It's not just kickstarter promises - I bought the game from the website 6 weeks ago. it clearly advertised offline solo play as a feature.
No Single Player offline Mode then?
- Thread starter Brandon31
- Start date
- Status
It's not just kickstarter promises - I bought the game from the website 6 weeks ago. it clearly advertised offline solo play as a feature.
So it would appear. It is sad that SO many games are making themselves dependent on the internet. You no longer get any physical content, physical media, or a way to play the game down the road. Look at what Frontier has done. They have given free access to beta community to the original Elite by way of a BBC Micro emulator program. You have DOSBOX that can play many older games by emulating the DOS environment within Windows NT. It is going to be a lot harder, if not impossible to play ED 10 years from now, let alone 30 years. Down the road someday, Frontier and other companies are going to be shutting down the game servers. That is just reality. When they do, you will no longer be able to play that game, be it Elite Dangerous or some other game. At least if there were a single-player standalone mode, you could still enjoy the game as long as you wanted to. Personally, I try to stay away from games that are dependent upon the internet and Steam, and Origin Play, etc. But it is not possible to completely isolate yourself if you want to play certain games. Again, I never play games that are MMO only. If it doesn't at least have a solo mode, as ED does, I don't play them. That is my personal choice.
As I said, it is sad that ED does not have any OFFLINE mode but, that is the trend in gaming today.
Well yeah, that is a clear refund to be honest, if the door is totally closed on a future offline solution anyway.
Agreed. The kickstarter backer issue does muddy the water (and that is was a UK Kickstarter not the USA one i'm sure will be another complication). So as it really seems like Single Player Offline mode is dead i put in my request for a refund and here is the polite mail i sent about that (so others have an idea of what to put, or maybe can critique my form so we can make it better for others):
So stick your relevant info in those stared(*****) spots. Fingers crossed FD will honour the Kickstarter pledges.
True ! And thankfully Australia is one of those countries who does uphold this right. You cant be an aussie or have familiarity with the ACCC. A month ago they screwed a large supermarket chain for using the word 'fresh' on some of their products, it cost them $12million, the ACCC argued that 'fresh' means something different to Australian consumers, and didnt give a rat's what the company defined 'fresh' as.
Like I said, they are a rabid dog, once out of the cage, they will continue unabated until they get their feed.
But I do get your point
Some lawyers made a bank on someone else's account. What else is new? Hopefully FD will not be the victim of such events and I can continue to enjoy the best space dogfighting simulator ever released.
And there's that whole "DRM free" issue.
2320
i think a offline mode can work if it was thought out, for example you can launch or enable the mode which will bring you offline but will grant limited exploration or global advancement. rather than a offline mode as a whole, makes more sense to me.
however as much as we have all been used to the fact of a lonely single player game, we are just looking at the other side of the coin we havnt had due to the limitations of its time.
i think a offline mode can work if it was thought out, for example you can launch or enable the mode which will bring you offline but will grant limited exploration or global advancement. rather than a offline mode as a whole, makes more sense to me.
however as much as we have all been used to the fact of a lonely single player game, we are just looking at the other side of the coin we havnt had due to the limitations of its time.
Well they should never have stated on KS that off line was an option, if it said it was online only i'd have steered clear of it until release, i've had my fingers burnt over the years with various online games/mmo's and would never back one, so as it stands i've paid £200 for something that it appears I won't be getting.
Trumped entirely by your last line.
I actually didn't think about the Linux thing, that would make sense, although not why they chose to go that way. Also, it would mean that they knew from a very early stage in development that it would not be "portable" and therefore that puts FD in an even worse light.
If it's a single database server at the backend that accepts feeds from other systems though, to me that would make it easier. The cut-down server doesn't need to be integrated into the client code base, it can run as a separate entity. Even just linked into the main exe and then forked out when you start the game. Encryption also doesn't seem to be an issue - if the client is expecting encrypted content anyway then the encryption could remain.
What I'm suggesting though is that you simply mock out the server calls in this local server. They can then do whatever is required in order to get the game to run... and it needn't be anything like as much as the main online server has to do.
No-one expects the offline galaxy to be as rich as the online one. That's not the point.
To be fair to Frontier, some of us raised this during the original kickstarter in the comments section (you can land on planets in FE2 and FFE, so can you land in ED?). It took a week of insults and vitriol from the "fanbois" before we eventually got an answer from Frontier (not going to be in at Launch but aiming for this in an expansion/DLC).
Maybe we should have asked about offline instead
People did. It was confirmed during and after the Kickstarter how it would work.
I am surprised Simcity hasn't been raised more than it has in this thread. I would have thought that a company like Frontier would have looked long and hard at the damage that did to that game and EA. So much so that damage limitation included bringing an offline mode to the game even after the producers said it wasn't possible. (See a similarity there?)
