No Single Player offline Mode then?
- Thread starter Brandon31
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To be frank, you won't find offline mode in any descriptions or official definitions. Also definition during KS was very carefully written. So dev speculated he might provide feature, carefully added disclaimer about possible regular updates. So it's not a fraud.
However, I personally see FD acting in good faith there. They didn't drop a shell on players on release night. Yeah, it would be nice to have this information sooner, but people with just a copy of the game can get refund rather easily.
As for KS backers KS never works with refunds, except if developer does it by itself.
As for emotional state I am little bit gutted. I understand that spec is changed for background sim (it turned out to be more expensive process) and offline mode has always made me worried how they gonna handle all that.
well, they are making all efforts to not paying attention then.
Except that was stated to be happening. Your talking as if FD intended to make what we have online but available offline from the outset. Which, from what Ive read, isn't the case.
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Its currently 3am here in blighty so I wouldn't expect an official response at this minute.
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The Kickstarter FAQ is an official definition.
Clearly stated RIGHT FROM THE START there would be an offline mode.
Sorry but the evidence you present for your logical conclusion is lacking, you may well be right, but you are just guessing.
Porting Linux code to Windows can range from trivial to difficult, depending on many and varied factors, (I have to maintain and advance a large multi-node 3D engine framework that supports pretty advanced HLSL/GLSL shaders across both Linux and Windows written in C++).
- C++ is mostly trivial to port from Linux to Windows and vice versa, even when going from a VS environment to Linux Makefiles it really isn't that difficult and you can always use tools like CMake.
- GUI, 2d/3d graphics, the more of this your application has, the more difficult, (potentially), the porting can be. If you use standard API's like Qt and OpenGL then it may not be difficult all: typically your server code has little or NO GUI/2d/3d, just a console and some log files.
- If you spend just a few hours in planning when you start your project you can have a parallel version of Linux and Windows code compiling and running side by side trivially.
- Worst case for an application that had no forethought put into it; (in my experience), most non graphical applications could be ported from one to the other in a matter of weeks, with Linux to Windows being faster than Windows to Linux. This is a sweeping generalisation because it depends on so many factors, (how the code was written, what compilers/linkers/tools used, what API's used etc), but it's usually not more than a 1 man job and never impossible.
Actually D3 broke the record on pre-orders, Blizzard also ended up having to issue refunds and copped a massive amount of negative press when they released and people found that there would be no offline mode, I believe they faced 3 law suits, 1 in Germany, 1 in South Korea and 1 in Belgium at the time especially when they refused to actually refund because 'The Game was not broken'.
Sim City faced issues almost exactly the same, as people have mentioned again it ended up costing EA a lot of money and forcing a massive change in both the policy of the company and the game, they patched in Offline mode and brought in the Game Gaurentee which states that you are able to get a refund for up to 7 days.
While I think some are over reacting I know that if I don't deliver on what I advertise/allude to I can be held accountable for it so I'm -very- careful when I'm twitch streaming preview builds of stuff or the like to state 'this is all development stuff and i'm not promising anything seen here will ever ship' and I'm very careful not to put out FAQ's saying things will be in that I can not be certain will.
I think that's the reason for the reaction being so violet.. People feel Lied to blatently so given that Frontier's own staff have been saying it would be there, they posted a SS of a dev computer with Offline/Local on it etc at one point.
Unless they never intended to do offline, of course, which means waiting until 1 month prior to release to notify people is another question in itself.
As a SCRUM manager, I feel I should share some insights with you
Grr thread merge (FYI, this is no censorship just the mods doing damage control)
This is a thread aimed at people who are complaining about what they have read in the newsletter.
What I am seeing here is a small but vocal group who don't like the idea of no solo offline mode. First of all, I understand your frustration. As an end user you see a product that is put in front of you, and it's not quite what you expected.
However, the fact is you are just an end user - you are not a stakeholder, client or investor - not matter what Kickstarter might make you think.
I suggest you go watch this first:
[video=youtube;502ILHjX9EE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE[/video]
Ok, watched that? Lets continue.
The stakeholder in this project is David Braben. His team of producers came to him and gave an update on where their teams are. They presented a report that said at the date of release they can provide an MVP that has most of the functionality that was in the original spec, but not all of it. Some of the scope of the project has grown beyond the original design document.
A decision had to be made. One of those decisions was to push back some features and content to later releases, that includes flyable ships.
