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Elite: Dangerous - trouble in paradise ?
SpottyGekko
Member EpicPosts: 6,916
In the latest newsletter, FD have indicated that there will be no offline-mode for E:D at launch (or quite possibly ever). As it was one of the promised core features of the game, it has caused a strong reaction:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=58789
It also appears that E:D might launch without some of the features that were planned for launch. This may cause a less than favourable reception at launch, and it's always difficult for a company to recover from negative perceptions caused by a bad launch.
There have been quite a few posts lately expressing concern about E:D's monetization model. Unless FD can find a significant amount of new game buyers at launch, they will have little to no new income until the first expansion is up for sale. A negative reaction from longtime fans is not going to help boost sales at launch.
FD are currently pushing very hard to convert pre-orders into beta backers. All players who have paid for beta access will be given early access (play between 22 November and the 16 December launch), the rest will be denied early access. It currently appears that even original Kickstarter backers without beta access will be excluded from the early access.
Those who upgrade to beta access will also now get a free ship and a discount of ship insurance after launch. However, with only a week of beta left, FD are really selling early access at this point.
It certainly looks like FD are making a last-minute push for extra cash. Combining that with the announcement yesterday of a somewhat reduced feature set at launch does make one wonder if there's more to this than meets the eye...
Comments
Good thing the game isn't all about you then!
Solo offline mode was never promised, but it is true that backers had that carrot dangled in front of them during the funding campaign. I don't think Frontier would cut this feature if they didn't have to, there's a lot of sense in dropping the offline mode when it conflicts with what is at it's core an online game. There would be too much of a contrast between the online evolving galaxy & the offline static version.
The lack of features is a more serious issue. The game currently has only the bare essentials from the previous games, trading, mining, bounty hunting, courier runs. There's no dynamic economy or evolving galaxy yet. It seems to me that these two features should be added (& were expected) to the core game play for a compelling experience. It's very shallow at the moment.
As for the fundraising, well they're not doing anything they haven't been doing all year.
Overall it does feel as though the release will be a beta in disguise. There are still game breaking bugs in the game. The release needs to be delayed as far as I can tell.
I would advise anyone thinking of buying ED to wait until at least the 22nd Novemeber when the pre-release version is available, before the release on 16th December.
IMO FD need to pull a rabbit out of a hat, or postpone release, or this else game is going to sink.
They'll shoot themselves in the foot with this and likely won't ever recover.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
LOL.
As if this would be their only problem!!
This game has almost zero playable content-- the only upside of it: there is a whole lot of space to do nothing in
the reviews are going to be interesting to say the least
I really like Elite and have had high hopes for it, but for a while now I've been pretty worried. I was hoping the promised 2014 launch would get pushed back. Unfortunately, not only is that not going to happen, but the last newsletter was really depressing -- full of blatant marketing speech designed to lower expectations as much as possible.
As others have said, the lack of an offline mode -- while a big deal to a lot of people and something that should have been mentioned as being pulled a long time ago, since clearly this was not a recent decision -- is the least of the issues. Elite currently has the framework for a great sim, albeit even that isn't really complete, but basically there is no meaningful game there. Everything from missions to trading to exploring is not just bare bones, but skeletal. Even ignoring the bugs and the dicey -- at absolute best -- netcode and multiplayer features (what of them there are), there's no meaningful game to play -- a trillion procedurally generated systems mean diddly-squat if there's nothing interesting to do in them. You can literally do pretty much everything there is to do in a few hours.
If it launches as-is, and at this point that seems to be exactly what's going to happen, it's going to get savaged -- and rightly so. FD seems to be hanging their hat on the "But we're going to be adding more!" peg, with no apparent realization that you only get one launch and recovering from a bad one is nigh unto impossible.
Really sad to see so much potential likely be wasted
.
Better to sell $600 ships to those that wish to buy them , then to release early because you are out of money because you didn't sell them $600 ships to those that wanted to pay that for them.
I feel they are on the edge and need a influx of cash in a very bad way. I doubt this early release with half the features they promised for launch will be something the game recovers from.
Offline mode means 95% of 'customers' get the game for free.
The game is good, and it will take you a week or more to learn how to fly your ship, just to get out of the station, unless you are good at flight sims already. The delay of a few features is only going to make the included stuff work better, subtraction of yet to be perfected code reduces bugs, adding more features near release is a classic sign of poor software code production management.
The doom and gloom is ridiculous, the game will be fine after the obligatory DDOS is over. E:D will launch right after WoD becomes playable, so it will all just roll right along.
