Yup, I'm pretty sure there have been several KS projects that only saw boosts in numbers after promising DRM free releases - which makes sense considering most of the major KS projects were for games in genres that the big publishers didn't care about, and the backers generally were people who felt left out or antagonized by the direction the game industry had taken in recent years. That's the general sentiment I remember from the project comments at least, and seemingly the audience the project creators targeted when they talked about doing the kinds of games "for gamers" that publishers wouldn't let them do.

Well, I was casually interested in this game, but now I think I can wait to experience their curated and fully evolved universe once it's on a steam sale.

@legion_ said:

Okay then. To counteract the negativity of this article, I'll just post this cute gif of a raccoon.

FILTHY MONGREL VARMIT!!!! >:( >:( >:(

I thought the game was going for a MMO thing like Star Citizen and they don't have as much money as SC to do a single-player campaign so this doesn't surprise me.

That's because CCP employs economists who observe and tweak the EVE economy to prevent things like hyperinflation, pretty interesting stuff:

"We function as a national economics institute, statistics office and central bank giving advice to government, with the government being the developers and us being the monitoring authority."

It's actually not that much different from our "real" economies, which are also "player driven" ;)

So people went to a website, watched a streaming video of a pitch for a video game, gave them money via an online transaction, the vast majority of them got the digital download version, and now they rush to the online forums to complain about needing an internet connection? Got it.

Really doesn't bother me, I can't see this game being very fun completely offline. You can already play solo online and that's boring enough. They shouldn't have made the kickstarter promises though.

I'm more worried about the game being pushed out too early. There is really not that much content yet and very few things feel feature-complete, the game is out in a month.

Unfortunately game design starts out with planned features of which not all make it. Kick starters doubly so. There was no "promise" of any particular feature. I can certainly understand some backers being upset at the loss of a feature, but the nature of software development appears to mean that you just assume any particular one will make it all the way.

I'll just leave this here:

@ripelivejam said:

@legion_ said:

Okay then. To counteract the negativity of this article, I'll just post this cute gif of a raccoon.

FILTHY MONGREL VARMIT!!!! >:( >:( >:(

You wouldn't say that if you've seen Guardians of the Galaxy.

This is pretty much how I feel about it, too. If you want to know exactly what you're getting then wait until a game is released, otherwise it's essentially just a gamble.

An offline mode sounds like a great way to manipulate the economy, anyway. Imagine EVE with an offline mode? No thanks.

This game doesn't seem very elite.

The way FD handled this announcement was absolutely horrific, but I don't think that the removal of offline is. Playing the alpha and beta lets you display the bandwidth being used (measured in bytes per second). If you play in solo mode, this is almost always zero, unless transitioning between areas or buying and selling goods. Also, the economy is NOT player driven.., there are hundreds of billions of people in the galaxy, and players will always be a drop in the ocean, although combined actions will help decide events that hang in the balance.

I have invested a huge amount of time and money into this game (day 1 backer, member of the design decision forum) and would be heartbroken if I thought a deal breaking game change was made, and so I understand and respect anyone who wants a refund, or is put off buying the game. But I would prefer a fully realized online version to a an offline one, and 80% of the backers came after the Kickstarter, and probably never realised that offline mode were being investigated.

In answer to the suggestion that ED might not have made it without offline support, they beat the target by over 250,000 pounds, all in the last 4 days of a 60 day campaign... This was more likely to be due to the announcement of a Mac version as a stretch goal.

As someone pointed out, cosmetic microtransactions have been introduced, but as a replacement for the ability to buy credits with cash, as FD polled the community, and saw that pay to win was very unpopular. They have said that they are only pursuing MT that don't upset the game balance.

The way things are now, the background simulation servers probably track terabytes of data, and every time you jump to a new place, the skybox is generated from all of the 400 billion stars in the galaxy. I could be wrong, but I think that an equivalent offline mode would be far more restrictive of who could play than the current requirement for internet connection.

