No Single Player offline Mode then?

[Krait_79]

I don't know about everyone else, but for me, I funded a project not a finished article. Projects change over time either due to scope change, economical constraints, time constraints, and even through discovery that the initial brief cannot be wholly delivered. I'm ok with the changes announced, because I did not expect a monolithic unchanging project, I expected an iterative approach to the project.

Again, my Kickstarter money was to assist in funding the project. If I wanted to buy a finished game that would be unchanging, I'd have purchased one that was already developed and released.

+1 well said

 

[mattensky]

Going by google, 3 ISP's in your area are promising faster connections than I get.

Excuse me LucyFer? Where have you been all my life?

I cannot even get ADSL1 where I live - the only ISP who would even agree to do it were Telstra, but the engineer advised against it on the basis that it would be SLOWER than dial-up.

As a result, four of us are sharing 25Gb per month on wireless broadband: and paying a stupefying amount of money for it.

Needless to say, the signal is rubbish - even with a 4G antenna on the roof I'm lucky to get two bars on the modem. And sometimes it drops out for days at a time.

But maybe your skills with google mean you can sort it out for me?

 

[xxThe_Dice_manxx]

And yet there are games like Dark Age of Camelot which launched in 2001 and are still perfectly playable 13 years later. Mythic Entertainment were bought out and folded in to EA, and later reformed as Broadsword. Their server architecture has gone through innumerable changes, and there is/was a community of server 'shards' which had been reverse-engineered by the community.

But I digress. As others have said: If you think FDEV are going to turn the servers off after a few years, why are you buying this game?

Indeed sir, why would they shut them down when they have invested so much time and effort into this game, it just wouldn't make sense.

 

[SJT]

Seems foolish to me to buy a dynamic, multiplayer game in 2014 with a poor internet connection.

I completely agree. However, it was implied that there would be an offline mode. A mod on this forum was telling people that there would definitely be one on the 9th of this month and someone bought the game because of this yet FD did nothing to contradict what this mod was saying. The decision to cut offline was not made between the 9th and today. At best FD are utterly incompetent. At worst downright dishonest.

 

[Sylv3r]

"You can play offline without server connections and we will make sure you can play the game if we ever shut the servers down."

Yep that was clearly stated.
Thats why there is so many people after it. 476 posts here in few hours mean its not a simple decision. It affect many people and i think those who dont care dont understand what this mean behind.
The fact of saying there are secret behind the universe is not a good reason because the players in solo mode witch will discover things will be able to reveal them via forums or online as it will be the same world.
Dunno what happened to Frontier to act this decision but it will be good to have a David answer about it.

 

[jasonoffley]

On the other hand, let there be a static, dull, never updated version for offline use. After all, as someone here pointed out, it's better than no version at all for those who have pledged in hopes for one.

I think the issue here is not really the quality of what can or cannot be achieved with an offline mode, but more the fact that this was, from day one, promised to the fans and many people (myself not included) for various reasons, need or want this mode of play. Frontier will do the descent thing and refund people that require it, while the rest of us will play the sequel we have waited two decades for.

 

[LucyFer]

And yet there are games like Dark Age of Camelot which launched in 2001 and are still perfectly playable 13 years later. Mythic Entertainment were bought out and folded in to EA, and later reformed as Broadsword. Their server architecture has gone through innumerable changes, and there is/was a community of server 'shards' which had been reverse-engineered by the community.

But I digress. As others have said: If you think FDEV are going to turn the servers off after a few years, why are you buying this game?

I'm playing Goldeneye 14 years after support stopped. And that was console....pc fans kept it going.

I agree faith is needed.

 

[xyphic]

I don't know about everyone else, but for me, I funded a project not a finished article. Projects change over time either due to scope change, economical constraints, time constraints, and even through discovery that the initial brief cannot be wholly delivered. I'm ok with the changes announced, because I did not expect a monolithic unchanging project, I expected an iterative approach to the project.

Again, my Kickstarter money was to assist in funding the project. If I wanted to buy a finished game that would be unchanging, I'd have purchased one that was already developed and released.

