What do we need servers for? Let's have an off line mode.

vometia · August 2018

Davor wrote: »

I am old. Almost 50 years old. Technology has passed me by. I am basically a hermit. I don't go out. I only have 2 friends. I don't even socialize online. So I basically live under a rock. So I am trying to get out of my rock and learn now. Never to old to learn.

So that said, in terms I can understand is a MMO is basically a single player game.

Youngster.

I know what you mean, though: I mean even having played video games on and off since the '70s and working in IT since the '80s, for example RPGs completely passed me by until Oblivion was released. In hindsight perhaps it's because I associated them with the pen-and-paper types when I was at college which held no interest for me, considering even playing cards meant the sort of "multi-user game" that didn't interest me. But the upshot is that I ended up with many years of slightly unfulfilling platformers and shooters and remained blissfully unaware of what would turn out to be my natural home.

MMOs aren't really the latter, and a brief foray into WoW wasn't very educational as I felt sufficiently harassed within the first hour that I never went back. TOR showed me that it was essentially a single-player game with some multiplayer elements, that I could mostly avoid if I chose to do so, as is ESO. I'm still ambivalent about the slight intrusiveness of the latter part in particular but that's where I am right now.

TheValar85 wrote: »

if you doubt my words i dont realy care i've been in this busniness for 15+ year now and i know and they also know how things works and yes they can do it. they just simply wont do it. and thats all. and the game can survive if the devs wants to make sure to survive even the single player and online aspect of the game.

Yeah, I suspected that it was much more likely to be a political decision than a technical one as it would've been quite possible, at least if it was designed that way from the outset (though as previously mentioned, if it wasn't it could require excessive effort to get a solo server into a fit state for release). I guess there are various reasons that could be used to justify that decision, as much as I might not like it: a purely SP version may sell additional copies but will never generate the monthly ESO+ income; and whenever TES6 eventually hits the shelves, they could rationalise that they now have the awkward situation where they're potentially competing with themselves.

DanteYoda · August 2018

The amount of population they'd lose over night if it happened....

Funny as.

Davor wrote: »

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

My question is, why can't people just accept the fact this is a MMO and stop asking for your hand to be held in the matters of social interaction?

Awesome post. I like to thank you very much for this.

Thing is, how is having an off line mode prevent you from any of what you have said? For comments like "accept" or "move to a game that has it" is just the same result in having an off line mode. People will not be there. So if people will not be there it would make your on line experience better since you will have more server resources dedicated for your gaming experience unlike people like me who play the game solo. I am not telling anyone how to play. Why would other people tell me how to play? All I did was ask a question. All I did was offer a suggestion. Is that so bad? After all we are on a forum to discuss things.

I accept that this game is an MMO. Thing is, even after reading 4 pages here, I understand a bit better of what a MMO is. I still don't know 100% because I am still thinking it's something different. So let me see if I get this correct.

I am old. Almost 50 years old. Technology has passed me by. I am basically a hermit. I don't go out. I only have 2 friends. I don't even socialize online. So I basically live under a rock. So I am trying to get out of my rock and learn now. Never to old to learn.

So that said, in terms I can understand is a MMO is basically a single player game. I always though a MMO was something totally different that you can only do with other people. Since I thought MMO was always dealing with other people and there was no NPCs I never tired any of them out. I did try Guild Wars 1 a bit. It was mostly single player but a bit of human interaction. Since I was never good at keyboard and mouse I quit it.

So now playing ESO. To me it seems it's a single player game but just like GW1 it has some human interaction. So is this how all MMO games work? Have I been missing all these MMOs games for over 20 years because I didn't know what a MMO really was? So a MMO is a single player game that can be played with others if you so choose. It's not mandatory but you still need to play online. I think I finally get it. I understand and I can accept it.

That's 2 friends more than i have.. and i'm only 45, not in a basement though more of a bedroom etc..

idk · August 2018

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

TheValar85 wrote: »

well let me inform you guys those who say it is not posible to allow offline mode for this thats a huge lie.
.

I never seen a full blown MMO with a single player/offline mode.

This is it. It would not make sense to have an offline mode in an MMORPG.

The O stands for online. That is a requirement for the genre.

Heka Cain · August 2018

I read your first line only and you are quite correct; you know very little about MMO's!

Azuramoonstar · August 2018

vometia wrote: »

Davor wrote: »

I am old. Almost 50 years old. Technology has passed me by. I am basically a hermit. I don't go out. I only have 2 friends. I don't even socialize online. So I basically live under a rock. So I am trying to get out of my rock and learn now. Never to old to learn.

So that said, in terms I can understand is a MMO is basically a single player game.

