Civ 5/Steam:Offline Mode Question

I don't know if this is true or not, but if you're paranoid about installing steam updates (even though you shouldn't be) then you can block it with your firewall.

You can't complain that Steam has not catered for you being irrational. You're able to stop it from phoning home with your firewall. What more do you want? A button that says "pretend I don't have internet access"?

Stop taking an unreasonable position then complaining that it's not being specifically catered for.
Dude just read through the Steam forums and you'll see that a concern over client updates is founded in fact. The updates have caused all sorts of problems. People wasting their gaming time trying to get the balsted client to run. Something I would avoid.

I just wanted to play one game... Civ5. I don't want to be jumping through hoops and finding work arounds to play that game. I also don't want to have yet another program to troubleshoot. From what I read, enough people to take notice, are encountering major hassles with Steam. I've had my share of deleting files, reinstalling, trying this and trying that and on and on. Enough already! I just wanted to play Civ5.
 
This is NOT true! The Steam client frequently checks for updates. It does this on its own. You can choose offline mode and jump through the hoops required to get it working. But Steam will still access the net. And if it finds a client update then you can't play any games until you install the update.

To be clear: if your PC is connected to the net, Steam will be phoning home to look for updates.
If it finds a client update, offline mode will not work until that update has been installed.

Incorrect. You can play steam games while the client is updating. You cannot play while the game itself is being updated.
 
Dude just read through the Steam forums and you'll see that a concern over client updates is founded in fact. The updates have caused all sorts of problems. People wasting their gaming time trying to get the balsted client to run. Something I would avoid.

I just wanted to play one game... Civ5. I don't want to be jumping through hoops and finding work arounds to play that game. I also don't want to have yet another program to troubleshoot. From what I read, enough people to take notice, are encountering major hassles with Steam. I've had my share of deleting files, reinstalling, trying this and trying that and on and on. Enough already! I just wanted to play Civ5.

I've used steam for 4 years, never had any problems.

There are 25 million people using steam and a comparative handful of people suffering a few minutes or hours delay once or twice in their entire lives.

You can rant about the potential issues with any technology. You'd have every right to be annoyed if there were loads of issues with it, but since it's not happened yet you're trying to justify being annoyed about the potential for issues, even when it's extremely unlikely.
 
Incorrect. You can play steam games while the client is updating. You cannot play while the game itself is being updated.

you mistaken the sentence, he talked only of the offline mode - if the client is updating your are no longer in the offline mode, are you?

And welcome here :)
 
I've used steam for 4 years, never had any problems.
your experience

There are 25 million people using steam and a comparative handful of people suffering a few minutes or hours delay once or twice in their entire lives.

Do you have figures or is this your impression? Btw why do you think 25m accounts (iirc the number also was part of a press release, or?) are equal to 25m active users?

Edit: ups, sorry for the double post
 
you mistaken the sentence, he talked only of the offline mode - if the client is updating your are no longer in the offline mode, are you?

And welcome here :)

Thanks.

However, if you're connected to the internet, what's so important about being in offline mode?

Do you have figures or is this your impression? Btw why do you think 25 accounts (iirc the number also was part of a press release, or?) are equal to 25 active users

Edit: ups, sorry for the double post

I remember seeing 31mil steam accounts last time I played TF2, so that suggests there would be at least 30 million accounts. Not necessarily 30 million active accounts, but 30 million nonetheless.
 
And where is it they define "active users" or "active accounts"? We have seen already based on Steam's meaning of offline mode that sometimes the definitions they use are non standard. My guess is that active accounts mean accounts that were used at least once during the year.

Also, they are careful to only call them active accounts - not active users. Since a user can have more than one account, it's making assumptions to start equating accounts to active users.

I suppose it's easier to just believe what they say and that it means what you want it to mean.
 
However, if you're connected to the internet, what's so important about being in offline mode?

it´s one of the reason there are more than one hundreds pages of "discussion" [opinion presentation]. Only one as entry, the offline mode was sold as one time activation for persons with objections towards steam (another reason for the 100+ pages) - one time register and playing in offline mode and no need to bother with steam. But if steam would work like decribed above, it would be more like an occasional online verification and you had to bother much more with steam (also only one reason, why someone can see a problem in this).