If E:D needs to go sub, I would pay, the game is fun, best since Darkfall minus the darkfail.
Yep.
Complaining of no offline mode on a mmo site is pointless.
If you ask me all games should have online only mode.
what are you talking about this might be the most featureless game launch of the decade and you say the game is "fun" and even recommend it? you must be joking
Maybe the novelty of doing simplistic text window fetch quests in emptyspace is fun but that wears off in 2 hours.
This game has a category on this MMO site and has zero mulitplayer content. You can´t even group up to jump to a different system it fails at the basics, and even if you could, what would you do, without multiplayer content?
How they think launching is a great idea? Must be the shareholder forcing them or something
think you mean Darkfall minus 99% of Darkfall features because it doesnt have anything from Darkfall or any other MMO, it´s still like an alpha tech demonstration
It's a shame for those hoping for offline mode but I can understand the reasons for removing it. It should certainly have been communicated earlier and in a more descriptive manner.
In many ways I wish they had chosen to stay with the original idea of 'Gamma' lasting for an extended period, 12-18 months was the estimate at the time. However I'm happy to play the game and see it get fleshed out, it's not as though they are saying what we get in December is all the game will ever be...
/insert Guiness advert
EvE was not built in a day.
Remember way back when EvE had a tradegoods economy, with demand driven by an algorithm, not by players? Back when all you need to make any ship in the game was just a huge pile of minerals? EvE added systems over time, and got way better as a result.
E:D will be the same, it is starting as a very basic game, and features will be added over time, preferably as they are ready, and not rushed full of bugs.
As for DFO, that game was loads of fun, crippled by client side hax, extreme grind, no safezone, and poor marketing. Features was never DFO's problem, it had enough of a game to be worth playing, it was just marred by poor design choices.
Except what CCP accomplished back then really can't be reproduced today, their founders even said so a few years back.
"Of course, the internet was a different land back in 2003, when wild lollercopters still patrolled the sky. I ask Torfi what would happen to EVE, launching today. “The market is less tolerant of lower quality products. You can't ship with as many defects as we did in 2003.”
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-making-of-eve-online/#page-1
The market really has changed, and players will be far less tolerant than they were of EVE (and if you read the article you'll see they really weren't that tolerant then".
EVE was likely a one time phenomenon, it won't be easily repeated.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Yeah this game does not give me the same bad vibes as Star Citizen. But then again it is an indy game and a triple A game is not to be expected.
My gaming blog
Please stop spreading misinformation. Offline mode was NEVER a core feature. During Kickstarter it was requested and FD (with warnings and disclaimers) said they will try to do that. Not really a full promise. It has caused strong reaction of maybe 100 people. Out of 140 thousand.
Sorry, but that's not true. Reception is measured by how well game plays and how it holds together. Is it fun. How much it is fun. Does major functionality work.
Second, people rush to interpret newsletter (admittedly badly written) as admission of missing features. To be frank, there are not much features missing left. Biggest thing in all this is background sim, which people claim they haven't seen in action - but it was never planned to test it fully during beta. They did some rounds with stat collection and playing out war between Eranin and Federation. It was well received.
So long story short - there are not big major features left to implement (and no, wings and system wide comms aren't big major features). There are some new things planned to reveal at premiere after week. You don't mention this at all.
Please stop spreading FUD. There has been multiple usual suspect threads with "let's pay sub", which has bored to death everyone in forums already. Everyone has their issues with MT, but majority of fans voted to accept cosmetics as lesser evil.
Most of long time fans didn't really wanted offline mode. Again, it was requested by rather marginal group of players. FD thought they will be able to provide them simplified offline version. Turned out it's impossible.
FD Marketing has always tried to convert people to higher levels of backing, for better or worse. I personally not a fan of this policy, but hey, they want to earn money. They also clearly indicate what perks you will get for upgrading.
As for gamma, it's goal is clearly changed, as it is just three rather short weeks till release. Gamma similar to offline mode was hinted, but never fully and officially promised, as it was ever changing subject.
Nonsense. That "extra cash" is 15 pounds a piece. As majority of 140k people are at least beta players (according to FD itself), it is not nearly enough to cover their base if release would be planned so disasterious as you suggest.
As for upgrading I suggest you to either preorder game, or just wait for Youtube and mainstream reviews if in doubt. Still, all doom and gloom in this post is borderline FUD. There's issues, but nowhere that damaging as you suggest.
I cannot and will not defend FD over this decision.
