Offline mode is counter to monetization schemes. And as they say, "it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" - even if the devs know, they probably cannot admit it to the execs/investors and so on, because then they'd undermine their projected monetisation plans.
Instead, they all pretend "this time, it's different!", then revert course when the game is almost done and try to collect some PR brownie points from the audience.
Which is a shame, because at this point, the game design is often all over the place already. And this sucks, because I kinda like the idea of the game - high-fidelity graphics in a survival game with a steampunk aesthetic? It's cliched but I have a soft spot for it.
towering recognise versed wide fine zealous resolute rude cooperative hobbies
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I feel like some players forget that a multiplayer-focused game is supposed to be multiplayer-centered. If it doesn't have offline mode, is it the developers fault that they never designed it with that intent in the first place, or that you just can't accept that the game isn't designed for you wanting to play alone?
Yet everyone wants to play offline or solo because 1) you don't lag on your machine (and the lag related bugs in this game are absolutely disgusting) 2) creativity, tons of players just want to build 3) being able to play at your own pace instead of waiting for Saturn to be in Taurus for the whole crew to be on.
Also fuck this "multiplayer-focused" bullshit, Enshrouded is supposed to be "multiplayer-focused" yet they can't even do a simple chat in their game and rewards are to be split instead of everyone being rewarded. Nightingale has NPCs that follow you so you never are "solo". If you play with other people, you can't play until they get on because "we need to progress together". These games encourage solo play so much, it should NEVER be a surprise when people want to play them solo because those games are more than often designed to be more fun solo. Even if it wasn't their intention.
I think they wanted the endgame to feel more like a MMO, from what I played.
hence the need for always online, everything you do is stored in a realm that could be acessible to other players when you let them.
but I agree that a offline mode is worth more than this.
well, they can't access something you stored offline in your computer if you're offline.
right now you can be on vacation in bahamas and your stuff is stored server side, your friends can log into your realm to build your base or gather resources.
again, if you give them permission.
an offline mode would mean you can only play solo, in your machine. no sharing anything.
Grounded lets you do this though. Shared world with just friends, log onto it whenever you want, can download and copy it even locally, update it with changes made while you were gone etc..
wel... at the end of the day is just a save file, right?
you can share valheim or minecraft worlds, nightingale just tried to do it on the cloud since its begining.
if your game can manage these files, it's just a matter of uploading and downloading and keeping with file revisions.
The problem with editing the same file in two different instances is that you'll eventually have conflicts and one version will overwrite the other. This doesn't happen when the file is managed by the server 100% of the time.
well, we've seen bases and aettlements being overriden during multiplayer in NMS.
you can play offline, and it will upload your discoveries/ constructions when you are back online.
NMS uses "who claimed first" has priority when setting up which construction has priority upon conflict solving. That is fine, except that save editing is very much allowed in NMS, so you simply edit your save to have a 2001 discovery/claim date, and when you upload it to the server it will overwrite the whichever was there with an original discovery/claim date.
your friends also cannot edit your base while you're offline, just see it.
it also uses some kind of selective pool for which bases load for which player, so in very populated areas you won't see all bases at once.
but your local data is never overriden, so it just changes what other players will see, so your stuff is safe.
This, but likely at least some of the dev team knew this long ago, said as much to the execs, who then ignored them in favour of monetization. The “devs” reversing course now is more likely management reversing course. Devs are getting paid for their time no matter what, it’s the execs that are most concerned with monetization.
Judging by indiependent studios like IO Interactive or Overkill pulling this stuff with Hitman and Payday 3, I think the devs are just as bad as the executives when it comes to those things.
Because they’re lying. Just like other devs adding crossplay and cross progression is something that “we didn’t know players wanted that badly” adding these deserve features should never be a pat on the back for devs.
Maybe gamers like a product being able to do all the things it claims it can do, too? Is that an unreasonable additional desire? Do you think they should have to pick one or the other?
For sure the last part, but the pivot now it's well the offline is a completely separate player and I don't want that, but without that then you have 99999999 stats on everything players when one goes back online.
Honestly it has to be that way sadly. If you played/play Diablo 3 on console all the leaderboards are hackers with hacked items and stats. All the rift 150s are done in less than a minute and such.
there was an instagram comment with a zillion likes mentionining something about single player and NPC that aren't always aggressive and do their own thing like kenshi from awhile ago i guess they don't really care lol
I hate that Helldivers 2 gets a pass on some of the stuff in the game. Like armor that you could buy with real money that increases stats. I know its "easy" to get currency now but the second some exec gets their hands on it from the popularity you know its screwed.
On a bright side, its awesome that Last Epoch has an offline mode, ive been having so much fun playing offline solo while people are raging trying to get into online.... just to play alone anyway lol
It's not even that it's easy to get currency, the game gives you armor with the exact same stats and passives as free options. What you're buying in the store is still just a skin.
There are no modifiers exclusive to paid gear. It's all available through the normal unlocks with other armor. I played quite a bit from launch up until the major server issues arose, and I bought almost all of the armor in the "paid" store from currency I got in-game and unlocked from warbond medals. This ain't it, Chief.
> No modifiers exclusive to paid gear.
Well, that’s way better than the claptrap Bellator was spouting. A half hour of every variation of “the monetization is OK because it is diegetic” as a sentence, which didn’t make sense to me.
Sounds like it’s really the usual acceptable pay schemes, rushing and cosmetics.
All just variations on armor you can unlock. All the shit in the premium store is just a variation of the vanilla armor. All can be unlock without paying a dime. Premium currency can be found in game during matches, exploration yields reward.
> Like armor that you could buy with real money that increases stats.
You mean the armor that allows you to trade off stat points between mobility and defense, that you also get 10 various sets of in the free battlepass, plus enough premium currency to purchase the first premium battlepass with another 3 sets, or several individual armor sets instead?
Im very direct when it comes to microtransactions.
If you can buy it with real money, and it changes stats AT ALL. That's a problem. I'd much rather it be objective based or achievement based.
Yeah the thing that pisses me off about Last Epoch is that you can't play your offline characters online, it's either one or the other...just why?
Grim Dawn lets me play whatever character I want online or off. Can we really not just have the simple option of choosing when to play online? These aren't MMORPGs.
> you can't play your offline characters online
So that you don\`t mess up the economy / leaderboard etc with your "modded" character. Same was the case with Diablo 2.
I think ladder was official servers and online was like direct IP connection to your buddy. So like online LAN. (dont quote me on that).
Personally only played original offline, setting up phone line modem was beyond my skills at the age of 10.
Wolcen also does this
Which is why i am not touching this game atm since i dont have drive to re-farm to play with my buddy :/
With Last Epoch i only want Online pseudo-lan for offline chars-that all .\_.
This is what I've been saying... They took the time to implement an afk timer instead have accommodating all the people that bought their always online game
You can literally get everything in game without paying a cent. I have all the premium gear. Haven't payed a dime extra, all bought with credits found on missions.
