Elite: Dangerous Dumps Offline Single-Player

Robotron23 writes: The developers behind the sequel to legendary video game Elite have, to the anger and dismay of fans, dropped the offline single-player mode originally promised. The game is due for full release in under a month. With the title having raised about $1.5 million from Kickstarter, and millions more in subsequent campaigns that advertised the feature, gamers are livid. A complaints thread on the official Elite forums has swelled to 450+ pages in only three days, while refunds are being lodged in the thousands. It is down to the discretion of Frontier, the game's developer, whether to process refund requests of original backers.

Comments

Buyer Beware

[fustakrakich]

This Kickstarter stuff isn't very well regulated...

Re:Buyer Beware

[Dahamma]

You could say that (and in a way it's true), but technically there is no "buyer" since it's NOT a purchase, it's financial backing of a project.

Not much different from venture capital, except by giving $50 instead of $50M you don't get a board seat and massive returns if successful, you just get a possibly sketchy promise of a "reward" for your investment.

Re:Buyer Beware

[Smidge204]

you just get a possibly sketchy promise of a "reward" for your investment.

Kickstarter is NOT an investment. An investment is when you put in a small amount of capital with the expectation that you will get some slightly larger amount of capital back after a period of time. You do not "own" anything when you give money to a Kickstarter project. You are not a stakeholder. You are not entitled to or owed anything.

Kickstarter is best described as a donation. Being more generous, Kickstarter is an advanced purchase, but since there is no guarantee to delivery it's not really that either.
=Smidge=

Re:Buyer Beware

[N1AK]

If you're getting something in return, it's NOT a donation. In this case, it is prepayment for early access to a product. Of course, when you get nothing, or something below your expectations, it's more like a ripoff.

It's a crowdfunding platform. Perpetuating the falsehood that it is more than that just encourages more people to put money into the platform expecting more than they should.

Re:Buyer Beware

[SeaFox]

You could say that (and in a way it's true), but technically there is no "buyer" since it's NOT a purchase, it's financial backing of a project.

I don't think it's possible to apply a blanket label to Kickstarter, which is the first mistake people seem to make with comments on Kickstarter stories.

In my mind there are three distinct types of Kickstarter campaigns.

1. The Distribution Campaign - This is for a tangle good generally, and it's an item the maker already has planned and maybe prototyped as well. The reason for these campaigns is lots of times "we can't get this mass produced unless we order at least x units". So they take the minimum number of units and multiply by the price they want to charge and that becomes the funding goal. These are very straight-forward and the goals are, too. You will get one of the (widgets) in (color) for this backer level. There's little way you wont know what you're getting or for the maker to "rip you off". It's clearly defined what you get. These Kickstarters also have fairly short turnaround times between funding ending and backers getting rewards, because it's a pre-sale drive for the most part.

2. The Charity Campaign - This is a campaign that oftentimes is for a visual art, theater, or dance companies. The money is used to fund a tour for a play to be performed by a company, or a series of exhibits, and another popular example as of late is small independent movie chains being caught with their pants down with the end of film-reel distribution of movies (forced upgrade to digital projection). The rewards are often times simple thank-you's, shout-outs on official websites or Facebook. You name on a "wall of fame" at the business. The higher dollar rewards for these might be admission to a show, or if you're a real high funder, actual face-time (dinners or private Skype discussions) with important individuals about the project. Most backers don't really get any "thing" so there's little to dispute about (unless someone embezzles the money and runs off).

3. The Production Campaign - This is the one that causes the most issues, generally because the goals are not very concrete. Lots of times it's "we want to make a video game and we have these ideas and here's some characters sketches and maybe even some initial computer graphics work, but we can't really focus on this because we have to maintain our day jobs. Please give us monies so we can stop taking all these freelance gigs to pay the rent." Lots of times the backer rewards are copies of said game when it gets released. But the exact form of the game is something that can change during production, which can be delayed, too. This is also the type of Kickstarter that generally can take years to get rewards to its' backers because it requires the people who started it to actually spend time creating something from scratch something afterwards. Another example of this is musicians pre-selling an EP or new full-length studio album they haven't recorded yet. They might have a song or two to demo to you, but the Kickstarter is to front the money needed for studio time, engineering, and disc production of the album.

