Offline mode isn't offline at all? Time seems synced with server

I thought that the offline mode would be separate from the online modes and I always wondered why it was so hard to implement a feature to advance time in the offline game. I also wondered why the time in the game advanced when I was not playing the offline game.

Now I saw that the time is exactly the same as in the online game. It is the same date, the same time, the same weather. So offline isn't offline at all? Is the time synced with the online version?

If so this would explain why the devs don't seem to want to add a sleeping feature to advance time in the offline mode. This would be a real bummer as the offline mode then would just be a joke...

Will this stay this way or will the offline mode really become offline and separate?

Offline:



Online:

 

I hope the devs will develop a decoupled offline mode. A statement from Port about this matter would be very appreciated.

 

Nice find.
I agree there is no reason to sync the time with the servertime.

 

I have been able to turn off my internet connection and still be able to play.
This doesnt mean that the time we see in game, isnt based on real time, resulting in what would seem sync'ed time.
So, there is an explanation to what you found, but it isnt that offline is not offline.

 

Right now, it might be based on the UTC time on local machine. You maybe able to confirm that by setting the machine clock to a few hours prior or ahead of current time.

In any case, the time in-game will become independent from machine or any default reference time once the wait and sleep feature is added.

 

Have you unplugged your PC from the internet to test this? What happens when you played offline without an internet connection? I don't see what the big deal is, frankly. It makes sense to me that game time is game time, regardless of the mode played. Why wouldn't the world time pass at the same rate for on and offline play? Are you expecting the clock to stop for you for offline play when you log out? Or just expressing distaste for any online sync at all? At the end of the day, if it is syncing, how is that affecting your game play negatively?

 

No haven't unplugged yet. Yes, when I quit the game I expect the time to stop just like in any other single player game. I also expect to be able to advance time through sleeping just like in other single player RPGs.

 

So my expectation is that they wrote a wrapper class around accessing the system time. That would explain why the time sync is there.

Your clock is most likely updated via NTP or set to near real time. Thus they look the same.

Since the game clock wraps the system clock, the only way to preserve time is to adjust your system clock backwards to when you stopped playing.

 

Gotcha. I guess I see game time as a lore item. Time passes quickly in Novia, as with the Narnia Chronicles. When characters left Narnia to return to the 'real' world, a few years passed for them while decades or centuries passed in Narnia. So too it is with SOTA. I kinda like that as both an online and offline feature. It creates a draw to return before too much time passes in game.

 

This would imply that things change in Novia during my absence. But Highvale still burns even when I log out for three weeks...

 

The answer is that offline mode hasn't been worked on, probably any more than adding the option to the start menu. Systems haven't had their offline modes implemented yet. My guess is offline is the last set of systems they code.

It's easier to take a multiplayer system and walk it back than it is to make a single player system and make it multiplayer.

 

I still don't think that a single player RPG can work on a multiplayer foundation. If I imagine The Witcher 3 with the mechanics, UI, gameplay etc. of Everquest, I don't think that I would have played it.
Also I hope that they take their time to do it properly - time is running out...

 

Interesting. How does this work in the online game? If the time is synched with my system time and I am partying with players in a different time zone, wouldn't we be seeing different times of day? I haven't compared times with others, but when I use the light spell at night, others are too, so it must be night for all of us.

EDIT: Ah, thinking this over I came up with an answer to my own question. If the program is reading the time off my system, it knows from my regional settings what time zone I am in. So to make the time pass according to universal standard time, it need only make the necessary adjustments taking my time zone into consideration.

 

Correct. All time is adjusted based on GMT/UTC and then offset to your timezone.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if the client checks in with the server at the splash screen and sets the clock based on that.

I'd be quicker to assume that they'd rather not have vastly different experiences from one mode to the next.

They might have simply not taken the time to add a sleep function or make their sky/weather clock to factor in time skips yet... to be honest, they have more pressing matters to attend to; like dialogue and NPC behaviors.

 

Actually they have flat out said that time advancement is not in the scope of Episode 1. No sleep/time advancement in a single player RPG with NPC schedules is a joke. You either have NPC schedules and time advancement or no schedules and no time advancement. It is, in my opinion, a "make or break" feature for the single player experience and it's not on the schedule.