This is a flawed argument. Clearly projects change over time, but if crowdfunded games are to be a continuing 'thing' then developers making them need to be more open and honest. Fair enough, something happened that meant it wasn't viable to include the offline solo mode. But leaving it until the last minute to tell the backers? That's just poor management. Certainly about something that a lot of people were clearly passionate about and that quite possibly may have been the difference between the project making its funding or not. There's no way that this can be spun as anything other than a Bad Thing, and has undermined a lot of the good work that FDEV have been doing over the last couple of years.

 

[EAGLE 5]

I don't know about everyone else, but for me, I funded a project not a finished article. Projects change over time either due to scope change, economical constraints, time constraints, and even through discovery that the initial brief cannot be wholly delivered. I'm ok with the changes announced, because I did not expect a monolithic unchanging project, I expected an iterative approach to the project.

Again, my Kickstarter money was to assist in funding the project. If I wanted to buy a finished game that would be unchanging, I'd have purchased one that was already developed and released.

I can certainly relate to this. have some rep.

 

[stimutacs]

Excuse me LucyFer? Where have you been all my life?

I cannot even get ADSL1 where I live - the only ISP who would even agree to do it were Telstra, but the engineer advised against it on the basis that it would be SLOWER than dial-up.

As a result, four of us are sharing 25Gb per month on wireless broadband: and paying a stupefying amount of money for it.

Needless to say, the signal is rubbish - even with a 4G antenna on the roof I'm lucky to get two bars on the modem. And sometimes it drops out for days at a time.

But maybe your skills with google mean you can sort it out for me?

But lucyfer googled it, and everything! That is exactly the same thing as examining the precise network topology and drilling down into the capacity of individual telstra exchanges.

 

[ecgallagher]

< redacted >

 

[SJT]

Hello everyone,

Just a quick one to remind everyone to be good to each other on these forums. I'm all for intelligent debate, but I'm not happy with people insulting each other.

Please understand that the moderators don't have access to this information before it is released, so they can't be held accountable for any decisions that have or haven't been made by Frontier. Any abusive messages aimed their way will be dealt with accordingly.

Cheers,

Ed

Agreed. However, they could have been told to stop telling people something which was completely wrong, especially when they were quoting a discussion they had with FD staff.

 

[srinidhalaya]

It is obvious this decision wasn't made last night. The question is, which has been asked many times already, but still not answer, WHEN was this decided? I can remember as of last week, the website store was advertising offline mode, as I was looking into buying for a friend. I'm glad the store doesn't let you purchase items as a gift, as both of us are offline gamers.

 

[ssg]

I don't know about everyone else, but for me, I funded a project not a finished article. Projects change over time either due to scope change, economical constraints, time constraints, and even through discovery that the initial brief cannot be wholly delivered. I'm ok with the changes announced, because I did not expect a monolithic unchanging project, I expected an iterative approach to the project.

Again, my Kickstarter money was to assist in funding the project. If I wanted to buy a finished game that would be unchanging, I'd have purchased one that was already developed and released.

Elite Dangerous will be released on 16th December. They marketed that there will be offline play. Why they have to release this game in current state? They could delay the launch. No one will remember delay if the game is released polished and finished. Everyone will remember bad release however. Of course, they could be forced to make this decision. Maybe they run out of money, or maybe investors are pressuring them. I don't know, but I don't think this situation is optimal for anyone. Maybe they will surprise us in the launch and everything will be ok and all this drama was for nothing and could have been avoided with better communication.

 

[Kayweg]

Agreed. I jested earlier that reading this thread feels a bit like walking through a museum, but I am not so sure it's a jest anymore.

So a 30 year old oil rig worker, a 25 year old soldier or a 20 year old sailor are people belonging into a museum then ?
Also, a 50 or 60 year old fellas' 100 bucks count for less than your's ?

I have picked my side of the argument, but can easily consider both.
Posts like thatone only put more fuel into the flames.

 

[Gortron]

Offline mode would mean. No updates at all. no planetary landings or walking around. It would be a static game. every version the same as the other offline version. People thinking different seeds etc.. are wrong. Why do it? It is 100% offline the shipped game. Nothing more or less added ever. They decided this would not work for reasons FD have stated and I am sure a decision they knew would cause massive posts and disappointment to down right hostility on some people's parts.

Michael has said there is a way at the store to ask for a refund it is already available. So try it, if it works post you got your refund.