Where exactly are you getting the idea that Frontier was having any financial difficulties and how are they an indie studio? They have over 200 employees in 2 countries.

Disappointed, but if I can still play it then *shrugs*

@bollard: To be honest the whole tone of the article makes me scratch my head. I wonder if klepek was playing catch up on what was basically four day old news and so just rehashed other sites, losing the thread in the process. Pretty poor effort.

Speaking for myself, I'm unlikely to ever back a game again because Elite was an exception that I just can't imagine happening again. Ultimately if the game is as good as I hope then that's great. If it isn't though, well those are the breaks. Since as we all know, if you decide to fund a project you're kissing the money goodbye.

They aren't an indie studio in the Vlambeer sense or anything like that, but like Id Software before the Zenimax acquisition, or Double Fine. Indie as in independent of a publisher, usually self-publishing their games.

As for the financial difficulties thing, I remember several sites running articles warning against funding the campaign since their financial situation was dire enough that 1.5 million pounds wouldn't cover the development costs (can't remember exactly which, seemed to recall Joystiq, Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun doing it, but I'm unable to find any articles other than mentioning Frontier Development having layoffs in the middle of the kickstarter campaign from them now).

I found this editorial from November 2012 sharing the same sentiment, http://warpgate9.com/elite-kickstarter-i-thought-i-wanted-this/

Then there is the company. Frontier Developments have not produced a single thing worth crowing about. The last game that might have been worthwhile, was The Outsider, a game that never made it out the door. The company is also burning through absurd amounts of money, and likely to go belly-up in a year or two unless they could come up with a bail-out plan. This Kickstarter pitch seems to be that bail-out. So why don’t we all just band together and help those folks out in the same way we did for Double Fine? Go to this link and click on the “Key Financials” tab. £1.25 mil. is not going to fund a game at that company that’s only going to be released in 2014. If that downward trend continues, the company will be bankrupt before the end of next year, even with the Kickstarter funding.

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Cash	£2,009,734	£1,064,000	£1,686,000	£7,155,000	£8,612,000
Net Worth	£6,284,354	£1,844,000	£3,432,000	£4,945,000	£7,930,000
Total Current Liabilities	£674,719	£1,889,000	£869,000	£3,093,000	£3,677,000
Total Current Assets	£6,169,313	£3,218,000	£4,266,000	£9,237,000	£11,697,000

Not sure if the others just referenced that and pulled the articles after getting better or more information, I just remember reading this information at several places back during the Kickstarter campaign's run in late 2012 and early 2013.

I mean, this is just going to modded like day one anyway, right?

I for one couldn't care less and don't ever see a time when I wouldn't want to play this game as an MMO. I played Elite by myself enough on the Commodore 64.

I understand the fact that backing a Kickstarter is a risky endeavor, and that you might not ever see what you paid for. But making the decision to just NOT have some of the features that you promised because you want to implement online DRM is a dick move.

And the people who say backers should just suck it up are really anti-consumer-minded I guess? Do we no longer even have the right to complain about something we don't like, especially something that was promised? Maybe the devs figured this idea might not upset too many people, and change their minds after seeing thousands of fans complain loudly? I remember (the same?) people saying everyone complaining about the Xbones always online DRM system, the mandatory Kinect or the blocking of second hand sales; were just idiots that would never get anything changed. Well, it seems complaining does create change if enough people do it. Maybe the Elite devs also change their mind. I was very likely to get this game, but I'll never buy a space sim that I can't just enjoy at my own leisure or when the servers inevitably go down. Because if huge multinationals can't keep servers online, a small studio definitely won't. Unless this news completely kills the sales of the game in which case the few people that still buy it can enjoy it until the developer kills the servers because they're not profitable anymore (and just tell people to buy the sequel). Combine this with microtransactions and I fail to see why I should buy this game to support a company that just treats customers the same way the giant corporations do.

Nope!

For some reason I'm okay with this on Destiny, but not this game.

