Elite: Dangerous

[DraQ]

This is somewhat understandable, but I can't agree with people who rattle their chains when one or two kickstarter promise is not met, if those are not core features.

Those were core features.

 

[Raapys]

Ye, I'd say being able to play the game offline was definitely a core feature considering these dev quotes:

”Elite will also work offline but you just won’t get a lot of the features. The whole point is that the world evolves due to the aggregated actions of the players.”

"I’m always concerned with games that are server-based that you can’t then play them after the publisher or whoever turns the servers off. We’ll structure it in a way that you could play it entirely locally, so it would survive time if that makes sense.”

"I hope you'll all give the connected game a try as it is the way we want people to experiece it, but you have the option if it's not your thing."

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

 

[Runciter]

What is hard to understand? Frontier Developments have not kept to their Kickstarter promises, first with Newtonian flight model and now with single player. For some people, these were necessary features which made them back the project. No wonder they now feel cheated out of their money.

This is somewhat understandable, but I can't agree with people who rattle their chains when one or two kickstarter promise is not met, if those are not core features. When you make a kickstarter pitch, you try to plan everything, but you only see the viability of these promisis when you are actually developing the game. Frontier didn't cut Newtonian flight modell and singleplayer, because they wanted to troll the costumers. The newtonian flight modell was probably not in line with their vision of how the ships are controlled. And I don't see why is that such a problem. The game still has a fairly realistic fligh modell compared to other arcade games, and you have to learn how to fly the ships effectively.

It is a problem because if they hadn't promised a Newtonian flight model, I wouldn't have backed the game. If they hadn't promised offline play, some others would not have backed the game. They can implement any "vision" they want, as long as the dishonest fuckers give back the £1.5M they got during crowdfunding.

 

[J_C]

This is somewhat understandable, but I can't agree with people who rattle their chains when one or two kickstarter promise is not met, if those are not core features.

Those were core features.

Not in my book.

 

[Perkel]

This is somewhat understandable, but I can't agree with people who rattle their chains when one or two kickstarter promise is not met, if those are not core features.

Those were core features.

Not in my book.

 

[Whiran]

You can still play the game solo in a private instance that receives market data from the central server. Maybe people misinterpreted that as offline play? I can keep digging through the mails I guess, but it seems like the whole single player with online compoenent interactivity was a feature from day 1.

This is what the kickstarter page has on it:

Update! The above is the intended single player experience. However it will be possible to have a single player game without connecting to the galaxy server. You won't get the features of the evolving galaxy (although we will investigate minimising those differences) and you probably won't be able to sync between server and non-server (again we'll investigate).

So according to their kickstarter plan they were going to do a fully offline single player element to the game.

Personally, if I pick this game up (I might, we'll see how it turns out) I would make use of the multiplayer stuff since that interests me more. But, they did plan for a single player element to the game. To pull that core feature from the game so close to release is... not cool for the people who backed and those who subsequently bought into the project for the single player bit.

 

[almondblight]

As far as I can tell from the beta, the only thing it gets from the server when you're in solo mode is market prices and station inventories/missions.

I love how companies use such frivolous and pointless bullshit to justify always online DRM for single-player. "We can't let you play offline because it would compromise the vision of the game if a drop in the price of copper was based on a RNG instead of a random player!"

Actually, with so many systems the economy is going to be mostly RNG anyway, so I guess it's more like "We can't let you play offline because it would compromise the vision of the game if a drop in the price of copper was always based on a RNG instead of being based on a RNG 99.9% of the time!"

 

[DeepOcean]

Well...won't buy this then, really funny the amount of mental gymnastics people use to justify DRM. There is no reason for this game not have an offline mode, if they have to restrict certain features that require multiplayer, okay, the whole game? That is bullshit and this is just disguised DRM. My internet is really shitty and suddenly disconnects on the most annoying times, playing this game would a nightmare. I really don't trust on some kickstarter indie company maintaining servers on the long run, fuck, I don't trust publishers that have alot of resources, let alone Elite: Dangerous people that unilaterally cut critical features on a fucking kickstarter game.

 

[Whiran]

I spent some time reading the super long thread over at Frontier's website.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789

I have come away with the impression that this is remarkably similar to the SimCity or Diablo 3 fiascos that happened. The claims of 'all the processing' being done in the 'cloud' so it wouldn't work on the client still don't work for me. The biggest difference here: Frontier claimed that they were planning on having a single player offline mode from the start and maintained that even as recently as last month.

They are springing the removal of the feature weeks before release. If this was always in question as they claim then their language should have been 'we hope for an offline mode', 'it is a possibility we are trying to have,' 'this is something we want to have in the game but we aren't sure if we can do it.' Instead they used language such as, 'Yes, there will be an offline mode.'

Happily they seem to be offering refunds for people who are really upset by this. Or, I guess more accurately, they are okay with refund requests that are to be handled on a case by case basis whatever that really means.