The problem is lots of people get involved in Kickstarter and don't recognize campaigns for the type they are, and adjust their expectations accordingly. They back one campaign and expect every campaign to be as clear cut or easy as the last, completely ignoring what Kickstarter is -- a showroom for completely unrelated groups of people to reach a geographically diverse audience to seek financial support. They each have their own unique work ethic, and definition of meeting expectations.

I personally avoid Production-type Kickstarters because of the long turn-around times and lack of clear-cut goals. I fund some Donation-types, but mostly focus on Distribution-type campaigns and I generally am very satisfied with what I get in all of them.

Re:Buyer Beware

[Half-pint HAL]

Kickstarter was originally designed to comply with US law. There are laws in the US that cover investments, and Kickstarter is not an investment. These laws were created because of the sort-of-legal scams that would see travelling conmen roll up into a small town and offer to put them on the map by setting up a company or making a film. The locals only had to invest the money to get the film made, and then they'd all be rich. Well, the film would get made, and the film crew would get paid. But the film would never be released, because it was rubbish. The scam was all in the wages -- the conmen were the production staff and crew. So it's not an investment.

Is it a donation? I don't think it is legal to donate to a for-profit entity. Kickstarter doesn't seem to think so either, which is why projects offer at least some sort of token for their lowest levels.

As I understand it, Kickstarter funding is VATtable -- translation, en_US: subject to sales tax. This means there is a clear relationship between the project as a commercial entity and a customer.

There's not a lot of case law to go by, but there's strong legal opinion that the rewards are good or services for sale or hire. If the reward level includes "the game", a lot of people consider that a preorder. The fuzzy bit here is how important the description of the game is. I'd say this is not what was advertised, and I don't see how they can justify dropping it without offering refunds. I'd be surprised if they didn't have enough cash to do it, or at least enough projected sales to be able to promise it later.

Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Dahamma]

Sure, it sucks when projects don't meet their exact launch goals, but I don't have too much sympathy for the "backers" on Kickstarter in general.

The whole thing is clearly labeled as "crowdfunding", not "preorder". If you want to preorder a game, go to Gamestop. If you want to be a backer, i.e. basically micro funding of a startup project, go ahead and use Kickstarter, but in that case you really aren't *guaranteed* anything. There will be poorly managed Kickstarter projects that fail miserably and blow through their investment without ANY decent return/reward. And since you basically agreed to be an investor in the venture (that's why you get a "reward", not a "purchase"), do you know what you can do about that in most cases? Jack and shit.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[ledow]

Agreed. However, crowdfunding for something and then completely abandoning the idea is only going to prompt ire.

You're still obliged, in law, to deliver what you promised you would. Sure, it's almost impossible to enforce that, but you can't go spending the money on holidays in the Caribbean nor can you use it to develop an entirely different game or product. People have had their projects shut down and been chased through the courts for failing to deliver on Kickstarter. It's not easy, but it's no different to any other payment. If you misrepresent what you're going to receive in return for someone's money, it's fraud whether it's an investment, crowdfunding, or written into a sales contract.

To be honest, E:D is my worst Kickstarter. I've contributed to a handful and they've all been great, whether for physical products, digital content, or whatever. I've got several rare beauties of games (I collect mathematically-interesting board / card games), good video games on Steam (including copies), video graphics hardware, all kinds from it.

E:D is disappointing, however, mostly because of the constant demands for more money and the complete under-delivery of the base product. I backed it out of retropathy, yet I have ZERO idea how it plays as yet. That doesn't bother me. But being told "Just X amount of money more and you could see how it plays!" every week in an email is really grating. I regret backing E:D just because of the lack of real return for the backers as yet, and the constant demands for more cash.

