Elite: Dangerous

[DraconianOne]

"I have no interest in online play" seems odd when "online play" no longer means "multiplayer" and I get the feeling that people don't want to play multiplayer.

This is worth highlighting. You can still play solo. Theoretically, your game will also be impacted by other players in an indirect way (market trading mostly - maybe what's available in terms of downloadable exploration data, maybe in terms of Galnet news items, hopefully in terms of galaxy evolution) but you don't ever have to interact with those players.

At the moment, though, the "dynamic universe" only had a brief weeks try out at the end of Beta 1. On the plus side, you could see what was going on even in solo but on the minus, there was no significant impact on the game because, well, beta.

[Typhon]

There was a time (pre Diablo 3) when I was happy that many games were coming out "online only" because I took it to mean that I could play solo or with friends pretty easily.  Chronic latency, login issues and service maintenance windows that made (and to some extent still make) playing the game when I want to play it, how I want to play it, not as pleasant an experience as I'd like have changed my mind.  I'll probably just wait a good three months after this comes out to make sure they have all their infrastructure challenges overcome.

[Kail]

"I have no interest in online play" seems odd when "online play" no longer means "multiplayer" and I get the feeling that people don't want to play multiplayer.

That's the probem; "online play" doesn't mean multiplayer, it means "always on DRM".  I hated it when they pulled this "your computer can't HANDLE the intense processing" shit in Sim City, I hate when they're doing it here.  I might be moving to somewhere with crap internet soon, so I guess this makes me one of the rare people who gives a shit, but even if I wasn't moving this still annoys me on principle.

[Falconeer]

Well, it was only a matter of time before the backlash.

Elite: Dangerous Drops Its Promised Offline Mode

A month before space sim Elite: Dangerous' final release, developer Frontier Developments announced that the game will not have the offline mode initially promised during its Kickstarter campaign.

"Being online lets us constantly both curate and evolve the galaxy, with stories unfolding according to the actions of commanders," Frontier Developments CEO David Braben said in a recent newsletter to fans. "Exploration is also a key factor, too, and it is important that what a single player explores matches what other players explore whether single or multiplayer – a complex, coherent world – something we have achieved."

As the game's FAQ section on Kickstarter still shows, the game was always focused on a persistent, shared world, but would also allow players to choose a single player game without connecting to the galaxy server.

As executive producer Michael Brooke explains on the game's forums (where some upset backers are asking for refunds), "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."

In short, you can still play a single player mode, but the game requires an internet connection to sync up with the galaxy's shared economy.

[Jeff Kelly]

After the recent string of online fuckups (Sim City, Drive Club, Warlords of Draenor with its constant 5000+ queues, Battlefield 4) and the tendency of developers of even popular online experiences to shut down servers after two years I'm less than thrilled.

Flip flopping on a kick starter promise is just as bad. If online play against other players becomes the new normal even for "single player" type games I'll probably have to do something else. If I wanted lag, crashes, waiting in line for hours just to play for five minutes until the server crashes, getting ganked and griefed and called a noob and a cunt on the net I could always play WOW instead or go to the popular clubs in my city.

[apocrypha]

getting ganked and griefed and called a noob and a cunt on the net I could always play WOW instead or go to the popular clubs in my city.

They are not dropping the online solo mode. You will never be forced to interact with other players if you don't want to.

Dropping the offline mode is something that will impact a very small number of people most of the time. The always-on DRM aspect is here to stay in the gaming industry, I think that horse is well and truly dead. Dropping a Kickstarter promise is more egregious to me and further erodes trust in Braben & FD, and the crowd-funding method in general.

I'm still waiting for any gaming news outlet to admit to the real flaw with E:D, which is that it's incredibly tedious to play.

[Falconeer]

I'm still waiting for any gaming news outlet to admit to the real flaw with E:D, which is that it's incredibly tedious to play.

Apo, I'd say they are waiting on release for that. And that's quite fair. After December 16th, if nothing miraculously change in the next 30 days, you are gonna read that everywhere.