Youngster. I know what you mean, though: I mean even having played video games on and off since the '70s and working in IT since the '80s, for example RPGs completely passed me by until Oblivion was released. In hindsight perhaps it's because I associated them with the pen-and-paper types when I was at college which held no interest for me, considering even playing cards meant the sort of "multi-user game" that didn't interest me. But the upshot is that I ended up with many years of slightly unfulfilling platformers and shooters and remained blissfully unaware of what would turn out to be my natural home.
.

i can sympathize with the WoW harassment. When i first tried it after breaking up with my ex. i made a rp character to test out rp on a server only for 5 ppl to start calling me a ***. When i asked how to report it, i was bullied being called thin skinned, only to get a 72 hour temp ban for telling people what i was called, and i jut simply wish to report it. played 5 min never played till a year after and only got to 46.

vometia · August 2018

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

i can sympathize with the WoW harassment. When i first tried it after breaking up with my ex. i made a rp character to test out rp on a server only for 5 ppl to start calling me a ***. When i asked how to report it, i was bullied being called thin skinned, only to get a 72 hour temp ban for telling people what i was called, and i jut simply wish to report it. played 5 min never played till a year after and only got to 46.

If I'm honest it wasn't anything like that, it was just a case of being really pestered to join people's guilds and stuff: I wasn't even given a chance to figure out the most basic stuff without someone coming along, "helping" me in the training area and then "now you owe me, you must join me". No, go away, stop harassing me when I don't even have a clue what I'm doing! I'm not even sure what was the point since I clearly had no idea what I was doing, unless cannon-fodder is a thing.

Whatever I think of subsequent games like TOR and ESO, at least people for the most part leave you to get on with it or help out without insisting you're forever in their debt.

Your experience sounds way more bothersome than mine which was really just me ending up too exasperated to even try any longer. I think being handled so clumsily makes matters worse. Maybe I've been lucky or maybe it's because I stay away from the actually MP bits of ESO but in spite of my occasional griping about random stuff it seems a lot less toxic than that.

Then again, it's early morning here, the time of day when I'm generally in a good mood: my tone may be entirely different had I written this late afternoon when I've run out of steam.

starkerealm · August 2018

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

TheValar85 wrote: »

well let me inform you guys those who say it is not posible to allow offline mode for this thats a huge lie.
.

care to point out an example of this? as I never seen a full blown MMO with a single player/offline mode.

i' ve seen single player games with optional multiplayer. And i've seen orpg which are not full blown mmo.

I have. Hellgate: London was an MMO with an offline fork. It sank the studio within six months of launch. Post mortems from the development leads cite developing and maintaining two separate code bases as one of the leading factors that lead to the game's demise.

It's also a real shame, because HG:L was 5 to 8 years ahead of its time in some respects.

Minyassa · August 2018

Ydrisselle wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

What I'd like even better would be to host our own private servers, like the original NWN had, so you could invite your friends and play with just the people you want to play with. Maybe just a MORPG, get rid of the massively part. Letting us play without the griefers and bad sports and jerks and cheaters and bots and trolls would make it a lot better experience. I'd pay an extra sub fee for that.

That would be problematic because it would give the server code in the hands of the cheaters. They could do much better hacks and cheats based on that server code. You wouldn't get less cheaters - you would get much, much more.

Well....I wouldn't. I don't have any friends who are cheaters. If there was a version of this game that I could play hosted on a small server with just my friends, do you think I would *ever* go into the MMO version again?

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

(...)If we only surround ourselves with people who share our opinion, we don't mature in our social interaction. We become stagnate, and see what we see lately with people. In that if we meet someone who don't agree with our opinion, we consider them toxic people. I find this to be a flawed concept, and just hurts us a community.(...)

You are forgetting that for many of us, MMOs are not the sum of our time spent surrounded by people. There's work and all of the travel and interpersonal, phone and text contact that goes with it. There's errands. There's home maintenance and repairs, installations, car maintenance and repairs, trips, vacations, medical upkeep and a myriad other daily things that many of us do that puts us into contact with scores of strangers of all different sorts both in environments that we have some control over (like our homes) and environments in which we have no control whatsoever. These are environments in which we have to conform to societal expectations of behavior because there are real consequences for antisocial behavior, and we live with that and learn to navigate it and interact on a normal standing with other humans in ways that give us life experience.

Interacting with some brat in an MMO that's reveling in the fact that there are no consequences to the absolute worst behavior he or she can drum up for shock value or attention is not a maturing interaction after the first couple of times you encounter it. Sure, we can learn from having to ignore and then get technical help in further ignoring people for whom there is literally no point in encountering except to get away from that encounter as quickly as possible. And after we learn how to click Ignore, what is to be gained from doing that, during our leisure time sitting in front of a computer by ourselves, that has any value in life experience?

