Store gold temporarily on the device

[PinkRose]

Is there any reason that rewarded gold can't be stored offline on a device while it's offline until such time that an offline device goes back online?

If I am playing in the park and get ready to close a location, I need to wait right now until I get back on my wifi so I can collect my 5 gold.

Wouldn't it be fairly simple to store that number and then upload it when I get online, updating my total?

[HPL_fan]

I don't work on the game, but I do work on software and have worked on a game in the past.  There is no such thing as a simple feature/fix.  They'd have to store gold transaction data offline, after logging in check to see if any such data exists and update the changes in gold in the account.  That can lead to some messy use cases like multiple device support.

 

That said, I don't like online only games in principle, so I'd vote to get this feature added to their backlog, but not with as high priority as their bug queue right now. 

[Hannibal_PJV]

Also any on device data can be tempered, so in no time there would be tip how to get 1000000000 gold to your pathfinder account...

Edited May 13, 2016 by Hannibal_PJV

[zeroth_hour]

Yeah, but they can scan transaction data to prevent things like that and ban accounts due to abuse.

[Kgk4569]

I can net ~230 gold every 15-20 minutes via farming. Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that I could get 5000 per night when I would be sleeping, or when I would be working.

 

So, someone tampering with their saves could easily get 50000 gold per week by claiming to have no life, wifi, and live in a bad reception area. This is equal to 70 treasure chests, or just over $35. And Obsidian would have a tough time proving that this person deserves a ban.

 

Obsidian is first and foremost a business. They need to turn a profit to ensure they can continue to employ their excellent staff and pump out great games and addons. By putting this server side they can ensure that anyone unwilling to farm needs to pay.

 

Additionally, if you are a big farmer (like me), you won't do it if you aren't gaining gold. So you will wait till you have reception, and this way all your hard work is backed up in case your device is destroyed.

 

Edit: @PinkRose: I don't mean to sound condecending. I just want to clarify for any future people who stumble across the thread, or ask the same question.

Edited May 15, 2016 by Kgk4569

[leProgrammer]

Hi @PinkRose, everyone here is essentially correct in a certain aspect.

 

@HPL_fan is correct in the sense that it's not necessarily a simple feature/fix. We would be storing gold transaction data offline and it does leave room for a lot of edge cases. @HPL_fan is also correct that it is a feature in our queue.

@Hannibal_PJV is correct in assuming the more tech savvy people can tamper with data and try to cheat.

@zeroth_hour has a good response to that and we are just going to make sure we have checks and balances in before we bring the system to offline gold earning.

Last but not least, @Kgk4569 is also right that there need to be bounds with what people can possibly earn when offline.

 

TLDR; we're working on it, we're just being careful

[PinkRose]

When I said Fairly Simple, I meant for the Awesome Obsidian Programmers. Not fairly simple like Rocket Surgery is. 

I know it's still work.

 

Thanks for replying and letting us know it's in the queue.

[Kgk4569]

I ran into this annoyance yesterday. My connection was flickering (wifey stealin' all my bandwidth!) so I would randomly get gold. *shrug* at most I lost out on <300 gold (went through a few quests) no big deal.

 

If you are taking votes on a limit, I vote for 300. By my estimation from what I see that is a bit above the Max you earn. So if someone has just started a scenario and their connection cuts they should be able to retain the gold from the scenario, but they should not start another until they have connection.

[HPL_fan]

I'm not a big fan of online games for this reason.  Especially given that it is only intended to be played on tablets.  My tablet is wifi only since I very rarely leave the house with it.  If I wanted to, though, I basically couldn't.  For what it's worth, I would REALLY love to see the full party and gold synced across devices, so I could pick up on my phone when away and have the better experience on my tablet when at home.  The game seems to run fine on my S6 Active now, though it would be extremely small to see.  That model worked for me with another online only mobile trading card game (whose name I won't mention).  I know that's way way out there in the queue of possible features, but putting in my vote early I guess.  At the least, being able to play offline would be a big step forward from my perspective.  Not sure why the online design decision was made, but I do know things have to get prioritized to cut time to market, and the game we have now is awesome so not complaining (too loud, at least).

[leProgrammer]

I'm not a big fan of online games for this reason.  Especially given that it is only intended to be played on tablets.  My tablet is wifi only since I very rarely leave the house with it.  If I wanted to, though, I basically couldn't.  For what it's worth, I would REALLY love to see the full party and gold synced across devices, so I could pick up on my phone when away and have the better experience on my tablet when at home.  The game seems to run fine on my S6 Active now, though it would be extremely small to see.  That model worked for me with another online only mobile trading card game (whose name I won't mention).  I know that's way way out there in the queue of possible features, but putting in my vote early I guess.  At the least, being able to play offline would be a big step forward from my perspective.  Not sure why the online design decision was made, but I do know things have to get prioritized to cut time to market, and the game we have now is awesome so not complaining (too loud, at least).

 

You voice some excellent concerns! We are working on full synchronization across devices as well as cross platform (iPad -> Android phone, etc.). We are also working on mobile phones and Steam so once that's out, you'll be able to play on the majority of devices with the same account! We are also working on offline gold progression! Just a matter of time

[HPL_fan]

You voice some excellent concerns! We are working on full synchronization across devices as well as cross platform (iPad -> Android phone, etc.). We are also working on mobile phones and Steam so once that's out, you'll be able to play on the majority of devices with the same account! We are also working on offline gold progression! Just a matter of time

Very exciting to hear. For what it's worth, as excited as I am I'd be fine with the feature being lower priority for a while. I played another game (that I won't name) that took almost a year to get game syncing implemeted. Sounds like a long time, but that game is almost infinetly expandable in the same way PA is. I didn't mind waiting because I had new content to buy in the meantime. I wouldn't mind if Obsidian did the same - I'd be happy to buy new content for a while to help fund the game sync feature if that's what it takes.

 

Just my two cents