"Elite: Dangerous will no longer support an offline mode"

[kane_magus]

News like this makes me glad I didn't back this game, and if I had backed it, I'd definitely be asking for a full refund. And now I won't even be buying the finished product when it comes out, though I'd already been somewhat leery of it to begin with.

And, of course, the comments under the article are filled with the likes of (actual copy/pastes of comments) "Don't really mind all that much personally, since i'm online 24/7 anyway" and "Being online 100% of the time while I game on my PC, I really don't see where the problem is" and "I'm fine with this really, solo mode is enough of a single player for me." This is why we can't have nice things. (EDIT) Okay, now that there's been a little time passed, the overwhelming sentiment in the comments seems to be negative in response to this (not that that will matter the slightest bit as to getting this boneheaded move reversed, of course). It's just that when I first opened that PC Gamer article, those three comments were among the only four or five that had been posted at that time, and the replies to those comments that have since shown up are scorching the original commenters, as they well should be. (/EDIT)

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

You know what that smells like to me? Shills posting asap to try to set the tone of comments. Obviously if that's the case it thankfully failed miserably.

If they promised an offline single player, or even hinted towards it honestly, then they should expect angering a lot of people. Personally I hope the project fails at this point. There has to be SOMETHING that teaches devs and publishers not to do this fucking shit.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

And after reading the actual article and the dev's explanation, it's clear he thinks EVERY gamer is retarded if he expects us to believe that's the real reason for the online connectivity.

If a person wants a solely offline experience then YES the static little world is most definitely acceptable to that player. Whether or not it's acceptable to the developer is IRRELEVANT. They want this as the DRM for the game. That's it. We've heard this bullshit story, this exact same bullshit excuse from countless other attempts to shoehorn multiplayer/required online onto perfectly acceptable single player games.

I really hope enough refunds are demanded that they go broke over it. :P

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

If I wasn't already rather soured on the whole Kickstarter thing, this would definitely have been the thing to push me into sour town. If Frontier Developments (or whoever the hell it is that's making this damn thing) can just up and do a complete about face just before the game is about to be released on this thing (offline mode) that they apparently explicitly and repeatedly promised to backers of the original Kickstarter (which is apparently a large part of the reason the damn thing made it in the first place) and get away with it, then what's to stop other Kickstarter projects from just ignoring their stated goals and promises? It remains to be seen yet if they actually will get away with doing this, but I wouldn't be too overly shocked if they did. I mean, it's not like we haven't already heard about other KS things that also didn't deliver on the shit they promised either (which is part of the reason I was already soured on the whole KS crap).

What's worse is that it seems that people who backed the game on the game's own website after the fact are being allowed refunds, but the people who backed it on Kickstarter itself are apparently shit out of luck, at least according to some of the comments under that article.

God damn, am I seriously glad that I didn't back this game. I came close to doing so on more than a few occasions, both during the KS and afterward, but thankfully dodged that bullet, in retrospect. I also hope this shit crashes and burns now, but I am cynical and jaded enough to predict that it'll still sell like gangbusters, even despite this horseshit.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I did a bit more reading into it, and checked the links PC Gamer got their quotes from.

Braben also mentioned after his excuses for why they were unnecessarily axing offline mode (Gotta be careful with what you say, the pc gamer comments are loaded with corrections on people simply calling it "single player" despite it's obvious they're looking for singleplayer OFFLINE. "there's still a solo mode, you just have to be online to play it!" 9_9)

Where was I? Oh yes, Braben. He ended his comments with this as if it should somehow matter. "If you were able to offer me on the 3rd January 2013 what we will deliver on the 16th December 2014, I would have grabbed it with both hands. It is fantastic what the team have done, and are still doing – a phenomenal job."

The project leader's (I believe that's what he is) opinion on how fine a job he's done does NOTHING to soothe the angry mob that has been robbed of what was promised them. Just about literally robbed in the case of the kickstarter backers that made the game even possible who are being denied their money back. At least one guy chipped in over 5000 dollars and was not happy about this change.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

It's kind of amazing how angry this has made me, despite the fact that I didn't even back the fucking game at all, and despite the fact that duplicitous horseshit like this from the modern video game industry should be old hat by now. I can hardly imagine how pissed I'd have been if I actually had backed this, especially on KS and especially if I couldn't get a refund.

I wonder if filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau against both Kickstarter and Frontier would help those people who did back through KS get refunds? Hell, for that matter, you know what we were talking about the other day (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/736123.html#comments) about how people were calling for legislation for buggy games and what not? Well, while I still don't know about legislation specifically for that, I would absolutely, positively be in favor of legislation to stop this kind of bullshit. Seriously, this whole thing could almost literally be considered a full on scam at this point.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Hey, you want to know the real reason why Elite: Dangerous is online only? Here (http://www.destructoid.com/more-bitching-about-pre-owned-games-from-david-braben-103313.phtml) is (http://www.vg247.com/2010/10/20/david-braben-proposes-six-fixes-for-used-game-sales/) why. (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-19-braben-used-sales-are-killing-single-player-games) Spoiler alert: it's DRM. Yeah, that's three different articles, from 2008, 2010, and 2012, all about David Braben bitching and whining about how used games are destroying the industry or whatever the fuck. Not a shock, I know, but it's pretty goddamn clear that this is the reason why Elite: Dangerous doesn't have an offline mode.