Shaping your life to exclude behavior that brings no value or positivity to your life is not stagnation. It is discernment. The people that act like complete horses' patoots in the game are not teaching valuable life lessons. They are wasting our time. Some people may feel that the socialization they get from the rest of the game is worth wading through that crap, but for some of us, we get plenty of valuable human interaction through the lives we lead the other 20 hours of the day, and we do not have so much play time to waste that we are willing to share it with worthless trolls.

dodgehopper_ESO · August 2018

I don't know why people care if there was a solitary version of the game. It would have to be unlinked from the megaservers but that isn't so horrible. I think from the perspective of other dead MMO's like City of Heroes it would be nice for the sake of nostalgia alone to be able to hop on those games. Co-op mode wouldn't be bad either.

The big question is whether such a thing would be worth it to the game developers. Maybe, but I presume they would sell it as a separate product. (Kind of like HD/3d Skyrim).

Azuramoonstar · August 2018

Minyassa wrote: »

Ydrisselle wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

What I'd like even better would be to host our own private servers, like the original NWN had, so you could invite your friends and play with just the people you want to play with. Maybe just a MORPG, get rid of the massively part. Letting us play without the griefers and bad sports and jerks and cheaters and bots and trolls would make it a lot better experience. I'd pay an extra sub fee for that.

That would be problematic because it would give the server code in the hands of the cheaters. They could do much better hacks and cheats based on that server code. You wouldn't get less cheaters - you would get much, much more.

Well....I wouldn't. I don't have any friends who are cheaters. If there was a version of this game that I could play hosted on a small server with just my friends, do you think I would *ever* go into the MMO version again?

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

(...)If we only surround ourselves with people who share our opinion, we don't mature in our social interaction. We become stagnate, and see what we see lately with people. In that if we meet someone who don't agree with our opinion, we consider them toxic people. I find this to be a flawed concept, and just hurts us a community.(...)

You are forgetting that for many of us, MMOs are not the sum of our time spent surrounded by people. There's work and all of the travel and interpersonal, phone and text contact that goes with it. There's errands. There's home maintenance and repairs, installations, car maintenance and repairs, trips, vacations, medical upkeep and a myriad other daily things that many of us do that puts us into contact with scores of strangers of all different sorts both in environments that we have some control over (like our homes) and environments in which we have no control whatsoever. These are environments in which we have to conform to societal expectations of behavior because there are real consequences for antisocial behavior, and we live with that and learn to navigate it and interact on a normal standing with other humans in ways that give us life experience.

Interacting with some brat in an MMO that's reveling in the fact that there are no consequences to the absolute worst behavior he or she can drum up for shock value or attention is not a maturing interaction after the first couple of times you encounter it. Sure, we can learn from having to ignore and then get technical help in further ignoring people for whom there is literally no point in encountering except to get away from that encounter as quickly as possible. And after we learn how to click Ignore, what is to be gained from doing that, during our leisure time sitting in front of a computer by ourselves, that has any value in life experience?

Shaping your life to exclude behavior that brings no value or positivity to your life is not stagnation. It is discernment. The people that act like complete horses' patoots in the game are not teaching valuable life lessons. They are wasting our time. Some people may feel that the socialization they get from the rest of the game is worth wading through that crap, but for some of us, we get plenty of valuable human interaction through the lives we lead the other 20 hours of the day, and we do not have so much play time to waste that we are willing to share it with worthless trolls.

I met dozens of ppl in ff11 that were 25-40 years old, with full time jobs, families, homes etc. They played 5 hours a day, 7 hours on weekends with little to no issue with being social, running guilds, helping others. Whats your excuse. You call people brats, yet act like one yourself.

Isn't that a bit hypocritical? Can the me me me pretentious holier then thou talk. Ff11 had one of the better communities in mmo because people were humbled with their experiences. They left irl, in irl. Hate to break it to ya, but once you get on an mmo your time is not just your time. Only a bratty person would think it.

You can meet great people if you stop having a foul pretentious attitude.

My bf works 12 hours a day working at a chem lab as a qa. He barely has time to spend with me, let alone an mmo. Yet he enjoys them and helps people. He shrugs off trolls. He works, and helps take care of my needs with my disabilities. So please, the "i have a real life" argument holds no water.

If you have such a real life, why waste it on a video game forums?

KraziJoe · August 2018

You have offline mode, it's called Skyrim.

Catsmoke14 · August 2018

I skimmed the posts. Did no one mention SWGEMU? Or the even older UO emulators like "greyworld"? (called RunUO now I think)

I can tell you for sure that for UO, a single player server and client (on same machine) could be supported on some pretty crude hardware.

