Access to offline version to test

I was reading a few threads and I came up with an idea that it might be beneficial to allow players access to the offline version of the game, with the caveat they still have to log on before it will alow them to play offline. That wouldn't really affect the servers at all.

Reasons to allow this:

1 Gives players a chance to muck around with systems already in game at their leisure which allows for much better error reporting/suggestions.

2 Test the offline game.

3 Allows for even further fualt finding for systems out there with much better detailed error reports to specific machine issues.

I'm not sure how big of an issue this would be, but you wouldn't have to give the full amount of access that the online one has just enough to play around with the systems.

To me it would be a definate benifit to testing.

 

They said in the offline deep dive that it won't be happening. They said it doesn't provide them with the real time data they need.

 

It would give more people an incentive to pledge.
Maybe it's hard to implement, I can't see the downsides but I'm not a dev.

 

I mean you're free to keep trying to get it, but they gave a pretty firm "no" when asked. There was more to the answer, but I don't have it bookmarked or anything. You'd have to watch the deep dive to find it.

 

Going to watch it now, thanks for the info

 

In the online builds, they can push regular updates/patches to it. They can get metrics from the servers on what you're doing when something breaks, how you're interacting with NPCs to improve dialogue, etc. They get data to make the game better, and you constantly get an up to date beta client.

Offline play wouldn't be restricted, so you can see things you're not meant to see yet, you wouldn't get bug fixes, and you wouldn't be able to send data to the team to help them.

There is no benefit to it.

 

That's not true that there is no benefit, it would allow players to really get into some of the systems and provide detailed thoughts on what they think needs work. Why wouldn't offline be restricted? An easy setting would make it so you wouldn't have access to areas. You wouldn't be able to send in bug fixes directly, but we do have email.

 

If they give you the full offline client, it is much harder to restrict what you do with it. And you can't test systems as well offline, because they're not getting metrics from what you're doing.

 

I mentioned they wouldn't get metric data already. As for restrictions it wouldn't take more then flagging an exit from the map as unexitable. It's not this huge event that would have to take place. It wouldn't be as useful I noted but it would still have some use.