Offline SOTA issues, what's your issues?

Please do not quote me out of context.

 

Please take your time, no hurry.

Because otherwise we need the learning and adventure buff fountains added to Castle Arabella in Britanny, as well as a source of those learning buff candies that the kids hand out. and a Wizard of Wonder to give offline access to the Wizard castle in the sky.

Yes, it is, and it violate the Virtue of Honor, thus I don't want to do it.

I disagree.

Works for me.

 

It's a great way to test builds for online though.

 

Isn't that what Q&A server does best, best for testing stuff?
~TL~

 

Sure, if you want to spend all your time building experience and training skills only to have it erased later. I would rather try out different builds offline then collect experience and train skills online.

 

An imaginary vision...

When I see offline, I see a toy box we've paid for. Some have paid for a larger toy box than others, while some have played our offline game long enough to have built a hunted-up-COTO empire, thus also having a large toy box to play with. Yet there are differences between each; One can be wiped clean and retain it's value, while the other's hunted up value would be lost if wiped clean.

Suggestion:
In this toy box way, I do not see it as being fair to those who have hunted and thus built their offline wealth, not of the gold, but of the COTO or the COTO equivalant. If there were a "COTO Bank in the Portalarium/Catnip web sight, where COTO from hunting could be stored from both online as well as offline, I think this would be manageble and able to enhance our over-all game.

A Bank, where you can take your COTO out of the game, and into the bank, and out of the bank and back into the game.

Maybe there's a way to save offline Exp from a character in a similar easy way.

As far as the exploited COTO through hacking or modifying the offline program, I don't know how that could be mitigated, other than to have trap set in the "Claim Rewards", where the offline program could be checked for it's uncurrupted integrity. Maybe a rectification of the account's COTO amounts through tracking of COTO, hunted or purchased, audit the account's balance and if that balance dosen't match, then terminate that account's ability to Claim any further Rewards and end it's ability to deposit COTO into the bank.

There must be a way to improve our offline game through monitization so we can afford it's development, while also presurving what has been built offline by those players who play it.
Being able to afford programing any new idea means that there must be development profit as it's end goal.

In many ways, our forums act as a profitable development brain bank, as long as it doesn't get addicted to free pixel crack, which blinds all further possibilities as well as ending the possibilities of accelerating development of our over-all game due to falling or flat lined profits.
~TL~

 

I've only ever fooled with offline mode for testing stuff out, too. I started to play a character there but the biggest problems were:
Without fiddling with the save file, its

a) way too many (thousand) hours of grind to get to the point in experience/skill/level where you can solo all the content
b) way too many (thousand!) hours of grinding materials to make gear to solo all the content
c) no reason to solo all the content because 99% of the stuff you get, you wont use and can't sell because its just you in your own universe

Unlike purpose-made single-player narrative games or RPGs, Sota does not lend itself while to a linear offline experience. Unless your intent is to just level up "enough" and gear up "enough" to get through the main story content, but if that's the case, you can finish that pretty quickly. There's simply no point in continuing to develop an offline character. The fact that save game editing is so simple too makes me really question why I (or anyone) would do repetitive, tedious grind activity for its own sake - I mean, if you're going to invest those hours, why not do it online, where even if you always want to play alone, you at least have like, a market, access to your own (and other) POTs, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I think its cool that its an option, and if someone wants to grind offline mode to give themselves a challenge or to relax or whatever, that's their business, and if they enjoy it, awesome. If it was the sort of thing you could spool up your own server of with a handful of friends, that actually might have some appeal to me - but I guess that would detract from "real" online Sota, whose population doesn't need that hit.

For me, the best way to "monetize" offline mode is the same way to monetize online mode - sell account-wide unlocks that work in both modes. (Deployable 5 minute vendor npc, deployable banker npc, deployable "loot" pet, (or omg, give us the smelting beetle as a summon skill), additional hairstyles, additional hair colors, additional skin colors, build loadout slots, outfit/wardrobe slots, even coto-purchaseable guild features (that could be used offline by a solo player by creating their own guild and levelling it up). We have few unlocks, like pet dances and bank upgrades and such, but there's potential for loads more, and you know, if someone plays only offline, they could enjoy that stuff too.

