Space Commanders rebel as Elite:Dangerous kills offline mode

Erm non story

Offline mode has not been canned its still there all they are changing is that occasionally it will update the galaxy with things that the online game has found.

This sounds like a very good thing to me - want to potter around the galaxy on your own - go for it but you can now see the planets routes etc that people have found changing the galaxy in a more natural way than just generating things randomly does.

Quite honestly who actually has totally offline machines at the moment that don't occasionally see the internet? Who actually plays offline games where they have put out content patches online without the patches? I suspect that if you never want to update the game then it will still keep going just not with the newer stuff

No-one is being forced to play multiplayer.....that is not what has been removed. You can still play the game entirely solo and never encounter another human being.

5,000+ people show themselves to be slightly illiterate...

Including the Reg it seems.

The newsletter did not state that offline was being removed.

It stated, quite clearly, that offline mode (it's still there!) is required to connect 'from time to time'. I think this can be taken in a positive light, as there are *plenty* of examples of software that needs to connect 'from time to time' for all sorts of reasons.

Frontier have only modeled the entire Galaxy - probably a bit of a stretch to fit that in 4GB of RAM at 32bits, really!

I for one can't wait - I've been looking forward to this day for about 28 years...

Declaration of Conflict of Interest: Alpha Backer, who has spent way too much time of late carving up asteroids in my Hauler, about to upgrade to Cobra to do some heavier trade runs. I want to try to get a Clipper before the next wipe! Right on, Commanders!

Thanks for posting this, I don't pay much attention to the forums or newsletters. I'm seriously pissed at them now. I only backed on the promise of offline play, online multiplayer does not interest me, it was a nice bonus in my opinion. But if that was my primary interest I'd have backed Star Citizen.

I have just filed a ticket for a refund

Guess I'll have to continue playing Oolite (and Pioneer) for my Elite fix.

This is really just a case of those shouting loudest. There have been several polls about the withdrawal of the offline mode. Most aren't that bothered.

I'll wait

This is definitely still in the wait and see category, once it is released I'll take a look at the reviews and decide whether or not I want to play this.

If I wanted to Gank^hhhh interact with people I'd play Eve so the mmo really doesn't interest me.

I understand that from Frontier Development's perspective the game was always intended to be online, and that offline was an addition after it was requested by a vocal minority during the kickstarter. It's not that this minority don't matter but that FD have limited resources. They put time and resources into trying to make it happen but the way the online game has developed has meant that offline would need a separate development path and be a different game.

If you're looking for more factual detail the developers have answered a lot of questions over the weekend and they've been collected here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59481

I do think it's a real shame there won't be an offline mode, but there's hope for those with a crap connection because solo online isn't data heavy, a dial-up connection could be enough to run it.

Is anyone actually surprised?

Elite 4 has been in and out of development for at least a decade, supposedly in parallel with The Outsider which would serve as a test-bed for the technology involved. That would be The Outsider that was announced in 2005, scheduled for release in 2009 and... is currently in development. Anyone sensing a theme here? Elite 4 was last cancelled around 2011, although supposedly work never completely stopped on it. Oddly enough, most of the development history has been removed from Wikipedia.

But hey, everyone threw money at Star Citizen, so why not replace the 4 with "Dangerous", pretend it's not vapourware that's been hanging around for a decade, and get some suckers to throw money at it. And surprise surprise, the game said suckers were promised is not actually what they're going to get. But let's be honest, with this kind of history they should really just count themselves lucky that anything is getting released at all.

Nerd rage know no bounds

It's nice to see that the nerd rage can span forums. I could offer that there is an offline version of the game at the moment ... it is the tutorials.

The problem is that the game client is exactly that, a client and the universe is running on an Amazon cloud service. Join the dots and you realise that they have not and probably will not be porting that Amazon service to something that runs on a client workstation.

Seriously? Again? The Internet has Ruined... everything

I'm livid.

I do not want a "connected game" - I wanted a cross between Freelancer and Elite that I could run on my laptop, step into and away from for long periods WITHOUT change and worrying if I was on-line (not usually in trains / B&B / hotels which are about the only places I get time to game these days...).

My son wanted something he could play at Sea (six months at a time) without getting locked out (and yes Steam "Off-line mode", I'm looking at your crude "lock out all games after a week of no internet" operation).

Bah.