Offline Content?Follow

I am sorry. This is gonna sound really bad, but it has to be said.
GTFO!
Come on man, its an MMO. What were you thinkin?

Edited, Jul 6th 2009 8:24pm by AmsaimSutavarg

Unless they call the game brand something else, MMORPG is just that.

I'm sure there will be private servers made at later times, so if you want offline content, sign into IP 127.0.0.1 and play all night offline...

I have a perfect idea for offline content. It can be a mini rpg starring my pet chocobo. Just download it to my pocketstation for on the go fun. And it'll earn me items I can use in game.

I don't see why offline content shouldn't be possible. Especially if it was content that was specifically different from community based online stuff. Like crafting or fishing. these don't require a lot of interaction (although the can!), so there's no reason you couldn't do them off line. But why? Why do these things offline when they can easily be done online. I can't come up with a good reason, and there haven't been any posted here. But that doesn't mean that SE can't find interesting, compelling and fun reasons to make these and other activities available offline. Here's a few ideas:

-Player run shops. You can build, staff and run your own shop. This could be a sim type mini game where players shops ar available in the same way the auction house is now. Walk up to a door in the game, select the player run shop you want to enter and step inside. You can interact with npc shopkeepers, customers and other characters set by the shop owner player. Shop owner players can sell goods they've gathered, as well as goods won through purchasing contracts earned through playing the shop sim. Shop owner players don't have to be in-game to interact with the shop mini game. They can mostly play it, modify it and interact with it without logging into FFXIV. In this case the content isn't really offline, it's just that the mini game shop allows the player to interact without logging in with their character. Extend this idea to player run taverns, restaurants and houses!

-Training. Another mini game that lets characters face off against individual monsters using special equipment of their choosing. This game could serve a few different functions,including letting players test out new items, spells and combat techniques without the risk of death in game. But that's no big deal, right? Maybe the training mini game could also offer victory points to earn special prizes that could be brought into the main game. Cosmetic stuff would be best, I think. This would be a totally offline feature that would still link directly to the online game.

-Library. A special room that can be accessed both in and out of teh game, allowing character to wander through a vast library accessing fictional info about the game world, official info from SE about the game and maybe even a player created and maintained Wiki with game tips and info. This is less of a mini game and more of a virtual library that's accessible both in the game as well as from the quick start menu.

-Earned solo adventures. Rewards for missions/quests/whatever could take the form of fun offline solo missions designed for a single player. These would take place in small, contained areas and would focus on presenting the individual who had earned them with a challenging mini adventure. These could be repeated as often as you wanted, possibly allowing you to earn experience along the way. The benefit here is less about playing offline and more about having an awesome and fun little adventure just for you.

-Pet raising. Chocobo and pet raising would hopefully be part of the main game, but it would be fantastic to be able to monitor and influence my pets development without having to actually log in and run to a stable.

These are just ideas. There's a lot SE can do with out of game content.

Personally I always wanted to be able to play FFXI while I was on the move on a laptop or something and this is possible if you have a constant source of wifi, while thats not always possible and sometimes quite expensive, the only way around this would be to have an offline mode, but not for actual grinding. Maybe crafting like fishing and other such connected mini-games.

It's not a terrible idea but it would be tricky to impliment and manage since one: as people have already pointed out, it would be easy for those not so honest players to hack and cheat. And two: FFXI was always about consumables especially for crafting. It was the biggest money-sink ever for me. I could spead loads in a few minutes and then take days to get it back. Same was for fishing. Bait, Lures and unless you really enjoyed it or knew what you were doing, you would still loose money. The skill up system was slow and quite frankly unfair, especially when I kept loosing my Shrimp Lure.

Although I don't see it happening anytime soon, if it was just for mini-games like Fishing or even Gardening I would totally go for it.

While Phantasy Star does have that feature, there is one reason why it wouldn't work in FFXIV. Phantasy Star's information is stored player side so anyone that bought a PC copy and a PS3 copy would have to create two different characters. I know you said the concept is stupid I was just getting an explanation incase someone looks at it and goes "SEE TOLD YOU SO!"

I would like some offline content just for updates and temporary connection problems. It could transfer to your online character as long as it was basically consequential. i.e., ridiculously small amounts of gil, extremely common items.

Or just some features that transfer online but wouldn't really impact the game. For example, the character customization process could occur offline (just to play around with different character designs). Gear designs could be created offline and saved to the hard drive to be uploaded to the server later. If there's a card game (fingers crossed) maybe make it so that you can rearrange your deck offline. Watch unlocked CSs.

Basically anything that deals with cosmetics and not statistics won't really upset anyone.

Offline content would have to be, for reasons already mentioned, completely independent from the online content. I must say, though, that an offline version of any MMO would not only be nauseatingly boring, but also extremely eerie. Can you imagine walking into a large town (equivalent to Jeuno) and it being void of players? Not to mention that there wouldn't exactly be much to do. I guess it would be alright for obscure exploration, but that's about it.

That's when you play a different game or do something else.

You can play Tetra Master while waiting for the servers to come back up.

And I totally approve Tetra Master being offline content, with no relationship to the online game whatsoever.

Offline play is just a bad idea. It opens up too many holes to be exploited, when most of us would rather have the dev team focusing on the holes in online game that are being exploited.