No Single Player offline Mode then?

[Jigsaw]

We've investigated the different ways we can do it and the simple answer is that we can't - not without compromising the game we're trying to make.

Does that mean that Frontier: Elite II was a much more sophisticated game and that my Amiga 500 was a much more sophisticated computer? Because, for some magical reason both of them could manage a huge procedurally generated galaxy, a full trading system and a mission system without relying on online servers. An offline mode doesn't require dynamic events or dynamic market prizes or all that jazz. It only needs to provide exactly what Frontier: Elite II provided, which was possible with 500KB of RAM and not Cloud Computing.

It also makes me wonder what the vision of the game is: is it to shackle the users to your company so that they have to accept any possible future changes in the financial model ("You want to keep playing? Pay up!"). And does your vision also include games that can't be played by anyone anymore once the company decides to not support them anymore, because they stop being financially feasible?

And an often asked question: it very much sounds as if you knew this for many, many months. Why was that never communicated but kept quiet until now, while people kept assuring others that there would be an offline mode later on?

 

[Pibbles]

Please show me where they advertised and talked a lot about offline mode post kickstarter. Please.

I have 7 screenshots of this activity. If you PM me I'll send you a link to those screenshots. I am just rushing out so cannot do it now but will also post here too later...

 

[Michael Brookes]

It's pretty simple.

FDev asked for money to make a game.

They promised features for that game.

They received money.

They changed what features would be available.

They did not communicate those changes in a timely manner.


The shipping product now comes without features that were promised at time of payment.
Hence, "cash grab"

No it was't a ploy to get more money.

Michael

 

[Lobstris]

It's not just the data on the servers, it's the processing of everything that happens in the galaxy - so generating missions, trading, events, exploration - the core of the game.

Michael

OK. Missions - generating fetch and carry missions was already done in Frontier and FFE. Trading - keep the prices static, worked in Frontier and FFE. Events - OK remove dynamic events. Exploration/Mining - with the best will in the world the single player isn't going to explore/mine more than 10,000 systems in game. That's not a lot of data to keep track of. Over 99.99999% of the galaxy will remain untouched throughout the life of the game and can be ignored.
.
The problem I have with all of this is that some of us backed based on your previous track record of cramming the universe in a box. You (collectively) have done it 3 times before. We (OK, I, erroneously) expected it wouldn't be an issue to do it again - just with 2015 sound and graphics.
.
I'm not going to throw baby out with the bath water, stamp my feet and ask for a refund, as I enjoy the game as is. It just damages expectations and trust, and make you wonder whether the long term plans for the game will truly come into fruition.

 

[Titus Balls]

Case by case ?

As all purchases have been made pre-release, I am wondering what parms could possibly differentiate the cases. Why would one refund request get approved, and another not?

Is there some magical, secret word we need to quote, or some obsure oriental yoga position we need to assume while making the request?

Kickstarter vs Store.

If money was paid directly to FD via the store there is at least an argument for someone getting their money back.

From KS - absolutely none, especially as the game was funded before any TOS changes relating to that. When you back at KS level to assume the risk the project might not see the light of day, let alone one feature.

 

[PrometheusDarko]

I wonder how close to release they're going to announce they're dropping coop features?

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Oh, wait, no it's not... Development just took a slightly different direction due to technological constraints...

No, zero times this. I was expecting to patch it like any other "Physical DRM-free collector's premium boxed edition" of games that I buy.

Magic? Pixy Dust? Leprechauns? How?

I have to say i'll struggle to believe a single thing FD say from now on, and the cash grab is up to last week people were still buying this thinking that an offline option was available

Honestly, I fail to see how this is so terrible a thing. They didn't kill your dog, the development took a turn that the Devs didn't see coming... And when they saw it, they waited to make absolutely sure that it wasn't possible... The kickback if they had gimped the game to allow offline play would have been 100X worse...

I am getting annoyed at some of the people on here who clearly are out for blood and are trying to destroy the whole experience for everyone else though. Nothing positive comes from that type of attitude.

Welcome to the Elite: Dangerous Beta forums...

 

[GLJones]

Wow - just stumbled on the most recent newsletter/this thread, after being away from the forums for a while.

Pretty saddened by the "no offline" decision- although given modern games, not surprised at all.

For me, it's a preservation thing. Frontier Elite 2 is my favourite game of all time, which I found via amiga emulators around 2000, when looking for old space sims. The size/scale blew me away etc. Today, in 2014, I still play the save that i made upon first discovering FE:2 - a nearly 15 year old save file of a 21 (?) year old game.

I know I am probably a massive outlier in this respect, but this will not be possible with E: D as an "always online" game. I want to be able to play Elite Dangerous in 15-20 years, on my old machine that i keep around for playing elite. I want it to be "my" game. I want a collection of saveslots with different types of character that I save and curate myself for years. (This is not unprecedented with modern games either- just look at oblivion/skyrim - I have many different characters created in these games over hundreds of hours of gameplay. I will always be able to access these characters as long as I have the hardware to do so.

Again, with an "always online" game this is not really the case. With always on it feels like those characters are not "mine", they exist at the whims of a company over which i have no control. Company dies, so do my characters/saves along with hundreds of hours of my time.

Sure, games like everquest 2/wow/eve have been around years, but they are quite unique in their success, there are many examples of online games disappearing without a trace.

Game still looks ace, and I know its a risk of buying in early, but not hard to to feel burned/ blindsided by this.