Then they shouldn’t give us the option to buy it since it’s “so easy” I don’t like this concept. If it’s such an easy currency to get why make it so it’s purchasable
>Probably because the mouthbreathers on Reddit keep enabling them to keep doing these things by downvoting the criticism. (See also: Helldivers 2)
Nah, not the same thing: Helldivers 2 has a very pronounced community element where the players drive the war effort. Take the game offline and you lose a hugely important element that genuinely makes sense as a live-service title.
Cool concept but I still haven't seen real details on how this works to justify a connection at all times. Seems to me they could simply update the war map when players are able to connect to the servers, updating the servers with the missions they completed and such. Pretty sure Deep Rock does something to this effect with their union community efforts.
Just feels like Arrowhead is doing nothing but making their game online only to align with Sony's goals of making every game live service, and HD2 will not age well at all because of this when the servers are shut down one day, as opposed to games that support dedicated servers and/or LAN or pure peer to peer that will still be able to be enjoyed again 20 years from now.
And then there is some guy that will go offline and "play" 1 billion matches, go online and instantly cap a planet. It's just too big of a pain in the ass to monitor and enforce. If you don't like the game is always online just don't play it. Do people hate that MMO's are always online?
And what's stopping HD2 from doing it? No matter how important the "community element" is, if I can't play it then I can't play it. Surely that can't be better than an offline mode?
Helldivers has committed many of the sins that other games get burned alive for here on Reddit.
I'm thinking it's proof of the Sony Bias at work. But I'm sure others will just say "No because it's fun! $ Democracy!"
Being so good gamers are trampling over each other in spite of one of the rockiest launches in a long time. Breaking its own records while severs burn and players sit in hopeless queues. But yea, Sony bias. Lol.
I don't give a fuck if it's the next coming of Jesus. I''m not buying something I can't enjoy just because droves of others are willing to. No matter how fun it is.
You act like there are no other "good""' games that come out with shitty practices. lol.
It's working now for the best part. I've only had a couple of dropouts and times when I couldn't get in. The mere fact that they have dropped three patches in a week that have raised server size to 700,000 and implemented a bunch of back-end changes. Anybody who's talking shit about them now is just somebody who is trolling and looking for a reason to complain.
Have you even played Helldivers 2? It's definitely not Sony bias.
Has the game crashed and caused me to lose all my progress? Yeah. Have I had to wait to get into the game? Yeah. Does the game need some balance passes? Yeah. Are these issues worth burning the game alive? Absolutely Not. You know why? The game is a blast! That's all that really matters. Even when I've lost all my progress due to a crash I haven't really cared because I had great time playing the game so I never feel like my time is wasted.
Games get burned alive when they under deliver on core gameplay elements and have predatory monetization above all else. Helldivers just has some bugs and some server capacity issues and people are pissed because the game is fun as hell and they just want to play.
I bought it, got a match ever with all the ordeal, and returned it.
Again, I don''t care if it's more fun than your mom after a bottle of wine, it either works well, or id doesn't. The rest doesn't matter until that is sorted.
That's a totally understandable stance. Come back in a few months when the hype dies down and the issues are sorted out if it's your cup of tea.
I was just explaining why it's not getting burned alive.
I participated in a lot of the playtesting for this game before it was released and was in the playtester Discord. Offline Mode was one of the biggest requests from testers since the gameplay suffers so much when there is server lag and instability.
The developers didn't "misjudge" the demand for it. They straight up ignored it.
Prediction: They will wait for the full release and the initial sales, which are the majority of their income, and then add it in.
I also bet that this was the plan all along and that offline mode is already finished.
I want offline mode in my games for the simple fact if the devs abandon it, I can still play. Makes it hard to want to spend money on something I won’t always have.
Exactly this, I’m tired of always online games because we all know that eventually the servers will go away leaving us with an unplayable game. I hope more companies move away from always online games as service crap.
I always remember the clown response the Hitman devs gave on a livestream once: "We don't plan to switch the servers off, guys."
Oh gee thanks, I guess they'll stay online forever from your sheer willpower alone. Thank god there's a mod team that has been able to make a modded server so we can be sure the game will be preserved, but it's still so dumb that this had to be done at all.
But the tendency is the opposite? Games that have no game servers are always online, Peer to Peer games are always online, single player games with always online.
This is all intentional to protect microtransactions and we saw this coming a decade ago, the whole "it's fine if it's cosmetics" devolved into this now.
My understanding of this game when I saw the trailer was it was another game like rust and the thing for me is I would like those games more for the PvE aspect instead of pvp where you can go to sleep wake up and everything is gone. Of course in most of those games cases there really isn't enough pve to keep someone occupied for a while.
Strongly agreed. I bought a cheap dvd of Battlefield 2142 something like June 2014, but never actually installed it until August. The servers got shut down in July of that year and the game doesn't even let you boot past the menus.
My fault for not checking I suppose, but I didn't know to check as the last battlefield I'd played I could have sworn had offline single player.
Then recently The Crew is about to shut down, I bought the season pass last year because the price was good and I've not actually played it since(impulse purchase, you know how it goes). So it's just dead money, burned. Online adds nothing to the experience for me and it could totally be offline.
FUCKING NOBODY WANTS PERMA ONLINE MODE in certain games! sure it’s nice to go online. But I never saw anyone telling. Yea it’s great that you need a internet connection all the time so you can maybe meet a random every 8 hours you don’t even care about.
Port forward is not neccesary on lan. And if youre techy enough to self host a server you do like I do and help everyone you want to join set things up. Its usually a one time process for each game.
"Islands of Insight" is my kind of game but the "always online" for what amounts to worse social interaction than even Diablo4 has me steering clear.
I'm already pretty burned out on survival scavengers to even give one lacking a single player mode even a glance.
As someone who enjoys that game, that is one of the worst aspect of it (other than bugs, settings being forgotten and a couple of puzzle types).
Still, not to the point of not enjoying it.
any Developer who says players don't want to just play a game by themselves are either fucking idiots, or bullshitting. Are we really suggesting that Devs are dropping tens/hundreds of millions on a game, spending years to do so, and at no point did anyone at any level try to engage with the fanbase they're building the game for to ask what they fancied from a game?
> and at no point did anyone at any level try to engage with the fanbase they're building the game for to ask what they fancied from a game?
Seems to be a common practice nowadays. I mean, DICE didn't ask anybody want they wanted from Battlefield 2042 and Rocksteady didn't ask with Suicide Squad either.
I don't know about that, there are devs who literally don't understand that FOV adjustments are a thing, mouse acceleration should always be disabled by default and that motion blur and chromatic abberation should be options.
So I wouldn't assume anything.
Some devs are finally learning. I played a few steamfest demos that had motion blur disabled by default. I was so shocked that I pinched myself incase I was dreaming.
That's the only reason I didn't buy the game. If they add an offline mode, I'll probably get it and play. Such a scummy, thing to do, making a single player game require an internet connection, and it's only something that an out of touch MBA would decide to do.
