Single player offline version

I'm happy with online play as long as I can play alone - which with Path of Exile, I will be able to.

I prefer doing things at my own pace. When I play multiplayer games in D2, everyone rushes ahead of me, scooping up the items before I even finish reading the quest text. Playing a new character in ladder rush season in public games gets me levelled up fast, but only wearing white-text items.

And then there's the harassment I get in some online multiplayer games for playing a female character -_-

I hated it in Guild Wars when you had to party up for a quest. My random partner's quest status messed up the entire reason I made that character. They ruined my Gwen quest T.T

The downside of playing Diablo 2 online for single play is that I had to keep refreshing my character otherwise I would lose it. I'm the kind of player who can go a long time in between playing sessions of the same game. I hope GGG never delete any of my characters. I treasure them all.

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Chris wrote:

If you're playing with multiple people, then the difficulty and rewards of the area scale up.

Yes, but it would be good to consider a means to change an area's difficulty when doing 'singleplayer'. If I recall, there was a chat command for this in Diablo 2.

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Seamstress wrote:

The downside of playing Diablo 2 online for single play is that I had to keep refreshing my character otherwise I would lose it. I'm the kind of player who can go a long time in between playing sessions of the same game. I hope GGG never delete any of my characters. I treasure them all.

I agree. I haven't touched my GW character in years, but I am fairly certain she's still there, with all her gear and glory intact, should I start up GW sometime just for shits and giggles (still installed). Likely, the reason Diablo 2 accounts and characters were cleaned up after a few months was due to the sheer volume of new accounts and characters constantly being created... most of them probably bots or mules. Path of Exile has potential for the same kind of problem, too. Hopefully some form of rigid security check or human confirmation will be in place eventually to prevent mass generation of accounts and characters. In GW this wasn't an issue because the purchased cd-key was linked directly to the user account.

*shrug*

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Dubby wrote:

Likely, the reason Diablo 2 accounts and characters were cleaned up after a few months was due to the sheer volume of new accounts and characters constantly being created... most of them probably bots or mules. Path of Exile has potential for the same kind of problem, too.

D2 players had to use mules because their stash was so small and there were so many set items to collect. Hopefully Path of Exile has a huge stash, so no-one needs to mule. Then there won't be as many character storage issues.

I agree with nbringer in principle, I would like to be to play (and would pay for) an offline version. However...

I'm no coding guru, but my layman's brain tells me that the game has been designed under a client/server model - therefore an offline version would have to include the server code to function (even if it is merely "serving" to the client on the same PC). Having access to the server code would mean more frequent and more successful hacking attacks on the online version of the game.

So it is imperative that the workings of the server be kept a highly guarded secret, and not just handed out to anyone with a web browser.

Additionally, hacks could probably be made to enable in offline mode all of the extra features/perks normally reserved for cash shop customers, potentially reducing income.

Lastly, the main idea behind the free to play model seems to be to attract as many players as possible, whether paying or not - the non-paying players would enrich the experience of the paying ones.
An offline version would reduce the number of online players, hampering that goal.

I'd say you summed things up pretty well, Malice.

As much as i agree with malice regarding the model on which PoE is built on, i would like to see an option for offline play aswell.
I would be prepared to pay for an offline thing aswell.

And i dont get why people dont understand that some of us have crappy internet that just decides to not work sometimes.

I dont expect it by launch, but somewhere down the months after.
Maybe slimmed down, offline way to play.
Much like D2 had with with less content compared to onlineplay.

I dont ask for much, just an option to be able to play PoE when my internet goes belly up and decides to not work for a few hours.

In comparison, torchlight 2 will have LAN/Offline/Online/mod support.

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Planetsurvival wrote:

Spoiler

As much as i agree with malice regarding the model on which PoE is built on, i would like to see an option for offline play aswell.
I would be prepared to pay for an offline thing aswell.

And i dont get why people dont understand that some of us have crappy internet that just decides to not work sometimes.

I dont expect it by launch, but somewhere down the months after.
Maybe slimmed down, offline way to play.
Much like D2 had with with less content compared to onlineplay.

I dont ask for much, just an option to be able to play PoE when my internet goes belly up and decides to not work for a few hours.

In comparison, torchlight 2 will have LAN/Offline/Online/mod support.

Why not ever read before necroing an old thread where it won't even make its purpose cause of everything pretty much has already said ?

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Malice wrote:

I agree with nbringer in principle, I would like to be to play (and would pay for) an offline version. However...

I'm no coding guru, but my layman's brain tells me that the game has been designed under a client/server model - therefore an offline version would have to include the server code to function (even if it is merely "serving" to the client on the same PC). Having access to the server code would mean more frequent and more successful hacking attacks on the online version of the game.

So it is imperative that the workings of the server be kept a highly guarded secret, and not just handed out to anyone with a web browser.

Additionally, hacks could probably be made to enable in offline mode all of the extra features/perks normally reserved for cash shop customers, potentially reducing income.

Lastly, the main idea behind the free to play model seems to be to attract as many players as possible, whether paying or not - the non-paying players would enrich the experience of the paying ones.
An offline version would reduce the number of online players, hampering that goal.

I agree with all of this, these are the only legit reasons I've heard for this terrible always-online crap.
Still think there should be an offline mode. My internet fails a lot as well

I don't think the internet should be required for anything! it never did years ago and its only DRM copy protection these days that keeps everything online, its an invasion of privacy and there should always be an offline mode.

Having a constant connection to my system is not the answer here and there must be a balance of copy protection and owning the product you pay for, that includes any mircrotransactions within the program, you should always have the ability to use the program offline and not be forced to use an online service.

As for hacking weather your online or offline hackers will ripp your program apart and look for exploits so keeping things as online only dosen't make real sense.

constant patching to an online server should help eliminate hacks there for you shouldn't need an always online mode because soon as you log back in online the program is updated making any 3rd party program or hack irrelivant because the code has changed.

so while you still require the internet to update and play online you could also take it offline when the need arise's and forgo any updates or use of the multiplayer servers.

Well I just checked back after a while, playering my Marauder again, since I see no point in playing characters to very high levels, only to see them wiped away once the next beta-phase begins.

I think there should be an offline mode, even though, the points made above about having an easier time to hack teh servers might be valid.... wake up! Look at Word of Warcraft for example you can automate this game using bots and I dare say it is a litte more complex than PoE. Look at D3 you can bot all you like and the game has no offline mode either.

If the initial idea was, that always online prevents hacks, it was most laudable, however it obviously isn't that easy.