Elite: Dangerous looks better already!

[Tamina]

As Tamina and felter said: The game is not finished, we can't judge it right now.

Good points.
I also don't think online only will be essential in future.
We are running a server farm together with a scientific institute to render high resolution nearly real looking videos of a nearly totally physical correct behaving product (which does not actually exists yet).
That is basically one of the few cases I can think of which make sense to rely only on servers.

[Oldman]

*Cough*....Elite Dangerous update 50 now just been posted up on the Frontier Forum. ...it's earlier than usual.

Oldman

[matthewfarmery]

Will offline mode ever be implemented? Why not create a second "offline galaxy" with different secrets than the online one?
It is not out of the question we will create a cut-down game that is offline only, but this is not currently in our plan. It would still be a big undertaking to do well.

[/b]

sorry but I don't believe that for a second, as well as many of the other answered questions, having a static universe I think would be feasible, so they are saying to offer an offline mode would mean that the game would be a cut down version? what? if people want to play in their private universe, not influenced by others, they should bloody add that in. I don't see how cut down that would be compared to the online mode, that does get influenced every time you play. and to me, playing in a universe that gets updated by what other people will be doing regardless if you like it or not, is just utter BS. so far, I find the whole reason for dropping an offline mode is complete and utter BS.

[Nyax]

*Cough*....Elite Dangerous update 50 now just been posted up on the Frontier Forum. ...it's earlier than usual.

Oldman

yeah I noticed that. I'm glad I'm not working in the PR team for Frontier. I imagine they're having a REALLY bad week.

David Braben also wins this years "No Sh*t Sherlock" award for his comment:

In retrospect we should have shared the fact that we were struggling with this aspect with the community

But I suppose at least he basically admitted they screwed that up big time.

Part of the problem is that for a lot of people online only has some pretty major downsides-

-Inability to play with no internet connection
-Other players interfering with your game
-Inability to replay or go back
-Missing important events because you're not playing at the right time
-The game will stop working when Frontier stop supporting it
-Any story they tell has by it's very nature to be limited in scope and impact.

and so on. Frontier have said nothing about what they have planned that will make the online version so great that they think these downsides don't matter. I get that they don't want to reveal all their plans as they want it to be a surprise, but all we're left with at the moment is 'You must play on-line and it'll be great. Offline will be boring.' Which frankly doesn't help matters, it just inflames them.

What Frontier really need to be doing here is trying to win as many people as possible over. An online only game lives or dies by the number of players it has. Removing the offline option has cost them a lot of players (sadly we'll never really know how many) and a awful lot of goodwill. Denying refunds for people who've been playing in the expectation of an offline mode is going to cost them even more goodwill. They need to really be trying to get across why the line version is so great to try and win some of those people back.

[SteveMill]

For what it's worth my understanding is that an online third party utility is used to create and share the Galaxy. Once that became the basis of the design then it wasn't easy to do the offline version. But that was their design decision. The earlier games showed that wasn't the only option.

I just believe you don't get to take money, not deliver and then refuse to give it back, no matter what.

A good game is already there. It's going to get better. But that nasty taste in my mouth won't go away.

[Chips]

I just believe you don't get to take money, not deliver and then refuse to give it back, no matter what.

The risk of crowd funding.

All this openness (or not so openness) highlights that it allows people to get too emotionally involved in things.

I'm glad I have kept away from Star Citizen so far... I really don't know what's coming which means I'm probably going to be fairly hard to disappoint because of that Or in the event I am disappointed, it won't be too significant. As I've said earlier - I've written my backing off before it even started so - what will be will be. I didn't back this because, well, I had backed one and that was enough (plus, Elite was great... but i'd expect a lot more game play now ).

So crowd funding won't prevent hidden bad eggs, major departures from what people expected, significant disappointment? Maybe it's not the new perfect paradigm people thought it could be.

[Nyax]

This brings to mind another thing that worries me: Elite is Veering Dangerously close to covering almost EXACTLY the same turf as Star Citizen. Yes it's going to be out first, so it'll have time to get established but it runs the risk of having simultaneously driven away a lot of it's potential players and kept (for now) the players most likely to abandon it for the much higher budget 'Star citizen' when that comes out. History has surely shown there simply isn't the market out there to maintain two similar MMO games for any serious length of time?

[LV]

Skimming the Braben Q&A i saw this and it never dawned on me until i read it.

In effect this means i will never play ED

Code: Select all

The recent news about offline mode is bad news for the modding community - would you consider releasing something to support them?


Quote Originally Posted by David Braben 
Community/modding content is an interesting point - something I'd like to embrace, but within the game itself. There is a danger of the game branching otherwise.

reeks of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gfBiccvcNQ

[kurush]

They need to really be trying to get across why the line version is so great to try and win some of those people back.