This is a totally sound and sane business move that will not have any repercussions whatsoever, I'm sure. It definitely won't piss off at least half the people who would have bought the game. Nope. Can't see any negatives at all from this. Totally sound.

So, CEO David Braben went on the Elite forums today to answer questions from backers. The thread is here and is 40 pages long, but the responses have been added to the first post.

Here is what he says about the long term future:

"We have no intention of taking the servers down, but I understand what you are getting at. We plan to archive the game from time to time (ie matching client and servers and game world state), and would release such an archive if the servers were to come down. That would also address the issue of how you preserve an online game for the future, from the whole 'retro' perspective."

And here is his comment on connectivity issues:

"One thing we have looked at carefully is our requirements of the network connection. For the single player game they are pretty light. I myself have played the game fine on the train using a laptop on a tethered connection over my phone."

I was chosen as one of 3 ambassadors from the community to represent ED at E3 in June... I even got to meet Brad and Alex which was awesome :D. Full disclosure, they paid for flights, hotel, and expenses, but I worked my arse off for 4 days and more than earned it! Back then, the whole game fitted on a USB stick, but then only 5 or 6 star systems were opened up. Now that over 100,000 real star systems have been added by hand, stations have been added to thousands of star systems, and all of the stars have been populated with planets, rings etc, the game must be orders of magnitude larger.

Been playing it off and on since the Alpha, this game would be super duper unfun in single player. Strange to not include it though.

@tomba_be: if you want to complain about the kickstarter system, then complain. Imagining that a feature was promised, when it wasn't, and then complaining about the t's and c's that people opted into when that's a kickstarter issue not an fdev issue is just muddling your own points.

I'd say this feature was promised, if not at the point when they detailed it in the FAQ, then at least at the point when they created two reward tiers (£60 and £90) promising physical, DRM free copies of the game. This change makes them unable to fullfill those rewards.

It would've been one thing if they had just said they would "look into making an offline mode available" or something like that, but once they said the game would have an offline mode, would be DRM free and made that part of reward tiers, surely that must've made them promised rather than possible features of the completed game?

@fisk0: You'd have to take a very close look at kick starters terms. I would wager that in fact no, it still does not constitute a promise.

I've used kickstarter and what I say to anyone else is, don't. If you insist on doing so then you really do have to just say bye bye to whatever money you put in. There's literally no other way to approach it.

Speaking for myself I'm all for offline games and I still insist on buying most of my software on disk because I like to have something physical for my money. So I can fully understand some people being miffed at the final decision to drop offline.

As I said though it's two different issues here, kickstarter and fdev. I'm not at all anti-consumer but if you're aiming all your ire at fdev then you're going after the wrong target.

I've actually been thinking that what the industry needs is for developers to get together at something like GDC and talk about do's and don't with crowd funding. frontier have definitely made a poor job on occasion but also there have been times when the customer base have been almost willfuly ignorant of the development process and I can't help but feel that there must be a better way of conducting these things.

@japanesebuffalo: That's the idea of having an offline mode. Players could then hack, mod and pretty much do anything they want to make the game the way THEY want it to be without affecting anyone else. In effect, every player who plays a game could then have a personalised version of it. This has been proved a success every time with games like Giant's Farming Simulator and Bethesda's Skyrim and many others that give the players the ability to mod and change the game into something they specifically want.

The old story is true, you can't please all of the people all of the time and this is especially relevant with MMO games. You do something to appease the whiners and others will whine about the changes.

@japanesebuffalo: That's the idea of having an offline mode. Players could then hack, mod and pretty much do anything they want to make the game the way THEY want it to be without affecting anyone else. In effect, every player who plays a game could then have a personalised version of it. This has been proved a success every time with games like Giant's Farming Simulator and Bethesda's Skyrim and many others that give the players the ability to mod and change the game into something they specifically want.

The old story is true, you can't please all of the people all of the time and this is especially relevant with MMO games. You do something to appease the whiners and others will whine about the changes.