Steam rant

[keith.lamothe]

Switching to offline mode has to be done while online; probably so that steam can do a sanity check like "have 1000 different computers all gone to offline mode on this username today?".  Then it saves your credentials locally and uses those to authenticate locally when you start it up.  Those saved credentials expire after 30 days, iirc.  There are some workarounds, I believe, but those probably run afoul of the agreement involved in using the service.

All that said, offline mode works very well for me.

[Coppermantis]

Yeah, Offline mode works fine if you're connected to the Steam Server when you go offline. If I close steam for whatever reason and lose internet (Router down for some reason, etc.) and then try to restart it doesn't work. If you lose internet/go offline while connected there's no problem.

[BobTheJanitor]

Switching to offline mode has to be done while online; probably so that steam can do a sanity check like "have 1000 different computers all gone to offline mode on this username today?".  Then it saves your credentials locally and uses those to authenticate locally when you start it up.  Those saved credentials expire after 30 days, iirc.  There are some workarounds, I believe, but those probably run afoul of the agreement involved in using the service.

All that said, offline mode works very well for me.

It makes sense that there would have to be some check to avoid abuses. Still seems like it could give you the benefit of the doubt if needed. Like if your internet goes down while your PC is off and you start it up to find steam inaccessible. Hit offline mode and it gives you a 24 or 48 hour grace period after which you have to log back in to steam or be stuck without your games. That should be enough to cover 99% of lost internet or lost power situations. Anything longer than that and you'll probably be too busy trying to get out of the path of the natural disaster that's taken down your service for so long. (or you're a Comcast customer *rimshot*)

[keith.lamothe]

It makes sense that there would have to be some check to avoid abuses. Still seems like it could give you the benefit of the doubt if needed. Like if your internet goes down while your PC is off and you start it up to find steam inaccessible. Hit offline mode and it gives you a 24 or 48 hour grace period after which you have to log back in to steam or be stuck without your games. That should be enough to cover 99% of lost internet or lost power situations. Anything longer than that and you'll probably be too busy trying to get out of the path of the natural disaster that's taken down your service for so long. (or you're a Comcast customer *rimshot*)

That would be nice but would be a fairly easy thing for someone to use as a backdoor by simply hacking the "how long has it been?" mechanism, etc.  Though I'm sure somebody keeps up an offline crack for such purposes despite however hard it may be.

My suspicion is that Valve has trouble persuading some publishers to rely solely on steam-drm for steam games, and that if offline mode were more obviously abusable (i.e. what the drm-hungry folks who seem to call a lot of shots hear whenever someone says the words "customer friendly") they would have a still-harder time.  Just a guess.

[BobTheJanitor]

That would be nice but would be a fairly easy thing for someone to use as a backdoor by simply hacking the "how long has it been?" mechanism, etc.  Though I'm sure somebody keeps up an offline crack for such purposes despite however hard it may be.

My suspicion is that Valve has trouble persuading some publishers to rely solely on steam-drm for steam games, and that if offline mode were more obviously abusable (i.e. what the drm-hungry folks who seem to call a lot of shots hear whenever someone says the words "customer friendly") they would have a still-harder time.  Just a guess.

That's probably exactly it. Too bad. I don't want to get myself into a DRM-hate rant since I'm sure it would just be an echo chamber in here. Steam still strikes me as the least evil option, but that's primarily because I've become used to having internet connectivity available at any time, so it never becomes an issue for me. Funny that I remember a time when the internet was something that took an effort to connect to, and downloading a picture was something that you intentionally did and then waited for it to load. If I'd shown myself then the phone that I have now, my young head might have imploded.

[keith.lamothe]

If I'd shown myself then the phone that I have now, my young head might have imploded.

Next big movie: AI sends agents back in time to show future expert AIW players modern phone-computers, causing their heads to implode and removing the future threat to the AI.

Not derivative at all.

[Mánagarmr]

I've never actually had cause to use it, but that's what I understand. I don't know why they do it that way. Logically you'd think it could authenticate itself as a valid game when you buy/download it, when you're guaranteed to be online. But I don't know the hidden depths of their DRM system. I've never had a game stop on me due to a connection drop mid-game, except for one of the Penny Arcade adventures, which was very odd. Otherwise it can go and come back with no trouble. It seems like if you really want to use offline mode, the best way would be to use it permanently and only go online periodically to check for updates, then set it back offline again.

Yeah, I've never had any problems with Steam suddenly going offline either (game wise). The Friend service drops fairly often, but most of the time just for a few seconds. That does however not affect that games or the store.

And yeah, that sounds like a fairly reasonable use of offline mode.

[Mánagarmr]

Also, draconian DRM people should be lined up and shot. In a perfect world at least. All we can do now is avoid them like the plague. EA just joined my ranks of "Do not buy":s with Origin and requiring even offline single player boxed games to be connected to Origin.

[BobTheJanitor]

Also, draconian DRM people should be lined up and shot. In a perfect world at least. All we can do now is avoid them like the plague. EA just joined my ranks of "Do not buy":s with Origin and requiring even offline single player boxed games to be connected to Origin.

