can we end the "im going to call my lawyer" posts now? its more than absurd.
No Single Player offline Mode then?
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can we end the "im going to call my lawyer" posts now? its more than absurd.
There's nothing to suggest they were building it incorrectly in the first place. In fact, they WANTED to have an offline mode but that became impossible to do as development went on.
Are you claiming that when you actively design something, you have no control of what you design?
The whole point of software designs is to reach what you intend the software package to do.
What about the KS projects that completely folded having spent all the money? I wouldn't get your hopes up on suing someone for an idea you invested in not turning out how they originally hoped. I suggest you strongly consider checking what KS is actually about before investing in any more projects with them.
I concur.
I think this is entirely ridiculous. I don't think I've been disconnected from the internet for more than day in the last few years..I cant even remember. for 99.9% of people in the western world its not a problem. Sorry for those who cant get a constant connection but eventually even you will have one, time and progress moves on. Just quit the niggly nit picking over a tiny issue omfg. Get your money back and play SC then.
Apologies if this has already been pointed out, but this:
Quote Originally Posted by Michael Brookes View Post
The problem is that the galaxy mechanics all sit on the online servers. The data set and processes are huge and not something that would translate offline without considerable compromise to the vision. Trust me we didn't sit down and think what would annoy people the most! It's a choice we've had to make and so we've taken it.
Michael
Suggests that they must've known about the 'problem' of offline play for some considerable time.
I am trying to raise a ticket to request a refund but it's not working - nothing happens. Guess the system is overloaded right now.
Now my understanding of paying for goods, whether that is on KS or in a shop, is that they have to be as described and fit for purpose. Can't see any way around this - there was no suggestion that there might be a single player mode - it was inhernetly offered from the get-go!
Quote Originally Posted by Michael Brookes View Post
The problem is that the galaxy mechanics all sit on the online servers. The data set and processes are huge and not something that would translate offline without considerable compromise to the vision. Trust me we didn't sit down and think what would annoy people the most! It's a choice we've had to make and so we've taken it.
Michael
Suggests that they must've known about the 'problem' of offline play for some considerable time.
I am trying to raise a ticket to request a refund but it's not working - nothing happens. Guess the system is overloaded right now.
Now my understanding of paying for goods, whether that is on KS or in a shop, is that they have to be as described and fit for purpose. Can't see any way around this - there was no suggestion that there might be a single player mode - it was inhernetly offered from the get-go!
The guy claims that it is not about DRM because the "the internet connection is required for the gameplay mechanic", but he fails to realise that the requirement of a permanent internet connection to the FD servers is the very definition of Always-on DRM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always-on_DRM
Well this news has ruined my day
Having backed this project on Kickstarter from the very beginning and have read the regular communications from the Frontier team, I can fully accept that this wasn't an easy decision for them to make, and can also fully accept that it was a decision they probably didn't take lightly.
HOWEVER, having said that I am also an avid gamer who played Elite on the C64 non-stop back in the 1980s and loved every moment of it, and now cannot help but feel let down by such a wonderful team.
Whilst my excitement for Elite Dangerous was immense when I saw it appear on Kickstarter I was never intending to click that "pledge" button until I saw one specific phrase "offline singleplayer", I saw it, therefore I clicked it.
Your recent revelation however can't help but leave a sour taste in my mouth, I mean the original Elite managed to procedurally create over 2000 planets with a laughably small 32k of memory, X3 managed to create a fully dynamic market system on hardware 10 years ago.
I can only assume that you got so caught up in your excitement and mechanics for multiplayer that you forgot to assess at each step of the development process if a multiplayer mechanic or requirement was also compatible for a single player offline experience, until you got so far into the development process and suddenly realised that you'd concentrated so much on online multiplayer and "accurately modelled Newtonian planetary modelling" that you had coded yourself out of any possibility of re-engineering the code for single player. I mean 400 BILLION STAR SYSTEMS... a singleplayer experience of just 500,000 star systems would be plenty and would still take a player MONTHS to explore, did you even look at a galaxy model that could be fed the instruction of if a singleplayer or multiplayer game was being played and scale itself accordingly?
No-one expected a game where you could dynamically shift from singlplayer to multiplayer in the same game, but you seem to have modelled the game as if they are the same thing.
I refuse to buy online only games or play online for a number of reasons.
1) I am off to stay with my parents for 2 weeks coming up to Christmas (I do it quite a few times during the year), I was looking forward to taking my gaming laptop with me an playing Elite Dangerous... my parent don't have internet connectivity... well that's my Elite gaming experience ruined.
2) I go on regular business trips and stay in hotel rooms where they either don't have internet access, or the access is slow, or the cost of internet access if exorbitantly high, I like to game in the evenings... well I now can't do that with Elite.
3) I work for an internet telecommunications company, and if there if one thing I can guarantee, is that telecoms bearers will error and fail, servers will crash, servers will need maintenance, during peak times connectivity will be spotty, especially intercontinental. If you bought an offline game would you expect to press the "play" button and then the game take 24 hours to load? I hope not, if you got a game like that you'd throw it in the bin, it should be the same for online games as well, but it isn't, and you now expect us to tolerate such disruptions in our SINGLEPLAYER experience. There are going to be multiple times where your customers are going to want to play a singleplayer game of Elite Dangerous and are going to press that play button and nothing is going to happen. I work in networking, it IS going to happen and there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT.
