Offline Game Modes

[steviebwoy]

I've just read a really interesting post from Pancufer (http://steamcommunity.com/app/636690/discussions/0/2381701715729798323/) and whilst I agree with everything he has said, I think we need our own topic about this.

I think that we need more OFFLINE game modes. I feel like this game is going to go too far down the online route if the devs are not careful, and it's important to remember that in order for the game to work well online, it needs a LOT of players online ALL of the time. That's a massive problem. Making a great offline game will not have this problem - it will be there for the player whenever he wants to play and regardless of how many other people are online.

The world of SWOS was amazing, there's no doubt about that. I'd love it if Jon and his team just bolted the SWOS career mode to Sociable Soccer but I don't think that will happen this release.

That said, SURELY there is a game mode that they could add to the offline game that would give us an element of this. I noticed that Jon recently worked on Speedball Brutal Deluxe for mobile. Surely something like that would work? For example, signing new players into a team and upgrading their skills etc. I can't see why that wouldn't work. Or even, just give us the Ultimate Team mode, but make it available offline as well as online.

Personally, I think it's great to offer online game modes, but I strongly believe the real bread and butter of the game has to be offline. Look how popular SWOS still is now (I know it now has online thanks to ss.de), but it's popular because of the world you could absorb yourself into, and the breadth of choices you had as a manager. If there's some way the devs can introduce this into Sociable Soccer I really think it's worth the investment.

Here's pancufer's original post:

Originally posted by pancufer:

This was regarding the playability, now few words regarding the rest of the game that could be considered later:

I personally want to see this game brilliant in offline mode, all those online features are great, but I would like to have addictive feel playing on my own.

Also, I know that we have many clubs possible to choose (around 600) , but I am really missing that World(!) of football in a exact meaning of the world, (or at least european world :) , having this combined with the career mode was charming as f****

It was beautiful feeling to start career in some weak club (this was especially great for us from the eastern europe where we had all those domestic leagues, I was always kidding my friends who were played PES when they complained that they can't choose their local clubs and then I could say "well - they are in SWOS!! ") , to win something, make transfer to the Real Madrid, manage all those great players, win trophies and nostalgically browse your country league on the current season to see if your local club is going well, or they are struggling, that was absolutely brilliant feature that made me love SWOS so hard. I know that we have couple of clubs from every other league right now, but I would really like to see at least all first Europe leagues, I guess all fans from Eastern europe or Scandinavia would like to see this!

However, keep up the good work and I hope that in a half year from now we could have something that can stand with SWOS hand in hand :)

[pancufer]

Hi stewiebwoy,
I am glad you catched the point :)

When I am talking about SWOS it is not just the game, there are bunch of solid and good football games but they are all oriented for the head to head matches, which is great and important feature,for example, I can remember when me and my childhood friend have discovered patch for two players on the same keyboard, that was awesome and even in that mode SWOS was so fun, especially if you play with someone of your level.

But in SWOS, I could play few seasons in a day on my own just to be able to get my team into the UEFA Cup, I could imagine all those press conferences before and after important matches, I could imagine that pride of the small club with the slow players while they are defending 0-0 against Barcelona in the 1st round of Cup Winner Cup...that was beauty, everything was just right!

I never preferred PES ans FIFA because they wanted to be realistic, and that is thin ice, it is not realistic to madly celebrate goal for 6:0 in some non important match and it is not realistic to watch some very obscure match on the Wembley alike stadium, that is not realistic. SWOS didn't care about this, they presented you symbolic stadiums, symbolic celebrations and rest is up to you, you should imagine how big stadium is for this match or how important was goal for 6:0. That was brilliant psychological effect that I would like to feel again ;)

So I would say, dynamic and playability is just 50% of the story, but other half is equally important, especially offline modes, career in SWOS was everything what is football or soccer about.

[steviebwoy]

Yep, I totally agree with you Pancufer. More offline game modes would be fantastic, even if it's not the fully featured Career Mode we all want!

I think the offline game is too limited at the moment, and the Boss Mode feels like grinding with no really interesting progression..

Would love to hear the devs thoughts on this.

[UtterNewbie]

Well... let me put it this way - we've worked at this for two years now, with no sales and no income. We'd love to get all kinds of modes in there, but to do that we have to be successful enough to grow the team from where we are right now.

Ideally, this will turn into a thing we can update every year and really challenge the bigger games, with plenty to do online and offline.