I would entirely agree with this if it wouldn't make me a lying hypocrite. When it comes to something like Origin, any game that requires it is an automatic no-buy for me. This isn't too hard, since thus far they've all been games like Manshoot Warsim 3000 and other such things that I don't really care about. On the flip side, a game that uses Steamworks, that is a game that uses Steam as its DRM and requires it in order to download and play, is a plus for me. I've saved a fair bit of money buying Steamworks games on other DD platforms and sites and popping the key in Steam. So even though they're fairly similar, one I despise and one I embrace.

Of course when you compare ease of use, reliability, convenience, extra features and ridiculously good sales prices, Steam comes out on top every time. Not to mention EA seems like a bratty baby for removing their games from Steam and never giving a valid reason for it; nonsensical, meaningless phrases like "we want to connect directly with our customers" aside.

[Hearteater]

I find the indie scene is pretty much producing all of the games I want to play now days.  Sadly, even if people boycott EA or any other publisher, they will just blame the lost sales on piracy.

[BobTheJanitor]

I find the indie scene is pretty much producing all of the games I want to play now days.  Sadly, even if people boycott EA or any other publisher, they will just blame the lost sales on piracy.

Ah, the piracy excuse. That old chestnut gets pulled out of mothballs every time a game sells poorly. And the only people who believe that excuse any more are dumb publishers. The rest of the game community, and smart devs and publishers know it for BS excuse that it is.

That's another reason I find myself being a Valve apologist. They get that piracy can be an issue, although not as big of an issue as it is made out to be every time something sells badly. And instead of combating it by restrictive and ridiculous DRM schemes that make it more convenient for the end user to pirate the game, they flank the problem by making Steam easier and quicker to use than downloading a torrent, and they provide the sales that make people mentally feel like they're getting a better deal than pirating the game (because they get the intangible bonus of a clean conscience) while still feeling like they're getting it for dirt cheap. And it works, incredibly well. Gabe gave out some numbers once indicating that their profits during a sale for a given title at 75% off go up 40 times. That's not just 40x the units sold, that's 40x the dollars, even at the drastically reduced price. And then afterwards the sales continue to be higher than normal thanks to word of mouth.

[Cyborg]

The days of $60 titles are being replaced by more price conscious consumers. We have more choice now. We don't have to pay $60 to scratch an itch when there are plenty of other titles at better prices. Also, I feel as if technology has taken a break from progress at the moment. The graphics between generations aren't that much better. The gameplay mechanics may add different gimmicks, but the real innovation is in the indie scene.

[eRe4s3r]

2 Words

Mass Effect (I am just clumping all 3 mass effect titles into 1 now, )

We have 0 choice

Amount of Sci-fi rpgs? (Now please, don't say Dead Space is a RPG)
1 <--

Amount of Action RPG's in space with (mostly) epic story and lots of deep'ish character interaction
1 <--

Amount of decent AAA RPG's not set in a fantasy world
1 <--

I wish it were different, but Indy devs produce sometimes interesting gameplay, but sometimes i want to get lost in an epic story, meet interesting characters and blow aliens and their space-stations up while romancing someone who can't leave her suit while also playing in an Universe that isn't entirely "out of this world". HAH. Also after my 3rd playthrough i finally understood what the Quarians represent (namely the Gypsies of the past century) And this is not just thrown "in your face" .. no, its a lot of vague clues and hints in text and dialog. Nobody openly says this in mass effect. Or maybe i am just slow..

Ain't exactly much choice on the market for that. While Mass Effect is an action game its 50% dialog. Of which 40% is interesting. Compare that to BG2 where maybe 25% was (text) dialog and large sections were essentially the same grind combat (particularly later on) and you never really had any deep connection to the game world, just to the characters.

Innovation is all good and well, but what good is the best gameplay when theres no MEAT to the game. (Meat = Graphics, Story, Sound, Music, Immersion)

[keith.lamothe]

We have 0 choice

Amount of Sci-fi rpgs? (Now please, don't say Dead Space is a RPG)
1 <--

Amount of Action RPG's in space with (mostly) epic story and lots of deep'ish character interaction
1 <--

Amount of decent AAA RPG's not set in a fantasy world
1 <--

Reasons I would have no choice but to play Mass Effect
0 <--



I really really like the first two and am very eager to see how those choices I made work out in the third, but it's quite far from a compulsion.

[eRe4s3r]

A good game is pretty complusionatory to me ^^ No excess of those ;p

I mean have you see Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning? Its just another, just cheaper and less fancy Skyrim in 3rd person. It feels like the industry has 0 fantasy any more to do anything BUT fantasy, quite literally.

Off hand i am not even waiting for any other game but Mass Effect 3 and X Rebirth .. thats pretty sad ;/ Other games may come out but so far i have not been convinced they are worth time, mine particularly.. and there is still the open disaster of SOTS2 which is STILL unfixed. And will be for many many more months.

Why does no one does a Dead Space where the Horror comes from being thrown in a Fantasy world? Why nobody interlinks sci-fi with fantasy? There is so many ways to do this properly, yet nobody even tries.