4) I have not got the time nor patience to deal with the morons that are just going to be playing online to around a ruin my gaming experience. I know you have the anti-griefing bounty mechanic, but it only "discourages" that behaviour, heads are going to be heads and by the time someone claims a bounty a single player could cause havoc to numerous other players, and if they get destroyed they just get another ship, rinse and repeat. No thanks.
5) No offense but you're a smallish development company, how long before you turn off the server farms and kill the game for everyone? How many server farms have you got, on how many continents, the game is not subscription based so what happens when funds from the sale of elite dwindle to the point you're losing money on server rental and bandwidth costs? How long before we receive the inevitable email "It is with deep regret that we have come to the difficult decision of turning off the Elite servers, fiscal reasons mean that we can no longer maintain current development of new games whilst incurring the costs of running our Elite servers which are now losing money. Thank you for travelling with us on our incredible journey. Sincerely David Braben"
6) Again, not offense, but as a small development company you have developed only a handful of games and are reliant on the success of one game in order to finance another. How long before you produce a game that does not sell well and you find yourself in financial difficulty? I am sure Big Huge Games and THQ never intended to go bankrupt... but look at them now.
7) I still play Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 which is now over 10 years old and enjoy it immensely, heck I still play Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 which is now 16 years old thanks to gog.com, well one thing's for certain, I certainly won't be buying Elite Dangerous and playing it 10-16 years from now, 'cos the server farms will no longer be there!
I don't argue that Elite Dangerous is a gorgeous and amazing game, but it was not the game I was sold.
A disappointed original Elite player and fan. :-(
Having backed this project on Kickstarter from the very beginning and have read the regular communications from the Frontier team, I can fully accept that this wasn't an easy decision for them to make, and can also fully accept that it was a decision they probably didn't take lightly.
HOWEVER, having said that I am also an avid gamer who played Elite on the C64 non-stop back in the 1980s and loved every moment of it, and now cannot help but feel let down by such a wonderful team.
Whilst my excitement for Elite Dangerous was immense when I saw it appear on Kickstarter I was never intending to click that "pledge" button until I saw one specific phrase "offline singleplayer", I saw it, therefore I clicked it.
Your recent revelation however can't help but leave a sour taste in my mouth, I mean the original Elite managed to procedurally create over 2000 planets with a laughably small 32k of memory, X3 managed to create a fully dynamic market system on hardware 10 years ago.
I can only assume that you got so caught up in your excitement and mechanics for multiplayer that you forgot to assess at each step of the development process if a multiplayer mechanic or requirement was also compatible for a single player offline experience, until you got so far into the development process and suddenly realised that you'd concentrated so much on online multiplayer and "accurately modelled Newtonian planetary modelling" that you had coded yourself out of any possibility of re-engineering the code for single player. I mean 400 BILLION STAR SYSTEMS... a singleplayer experience of just 500,000 star systems would be plenty and would still take a player MONTHS to explore, did you even look at a galaxy model that could be fed the instruction of if a singleplayer or multiplayer game was being played and scale itself accordingly?
No-one expected a game where you could dynamically shift from singlplayer to multiplayer in the same game, but you seem to have modelled the game as if they are the same thing.
I refuse to buy online only games or play online for a number of reasons.
1) I am off to stay with my parents for 2 weeks coming up to Christmas (I do it quite a few times during the year), I was looking forward to taking my gaming laptop with me an playing Elite Dangerous... my parent don't have internet connectivity... well that's my Elite gaming experience ruined.
2) I go on regular business trips and stay in hotel rooms where they either don't have internet access, or the access is slow, or the cost of internet access if exorbitantly high, I like to game in the evenings... well I now can't do that with Elite.
3) I work for an internet telecommunications company, and if there if one thing I can guarantee, is that telecoms bearers will error and fail, servers will crash, servers will need maintenance, during peak times connectivity will be spotty, especially intercontinental. If you bought an offline game would you expect to press the "play" button and then the game take 24 hours to load? I hope not, if you got a game like that you'd throw it in the bin, it should be the same for online games as well, but it isn't, and you now expect us to tolerate such disruptions in our SINGLEPLAYER experience. There are going to be multiple times where your customers are going to want to play a singleplayer game of Elite Dangerous and are going to press that play button and nothing is going to happen. I work in networking, it IS going to happen and there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT.
4) I have not got the time nor patience to deal with the morons that are just going to be playing online to around a ruin my gaming experience. I know you have the anti-griefing bounty mechanic, but it only "discourages" that behaviour, heads are going to be heads and by the time someone claims a bounty a single player could cause havoc to numerous other players, and if they get destroyed they just get another ship, rinse and repeat. No thanks.
