Single-player gamers - read before buying!

[djtim_3000]

Before you buy this game it may pay to take note of the differences between the offline and online mode for the single-player campaign.

1) Unique items called Dynasty weapons are only available in online mode. These items give relatively small initial bonuses at first but increase in power over over time (they gain XP when you use them).

2) There are also unique Dynasty traits (which are basically additional starting skills) that are also only available in online mode. These include bonuses to base stats, increased weekly creature growth, decreased building costs and other helpful hero skills.

3) At the end of the first mission the game gives you a weapon as a plot device. This weapon turns out to be a Dynasty weapon and is only available in online mode. You can view it and see the stats in offline mode but you cannot equip it. In offline mode the game also frequently reminds you when you can equip Dynasty traits even though you can't actually use them.

4) You cannot start a campaign game in offline mode, then change to online mode to access the online features part way through the campaign (and vice versa). You will have to start a new campaign from scratch to change modes.

5) Online campaign games are limited to 10 auto-saves and 10 manual-saves. These save games are stored on the Ubisoft servers and cannot be accessed at all when offline or if the Ubisoft servers are having connection difficulties. Offline mode does not have any limitations on save games.

6) You will get kicked back to the menu screen during an online game any time your internet connection is disrupted, even momentarily. You will lose all progress (e.g. if you were mid-battle) from your last save.

There are other limitations that involve the Dynasty system when it pertains to single-player custom games, however I haven't covered these. I've also tried to be as impartial as possible so you can make up your own mind about whether to buy the game or not - Ubisoft do not make it clear what the differences are.

**opinion starts here**
I personally think the system is ridiculous and alienates paying customers. There doesn't seem to be any good reason to restrict the Dynasty based system to being online only. I understand it has implications for online multi-player however I do not believe that single-player gamers should miss out on features if they do not want to play online.

It wouldn't feel so crippled if the game did not use the Dynasty weapons as part of the plot and did not continually dangle unreachable carrots in front of you if you chose not to play online. Features that are now online only, worked fine offline in previous iterations of the series. I regret buying Heroes 6 and giving Ubisoft any money at all, I would return the game in a heartbeat if I was able to.

[Fangzor]

Of all the legitimate reasons not to buy this game, you stated NONE. Congrats!

[djtim_3000]

Originally Posted by Fangzor

Of all the legitimate reasons not to buy this game, you stated NONE. Congrats!

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. However I was just just trying to be helpful and provide some clarity to those that may be interested. Thanks for trolling.

[Mikey-]

Just play in offline mode. I don't understand what your complaint is? The online stuff is for online players? It's so they can get rewarded for being part of the community, and helping to build it.

[banished_one]

He's not complaining, he's trying to warn future buyers about the restrictions of the game if you play it in offline mode.

Which i think is a good idea since the product doesn't state you need to be online all the time to access all of it's features, even during single player sessions.


@OP you're also restricted to 2 heroes of each faction when starting a skirmish game in offline mode.

[Kriton]

I agree with the OP. Its very annoying. I tried to continue my saved campaign the other day on a location that I had no internet access and I was amazed by the fact that I could not!!!!!

It's not even documented that you cannot do that! Even if it is, it is not obvious.

Thats not to say that I would not recommend this game to nayone :P It still is imo best in the series.

[Stocean]

Well I think always-online DRM is still a big restriction unless wireless is supported everywhere in the world. Then there would be no 'offline' and this DRM shouldn't be a restriction anymore. Also I hope Ubisoft keep(and protect) their servers up and stable for a long time but from my experience that's quite a costly task so I kinda doubt it...

I would've bought it right away if it wasn't for this stupid DRM which is ironic since the DRM that's meant to protect the game from piracy is punishing legitimate buyers/fans who love/support the game while pirates just go play another hundreds of free game?

[DrakenLord]

Yes I was not aware of the limitations of online mode, so this post will be helpful to future buyers.

I ended up playing in offline mode only to avoid connection problems.

[Dazzled]

Originally Posted by Mikey-

Just play in offline mode. I don't understand what your complaint is? The online stuff is for online players? It's so they can get rewarded for being part of the community, and helping to build it.

No, just no. It's there as DRM and a frak you from Ubisoft to all Heroes fans who do not have a great internet connection. And the saddest thing is that sometimes the problem is with Ubisoft's servers and not the players connection.

Also how exactly is someone playing the campaign a "part of the community" and how does he help build it?

[Mikey-]

Originally Posted by Dazzled

No, just no. It's there as DRM and a frak you from Ubisoft to all Heroes fans who do not have a great internet connection. And the saddest thing is that sometimes the problem is with Ubisoft's servers and not the players connection.

You can play in offline mode. So do so.

[JOINTS]

Originally Posted by Dazzled

No, just no. It's there as DRM and a frak you from Ubisoft to all Heroes fans who do not have a great internet connection. And the saddest thing is that sometimes the problem is with Ubisoft's servers and not the players connection.