Like computer museum quality old.

Of course UO is pretty crude.

RavenSworn · August 2018

"I'm in a bus with everyone else but why can't this bus be more like a car? Why must all these people ride on it as well? See, there's other cars and trucks as well? Why can't this bus be more like them?"

Why would you take a bus (mmorpg) when there's cars (single player rpg) or trucks (orpg) around, and then asking for the bus to

Are they similar? Sure they are, they have windows, they have doors, safely bags in them, they have wheels, they have rims, steering wheels... But they are built differently, with different intentions.

/shrug. You can always play pts op, but even then, there will be, always, that chance of another player in that same world.

Davor · August 2018

KraziJoe wrote: »

You have offline mode, it's called Skyrim.

Oh another one. And your point is? No serious. How does that have to do with the discussion? Give examples. Give reasons. Just saying so doesn't make you correct at all.

Let's go one better. It's called Witcher 3. Or any other non Zenimax/Bethesda game. So how will this make Zenimax money? My idea would maybe be more people would play. Even if it's an off line mode people would still pay the ESO+ for the bonuses they get. So more people playing more money for Zenimax.

Add to the discussion, please. Don't be lib about it at all. Adds nothing.

VaranisArano · August 2018

Davor wrote: »

KraziJoe wrote: »

You have offline mode, it's called Skyrim.

Oh another one. And your point is? No serious. How does that have to do with the discussion? Give examples. Give reasons. Just saying so doesn't make you correct at all.

Let's go one better. It's called Witcher 3. Or any other non Zenimax/Bethesda game. So how will this make Zenimax money? My idea would maybe be more people would play. Even if it's an off line mode people would still pay the ESO+ for the bonuses they get. So more people playing more money for Zenimax.

Add to the discussion, please. Don't be lib about it at all. Adds nothing.

I guess here's my question. How does making an offline mode make ZOS more money than the current online mode?

First, is there some vast untapped pool of players who would totally play ESO if only it were offline who will never buy the game as long as it's online? I can't be sure, but I'd guess the answer is no. There's probably a fair number of players who would, I don't doubt that, but I don't think its a vast uptapped market that would make ZOS put in the money it would take to adapt this game for single-player offline modes. Remember, that takes things like making any game memory stored on the servers now be stored on your computer, so even leaving aside gameplay adjustments, the game would take a lot of changes in its coding. All those adjustments cost money. Also Support for the new game mode - that costs money. Would ZOS make enough in sales of the offline mode to warrant making the adjustments to the game to create the offline mode in the first place?

Second, ZOS still has to use the servers for the online mode. But if people move to the offline mode, that's less people using the current servers, becoming much less cost-efficient. Sure, ZOS could adjust things to better support those fewer online players and the players would be happy, but adjustments like that cost money, money that has to be made up from the sales of the offline version. Cutting back probably won't help a whole lot, since they've got sunk costs into their current infrastructure to meet current demand.

Third, all new content now has to be designed for online and offline modes. That's extra design time with the coding, again, costs money. Furthermore, new DLC has to appeal to both offline and online modes, so end-game content like trials and dungeons are much less important in the offline mode and won't sell as well.

Fourth, consider the current revenue stream of the game. Buying the game, ESO+ subscriptions, Crown Store sales, and Crown Crates. Now, ZOS could possibly, possibly adapt the ESO+ subscription for an offline mode. But the Crown Store and Crown Crates? Probably not. Just because that really has to be handled by the company servers. There's no way you want your offline players being able to mess with the revenue stuff, so none of that can be stored client side. So that's a chunk of revenue, ongoing revenue, gone with every player on offline mode. Now, sure, ZOS could probably make packs of these crown store items for offline players to buy from Steam or the website and get their revenue that way. Surem they probably could, but that's duplicating effort they already have made in the online version, and that duplication of effort...cost money.

Its not a matter of "Zos, you could totally make money off of me and any player who wants an offline-only mode of ESO, if only you just made one." That's a very player-centered view of the matter.

From ZOS' point of view, its a matter of profit margins. "Will we make more money focusing solely on the online version of the game or would we make enough profit across our whole market by offering an additional offline version, with all the costs associated with that?"

I can't say for sure, not having ZOS' budget in front of me nor being able to accurately gauge the costs of some of the steps I listed above. However, I strongly suspect that ZOS would continue to make more profit by continuing to focus solely on their online version of the game.