[Ironwood]

Well I just had a month without decent internet and all I could play was offline stuff, so it is a thing.

I mean, I know it's a thing.  But if you're someone who really wants to play solo Elite, barring this kind of frankly rare scenario these days, you can still do it.  I guess you could just be upset enough with them for the decision that you don't buy the thing in principle but "I have no interest in online play" seems odd when "online play" no longer means "multiplayer" and I get the feeling that people don't want to play multiplayer.

2 Things

1 - I have no interest in ONCE AGAIN explaining different playstyles, environment or personal tastes to you.  YOU are not ME.  It's that simple.
2 - I eagerly awaiting this thing getting released on consoles entirely in offline mode.

FUCK Always Online.  It's a Lie and It's Always a Lie.

You fuckers jumped up and down on me for Diablo 3 for fucking ages and it all played out pretty much as some of us here predicted.  Get Always Online To Fuck.

Also, once NN gets raped, always online is just gonna be another tax.

[Jeff Kelly]

Worse even. I fully expect it to be used to "encourage" people to upgrade to the next game in the series. It will only be a matter of time until servers for a game go down the instant the next installment in the series is available in stores. After all people still being able to play a decade old game is not a business model.

[Falconeer]

Here's ALL the public explanations Michael Brookes has given on the topic in the past three days. If you care about the details as opposed to hearsay, it's worth a read.
"Spoilered" for size.






The important parts:

- Question: What would you lose in offline mode? Answer: The online servers provide all of the data and processing for the galaxy, interactions between players and all transactions of value. Without it there isn't a game. We always intended that the way to play the game would be online. We had hoped that we could do an offline variant, but as the game progressed the online requirement superseded that. It wasn't an easy choice to make, but to stay true to the game we set out to make we had to make this choice.

- Question: what happened to the idea of creating a cut-down single-player experience? Answer: The problem is that you wouldn't have got that. During the kickstarter we thought we would be able to operate a dual mode with the offline version cut down. As we've progressed more of the game has had to exist online, so much so that an offline version would be mostly a new and different game - which is something we can't support. The galaxy exists as an online entity, extracting that into an offline version that still works as game isn't simple. Missions are a good example, they are created based on the state of the galaxy and they feed back into the state of the galaxy there's a big level of difference between what we're doing now and what was in the previous games..

- There's an established process on the store for requesting a refund: https://store.zaonce.net/cancellations-returns/

- Question: How will single-player online mode work? Answer: Single player online does require a consistent connection.

- Question: how often will the single-player client connect to the server? Answer: At the moment it's whenever you need to conduct a server moderated transaction like trading.

- Question: if my network connection dropped out, how long could I go before the client had a problem? Answer: Until it needs to retrieve data from the server or moderate a transaction.

[Ironwood]

We always intended that the way to play the game would be online.

 

Translation :  It was a Kickstarter, so we lied through our teeth for some sweet cash.  Tough Break Suckers.

[apocrypha]

As much as I have criticisms for E:D and FD they don't strike me as being like that. I do think they're being genuine when they said they just couldn't find another way around the problem.

On the other hand, it's a problem entirely of their own making and I think their insistence on a playable galaxy consisting of 100's of billions of systems is pointless and extremely constraining on the design and resultant gameplay. Also, I've yet to see any actual noticeable/interesting effect on the playable systems of other players, there is nothing dynamic about it so far. Yet to come, sure.

[Jeff Kelly]

Always on is the ultimate deal breaker for me and always will. Even if you have a competent developer and a great internet connection (I'm on a 50 MBit down/10MBit up VDSL pretty much the best you can get if you're not on Google fibre or in Korea) you're constantly running into issues due to overload issues (evenings, weekends, holidays), fuckups on patch day, the internet actually being used by other people besides gamers for stuff or people just being dicks in your game and making the experience a bad one for everyone.