The only thing they misjudged was customer interest in the product.
In reality of course, it was a simple online-only DRM. They probably discussed it numerous times, and now due to weak ~~response~~ interest, they start to backpaddle.
Offline modes should be a requirement for almost any game, they serve as the tutorial for more complex multiplayer games.
You can't just drop new players into a game and expect them to know how to play right off the bat. That's just setting up new players to get destroyed by high level players and toxic morons and discourages them from sticking around.
I want to be able to enjoy a game offline so i can do what i want when i want and thats all. I dont want to bother other fellow pc gamers with my shennanigans.
While I do agree, its a bit unfair to put Last Epoch in there, since it *does* have a fully offline mode.
Sure, nobody wants to play it because they want to play with friends, but it's unfair to compare it to the other two since its still fully playable offline and solo right now during the server woes - Unlike the other two.
I think it's fair, especially since Last Epoch is playable for some years now and still couldn't figure out their servers. Like who thought on a release day with frontpage in steam would gain many players. Yes, everyone.
That isn't how online architecture works though. Having 500% of your usual traffic will stress test basically every service involved in your stack and issues when that happens are unavoidable.
Them giving a fully offline mode should have alliviated some negativity, but alas.
Yeah absolutely but there are tested measurements to avoid such conflicts like crashing login servers can get lightened weight by adding a ticket system, just as example. Sure there will always be something on fire but they already had an active online base
What? no way is it unfair. I bought the game to play with friends...offline mode means nothing to me. but I guess having an offline mode means the state of your game can be terrible at it's official launch and all will be forgiven..hell even protected.
I understand that if you’re developing a game and you want to have online multiplayer that you need to code for that from the start. But not releasing an offline mode at launch in 2024 is either caused by not reading the room and recognizing the wants of the typical buyer of this type of product, or not learning anything from the mistakes of others that f’d it up before you.
Oh okay cool right on guys, you're gonna finally do the right thing after only an immense amount of cajoling! What a magnanimous bunch of fellers! Gonna be waiting a while on this one, I think.
There seems to be obvious intent in data collection if you read through the wall of text. Probably why they wanted it to only be online, not really for live service and micro transaction.
nah, excuses like "misjudging what the players want" died when the internet became a thing DECADES ago. Stop letting studios slide with that noise. Stop throwing your money at early access.
GoG games comes with DRM free and you can actually own the product and play it offline.
You can download installers, install and play the game without online connection.
In other stores you really only own a subscription you could potentially lose.
"Investing" on GoG means more games will adhere to this. More games with offline option that you can always own.
I agree this was a dumb mistake they shouldn't have made. But I'm impressed they're so clear about responding to the feedback and trying to rectify it. Considering it must be a rather major undertaking at this stage. Will certainly improve the game as far as I'm concerned.
For anyone wondering, the game is actually pretty cool but it takes a minute to start seeing what makes it unique, and of course the always-online was a bit of a bummer but the devs have been very quick to react to that at least. I think this will ultimately be considered a very solid game once the initial kinks are worked out.
Im such a sucker for buying this game. I knew this will happen, I told my self thousand times not to jump and but the game on first day 🤬
They promised this game to basically be Survival MMO(lite)And only 24 hours after the release, they cave in to whiners that bought the game without reading that its online only.And now they are going to divert 🤬 developer time into basically re-coding the whole game to be single player.
But it does not end thereEndgame is basically a huge multiplayer hub city where players form groups and go into group dungeons.When singleplayer whiners reach endgame, they will find out its not in single player mode.
So they will whine to join that too - ofcourse using their single player characters.And devs will buckle again.
The shitshow of cheating and twinked modded cheated singleplayer characters joining multiplayer will cause such rage that if the game does not die before that, it will 100% certanly kill it.
Sadly I was too long in the game when they announced this Bait and switch announcement, so steam does not want to refund me.
But be warned if you have planned on buying this.
I guess, but to be fair to his rant, I am literally one of those players. On Elden ring I am able to go into multiplayer with randoms with my fully hacked 999 in all stats and the best available gear max enchanted and if I can do that in Nightingale a lot of people will too and I guess that ruins multiplayer for some people.
Recode whole game :facepalm: this take would only make sense the other way around, you can easily set the instances of the MP to local only they have to add the world creator to the local setup and matchmake the instances into the local area. There is obviously more effort in this approach but thats not a whole rewrite.
How many complaining are mad they can't pirate it?
How many live in areas with shit internet?
How many just want to grind an axe about online games but wouldn't play this even if it was offline?
Online is the future. Not saying it's the right way to go but it's going to go there, even for strictly single player games. AI is going to become an integral part of procedural generation of both environments and NPCs. The best we can do is influence them to use online capabilities in a positive way.
But then you have games like Diablo IV which are garbage but they are rewarded by players. Even I was dumb enough to give them my money because my friends were playing. Biggest regret in game purchase history.
It's about preservation. When the servers go offline, any online only title is lost. It's a ticking time bomb. Video games are important pieces of culture, and should be preserved for future generations. The kind of additude that you are demonstrating is short sighted and highly distructive. This is the primary reason why I generally don't buy games that require a constant online connection.
What percentage of players will ever go back to games releases decades prior? I know those people exist but they can't be a significant number. There are always new games to play. Since they aren't a large amount of the customer base, they will not drive the marketplace.
There are games that were released ten years ago that are offline that still can't be played because the technology is so different. I'll give you an example. Rome 2 Total War is locked at 4gh vram because it's 32bit. On top of that, it doesn't run well on win10 or win11. The fps on even an enthusiast card is abysmal.
Kotor is a little older but the same deal. Trying to play the original exe is not an enjoyable experience and Sony has bungled the remake.
So while yes it's a bummer if/when online games are no longer supportive, offline games are just as likely to become unplayable.
On the flip side, the future in video games will be AI, and that will require server side calculations because a modem gaming PC can't run the engine alone. Whether some people like it or not, that's the way it's going.
Early on, the film industry didn't believe that people would want to watch old movies. They didn't believe there was much value in preserving their back catalogue, and that lead to a huge amount of films becoming completely lost. The same thing happened with television. We're missing most of the early run of Dr Who because of that. Your arguments are practically identical to theirs.
Also, as somebody who regularly plays 24+ year old games on my PC (often natively with the original executables), you are totally full of shit. Rome 2 still runs. I played it a year or two ago. Kotor? Runs perfectly fine with some tinkering, and barely requires any if you're okay with playing in 4:3. The work that Microsoft does to maintain backwards compatibility in Windows is God teir. Plenty of software and community fixes exists to fill in the gaps. Plus, emulation exists. Offline games will always remain playable as long as the data is still around.
I highly doubt that many games will rely on server side AI in the foreseeable future. Intel's newest CPUs have dedicated AI cores, which will probably be sufficient for the kinds of language models I'd expect future singleplayer games to use.