I would totally pay for "firetruck red hair" color as an option, or a single french braid, or even my two braids without the hateful red baubles on them. Or hey, why not platinum hair, or blue hair, or howabout an account-wide unlock that just lets you DYE hair with the existing in game dye colors? Sparkles pls. If you charged more or less what you charge for pet dances (maybe a bit more?) I guarantee you'll get loads of people buying it. I can speak for four accounts in this household alone.

 

Taking all those comments and combining them, I think sets up a good argument for selling X2 or X3 Obsidian Potions of Experience Gain, which have a time durration of an hour or 2, just enough time for an average person's play. If they sold for 100 COTO each (or whatever amount), then as with the large amount of COTO able to hunted up offline, that would create a sump for that earned COTO to go, while also presenting the player with a choice between spending COTO for Exp Boost, or for other things from the offline store.

I suggest the X2-X3 and even X4 offline potion boost levels, because this then transitions COTO directly into Exp, yet through effort. A grduating scale of 100 COTO for an X2, 300 COTO for an X3, 600 COTO for an X4, could eat up a rich player's COTO very fast, while also affording the Free to Play player an incentive to spend their hunted COTO for the X2 level potions.

~Toy Box Thinking~
So, thus far I would think the suggestion has evolved into: (On the edge of P2W)

• #1 Portalarium/Catnip Website COTO Banking
• #2 Portalarium/Catnip "Experience Banking" The ability to liquidate a character yet save that chr's exp for future character.
• #3 Offline Obsidian Potions of Experience Gain

I think that both of these bring us one step closer to being able to monitize our offline game in significant ways through motive and security of investment (COTO).

If a player wished to start their offline all over again, they would liquidate their things that could be sold into gold, liquidate their gold into COTO, place that COTO into the Port/Cat COTO Bank and also place their character/s into the Port/Cat Experience Bank, thus liquidating them, "the start their offline game all over again without having lost any of their effort or real COTO value.

This is only one "line of thinking", of which I do believe there are many others which have yet to be thought of to improve offline while monitizing or coming closer to monitizing our offline game.
~Time Lord~

 

I'm currently playing offline almost exclusively because I want to try out high-end artifacts (have 2 "epics" so far). The only thing I've noticed that seem wrong is that charging skills does nothing. Like literally, nothing. I mean, yes, the skill executes, but damage/duration/focus cost does not change - at least on the skill icon.

 

I made a test of a $100.00 of COTO purchase because I love our friends @Coswald_Dirthmire , @Alley Oop and @Ravalox too much not to, so we could test to see if our offline game was somehow currently monitized, just to make things more clear for all of us.

The $100.00 of COTO I purchased today, all 10,750 of them did show up when hitting the claiming rewards button, to add to all the rest of the COTO had had offline.

As far as spending COTO offline, the purchases made with them are as permenent as whatever game we are playing offline, and will be liquidated back into COTO when begining a new offline game.

• Purchased COTO can be spent, even when recently purchased to add to your online play

~TL~

 

I'm almost never very understandable to normal humans It's not easy being the Time Lord I was trapped in a box in Ultima 7, so I'm not the sharpest pincil in the box compared to normal Avatar.

I think our offline game should continue as is, while applying all forms of non-intrusive monitization through making availible "offline only" items availible through the offline COTO Store.

These things should be what would be considered online to be "pay to win" items and abilities.

Many of these ways of monitization are not intrusive, yet could easily be accomplished and provided through our offline store, without changing anything within the offline program or upsetting what is now normal play within offline.

Each one of these ways of monitizing have value to be considered and are quite gaming industry accepted as normal monitary practices.


In many of these ways, our offline game should be looked at and monitized in the same way as the Sims 3, which is very similar in design and also offline.