If you want an offline mode, you have to convince ZOS that sales from that offline mode will be a substantial enough profit margin to justify completely adjusting the base game's gameplay and data storage, continuing to adjust that in all future DLC, maintaining Support for a new version of the game, giving up or having to add a second way to buy ESO+ Subscriptions, Crown Store items, and Crown Crates, while still maintaining the current online mode of the game for players who want the ESO MMORPG experience they bought.

TLDR: Unless I'm dramatically wrong about the profit potential and the costs of creating and maintaining an offline and online version of ESO at the same time, I'm pretty sure that that ZOS's profit margin would prefer you to play Skyrim for your single-player RPG fix.

Sergykid · August 2018

the game can be single player very well. Most vet dungeons can be soloed, even trials if u have few hours to spare. All professions can be made alone. All items except vet trials (maybe) can be obtained alone.

FearlessOne_2014 · August 2018

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

Offline mode would cause rampant cheating.

That's already happening now. And all ZOS does is sweep the issue under the rug.

Watch two dudes tank and insta-wipe a group of 10 players. Without losing any health. There would be no difference.

idk · August 2018

starkerealm wrote: »

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

TheValar85 wrote: »

well let me inform you guys those who say it is not posible to allow offline mode for this thats a huge lie.
.

care to point out an example of this? as I never seen a full blown MMO with a single player/offline mode.

i' ve seen single player games with optional multiplayer. And i've seen orpg which are not full blown mmo.

I have. Hellgate: London was an MMO with an offline fork. It sank the studio within six months of launch. Post mortems from the development leads cite developing and maintaining two separate code bases as one of the leading factors that lead to the game's demise.

It's also a real shame, because HG:L was 5 to 8 years ahead of its time in some respects.

Yes, it would take far to much to consider both aspects.

Further, an offline mode would me a trusted client design. A brief history lesson of just ESO for those that are interested. ESO very much had a trusted client. That opened the door to all sorts of exploits using cheat engines that would convince the client the player had enough ult or resources when in fact it was no the case.

Move that to a situation where a player was not even connected to the server then the exploits would increase significantly.

In other words, ESO will not have an offline mode. No MMORPG worth it's salt will have an offline mode if they have decent management.

Peekachu99 · August 2018

Um, the cheating would be out of control. You’d see level one—NOT CP, BUT LEVEL—running around in VMoL, VAS skins with every crow store mount unlocked in the game. Offline or heavily client side game NEVER work for these reasons.

Malacthulhu · August 2018

If anything, an offline version would just be a stand alone game meaning zeni would have a licencing issue. Bethesda does the stand alone games so better off asking them. Second thing if anything, I would rather see an inventory, guild store banking writ app over this.

Ydrisselle · August 2018

starkerealm wrote: »

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

TheValar85 wrote: »

well let me inform you guys those who say it is not posible to allow offline mode for this thats a huge lie.
.

care to point out an example of this? as I never seen a full blown MMO with a single player/offline mode.

i' ve seen single player games with optional multiplayer. And i've seen orpg which are not full blown mmo.

I have. Hellgate: London was an MMO with an offline fork. It sank the studio within six months of launch. Post mortems from the development leads cite developing and maintaining two separate code bases as one of the leading factors that lead to the game's demise.

It's also a real shame, because HG:L was 5 to 8 years ahead of its time in some respects.

I played Hellgate, I even still have it somewhere. It was a mess for many different things. I think it was not the game that killed the studio, it was the leading of the studio itself.

starlizard70ub17_ESO · August 2018

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Smitch_59 wrote: »

A better solution would be for Bethesda to make a new single-player Elder Scrolls game, sometime within my remaining lifetime.

Yeah. That's starting to concern me, since I'm in my early 70s. Please, let it show up in the next couple of years - and don't make it VR....

I'm 59 and I was wondering if I'd be alive and able to play when TES IV finally comes out. I'm guessing I'll be 63 or 64 when it happens. We just need to hang in there to stay in the game.

AhPook_Is_Here · August 2018

Not that I'd care for it or use it, but i think it would be fine as long as you couldn't bring a character that had been in off-line mode back into the online game ever. That would cover all the cheating concerns, and allow mod makers to do more interesting things with a more open api

Leogon · August 2018

We need servers 'cuz it's an MMO but I would love to have a SP/Co-op(private server) version of ESO when they decide to shut down the servers.

Davor · August 2018

RavenSworn wrote: »

"I'm in a bus with everyone else but why can't this bus be more like a car? Why must all these people ride on it as well? See, there's other cars and trucks as well? Why can't this bus be more like them?"

Why would you take a bus (mmorpg) when there's cars (single player rpg) or trucks (orpg) around, and then asking for the bus to

Are they similar? Sure they are, they have windows, they have doors, safely bags in them, they have wheels, they have rims, steering wheels... But they are built differently, with different intentions.

