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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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OK, enough hype.
-- Larry Wall in the perl man page
(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