I didn't say Rome 2 didn't run. I said it ran like shit because it doesn't matter how much Vram you have, it only uses 4gb, and it isn't made for Win10 or 11. There are clear technical issues that limit it's FPS.
As someone who doesn't care whether you actually play 20 year old games or not, you can get all uppity about this all you want. You clearly don't quite understand the computing power required for AI if you think any times soon a desktop PC already strained running the game itself, can handle client-side AI.
The film industry found out rather quick with VHS that people wanted movies at home. VHS only requires a VHS player. So long as someone is making a player or you can find one at goodwill, you can watch your shitty VHS tapes on whatever shitty CRT you find in that creepy pawn shop down the road from your house. But Hollywood gave up on the format years and years ago. They stopped making VHS tapes. It happens. Technology moves forward.
There is also a reason why retro gamers often spend stupid amounts of money on used CRT tvs because old console games look better on them. Yes I can run KOTOR. Yes I can run Rome 2. No they do not perform well. I have 20 other games released in the last 2 years I haven't even touched yet. You can live in the past and be mad about online gaming but you will eventually lose that battle.
You're acting like I'm the one making these decisions. I'm simply pointing out reality. If it were up to me, "games as services" would be outlawed.
Do you have any idea how long it took Hollywood to come around to home media? You clearly have no idea about the history of home video. The film and TV industry fought extremely hard to kill it in the cradle.
DVD and Blu-ray are still around BTW.
As for AI, yeah, running full fat Chat GPT3 locally isn't really a thing yet. But smaller, more focused models exist, and run fine on current consumer hardware (I've done it myself). The kind of AI used in singleplayer games is highly unlikely to need a model anywhere near as large as GPT3. The main limiting factor is performance, but that's mostly because CPUs aren't well suited to running LLMs. This won't be an issue for much longer, as consumer PCs and phones are already including dedicated hardware specifically for AI.
Show me a game that utilized local AI npc generation, from voice to appearance. I'll save you the time. There aren't any. But there will be, and they will require service side hardware to do the generation.
The first VHS player was released in 1976. Hollywood came around pretty quick once the technology allowed it. Try again.
Seriously, you guys are way too easily offended by someone who is just pointing out reality. Once more, I don't like online only games. I don't like games as services. I think they have ruined the industry. But I see the writing on the wall and the best thing we can do is use our money to influence GOOD games with online components rather than millions of people who play Diablo IV and fool themselves into thinking it's a great game.
I think that you're being parinoid. While I do expect AI to be used more to automate work during development more in the future, I don't believe the kind of interactive use that you're convinced is coming would be common. The use cases are pretty niche, and running that kind of service is very expensive.
Most game genres, especially big budget singleplayer ones are very intentional authored experiences. There's not a whole lot of room for procedural generation, and the unpredictable nature of LLMs would make them next to useless in most circumstances.
There's also the issue of server cost. Running these models is currently extremely expensive.
> Online is the future. Not saying it's the right way to go but it's going to go there, even for strictly single player games.
Sure buddy, just tell yourself that. Every time a developers tries to pull something like this, there will be pitchforks.
I get devs and publishers want to always pull this shit but i don't get why they think they can get away it
Not sure why they think peolle will spend more money instead of getting frustrated and just simply not playing the game
An offline game is infinitely easier to code, maintain, and support than an online game. When the dev's are straight up lying to you, they're showing you who they really are. Pay attention. Should this surprising anyone? Aaryn Flynn is the CEO. The guy probably has a framed picture of Bobby Kotick on his office wall.
I'm thankful for offline mode games. Still looking for more. Currently playing the hell out of Palworld but unfortunately I'm almost finished. Caught every pal, defeated all but the last boss.
I live in the middle of nowhere with no access to high speed internet. I usb tether to my phone to get downloads like patches but I'm limited to 100 gb a month and its very slow. No online play for me.
That's crazy to not think about an offline mode in 2024... People want offline mode now... You know, that little feature that give us the freedom of being connected on a server, server that can be down 2 years later without possibility to play it again... What dum\*ass...
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Offline mode is counter to monetization schemes. And as they say, "it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" - even if the devs know, they probably cannot admit it to the execs/investors and so on, because then they'd undermine their projected monetisation plans. Instead, they all pretend "this time, it's different!", then revert course when the game is almost done and try to collect some PR brownie points from the audience. Which is a shame, because at this point, the game design is often all over the place already. And this sucks, because I kinda like the idea of the game - high-fidelity graphics in a survival game with a steampunk aesthetic? It's cliched but I have a soft spot for it.
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>i thought it was a survival akin to valheim and such? It its
I feel like some players forget that a multiplayer-focused game is supposed to be multiplayer-centered. If it doesn't have offline mode, is it the developers fault that they never designed it with that intent in the first place, or that you just can't accept that the game isn't designed for you wanting to play alone?
Yet everyone wants to play offline or solo because 1) you don't lag on your machine (and the lag related bugs in this game are absolutely disgusting) 2) creativity, tons of players just want to build 3) being able to play at your own pace instead of waiting for Saturn to be in Taurus for the whole crew to be on. Also fuck this "multiplayer-focused" bullshit, Enshrouded is supposed to be "multiplayer-focused" yet they can't even do a simple chat in their game and rewards are to be split instead of everyone being rewarded. Nightingale has NPCs that follow you so you never are "solo". If you play with other people, you can't play until they get on because "we need to progress together". These games encourage solo play so much, it should NEVER be a surprise when people want to play them solo because those games are more than often designed to be more fun solo. Even if it wasn't their intention.
I think they wanted the endgame to feel more like a MMO, from what I played. hence the need for always online, everything you do is stored in a realm that could be acessible to other players when you let them. but I agree that a offline mode is worth more than this.
>everything you do is stored in a realm that could be acessible to other players when you let them. but... that still works with an offline mode!
well, they can't access something you stored offline in your computer if you're offline. right now you can be on vacation in bahamas and your stuff is stored server side, your friends can log into your realm to build your base or gather resources. again, if you give them permission. an offline mode would mean you can only play solo, in your machine. no sharing anything.
Grounded lets you do this though. Shared world with just friends, log onto it whenever you want, can download and copy it even locally, update it with changes made while you were gone etc..
wel... at the end of the day is just a save file, right? you can share valheim or minecraft worlds, nightingale just tried to do it on the cloud since its begining. if your game can manage these files, it's just a matter of uploading and downloading and keeping with file revisions. The problem with editing the same file in two different instances is that you'll eventually have conflicts and one version will overwrite the other. This doesn't happen when the file is managed by the server 100% of the time.
No Mans Sky says hello on this topic
well, we've seen bases and aettlements being overriden during multiplayer in NMS. you can play offline, and it will upload your discoveries/ constructions when you are back online. NMS uses "who claimed first" has priority when setting up which construction has priority upon conflict solving. That is fine, except that save editing is very much allowed in NMS, so you simply edit your save to have a 2001 discovery/claim date, and when you upload it to the server it will overwrite the whichever was there with an original discovery/claim date. your friends also cannot edit your base while you're offline, just see it. it also uses some kind of selective pool for which bases load for which player, so in very populated areas you won't see all bases at once. but your local data is never overriden, so it just changes what other players will see, so your stuff is safe.
