Viking wrote:

Wow, if true would be awesome, the first superhero Offline game in more than a decade! Imagine the amazing mods would be with the Unity open technology. Please someone confirm that and it will be my favorite game instantly!

CoH was actually a "moddable" game from its very beginning. Yes you could only do client-side modding, but that was plenty enough to be able to change all sorts of audio and graphics effects including costume items. Obviously modding in CoH never became as huge as say it did for Skyrim or Second Life, but there were easily hundreds if not thousands of individual mods over the years. If CoT allows for the same degree of modding then it won't have to be playable offline just to be moddable if that's the main thing you're interested in.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Indirectly. The plan is to retain Unreal's ability to launch the client in server mode, which would allow people to host their own games, even if it is for just yourself. The limits of this have yet to be determined.

For what it's worth I wouldn't mind if CoT eventually had a playable "offline" mode. I don't think it needs to be a top launch-day priority, but maybe at some point it could happen. My job in real life routinely takes me (for weeks at a time) to places around the world that still literally have no Internet connectivity (or at least not good enough to seriously consider trying to play realtime MMOs). So in effect I might be one of the few future CoT players who could argue that I actually NEED an offline mode to be able to play on a fully regular basis. Even with that semi-legitimate need I still don't think its worth making it something that's necessary on Day One unless providing for it would be absolutely trivial on the Devs' part.

This is totally freekin awesome!!!
I used to make a lot of custom skins and characters for Freedom Force but I think most players (including myself) were never aware of CoH even being modable. I played it for years and, used some add ons (like some map thingy I can't remember the name of) but I was given the impression that doing anything to alter the game put you at serious risk of having your account deleted, if you were caught. Also I never found out how to open much less alter a Pigg file.

Lollerskatez wrote:

Personally, I would never use the offline option. I'm looking forward to a MMORPG. Not a Skyrim with super powers. But I don't mind having the OPTION to play in offline mode. It's something I would never play in but I know others would love to play offline and some players may even have to due to their internet.

The biggest advantage of the offline option is if the game closes down someday in the future, you and your friends can keep playing the game, unlike just about every other MMO.

Cinnder wrote:

I always assumed the offline option was a sort of "break glass" thing to be activated only in the case of a shutdown.
I don't know much about the technical management of an MMO, but wouldn't having people sometimes playing a live MMO offline cause synchronisation issues?

The way I would handle it would be that "local" characters would not play on the live game server. You could copy a character to your local vault to play offline while logged into live. If running a private server, you can either have a sever vault or allow people to play with local vault characters (Just like how Neverwinter Nights handled it).

TheMightyPaladin wrote:

This is totally freekin awesome!!!
I used to make a lot of custom skins and characters for Freedom Force but I think most players (including myself) were never aware of CoH even being modable. I played it for years and, used some add ons (like some map thingy I can't remember the name of) but I was given the impression that doing anything to alter the game put you at serious risk of having your account deleted, if you were caught. Also I never found out how to open much less alter a Pigg file.

Modding in CoH didn't actually involve "altering" the game's Pigg files or changing any code really. A number of people used to "Pigg dive" (hex editor type stuff) to look at the contents of those files to see how they worked and to check if there were new badges or other things being added to the game during beta testing, but even then those people never really played the game with altered code.

Basically CoH provided for a built-in capability to "override" default texture and audio files with replacement versions that would load up when you started your client on your machine. This is exactly how those famous (and openly accepted and praised by Paragon Studios BTW) vidiot map files you mentioned worked. As long as those modified map files were placed in the right directories they would be seen and used by the game instead of the hardwired default ones that existed unchanged in the Pigg files.

Now obviously if you tried to play the game with "altered" Pigg files that might have managed to have some kind of effect server-side that would've been a serious No-No that likely would have gotten you instantly perma-banned. But as long as you stuck to using the built-in overlays that only affected what you saw and heard on your client then the Devs were perfectly willing to look the other way.

For the record the Devs of CoH never directly talked about the overlay capability or officially explained how it worked. And they always heavily implied that they would never provide customer support if you somehow messed yourself up trying to use them. I think the idea behind this "don't ask, don't tell" policy was to keep it out of sight and mind of most players who probably would've gotten themselves into more trouble over it than it was worth. But for those brave folks who managed to figure out how to use them and for those clever folks who managed to figure out how to create them there were plenty of mods to be had.

This is the version of modding that I'm talking about and I remain curious to see if something like it will exist in CoT as well.