Only that you can read the above correctly. My personal point of view would allow you, if you will reduce this discussion to two sides, to count me to the anti steam fraction.

I remember seeing 31mil steam accounts last time I played TF2, so that suggests there would be at least 30 million accounts. Not necessarily 30 million active accounts, but 30 million nonetheless.

I would expect the numbers are still rising. Through aquiring some franchises for the Steam DRM they got a lot of new accounts lately. Also Civ5 most likely will add some new numbers to the accouts figure. But if someone will argue with this number, more important would be: How many of persons are behind the accounts? How many choose steam because of their personal interest (and not they need a account to play a game)? How many are happy with steam and how many have problems? ...

Edit:
And when arguing with people who have no personal experience at all, that gives me the upper hand.
nope
 
This is NOT true! The Steam client frequently checks for updates. It does this on its own. You can choose offline mode and jump through the hoops required to get it working. But Steam will still access the net. And if it finds a client update then you can't play any games until you install the update.

To be clear: if your PC is connected to the net, Steam will be phoning home to look for updates.
If it finds a client update, offline mode will not work until that update has been installed.

Any source for this? I haven't experienced Steam finding any updates while I was in offline mode. Not that it matters to me, I have no real need for offline mode when I have an internet connection (I just don't bother switching back and forth). But you are the first person I've seen reporting this, so I'm curious.

Either way, I haven't had a Steam update take more than a minute or two on my machine.
 
This is NOT true! The Steam client frequently checks for updates. It does this on its own. You can choose offline mode and jump through the hoops required to get it working. But Steam will still access the net. And if it finds a client update then you can't play any games until you install the update.

To be clear: if your PC is connected to the net, Steam will be phoning home to look for updates.
If it finds a client update, offline mode will not work until that update has been installed.


What I said is true. I said I could play the game in offline mode when my router was playing silly buggers and I was not connected to the internet.
 
I don't know if this is true or not....

That has been the main problem with many posts in this and other threads. So if you or anyone else doesn't know what they are posting about, then kindly refrain from gossiping and spreading untruths.
 
And where is it they define "active users" or "active accounts"? We have seen already based on Steam's meaning of offline mode that sometimes the definitions they use are non standard. My guess is that active accounts mean accounts that were used at least once during the year.

Also, they are careful to only call them active accounts - not active users. Since a user can have more than one account, it's making assumptions to start equating accounts to active users.

I suppose it's easier to just believe what they say and that it means what you want it to mean.

Active account appears to mean account they haven't suspended, regardless of the last login time.

it´s one of the reason there are more than one hundreds pages of "discussion" [opinion presentation]. Only one as entry, the offline mode was sold as one time activation for persons with objections towards steam (another reason for the 100+ pages) - one time register and playing in offline mode and no need to bother with steam. But if steam would work like decribed above, it would be more like an occasional online verification and you had to bother much more with steam (also only one reason, why someone can see a problem in this).

Well, it is a one time activation. You just need to log into the steam account to confirm that you were the one to activate it. A subtle difference, but technically true.

Only that you can read the above correctly. My personal point of view would allow you, if you will reduce this discussion to two sides, to count me to the anti steam fraction.

I don't get how people can be anti-steam without using it for themselves? Most people I've seen argue against steam here clearly have never used it. It's 2010, if you don't have a persistent internet connection how are you going to afford a computer able to play civ5?

I would expect the numbers are still rising. Through aquiring some franchises for the Steam DRM they got a lot of new accounts lately. Also Civ5 most likely will add some new numbers to the accouts figure. But if someone will argue with this number, more important would be: How many of persons are behind the accounts? How many choose steam because of their personal interest (and not they need a account to play a game)? How many are happy with steam and how many have problems? ...

From my sample size of counter strike players, very few have problems with steam, and those that do can almost always solve it thru valve's support protocols.

That has been the main problem with many posts in this and other threads. So if you or anyone else doesn't know what they are posting about, then kindly refrain from gossiping and spreading untruths.

It's more dangerous when people don't admit they aren't certain of the truthfulness of their post.
 
You guys can debate whether there are 25 million or 10 million active accounts on steam. Suffice to say there are millions upon millions of people using it without any particular problems.

