This one is early and a bit better
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=6b99a1d038&e=

Two things make these news seem a little fishy, which would explain that sh!tstorm:

1. The timing. After all this time spent on development, they find out about that problem just one month before their release date? If what they state is true, that due to the game design it would be impossible to have offline play....well, this is a rather big coding issue and should have been noticed by the programmers a lot sooner. Getting the news out so close to the release date is - at minimum - a very bad PR decision.

2. The fact that EA/Maxis pulled something very similar with SimCity. They announced that it would be impossible due to the very design of the game to play offline. Until some pirate group released a crack soon after release, that allowed offline play. Awkward. Miraculously, EA meanwhile has also released an "offline patch", IIRC.

I can only hope for Frontier's and Braben's sake (and credibility) that something similar does not happen with Elite: Dangerous. While EA can pull something like that off (they have more than enough AAA titles in their portfolio, and hundreds of thousands of customers who don't even know what a "SimCity" is and don't care), Frontier, on the other hand, just might just be screwed. And then the only remaining hope for Space-games genre would be Star Citizen.

While personally I don't care all that much whether the game has to be online all the time (fast, stable broadband user), I can see where all the discontent is coming from: the perception seem to be that Braben is using always online as a DRM (and therefore sacrificing all those who don't have fast or stable internet on the altar of "anti-piracy"); and/or hoping that with everyone constantly online, there might be a higher number of micro-transactions.

All depends on whether Braben's reasoning is indeed valid (= no hidden agenda, like a "backdoor DRM"), and whether he can convince the potential customer base, especially all the backers that are freaking out.

With all that you said above Jayhawk, I have to agree to some extent that an offline mode not being feasible should have been known/announced earlier.

However as for DRM. This game is a business its how braben and team gets to live and feed a family, so I have no problem over instigating something that poos in the faces of those who like to steal for a living.

Jayhawk I'm sure it'll be entirely possible to play ED offline with some third party crack or something. Just because it's possible doesn't mean the devs want to release a half supported, always out of date shell variant of their game.

I could go play WoW 1.0 offline too, doesn't mean it makes any sense or that Blizzard would ever bother supporting it over the actual main game.

All in all, as usual I believe the big offline argument is much ado about very little.





DRM wise I've always been a fan of Flashpoint's style, slowly degrade the game and make it horrible in general for the pirate.

The reason for the online always stuff is because their market tables are updated constantly every time there is a transaction. They could just set one table for offline mode but they dont want to have a static economy.

I have no doubt some hacker could set it so you could play offline but that is not the living universe they want for their game. To be fair I dont think it is right for them to do this after spending this whole time saying they would do an offline mode.

Honestly I believe it's got a lot to do with DRM. Yeah it's a "constantly evolving" galaxy but they could achieve the same thing with a 12/24 check in instead of a constant online connection.

I bet if Frontier had just been stating that they would use "always online" as a DRM early on, they might even have gotten quite some sympathy. No "honest" gamer wants to see an Indy developer lose money to pirates.

Now they've alienated a lot of backers by delivering these news way too late, and if it'd somehow indeed turn out that their reasoning is BS (via some third party crack), they might alienate a lot more by having been caught lying.

Especially if you are some "Indy" developer and are relying on crowd funding and investors, you need to act as transparent as possible. Or people will lose faith.

If all of this even was for DRM reasons. You still need an active account to get to play this game anyway, so you need to get on their servers at least once before starting a new session.

So based on what I have read so far on this game's design, I don't believe it would be very prone to pirating in any case - at least not in quantities that would hurt Frontier financially. Unless some pirate could fake an active account, I imagine it would be a pain in the arse to try to get the frequent updates that would be necessary for offline gaming.

But I would not neglect the fact that people who are constantly online are more prone to engage in micro-transaction (that whole "pay to win" nonsense).

Or, everything David Braben told us is true; then it was just the worst timing he could possibly choose. No PR pros anywhere near that company.

All that being said, here's what I'm going to do: I'll patiently wait for the release date, let it pass and then wait some more ; chances are very high that there could be server issues during the first couple of days. Then I will wait for press and customer reviews, and give the game some more time to mature. Then I will consider buying it.

Very disappointing news for me because I spend a lot of time on a ship where the only time I can get a net connection on my laptop is when I'm in a UK port and can use my own mobile internet. If I'm at sea or in aother country then it's no internet.

If it's down to the game design then that's fair enough, but what leaves a very bad tate in my mouth is how this was announced totally out of the blue one month before general release. I don't believe this is just something that cropped up in the last couple of weeks. So that's a £50 game I now unable to play most of the time.