No Single Player offline Mode then?

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Of course it didn't stop them playing Frontier - there wasn't anything else out there.

Right now, there's 2 candidates - Elite Dangerous & Star Citizen. Both actually different (Disclaimer: Backed both). Times have moved on, and for Frontier to deliver the experience they think is crucial to its' success, means that unfortunately offline is no longer an option.

If my lifestyle meant that this removed ED from games I could possibly play, I would be annoyed, but then move on. You won't be playing Star Citizen offline, either (and I am aware that that's not part of the discussion at hand, but thought I'd mention it).

The hard truth we have to understand is that online games are the way forward for multiplayer-online games. Note that I make a distinction there, that online is the way forward for Multiplayer games. As our hardware and networks improve, it'll become the norm and the entire idea of "offline" will be lost in the ether in a decade.

You forgot to add that squadren 42 is the offline single player mode of the game. Even star citizen is offering that.
 
The hard truth we have to understand is that online games are the way forward for multiplayer-online games. Note that I make a distinction there, that online is the way forward for Multiplayer games. As our hardware and networks improve, it'll become the norm and the entire idea of "offline" will be lost in the ether in a decade.
Yup. The notion of "owning" a game is quickly becoming a thing of the past. There are a lot of effort and resources being directed towards streamed gaming at the moment, and I think this is what gaming will be like in the near future. Get with the times.
 
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It is impractical rather than impossible, but circumstances mean that it cannot be done.

Michael


Hello Michael. I've played all of the old Elite games going back to my C64, and I've been following the development of Elite Dangerous ever since the kickstarter, though I've not purchased the game yet. I was actually planning on buying the mercenary edition this weekend but then the newsletter came out and the cutting of the offline mode was made public. I won't go into the moral issue of how it was done or the lack of respect shown to kickstarters and current game owners, but I have one very simple question:

How long does Frontier Development plan to keep the Elite Dangerous servers up and running?

If I am to buy the game then I would like an answer as to the timeframe that my investment will be good for. I typically do not buy online only games as I don't feel they are a good long term value as products, I might be breaking that rule for Elite Dangerous but I would like to know just what value I will be getting for my game / paint packs /DLC / and expansion purchases. Will we get five years of gaming value? Ten? Only two or three?

Thank you in advance.

Mengy
 
I would never buy a game which survivability depends upon online component. I feel very much cheated now and can't help myself to think, that Frontier knew about cutting off offline for a long time, but just didn't care!

In the end it all comes down to one question:

How long will the FD servers last?

Edit: Funny how the poster above expresses the same feelings
 
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It all comes down to trust and losing a few players, seems the decision was made a longtime ago, though not publicised for 'some' reason.

As it stands now MB is fielding questions here instead of working towards the deadlines, nothing is going to change, but I'd be shocked if a compromise isn't worked out after release.

I think many of us have lost a little of that warm fuzzy feeling we all had for FD but there's still a great game waiting to be made.
 
You forgot to add that squadren 42 is the offline single player mode of the game. Even star citizen is offering that.

It's a standalone classic Wing Commander style game, of course it can be ran offline. Still, I expect it to have online registration because you have to download new episodes.
 
You forgot to add that squadren 42 is the offline single player mode of the game. Even star citizen is offering that.

Exactly, as a separate game module - just the the FPS, Racing, Arena - they are all completely separate modules. PU is also separate, and comparable to Elite: Dangerous.

They are two completely separate product, and being developed by separate teams with a budget WAY over what Frontier have.

Regardless of that, they are also having issues delivering what people expect.
 

I think I'm in love.

You forgot to add that squadren 42 is the offline single player mode of the game. Even star citizen is offering that.

Please give me an official link that says Squadron 42 is going to be offline? I searched for one and could not find it. I back both, and plan to play both, so there's that. But should my internet go out one day, that would indeed be nice. Elite is not Star Citizen, however, I feel it oddly necessary to point out... Different teams, different designs.

How long does Frontier Development plan to keep the Elite Dangerous servers up and running?
Mengy
How long will the FD servers last?s

How is this even a question. The obvious answer here is: "As long as humanly possible." Honestly, it's like you think Frontier don't like the game they are spending countless hours developing or something...

