Quick Thoughts

makes sense that you should be able to buy them not sure if the home deco merchants have them or not. I know you can buy the crown ones at least.

As to the map. I just did some more testing well waiting to head home from work hehe. the novia map itself is awesome and alot more useful now. quests are highlighted on it and its super super fast now. looks like Player towns still have a few bugs with loading details but other zones that have maps seem to load super quick. I dont know if other group members show up on the map as I am along on the QA right now at least on my friends list

The blue locations are where I have quests and hovering over them tells me which one.

 

By the way, a huge difference between being able to solo in a multiplayer game and a good single-player offline game. For instance, it makes sense for crafting to take such a prevalent place in multiplayer SOTA with a focus on player economies. But in a single-player offline RPG? Crafting should largely be optional. There should be more focus on the adventure part of the game (since you lack the social).

I'm not sure the combat system of randomly drawing cards is good in single-player offline. Maybe if the enemies were using the same system. It'd be cool if we could create an adventuring party outside of just the companions (like in Pillars of Eternity). But like ESO and Skyrim are different and yet similar for a reason. You don't have to change everything for SOTA Single-player offline. But if you released SOTA single-player offline as it's own game, it should be able to be good on it's own.

 

Some of us definitely do care about single-player offline.

No, you don't have to worry about taxes. The game will tell you to pay them, but you don't have to.

My first character, offline, intended up spending ridiculous amounts to buy a public cache chest from the deco merchant because it was the only way I could find to get a container. :-( Now, I'd say.... SotAWiki and discoverable recipes will be your friends in offline mode. But yeah, you're going to have to craft pretty much everything yourself, and getting the non-discoverable recipes will be a hassle.

One neat trick to the offline mode... you'll have noticed that you have plenty of free character slots. If you want to create alts, or if you have an SO or someone else you share a computer with, their characters will share your game by default. So if you buy one house and your roommate in the second character slot buys their own house, you'll still see their house in your game, and vice versa. Gives you more ability to build a lived-in-looking world, where you're not the only living soul wandering around. The downside of this -- all character slots in a saved game share gold, bank slots, virtue, and land ownership. (If you want to avoid this, you can just save and reload different game files. )

 

Starr decided, and rightly so for technical reasons, to begin building the framework for multiplayer first.

The differences are important. Companions (hopefully equippable come Ep. 2), difficulty curve, XP rate, spawn rules and save states that remember player location to name just a few.

Sorry Xee, this is incorrect. The game was conceptualized as both, which was a very exciting prospect.

Didn't know there'd be a full screen version, looking good Port!

Absolutely.

Yes, we do!

 

No, Xee is correct. The game was sold on Kickstarter as both, yes, but almost from day one, the actual game has been designed as an MMO. There was a time, years ago after the foundation had been set but before the releases hit double digits when the dev team should have split off a small portion of the design team to focus on just the single-player offline experience.

The team also should have, from the start, sold pets and other items that would have been for offline play only. Stuff that maybe would imbalance the MMO but that could be fun in a sandbox single-player RPG-you can complete the story without them but they could be fun for future runs. They could have sold "adventure packs" that added quests for single-player offline only to keep the life cycle of the game going as people waited for Episode 2. This money would have ensured the single-player community could have also continued to pay for the development of the game by paying for its small team. As it is, the diminishing multiplayer community is subsidizing anytime the current development team works on single-player offline.

 

The game was sold as having a lot of ideas that have been removed due to player complaints (sadly). For example, it was sold as having a single player ONLINE experience as well, but then people complained the world map and towns appeared too "empty", so they broke this feature (losing a number of players and harming the already compromised economy even further). They promised the ability to learn everything, and then people complained that players could do exactly what was promised, and so combat specializations were introduced. Plenty of other examples I'm probably too tired to recall at this point. Point being, I wouldn't really lay great expectations on anything promised in the kickstarter, because it's subject to change, especially based on the feedback of a vocal minority.

 

They compromised on just about everything lol. Maps you have to buy and don't hold your hand? Out the window. NPCs that didn't signal they had quests so you had to go out of your way to talk to them? Gone. Universal chat? It's here. LFG mechanic? It's here. I think the journal was a compromise (poorly implemented of course). The goal was supposed to be total immersion. The minority had their say and now the majority of the backers are gone. A pity but it happens.

(By the way why does the game tell me I get an XP bonus in single-player offline? I get log-in rewards. FF14 has them and if you log-out in a city/town in FF14, you get a boost so when you log-in you gain more XP for as long as the boost lasts...which depends for how long you were offline. But single-player offline? Huh? i don't see any single-player Final Fantasy games going "oh you've entered your save file here's XP")

 

The hardcore players here need to play other mmorpgs just so they can make educated comparisons themselves. And Final Fantasy is MOST DEFINITELY competition. ALL time-sink mmorpgs are competition. Very few can play more than one. Believing otherwise is pure delusion. Come on guys. And just to inject more reality, there are 100's competing for our precious time.

Why does every constructive criticism have to be argued?

Do you think you all have a perfect game here? Players banging down the virtual door to play? F'en LISTEN to people for crying out loud. This community member is telling us WHY they are choosing one mmorpg over another and you're literally telling them they are not doing so. Do you hear yourselves?!

They could have just kept it to themselves and moved on but they chose to share their feedback. That is very valuable.

Thank you for letting us know your thoughts.