Won't it be useless to run a shop?

I'm trying to figure out if there is going to be any real reason to ever own and run a shop in game?

My concern is the fact that the houses and NPC vendors will be located on a persistent server, but the players who play this game can presumably choose to play totally offline with no server connection needed while doing so.

This of course will lead to people hacking the game offline to create whatever valuable items they want. Then when they go online they sell all these items for super cheap prices - undercutting every other vendor in the game and totally killing the economy.

Why be a blacksmith and craft your own armor when you can buy whatever you want for 10 gold off supercheatman's vendor?

As far as I can tell the only way to keep things safe and prevent duping/cheating would be if a constant connection to the server is required to control what items are created. Which of course would mean you can't really play offline without an internet connection.

I'm interested to hear how the team is planning to tackle these issues.

 

This is probably why they're thinking characters offline should be separate from characters that are online.

 

I think they said that everybody will need the Internet connection to play the game therefore everybody will have to connect to server regardless if he/she wants to play online or offline.

 

In one of the livestreams RG mentioned they were still making decisions, but it sounded like they will give us the option - either make an offline character that you play totally offline all the time, or make an online enabled character where you have to connect to the server so it can keep things legit.

Now he mentioned possibly it would only be a periodic connection to the server needed, he wasn't sure yet if it would require a constant connection.

Personally I don't think full security can happen without it being connected 100% of the time. Any amount of time you don't need to be connected is time for people to hack the game to look like you earned something you really didn't and trick the server into accepting it.

 

If "loot" was generated server side and whenever a character equipped an item it would connect to the server to determine if that character received that item it would be possible to prevent a lot of item hacking.

However you are correct this is my primary concern. "What's the point of a house when no one needs to shop"

 

They updated and said that the offline will be separated from the online so yea wont have to worry to much about the hacking for now i think.

 

Yes much like Diablo 2. You can not bring your single player characters to the multiplayer realms.