The game is also most balanced for player vs. player, with especially local multiplayer being a ton of fun - but it seems barely anyone has even tried that out. Making video games is a bit of a chicken & egg proposition because you have to make a game that's good enough for the game to sell, and the game has to sell for you to afford to make it good enough. We have a core game that we find to be a lot of fun, but developing a full blown career mode would just be out of scale as a first step. Our multiplayer code should enable you to have 1vs1 matches against people not in the room with you, and that may well convert some of you over.

In the meantime we'll do what we can - improving the AI+GK and Boss Mode to make them more fun and engaging to the best of our ability.

Btw; one of the reasons (not the only reason) we didn't go for a traditional career type mode was that since licensing has changed from the time of SWOS and you can't have the "real" star players anymore, so trading with and for "fake players" wouldn't be as involving. I guess what you guys are telling us is that it doesn't matter so much if the names are real or fake? We'll keep this in mind as we go forward with our plans.

[Mane-FCH]

Originally posted by UtterNewbie:

. I guess what you guys are telling us is that it doesn't matter so much if the names are real or fake? We'll keep this in mind as we go forward with our plans.

Doesn't matter if Ronaldo or Rineldi :).

[petarku80]

Originally posted by UtterNewbie:

Well... let me put it this way - we've worked at this for two years now, with no sales and no income. We'd love to get all kinds of modes in there, but to do that we have to be successful enough to grow the team from where we are right now.

Ideally, this will turn into a thing we can update every year and really challenge the bigger games, with plenty to do online and offline.

The game is also most balanced for player vs. player, with especially local multiplayer being a ton of fun - but it seems barely anyone has even tried that out. Making video games is a bit of a chicken & egg proposition because you have to make a game that's good enough for the game to sell, and the game has to sell for you to afford to make it good enough. We have a core game that we find to be a lot of fun, but developing a full blown career mode would just be out of scale as a first step. Our multiplayer code should enable you to have 1vs1 matches against people not in the room with you, and that may well convert some of you over.

In the meantime we'll do what we can - improving the AI+GK and Boss Mode to make them more fun and engaging to the best of our ability.

Btw; one of the reasons (not the only reason) we didn't go for a traditional career type mode was that since licensing has changed from the time of SWOS and you can't have the "real" star players anymore, so trading with and for "fake players" wouldn't be as involving. I guess what you guys are telling us is that it doesn't matter so much if the names are real or fake? We'll keep this in mind as we go forward with our plans.

Hi guys ,
i will support you in the future as i see you have game that have sensi spirit.
You are reacting very fast and patching things that people want and have good communication with the community.

Just a question , as you are saying game is developed already 2 years, could you guys do early access earlier so you get some of this community feedback earlier.
If you really focused on player vs player , I dont understand why you released the game without online mode and bad goal keepers. I dont know what is percentage of people that have friends&family for local multiplayer.
For my point, if you went with no online for start , you should have hard AI and good goalkeepers so people keep the hype playing boss mode (which is very good idea btw)
I dont mind that you dont have career and other stuff as that is something that can be added if gameplay is right. Things like that didnt exist in first sensible soccer but people were playing it.


From what I see the problem is that your fanbase at least on discussion board is 85 % swos players including myself. On the part from online community around sensible soccer.de, swos community consist of the people are playing against computer career games so expectation is different and yet you are in two years of development but you dont have proper player vs CPU gameplay yet.

I agree with some other guys that we cannot expect to have swos remake here, for that people should mail codemasters :) but there are certain expectation that game have good AI and GK for offline playing if you want to have this portion of community.

I dont know will your fanbase change when this is released to switch and iOS.

From my side , if I see patch coming with good GK ,good AI, I will play this game and do some promotion among my friends that were playing swos.
If AI will be weak and you make GK good , i might stick around because of online play...
Lets see

[pancufer]

Hi UtterNewbie,

thanks for sharing your thoughts. Regarding the project in general I really want to support this, and if we need to wait couple of years more to have all these implemented I am ready to wait and I am sure that is the case with the rest of the SWOS fans, if we could wait for 20 years, few years are not big deal :)

Also, I agree that we are living in the modern times and market rules are different and that's the way it is so I agree that we should have all those features, but I don't see a reason why not to have them good in both ways.

I guess boss mode could be fun but my impression is that there is no better fun, challenge and excitement than competition as it is designed in the real football life, that means season after season, with all those promotions, relegations, changing of the clubs etc.