5) No offense but you're a smallish development company, how long before you turn off the server farms and kill the game for everyone? How many server farms have you got, on how many continents, the game is not subscription based so what happens when funds from the sale of elite dwindle to the point you're losing money on server rental and bandwidth costs? How long before we receive the inevitable email "It is with deep regret that we have come to the difficult decision of turning off the Elite servers, fiscal reasons mean that we can no longer maintain current development of new games whilst incurring the costs of running our Elite servers which are now losing money. Thank you for travelling with us on our incredible journey. Sincerely David Braben"
6) Again, not offense, but as a small development company you have developed only a handful of games and are reliant on the success of one game in order to finance another. How long before you produce a game that does not sell well and you find yourself in financial difficulty? I am sure Big Huge Games and THQ never intended to go bankrupt... but look at them now.
7) I still play Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 which is now over 10 years old and enjoy it immensely, heck I still play Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 which is now 16 years old thanks to gog.com, well one thing's for certain, I certainly won't be buying Elite Dangerous and playing it 10-16 years from now, 'cos the server farms will no longer be there!
I don't argue that Elite Dangerous is a gorgeous and amazing game, but it was not the game I was sold.
A disappointed original Elite player and fan. :-(
Okay your are working on piece of software, one of your requirements is it work offline. If you end up with a piece of software that doesn't work offline I'd say you've done something incorrectly...
Calling someone a fraudster fits the definition and has been used by some of the more intense posters.
"someone tells one or more persons an untruth about another which untruth will harm the reputation of the person defamed"
"statements such as an untrue accusation of having committed a crime, having a loathsome disease, or being unable to perform one's occupation are treated as slander per se since the harm and malice are obvious, and therefore usually result in general and even punitive damage recovery by the person harmed."
I do not even know why we are discussing it though as its all very silly to throw legal definitions about over such matters in my opinion and very off topic.
Would be nice if people stayed on topic and stopped talking of refunds in this thread, as pointed out -countless times- this is not the place for that.
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If the creators went belly up, then you are obviously boned. But that is not the case here.
Incorrect. They stated something was part of the product. Flat out.
Now they state it will no longer be part of the product.
That's not about disagreements of opinions, but rather black and white showcasing that they said one thing and then changed it afterwards. Hence the feeling that it is impossible to trust what they say when they have displayed already that they can change at a moments notice.
You mean like claiming fraud because you *think* it's fraud even though you aren't actually in possession of evidence such as FD's software design process?
I don't think anyone is implying it was unreasonable to believe what was said two years ago on the issue but discounting what he has said recently doesn't make any sense. I think the only reasonable thing to do in this case is to assume that what we are being told is the truth until it's demonstrated to be false.
I hope people do call their lawyers.
They will take on the case, bill you the money and quite happily take it.
Then after a while they will turn round and tell you it's not possible to take Frontier to court over this.
They will take on the case, bill you the money and quite happily take it.
Then after a while they will turn round and tell you it's not possible to take Frontier to court over this.
Hi folks.
I just wrote way too much text on some technical musings about the OFFLINE mode removal. You're welcome to read and comment.
Warning: It's sadly devoid of any emotion, as I'm actually a soulless robot. It's also lacking any discussion on apparent poor corporate communication style, or prior project plan assessments about the viability of OFFLINE mode, or kickstarter, or moderators. Yes, you got it - it's pretty dry! Still, it might be thought-provoking for some with a technical bent (most of us qualify, I reckon!!).
I just wrote way too much text on some technical musings about the OFFLINE mode removal. You're welcome to read and comment.
Warning: It's sadly devoid of any emotion, as I'm actually a soulless robot. It's also lacking any discussion on apparent poor corporate communication style, or prior project plan assessments about the viability of OFFLINE mode, or kickstarter, or moderators. Yes, you got it - it's pretty dry! Still, it might be thought-provoking for some with a technical bent (most of us qualify, I reckon!!).
Seeing that has been reposted, I will repost this ...
In Drew's review of the offline situation, which Mr Braben's tweet supported, he quotes KS;
"When you back a project, you’re helping to create something new — not ordering something that already exists. There’s a chance something could happen that prevents the creator from being able to finish the project as promised."
He then concludes .. "So, I can’t see a refund route here. If you are a Kickstarter/Paypal backer this is the risk you took when you signed up. If you didn’t understand the risk, that is your concern."
However he knowingly omits to mention the full story because his KS quote was sourced from this KS FAQ paragraph.
The full paragraph reads ...
"When a project is successfully funded, the creator is responsible for completing the project and fulfilling each reward. Their fundamental obligation to backers is to finish all the work that was promised. Once a creator has done so, they’ve fulfilled their obligation to their backers. At the same time, backers must understand that Kickstarter is not a store. When you back a project, you’re helping to create something new — not ordering something that already exists. There’s a chance something could happen that prevents the creator from being able to finish the project as promised. If a creator is absolutely unable to complete the project and fulfill rewards, they must make every reasonable effort to find another way of bringing the project to a satisfying conclusion for their backers."
The red section Drew quoted was favourable to FD's case.
The remaing blue section, was not.
You can draw your own conclusions to determine if Drew's assessment of the 'refund route' was fair, or cherry picked.
Unsurprising Mr Braben considered it a "nice piece".
They also said this on their kickstarter page and as far as I can see they haven't retracted it anywhere - so presumably we have to it into account too?
"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."
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