The developers behind the sequel to legendary videogame Elite have, to the anger and dismay of fans, announced they've dropped the promised offline singleplayer mode. The game is due to be released 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, many of those following the project are livid. A complaints thread on the official Elite forums has swelled to over 450 pages in merely three days, with backers demanding refunds. It is down to the discretion of Frontier, the game's developer, whether to process refund requests of original backers.
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Anger as Elite:Dangerous Drops Offline Singleplayer
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:06PM
More evidence that Kickstarter is for chumps.
And this is speaking as one of those chumps. Occasionally I get what I wanted eventually, but it has resulted in more frustration than it is worth.
I intentionally sat out this one as I had sworn off all software based Kickstarters long ago. My guess is that with how big of a disaster X:Rebirth is (not a kickstarter, but people were sure pissed that they did not get what they paid for) Elite:Dangerous made some serious bank in getting Kickstarter money.
This goes the same for pre-ordering games. Seriously, don't reward bad behavior by enabling these assholes to get away with it. And this goes double for so-called AAA developers.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Insightful) by novak on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:25PM
Basically. Most people who are both good enough to be in the business and want to be in the business, already are. If you're going to invest in a kickstarter it should be more along the lines of wanting to see what some very talented people can do, not preordering a product which is still not designed.
I think kickstarter has its uses, but unless its almost more of a group buy for a production run of something already completely prototyped, it's basically a crapshoot. Treat it as such, or you're likely to be as disappointed as these fans.
novak
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:00PM
Even in your already prototyped case things can go horribly wrong. A kickstarter I put a bunch of money into has become a disaster because when they got the first rewards sent out they discovered the product has manufacturing defects from their supplier in China.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:07PM
Do ho ho, prototyping with Chinese anything has been a rookie mistake for at least the past ten years. Now the jackass who wanted to pocket the saved pennies is now going to be shit out of luck and never trusted again because there are no deliverables.
Care to be more specific about what exactly went wrong?
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:10PM
I'm assuming an overworked sweatshop employee forgot to check the solder arms for that batch or something along those lines.
That ought to teach them to not use plants in their own countr- heh. Heheh. Bwahahahahah.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I couldn't type that with a straight face. Plants in their own countries. Heh. Maybe 60 years ago.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 3, Interesting) by novak on Wednesday November 19 2014, @12:49AM
Yep. There are very few places that do manufacturing left in the USA (which is where I'm from, other relatively developed nations have not fared a lot better). I guess somehow slave labor is fine with everyone as long as it is done elsewhere. At my company, we do as much manufacturing as possible in house. That isn't everything, but we do PCB assembly including SMD components. Granted, we don't have that much volume, at least yet, but we're paying people who can do a good job to do so.
As much as possible, we source the components from the US (PCBs) or other nations with better labor laws (Japan). That isn't just for touchy-feelies; buying high quality stuff generally results in a better product. If you take apart a failed computer monitor, for instance, maybe 80% or 90% of the time it is blown caps on the power supply. And almost always, they are capxcon or a similar trashy brand, which are about the most worthless capacitors in existence. Saves a cent or three compared to buying quality Japanese caps such as Nichicon. I guess they get more monitor sales if your screen breaks ever few years.
novak
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday November 19 2014, @08:57AM
Wow, I know hatred of China is big in the US, but it's still shocking to see it for the rest of us...
Yeah, some parts of China suck. Some parts of the US suck too. That doesn't mean that you can't get high end, well paid manufacturing done there. I've stuff made in China before, and it wasn't done in a sweatshop or bad conditions. The factory was clean, the workers well paid. I went there because no local companies were flexible enough to do what I wanted at a reasonable price. The quality of the finished products was extremely high, and actually had a lower failure rate than the UK board house that made the first batch of prototype PCBs.
You get what you pay for, anywhere.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 19 2014, @01:38PM
Google "Potemkin village" and get back to us.
UK board house
UK is small. In the US you just contract "down south" and it ends up costing about the same overall by the time you're done with tax rebates and lower transport costs and faster deliveries and generally better quality. In the UK its too small so there isn't a "somewhere else" and you gotta go China, so I sympathize.