Also how exactly is someone playing the campaign a "part of the community" and how does he help build it?

You can get good uptime on any internet connection if you skip wireless solutions. And stay away from shielded cables, they will act as an antenna in a normal household, wich might cause alot more trouble than you had to begin with.

And I highly doubt that UbiSoft servers would have problems sometimes as you wrote, it's very rare that a solution like the one UbiSoft is using fails.
When you and your friends fails to connect, it's mostly because you use a ISP that pay to peer and usually gets 2 possible routes to reach any given destination.

If you instead use a Tier 1 ISP you would get far more than 100,000 possible routes, it just wont happen that your destination is unreachable unless the destination is down. You can check the amount of possible routes you have with a bgp from your ISP's "Looking Glass" if they have any.

This is how it looks from my ISP's bgp, running from a node in Stockholm towards a UbiSoft website, I know their website might be on another network but it's just an example.


Router: Stockholm
Command: show route protocol bgp www.ubisoft.com table inet.0

inet.0: 418654 destinations, 968176 routes (418562 active, 424 holddown, 24071 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both


And from Chicago it looks like this:


Router: Chicago
Command: show route protocol bgp www.ubisoft.com table inet.0

inet.0: 420275 destinations, 3592062 routes (418460 active, 1769 holddown, 279032 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both

[malek1013]

Originally Posted by Mikey-

You can play a neutered version in offline mode. So do so.

Fixed.

[Dazzled]

Originally Posted by JOINTS

You can get good uptime on any internet connection if you skip wireless solutions. And stay away from shielded cables, they will act as an antenna in a normal household, wich might cause alot more trouble than you had to begin with.

And I highly doubt that UbiSoft servers would have problems sometimes as you wrote, it's very rare that a solution like the one UbiSoft is using fails.
When you and your friends fails to connect, it's mostly because you use a ISP that pay to peer and usually gets 2 possible routes to reach any given destination.

If you instead use a Tier 1 ISP you would get far more than 100,000 possible routes, it just wont happen that your destination is unreachable unless the destination is down. You can check the amount of possible routes you have with a bgp from your ISP's "Looking Glass" if they have any.

This is how it looks from my ISP's bgp, running from a node in Stockholm towards a UbiSoft website, I know their website might be on another network but it's just an example.

The "Ubi having problems at their end" part of my post was due to my personal experience of The Settlers 7 in the first weeks since launch. I admit that that miserable experience has permanently damaged my opinion of Ubi's DRM system.

[dingoperson]

When you and your friends fails to connect, it's mostly because you use a ISP that pay to peer and usually gets 2 possible routes to reach any given destination.

Or you can search this board and find plenty of people who have been unable to play at some point (post launch day). Including myself, whilst accessing the rest of the internet just fine at 50mpbs. Do you have a source for the assertion that "most of the time" a failure for any given person to connect to a EU/US medium-high reliability site for a meaningful amount of time is due to routing failure?

[JOINTS]

Originally Posted by dingoperson

Or you can search this board and find plenty of people who have been unable to play at some point (post launch day). Including myself, whilst accessing the rest of the internet just fine at 50mpbs. Do you have a source for the assertion that "most of the time" a failure for any given person to connect to a EU/US medium-high reliability site for a meaningful amount of time is due to routing failure?

Do I really need a source for that?
Ofcourse a lower tier ISP will have much worse routing tables.
Why do you think World of Warcraft for example are using TeliaSonera International Carrier, or Rift using Cogent?
The T1's are peering wich other T1's only, all the rest have to rent bandwith from them, and its very expensive so they cant afford to rent much of it.

I can take an example here in Sweden we have a company called ComHem, they sell Cable Modem connections from 2Mbit up to 200Mbit for a small cost each month. But they only rent 4x10Gbit bandwith from TeliaSonera, how much bandwith do you think is left for each user when only a couple hundred users wants to download something outside of Sweden? There will ofcourse be problems, and their network goes down frequently. While people using TeliaSonera 100Mbit, 250Mbit or 1Gbit will not come anywhere close to reaching the limit of the network.

You can pay for a connection at ISP X or Y. X is a Tier 1 ISP, while Y is a Tier 2-3 ISP who mostly peers through open networks in the country and pays ISP X to get access to internet outside the country. Now Y have alot of customers who just loves peer-to-peer, but they only paid for the smallest peering solution wich results in both their rented nodes is overloaded, wich results in massive amount of packetloss for their customers who wants to reach beyond their country. They might have a packetloss policy of <5% is acceptable, wich could be enough to get you disconnected from a online game.

If you instead buy a connection from X and people use peer-to-peer, they will automatically balance the load over several nodes so that none of them have to dump any packets. And since they own the fibers they got enough bandwith to handle pretty much anything coming through. They have a packetloss policy of less than <0.01%.