Offline Client?

[Lord Raven]

Hello,

I was just pondering how nice it would be to take care of some chores while the servers are down and again thought of the possibility of an offline client.

When offline, the player would be limited to actions inside their own house. No recalls or venturing to the outside world. A current inventory of your house would be kept on your hard drive, and you could then undertake certain activities offline.

1. Crafting: As long as you had sufficient raw materials stored in your house you could fill bods, make weapons and armor, etc. You would NOT be able to go outside your house to obtain more resources.

2. Remodeling: Days when the servers are down would be the perfect opportunity to tweak the deco inside your house.

3. Character design: The perfect time to look over armor, complete repairs, and tweak your characters to perfection. Again, only inside the confines of your house using materials already available there.

When you get back online, your offline house and online house would synchronize and then you're back in the game!

I recommend this as there are a lot of chores that I kinda put off because I'd rather be off seeking adventure. Days where the servers are down either by accident or design are the perfect time to catch up on these chores.

This would take some pressure off the Devs during maintenance as players would have a choice of offline play. Obviously there would be some security concerns and the offline mode would have to be limited.

Just a thought as I sit here doing laundry. (I would have been hunting Pirates if the darn servers weren't down!)

 

[Crysta]

They tried an offline demo before. It screwed things up badly for the online game, though not because of anything the demo did.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Hello,

I was just pondering how nice it would be to take care of some chores while the servers are down and again thought of the possibility of an offline client.

When offline, the player would be limited to actions inside their own house. No recalls or venturing to the outside world. A current inventory of your house would be kept on your hard drive, and you could then undertake certain activities offline.

1. Crafting: As long as you had sufficient raw materials stored in your house you could fill bods, make weapons and armor, etc. You would NOT be able to go outside your house to obtain more resources.

2. Remodeling: Days when the servers are down would be the perfect opportunity to tweak the deco inside your house.

3. Character design: The perfect time to look over armor, complete repairs, and tweak your characters to perfection. Again, only inside the confines of your house using materials already available there.

When you get back online, your offline house and online house would synchronize and then you're back in the game!

I recommend this as there are a lot of chores that I kinda put off because I'd rather be off seeking adventure. Days where the servers are down either by accident or design are the perfect time to catch up on these chores.

This would take some pressure off the Devs during maintenance as players would have a choice of offline play. Obviously there would be some security concerns and the offline mode would have to be limited.

Just a thought as I sit here doing laundry. (I would have been hunting Pirates if the darn servers weren't down!)

Few potential problems with this. All this information is saved on the server, thus would have to be saved on your computer at each server save (could cause potential lag for "you"). Next it would have to be loaded to the server at each server up, which could overload the server at server down and server up. Plus not everyone is online during the last server save. I suppose all the other features are supported by the client and not the server.... Also I don't think the developers feel any pressure during server down times (considering the current server down times have nothing to do with them, I think that is true even more so)

Also it would fix nothing for the times that you were not there for the server down and came to find out the server will be down for an extended time, as if you made any modifications it could not be loaded to the server.... since the server save would be after your computer save (despite you making changes it should keep a server save tag to prevent any issue's.)

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

They tried an offline demo before. It screwed things up badly for the online game, though not because of anything the demo did.

I don't recall the offline demo causing any issue for the actual game... Since the demo never loaded to the server. o.o

 

[the 4th man]

Think of how much you would have accomplished if you didn't sit and waste time about an online addiction!!!

It's just a game people.

 

[Lord Raven]

Also it would fix nothing for the times that you were not there for the server down and came to find out the server will be down for an extended time, as if you made any modifications it could not be loaded to the server.... since the server save would be after your computer save (despite you making changes it should keep a server save tag to prevent any issue's.)

The house contents would save locally on logoff. (Presented as an option so that folks who don't plan on using the feature and don't want the delay can logoff quickly.)

Without knowing if individual items are tagged with a last modified tag it's hard for me to say what conflicts would arise. That's why the actions you could do offline would have to be very limited. Perhaps a special chest that locks down in your house that holds items for the synchronization.

There would be a lot to think about and I don't have access to all the information on what information their database saves regarding individual items.

Perhaps they should invite me up to HQ, set me up with a little desk in a broom closet somewhere and I'll peruse the database and come up with some solid ideas?

 

[Arcus]

I can think of at least 5 ways to exploit that without even giving it much thought. Prolly not a good idea.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

The house contents would save locally on logoff. (Presented as an option so that folks who don't plan on using the feature and don't want the delay can logoff quickly.)

Without knowing if individual items are tagged with a last modified tag it's hard for me to say what conflicts would arise. That's why the actions you could do offline would have to be very limited. Perhaps a special chest that locks down in your house that holds items for the synchronization.

There would be a lot to think about and I don't have access to all the information on what information their database saves regarding individual items.

Perhaps they should invite me up to HQ, set me up with a little desk in a broom closet somewhere and I'll peruse the database and come up with some solid ideas?

My friends use my houses when I am not online. That is only ONE example. I don't think you can come up with a flawless plan here, I didn't just post random thoughts...I thought about what you offered and instantly came up with why it wouldn't work.

 

[Babble]

Uhm... why?
All that effort because the servers are offline for a few hours?

Way too much effort and exploitability for the returns.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Uhm... why?
All that effort because the servers are offline for a few hours?

Way too much effort and exploitability for the returns.

You forgot to mention "rarely".

 

[Lord Raven]

My friends use my houses when I am not online. That is only ONE example. I don't think you can come up with a flawless plan here, I didn't just post random thoughts...I thought about what you offered and instantly came up with why it wouldn't work.

I didn't think you were just posting random thoughts. There are a lot of problems that could pop up. And, true the servers don't go down that often but I was also thinking of folks that might be having local connection issues or that might travel a lot and not always have Internet access.

 

[Babble]

They would be better of setting up a 'freeshard' on their own computer and then play around.
That is an offline client.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

I didn't think you were just posting random thoughts. There are a lot of problems that could pop up. And, true the servers don't go down that often but I was also thinking of folks that might be having local connection issues or that might travel a lot and not always have Internet access.

Well I didn't mean to insinuate that you felt I was posting random thoughts, just saying the issues I posted about have no work around. But babble puts up a good point.

 

[Cogniac]

This idea would have horrific security flaws.

 

[Raptor85]

If all you want to do is test things, there's a project that actually started on and was hosted by stratics with the goal of being able to play uo offline, it was completed and it does work but I don't believe it can be named here anymore now that stratics is an official fansite. Should be easy enough to find though.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

This idea would have horrific security flaws.

Marking that as a : given / agreed

Case of: Offline with a revert =

 

[Thav12]

I think it is great. I can script all day and then go back on line...

 

[Cear Dallben Dragon]

You can play the offline demo that came with second age.

Or just play Ultima VI Online, check the signature.