What can you do in the offline game you can't do in the online one? (what is different?)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by sarbonn, Apr 8, 2018.

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  1. sarbonn

    sarbonn Avatar

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    For no reason in particular, I decided to try out the offline version of the game instead of the online one. I was fascinated with the three Oracle characters that get discussed by the devs all the time, so I thought I'd try and see what's going on with them. So, my question is for those who have played this version a lot: What are the differences (advantages/disadvantages) of playing the offline version.

    Here are a couple of my observations so far:

    1. No player owned towns. I just wandered into the world map for the first time yesterday, and the world seems so empty. The only towns I was able to find were the npc towns only. So, this begs the question: Are my POT deeds all useless in this environment? If so, how do you get housing in the offline game without paying an outrageous amount of real money? Of is there some other mechanism to make this work offline?

    2. No player vendors. This started to affect me because my bow was crappy, so my natural inclination was to go get a better one. No player vendors. I did notice that in game vendors do sell equipment that appears to be a bit better, but maybe they always did, but I just never needed to notice in the past.

    3. Game feels very lonely.

    4. Environment doesn't really explain what you're supposed to be doing. It's an MMO wrapper on a single player game, and it feels really wanderless right now. Still not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

    Any thoughts from others who played this part of the game?
     
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  2. Xandra7

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    You also get a companion which are not available in online.

    Now if you are asking if folks will have a wonderful gaming experience in the offline version, then the answer is no. A lot more work should have gone into the offline version to make it feel like a proper good single player experience.
     
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  3. Sidorovich

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    Haven't touched offline but way you describe it is exactly how I imagine it.

    I say make online character. Neat thing is that even when playing online you can switch to private mode. I always switch to private when doing scenes and switch to multiplayer when in cities or traveling. I always hate in MMOs when you are doing some quest only to see someone else already done it just a little while before you. Same goes for puzzles here. Game have amazing puzzles but in fist scene I was in...someone just already solved it and opened the door :D .

    Since really, exploring in this game feels like singleplayer RPG so I prefer to play it like one. Buut all the player housing and player vendors and player owned tows are really neat so I still prefer to play online rather than offline.
     
    Last edited: Apr 8, 2018
  4. Barugon

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    You can claim lots in NPC towns.
     
  5. sarbonn

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    Yep, turns out those POT deeds are good for both in the single player game. That was definitely a nice realization. Guess it won't serve much of a purpose to put out my vendor.
     
  6. sarbonn

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    To be honest, since I've been playing the single player game, they REALLY need to have their devs, or at least their QA people doing the same because there are a few things that seriously need addressing.

    1. Traveling out of your general area. This is really hard to do, especially if you started in one of those out of place starting areas. I started out in the Soltown area, and unless you REALLY know your way around the game, traveling to Brittany was really difficult. A couple of reasons make that even harder in the single player game than the online game, like for one there are no player owned towns, which means you have absolutely no way of shortcutting by taking a carriage, balloon or boat to an area that's nearby. This happened with Storm's Reach, as there's no linkage to the mainland with Storm's Reach other than to its one boat connection. In the online game, I've often used it to get to Elementum and then to the Highvale area. Impossible to do when you have no linkage by player boats from POTs. Yes, there are ways around this, and I managed to find one, although to be honest, I don't remember what it was as I've been playing the online game for awhile, so something I did worked. But if you were new to the game, you'd be screwed.

    2. Quests hang and don't disappear. I know the devs are working on this, but if you end up with this type of problem just starting the game, and you also don't have general chat to ask others about this, you're probably going to just quit the game, thinking that it's just not finished yet.

    3. The game is really lonely as a single player game. It really needs to have more going on, if you're going to attract people who are not doing the MMO part of things. At least with the MMO, if you're wandering around, there are tons of POT you can visit and just see the wonderful stuff people have designed. NONE of that exists in the offline version of the game.

    4. The maps synch to the online version of the game. I wandered around Ardoris, Soltown and Brittany (the town with Lord British's castle), and my map keeps showing me that all of the land is claimed by people in the MMO version of the game. But those spaces are completely empty and void of claimed housing.

    5. Still at a loss as to how I would make my own higher end armor and weapons. The game doesn't really do a good job of explaining this. Although, to their credit, they did stock some of the vendors with better weapons and armor than I believe you find in the regular game. Still couldn't find a decent longbow, however.

    6. Teleport scrolls are completely useless. Unless they serve some other purpose I don't know about, if you have no friends in an offline game, they serve no purpose. Yet, they're still dropping off mobs. Kind of rubs it in my face that I have no friends but a companion that tells me bad jokes.

    There are probably some other comments, but I didn't want to make this a complaint but rather a series of suggestions.
     
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  7. Daxxe Diggler

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    Yes, it's true that the offline version needs a lot more polish. Most of the updates and improvements to it have only come in over the last several months. If we're being honest, the focus of development has been much more on the MMO side of things simply because that's the bigger population. The offline version will have a good following at some point, but they haven't spent the time on it that it deserves yet. It will happen though because they've begun work on it.

    What I like in the offline version is that they are putting just about every item from the add-on store on the crown merchants, and you can buy the crowns at a discount of 2000 gold from the merchants too. So, you can easily farm up some gold and buy any item you want fairly cheaply to test it out. Also, you will have your choice of virtually any lot in the game. You can even buy castle lot deeds and pick out the best one in the game!

    I'll try to comment on your 6 points in this post:
    1. Travelling can be daunting to a new player who is not familiar with the map and all the various control points. I would suggest binding yourself to somewhere in the center of the map like Brittany. At least that way, you can recall to the middle area to start your journey.

    2. The quest hanging bug is something they are currently working on. I would hope that would be fixed (for offline and online) within the next release or two.

    3. Yes, the game will be lonely. At least you can get the 3 main quest companions to help with that a bit. But I think this issue remains with any offline game, no?

    4. The map that we have now is something that was made by a player (Jakub White) and it was so much better than what they had so far they acquired it from Jakub and added it to the game. It was originally built to be run outside the game as a webpage, where you can place your own markers, etc. Most, if not all, of the data it has in it has been added by the original maker and/or players who updated the data manually on the original website. They are currently working on making the data get pulled directly from the game instead of the manual entries. Once that is done, everything will be up to date and I would think the offline version would not show the manually populated lot owners.

    5. Crafting offline might be somewhat of a challenge... at least for the higher end gear. This is because a while back, they removed all the higher tier crafting recipes from the NPC merchants and added them to the loot tables. So, what most people can make in the online version now will not be available to the offline player unless they get the recipe to drop from a mob or supply bundle. I think they should at least add the recipes for the better materials (bronze, meteoric, white iron, carapacian, fustian, etc.) on the offline merchants so that players can learn them easier and improve their gear easier through crafting.

    6. True, teleport scrolls have no use in offline mode. I would think at some point they will simply remove them (and the recipe to make them) from the offline version. But for now, I'd just think of it as vendor trash loot that will earn you a few extra gold coins. ;)
     
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