This I see as a plus, because it could be developed in totally different ways through things offered to buy for it, in the same as GM abilities are currently possible in our online.

Paying for combat advantages or quick advancement items and packages is not a dirty word offline, yet could lure gamers that play in offline, to eventually enter our online play.

Buying expencive potions there as well as those of lesser cost could alure many free players to spend real $, basically causing our offline advantage play to be something that costs as much as a new game's initial cost to purchase from a store.

All of this, with "zero" modifications needed to the way our current offline world mirrors our online, subscription availible premium world.

Some offline obsidian potions could last as much as online potions currently do, others as long as 1-2 hours, while an obsidian potion that lasts for a full real world year, having greater effects yet costing much more, then become the greatest pull from the player's actuall $ pocketbook to pay for the much more player power enhanced game, much in the same way as an online subscription or the cost of an episode release access.
~TL~

 

But why would people buy experience boosters to grind in an offline game, when the same goal could be achieved by editing a save file? Or would Catnip have to obfuscate save files to prevent this so as to sell more of the booster? And would doing so make offline even less attractive to people who use it for test purposes?

Most standalone offline games have "settings" that let you dictate your difficulty level, etc. Because offline Sota is just online Sota stripped down and not a purpose-made offline single player game in its own right, its missing a lot of this stuff. But since there is not really an appetite for working on the offline game I doubt we'll get that. Trying to SELL a workaround to that just comes off as greedy, imo - asking people to pay for something they can get by editing a value. The easiest solution to offline mode being too grindy is to just crank the base rates (exp/drops/etc.) in offline mode to a palatable level that sets the appropriate progression pace. And I think that's been done anyway. If we're saying it still feels too slow/too grindy (which for me it certainly is) there's a workaround for that too.

I can't see monetization for, essentially what is an editable test-bed for online play, achieving much in the way of fundraising. I think there's lots of better opportunities for making money that would be more lucrative and less effort, esp. considering the limited capacity of the dev team.

 

This assumes that most players who would want to play Shroud of the Avatar are computer programers or savvy enough to modify our SOTA programing, and also that players would choose to modify the program rather than pay some of their "many earned offline coto" to unlock the same abilities.

A bar of soap in the grocery store has no lock and key preventing it's theft, yet even because of that, it's not best to give it away for free, which is the current situation.

Many people play games without hacking them and many that even do go to the trouble of hacking a program, then become endeared to wish to try their hand at the live online game, leaving their hacks behind.

It's not good business to give everyone in the world a bar of soap because it' not under lock and key by police standing by to catch them.

As you say, they can and are doing that now, yet they did need to buy Episode 2, didn't they? Or is there a way to hack that?
~TL~

 

You're suggesting that these standard, basic offline game settings features (such as difficulty setting, advancement rate, etc) should have an additional "cost" to the player.

To me personally, this feels like buying a car, and being told if you want a steering wheel and windows that roll down, it will cost extra.

Furthermore, you're asking that very limited/stretched dev resource be used to implement systems to try and collect this extra cost for offline mode. I mean, I don't know what you're thinking of charging for "offline exp pots" but considering that being able to edit a save text file is already possible (I know, you "personally" wont do this because you consider it "hacking" - that doesn't diminish the fact that its easy and straightforward to do requiring no programming knowledge or special software whatsoever), most people are not going to fork over cash to achieve something they can do by easily editing a text file. If you want offline mode advancement to be faster, that's a problem that already has a solution.

So I just don't see it as a good "fund raising potential" - I am with you 100% on looking for monetization options, but if we're going to spend dev time and effort, we should look at options that benefit both game modes - such as suggested in my previous post. That gives something for everyone and a lot more prospective customers.


