It wouldn't matter if it was online or offline - Elite D is not the sort of game that would benefit in the long term from mods IMO, it should be left untainted. Consider what people would add... mining hacks to show which asteroids contain Platinum for example - there, no more having to fly around and find a decent stroid - now you just follow the target to the best resource. Or something that shows the best places to sell commodities - then you have no need to go exploring, you just buy and sell with the insider knowledge. Then your offline save has millions in credit, and your online save is dirt poor in comparison - IMO people will regard the online game as nerfed - rather than being a more organic, fair and controlled system. See, there will be gold encrusted trade routes, and an offline mode would probably reveal all these really easily which I believe would detract from the game.
I think there's a distinct correlation between the mod-ability of a game and the amount of annoying hacking that goes on - case in point, Arma3, DayZ, Minecraft - mod-able to the nth degree and practically every game has some script kiddie hacker making peoples life a misery. I say keep the doors closed, keep ED pure and fair, so when we are impressed by someones stuff in ED, we know it isn't misplaced, we know they had to work their ass off for their ship, cash and gear. I want ED to evolve, not be left in the hands of it's community - who lets face it, mostly have long hair and T-shirts older than most people here. These are not the right people to decide the future of ED.
I'm not usually so adamant, least of all about modding a game - but in the case of Elite D I strongly believe it should be left alone and not tampered with and certainly not abstracted by someones idea of what would make a game more enjoyable. In Elite D, everyone suffers, everyone has to grind to make money to buy new ships and loadout, everyone has to explore to find a good trade route, or stroid belt. If people could just download a mod to remove the hard work, then I might not even want to play it. If I see someone whether online, Youtube, whatever, and they have a cool ship, lots of credits, or can say something about the game from a learned position, then I expect them to have worked towards that, otherwise whats the point in watching or even being interested.
I hope beyond measure that nobody gets to mod Elite D beyond making their own skins or visual enhancements - the game logic, universe system, and dare I say it, grind workload should be left alone. Sorry to ramble, I guess my whole point is that Elite D right now is a universe with distinct rules and laws that everyone has to abide by, and that's a pretty cool thing that should be maintained.
I don't think that the DRM issue is even why ED works like it does - I think the game was setup to take the galaxy data from a server rather than store it locally - and Braben is getting old
, he probably had a decision at some point... either online galaxy with private groups and solo play, or offline galaxy - not both... and with that 'choice' theres only 1 option. Lets face it - we've seen how clunky it can get with Space Engineers private servers and they probably decided that solid server code and systems is where the time should be spent. It shouldn't matter what a developer states before a game is released, things change, we of all people should understand that - maybe the flaws in having an offline mode were pointed out to him and he decided to just avoid it all and assume that anyone playing Elite Dangerous which requires a download will have an internet connection.
In 1983 Elite came with the worlds actual worst copy protection system - the Lenslock protection was so flawed that people just guessed the pass character rather than try using it - it was a little plastic fold-out screen that you put on your TV screen so you could decipher a character (One size fits all TV sizes somehow, impossibly somehow). It was horrible and ridiculous - Elite fans should be used to stupid copy protection systems
I am the one who knocks...
