No Single Player offline Mode then?

[Skeloton]

You can't know that. You have no idea.

What just like you cant know it wasn't?

 

[Tar Stone]

Thread is getting messy but is brilliant reading.

I hope Titus Balls is correct, sincerely.

Offline mode always sounded dodgy to me, now the FPS stuff is sounding even dodgier and I hope it gets dropped - and offline given a second chance next year.

 

[craftomega]

Although I am clearly on the negative side of this, I beg people not to take this outside of Frontier unless you request a refund via proper channels (the Zaonce store) and are refused when you feel you should not be.

Oh I mean just link that to them when requesting a refund, currently there TOS says you cannot get a refund if you baought beta/alpha. But according to canadian law I can...

 

[Tim Wheatley]

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're a good studio. Great development pace, relatively bug free release candidates (they'll have an internal team that test things before we do), and they seem like genuinely nice folks. Whatever happened, I find it hard to feel much negative about them, however disappointed I am.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

First of all, this post is not meant as an attack. I believe many of us here understand your reasoning for deciding as you did on this issue, as I know I do. However, as someone who was looking forward to playing offline-only (luckily, unlike many others, I am not limited by circumstances to offline-only - it is merely my preference), I think the timing of the announcement is perhaps more troubling than the announcement itself. How long ago was this decision made? Perhaps more importantly, at which point was scrapping plans for 'offline-only' the option being favored? If I had heard this announcement months ago, I would not be as disgruntled as I am now. If you and the folks at FD can truly say you were very seriously considering still developing 'offline-only' up until very recently, then I guess I can accept it and move on. Otherwise, the timing of releasing this bombshell a month from release, and a week (!) from Gamma, is really upsetting.

Again, I'm not trying to attack you guys or anything, but the timing is really what sticks in my craw...

I think it is very simple - they are working on background sim even now, this night. One of FD devs got tasked to strip out parts of the sim to get it runnning on single computer with ED. I assume he ran into serious problems - most likely that even having just simple trade transaction would require full blown simulation, not even talking about other things.

So no, I don't think it is delayed for some reason. It sounds like they have decided it just recently...even possibly this week. In nutshell, to run ED offline, they would need to completely redesign backend side.

 

[Tim Wheatley]

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.

As I said in the other thread, er... newsletter thread. I think an apology, a statement on this, would have gone a loooooong way. It feels like they said: "YAY, free ships! Isn't pizza great? This! This! This! Oh, and your cat died."

 

[Skeloton]

They're a good studio. Great development pace, relatively bug free release candidates (they'll have an internal team that test things before we do), and they seem like genuinely nice folks. Whatever happened, I find it hard to feel much negative about them, however disappointed I am.

I would say KSH was a good studio...but then again I bought their recent early access game yr ago in 14days. No real shady dealings, going retail with a early access (alpha) is a bit iffy though another game did this previous. Updates to the game every Thursday. Listen to the community.

 

[-o-]

One of the methods ED will be using to make money for FD is through dynamic online advertising.

In most questions relating to business matters, the answer, more often than not, maximises profit.

Welcome to the wonderful, evolving galaxy of online gaming.

 

[Tim Wheatley]

I hope Titus Balls is correct, sincerely.

Me too...

 

[Juniper]

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.

You're right - I am just guessing, but it's 3am and it's been a long week, I'm tired, and this has just put the scubas on my year.

It depends very much on how the code is written (most of it would actually be mocked out anyway as they don't need or want full server functionality in the offline game), but it's clear that this was never intended to happen. Online mode is how they always intended us to play - Michael has said so tonight.

The hope presumably was that they could just somehow shoehorn this in last minute, and then realise "oops, no, it's not been written like that", when the reality is that offline mode should have been part of the plan from day one with every design decision. We certainly all assumed it was, based on previous statements from Frontier - and they gave us no indication (until the newsletter) that it hadn't been.

Hopefully, FD will see the depth & strength of response on here and take heed / action. They clearly underestimated the crucialness of offline, and of how betrayed many backers feel right now.