As an aside,
I say this as someone who spends probably way too much money on games, both online and offline. I'll buy persistent stuff all day long, expansion packs, unlockable features, permanent unlocks, stuff I get to "keep" - in offline games, too. Happy to throw some money at the developers of every indie/clicker/idler/mmo for a permanent multiplier to progression to support future stuff. But just on general principle, I avoid anything that has time-based restrictions - "7 day this and that" or "1 hour potion of whatever" - this just ends up being an infinite sink and pay to win. I don't want to see it in the online version of the game, ever. And in the offline version, it doesn't make sense for the reasons above. Why would you pay-to-win an offline game? A one off purchase with permanent benefits, to support the devs, sure I get. But continually? Repeatedly? I mean, I'm sure someone would, but can't imagine it would be enough folks to be worth the implementation effort. (And they'd feel pretty silly buying a million exp for $$ when they could literally go add the xp to their char in their save file.)

You're basically looking for a very specific sort of customer, who wants to play offline mode, who is unwilling/unable to edit a text file to adjust the progression rate, who is willing to throw extra money repeatedly for short duration offline mode boosters, in an offline game that is not feature complete, that is essentially a stripped down version of an MMO that has a small population to begin with. How much funding do we expect this to generate? Just being pragmatic.

 

But it can't feel like buying anything, because it's all currently free, and thus paying for extra things there, should be paid for.

To describe what you described as easy things to hack into the program, why pay for them' , I say, if they are so easy as you describe, then making an obsidian potion which does the same thing, should be just as easy to program by our developers. "Meaning that"; the $100.00 in COTO I just purchased to prove that offline was monitized when everyone insisted that it was not, that $100.00 should buy enough developer time to create such a simple thing to be sold.

You are the one, amung others here, that say it's easy, so I ask you, "how much development time does $100.00 buy these days?" 10 minutes? You stated this was an easy thing to do, so why do you say now that it's so expencive or difficult?

With every moment we accept giving our program away for free, instead of offline Obsidian Potion X2 Exp selling, is a moment we don't make any money from it.

There's an entire jury box full of players that have commented here that have stated it's easy. Do I need to fund the idea through buying another 10 minutes of developer time so that programer can then place it into the COTO Store, while just as with all the houses offered there offline, they could cause that X2 potion not to be displayed and offered through the online store?

So far the development fund for this sits at $100.00, how much more is needed for such an easy thing to program?

I agree, that it's easier to give away things for free, but it makes for a very bad business model to remain in business with, which is why our offline game, as stated here by one of our programers, is not being developed.

We are currently making zero, "other than my $100.00", in offline monitization, which means that if we make as much as a penny a day from offline, that our profits have increased more than 10,000%


How long does a funding faucet have to drip before we call on a plumber to fix it?
If your house had your next door neighbor hooked up to your electicity, how long would you wait to call an electrician?
If you bank account had a bank error which was deducting all the interest your account would otherwise make, how long would you wait to call the banker?

I cannot accept that "by design", a great portion of our game is encouraged to be,

• hacked as normal encouraged practice
• leading players away from our monitization.
• egnored as if it's not worth 10-20 minutes for offering simple profitable things for it.

More than we currently are, which is zero, unless you count my $100.00, which should cover what's asked here in development costs, "according to most all the programers and program hackers who have commented here".

That's an increase in profits, while doing less than nothing as we currently are, is not.

We invested heavily in our offline game along with it's companions long ago and now we have no dividends to show from that investment, because we stopped when it came to monitizing it, which placed it in direct competition with our online game, offline offering the same for less. Yet even more than this, the hunted COTO fall like rain there, to buy even more things offered by our online store, offline.

Neiman Marcus stores have the same return policy as our offline game, you can return your purchase to the store for a complete refund at any time, which is the same as when we clear our offline game and begin a new. This means that this direct competitor to our monitized online game offers it's customers more.

We went through allot of development funds for what we have offline and I want to see what we invested in have simple monitization applyed to it.

Everyone says it's easy.
Then make the potion and prove it!
You have my $100.00 to get that first potion to market.

Catnip knows best in whatever they do or do not do, yet this case makes itself as clear as day through all the supporting testimony made by all these hackers here.