I've played online multiplayer games for a decade now and when even a decade old game from a publisher swimming in money is still prone to issues with load and latency, when online services get taken down for months due to hacking (see PSN) and games with huge issues simply won't get fixed (Battlefield 4) or the servers get taken down after a year due to the operation 'not being commercially viable' I know that I really don't want that shit in a single player mode. You couldn't play Mass Effect 3 for a month after release due to Origin being shit and totally overwhelmed by the demand for that single game for example.

Multiplayer and Online is still - in 2014 - such a crapshoot and there are so many AAA games witzh such large and glaring online issues that I really don't like online if it isn't really absolutely necessary.Those issues might be par for the course for multiplayer only games but in a single player oriented game (and Elite was pitched as single player first with multiplayer as add-on initially even if they now claim otherwise) there is really no benefit that I'd consider to be big enough to basically hand over the decision of whether or not I can play the game any longer to the developer or publisher.

[tmp]

Sounds like opportunity for Star Citizen. Promise offline mode as the next milestone.

[Falconeer]

Haha, offline mode is already part of the Star Citizen bundle. When you buy Star Citizen you get Squadron 42, which is the offline and story-heavy version of it.

[Malakili]

YOU are not ME.

Thank god for that.

[Tebonas]

Yeah, this is a dealbreaker for me as well.

More power to the people for whom it isn't, but don't pretend always online is for everyone.

[Lantyssa]

Haha, offline mode is already part of the Star Citizen bundle. When you buy Star Citizen you get Squadron 42, which is the offline and story-heavy version of it.

Plus you'll be able to run your own server.

It's purely an architectural design challenge.  ED built with the assumption their servers would always be handling stuff, with the hope but not the design planned, to allow such things offline.  If you don't don't scope out your design for it, it's not going to happen.

[apocrypha]

At least they're getting reamed on the forums for this decision.

I think the scales are finally starting to fall from the eyes of a lot of backers.

[tazelbain]

Feels they could easily do galaxy updates as a nightly sync thing.

[Falconeer]

MichaelB rookes just posted:

The game is not launching as is. Most of the major features are there, but there have been a host of fixes and improvements. And there are a few new things coming as well. The release on December 16th isn't the end of development either, we have lots of new content and features we want to bring into the game.

[Count Nerfedalot]

getting ganked and griefed and called a noob and a cunt on the net I could always play WOW instead or go to the popular clubs in my city.

They are not dropping the online solo mode. You will never be forced to interact with other players if you don't want to.

Er, not quite correct. The trading game/markets are apparently 100% full-on PvP, right? If a few thousand (or however many it takes) players collude to corner the market in civilized space using 24/7 presence, shared market data, coordinated dumping, hacks and everything else they've proven capable of doing to get an edge in other games like Eve and Archeage, will there be enough room left for solo - mode and casuals to have fun?   While not the same issue as getting ganked en-route, it remains to be seen if the useful market space is big and resilient enough to still provide that key trading game to individuals while being hammered and manipulated by the cartels.


I'm going to guess not, or not for long anyway.

The always-on DRM aspect is here to stay in the gaming industry, I think that horse is well and truly dead.

Minecraft being the exception, of course.  Hopefully not the one that proves the rule!

[apocrypha]

With 400 billion systems I don't think even Goonswarm could lock down anything more than a rounding error of the market.

[Count Nerfedalot]

How many of those systems Will be accessible to a starting player ìn their newbie ship? I thought interdictions and various hostile forces would severely limit where you could go until you got a better ship?  Or is the whole galaxy at peace and full of open markets? I ask as an interested casual who honestly hopes against hope that this will end up being something I like, not just to be argumentative.

[apocrypha]

Your ship jump range will be more of a limitation, so yeah the starter systems will be where you're stuck for a couple of hours probably. But you can't really trade (well, haul, there's no trading, just hauling) in the starter ship either.

And NPC interdictions are easily escapable in the Sidewinder. And there won't be any player interdictions unless you want there to be. It's not EVE. Calling the market "pvp" is really not accurate. It's just not that dynamic.