That said, it was such a pittance that I don't really care because I always follow your "rule": Never crowdfund with money you can't afford to lose.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Anonymous Coward]

They lied. They claimed offline was part of the project in 2012 and took a lot of money in on the back of that. Now they're going back to the original plan after raking in all that money. They should at least be offering refunds to those they conned, but their refund statement is almost two years out of date and leads nowhere.

This outfit will not make anywhere near month they need to sustain their product. Therefore the online only requirement means this project will disable all copies of the game when they shut up shop in a few months.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Darinbob]

Agreed. However if you lose the money that you can afford to lose, you still have the right to complain about it. And that's what people are doing. Telling them to stop complaining is kind of dumb. At the very least there's some moral obligation to warn potential customers to stay away from Frontier and its games.

Re:Apparently "backers" don't understand the term

[Half-pint HAL]

You're still obliged, in law, to deliver what you promised you would.

No, you are absolutely not in this case. Kickstarter is microfunding investments in a project/company, not a purchase of a product with a specific guarantee or warranty. The fine print says as much.

The fine print is less important than the law. In the US, microfunding commercial for-profit enterprises is illegal -- this is why Kickstarter, Indiegogo et al don't offer equity: it would get them thrown in jail. In the UK (where Frontier Developments is based), there are no "competent investor" laws so all microfunding is legal, but because there is no equity stake, Kickstarter is not considered microfunding. Last I knew it was considered a commercial transaction ruled by the Sale and Supply of Goods Act, and Kickstarter income was subject to VAT (similar to US "sales tax"). This means that they have to deliver the promised rewards, or declare insolvency.

This is ABSOLUTELY incorrect. It's not a payment at all, you are NOT buying a product. You are investing in one,

As I say, if this was true, the Kickstarter team would now be in jail for breaking investment law.

Re:Oh the horror

[Anonymous Coward]

I FEEL ENTiTLED AND MY OPiNION MATTERS BECAUSE LOUD

Re:"Just pay extra..."

[Tyr07]

I'm disgusted that you're disgusted that you didn't receive more than what you paid for.

I paid the price to include the beta access, and I've had a lot of fun with the game, it's actually a lot of fun. I combined it with voice attack and astra and it's quite immersive. Especially playing with friends, its amazing.

You're really missing out over your bitterness that you didn't pay for early access. Personally I'm fine with no single player component, there are plenty of excellent single player space games like the X series (X-2, x3 etc). It's about time we got a quality game like this, that was online and that was their primary focus.

Imagine if you just ignored all the emails, and waiting for the game to come out. Would you be satisfied? Probably. Your real issue, is a bunch of us paid more and are having fun, and you feel you deserve what we got as an extra for you because you're some special cupcake. Suck it up, spend the extra, good game development costs money, and I've seen enough shitty games just trying to make a dime I'm happy to seriously invest money (on a game purchase anyway) for a quality game.

I paid for beta access, and it was worth it

[Tyr07]

Hello /.

I've purchased the game plus it's early access, and I've had a lot of fun with it. I've played games like X3 and earlier so I know what a decent single player game consists of.

Frankly, I think it's about time we received a game that was even of better quality that was just online, we have great single player space games, we really do. However, I always wished they were online, that those ships out there were other players I could comm with or do things with my friends. Elite dangerous, has brought me that. Eve online is a fantastic game, but I always wanted a first person cockpit, full docking procedures, aiming, the whole I'm a spaceship in space experience, not the mmo style.

Elite brought it. They also added new features, and patched them quickly to make the game stable, playable, look fantastic, fun, and immersive. Sitting in the cockpit with voice attack, astra, engaging in combat yelling divert power to weapons! Full impulse! and shooting down npcs or players is great fun.

If they focused on a single player offline mode, I think the game would really suffer, we need that open ended focus where players get the drive the story and history of the game by their actions, not by a predefined script.

I want to see alliances of mercenaries that you know to avoid or that will steal cargo from you. You'll eventually see player factions I'm sure that you recognize as pirate. You get the joy of someone pulling you out of hyper drive, and fighting to stay in it. If they pull you out, you see what it is, oh crap it's system authority, do I fight or run? I kick my engines to full speed as I have a bounty on me and as soon as they scan me, they'll open fire.

