Offline mode?

[tomchynsky]

Hello can we play without internet connection?

[Mordgier]

I sure hope so - but doubt it.

RaceNet was why I refunded Dirt 3.

I doubt GRID will be without it though - Codemasters sees racenet as a DRM feature.

MINIMUM:
...
Network: Broadband Internet connection

So my guess is a hard no.

[ww2_v2]

If it doesn't have an offline mode, that's a straight up hard pass from me. I'm never going to support that kind of rubbish. Single player should NEVER require an online connection.

[Mordgier]

To be fair, a large part of the issue Grid had was that multiplayer was full of cheaters with edited cars and profiles and so on. There were many attempts to combat it but people were raging about cheaters in multiplayer for years.

Because the game tried to make the SP and MP world one and the same it basically turned into a "Screw it, we'll make the whole thing online."

https://steamcommunity.com/app/255220/discussions/0/46476690955150281

Codemasters could have split the game into SP profile and MP profile - but given the fact that making it online only also serves as DRM I can see why they went the route they did.

Dirt 3 was cracked day one. But the entire campaign was unplayable. You could only do "Free Race Mode" which made the cracked version worthless as in general codemasters racing games are about Career progression and with the profile AND races stored online - that content is simply impossible to add into a non legitimate copy.

I am not saying "Buy it anyway" - what I am saying is that there is a sane reason for it.

Personally, I will be buying it sometime well after release, when the release day Racenet issues are worked out, and it's on sale.

[ww2_v2]

I don't care how anyone tries to justify it (although you were very civil in your response, which a lot of people aren't these days, so thank you), I just don't agree with online DRM, period. There is nothing that anyone will ever say that will convince me to ignore it, or to agree with it.

You said it yourself that the other option would've been to completely split and compartmentalise the single player component from the multiplayer component, but in the developers eyes it had the added benefit of online DRM ... which only benefits them, not you in any way whatsoever.

Online DRM for single player is simply a worse experience for the paying customer, getting them to jump through unnecessary hoops that otherwise would've never been there. I've read about so many people losing hours of progress with connection dropouts in Dirt Rally 2.0, even in more recent reviews, so it's not just a problem of days gone. Online DRM is atrocious.

I won't lose sleep over it. I simply won't buy it. I know a lot of the negative feedback over Dirt Rally 2.0 was because of online DRM. People don't like being burnt twice. It will be lost sales, there is no question about it. But if people want to support this kind of thing, then go right ahead ... but remember that the more you support it, the more you can expect to see it.

[Aurora]

24/7 internet connections are way beyond standard now. If you keep up to current year you might not find this an issue.
The only reason someone would be against this kind of DRM nowadays is because they either want to steal the game or cheat in it - So which is it?
inb4 some 'cheating in sp doesnt matter' response

[AguilaDeAcero]

Whaat? Really? Forcing you to be online? Lets hope not..

[Nebula Punk]

Making a singleplayer game always online is absolutely unacceptable and extremely anti-consumer. They're saying they don't care about people who don't have good internet or internet at all. If someone wants to cheat in their singleplayer game, let them.

I don't know if this game is going to have microtransactions but the reason they usually make online only games is so people can't cheat and get the MTX w/o paying. Because god forbid they get the content they already paid for.

[SeriousSpy]

Originally posted by Aurora:

24/7 internet connections are way beyond standard now. If you keep up to current year you might not find this an issue.
The only reason someone would be against this kind of DRM nowadays is because they either want to steal the game or cheat in it - So which is it?
inb4 some 'cheating in sp doesnt matter' response

And not because we dislike the idea of not actually owning our game - or because we're worried that in the future servers could shut down.

GRID 1, and the older Dirt games are all unavailable for sale, because Codemasters only had car or music licences for a limited time. If they had always online DRM, they would be 100% unplayable. This is doubly so for racing games like the aforementioned, because they are at risk of losing their licenses.

Imagine if you couldn't play this game in 5 years time, despite the fact that you bought it, and potentially spent $50+ additional on DLCs?

Imagine if we couldn't play some older classic racing games, rFactor 1, GTR2, the old Colin McRae games?

[Mordgier]

Originally posted by Aurora:

24/7 internet connections are way beyond standard now. If you keep up to current year you might not find this an issue.
The only reason someone would be against this kind of DRM nowadays is because they either want to steal the game or cheat in it - So which is it?
inb4 some 'cheating in sp doesnt matter' response

I wouldn't mind it.

Except for this issue:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/690790/discussions/0/1798529872642883472/


The online only aspect of the game flat out didn't work during release. Worse yet. To "compensate" people Codemasters gave people 1 million in game credits - which basically ruined the progression as suddenly you had more money than you needed at that stage of the game allowing you to basically power through.

There isn't really a point to cheating in a SP racing game anyway so I'm not sure it's a real concern for anyone as far as stealing:

https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197972608891/?cc=us

Does it look like I steal games?

[Doktor Mandrake]

Originally posted by Aurora:

24/7 internet connections are way beyond standard now. If you keep up to current year you might not find this an issue.
The only reason someone would be against this kind of DRM nowadays is because they either want to steal the game or cheat in it - So which is it?
inb4 some 'cheating in sp doesnt matter' response

Some people want to be able to play their games in the future, wether it be 10 years or 20 years

Maybe you're of a younger generation where digital gaming was already taking off, but a lot of us use to collect things, wether it be games, consoles, computers.. A lot of people are into archiving great games

But on PC physical releases are rarer and rarer and even nowadays they still have to be activated on steam even if physical.. And now you're saying we should just accept always-online DRM that in history has normally ended up with the servers being shut down and the game being unplayable

Not everyone sees the games they buy as disposable digital goods, a lot of us like to hang onto our games (I've got multiple mechanic hard drives with pc games I've purchased backed up and saved)

[AguilaDeAcero]

Originally posted by Doktor Mandrake:

Originally posted by Aurora:

24/7 internet connections are way beyond standard now. If you keep up to current year you might not find this an issue.
The only reason someone would be against this kind of DRM nowadays is because they either want to steal the game or cheat in it - So which is it?
inb4 some 'cheating in sp doesnt matter' response

Some people want to be able to play their games in the future, wether it be 10 years or 20 years

Maybe you're of a younger generation where digital gaming was already taking off, but a lot of us use to collect things, wether it be games, consoles, computers.. A lot of people are into archiving great games

But on PC physical releases are rarer and rarer and even nowadays they still have to be activated on steam even if physical.. And now you're saying we should just accept always-online DRM that in history has normally ended up with the servers being shut down and the game being unplayable

Not everyone sees the games they buy as disposable digital goods, a lot of us like to hang onto our games (I've got multiple mechanic hard drives with pc games I've purchased backed up and saved)

Well said.
Also I still remember the always online requerimient of Diablo 3.. Despite the game being regular (at best), that single thing killed the game for good.
Single player games with forced online requerimient will always fail. But some Studios never learn..

[76561198965635790]

Hey there - can confirm: you can play offline. There's no requirement to be online to use the single-player features. Thanks :)

[TneX]

Originally posted by ChrisGrovesCM18:

Hey there - can confirm: you can play offline. There's no requirement to be online to use the single-player features. Thanks :)

Great news! Thank you for clarifying it.

[AguilaDeAcero]

Praise the sun!

[Aurora]

Originally posted by ChrisGrovesCM18:

Hey there - can confirm: you can play offline. There's no requirement to be online to use the single-player features. Thanks :)

Fast replies that clarify what's going on? Amazing!
Can you poke the DiRT guys to do the same?