One major issue to come out of this is that single player won't be in this, or any near foreseeable releases - HOWEVER, IT HAS NOT BEEN RULED OUT COMPLETELY.
The project managers have had to make a call and they would rather focus the resources on getting a game out that will make the project a commercial success - something a company like Frontier need.
Once the release is done (i.e the Ship It Squirrel is in the office, there are no further Yaks to be shaved) then - well first they can let the staff take a few days break to recover from the pressure of hitting their deadline, then they go back to the board and see what can be pushed out for the next release.
This will continue through the entire lifecycle of the project - DB has already stated they want this game to be around for at least 10 years, if not more.
tl;dr All this actually means is Solo Offline mode has been pushed to near the bottom of the priority list to make sure the main focus of the project can be delivered with the resources available.
Edit - tl;dr 2 - If they pandered to the people who must have Solo Offline mode, then a) The game might continue in perpetual beta and b) Solo Offline mode will ALWAYS ALWAYS lag behind online mode as they figure out ways to make features available to offline users.
Grr thread merge (FYI, this is no censorship just the mods doing damage control)
This is a thread aimed at people who are complaining about what they have read in the newsletter.
What I am seeing here is a small but vocal group who don't like the idea of no solo offline mode. First of all, I understand your frustration. As an end user you see a product that is put in front of you, and it's not quite what you expected.
However, the fact is you are just an end user - you are not a stakeholder, client or investor - not matter what Kickstarter might make you think.
I suggest you go watch this first:
[video=youtube;502ILHjX9EE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE[/video]
Ok, watched that? Lets continue.
The stakeholder in this project is David Braben. His team of producers came to him and gave an update on where their teams are. They presented a report that said at the date of release they can provide an MVP that has most of the functionality that was in the original spec, but not all of it. Some of the scope of the project has grown beyond the original design document.
A decision had to be made. One of those decisions was to push back some features and content to later releases, that includes flyable ships.
One major issue to come out of this is that single player won't be in this, or any near foreseeable releases - HOWEVER, IT HAS NOT BEEN RULED OUT COMPLETELY.
The project managers have had to make a call and they would rather focus the resources on getting a game out that will make the project a commercial success - something a company like Frontier need.
Once the release is done (i.e the Ship It Squirrel is in the office, there are no further Yaks to be shaved) then - well first they can let the staff take a few days break to recover from the pressure of hitting their deadline, then they go back to the board and see what can be pushed out for the next release.
This will continue through the entire lifecycle of the project - DB has already stated they want this game to be around for at least 10 years, if not more.
tl;dr All this actually means is Solo Offline mode has been pushed to near the bottom of the priority list to make sure the main focus of the project can be delivered with the resources available.
Edit - tl;dr 2 - If they pandered to the people who must have Solo Offline mode, then a) The game might continue in perpetual beta and b) Solo Offline mode will ALWAYS ALWAYS lag behind online mode as they figure out ways to make features available to offline users.
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This is pure speculation. I don't know what went into the decision, and neither do you. There is no need to impugn people's motives.
Nice idea im all in favor of community modded games i still play a modded version of skyrim and sometimes they come out better than the original game.
Thank you. I really appreciate the way you responded, it was helpful informatio that I had missed, and was presented both clearly and with rancor. I stand corrected.
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This sounds perfectly reasonable, but that isn't the language used when describing the apparent roadblocks offline mode faces.
edit, thread merged, was replying to: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789&p=1000520&viewfull=1#post1000520
edit, thread merged, was replying to: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789&p=1000520&viewfull=1#post1000520
I seriously hope that isn't what happened. I have no previous dealings with FD so my opinion of them was neutral. However its slipped towards negativity with this announcement. Should I find this to be true....Only a God would know what happens next.
They probably knew for a while that offline was problematic, but in the end you can do anything provided you have the necessary development resources. I expect that the decision to finally pull the plug on offline was actually pretty recent. Axing offline will cost them sales and they would have preferred to avoid antagonising their customers as well, so this decision would have been taken at the last possible moment. If there was a way to get it done without compromising the online version they would have done it.
Speak for yourself. Not others.
Yeah, problem is that it is another way around. ED is online game primary, and offline mode has always been afterthought. Offliners are clearly a tiny minority here (still a painful problem for them though). Also if I remember Simcity revealed it's online only status few days before actual release I think?
You can't know that. You have no idea.
ed as an online game primarly? with p2p?
also, it seems that we are not so small in numbers, in 4 hours this thread is 70+ pages and counting
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