I always considered that SWOS has been oriented to the hardcore football fans who do not care just about Messi or Ronaldo or some tricky shot, they can feel same enjoyment in all levels of competition and Sociable is following that path for sure having all these teams but I am personally hungry for more, I want it all , as in SWOS :)

Regarding the fake names, as I mentioned in the post above, big part of the SWOS magic was in symbolism, to feel what is necessary and what is not. For example, 3 type of player faces were just great, whites with black hair, blonde hair and black player - just enough to fit everything, no need for detailed facial expressions , it is not something what will change your football game experience.
Having that said, I know that we have licensing problem but I guess this is something that we can deal with it (If we can accept to have Mussi or Reinaldo then it is really not so important for the rest of the players :)
Having all teams with fake names and players is just fine as long as they are symbolic version of the real teams, it should not ruin that magic so I am gladly looking forward to it.

[steviebwoy]

Regarding offline game modes:
The key elements for me are:
- Promotion/relegation of teams
- Buying/selling of players
- Continuity of having a team that you can develop over a number of seasons in the above format

Regarding player names:
I don't honestly care whether the player is called Crusteoni Raneldi. In fact, I'd actually much prefer the game to have correctly spelled, but totally fictional names. That's just my preference. It would feel more authentic to me. Plus, quite honestly, when I'm playing SWOS I don't know who half the players are anyway, so it makes little difference to me whether they're authentic or completely fictional and anyone who says he can tell the difference between a real and fictional El Salvadorian 3rd division goalkeeper is probably telling a Porkie.

[Rafael Lima]

"Just a question , as you are saying game is developed already 2 years, could you guys do early access earlier so you get some of this community feedback earlier. "

WIth lots of people complaining and some asking for refunds with the game on its current state (which is a fun if too easy 1 player game and an awesome game to play locally with friends, like Jouni stated), I'd reckon there would be a crapfest if the game was released much earlier.

From what I understand (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), Career mode was always seem as huge *maybe* since the game begun being promoted, and if done at all, it would be very late at the development road. The devs never lied about that.

I am fine with fake names, I always ending up calling my players the real names they are supposed to represent, so I like the idea of having the nearly equal as the real players they represent instead of completely fake names. (Actually a friend of mine who saw the game, saw the team he supports roster and said "oh man, I miss those funny names on soccer games" :D )

But I really see the MyTeam Mode replacing career mode for me.... with online working, if I can get enough players to play against me (and I've already found a few brazilians who also bought the game), I don't think I would ever touch the single player section of the game again.

But then, that's me. The only PC games I play are online multiplayer ones :)

I think we should wait a few years for a Sociable World of Soccer with Career mode :D :D

[Sarblade]

Originally posted by Mane-FCH:

Originally posted by UtterNewbie:

. I guess what you guys are telling us is that it doesn't matter so much if the names are real or fake? We'll keep this in mind as we go forward with our plans.

Doesn't matter if Ronaldo or Rineldi :).

Exactly.
I always loved the fake names more than the real ones. They're easily recognizable and also fun most of the times. :D

[petarku80]

I like to have option to edit real names, somehow i better relate with real names there and if you do right skills to the player , it is great feeling.

I will create some thread just for it to check with community here first before you guys decide how low to put feature of the editor

[SociableSoccerCM]

There's no need for that petarku80. The editor is on our list. But still not ahead of priorities.

[steviebwoy]

It sounds harsh, but I think the devs have focused too much on local multiplayer because they all work in the office where the game gets played, so they're never short of opponents. It seems to me that the AI, and possible the single player modes, have suffered as a result of this.

Unfortunately, all of my friends have moved onto FIFA a long time ago and it's hard for me to get them to play anything else so I'm stuck playing this single player. I don't really enjoy playing online against randoms tbh.

[petarku80]

Originally posted by SociableSoccerCM:

There's no need for that petarku80. The editor is on our list. But still not ahead of priorities.

ok deleted the thread

[Mystic Monkey]

When cheaters come i run

[bokkiej]

Originally posted by UtterNewbie:

Btw; one of the reasons (not the only reason) we didn't go for a traditional career type mode was that since licensing has changed from the time of SWOS and you can't have the "real" star players anymore, so trading with and for "fake players" wouldn't be as involving. I guess what you guys are telling us is that it doesn't matter so much if the names are real or fake? We'll keep this in mind as we go forward with our plans.

Still good enough for me: there will be "real" name patches, "fake players" that I know are obvious enough and I didn't know most players in SWOS either. Could care less about the strikers name if it's a good FSV (or C) striker ;)

I can imagine the online focus could be because of piracy concerns. Couldn't it be possible to connect a manager mode to online as well?