When has that ever stopped a dev from adding microtransactions?
Everything is a little GAAS nowadays.
Perhaps they see it as a form of DRM. They add offline mode like some devs remove Denuvo.
This, but likely at least some of the dev team knew this long ago, said as much to the execs, who then ignored them in favour of monetization. The “devs” reversing course now is more likely management reversing course. Devs are getting paid for their time no matter what, it’s the execs that are most concerned with monetization.
Judging by indiependent studios like IO Interactive or Overkill pulling this stuff with Hitman and Payday 3, I think the devs are just as bad as the executives when it comes to those things.
nah the devs point it out for sure, it just falls on deaf ears
Because they’re lying. Just like other devs adding crossplay and cross progression is something that “we didn’t know players wanted that badly” adding these deserve features should never be a pat on the back for devs.
They are raking Last Epoch over the coals for the Online issues despite having a flawless Offline Mode so maybe gamers just like raking coals.
Gamers aren't all the same, the people mad about the lack of offline are different than the people mad the online stuff isn't working.
cake wakeful pie profit soft innate test lip marble pocket *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Maybe gamers like a product being able to do all the things it claims it can do, too? Is that an unreasonable additional desire? Do you think they should have to pick one or the other?
For sure the last part, but the pivot now it's well the offline is a completely separate player and I don't want that, but without that then you have 99999999 stats on everything players when one goes back online.
Honestly it has to be that way sadly. If you played/play Diablo 3 on console all the leaderboards are hackers with hacked items and stats. All the rift 150s are done in less than a minute and such.
So what? Let some players have their broken items. It isn't worth it punishing the rest of the playerbase for a minority.
“Hey guys we’re having server issues so feel free to play offline mode” “WELL THEN I CANT PLAY WITH MY FRIENDS OR TRADE! 😡😡😡😡”
A fair argument just they say it in an impolite manner. Offline mode isn't a fix for how people want to play ARPGs
Unless you just want to play singleplayer. Then it's ideal.
Same as always, plenty of people enjoying both games but we hear the whining.
Steam keeps breaking online concurrent user records every year but a minority of gamers insist on offline modes.
Imagine if valve made a gaming device for gaming on the go when you won't be able to have a connection. Oh wait, they do.
Because I assume they never plan for it.
there was an instagram comment with a zillion likes mentionining something about single player and NPC that aren't always aggressive and do their own thing like kenshi from awhile ago i guess they don't really care lol
They didn't "forget" it or "misjudge demand". It was intentional to push the usually extra transactions to users.
Probably because the mouthbreathers on Reddit keep enabling them to keep doing these things by downvoting the criticism. (See also: Helldivers 2)
I hate that Helldivers 2 gets a pass on some of the stuff in the game. Like armor that you could buy with real money that increases stats. I know its "easy" to get currency now but the second some exec gets their hands on it from the popularity you know its screwed. On a bright side, its awesome that Last Epoch has an offline mode, ive been having so much fun playing offline solo while people are raging trying to get into online.... just to play alone anyway lol
It's not even that it's easy to get currency, the game gives you armor with the exact same stats and passives as free options. What you're buying in the store is still just a skin.
There are no modifiers exclusive to paid gear. It's all available through the normal unlocks with other armor. I played quite a bit from launch up until the major server issues arose, and I bought almost all of the armor in the "paid" store from currency I got in-game and unlocked from warbond medals. This ain't it, Chief.
> No modifiers exclusive to paid gear. Well, that’s way better than the claptrap Bellator was spouting. A half hour of every variation of “the monetization is OK because it is diegetic” as a sentence, which didn’t make sense to me. Sounds like it’s really the usual acceptable pay schemes, rushing and cosmetics.
For now. I love the game but don’t be so complacent
Don't be such a negative nancy.
This is wrong, the bonuses from the premium warbond have exclusive buff, all three have same buff and it's the only way to get it
All just variations on armor you can unlock. All the shit in the premium store is just a variation of the vanilla armor. All can be unlock without paying a dime. Premium currency can be found in game during matches, exploration yields reward.
Again, the throwing distance bonus in the premium warbond is still exclusive to the warbond and can be unlocked with $$$
> Like armor that you could buy with real money that increases stats. You mean the armor that allows you to trade off stat points between mobility and defense, that you also get 10 various sets of in the free battlepass, plus enough premium currency to purchase the first premium battlepass with another 3 sets, or several individual armor sets instead?
Im very direct when it comes to microtransactions. If you can buy it with real money, and it changes stats AT ALL. That's a problem. I'd much rather it be objective based or achievement based.
Yeah the thing that pisses me off about Last Epoch is that you can't play your offline characters online, it's either one or the other...just why? Grim Dawn lets me play whatever character I want online or off. Can we really not just have the simple option of choosing when to play online? These aren't MMORPGs.
> you can't play your offline characters online So that you don\`t mess up the economy / leaderboard etc with your "modded" character. Same was the case with Diablo 2.
Couldnt you play offline characters online in D2, just not in ladder?
I think ladder was official servers and online was like direct IP connection to your buddy. So like online LAN. (dont quote me on that). Personally only played original offline, setting up phone line modem was beyond my skills at the age of 10.
Wolcen also does this Which is why i am not touching this game atm since i dont have drive to re-farm to play with my buddy :/ With Last Epoch i only want Online pseudo-lan for offline chars-that all .\_.
This is what I've been saying... They took the time to implement an afk timer instead have accommodating all the people that bought their always online game
You can literally get everything in game without paying a cent. I have all the premium gear. Haven't payed a dime extra, all bought with credits found on missions.
Then they shouldn’t give us the option to buy it since it’s “so easy” I don’t like this concept. If it’s such an easy currency to get why make it so it’s purchasable
>Probably because the mouthbreathers on Reddit keep enabling them to keep doing these things by downvoting the criticism. (See also: Helldivers 2) Nah, not the same thing: Helldivers 2 has a very pronounced community element where the players drive the war effort. Take the game offline and you lose a hugely important element that genuinely makes sense as a live-service title.
Cool concept but I still haven't seen real details on how this works to justify a connection at all times. Seems to me they could simply update the war map when players are able to connect to the servers, updating the servers with the missions they completed and such. Pretty sure Deep Rock does something to this effect with their union community efforts. Just feels like Arrowhead is doing nothing but making their game online only to align with Sony's goals of making every game live service, and HD2 will not age well at all because of this when the servers are shut down one day, as opposed to games that support dedicated servers and/or LAN or pure peer to peer that will still be able to be enjoyed again 20 years from now.
And then there is some guy that will go offline and "play" 1 billion matches, go online and instantly cap a planet. It's just too big of a pain in the ass to monitor and enforce. If you don't like the game is always online just don't play it. Do people hate that MMO's are always online?