The beauty of crowdfunding is that they don't have too. They can screw ppl out of some cash and then say that they didn't promise to deliver anything And for MMO games there are much better alternatives with less steep learning curve and made by people who actually understand what an MMO is and how to do it, at least understanding it better than Frontier I actually tried some beta and put it aside just because I realized I'm not going to even try playing it until they release an offline version, something that is not going to happen

[kurush]

or feel backers wrath.

How exactly can that happen? Anybody starting a kickstarter to DDOS their infrastructure? I think I'd at least match my contribution to the original game

[kurush]

DB has stated that they will archive the state of their universe from time to time with a view to making that available if their servers shutdown in the future.

I saw this message and it will likely end up as another patetic lie. Anybody asked a question who will privide the infrastructure to run this backup? Sure, they can probably sell what's left of it to some other company along with the remaning user base. How does that make things better ?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

DB has stated that they will archive the state of their universe from time to time with a view to making that available if their servers shutdown in the future.

I saw this message and it will likely end up as another patetic lie. Anybody asked a question who will privide the infrastructure to run this backup? Sure, they can probably sell what's left of it to some other company along with the remaning user base. How does that make things better ?

Indeed, things are quite uncertain.

[Avis]

..And for MMO games there are much better alternatives with less steep learning curve and made by people who actually understand what an MMO is and how to do it, at least understanding it better than Frontier ..

Such as?

Please don't say Eve Online, that would be like comparing apples and turnips.

[felter]

..And for MMO games there are much better alternatives with less steep learning curve and made by people who actually understand what an MMO is and how to do it, at least understanding it better than Frontier ..

You know I have to say, that's sounds like you're talking about eve online.

Things like this cannot be good for future kickstarters, as as the ones who do back those kickstarters are going to start saying to themselves, fook this I aint backing no more kickstarters.

[Antilogic]

Nobody in the history of the universe has said "less steep learning curve" while referencing EvE.

[kurush]

You know I have to say, that's sounds like you're talking about eve online.

Never played that one and will never touch it with a long pole considering what I heard about it. I am talking about MMOs that are not space sims. About kickstarters, I actually anticipated this turn. At least now I can finally claim that DB is a lying cheat and AlienTech won't be able to argue with that

[RegisterMe]

This thread is becoming almost as pointless and unpleasant as the one on the ED forums.

Can I make a suggestion? Either a) take all the Braben / Kickstarter / ED / FD / whatever discussion over to the ED forums and leave this thread for those who want to play the game or b) mods, can we have another ED thread for those who want to play the game where we try to avoid crapping all over it?

Either way I'm out of this thread . Fly safe and have fun .

EDIT: changed "nonsense" to "discussion". Nonsense was unnecessarily and unintentionally demeaning.

[SteveMill]

DB has stated that they will archive the state of their universe from time to time with a view to making that available if their servers shutdown in the future.

I saw this message and it will likely end up as another patetic lie. Anybody asked a question who will privide the infrastructure to run this backup? Sure, they can probably sell what's left of it to some other company along with the remaning user base. How does that make things better ?

Indeed, things are quite uncertain.

Quite. People need to stop bring so trusting. An online game requires servers to run and servers cost. Besides if the intellectual property is sold then you can bet the new owners won't allow it.

[SteveMill]

This thread is becoming almost as pointless and unpleasant as the one on the ED forums.

Can I make a suggestion? Either a) take all the Braben / Kickstarter / ED / FD / whatever nonsense over to the ED forums and leave this thread for those who want to play the game or b) mods, can we have another ED thread for those who want to play the game where we try to avoid crapping all over it?

Either way I'm out of this thread . Fly safe and have fun .

How about you put down the junior mod page and stop telling us what we can and cannot say on in an off topic thread on Elite Dangerous.

Regarding Kickstarter, there are rules but who is going to enforce them? I expect that technically frontier can win any legal case just by having the best lawyers.

It's just regrettable that they deliberately painted themselves into a design corner. It's the hard nosed refund policy that stinks.

[SteveMill]

I just believe you don't get to take money, not deliver and then refuse to give it back, no matter what.

The risk of crowd funding.

Kickstarter does have rules of delivery. I think frontier have broken two of them but no one is going to spend millions on lawyers and years of their life challenging them.

Frontier now just have to live with the fact that apart from the fan boy crowd they are now seen as just another cynical games company. The goodwill is gone so now they live and die on the quality of the dec 16th release when reviews will set the rep of the game in stone regardless of what is delivered down the line.

I expect it will take an angry pounding on meta critic to begin with.

I hope the release goes well and there are enough new features to justify the release. It needs new paying customers to keep going. Which of course makes recent events even more of an idiot move.

But in the end it's still for me a very good game. I'm having as much fun as when I first played xbtf. The classic Elite gameplay is all there and in the end what I really want from a space sim is a small ship, a handful of credits and a galaxy to carve a place in. It delivers on that.