On the other hand you got your southern/Mediterranean countries in euroland which are in economic collapse, so they'll work cheap until the revolution or breakup of euroland or nationalization of industry, so you're in a geopolitical risk scenario.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday November 19 2014, @08:17PM
You can't just take an awful reputation that China willingly made for itself and go "welp, 'murikans hating them foreigners". As sympathetic as I am to the people there, the government is shit at a level that our own in the US is only just beginning to approach and the sweatshop transistor stereotype is a well earned and willingly reinforced one. You can probably get high end manufacturing there yes, just like anywhere else. But you can also probably get free healthcare in the US somewhere. These things are a minority. I'd love to put the sweatshop transistor crap behind us as much as the next guy. But the fact is that the chinese government doesn't really care and are letting the abuse continue.
This is all kind of besides the point anyway because what grandparent said was hardly hatred. It's a genuine advantage his company has and statistically parts manufactured in the US and Japan are going to be on average higher quality. If someone is still able to maintain profit and do that I whole-heartedly encourage them to advertise the fact. I only wish he'd have given the company name so I can put it in my mental whitelist when deciding which stuff to buy.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:56PM
> Seriously, don't reward bad behavior by enabling these assholes to get away with it.
That's why I always vote 3rd party.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:03PM
May be it's not, at least not entirely, but yours is a fair description of backers of this particular campaign. Wow... These people pre-paid for a non-free game. Just how bad are they with their wallets?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:16PM
There is only one reason to go to kickstarter: pay for a game that you wouldn't get otherwise and hope to get it. It's a risk, but often the only option for games that aren't trivial to make and no publisher would touch them.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday November 19 2014, @08:20AM
Actually, Kickstarter happens to have a few categories outside of "games" and "gadgets".
I backed the OotS reprint kickstarter. That one came through, even though the kickstarter kind of exploded and got to 1 million instead of a few thousand.
There will be plenty of cases (like reprinting books that are currently out of print) where getting to the final stage is not as wrought with thorns as developing a game based on a proof-of-concept version.
On a side note, as Kickstarter points out themselves: Kickstarter is not a store. Treat it as such at your own peril.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:51PM
Why, you might as well just drink your wine right out of the bottle you uncultured slob.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Lagg on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:57PM
If you guys want an Elite done better than the guys who actually did Elite this [oolite.org] is a good bet. I've not bothered keeping up on any of this crap because I knew this would happen and Oolite is more than enough for me especially with the huge extension repos. I don't know why anyone thought it needed to be continued. This kickstarter scam completely lacks the charm of the originals (and I don't say this out of nostalgia) and particularly Oolite. You can really tell which of the two was made with passion and love.
Hint: It's the one without the stupid obligatory multiplayer that plagues so-called "AAA" games today, the flat out lie regarding DRM (grep "DRM-free" and look at their response, that's called DRM you morons), complete lack of extensibility (grep "script your own missions") and outright missing features if you opt out of always-online bullshit (grep "How will single player work", it's a doozy).
I don't know why people think that just because someone wrote a game at one point means they're unconditionally competent. These pricks talk about wanting to squeeze performance out of hardware in the same way the originals squeezed it, then proceed to tell you that you won't get features unless you connect to a server and give you obviously bullshit reasons that this is the case.
Frankly, I'm insulted that this is going to be released on my birthday. I'll go donate some monies to Oolite instead.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday November 19 2014, @10:16AM
Seconded. Oolite is the mutt's nuts. It's the original Elite but completely open for players to add their own ships, missions, equipment and even game mechanics. So much fun.
Newbies should know that the two or three hundred expansions in the game's built-in manager aren't the only ones available - you can download older, but usually still-compatible expansions which can be found all over the web, but they are mostly linked from the wiki: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Category:Oolite_expansion_packs [alioth.net]
Shame about :Dangerous though - I didn't back it but I kept a close eye, and the trailers were simply orgasmic. It also sucks that they're going back on their word, I expected better. Hopefully they see the light and cave to the backers' demands.