It's too easy to hack what you want there, so why not sell the same things being hacked there?

Sell potions that are easier than hacking ...

~TL~

 

The best objection I can come up with for not selling things offline with our current offline game's situation, is that selling anything more there than we already are would make our main online game's closest direct competitor look better.

If we are to increase monitization of our offline, we would need to do it with an over-all blanket of products just for offline using non-hackable account methods.

"Offline Bundles" sold online through our web site seems the only way we could easily accomplish this.

Bundles of consumables which effect play, or yearly pass types of play enhancement, with nothing sold that is permenent.

Cash would be a good currency to use for this. It's been done before and done very well before.

Starting at $250.00 to $500 and so on, I remember a game that started out just like that and has done very well thus far. "Bundles made our game".
~TL~

 

The only thing that I would even consider purchasing for offline is DLC with extensive story. Actually, I would absolutely buy that.

 

Ok, if we're going to be extremely pedantic, it feels like someone "GAVE" you a free car, but then told you that you had to pay for a steering wheel and tires.

For the 10th time, its not "hacking into the program" in any way, or by any definition of hacking lol.
We are talking about editing a save file that is intentionally provided in clear text so this is easy to do.
I think you are starting to be deliberately obtuse here and making a bunch of points that are actually hurting your argument.

Firstly, the game wasn't free when a lot of us started playing. There was a box price. So we weren't giving anything a way. Due to business decisions made by the team over the years, a free to play model was chosen as a way to get people in to the game. That's the strategy they chose. I'm sorry you don't agree with it, but they felt that getting more people in the door to "try" the game to increase the population and pool of potential customers buying things in the online persistent world was more important than trying to monetize an "offline mode" that is not even feature complete.

Next, the devs decided to stop actively developing this mode. I'm sure they have their own reasons for this, and there are a variety of factors including the difficulty of trying to maintain two different builds of the game and keep them straight with very limited resource. I'm sure offline mode probably gets less attention because it doesn't bring in the revenue, but I think you'd be really hard pressed to basically "sell" experience to offline players. Not only does it make the game "look like" a cash grab, but its also impractical since the savegame editing alternative exists.

Opening up a text file and changing a value is easy. Programming an interface to do this, building the UI for it, creating the items, testing the items, getting them coded into the store, building a way for the store interface to work offline etc - probably days/weeks of dev time easily. Probably not difficult, but time consuming and a waste of precious dev resources when there's already an easy way for players to do it themselves.

And then they'd probably need to change the format of text files so you couldn't edit it anymore so that people would actually buy the potion things (because most people would not buy something if there was a free workaround, that's just the reality.) So more dev time rewriting the whole savegame system.

This would be further detrimental, because someone who MIGHT play offline mode if they can fiddle around with their save, would probably never touch it again if they were FORCED to do tedious grind or pay additional money. It does a lot to discourage using this mode at all.

Then of course, consider that if they start monetizing offline mode there's additional support elements. What if someone spends a bunch of money and then deletes their save by accident? Now you need someone to go help you out, but your save file was local and offline so its probably gone. If you create a new save game, do you claim all the potions and things you ever bought "again" or are they gone? Lots to consider.

If you follow this through to its conclusion, you can see why there are a lot of problems with this. As you ask, how much development time does $100 buy? I honestly don't know if offline exp pots would -ever- pay for themselves in the time it would take to build all the infrastructure around it because I can't see there being huge demand for this. Which is probably why the devs have elected to not progress developing the offline version if they came to the same conclusion.

Nobody has said it is easy to program.
I'm pretty sure if it was a 20 minute job to add offline experience potions we'd be looking at them right now.
Aside from other considerations, like the perception that the game is trying to bilk people out of money by offering a paid bypass to the game's normal progression in timed, consumable bits.
I just don't think that's the answer.

