Offline mode

[Not Lee Harvey Oswald]

Can this game be played offline without internet access?

[Auzi]

No, It's an online MMO and a huge part of the game is connecting with others.
There are ways to play offline but can't discuss it here and it's very against the ToS, also it would be kinda boring to be alone, no?

[Meowish]

The game at least needs you to have internet to login. But during game play, if your internet connection gets cuts off, you can still play it for a short while before server error shows up. So you can say it's semi-offline, but in the end, you still require internet to play.

[Not Lee Harvey Oswald]

Originally posted by uwuki:

No, It's an online MMO and a huge part of the game is connecting with others.
There are ways to play offline but can't discuss it here and it's very against the ToS, also it would be kinda boring to be alone, no?

MMO live service stuff has always made me skeptical and I feel like my opinion of them dropped even further after I played games like halo infinite and destiny 2. I wouldn't know if I would find playing this game alone boring or not because I haven't gotten the chance to play it yet. I played destiny 2 alone and people told me it'd suck and I enjoyed it, so maybe that'd be the case here to or maybe it wouldn't. But it just led to me questioning why the stuff I was playing had to be designed around being always online and why there wasn't an offline mode (yes I understand the technical reasons but I still hate the idea of a game I sink time into being taken down permanently someday). I just saw the store page for this game and thought it was neat. I'll probably still give it a shot but I kinda just hate the feeling of playing a game like this that clearly had a lot of thought and passion put into it by the devs and art team and thinking "damn, all this can just unessacarily go to waste one day if it goes down for not that justifiable of a reason.". It's just mainly the art preservationist side of me speaking. I've seen games like no mans sky do mmo elements pretty well where it's an optional thing you can opt into, but the entire game can still be played offline.

Sorry for the rant, I know you may find all of this stupid but I'm slightly tired of having to turn down games that look fun for this reason.

[Not Lee Harvey Oswald]

Originally posted by Meowish:

The game at least needs you to have internet to login. But during game play, if your internet connection gets cuts off, you can still play it for a short while before server error shows up. So you can say it's semi-offline, but in the end, you still require internet to play.

That's better than nothing, though I wonder if that's the game running client-side or not

[Auzi]

Originally posted by Cuban Missile Crisis:

Originally posted by Meowish:

The game at least needs you to have internet to login. But during game play, if your internet connection gets cuts off, you can still play it for a short while before server error shows up. So you can say it's semi-offline, but in the end, you still require internet to play.

That's better than nothing, though I wonder if that's the game running client-side or not

It obviously client side once you lose internet, and unless you reconnect to the servers quickly it'll eventually say you need internet. Also you cant interact with things without a connection properly because it's mostly server side (this is so all players see the same thing at the same time) such as opening doors, spirits, etc.

My advice, if you haven't tried it yet, check the game out once it hits EA, if it's not your thing, no big deal. I wouldn't miss out (if you're interested) just because it requires an internet connection, also Sky is nothing like Destiny and other MMOs, unless you want to collect every single cosmetic you don't need to spend money or play like a full time job. Sky is on Switch,PS,and mobile so can always give it a go in the mean time if you have a device that can run it.

Also that's the risk you take playing a live service game

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Cuban Missile Crisis:

That's better than nothing, though I wonder if that's the game running client-side or not

Sky is modeled after Journey, so a lot of things are similar except Journey has better graphic due to its designed for PlayStation, while Sky is designed for iPhone so it has less pretty looking graphic by default.

Journey has almost everything processed client side with minimum server backup, Sky is similar design but with a cloud instance design that holds 8 players per room. Similar to P2P design but slightly different due to TGC uses cloud servers to host Sky instead of a datacenter, connection could be really bad for some regions and constant disconnection is a regular thing in the game, that's why it lets its player play in a solo instance while disconnected and update the stuffs with instance merging when they are back online... But yes, over 90% of Sky runs client/local sided, and a few more % of it runs host sided, which means certain stuffs might works better when you are disconnected due to you become the host of that solo instance and mechanism like door and gates works faster without Ping delay. But the final save file update require you to have internet connection, so if you play too long in offline mode, you get a server error warning and the game require you to re-login the game, if you don't login after that, and have played for awhile disconnected, you might lost progress due to it's not being saved to the server. Journey on the other hand, have complete offline mode due to its save file is local sided.

So about your concerns, Journey is a better game for you than Sky in compare. But do note that both games have short play time, you can reach the endings in just a few hours of game play, the rest is like other online games, repeat daily grind or repeat game play.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/638230/Journey/

[Not Lee Harvey Oswald]

Originally posted by uwuki:

Originally posted by Cuban Missile Crisis:

That's better than nothing, though I wonder if that's the game running client-side or not

It obviously client side once you lose internet, and unless you reconnect to the servers quickly it'll eventually say you need internet. Also you cant interact with things without a connection properly because it's mostly server side (this is so all players see the same thing at the same time) such as opening doors, spirits, etc.

My advice, if you haven't tried it yet, check the game out once it hits EA, if it's not your thing, no big deal. I wouldn't miss out (if you're interested) just because it requires an internet connection, also Sky is nothing like Destiny and other MMOs, unless you want to collect every single cosmetic you don't need to spend money or play like a full time job. Sky is on Switch,PS,and mobile so can always give it a go in the mean time if you have a device that can run it.

Also that's the risk you take playing a live service game

Yeah I'll def give it a shot still, but in the future I'll likely keep trying to avoid that risk

[Not Lee Harvey Oswald]

Originally posted by Meowish:

Originally posted by Cuban Missile Crisis:

That's better than nothing, though I wonder if that's the game running client-side or not

Sky is modeled after Journey, so a lot of things are similar except Journey has better graphic due to its designed for PlayStation, while Sky is designed for iPhone so it has less pretty looking graphic by default.

Journey has almost everything processed client side with minimum server backup, Sky is similar design but with a cloud instance design that holds 8 players per room. Similar to P2P design but slightly different due to TGC uses cloud servers to host Sky instead of a datacenter, connection could be really bad for some regions and constant disconnection is a regular thing in the game, that's why it lets its player play in a solo instance while disconnected and update the stuffs with instance merging when they are back online... But yes, over 90% of Sky runs client/local sided, and a few more % of it runs host sided, which means certain stuffs might works better when you are disconnected due to you become the host of that solo instance and mechanism like door and gates works faster without Ping delay. But the final save file update require you to have internet connection, so if you play too long in offline mode, you get a server error warning and the game require you to re-login the game, if you don't login after that, and have played for awhile disconnected, you might lost progress due to it's not being saved to the server. Journey on the other hand, have complete offline mode due to its save file is local sided.

So about your concerns, Journey is a better game for you than Sky in compare. But do note that both games have short play time, you can reach the endings in just a few hours of game play, the rest is like other online games, repeat daily grind or repeat game play.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/638230/Journey/

Thanks a ton for the info and recommendation!

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Cuban Missile Crisis:

Thanks a ton for the info and recommendation!

You're welcome!

There's also another game that predated before Sky, but have a lot of elements Sky copied(inspired by) in their design. Like outfits, spirits, temples sky islands... all those stuffs... even the concept of bringing your light to the temples...
There are soo many similarity that we can even say: Journey + AER = Sky
https://store.steampowered.com/app/331870/AER_Memories_of_Old/
This one is fully Offline and has a very similar way on how Sky pan out its story. But without the Journey's mechanism on flight upgrades.