 

[Virgil Kyle]

First of all, this post is not meant as an attack. I believe many of us here understand your reasoning for deciding as you did on this issue, as I know I do. However, as someone who was looking forward to playing offline-only (luckily, unlike many others, I am not limited by circumstances to offline-only - it is merely my preference), I think the timing of the announcement is perhaps more troubling than the announcement itself. How long ago was this decision made? Perhaps more importantly, at which point was scrapping plans for 'offline-only' the option being favored? If I had heard this announcement months ago, I would not be as disgruntled as I am now. If you and the folks at FD can truly say you were very seriously considering still developing 'offline-only' up until very recently, then I guess I can accept it and move on. Otherwise, the timing of releasing this bombshell a month from release, and a week (!) from Gamma, is really upsetting.


Again, I'm not trying to attack you guys or anything, but the timing is really what sticks in my craw...

Just for clarification, I meant this as a separate thread, but it was almost immediately moved here. I understand the mods are trying to contain this situation, but this is a very, very important aspect of the announcement, and I really feel that we should at least be able to start threads that address important aspects of this decision, as long as there aren't a bunch of duplicates, of course. Important points are really getting lost and overlooked with everything being shoved into one thread.

 

[Nomadski]

Doesn't change anything for me whoever is right. Paid a crapton of money a very long time ago to not be able to play a game I should have been able to play according to the original KS FAQ, and have had absolutely ZERO hints before this week that it would have changed.

I feel screwed, completely, and utterly.

 

[shazbot]

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.

Finally, some sense.

 

[srinidhalaya]

Over a 1,000 replies in less than 24 hours. Are you SURE you thought this through FD? Just because you don't want "secrets" to get out?

 

[the darkwalker]

Just for clarification, I meant this as a separate thread, but it was almost immediately moved here. I understand the mods are trying to contain this situation, but this is a very, very important aspect of the announcement, and I really feel that we should at least be able to start threads that address important aspects of this decision, as long as there aren't a bunch of duplicates, of course. Important points are really getting lost and overlooked with everything being shoved into one thread.

quite the contrary, more posts into an unified thread means more visibility and less chanches to get the thread buried with trolls

 

[Tim Wheatley]

Over a 1,000 replies in less than 24 hours. Are you SURE you thought this through FD? Just because you don't want "secrets" to get out?

To be fair, I think about 999 of them were me.

 

[Skeloton]

Over a 1,000 replies in less than 24 hours. Are you SURE you thought this through FD? Just because you don't want "secrets" to get out?

I think the word Explosive would be an understatement.

 

[FX2K]

*snip*

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.

I see the mod's merged your thread into here, almost missed it...this thread is moving fast... still...

TLDR1...If it truly was being put to the bottom of the list, surely they could say so... everything I have read points to them giving up on the idea completely and concentrating their efforts with online and online only.

TLDR2...I don't think anybody was expecting an identical offline experience compared with online, but what they are left with is the inability to play the game.

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?

Offline mode may have been an after thought, but we are not talking an afterthought in 2014... here is the thread which lead to the KS page being updated in 2012: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2913

Anyway, whatever comes of it, I hope ED is still a success.. I feel for those who won't be able to play it though. I hope FD do the right thing under these circumstances, whether that be honour a refund for those that want it, or revisit the possibility in the future.

 

[Atinus]

Which do you think happened? There is absolutely no way that they ran into a development decision on this last night.

I don't know. But I'm pointing out posts based on pure speculation without any evidence, particularly those insinuating this was hidden deliberately in effort to deceive.

 

[Robert Graham]

Because that then becomes another product we have to create and support and that just isn't possible. We have considered many alternatives to see if we could make this work, but unfortunately this is what we've had to do.

Michael

The problem here is that you'd have access to the server which isn't something we'd want to allow as it contains the secrets of the galaxy. Which was also an issue with an online version.

Michael

For those wondering why people are saying it's 'secrets' they don't want out.