I'm trying to get away and spin up my hyper drive engines, and I hear the dreaded 'Ship scan detected' Next thing I know, shots are wizzing past me, I'm under attack. Fortunately my quick reflexes allowed me to get away this time.

It's not always like that though, I've had players pull me out and open fire right away. I was in a slow cargo ship, their proximately slowed the spin up of my hyper drive, I couldn't get away, they destroyed me.

Other times, I was in a small attack ship, the eagle, and I inderdicted other players. Some got away, had enough distance to spool up and run before I could get them, others, not so lucky.

Plus all the docking is fantastic, it's actual ports, you go in the actual station, there is no state change to dock, and land in a landing port. Also even when you're waiting after you landed, and told the platform to pull you in, which it literally does and hides your ship in the station, if you want to go to the outfitting and it 's not done yet, your interface says 'please wait'. That is, your ships interface. You have several consoles, can still look around and muck with them still.

So it's quite well done to make you feel like you're in that ship and things are happening as they should with no loading trickery.

The only state changes are entering hypercruise, which with a bit of network lag you can tell it's a state change, but once in it, it feels natural, and if it's instant exiting and entering feels like it's not a state change. Also hyper jumping to other systems can tell it's a bit of a state change, but you never see a 'loading' screen.

Let this small detail go. It's one of the few games that will really benefit from online play.

Re:I paid for beta access, and it was worth it

[qeveren]

This 'small detail', unfortunately, leaves a number of backers who were depending on an offline mode - that they understood all this time they were going to get - basically shit-out-of-luck. That's kind of hard to let go.

Anyway, the real reason single-player offline got ditched is because the game is going to include technology to upload real-life advertising into the game world. It's right there in the EULA.

Re:Beware of Gamers

[Tyr07]

The game isn't difficult, oh wait I know what your problem is. In eve, you would be called a care bear.

Someone who if they lose even once gets extremely upset, even more so if it's because of a player. People need to look at it like a first person shooter, you die sometimes, and that's okay.

This doesn't mean it's not for casual gamers. Casual doesn't mean 'Super easy I never die so I'm the best and feeds ego'

If that's not what you mean I apologize but it's what it sounds like.

Re:No longer a day one purchase

[citizenr]

Single player still seems to exist, but will need to sync your universe with that of the multiplayer universe "from time to time". That's perfectly acceptable

no, that online DRM, like simcity

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[mwvdlee]

Or, perhaps the best option of all:

4. The project team reinstates offline single-player mode.

You're screwing it up devs

[Karmashock]

You got all excited about this new funding opportunity. The ability to get funded directly by your customers rather then going through the big scary publishers.

And it could have worked except you crapped all over your customers the instant it became possible. You told them what they wanted to hear until the checks cleared... and then you betrayed them.

Again and again.

All these crowd funding systems need to have some sort of refund clause built into them.

We're very happy to fund you guys... but if you intentionally fuck us over then you deserve to have the money pulled.

Obviously you can't afford that happening. You already spent it. I get that. That is in fact the fucking point. You make your commitments and you damn well follow through. Alternatively, just bail on the whole project and never get funded again. Either way, this sort of behavior needs to be a third rail. It needs to mean financial ruin or career suicide.

The first rule of crowd funding is DO NOT fuck over your sponsors.

The second rule of crowd funding is DO NOT fuck over your sponsors.

Re:You're screwing it up devs

[Karmashock]

They could very easily offer a light version of the server as well as a setting to have it look to the local host for server updates rather then their server.

Neither of these things would take more then an afternoon to configure. I could do as much with my own programs so I don't see why they couldn't offer the same thing. It isn't rocket science.

If they don't want to give away the mini server code... fine. Fix offline mode.

The issue here is control. If the game requires their systems to function then I do not have control of my game. It remains their game. The beauty of an offline game is that 100 percent of the relevant code is operating on my system. Their systems go down and I am not impacted. I am off the internet for some reason and it does not effect the game.