Exactly, as a separate game module - just the the FPS, Racing, Arena - they are all completely separate modules. PU is also separate, and comparable to Elite: Dangerous.

They are two completely separate product, and being developed by separate teams with a budget WAY over what Frontier have.

Regardless of that, they are also having issues delivering what people expect.

I still can't find anything that says it'll be offline... Legitimate interest here. Also, obligatory comment that that very well could change, as the game isn't slated for release until 2016.
 
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Faq on Kickstarter:
"Will the game be DRM-free?"


"Yes, the game code will not include DRM (Digital Rights Management), but there will be server authentication when you connect for multiplayer and/or updates and to synchronise with the server."
The other Point:

"How will single player work? Will I need to connect to a server to play?"


"The galaxy for Elite: Dangerous is a shared universe maintained by a central server. All of the meta data for the galaxy is shared between players. This includes the galaxy itself as well as transient information like economies. The aim here is that a player's actions will influence the development of the galaxy, without necessarily having to play multiplayer.

The other important aspect for us is that we can seed the galaxy with events, often these events will be triggered by player actions. With a living breathing galaxy players can discover new and interesting things long after they have started playing.

Update! The above is the intended single player experience. However it will be possible to have a single player game without connecting to the galaxy server. You won't get the features of the evolving galaxy (although we will investigate minimising those differences) and you probably won't be able to sync between server and non-server (again we'll investigate)."
And Now what Frontier says is ED have DRM and is not possible to Play offline.
Thats a NOGO!
 
I don't mind too much, I didn't buy the game with a thought to offline play but I do find one thing distressing - there's going to be a huge influx of Chinese gold farmers just like in every MMO that has a persistent economy. I hope there will be some sort of spam prevention.
 
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It's pretty simple really. A lot of people don't want to either interact with others & be part of "their" game, nor do they wish to be at the mercy of a proprietary 3rd party server which could be switched off at any time and for any reason... not to mention an overzealous engineer cutting the wrong wire, or other transient ISP issue.

Multiplayer & "always on" is a curse on the gaming industry.

I backed Elite to the tune of almost £1000 because it had the option of an offline mode. I've contributed to the DDF and promoted the game & Frontier for the last two years. If I had known it was going to be this, I wouldn't have done any of that, and would (maybe) have simply bought the game on release.

It perhaps wouldn't be so bad if there was a fully stable MP mode... but there isn't, and never has been. The one light at the end of the tunnel was offline mode, and now, due to cut backs, it has been switched off.
 
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I still don't understand... and the whole thing sounds a bit 'strange to me.

What i learned working on game editing is that everything is possible !
you can change everything and do everything you want.
there are no limits.

But I don't want to speak much about this (it's wiser to stay silent), i hope only that will not compromise the future of the game.
 
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Please elaborate on this point.

What circumstances, specifically.

Is your arm being twisted by "external forces"?

Oh please... If it were EA or UbiSoft, I'd not snort at the "external forces" comment (though I'd happily eat my hat in the future if it were proven otherwise).

Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and do some guesswork based on experience. You are free to say "Your argument is invalid", should you so wish :)

My guess is that, to deliver the game Frontier wanted, they had to change the way certain things worked. At the beginning the galaxy was procedural, stations/trading/composition, you name it - all stemming from seeds. At this point, there's still an offline version because it's doing nothing that the original Elite, and subsequent titles, already did.

New ideas were found, new ways of making the content and game-play rich. The universe was STILL too static. Some people claimed trading was boring... or maybe bounty hunting... or maybe mining and the results... Or just the missions in general.

Frontier looked hard on this, and realised that the multiplayer dynamic trumped the offline minority. By forcing the game online, lots of new avenues opened up, and the universe and the game that we play in come Gamma/Launch, is rich, and interactive. And not static. At this point FD realised that it would be financially unviable (at this juncture), to support both an online universe, and an offline universe (as alluded to a point made by Michael some pages back about having a "second" universe).

Now we can wax lyrical about the delivery and wording in the newsletter, but I honestly believe the game will be better for the decisions that have been made.