Lothic wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:
Cinnder wrote:
I always assumed the offline option was a sort of "break glass" thing to be activated only in the case of a shutdown.
I don't know much about the technical management of an MMO, but wouldn't having people sometimes playing a live MMO offline cause synchronisation issues?

The way I would handle it would be that "local" characters would not play on the live game server. You could copy a character to your local vault to play offline while logged into live. If running a private server, you can either have a sever vault or allow people to play with local vault characters (Just like how Neverwinter Nights handled it).

^^^^^^

Yep I would think the main concern would be to prevent any versions of local "offline" characters from being able to be "uploaded" to the online servers. This would prevent any possible problems with people figuring out how to exploit things in their local environments to give themselves unfair advantages online.

That is already set up. Server only trusts local data, be that the main server or your private.

Cinnder wrote:

Ah I see now. So you could play offline, but characters there are doomed to exist in this sort of shadow world that is forever separate from the "real" CoT world. Makes sense to me.

You make it all sound gloomy and sad but yes the easiest solution to the various problems this could casue would be to keep offline characters from being able to hop back onto the "official" online servers.

I can see having the offline capability provide several interesting opportunities. As was mentioned it could provide a degree of permanence for its players so we'd never have to worry about what would happen to our characters when/if CoT was itself shutdown. It would also allow players to basically have their own private "test servers" to experiment with things before they do them "for real" on the online servers. It would give people who have poor or intermittent Internet access the chance to play in some fashion. And the offline servers could even provide outlets for extreme modding or those players who'd want to openly roleplay "adult situations" with friends in ways that would be obviously inappropriate on the public online servers.

Lollerskatez wrote:

Now, would people be able to join your "offline" game? Would your offline game still be connected to a server kind of like how SimCity was? And if it's completely offline. Will there ever be a way to have friends join your offline game?

I think using the term "offline" in this context basically means playing completely off of the "official" game servers. So if you set up your own local CoT server you'll probably be able to support as many people as you could link into your machine via the Internet and/or LAN. By default this would mean you could play it as a single player game (on your own private "server") as well.

Izzy wrote:

While the main server is down, if the local server can be used to Invite another friend or two that are online.. that would work. :)
But if your upload speed is crap, they might lag allot. :/

Yeah you'd be limited to the number of players your particular hardware and/or Internet connection could support. And of course as a LAN party you wouldn't need to worry about Internet speeds.

I would think that having an "off-line" or dis-connected mode to play in would also make the creation of machinima a bit easier, as well. I suppose that has pros and cons, though.

rookslide wrote:

It would be really nice if it works as you all have described. Another nice feature would be the ability to sync a character to the local server. Sure it would have to be a one-way trip but when the servers are going down for maintenance in T-15, -10, -5 minutes and you have an hour to kill before heading to work sometimes you just really want to keep playing that character, even if you don't get credit for it on the official server.
Obsess much? Ok maybe just a little...
Plus, if the Official servers do schedule a permanent closure it would be a nice way to retain those characters you built online before they disappeared completely.

Doctor Tyche directly confirmed (earlier in this thread) that the "one-way" trip you describe for character syncing from the public servers to a local server would be a fundamental feature of all of this if the local server thing ever happens. It would practically be the only way the "keep your public server characters safe in case CoT ever shuts down" scenario mentioned earlier could actually work.

Cinnder wrote:

While I appreciate that there are times when people simply can't get online, some of the conversation about independent servers with multiple players makes me a bit concerned for CoT. After a shutdown in the future, of course, but while the game is still live? Don't we want to support the actual game and keep it alive through our subscriptions and/or purchases?

Yeah that's actually a good point. I personally don't care how people would want to play this game (either on the public servers or on their own local machines) but I'd still like there to be a reason for people to want to continue to financially support MWM for the good of the entire playerbase.

I suppose one compromise would be to not allow people to have their own local servers for say the first year or two of the game. That would basically ensure that MWM gets established before it allows some percentage of the playerbase to "splinter off" to do their own thing offline. The main advantage of this idea is that there would be no rush to get this working on launch day - they could take as long as necessary to make sure it's done right.

Another idea is to have plenty of updates and/or patches that you'd have to pay for to encourage people to stay "connected" to MWM even if they choose to play on their own. Maybe even make it so that certain new features would be free to use on the public servers but you'd have to pay nominal one-time fees to get those things unlocked on your local servers. Basically I'd have no problem making people who'd want to play "offline" have to pay an extra premium for that privilege and of course if at some point CoT had to shutdown permanently they could then send out the codes to unlock everything on local machines before the end.