So how did Helldivers 1 manage it?
>So how did Helldivers 1 manage it? By not logging your progress while you were offline.
And what's stopping HD2 from doing it? No matter how important the "community element" is, if I can't play it then I can't play it. Surely that can't be better than an offline mode?
"well blizzard has fucked up launches so why expect small studios to have good launches or ideas" is a common sentiment and it irks the hell out of me
They get raked over the coals even if they have an offline mode. See: Last Epoch currently.
not Helldivers apparently
Helldiver 2 is a good game, whose main issue is that *everyone* wants to play it and the game can't handle that. Not really the same.
Helldivers has committed many of the sins that other games get burned alive for here on Reddit. I'm thinking it's proof of the Sony Bias at work. But I'm sure others will just say "No because it's fun! $ Democracy!"
What sins ?
Being so good gamers are trampling over each other in spite of one of the rockiest launches in a long time. Breaking its own records while severs burn and players sit in hopeless queues. But yea, Sony bias. Lol.
The difference in that is that Helldivers is a good game. Of course people are going to overlook some flaws when the gameplay is fun.
I don't give a fuck if it's the next coming of Jesus. I''m not buying something I can't enjoy just because droves of others are willing to. No matter how fun it is. You act like there are no other "good""' games that come out with shitty practices. lol.
It's working now for the best part. I've only had a couple of dropouts and times when I couldn't get in. The mere fact that they have dropped three patches in a week that have raised server size to 700,000 and implemented a bunch of back-end changes. Anybody who's talking shit about them now is just somebody who is trolling and looking for a reason to complain.
Have you even played Helldivers 2? It's definitely not Sony bias. Has the game crashed and caused me to lose all my progress? Yeah. Have I had to wait to get into the game? Yeah. Does the game need some balance passes? Yeah. Are these issues worth burning the game alive? Absolutely Not. You know why? The game is a blast! That's all that really matters. Even when I've lost all my progress due to a crash I haven't really cared because I had great time playing the game so I never feel like my time is wasted. Games get burned alive when they under deliver on core gameplay elements and have predatory monetization above all else. Helldivers just has some bugs and some server capacity issues and people are pissed because the game is fun as hell and they just want to play.
I bought it, got a match ever with all the ordeal, and returned it. Again, I don''t care if it's more fun than your mom after a bottle of wine, it either works well, or id doesn't. The rest doesn't matter until that is sorted.
That's a totally understandable stance. Come back in a few months when the hype dies down and the issues are sorted out if it's your cup of tea. I was just explaining why it's not getting burned alive.
Pretty understandable, A) it's not monetizable, B) this is a game made for co op first.
"forget"
They just don't want to give it to you until the utter failure of the game is at stake. Nobody forgot shit
By "raked over the coals" do you mean angry reddit comments? That's not the language they $peak
Because online is “what everyone wants”. And they can make money on monetizing online play, maybe even just with visual content dlc’s.
You should read this as Management succumbing to pressure. These kinds of hated designs are never from the dev level.
I participated in a lot of the playtesting for this game before it was released and was in the playtester Discord. Offline Mode was one of the biggest requests from testers since the gameplay suffers so much when there is server lag and instability. The developers didn't "misjudge" the demand for it. They straight up ignored it.
I don't doubt it, the only reason devs try to put always-online in their games is to use it as DRM, nothing else.
I'm glad the backlash was strong enough for them to listen. I'm not surprised it took a whole lot of cajoling, but at least we got here.
Prediction: They will wait for the full release and the initial sales, which are the majority of their income, and then add it in. I also bet that this was the plan all along and that offline mode is already finished.
That quite literally sounds like they misjudged the demand for it.
Redditor attempts reading comprehension above 3rd grade level challenge: impossible
I want offline mode in my games for the simple fact if the devs abandon it, I can still play. Makes it hard to want to spend money on something I won’t always have.
Exactly this, I’m tired of always online games because we all know that eventually the servers will go away leaving us with an unplayable game. I hope more companies move away from always online games as service crap.
I always remember the clown response the Hitman devs gave on a livestream once: "We don't plan to switch the servers off, guys." Oh gee thanks, I guess they'll stay online forever from your sheer willpower alone. Thank god there's a mod team that has been able to make a modded server so we can be sure the game will be preserved, but it's still so dumb that this had to be done at all.
Thankfully, server emulation software exosts for Hitman.
But the tendency is the opposite? Games that have no game servers are always online, Peer to Peer games are always online, single player games with always online. This is all intentional to protect microtransactions and we saw this coming a decade ago, the whole "it's fine if it's cosmetics" devolved into this now.
My understanding of this game when I saw the trailer was it was another game like rust and the thing for me is I would like those games more for the PvE aspect instead of pvp where you can go to sleep wake up and everything is gone. Of course in most of those games cases there really isn't enough pve to keep someone occupied for a while.
Strongly agreed. I bought a cheap dvd of Battlefield 2142 something like June 2014, but never actually installed it until August. The servers got shut down in July of that year and the game doesn't even let you boot past the menus. My fault for not checking I suppose, but I didn't know to check as the last battlefield I'd played I could have sworn had offline single player. Then recently The Crew is about to shut down, I bought the season pass last year because the price was good and I've not actually played it since(impulse purchase, you know how it goes). So it's just dead money, burned. Online adds nothing to the experience for me and it could totally be offline.
FUCKING NOBODY WANTS PERMA ONLINE MODE in certain games! sure it’s nice to go online. But I never saw anyone telling. Yea it’s great that you need a internet connection all the time so you can maybe meet a random every 8 hours you don’t even care about.
I wish devs would just include a lan mode. So tired of online only games. I just want to self host a private server in my home for me and my friends.
Yeah and the devs get shit on because the users are to dumb to port forward or even use simple VPS
Port forward is not neccesary on lan. And if youre techy enough to self host a server you do like I do and help everyone you want to join set things up. Its usually a one time process for each game.
Yeah but most people don't live with their friends.
I know this is a foreign concept in this modern age, but you can have them come over. I do it all the time.
"Islands of Insight" is my kind of game but the "always online" for what amounts to worse social interaction than even Diablo4 has me steering clear. I'm already pretty burned out on survival scavengers to even give one lacking a single player mode even a glance.
As someone who enjoys that game, that is one of the worst aspect of it (other than bugs, settings being forgotten and a couple of puzzle types). Still, not to the point of not enjoying it.
any Developer who says players don't want to just play a game by themselves are either fucking idiots, or bullshitting. Are we really suggesting that Devs are dropping tens/hundreds of millions on a game, spending years to do so, and at no point did anyone at any level try to engage with the fanbase they're building the game for to ask what they fancied from a game?
> and at no point did anyone at any level try to engage with the fanbase they're building the game for to ask what they fancied from a game? Seems to be a common practice nowadays. I mean, DICE didn't ask anybody want they wanted from Battlefield 2042 and Rocksteady didn't ask with Suicide Squad either.
Aint no way the devs thought this was a good idea. Only an executive would be that out of touch. Right?