I'm not trying to defend FD's decision to remove the offline solo play, I'm simply trying to explain just how limited the player interaction is going to be in online solo mode.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Oh! There's no real trade?  You can't buy low one place and sell high another, just haul Someone else's goods on Contract? I may be Confused by only half paying attention while wAtching this and that other game at the same time. Or read too Much inTo terms like markets and wtf is with my phone capitalizing like a script kiddie? Sorry bout that!

I thought npc pirates did interdictions too?

I miss Witchspace diaries by the way, those were fun. Sorry to see that fall apart.

[Sir T]

The other issue for a lot of people is that they have bandwidth limits, and they could slam right into them with an always on connection depending on how much data is bieng swapped between the server and the client.

Hrm... I'm getting the urge to play Freelancer lately...

[Margalis]

So their explanation is that they promised an offline mode but designed the game such that an offline mode wasn't possible.

Hmm.

[Lantyssa]

Yes.

[Margalis]

Well that seems scummy but at the same time "lol kickstarter."

This is one of the reasons I dislike KS. Games change a lot during development, it doesn't make sense to promise specific things up front. Often those promises are bad ideas or just flat out don't make sense once the game evolves a bit.

[DraconianOne]

We always intended that the way to play the game would be online.

 

Translation :  It was a Kickstarter, so we lied through our teeth for some sweet cash.  Tough Break Suckers.

Come on - the way most people are trying to spin it is saying Frontier put their KS announced that E: D would be an offline single player experience and then added online aspect as an afterthought.  It didn't pan out like that - they said from the outset that the game would be online and server based. Adding an offline mode was the afterthought. From their KS FAQ:

How will single player work? Will I need to connect to a server to play?

The galaxy for Elite: Dangerous is a shared universe maintained by a central server. All of the meta data for the galaxy is shared between players. This includes the galaxy itself as well as transient information like economies. The aim here is that a player's actions will influence the development of the galaxy, without necessarily having to play multiplayer.

The other important aspect for us is that we can seed the galaxy with events, often these events will be triggered by player actions. With a living breathing galaxy players can discover new and interesting things long after they have started playing.

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).

Even back then they also said that it would be more limited than the online version and they've maintained that all the way along. But yeah, their mistake was saying "it will be possible..." and I bet they're regretting that now.

Personally, I'm more pissed off at the thought that they spent a lot of time trying to get offline working when they could have spent it fixing other shit. Hopefully they didn't bother at all and just decided to write it off.

[apocrypha]

Oh! There's no real trade?  You can't buy low one place and sell high another, just haul Someone else's goods on Contract? I may be Confused by only half paying attention while wAtching this and that other game at the same time. Or read too Much inTo terms like markets and wtf is with my phone capitalizing like a script kiddie? Sorry bout that!

I thought npc pirates did interdictions too?

I miss Witchspace diaries by the way, those were fun. Sorry to see that fall apart.

Disclaimer: I haven't played since beta 2, much of this may have changed.

Yes, you can buy low & sell high, but there's no complexity to it and it's just tedious repetition of carting goods from one place to another, with no way to tell until you actually *dock* at a station what the price for your goods is going to be.

In Eve you can see the prices for all goods across large distances, depending on character skills, all (or most) goods are produced and traded by players and therefore the influence you can have on the market is significant. E:D commodities have no use outside their role as market items, the supply & demand of them seems entirely inelastic and unaffected by players, and there is no real strategy involved beyond "get the biggest cargo bay you can and haul stuff over and over again". There are no player contracts, only NPC haulage missions.

And NPCs do interdict, frequently, but when I last played they were very easy to escape from and served no purpose other than slowing down your travel even further.

I also miss the Witchspace Diaries, it would have been really nice to be able to discuss some of the serious issues affecting the game, but that turned out not to be possible. Learning experience for me, for sure!

[Falconeer]

So, Braben spent a couple of hours on the official forums answering all sorts of questions.

Here's the recap:

[DraconianOne]

I'm impressed that you actually copied all that in and formatted it all. That's dedication. 

[Pennilenko]

I'm impressed that you actually copied all that in and formatted it all. That's dedication. 

After all this time, I expect no less from him.