Here's a compilation thread of a lot of the dev responses regarding single player offline mode:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59481

 

[Runciter]

I have a feeling they are desperate to release before Christmas, they probably need the money they will earn on sales this way. They are pushing for a quick release despite all the remaining bugs and the criticism of incompleteness in the beta and they are saying that they will keep improving the game after release.

 

[Ulminati]

Meanwhile, I'm doing a quick supply run in fed territory despite my 1½ million credit bounty. Needed the lakon for cargo capacity, so I was a bit worried some bountyhunter scum would get me befor eI could get back to Alliance territory and my cobra

Found a nice, pristine metallic ring in an unexplored system I'm gunna mine when I get home.

 

[J_C]

I have a feeling they are desperate to release before Christmas, they probably need the money they will earn on sales this way. They are pushing for a quick release despite all the remaining bugs and the criticism of incompleteness in the beta and they are saying that they will keep improving the game after release.

I wouldn't be surprised about this, and I don't even blame them. This game didn't got as much money as the other big kickstarters, yet it is amazing how much content this game has, how great the graphics are, it is complex, huge and beautiful. I have no idea how have they done this from 2 million dollars.

 

[Runciter]

They probably reached into their bank account, FD is an established game developer, after all. Which is also why they feel they can afford to fuck the backers.

 

[Perkel]

What FD released earlier ?

imo. It is their "beta 70$" and those 120$ that probably gave them a lot

 

[Ulminati]

What FD released earlier ?

Here, let me type "Frontier Developments" into wikipedia for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Developments

 

[Perkel]

The hell ? I thought this FD is different to that FD ...
Why the hell they needed kickstarter in first place when they release game almost every year?

 

[Ulminati]

Why did Double Fine or Obsidian need to do kickstarters? Heck, even inXile were releasing games before KS.

 

[Duellist_D]

The hell ? I thought this FD is different to that FD ...
Why the hell they needed kickstarter in first place when they release game almost every year?

Because
a) Kickstarter gives you a way to avoid total losses (if something does poorly even on Kickstarter where every shit gets backed, it won't be a good sell in the stores either)
b) free money
c) publicity

 

[bonescraper]

The hell ? I thought this FD is different to that FD ...

Oh, look. You're an idiot.

Why the hell they needed kickstarter in first place when they release game almost every year?

Easy, Microsoft pays for Kinectimans, FD makes Kinectimals. FD wants to make Elite, publishers don't want to pay for Elite.

 

[Mortmal]

I have a feeling they are desperate to release before Christmas, they probably need the money they will earn on sales this way. They are pushing for a quick release despite all the remaining bugs and the criticism of incompleteness in the beta and they are saying that they will keep improving the game after release.

I wouldn't be surprised about this, and I don't even blame them. This game didn't got as much money as the other big kickstarters, yet it is amazing how much content this game has, how great the graphics are, it is complex, huge and beautiful. I have no idea how have they done this from 2 million dollars.

ELITE 3 was announced decades ago already, and then postponed forever, so i think in fact he never gave up and was working on it aside when he had free time . Ttheres indeed really a lot of content done on a very short amount of time .A clear vision of what has to be done since years.

 

[J_C]

Do we know what form the online connection will take in this game by the way? I mean during singleplayer. You will need a constant connection, and the game will kick you out if your internet fails? Or it will only check it in certain interwalls, and if your connection is not up at the moment, you can continue playing, and the game will check later and sync the data?

Edit: Got it:

Galaxy, story, missions, have to match, and it does mean the single player has to connect to the server from time to time,

So you fuckers with third worldian internet connection can shut up. The game doesn't need a constant connection, it will only check it from time to time. So if your connection is down at a moment, you can continue playing I assume.

 

[Ulminati]

Judging from the beta, it checks whenever your inventory changes (cargo scoop/jettison/station buying and selling) and whenever you go someplace new (jump/supercruise/normalspace). If you're just floating around (in extasy... Don't! Stop! Me noooooow....) in space, it won't kick you. The pauses for going new places are miniscule in the beta solo mode, so it's probably just telling the server "hai, I want to go to X now, plz update where I respawn if I die and call me a cheating faggot if this is outside my jump range".

If this is a dealbreaker for you, you can and should ask for a refund. I bought this for the multiplayer game, so my jimmies remain pretty unrustled by Frontier.

 

[Executr]

Seriously considering asking for a refund even though I've internet access most of the time. I did back the KS based on this promise and remember that during it they conceded (they had only planned for always-on multiplayer) and gained a lot of backers that asked for offline. Granted the KS was poorly planned.
I'm pretty disappointed, even more when they announced this 1 month away from the release. Pretty poor form, really.

 

[Morkar Left]

That's disappointing. Thinking about a refund, too. Not sure atm because playing mp is a possibility for me. It's just missing a promised part of a deal that annoys me.

 

[Turisas]

Was going to buy, but guess I'll just pirate it now. That kind of bullshit shouldn't be rewarded.