/shrug. You can always play pts op, but even then, there will be, always, that chance of another player in that same world.

And if more people drive a car, you would have MORE room on the bus. So it would BENIFIT you if we did.

Thank you for proving my point.

vometia · August 2018

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Smitch_59 wrote: »

A better solution would be for Bethesda to make a new single-player Elder Scrolls game, sometime within my remaining lifetime.

Yeah. That's starting to concern me, since I'm in my early 70s. Please, let it show up in the next couple of years - and don't make it VR....

I'm 59 and I was wondering if I'd be alive and able to play when TES IV finally comes out. I'm guessing I'll be 63 or 64 when it happens. We just need to hang in there to stay in the game.

I had a heart attack about a fortnight before Skyrim's release. I'm not sure it was worth recovering for.

Davor · August 2018

VaranisArano wrote: »

Davor wrote: »

KraziJoe wrote: »

You have offline mode, it's called Skyrim.

Oh another one. And your point is? No serious. How does that have to do with the discussion? Give examples. Give reasons. Just saying so doesn't make you correct at all.

Let's go one better. It's called Witcher 3. Or any other non Zenimax/Bethesda game. So how will this make Zenimax money? My idea would maybe be more people would play. Even if it's an off line mode people would still pay the ESO+ for the bonuses they get. So more people playing more money for Zenimax.

Add to the discussion, please. Don't be lib about it at all. Adds nothing.

I guess here's my question. How does making an offline mode make ZOS more money than the current online mode?

Great post, and great question. Maybe I just got up with the "attacks" to prove me wrong for having an opinion/sugestion, I became a bit defensive with no proof at some of the people who had no proof either.

First, is there some vast untapped pool of players who would totally play ESO if only it were offline who will never buy the game as long as it's online? I can't be sure, but I'd guess the answer is no. There's probably a fair number of players who would, I don't doubt that, but I don't think its a vast uptapped market that would make ZOS put in the money it would take to adapt this game for single-player offline modes. Remember, that takes things like making any game memory stored on the servers now be stored on your computer, so even leaving aside gameplay adjustments, the game would take a lot of changes in its coding. All those adjustments cost money. Also Support for the new game mode - that costs money. Would ZOS make enough in sales of the offline mode to warrant making the adjustments to the game to create the offline mode in the first place?

You are correct, I can't really debate this. My guessing was that a lot of people have left ESO because of PvP lag and instability. So my thinking was if lots of people who play PvE or single player then there would be more resources for people playing PvP and since those zones are smaller, it would bring back lots of people to play again on line. Now it should be playable for them.

Second, ZOS still has to use the servers for the online mode. But if people move to the offline mode, that's less people using the current servers, becoming much less cost-efficient. Sure, ZOS could adjust things to better support those fewer online players and the players would be happy, but adjustments like that cost money, money that has to be made up from the sales of the offline version. Cutting back probably won't help a whole lot, since they've got sunk costs into their current infrastructure to meet current demand.

I don't understand here. How can it be less cost efficient? People are playing the game on their own computer, so Zenimax wouldn't have to allocate resources for them to play. I can be perfectly wrong here, but why would Zenimax have to "adjust things" to better support less people? Isn't having more people online causing a lot of issues people crashing, and lagging and what not? So again my rational is less people would be better.

Third, all new content now has to be designed for online and offline modes. That's extra design time with the coding, again, costs money. Furthermore, new DLC has to appeal to both offline and online modes, so end-game content like trials and dungeons are much less important in the offline mode and won't sell as well.

I am not saying you are wrong, it's just I don't understand again. Why would Zenimax need to make a design for on line and off line? Everything is programmed for it to be online right now correct? I am playing it as I would have if it was off line. It just needs to be programmed once. I don't see why it would need to be done twice.

Fourth, consider the current revenue stream of the game. Buying the game, ESO+ subscriptions, Crown Store sales, and Crown Crates. Now, ZOS could possibly, possibly adapt the ESO+ subscription for an offline mode. But the Crown Store and Crown Crates? Probably not. Just because that really has to be handled by the company servers. There's no way you want your offline players being able to mess with the revenue stuff, so none of that can be stored client side. So that's a chunk of revenue, ongoing revenue, gone with every player on offline mode. Now, sure, ZOS could probably make packs of these crown store items for offline players to buy from Steam or the website and get their revenue that way. Surem they probably could, but that's duplicating effort they already have made in the online version, and that duplication of effort...cost money.