Keep at it Frontier Devs! The game itself is great so far, and i think the level of investment we have as a community is testament to that.

 

[Dave Leestir]

As I said it's not simply the data although that is certainly an issue. Remember you don't just have the start point of the galaxy, you have any changes that are applied to it. The decision making processes for gameplay within the galaxy are also cloud based and it's not a simple job to transfer these over. The vision for how the game works has necessitated a much more encompassing online structure than we'd initially thought. We've not just said - let's not do offline. We've investigated the different ways we can do it and the simple answer is that we can't - not without compromising the game we're trying to make.

Michael

Probably not insurmountable technically though. Do you mean the server doesn't run on a MS Windows platform?
How about making a locked-down VM (virtual machine, e.g. virtualbox or vmware) available to run the server in, on the client PC?

Really, I haven't heard yet why it can not be done - how about crowd-sourcing a solution? There are lots of people here, some may have useful knowledge / experience.
Again, not for launch, but for one day, rather than never.

Thanks.

 

[Thargon]

I didn't bother to wade through the thousands of posts here, but I still don't get why it has been removed? Surely functionality that already exists wouldn't be hard to leave in?

 

[Michael Brookes]

The point is Michael, that the people who do want or need an offline way of playing ED KNEW and EXPECT that the overall experience will be compromised and DON'T CARE that it will be compromised. For whatever reason they had they backed you, David and FD on the promise of a cut down, unchanging and compromised galaxy simulator that they could still play regardless of where they were or how good their internet connection, if any, is. They need to have an offline mode in order to be able to play ED.

They paid good money on the expectation they will be able to play. Expectations based on your muppets in advertising and PR own declarations both in the KS AND on your promotional web site that there will be a cut down, compromised and otherwise static game environment.

Of course we cared. We wouldn't have devoted time and effort to try and support offline as well as online if that wasn't the case.

Michael

 

[Ccrazed]

I have to agree with your comment and urge FD to do exactly that. If they can't get an offline version out now, they can get one sorted out after the official release with a patch or two. It would be a great shame if this was an online only game (even solo will require being online) as there are a lot of people like me who travel a lot and go to places where there is poor or no internet.

 

[khaitom]

It's pretty simple.

FDev asked for money to make a game.

They promised features for that game.

They received money.

They changed what features would be available.

They did not communicate those changes in a timely manner.


The shipping product now comes without features that were promised at time of payment.
Hence, "cash grab"

From Kickstarter.

"Risks and challenges

Stating the obvious, all projects, whether building a bridge, making a film, studying for an exam or whatever, carry risk. Projects can run out of time or money, people can leave, assumptions that were made at the start may prove to be mistaken, or the results may simply not be as good as expected. Games development is no different."

 

[SJT]

Well I can't see the players without internet connection complaining very loudly.

Yes yes, we've had many clever people pop in and out of this thread for the last 18 hours with comments like your. Read some more of the thread for some the rebuttals. I've read all of it.

 

[Wulfrune]

You can still play solo. This will be entirely PvE then - no 'griefers' or other players.

Just that you will still need to contact the servers when buying, selling etc...

That's all I'd ask. I'd be more than happy with this scenario and based on your information, look forward with baited breath to the release.

 

[Irre]

why is everyone so mean you are worse than me lol and I just complained about selling ship skins

no one complained the first time when they did something different than on their Kickstarter page but this offline thing is a problem. lol

I think it is way worse saying every item will be available in game with credits and then instead starting selling exclusive cosmetic stuff with $$$

but hey in 2014 a missing offline mode cause rage?

I not get it

 

[-o-]

KS are not refundable, sorry.

Are you familiar with the legal and consumer legislation from where this poster lives?

 

[mbpoblet]

And there were no promises of ED private server (for obvious reasons). Heh, even SC backs from their private server promise now. It's just not that time and age anymore.

No, there weren't, but Brookes' post indicates that they'd be technically possible (and, frankly, they'd be the easiest way to provide offline mode... just put the server on the same machine as the client, and point the client to localhost... they'd even allow for LAN play).

Heck, they could even give us a "barebones" server with the stars from the catalogues (but not the ones from Frontier if they want to keep those secret) and let us input a custom galactic seed, and all the mission and political and economic data and whatnot... people could share custom open-source galactic setups and mods, set up private servers, whatever. Yes, the game would be utterly empty at the start, but just look at any healthy modding community and you can start to imagine the wonders we'd be capable of in a few months.

But they're so obsessed with their online persistent universe nonsense that they can't see that this would sell them a lot more games.

 

[Skeloton]

I didn't bother to wade through the thousands of posts here, but I still don't get why it has been removed? Surely functionality that already exists wouldn't be hard to leave in?

Im afraid that from Michaels posts, there isn't any shape or form of Offline to leave in.

 

[Pibbles]

Please show me where they advertised and talked a lot about offline mode post kickstarter. Please.

Here are 8 examples, we are finding more if anyone has them.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?res...17&authkey=!AB8ihXyry1B55fw&ithint=folder,png

It actually doesn't matter, one example is good enough, especially when you see the dates on some posts.

 

[Titus Balls]

I have to agree with your comment and urge FD to do exactly that. If they can't get an offline version out now, they can get one sorted out after the official release with a patch or two. It would be a great shame if this was an online only game (even solo will require being online) as there are a lot of people like me who travel a lot and go to places where there is poor or no internet.

Are you a software developer? Can you go knock it up in 5 minutes then?