I could have lived with the fact there would be no offline mode (and probably still will) - what I am deeply hurt by is the fact that FD thought they could sweep this under the carpet and hide it in a pathetic PR newsletter. This decision would have been made many months ago and they lied and kept it to themselves. After all the loyalty (and funding) provided by the original backers of this project. David often repeats in many videos how much of a strong relationship they have with their community. I am beginning to think they are actually deluded to think they have. I am starting to think that they are so out of touch with the feelings and desires of the community that they really thought it wouldn't be an issue not having offline. The bottom line is their PR and communication sucks.
That newsletter is disastrous.
It all started out so well and I have gotten more and more disappointed at the continual rush of late to get this shipped. Each beta so far has come with new bugs (and old bugs). Its it no way fit for shipping.
I could have lived with the fact there would be no offline mode (and probably still will) - what I am deeply hurt by is the fact that FD thought they could sweep this under the carpet and hide it in a pathetic PR newsletter. This decision would have been made many months ago and they lied and kept it to themselves. After all the loyalty (and funding) provided by the original backers of this project. David often repeats in many videos how much of a strong relationship they have with their community. I am beginning to think they are actually deluded to think they have. I am starting to think that they are so out of touch with the feelings and desires of the community that they really thought it wouldn't be an issue not having offline. The bottom line is their PR and communication sucks.
That newsletter is disastrous.
It all started out so well and I have gotten more and more disappointed at the continual rush of late to get this shipped. Each beta so far has come with new bugs (and old bugs). Its it no way fit for shipping.
Last edited:
Yeah I always expected the DVD to be just a delivery system for an online and offline installer, same as you would download. BUT, considering it also said DRM free, I had no idea I'd be expected to deal with DRM via login, etc, and always be online. People can say "the kickstarter said" all they want, in the Elite store RIGHT NOW it says "DRM free" in the description of my physical copy...
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
And what is the implication of "DRM free"? Always online!?!?
Yes. Its not a great outcome for any and all, that much I made clear in my original post.
I love the game, and I wont be complaining. But I feel compelled to help my countrymen who will be directly affected by this development, as they now have no game to play 'at all'.
I'm not a lawyer, in fact I cant stand them. Im just giving an option to some people who feel like they have been screwed.
If FD are taken aim at, they _may_ reconsider the recent development.
Ths thread has become a behemoth .. too fast and too complex for a saturday morning. thanks all, wish you the best of luck.
Thanks man, Ive sent mine. I really only got ED to fill the gap between now and the PC port of No Man's Sky. I'll hang around see if the offline front changes.
I think the best they can do is to create the limited version of ED universe with no added content or stats sync and ship it as the off-line mode.
Which is what they "promised", no?
[REQUEST] So there will NEVER be any mods or a modding SDK for ED?
I don't care so much about no offline single player. But in related news the fact that you can't run the game / galaxy server on your local computer means that it will be impossible to ever mod the game.
Correct?
I can't find a quote but there was a quote from FD about modding and an SDK, saying basically they would like to offer one if possible but not at release. So clearly not a promise but for me it was one of my biggest hopes to be able to mod the game more into the direction of Frontier Elite 2.
With a central opaque server you basically cannot mod the game except for pure UI tweaks. You can't change the flight model or change weapons or anything affecting the gameplay mechanic itself. You could possibly have UI mods like in WoW but nothing that changes how the game behaves.
I personally think this is a really bad design decision since games that allow mods in one form or another tend to have a longer lifespan. Modders try out things that fill a niche, addons that prove to be so much fun might even get implemented by the dev into the game itself, and it draws in "ultra-hardcore gamers" (= programmers) who feed communities. And literally every programmer I've ever met wanted to "make a space game like elite". So you'd have a huge community feeding creative ideas back into the game.
I don't care so much about no offline single player. But in related news the fact that you can't run the game / galaxy server on your local computer means that it will be impossible to ever mod the game.
Correct?
I can't find a quote but there was a quote from FD about modding and an SDK, saying basically they would like to offer one if possible but not at release. So clearly not a promise but for me it was one of my biggest hopes to be able to mod the game more into the direction of Frontier Elite 2.
With a central opaque server you basically cannot mod the game except for pure UI tweaks. You can't change the flight model or change weapons or anything affecting the gameplay mechanic itself. You could possibly have UI mods like in WoW but nothing that changes how the game behaves.
I personally think this is a really bad design decision since games that allow mods in one form or another tend to have a longer lifespan. Modders try out things that fill a niche, addons that prove to be so much fun might even get implemented by the dev into the game itself, and it draws in "ultra-hardcore gamers" (= programmers) who feed communities. And literally every programmer I've ever met wanted to "make a space game like elite". So you'd have a huge community feeding creative ideas back into the game.
Last edited:
I'm not sure what they promise nor I care. All I want is the great sci-fi game to play and so far I'm quite satisfied.
- Status