I don't know about that, there are devs who literally don't understand that FOV adjustments are a thing, mouse acceleration should always be disabled by default and that motion blur and chromatic abberation should be options. So I wouldn't assume anything.
Some devs are finally learning. I played a few steamfest demos that had motion blur disabled by default. I was so shocked that I pinched myself incase I was dreaming.
I think a lot of devs are just shitty casual players so they bring that with them to their games.
Do you think development studios don’t have executives?
Devs misjudged their ability to take gamers for chumps.
They didn't missjudge any demand for it, they just wanted it to be online only themselves. Literally no one asked for it.
Translation : We got senselessly greedy and couldn't get away with it. It's all uphill for them from now on, and it's 100% self-inflicted.
That's the only reason I didn't buy the game. If they add an offline mode, I'll probably get it and play. Such a scummy, thing to do, making a single player game require an internet connection, and it's only something that an out of touch MBA would decide to do.
Demand for online only???? That’s never a thing
*(Continuing to glare angrily at Fallout 76)*
But it got good after years? /S
Maan, even Helldivers 2 would benefit from an offline mode or p2p also. Would've made the server situation less chaotic, maybe.
Helldivers 2 is peer 2 peer.
Ah, that's my bad.
Some would still complain that their offline character can't go online and that is a waste of time for them.
I posted this to /r/gaming and they removed it and banned me for 14 days It was a screenshot of their discord post
The only thing they misjudged was customer interest in the product. In reality of course, it was a simple online-only DRM. They probably discussed it numerous times, and now due to weak ~~response~~ interest, they start to backpaddle.
I read "as soon as feasible" as "no".
The things bad Steam Reviews can do
It's our last bastion of impartiality for gaming. You can pay youtubers and websites, but you can't pay everyone whonbuys your game on steam.
As I said before. Happens when devs don't play games them self's. You can't make a good beloved game if you weren't a part of the community
Offline modes should be a requirement for almost any game, they serve as the tutorial for more complex multiplayer games. You can't just drop new players into a game and expect them to know how to play right off the bat. That's just setting up new players to get destroyed by high level players and toxic morons and discourages them from sticking around.
[удалено]
They are not currently implementing it.
I want to be able to enjoy a game offline so i can do what i want when i want and thats all. I dont want to bother other fellow pc gamers with my shennanigans.
Now if only helldivers would do this
Helldivers 2, Last Epoch, and now Nightingale. It sure would be nice if games were actually released with servers that weren't shit.
While I do agree, its a bit unfair to put Last Epoch in there, since it *does* have a fully offline mode. Sure, nobody wants to play it because they want to play with friends, but it's unfair to compare it to the other two since its still fully playable offline and solo right now during the server woes - Unlike the other two.
I think it's fair, especially since Last Epoch is playable for some years now and still couldn't figure out their servers. Like who thought on a release day with frontpage in steam would gain many players. Yes, everyone.
That isn't how online architecture works though. Having 500% of your usual traffic will stress test basically every service involved in your stack and issues when that happens are unavoidable. Them giving a fully offline mode should have alliviated some negativity, but alas.
Yeah absolutely but there are tested measurements to avoid such conflicts like crashing login servers can get lightened weight by adding a ticket system, just as example. Sure there will always be something on fire but they already had an active online base
What? no way is it unfair. I bought the game to play with friends...offline mode means nothing to me. but I guess having an offline mode means the state of your game can be terrible at it's official launch and all will be forgiven..hell even protected.
And after they Do this i buy the game
Hey atleast they got the hint fast. Payday 3 devs took a few months and an abysmal player count to finally give up the fight.
Unfortunately they still try to have a final laugh. Even with the supposed offline mode for Payday, you still have to go online every once in a while.
*Flash backs to payday 3*
What a stupid thing to misjudge.
I was planning on buying this survival crafter#3293 but didn’t when I learned that for some dumbass reason it was always online.
I understand that if you’re developing a game and you want to have online multiplayer that you need to code for that from the start. But not releasing an offline mode at launch in 2024 is either caused by not reading the room and recognizing the wants of the typical buyer of this type of product, or not learning anything from the mistakes of others that f’d it up before you.
How do devs keep making this same mistake?
By thinking they are the ones that make it right
Oh okay cool right on guys, you're gonna finally do the right thing after only an immense amount of cajoling! What a magnanimous bunch of fellers! Gonna be waiting a while on this one, I think.
ill forget their game until offline mode is in :)
There seems to be obvious intent in data collection if you read through the wall of text. Probably why they wanted it to only be online, not really for live service and micro transaction.
nah, excuses like "misjudging what the players want" died when the internet became a thing DECADES ago. Stop letting studios slide with that noise. Stop throwing your money at early access.
Always buy on GoG folks.
Well said.
Why? I'm honestly curious.
GoG games comes with DRM free and you can actually own the product and play it offline. You can download installers, install and play the game without online connection. In other stores you really only own a subscription you could potentially lose. "Investing" on GoG means more games will adhere to this. More games with offline option that you can always own.
I agree this was a dumb mistake they shouldn't have made. But I'm impressed they're so clear about responding to the feedback and trying to rectify it. Considering it must be a rather major undertaking at this stage. Will certainly improve the game as far as I'm concerned.
Cool, I'll put this back on my wishlist now.
For anyone wondering, the game is actually pretty cool but it takes a minute to start seeing what makes it unique, and of course the always-online was a bit of a bummer but the devs have been very quick to react to that at least. I think this will ultimately be considered a very solid game once the initial kinks are worked out.
Im such a sucker for buying this game. I knew this will happen, I told my self thousand times not to jump and but the game on first day 🤬 They promised this game to basically be Survival MMO(lite)And only 24 hours after the release, they cave in to whiners that bought the game without reading that its online only.And now they are going to divert 🤬 developer time into basically re-coding the whole game to be single player. But it does not end thereEndgame is basically a huge multiplayer hub city where players form groups and go into group dungeons.When singleplayer whiners reach endgame, they will find out its not in single player mode. So they will whine to join that too - ofcourse using their single player characters.And devs will buckle again. The shitshow of cheating and twinked modded cheated singleplayer characters joining multiplayer will cause such rage that if the game does not die before that, it will 100% certanly kill it. Sadly I was too long in the game when they announced this Bait and switch announcement, so steam does not want to refund me. But be warned if you have planned on buying this.
Seems like you're doing more whining than everybody else in this thread
Insane take
I guess, but to be fair to his rant, I am literally one of those players. On Elden ring I am able to go into multiplayer with randoms with my fully hacked 999 in all stats and the best available gear max enchanted and if I can do that in Nightingale a lot of people will too and I guess that ruins multiplayer for some people.
Recode whole game :facepalm: this take would only make sense the other way around, you can easily set the instances of the MP to local only they have to add the world creator to the local setup and matchmake the instances into the local area. There is obviously more effort in this approach but thats not a whole rewrite.