Offline mode is not a minor issue. People are asking for refunds for a reason.

Kickstarter, IndiGoGo, etc terms need to be adjusted so that organizations that raise money through them are held to their promises on pain of reversal of funds.

I am okay with projects failing. That is one thing. It is quite another for them to make promises that are easily kept and then betrayed when all the checks have cleared.

Bought merely for single player...

[sTERNKERN]

I do not want to synchronize anything with any server which might or might not make it for some years until it is shut down. This is DRM nothing more. I bought this game to play on my own not bothered by any other player... Kickstarter should be able to penalize companies which are not willing to fulfill their promises.

Re:Shattered

[jareth-0205]

Frontier is going to fold, and you know it.

What you need to do is pay attention to who is in charge of this, and find ways to boycott any products they have anything to do with in the future. Especially the bastards who were involved in the marketing.

Yeah! Let's make sure we punish people for the rest of their lives! Damn them for not providing me with my exact requirements!

The internet has turned into somewhere we can destroy people. It's ugly.

Cheating in singleplayer doesn't matter

[evilandi]

(disclaimer: this turned into a general letting-off-of-steam rather than a direct focussed reply to your specific points)

What does it matter if there is cheating in singleplayer mode?

I backed this game to the tune of around a hundred quid on the basis that there would be a singleplayer mode; I bought Beta and Lifetime Expansion Pass. And there still will be a singleplayer mode, it's just that it will require an internet connection. That's fine for as long as the game remains profitable enough to keep the servers running (and for as long as I don't move back to the sticks or join the armed forces; the latter is unlikely, the former is possible).

The problem is that it was funded as a one-off-purchase game, not a subscription game, and therefore I'm having trouble identifying how they will keep the money coming in to fund the servers past the initial, say, 18-month sales peak. As I've mooted elsewhere, Frontier need to commit to releasing the server modules as freeware on or before the day the servers inevitably become unprofitable. I appreciate the servers are cloud-based with multiple interdependencies, but it's not like the Elite fanbase is short of technical skills - the community WILL be able to manage it, even with near-zero documentation.

As far as the "it was always obvious it was going to be an MMO" goes, I disagree strongly.

I backed this because it was Elite, and not because it was Eve Online Plus. If I'd wanted an Elite MMO, Eve Online already exists.

I have neither the patience to deal with the minority but significant number of griefers, spammers and general idiots that proliferate in online games, nor do I have the time required to grind my skills up to the level required to participate fairly against those who can put 20+ hours a week into the game. I used to be one of those 20+ hour/week gamers (what I don't know about TFC:Badlands isn't worth knowing), they're mostly lovely people, but now I have kids and a mortgage, which was my choice, and a choice which informed which Kickstarter games I backed and which I didn't.

I backed a singleplayer game with up-front paid lifetime pass.

Now it looks like "lifetime" means the lifetime of the game, and with that lifetime is looking pretty short.

(And while I'm having a moan, have I just forgotten how steep the original's learning curve was, or are all the available control systems in E:D really, really hard, or is this just another symptom of me not being a 20+H/week gamer any more?)

Re:Even Donations Come with Obligations

[drinkypoo]

Back on topic; How about offline play with an option to update at each launch? Seems like a good compromise; You don't *need* an internet connection to play, but you can still keep in synch with updates.

You won't be able to do that with this game, because the game requires the server, and instead of giving the server to the backers so that they can run their own single-player games like they would do if they gave one fuck about the players, they are keeping it for themselves so that they can profit from it. They are keeping half of what they promised to deliver to the backers. That is bait and switch, and therefore fraud, because they are able to provide single-player: simply deliver the server component to the player.

I predict that if they have free servers that they will be shit, and that you will have to pay a monthly fee for access to a server that doesn't lag you into oblivion. As my internet connection is crap, an online-only game is simply not an option for me at all, so I would be livid if I had backed this kickstarter.