Good point there. As for effort costing money, it takes money to make money. Since the assets are already done for online, I am sure there is not much effort to make it into single player. After all Bethesda Game studios shouldn't be scrapped then. After all it takes time and effort to make an The Elder Scrolls game, so logic would say that Zenimax would save more money by scrapping Bethesda and just make everything like ESO then. After all if a "house" in ESO can cost over $100 I am sure that takes so much less work than a TES game in man power, time, hydro etc.

So while you are correct there, I would also say it's a moot point since Bethesda should be shut down then. Money to effort spent is totally in ESO favour and the effort shouldn't be made into Fallout 5 or TES VI, or Starfield (sorry if I got the name wrong) shouldn't be made then.

Its not a matter of "Zos, you could totally make money off of me and any player who wants an offline-only mode of ESO, if only you just made one." That's a very player-centered view of the matter.

So true. I can't really concede there. I guess what will need to happen is like what happened with Games Workshop then. Thousands of us say that and actually vote with our wallet.

From ZOS' point of view, its a matter of profit margins. "Will we make more money focusing solely on the online version of the game or would we make enough profit across our whole market by offering an additional offline version, with all the costs associated with that?"

Again, scrap Bethesda then.

I can't say for sure, not having ZOS' budget in front of me nor being able to accurately gauge the costs of some of the steps I listed above. However, I strongly suspect that ZOS would continue to make more profit by continuing to focus solely on their online version of the game.

I can't argue with you here.

If you want an offline mode, you have to convince ZOS that sales from that offline mode will be a substantial enough profit margin to justify completely adjusting the base game's gameplay and data storage, continuing to adjust that in all future DLC, maintaining Support for a new version of the game, giving up or having to add a second way to buy ESO+ Subscriptions, Crown Store items, and Crown Crates, while still maintaining the current online mode of the game for players who want the ESO MMORPG experience they bought.

All I can really do is just vote with my wallet. Being old school I also like to explain why. In most cases it's a moot point. I keep referring to Games Workshop a lot. Zenimax is making the same mistakes as they use to. While GW still made profits it was only about 4 or so million a year. Now they are making double if not more now because of the changes made. While I don't have proof, it would be nice to hear from Zenimax. Their silence is what drives me crazy.

TLDR: Unless I'm dramatically wrong about the profit potential and the costs of creating and maintaining an offline and online version of ESO at the same time, I'm pretty sure that that ZOS's profit margin would prefer you to play Skyrim for your single-player RPG fix.

You have made great points. It was nice debating with you. Thank you for making it civil and treating me with respect. While we may not agree on some issues, I have see where some of my opinons are in error. I am not here to change your mind and loving the debate.

Davor

VaranisArano · August 2018

Hey, its been a pretty good discussion so far, I think! Let me go back and clarify some parts of this.

Davor wrote: »

I don't understand here. How can it be less cost efficient? People are playing the game on their own computer, so Zenimax wouldn't have to allocate resources for them to play. I can be perfectly wrong here, but why would Zenimax have to "adjust things" to better support less people? Isn't having more people online causing a lot of issues people crashing, and lagging and what not? So again my rational is less people would be better.

So, right now, ZOS has X amount of system stuff like servers and hardware and all that stuff to keep the game running for Y amount of players, right? So it seems like a really simple thing to have X-Z = Y-Z, where Z is the number of players that leave for the offline no-server-support-needed game.

Except its probably not that simple. I can't speak exactly for ZOS' set up of their system hardware, of course, so some of this is rather hypothetical. Currently ZOS has X amount of system stuff to keep the game running for Y amount of players. If a large amount of players leave, its not so simple to reconfigure the system for the lesser amount of players. Basically, the game takes a certain amount of base system stuff just to keep it running at all. On top of that, it takes a certain amount of players before the costs of all of that system stuff is cost-effective on a per-player basis.

So right off the bat, if ESO loses a large number of players to an offline mode, their per-player cost of running the game online just shot up. Less players online = higher per player cost of running the online game. If that per-player cost gets too high and is no longer cost-effective, ZOS has just torpedoed the online version of the game. That's a big incentive to not lose players to an offline version of the game.

Now, ZOS could go for the old "work smarter, not harder" adage, and reconfigure their system to use that old system stuff that was supporting X number of players to now support the remaining X-Z players who stayed on the online version. But that doesn't happen for free. ZOS' developers have to do that reconfiguring and that requires paying people to readjust the system stuff so that it works better for less people. That costs money, money that ZOS currently doesn't have to pay because there's no need for them to do so. (This is, incidentally, why most players suspect ZOS isn't making needed system adjustments now to better support the current amount of players - because it costs money to do so.)