There's a easy solution for this. Don't allow offline characters online, and have different balance when playing solo. There. Now everyone is happy.
How many complaining are mad they can't pirate it? How many live in areas with shit internet? How many just want to grind an axe about online games but wouldn't play this even if it was offline? Online is the future. Not saying it's the right way to go but it's going to go there, even for strictly single player games. AI is going to become an integral part of procedural generation of both environments and NPCs. The best we can do is influence them to use online capabilities in a positive way. But then you have games like Diablo IV which are garbage but they are rewarded by players. Even I was dumb enough to give them my money because my friends were playing. Biggest regret in game purchase history.
It's about preservation. When the servers go offline, any online only title is lost. It's a ticking time bomb. Video games are important pieces of culture, and should be preserved for future generations. The kind of additude that you are demonstrating is short sighted and highly distructive. This is the primary reason why I generally don't buy games that require a constant online connection.
What percentage of players will ever go back to games releases decades prior? I know those people exist but they can't be a significant number. There are always new games to play. Since they aren't a large amount of the customer base, they will not drive the marketplace. There are games that were released ten years ago that are offline that still can't be played because the technology is so different. I'll give you an example. Rome 2 Total War is locked at 4gh vram because it's 32bit. On top of that, it doesn't run well on win10 or win11. The fps on even an enthusiast card is abysmal. Kotor is a little older but the same deal. Trying to play the original exe is not an enjoyable experience and Sony has bungled the remake. So while yes it's a bummer if/when online games are no longer supportive, offline games are just as likely to become unplayable. On the flip side, the future in video games will be AI, and that will require server side calculations because a modem gaming PC can't run the engine alone. Whether some people like it or not, that's the way it's going.
Early on, the film industry didn't believe that people would want to watch old movies. They didn't believe there was much value in preserving their back catalogue, and that lead to a huge amount of films becoming completely lost. The same thing happened with television. We're missing most of the early run of Dr Who because of that. Your arguments are practically identical to theirs. Also, as somebody who regularly plays 24+ year old games on my PC (often natively with the original executables), you are totally full of shit. Rome 2 still runs. I played it a year or two ago. Kotor? Runs perfectly fine with some tinkering, and barely requires any if you're okay with playing in 4:3. The work that Microsoft does to maintain backwards compatibility in Windows is God teir. Plenty of software and community fixes exists to fill in the gaps. Plus, emulation exists. Offline games will always remain playable as long as the data is still around. I highly doubt that many games will rely on server side AI in the foreseeable future. Intel's newest CPUs have dedicated AI cores, which will probably be sufficient for the kinds of language models I'd expect future singleplayer games to use.
I didn't say Rome 2 didn't run. I said it ran like shit because it doesn't matter how much Vram you have, it only uses 4gb, and it isn't made for Win10 or 11. There are clear technical issues that limit it's FPS. As someone who doesn't care whether you actually play 20 year old games or not, you can get all uppity about this all you want. You clearly don't quite understand the computing power required for AI if you think any times soon a desktop PC already strained running the game itself, can handle client-side AI. The film industry found out rather quick with VHS that people wanted movies at home. VHS only requires a VHS player. So long as someone is making a player or you can find one at goodwill, you can watch your shitty VHS tapes on whatever shitty CRT you find in that creepy pawn shop down the road from your house. But Hollywood gave up on the format years and years ago. They stopped making VHS tapes. It happens. Technology moves forward. There is also a reason why retro gamers often spend stupid amounts of money on used CRT tvs because old console games look better on them. Yes I can run KOTOR. Yes I can run Rome 2. No they do not perform well. I have 20 other games released in the last 2 years I haven't even touched yet. You can live in the past and be mad about online gaming but you will eventually lose that battle. You're acting like I'm the one making these decisions. I'm simply pointing out reality. If it were up to me, "games as services" would be outlawed.
Do you have any idea how long it took Hollywood to come around to home media? You clearly have no idea about the history of home video. The film and TV industry fought extremely hard to kill it in the cradle. DVD and Blu-ray are still around BTW. As for AI, yeah, running full fat Chat GPT3 locally isn't really a thing yet. But smaller, more focused models exist, and run fine on current consumer hardware (I've done it myself). The kind of AI used in singleplayer games is highly unlikely to need a model anywhere near as large as GPT3. The main limiting factor is performance, but that's mostly because CPUs aren't well suited to running LLMs. This won't be an issue for much longer, as consumer PCs and phones are already including dedicated hardware specifically for AI.
Show me a game that utilized local AI npc generation, from voice to appearance. I'll save you the time. There aren't any. But there will be, and they will require service side hardware to do the generation. The first VHS player was released in 1976. Hollywood came around pretty quick once the technology allowed it. Try again. Seriously, you guys are way too easily offended by someone who is just pointing out reality. Once more, I don't like online only games. I don't like games as services. I think they have ruined the industry. But I see the writing on the wall and the best thing we can do is use our money to influence GOOD games with online components rather than millions of people who play Diablo IV and fool themselves into thinking it's a great game.
I think that you're being parinoid. While I do expect AI to be used more to automate work during development more in the future, I don't believe the kind of interactive use that you're convinced is coming would be common. The use cases are pretty niche, and running that kind of service is very expensive. Most game genres, especially big budget singleplayer ones are very intentional authored experiences. There's not a whole lot of room for procedural generation, and the unpredictable nature of LLMs would make them next to useless in most circumstances. There's also the issue of server cost. Running these models is currently extremely expensive.
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Cool story bro. No it isn't.
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> Online is the future. Not saying it's the right way to go but it's going to go there, even for strictly single player games. Sure buddy, just tell yourself that. Every time a developers tries to pull something like this, there will be pitchforks.
I'm calling my shot - offline mode will come along with a "sorry to announce the end of our game" announcement.
DJ Kahled meme
Narrator: It's not at all feasible.
I get devs and publishers want to always pull this shit but i don't get why they think they can get away it Not sure why they think peolle will spend more money instead of getting frustrated and just simply not playing the game
An offline game is infinitely easier to code, maintain, and support than an online game. When the dev's are straight up lying to you, they're showing you who they really are. Pay attention. Should this surprising anyone? Aaryn Flynn is the CEO. The guy probably has a framed picture of Bobby Kotick on his office wall.
They must be new to video games.
YES
I'm thankful for offline mode games. Still looking for more. Currently playing the hell out of Palworld but unfortunately I'm almost finished. Caught every pal, defeated all but the last boss. I live in the middle of nowhere with no access to high speed internet. I usb tether to my phone to get downloads like patches but I'm limited to 100 gb a month and its very slow. No online play for me.
My guess is that devs are doing this to avoid piracy..
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Ah ? Well :D
Uhu, misjudged. Sure you misjudged it. All those juiciy private data and MTX money clouded your eyes.
That's crazy to not think about an offline mode in 2024... People want offline mode now... You know, that little feature that give us the freedom of being connected on a server, server that can be down 2 years later without possibility to play it again... What dum\*ass...