They marketed their fundraising at a group of middle aged folks who had played FD games offline for 30 years or more . When challenged by the backers during the fundraising process about the availability of an offline version they assured them there would be one and updated their kickstarter page to confirm this.
The studio owner and developers have repeatedly referred to the offline version since that time. Discussions have taken place about it on their own forums and in interviews.
Then 1 week before gamma launch they casually toss into a newsletter the fact they are going to renege on this.
Many people do not have constant internet connections. Salesmen, oilmen, sailors, soldiers, people who live in remote areas. These people are quite rightly upset about this u-turn
I find it sad that people try and defend this behaviour. It is simply wrong and should not be stood for by anyone.
I for one will not be spending a penny more with FD, I don't buy EA games as I don't tolerate their business practices. This is of a similar level of disrespect to people who helped fund their game when they asked.
Why launch should be pushed back? All major features are more or less there, they have to be finished of course, and that's FD is doing right now.
I personally don't understand these beejees. Gamma code will be 1 month old when released on Thursday as Beta 3.09. Then it will be about 2 months old when it will land on 16th December.
As for features missing there are few coming (passenger transportation for sure, wings very likely), and newsletter mentions it. However, they are right to concentrate to finishing game as it is. People also talk how beta is bare bones, but it doesn't mean those features already in Beta 3 are deemed as finished. So Gamma will mean all cleaned up and polished of existing feature set, AND adding some new things.
Not a lot of people. Very small fraction of them. And it's issue of not getting it working and not wasting resources on it.
[quote]Elite currently has the framework for a great sim, albeit even that isn't really complete, but basically there is no meaningful game there. Everything from missions to trading to exploring is not just bare bones, but skeletal. Even ignoring the bugs and the dicey -- at absolute best -- netcode and multiplayer features (what of them there are), there's no meaningful game to play -- a trillion procedurally generated systems mean diddly-squat if there's nothing interesting to do in them. You can literally do pretty much everything there is to do in a few hours.[/b][/quote]
Missions are done server side so they can be constantly improved. As for multi layered or chained missions those are known as coming for first release. I don't agree about stuff being skeletal though. Can interfaces be improved? Sure but those are not fundamental issues. Those are iterations, and you can still have great fun playing the game.
If your goal is to do everything in the game then no, you can't complete game in few hours. To get to big ships you will have to spend long time. To get rep increase to get better missions - again, some time investment. It's open world game. All they need to do is provide wings and better comms and it will be much better game now.
It doesn't launch AS IS. It's not Beta 3. Gamma will be much better polished, *finished* build. Key word is finished, because lot of things are still not completed there.
As for features - no, they don't missing much and it won't get savaged. I think you are missing the point how game is meant to work.
Sorry but I will. They clearly tried to make it work and couldn't get it done. That's a nature of Kickstarter. Some projects don't even produce a demo, or concept of product. During Kickstarter game was advertised as fully online game. Very loud but isolated group requested offline mode. And at first it wasn't because internet wasn't accessable, it was about disliking idea of online game in first place.
FD answered that they could do it but game will suffer from it, also they stated that it could require syncing game time after time with servers.
Rest is history.
Did they have to report it sooner? Maybe. But they also tried to be sure before doing so. They can't win this fight, people will be pissed anyway. So what's the point of kicking them.
Oh lord...are we really talking a miracle build here? Do you have any idea how tired that sounds? How many games people have said that about that turned out to be very, very unfinished and buggy?
I truly hope ED turns out well. But trying to defend the game with those type statements..well not a good idea. Really not a good idea at all, on a board that has seen so many game dev's and fans use those exact same words.
Any game that comes up against a deadline and starts announcing feature cuts, or anything of the type, sounds like a game to be wary of to me. And no amount of spin from anyone, dev or fan, will change that impression.
We are not talking about miracle build here, but there's enough time to deliver stable, functional, good game at 16th December. I don't believe in miracles, I believe that FD is keen to get good game out in public. They don't have publishers behind them.
As of defending I don't ask you to not to be wary. There's good reason to be skeptical. But one is being skeptical, and another is claiming things as facts.
Well, this is an important example in terms of crowd funding & players putting trust in developers. It's not like Frontier are a rogue company. They've been nominated for awards, they've done work for Microsoft, Braben is co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, & has an OBE.
The way they have communicated to the ED community is less than satisfactory. As someone who has been with the project for 24 months now I share the feelings of mis-trust.
I just thought that you missed the gist of the OP.
While the post does sensationalise these events, there's no way you could know how many have had a strong reaction. Only 52,000 people are even redgisterd at the FD forums.