(EDIT) Hell, I'm even finding myself in the crazy position of actually agreeing with (an over two year old tweet from) Jim Sterling (https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/182085780850737152) of all people, and that's sort of ridiculous, given how huge an asshole Sterling himself usually is. (/EDIT)

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Also, another promise for the game is that it's a one-time payment kind of deal.

Either that promise will be broken within a year, or within a couple of years this game will be completely shut down when the company no longer has the money to pay for the NOW REQUIRED servers to run the game.

Personally I expect them to:

A) Offer "optional" subscription rates. The result being the same kind of cesspool you get with Minecraft servers that have donator ranks. You get the 'elite' and you get the cannon fodder (non-subscribers) for the elite to shoot at.

B) Build in advertising for non-subscribers.

And even then you'll eventually get them shutting the server down. The game will not survive as planned without a constant flow of cash to pay for equipment and salaries of those that will be constantly "adding" new content.

Checking the forums now to see if they really are as full of pissed off backers as the pc gamer comments indicate.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

There were actually idiots in the comments saying things like (not an exact quote) "You know, I don't care if the servers shut down in X number of years, as long as I get to have fun with it between now and then. I'm still looking forward to this game." And then he compared it to an old book's binding degrading over time or some such asinine crud as that, as though the analogy made any sense at all.

<*pause to find original comment*>

Okay, the original comment was one of those three I mentioned in the post above, and then the same guy responded to one of his critics with the terrible book binding analogy shit.

Comment thread (including whatever typos and misuse of the English language and all):

OP: "I'm fine with this really, solo mode is enough of a single player for me. And for those saying that 20 years from now it won't work, so what new games will release new ventures and just like with the first elite I'll remember my time with it fondly and hope for a new entry or a game like it."

Response: "Such a strange mindset. Isn't the duration of a product's usability related to its quality, and doesn't a reduction in this duration not also devalue it or worse, discourage investing in its quality?"

OP again: "Not for me, I will play for the period of time it is still fun for me. Just because its offline function has been removed doesn't make it any less valuable for me. A book only lasts as long as its binding, just because it falls apart doesn't mean my time reading the tale is devalued."

And then the response to that (different person than the first responder): "Yeah, but you can always buy a new copy of a book once the binding on the old one has degraded. With this, not so much."

The only slight problem I see with that "buy a new copy of a book" thing that the last one said is if the book has gone out of print, then you really can't buy a new copy anymore, in which the OP was kind of right, in a way. But then, when a book goes out of print, it's usually because the company that was printing it either went out of business or else arbitrarily decided to stop printing it simply because it was no longer profitable for them to do so. Just like a fucking online game server that gets arbitrarily turned off. Oh, but there's the fact that even if a book does go out of print, there will still almost assuredly be used copies floating around that are available to buy. It might cost an arm and a leg, depending on how rare it is, but they should still be there, at least. But that certainly would not be the case for server-based games like this, in our shiny new online-only-even-for-singleplayer everything-fucking-digital used-games-are-the-devil future, though.

At any rate, this wasn't the only guy saying the whole "I don't care if the servers shut down later as long as I get mine in the meantime" bullshit.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's the latest newsletter thread where it's all going down, or most of it. 45 pages of replies and growing - the thread starting on the 14th.

Some people near the beginning were worrying about DLC being deployed in the game from the wording regarding "backers would get one of the five new ships to start off". IE: "Does that mean the others will need to be bought separately?"

Lots of accusations about complainers not knowing shit. Such as how people noticed the solo online version used only bytes of bandwidth to "update" and thus started using that as proof that the solo online was indeed just to use connectivity as DRM. The responders jumping down their throat going "you can't tell the horsepower needed for a task based on the bandwidth." and used computerized chess moves as an example. That comparison is of course invalid. The server just responds to events in the "universe" once - then forcefeeds it out to all players. There's nothing overly complex about that beyond the potential number of players the server will need to send to.

Also it seems the game was promised to be DRM free. Online requirements for a single player experience defeats this promise.

And as usual the people who aren't concerned about the servers not being around forever because "There will be something new to play by then" etc are of course the self-centered types that only care about their own personal enjoyment. I prefer to preserve history, such as it is.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

(Deleted and reposted for a bothersome spelling error, as I couldn't edit it due to having already replied to it myself, which disabled editing, even though I also deleted that other comment hoping it would reenable editing, which it did not. Fuck you, LiveJournal.)

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it and all that jazz. Thing is, though, in this case, the video game industry itself actually is learning from history. The long history of gamers (for example, the ones you mention there) being fucking retarded sycophantic lickspittles and letting them get away with stupid shit like this, that is. Yeah, it's fucking gamers who need to learn from history in order to prevent it from repeating itself over and over and over and fucking over again. But they don't give a fuck, as long as they can get their five minutes of fun from whatever hackneyed piece of shit that they suck down from the sewer pipe that the video game industry has become, thanks to them.