Single player – MMO Fallout

[Community] Live Events? In My Single Player Games?

How do you feel about live events in single player games? I’m genuinely curious because I’m not quite sure how I feel about it myself.

I’ve been playing a lot of Far Cry 5 and Assassin’s Creed Origins lately, and both games employ a growing trend in Ubisoft titles. I am of course referring to live events in a single player game, of which I have had mostly positive reactions to.

It is my opinion that live events should be something that the developer runs at the start both to bring in new players and to keep your current base playing in the long term. For Far Cry 5 this works to both bases, since Far Cry doesn’t have a traditional RPG system so you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything from the start. The rewards are so far things that the average player wouldn’t miss if they didn’t own the game at the time, and Ubisoft may or may not rotate them back in at a later date.

Assassin’s Creed Origins on the other hand is going to demand that you be around level 40 or above in order to complete its live event quests, making it more of a late to end game activity. Thankfully leveling isn’t going to take a massive amount of time, and the events are confirmed to rotate so you’re never going to miss out on cosmetics because you didn’t buy the game fast enough, nor should you feel that the game is demanding you no-life your way to level 40 as fast as possible.

How do you feel about live events in single player games?

Shroud of the Avatar Community Wants Free Offline Access To Perks

What do you do when your game sells items for real money but also includes a separate offline mode that can’t reasonably be regulated by the developer? For Shroud of the Avatar, the folks at Portalarium figures that no matter what their stance on the issue, there is little doubt that hackers will figure out a way to nab those cash shop items for free. So why not do everyone a favor, since the only impact the player can have is on their own world, and give everyone access to exclusive items in offline mode?

The idea was polled, and so far the response has been in overwhelming agreement. 96.5% of the voting community, approximately 860 votes as of this publishing, agree that it is OK for all add on and pledge rewards to be available in offline mode. This obviously comes with a caveat that items will need to be crafted, with the biggest and best stuff becoming end-game content, and that numerous items will have no real effect in offline mode like Fyndoro’s Tablet, an item that is used to find other players.

Community response to the idea has been overwhelmingly positive, especially from those who had invested serious money into the game:

I have 5k in and my greatest concern is someone will feel I bought a advantage over them. That’s not what I want. I like the nick nacks, their cool, but I don’t want anyone to feel its pay to play outside of the basic costs for the game.

And not all of the ‘no’ votes were against the idea entirely, with many citing the extra development time required to turn the items into craftables and figure out balancing.

I don’t really care either way, but voted NO because I do not want the developers wasting any time on making the items craftable. Just put them all on a special vendor and be done with it please.

If you add up all the hats, cloaks, costumes, weapons, armor, prosperity items etc. you would probably have at least 100 new items, each one requiring a unique recipe. How many unique recipes for hats alone are needed? Can it even be done without adding new ingredients?

How do you feel about pledge items, considering they can run a pretty penny, being available to players for free in offline mode? Let us know in the comments below.

(Source: Shroud of the Avatar)

Ex-Warhammer Dev Asks For Singleplayer Client

Warhammer Online may be offline forever, but its world may not be lost to us forever. Andrew Meggs, tech guy at City State Entertainment and ex-engineer at Mythic Entertainment, took to his blog to explain that while players may not be able to enjoy Warhammer Online as it was, it is within Mythic’s capabilities to at least let them roam around the world. As it turns out, most MMOs have the capability of running in singleplayer mode. There are no quests, no NPCs, no other players, but the point is that players could see the world that Mythic put so much effort into creating.

This won’t compete with any current or future game, because it’s not a game anymore. But it’s a place for the die-hard fans to visit by themselves, to reminisce and remember the times they had there with others. It’s something the hundreds of developers who worked on it will still be able to run for their kids someday. It’s a piece of history for Professors of Game Studies in 2113 to better understand what MMORPGs looked like before the neural implants.

Would you like to see a Warhammer Online virtual museum?

(Source: Shinytoys)