Basically, maintaining ESO as it is costs money. Changing how ESO works, even for less players, costs money. Creating an offline version of the game that sucks large enough amounts of players from the online version to make a difference enough that ZOS can change the system stuff to better support less players means that A. ZOS has spend money to change the system for the online game or else eat the cost of using more hardware than needed or not using the hardware they already bought and B. Costs of running the game are higher on a per/player basis, given that there's a certain startup level of stuff you have to have in order to keep the game running in the first place.

So in summary, having a large amount of players move to an offline version and adjusting the system to better serve lesser amounts of players would cost ZOS money. They have to maintain a certain amount of cost just to keep the online game running at current levels. Reconfiguring the system to better serve lesser amounts of players might lower that ongoing cost but certainly would cost money while they figured out how to set it up. And ZOS has to keep the per-player cost of running the game as low as possible so they can keep making as much profit as they want. Less players online = higher per-player cost.

Side note; There's an interesting side note to all of this in playing attention to the game since the last time ZOS significantly downsized their system right around One Tamriel, and the changes that made in how ESO's been making money, but that's kind of a different topic altogether.

Davor wrote: »

I am not saying you are wrong, it's just I don't understand again. Why would Zenimax need to make a design for on line and off line? Everything is programmed for it to be online right now correct? I am playing it as I would have if it was off line. It just needs to be programmed once. I don't see why it would need to be done twice.

So this one has to do with the way the game is set up. In a game like Skyrim, all your save data, your inventory, the damage you do, your character attributes, the enemy attributes, the game assets, everything in the game you name it, is stored on your computer or console. To use this term, Skyrim is a client-side game. Everything in the game happens on your computer, the client. I can play (and did) completely off-line.

Not so much in ESO. Now, sure, ESO stores a fair bit on your client. I've got an 87 GB folder of ESO files on my computer, with voiceovers and plenty of other data files essential for running the game. But the really important stuff is what ESO doesn't store and run on your client.

ESO doesn't save your game to your client. ESO doesn't do the calculations for fighting and character attributes and damage done/damage taken on your client (anymore, thanks to PVP cheaters). All that information about your character and what you are doing in the world is done and saved server side. That's all done online by ZOS' servers. (We know this is a couple of ways, notably when PVP cheaters got a bunch of calculations moved to server side. The game used to trust a lot more information to the client, then players abused it by writing addons that let them input their own values for certain numbers, so all that got moved to server-side to prevent hacking.)

So to have a offline version, ZOS has to change the way ESO handles all that information. They have to move some of it back to client-side. For stuff that was never client side, they have to create ways for it to be handled client side. Things like save games now have to be client side (and I don't know about you, but I've got some gigantic Skyrim save files from the characters I played a long time.) Every single thing that ZOS does on the servers has to be moved to your client. Now, some of that can be trimmed down, since you'll obviously lose all the calculations to do with PVP, lose Battlegrounds completely, and possibly lose trials as well. But the point remains the same for everything else - every single thing that's handled right now server side has to be done by your computer in an offline version.

That redesign, which is effectively what that is, redesigning a game that handles most of its saved information and RNG on the server side to now handle it client side, costs money.

(Another side effect of redesigning ESO so its all client side is that it opens up the game to mods in the same way that Skyrim is available for modding. That's why everyone keep talking about "cheating" once the game data is all moved to client side. I don't think that's a problem as long as people can't move their offline modded character to the online servers, but it does create a situation where only the online game is the "real" game.)

And that's before we get into the actual content.

Looking at new DLCs in particular, there are some issues with designing for offline and online at the same time. Not only does the way the information in the game have to be handled differently for online (server + client) vs offline (all client side), but the type of content has to be different.

Most offline players, with the exception of the I-wanna-play-a-Dark-Souls-version-of-Elder-Scrolls, aren't going to be super interested in end-game content like DLC dungeon packs and Trials. Online players, on the other hand, will want more end-game content for them to group up and do together. Offline players won't care about PVP. Online players will. Even Summerset, the latest chapter with plenty of single-player questing has a trial and world bosses that are designed for groups to fight.

So either ZOS has to focus on giving one group what they want and not the other, or make even more effort to please both sets of players. Making more effort means it costs more money. Given that ZOS' tendency is to put in less effort with mini-trials and dungeon pack DLC, I don't expect them to jump at putting in more effort.

Overall, it would require changing ESO quite a bit to handle ALL its information client side as would be required in an offline game. Furthermore, it would impact the development of new content, as ZOS now has to focus on both offline singleplayer and online single & group player demands.

Hey, hope that helps clarify those two points and why I think those add up along with the other points to explain why I think ZOS isn't going to make an offline mode.

MerlinPendragon · August 2018

No offline mode, please. Let's maintain resources for the live world. Want offline? There are several other Elder Scroll titles out there.

theyancey · August 2018

You're welcome

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