I've backed two kickstarters so far. The first one was the new space quest game, which the discerning reader will note is years overdue. YEARS. That is to say, it's still not there. The other was the infrablue photography kit which was actually delivered. Until I get the rewards from my first Kickstarter, though, I'm not even going to look at their site. I am not even considering contributing to any more projects.

Kickstarter is a Bad Deal if you don't have money to throw away.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[Anonymous Coward]

4. The project team reinstates offline single-player mode.

Game creators seem to hate single player anymore. I guess it is because they have to make an actual game with a plot, and goals, and an actual AI to fight against you. It is so much easier nowadays to take an engine (licensed and written by someone else) and create a bunch of pretty graphics for it. Then setup a server and charge monthly fees, no pesky AI or plot to worry about.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[bluefoxlucid]

You picked literally the worst analogy possible. I'll give you two important facts.

First, investment funds don't actually support the things you buy. A company's stock isn't directly tied to the company, and buying into it doesn't put money into the hands of the company. The big Harvard divesting projects to sell out of oil companies is more likely to make the oil companies huge profit in temporary corporate buybacks and stock reissues than anything.

Second, stocks work by buying off other people and selling to other people. What you call "growing your money in the market" amounts to "sucking cash out of stupid people's retirement funds". The stock market is a partial information game, like poker or blackjack. Some players have access to more information--one or three cards in an opponent's hand, the top card on the deck, and so on--and others have just the minimum. In the stock market, information amounts to understanding of the game itself: high-information players (investment bankers) know how to read technical charts, react to news, and overall predict the market; they also often buy into level 2 quotes, and know which purchase orders in which clearing houses are likely to relate to bankers rather than retailers (i.e. they know when other big firms are making a move).

Overall, 401(k) holders are there to funnel in money; day traders are picking at scraps (and paying loan fees for it); and big banks are leaning over everyone's shoulders and making enormous gains by outplaying everyone. If you make any money in the market, you do it by robbing someone stupider than you.

Enjoy your ethical investment.

Re:Wow Frontier Sure Can Shovel It

[Cederic]

With no save-reload ability.
With no modding.
With no "lets try this out for a giggle" without consequences.
With no exploration of your own private galaxy.

Computer gaming is escapism. I want to be a god in my own universe, not an also-ran in theirs.

Re:To be expected

[timeOday]

Minecraft allows people to run their own servers, for free, and is doing awfully well.

Online-membership-only is killing gaming for me. I'm not paying $120/year, forever, to link up my XBox 360s to play with my son sitting across the room. (I scrounge for games that support system link, but there are hardly any.) Nor am I going to watch a bunch of commercials before every game (mobile gaming). The deal is, I pay money for a game, which I can then play as much as I like. Take it or leave it. They're leaving it.

Re:Real investments come with guidance

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Game creators seem to hate single player anymore. I guess it is because they have to make an actual game with a plot, and goals, and an actual AI to fight against you.

I fear there is a much simpler explanation: on-line games are far less susceptible to piracy and generate more reliable financial returns.

Next time some pirate posts about how copyright isn't theft because the developer didn't lose anything, they wouldn't have bought the game anyway, and DRM is pointless, consider that the modern games industry is the logical result. Copyright infringement is economic damage and the big game publishers have routed around it.

Unfortunately, in doing so, they have almost killed off entire chunks of the industry, such as single player games with any serious depth, or games with novel gameplay and new ideas. Why bother with little things like creativity and making fun new games when Call of EVE: Advanced WarCraft 2017 is a safe bet to make a fortune?

Most of the innovation in the industry these days is done by the little guys. On very rare occasions, those little guys make it big, but mostly you just don't get the same kind of epic scale and production values at that end of the market.

Re:To be expected

[Zephyn]

OMG...is slashdot going to turn into another forum for spoiled MMORPG players to whine about not getting exactly what they want?

It's more like they're not getting the product that they donated money for.

The larger problem is this: If a Kickstarter developer can renege on the promises they made to get people to donate to their project, and not suffer any negative repercussions from it, it's going to make it a lot harder for other developers to get people to donate - once somebody gets away with a bait & switch, everybody else comes under suspicion.