Hey, when I started Sota, it wasn't free - I bought and paid for both my accounts. You're right Sota probably doesn't make any money from offline. The online game has long been the target market. Which is again why I say the best approach is to sell things that work in BOTH modes, rather than coming up with offline exclusives. Either that or go back to having a "box price" but that's a barrier to entry for a lot of folks who wont even give stuff a try so I don't see it happening.

I wouldn't object to a one-off "make offline mode better" purchase as a kind of simulation of the box price, that'd be a much nicer alternative to endless potion consumables. It still has poor optics though, in that you're intentionally creating problems to sell solutions. Much like many of the games that give you an unreasonably small inventory/storage space so they can sell you more "30 day bag slots". I think most people will pay to unlock something permanent, but its hard to stomach the 7-day this and 2-hour that and 30-day this-and-that. I really hope we never see that.

 

What you describe here, is exactly where our game came from and what some accused it of, as if what they/we did was some sort of ethical wrong, yet that's how we funded our game. SC is still deep into that same kind of development funding our game came from. We came from a cash grab, cash to pay for programing, and now we need more programing so our game continues to develop.

That would be a start. I would like to see that happen because our offline game is our online game's direct competition, which offers an easy street for... lets call the hackers "program editors".

This is currently and quite possibly forever, what our offline offers players who like to restart their offline play. Currently, the only COTO and things that do not get liquidated for the restart, is anything bought with hunted COTO and the COTO that were gathered through hunting. The way that is, I see as a good thing, yet not making our game any further program funding. I don't think offline needs the funding, it's not a seperate game. Any funding made from monitizing offline should go to programing our online game, because offline follows in shadow to it. That's what currently happens. The offline may never be perfect, yet it expands as online expands. The water turned just as green this weekend there as it did for online.

My current thoughts:

• I do think we need to prevent players from modifying or editing our offline game. I do however think that one of the steps to monitizing offline, is to consider selling a package which makes that possible, or anything to be sold for offline only, possibly causing our offline to become an even easier sandbox, where there is a (lets say for instance) "a button" which could adjust those things which currently players are or can edit there. The importance is not what to sell, but to sell something there, for there.
• I also think that if our offline were sought to be monitized any further than it already is (as it currently offers everything in the COTO shop), that offline items which would not be offered online, "such as the ability to mod the program as described above", that these extra offline modifying options, be sold directly through cash, bypassing the COTO store. That is to say we would buy the edit mod directly through the main SOTO game web page, just as we do with sales of Ep2 sales there. Yet here again, the thing mentioned here to sell is not the point, the point is that we need to sell something(s) there for there.

==================
Currently I am still playing offline so as to know something more about what could be possible or what could be sold to enhance our offline game.
(it's also the rainy season here where I live so offline suits the internet reliability).

Consider a situation which is common around our real world, where players that have internet connections through internet cafe', yet not at their homes. By selling a "Mod Package" or other items meant for that play, for whatever amount, could then be the things that those without an internet connection could play while at home and become addicted to it in order for our game to compete with other games played when visiting the internet cafe'.

By itself, our SOTA is a dandy game for anyone in that situation, where they may never be able to afford anything more than enough internet time to download it from some random internet connection and take it home with them to play it offline from there. If things were offered that apealed to that customer, then a micro transaction relationship could be made, specifically for offline play.

I think what we sell isn't the first problem to overcome, I think that first problem is to have a plan to sell something, instead of nothing.

The "what" to see is not important, as long as our game is seeking in every facet of it to sell something, which offline doesn't currently do very well at.

Selling additional companions for offline in the same way as we currently sell extra character slots is one of those uniquie items we could sell. They could come in most of the current designs we have in Coversationalists. They could be claimed through the claim rewards and be represented by a whistle. We have those tunes and we have the programing for Companions already, so there's little to no additional programing nessesary.

Here's one of my biggest issues with our current course and player funding philosophy:

1. 
   
   
   • Time Lord

Total: 284 (members: 3, guests: 271, robots: 10) This was our member's forums count today.

That's very telling of why we need to do some things differently when it comes to our funding and attraction.
~TL~