Yeah, I agree. Thanks for laying it all out for me, it’s given me a different perspective for sure. I just never even considered most of these potential problem areas so it all just seemed so arbitrary and confusing to me (it was like a “just take my money” moment, lol). Fortunately, I had the self-awareness to realize there must be more to it than what I was seeing and to seek answers. I hope the devs see these sorts of discussions on here and it helps them see things from our side in turn.
In the meantime I guess I am just gonna keep hunting for exalted items that not only have the right stats but the “right” look too and limit my choice of uniques somewhat. I am lucky I guess because on my Runemaster at least there is only the one pair of unique gloves that sticks out like a sore thumb but there is no replacing it because of the insane amount of ward retention it provides.
Piracy is the biggest issue plaguing the game development industry. Note that EHG is basing their entire future development support on mtx sale (there is only a one time box price for the base game. All expansions are technically ‘free’). This isnt paranoia. It is the reality of the industry and why so many games are moving online.
I should also point out that over time, the total value of cosmetics available will not just be “a couple of bucks” but in the realms of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (of course, the developers wont be expecting players to buy everything available, just as walmart won’t expect a shopper to come in and buy one of everything). Also, the devs would not be able to sell time-exclusive mtx when people can freely access those assets for play (which has been a successful business model for EHG’s competitor, GGG).
I get all of that now but it still leaves me in the same position I was in before. When I got the game I couldn’t have ever imagined that choosing to play Offline would lock me out of buying MTX cosmetics. Literally no other game, A-RPG or otherwise, that I have ever played in well over 20 years of gaming has had that sort of limitation.
I understand their concerns regarding piracy but I also see no reason to be forced to play online when I fully intend to always play the game solo just to have access to cosmetics which I also fully intend to pay for. Not that it’s particularly relevant to the wider topic but I happen to be a lawyer so for me whether I pay $30 for a game or $100 or sink thousands into cosmetics as I did in PoE (which I don’t even play anymore) is completely irrelevant to me because I can afford it.
In other words I WANT to pay them for all of these MTX transactions but they aren’t letting me. I am sure I am not the only one who is in that boat and they would do well to figure out a way around it not just for our sake but for that of their own business model. If having a completely offline mode prevents them from selling MTX cosmetics to players then they simply need to add limited connectivity for the purpose of preventing potential piracy. I would be perfectly fine with that. What I can’t do is spend another 100+ hours leveling and building a character from scratch just for the privilege of being allowed to pay them for MTX cosmetics because they didn’t do a good job of explaining the consequences of choosing Offline mode. As I have repeatedly said I only picked it because I intend to play the game solo and didn’t see a reason to have to put up with potentially shaky server connections. I had no idea that it would also lock me out of cosmetics.
Anyway, I am going in circles here. The bottom line is that this clearly a major issue as evidenced by the enormous amount of discussion on the topic both here and on other online forums and that something needs to be done about it for everyone’s sake. I personally couldn’t care less what the solution is, they could even add a third mode that’s only partially offline, they just need to find a way to let me give them money. LOL!
If they make it so the cosmetics/MTX you buy is in offline mode I would stop playing in online. I would jump over there to buy a pack or two and then hop back on my offline character.
I just feel wrong playing in offline when I can’t use what I spend money on even if the only thing I use is the portal effects
The issue with that is, over the last few years, the userbase has made it abundantly clear that any form of limited connectivity DRM beyond the VERY FIRST TIME YOU LAUNCH THE GAME for offline mode is unacceptable.
EHG has previously considered a once every 30-day DRM check for offline mode, which would function in a way to allow cosmetic unlocks in offline mode, but due to previous promises and claims during their kickstarter, alpha, and beta, they decided against that since the users were promised true offline mode, which entails everything they’ve given now.
Having no check on cosmetics for offline mode would just cause people not to buy cosmetics and play offline mode with mods and file modifications. It would hurt their profit-margin.
Having temporary checks for cosmetics would go against their original promise and the second promise they made after mulling it over on the forums and Discord.
Offline mode will have one check when you connect to the game for the first time on your computer. Afterwards, so long as your computer is the same, it will remain truly offline. This allows you to use mods and skin edits on your personal machine to do all sorts of things in the future, which means offline mode in the potential future could even have a modding scene like Grim Dawn.
This has been discussed in the past, long before you joined. The users who supported their kickstarter and alpha/beta came to this conclusion after much discussion on this forum, and I’m sure the threads are still around somewhere.
If you want to look into past EHG posts and past discussions about this topic, you should start here:
That assumes there is going to be a modding scene at all. In my experience a game has to be really popular, like Game of the Year popular, for a truly vibrant modding community to spring around it. Not that LE isn’t a great game but I don’t see it being a runaway hit like BG3, Hogwarts Legacy, or Elden Ring. A-RPGs just aren’t that popular.
This really confuses me and I just don’t understand it. It sounds to me that the people who are picking that as their proverbial hill to die on don’t want a game but rather the bones of a sandbox that someone else does all the hard work of creating for them and then going wild in it, basically something like an MMO private server but for A-RPGs. That’s just weird to me and if that’s what they want they should just make their own games or go play Minecraft or whatever. /shrug
Also I don’t understand why the devs would listen to those voices because if that’s their base… well they don’t really have a base because those people aren’t interested in what the developer wants to do with the game in the long term and want to take it in their own direction.
Probably extremely limited, perhaps none at all. Because most players will play online, for trade and multiplayer. Even more so now EHG is considering restrictions on offline, like having to kill a boss online once before you can fight it offline.
What confuses me is your post, to be honest…
You seem to assume people asking for a true offline mode do so because they want to edit or mod or whatever. This is conspiracy theory domain.
The majority of players who want offline do so for a simpler reason: because they have bad internet connection, or none at all, and still want to be able to enjoy LE.
There might be a few matching your description, but that would be a very, very small amount of players.
That’s just not true. It might not have thousands of mods like BG3 does, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have mods. Even a train wreck like Wolcen has dozens of mods.
Yes. Judd said it but specifically for newly introduced boss fights. It’s to prevent offline from quickly finding optimal strategy to defeat the boss thru free modding of your character abilities and items.
Here’s the quote from Judd, but it was something being pitched that may happen rather than will happen. That said, we’ll just have to wait and see what actually happens in the future concerning possible content differences in the offline mode.
There will be no leaderboards offline. It will be a truly offline experience without any online functionality, as stated in this announcement and reiterated by Kain, community manager at EHG, below.
I don’t know if that’s how it will be or not, but that seems to be what was said. Although it clearly contradicts the other post that @AndrewTilley linked.
Even if it just requires SOMEONE to kill the pinnacle boss, it would still require some online connection to know if you can fight that boss or not. So it would still contradict the other post.
You clearly didn’t bother reading what I said. I specifically stated that I found that entire notion ridiculous and bordering on paranoia. Apparently, however, there are a lot of people on these forums (including devs) who fully believe that people playing in offline mode want to do so solely to be able to freely mod the game which, to reiterate once again, is ridiculous.
I also fully believe that the vast majority of people who want to play offline do so because they don’t want to deal with server lag and/or have no desire to play the game with others. Personally, I’ve always preferred to play A-RPGs solo.