And it IS unfortunate for those who bought in solely for offline. It's easy for us online-freaks to say "Sorry!"... if you truly love the game and genre, you might find other ways to play the game. If it's no longer for you, I wish you well and good luck.
 
It seems that Frontier have moved the goalposts. No wonder there has been serious lack of communication from Frontier staff over the last few weeks on the forum.

Broken promise 1: No offline game.

Broken promise 2: 25 playable ships at launch.

Broken promise 3: All backers would get access to the Gamma version. Now it seems that only Alphas and Betas get access.



FRONTIER DEVELOPMENTS HAVE SERIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED ME.
 
And perhaps later they *will* be able to solve it. Right now they have a roadmap, of which Offline-mode isn't on it (currently). Perhaps down the line, with a bit of extra work, they can do it.

And I'm sorry, truly, but "intent" and "promise" are not the same thing.

Thats what I said albeit badly in my upseted frustration before, I truly hope that can get the offline feature sorted, not now but later. I understand that it can't be in the release due to time etc etc, but I hope that they haven't just totally dismissed the idea.

We will have to agree to disagree. In my book when someone states that they will do something, then I expect them to do that something.
 
Hello Michael. I've played all of the old Elite games going back to my C64, and I've been following the development of Elite Dangerous ever since the kickstarter, though I've not purchased the game yet. I was actually planning on buying the mercenary edition this weekend but then the newsletter came out and the cutting of the offline mode was made public. I won't go into the moral issue of how it was done or the lack of respect shown to kickstarters and current game owners, but I have one very simple question:

How long does Frontier Development plan to keep the Elite Dangerous servers up and running?

If I am to buy the game then I would like an answer as to the timeframe that my investment will be good for. I typically do not buy online only games as I don't feel they are a good long term value as products, I might be breaking that rule for Elite Dangerous but I would like to know just what value I will be getting for my game / paint packs /DLC / and expansion purchases. Will we get five years of gaming value? Ten? Only two or three?

Thank you in advance.

Mengy

How long is a piece of string?

How many forum posters does it take to change a lightbulb?

How long until the eventual heat death of the universe? (from this thread, can't come soon enough).


This is a spurious question at this stage. The answer is a simple one:

As long as they possibly can.

And while people call my previous point on this selfish, it comes down to everyone here sticking with Frontier and backing them. If everyone who is aggrieved by the lack of a single player module pulls their money out, there might be a "run on the bank" meaning the servers will stay up less long that they could have before now.
 
This is quite a long thread but I feel like I should provide my 2c as well. I'm on both sides here.

On one I can see that the Offline experience could become stale, lacking important event injections, economy events, special occurrences etc. While they say it was impractical for the offline mode to be this stale, I also believe that the offline mode would have been a serious misrepresentation of the Elite Dangerous experience. It would have effectively been 2 different games in one. I am "ok" at the removal of offline mode, dissapointed that I can't romp around in my own galaxy instance, but pleased with the fact that the online mode is becoming a place of interesting possibilities that I'm sure FD are going to surprise us with.
I can't understand people agreeing or even accepting the removal. In reality they are limiting the game to those people who have a somewhat reliable internet connections. I'm sure that in latest 1-2 years E : D is technically playable on Tablets (with x86 CPU), except they optimize it a lot (on my last test I was unable to play it on lowest graphics settings with my built-in A10 APU - one of the fastest in the market end of 2013). So a lot of potential customers are cut off. This is an immense financial loss. It's difficult to estimate right now, but end of next year we will see if this was a wise decision.

This, however, doesn't excuse FD from bait and switch (more of promised feature, and tried but couldn't deliver) and I hope that if anyone bought the game under the pretense of being able to play in an offline unconnected mode should be able to get a refund. I can excuse FD that when they first planned ED they had no idea that it would grow to the state it's currently in and beyond, but they still should do the right thing.

I disagree. I can understand that people want a refund but in the end it means even less people demanding Offline variant feature. Instead everything should be done to get this feature sooner or later even if there are a lot of technically challenges to be mastered. Also as stated above in the long run (decades) this game will give them much less income compared to the old (Elite-type) classics if Offline is not done.
 
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