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:03PM
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:22PM
They don't lose perspective. From what I've seen they get pissed off at people making bad excuses for their failures instead of being forthcoming (in this case the disgustingly common "we can't give you The Experience(TM) if it wasn't like this"). However in cases where the people behind it are honest and apologetic people are fine with it. For example, one game I gave money to at one point was a game called SCALE. It's taking a long time to complete. Thing is, the guy who is writing it was very honest about why this is the case. He wants to keep technical debt in the code to a minimum and wants to do it right the first time. As someone who also writes code and has a similar mindset I completely understand this. So did everyone else.
and on that note people who get rightly pissed off do so because the project is advertised as a product to be completed. They deliberately misrepresent the nature of the project because people wouldn't invest if they knew it was a higher risk investment. If they would stop presenting the project as inevitable then this wouldn't happen. They also frequently do false advertising on top of that as is the case here. This "it's an investment, deal with it" argument is really tiresome.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by hubie on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:29PM
I think this goes beyond just a matter of perspective. I think the anger is justified if the offline mode was an important factor for you because it goes to fundamental gameplay. For me, I would have almost zero interest in an online-only game, so I would never contribute in the first place. It may not be a deliberate bait-and-switch, but I would want my money back or be given some strong assurances that it will certainly be implemented later. If I found out that some feature I was lukewarm about wasn't going to be implemented, then maybe I'd shrug my shoulders and take your attitude.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by boristhespider on Tuesday November 18 2014, @09:15PM
In this instance it isn't a bait-and-switch. Frontier never originally promised an offline single-player, and when there was call for it stated that they would "investigate" an offline single-player that was as immersive as the online single-player, and which fitted well into the same engine - this was added as an update to the Kickstarter and wasn't in the original lists. They now state that this can't be done and have dropped it. Whether you think they're *right* to do so is a different matter, as is whether they're being strictly ethical to have done what they have, but I'd suggest that this isn't a bait-and-switch. A PR disaster, though, undoubtedly.
I walk to work past the Frontier offices most days. It was quite amusing walking past earlier and seeing one of the developers walking in and wondering if it was a good idea to try and ask him if he knew the shitstorm that they've caused online (Of course it wouldn't have been. I do dimly know one of the developers who swore blind to me a few months back that there would be offline single-player though. Next time I see him in the pub near the Science Park I think I might ask him what the flying fuck happened.)
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday November 19 2014, @08:25AM
Frontier never originally promised an offline single-player,
Then someone was impersonating the game's creator on Reddit:
http://www.geek.com/games/elite-dangerous-drops-offline-mode-angry-backers-demand-refunds-1609609/ [geek.com] (see image 2/3rds down).
(Score: 1) by boristhespider on Wednesday November 19 2014, @07:23PM
You may have missed the word "originally". They *did* promise it in a revision to the original Kickstarter, and maintained that promise afterwards, which is why I'm saying that the question of whether they've acted ethically or not is a different one -- all I was meaning is that it's not really a bait-and-switch.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:41PM
I think the problem is that "finished" is subjective when it comes to software. For some people it is "if it does not do all the stated goals at the inception of the project, it is a failure", for others if they get anything at all it is a success. For most people it is a specific subset of features that must be implemented.
For you I guess it is a quite reasonable, "Did I get X dollars of entertainment value?"
But I don't think there is a right way and a wrong way to think about it, just different ways. Setting expectations and detailed feature lists at the beginning of a project is a good way to piss off a lot of people when you don't meet them. If a Kickstarter was up front and claimed "do not expect to get anything at all from this", I doubt they would get any backers at all.
I would like to say, "Don't promise anything you are really really sure you can deliver." But after a lot of years of experience, I don't think game developers are actually capable of this. At least they are telling people about it. We will see if anyone actually gets their money back.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:40PM
Isn't "the anger and dismay of fans" a good way to get headlines for a game no one has ever heard of?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:44PM
"no one has ever heard of"
Hi, welcome to the internet! You should probably stay off of message boards until you are over the age of 14.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @11:32PM
It works both ways. Some of us were on these fancy computers and computer networks doing all sorts of cool shit to have noticed some home pc game when it came out. You might want to refrain from comments until you are over the age of 45.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:14PM
Can someone point me to where they say the game would be available offline at all? Seems like they were pretty upfront that this was a multiplayer focused game. It is kind of douchey and DRMesque to require an internet connection for a game that you say doesn't have DRM, but that's about it for what I can find.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:21PM
Well, here, for one [reddit.com]