Offline Play?

I kickstarter-backed PA for many reasons, but a major factor in my decision was the promise of offline play in a DRM-free distribution.

I love what PA is becoming. This game is the RTS I've always dreamed of, and I can see it only getting better from here.

But frankly, I'm troubled by the lack of offline play in the release build. Uber, can you please reassure me that offline play is still on it's way?

I'd love to see the option of use being able to run our own PA servers.

Yes, offline play is on the way. The problem is, it may not make it into the 1.0 release. Uber is still perfecting the server as I speak, but I don't know if the developers will perfect the server in time.

I have stated in multiple threads that always-online at launch will always lead to negative reception. If Uber chooses to delay the server until after launch, a storm of misery will befall both the company and players alike:

- Servers crash from high player volume. (Happened with SimCity)

- DDoS attacks cripple servers and lock out access for days, perhaps weeks. (Happened with Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin's Creed II)

- Players and critics write savagely critical reviews that permanently damage the game's reputation. (Every single game that is/was always-online at launch)

For now, lets cross our fingers and hope for the best.

This is not entirely true. People will not be as critical considering this is a mostly online game (See Titan fall always online yet no problems with it)

This game will feature offline mode, and as long as Uber says that it'll be coming soon (I suggest a large banner on the steam page/ingame saying that "Offline mode is coming soon" so players can't even hope to complain.)

Don't be so negative, it's not the end of the world.

I'm just worried about server disconnects and server lag. I know that this game is awesome and has massive potential to succeed.

EDIT: I should probably talk more about what's present rather than what's not present. I may have overreacted a little bit when writing my last post.

But nobody expected Titanfall to be offline now did they?

People will be critical regardless if there game was feature complete or not.

There will always be something to complain about, as so there will always be criticism.

Not sure if anybody saw that, but all advertisement about this feature as been removed from Uber's Website.
No more mention of Offline play, no more mention of 40 players games...

Will probably save them from a little bit of pain from new customers, but not from Backer's Wrath...

I saw the Uber Website, and there was no mention of offline mode like you said. Even the Steam store page for PA now says "*Internet Connection required."

Clever but dangerous move.
I would have more changed this to "Planned features" instead of removing completly every mentions of it.
Because now it is a great turnaround regarding the Kickstarter advertisement and the last years.

That would be a much better idea. Players could breathe easy knowing that offline mode will come soon.

Still, like you said, this move is dangerous and very, very risky. Not having offline mode at launch, even for one day, is bound to provoke savage and fiery criticism of the game.

A lot of the crashes are due to not disabling mods.

In the videos sub forum there is a sneak peek at PAX by Zaphodx who shows that Uber are using the local servers for their games. Thus, the local servers for us are VERY close. Matter of days or weeks I reckon. Hope this helps allay any fears you have.

They had to, for legal reasons. They can't advertise in retail with "offline play", and then not be able to provide it yet. This isn't early access any more, where even potential features may be listed under the promise of delivering eventually.

Doesn't change though that this feature is still on the TODO list.

They always did for internal use and testing. Doesn't mean though that the server is ready for release yet, as there are still some nasty bugs and stuff like modding API isn't fleshed out either.

No but he mentions in the video that it is close, so presumably he has talked to Uber

He has, but "soon" or "on the way" only means that is a matter of weeks. Who know whether 1, 10 or 100 weeks.

I would usually agree with that, but I dunno, it just FEELS close. Close close.

Who knows.

They might have made some progress while crunching for the past few weeks. They might have had other priorities. I'm still hearing about stuff which explicitly isn't modable on the server side yet, and how they are working on getting that stuff to be accessible from mods first.

Uber have always been able to create and run local servers - after all they wrote the software that currently runs from PlayFab, and which is running the build at PAX. To my understanding the biggest hinderance with releasing offline play into the wild is UI stuff.

Speaking to him earlier, Metabolical gave a long lost of things that need to be taken into consideration before people are able to connect to games run outside of PlayFab.