I was able to play the missions, docking etc.. the tutorials as it were with the servers were down. So there is some core rudimentary features that work. So you can see they were working that direction but as projects grow things change and as they said it is to complex for a true stand alone game. It is a shame, but I don't think they meant for this to happen and they may have been working up to today to see if they could make it standalone and decided they couldn't do it justice or make it work.

This is all conjuncture on my part, but I believe they did want a stand alone version, it just won't work. Disappointing for sure, but no malicious intent.

Calebe

It isn't because they can't get it to work. If it is running on a server there is absolutely no reason they couldn't get it all to run on your PC. They just don't want to for copy protection purposes etc. That is fair enough and I certainly don't think there is a malicious intent.


However, they must have realised that was a potential issue a far while ago and perhaps it would have been a bit more honest to drop this info months ago. In fairness to them perhaps they had hoped they could obfuscate the code and data to the point they never had to do this.

 

[Kemo]

And yet there are games like Dark Age of Camelot which launched in 2001 and are still perfectly playable 13 years later. Mythic Entertainment were bought out and folded in to EA, and later reformed as Broadsword. Their server architecture has gone through innumerable changes, and there is/was a community of server 'shards' which had been reverse-engineered by the community.

But I digress. As others have said: If you think FDEV are going to turn the servers off after a few years, why are you buying this game?

well, to be fair, I think the current concern is that a number of people thought that at least if that did happen, they would still have the game, albeit in an offline mode.

As of today's announcement, an internet connection is required to play this game, and that should appear clearly on the store.

 

[lbm]

I think the issue here is not really the quality of what can or cannot be achieved with an offline mode, but more the fact that this was, from day one, promised to the fans and many people (myself not included) for various reasons, need or want this mode of play. Frontier will do the descent thing and refund people that require it, while the rest of us will play the sequel we have waited two decades for.

Well, I think you misunderstand my post. My point is that if FD wanna focus on the online evolving galaxy that's fine, and I'm all for it, but to provide a scaled down solution for the people who can't play online would be a good gesture, even if that solution was extremely dull compared to the online version.

 

[littleminxundr]

What are the other reasons?

I see 3.

1. Not having regular access to the internet.

2. Having a poor connection.

3. Being worried FD will shut down servers in a few years.


Reason 1 is valid and should get refunds if desired.

No excuse for 2 in 2014.

Anyone who believes in 3 shouldn't have supported anyhow.

No, any reason to not want an always online is valid. Even if your magnetron-oven is disrupting the wifi-signal if that's what it takes. Up until the advent of Gamma, not a peep was being uttered about off line not making it in, but all the time Frontier happily took the money of those who researched their purchase with a need for off line; as I did.
I didn't buy Star Citizen because of no-online.
I don't even buy PS4 games that can't be played in PS4's off line mode (I take it with me when I'm hospitalized again.)
I did buy Elite because of the off line, of which there was totally no sign at all that it wouldn't be there until less than two months before public release.
And they want you to believe that only two days ago they discovered that it wasn't possible.
Seriously?

Blaming the off line people for their decision is plain wrong. We have to do serious research before buying anything, we don't buy blind because we have internet anyway. We do research and buy only when we are sure.

We have been led around the bush and Frontier has banked our money to the very last moment. It's bad practice and I hope that the backlash turns into a giganormous crapstorm that brings the company to the brink. It's about time that shady practices in the industry are being met with harsh consequences. Mr Braben should rightfully end up getting his UB40, if you ask me.

 

[T@F]

What are the other reasons?

I see 3.

1. Not having regular access to the internet.

2. Having a poor connection.

3. Being worried FD will shut down servers in a few years.


Reason 1 is valid and should get refunds if desired.

No excuse for 2 in 2014.

Anyone who believes in 3 shouldn't have supported anyhow.

1. I agree valid.

2. yes there are excuses as in my area i only have one isp,i'm not lucky to have bt or virgin,so they give me crappy connections at times i have to learn to live with it.
Hence why i would rather have offline mode so i don't use bandwidth.also that's not counting other ppl wanting offline for there reasons as well.

3.but there is a point to that fd is not like a big company like valve or ea ect,they could be forced to shut down within a year if the funds are not there and then we are left with a expensive game we cannot play,depending how much you pledged inc the expansion.