Character progression in single and multiplayer and using the same character

I'm facing a design dilemma in my monster truck game and would like to hear some input from others..

The player can play either single player, or multiplayer in a ranked online racing league.
In either path they can race, win money, and therefore upgrade their truck.

Now I really can't figure out which is best, keeping the single player and multiplayer progression seperate, or letting the user only have one character/truck for both.

Advantages of keeping them seperate
- Player is forced to start multiplayer as a noob and work their way up, providing more accurate stats in the online league
- Player may be engaged in the game for longer, as they have two upgrade paths

Disadvantages of keeping them seperate
- Player has to essentially play two seperate paths, and may get frustrated having to upgrade a truck twice

Which do you think is better, and why?

 

I've always been wary of having too much progression in the multiplayer game mode. Pitting the newb against players that are not only more experienced than them, but also have a huge statistical advantage, is no fun at all for the new guy.

Now, if all of your progression is side-grades and aesthetic (Mario Kart, for example), you can mix people well. Or, you could create 'Leagues' that have some sort of stat cap associated with them, so the new guy with the basic truck is pretty much facing opponents with similarly simple trucks, while the Monster Masters are duking it out with their fully upgraded Crushing Machines.

As far as the issue with 'separate upgrade paths', I prefer a single path, unless the gameplay between them in drastically different (single player is racing focused, multiplayer is more of a monster crushing arena), each with a distinct upgrade path.

 

Thanks for the feedback, player's in multiplayer will be matched by similar level, so that is not really an issue.

 

How 'bout having some stuff that's shared and some stuff that's not? Then you can pick on a per-item basis whether it should go in one, the other, or both. You can also design parts of your advancement specifically for each.

 

How about making the superficial stuff shared? (Can trucks wear hats?) In a lot of MMO's, half the point of getting gear is just for looks. Players can show off how they've tricked out the appearance of their trucks, and everyone can still compete against each other fairly, which increases the matchup pool.

 

Yeah I was thinking of having some special single-player only truck skins and branded tyres that the player can use in multiplayer, to show off achievements or if they finished the single player game.

But I would like to have some multiplayer achievements for show too.

 

Problem with that is if it's singleplayer with game progress which is same as multiplayer, you'll have to force your player to keep your game online everytime.

If you won't do that there will be risks to exploiting this system. Meaning your singleplayer game progress can be hacked offline and then synchronized with your server, making his progress "legit".

 

Thanks for the input, but all player progress will be stored online.

 

So that means your game will require player to be online while playing single player?

 

Correct, although if the connection is lost I may store data locally temporarily then write any deltas to the server once the player comes back online, while doing validation on it.

I'm still implementing the backend stuff, so not 100% sure if I will do that yet.

 

Kind of like Diablo 2, you could hack your single player character, and take it to the games non-official servers (can't remember exactly, was in the LAN mode) and play your hacked characters online.

You could have different options and upgrades for those who take the time to play single player (while still connected).

Issue I see with the whole store data locally and re-validating once reconnected is, the data is still stored locally. It can and will be altered by hackers, and how can the server tell if the upgrades and items that were hacked are legit, or not legit?