For the record steam released a major overhaul of their client a few weeks ago. I think it updated while I was playing my game. At some point I got a message saying I needed to restart the steam client to get the update, which I did at a time of my choosing. Then I played my game again.

No issues.
 
It's 2010, if you don't have a persistent internet connection how are you going to afford a computer able to play civ5?
So lets see.....I'm supposed to spend $2,000 and $60 per month for satelite internet so I can play a solo offline game of CiV?
All of us, some who have reasonably good computers and have been playing civ in all its forms since CIV (no number), do not live in your wired world. I realize, to you, we are of no account but do you have to be so abusively smug about it!
 
There are 25 million people using steam and a comparative handful of people suffering a few minutes or hours delay once or twice in their entire lives.

Putting aside the nebulous definition of 'active accounts', how do you know there's only a handful of people suffering problems, or that their problems are minor? Not everyone has an account on the Steam forums, not everyone that has an account posts, and it's a wasted effort to post when there are already dozens of people posting about the same issue you have and the general consensus is that there's nothing you can do. Even if you had access to data about what Steam Customer Support regularly deals with, that only covers the people that have invested the effort in requesting support.

There are a lot of people who have had problems with Steam, who simply haven't said anything because they would rather be doing something like playing their games. Post the question on any forum with a large and widespread user base and you'll see a lot of people who have had issues.

From my sample size of counter strike players, very few have problems with steam, and those that do can almost always solve it thru valve's support protocols.

I don't understand how this is supposed to be significant. What is the sample size? How did they participate, e.g. using a poll or survey? Did you take steps to prevent sampling bias?

Even assuming that all the players who are currently playing Counter-Strike are having no issues, the number tells us nothing about how many people who want to play Counter-Strike are having issues, or how many people that have had issues managed to solve them with the aid of Customer Support.

For the record steam released a major overhaul of their client a few weeks ago. I think it updated while I was playing my game. At some point I got a message saying I needed to restart the steam client to get the update, which I did at a time of my choosing. Then I played my game again.

The Steam client does not update itself while it is running; it only checks to see if updates are available and prompts for a restart if so. Steam will always check for updates when it is being launched in online mode (even with no active internet, according to my tests), and then install them.

Assuming that the update does not introduce more problems, there's nothing wrong with this method. Since updates can and have introduced problems in the past however, the inability to prevent client updates except through perpetual offline mode or disconnecting your internet every time you plan to launch Steam may be troublesome.
 
I don't get how people can be anti-steam without using it for themselves? Most people I've seen argue against steam here clearly have never used it. It's 2010, if you don't have a persistent internet connection how are you going to afford a computer able to play civ5?

i did not wanted to start a discussion with you, i only wanted to provide you a starting point (no idea how much of the 100+ pager you read so far). But some words to this, beside the fact that last time this point (how can one be anti, if he never tried it) resulted in some nice (or extrem) hyperboles, it´s not the reason.

I do not question that steams offers you an use, but all feature i know (and this can be done without trying it) have absolut no use for me. So the postive use of steam for me is zero. Steam itself comes for free (only counting money), but requires a registration. So the use of the deal is now is 0 - x (yes, i value a registration (especially if it´s a firm on the other side) as something with negative use for me - perhaps for you this is nothing to bother, would be a minir negative or zero use altering). So it´s already a negative deal for me, a deal which produces a use of -x, something which i would avoid. Expanding this, you hopeful can quickly see - depending on how certain aspects (some examples i´m aware: privacy, future development, dlc, contract safety, trust) are weighted or expected (or seen in steam, or ...) - steam can produce a quite immense negative use. It´s also possible that the (anticipated) negative use (steam, costs of civ5, ...) will outperform the positive use seen in Civ5 (fun, ...).
 
Well, it is a one time activation. You just need to log into the steam account to confirm that you were the one to activate it. A subtle difference, but technically true.

Sorry, but Ori has shown that this isn't true. Even if you play in offline mode with no internet connection it will pester you to connect.

I don't get how people can be anti-steam without using it for themselves?

I can be anti-murder without ever having committed it myself.

Most people I've seen argue against steam here clearly have never used it.

Completely irrelevant. There's alot of reasons to not want the software on a system.

It's 2010, if you don't have a persistent internet connection how are you going to afford a computer able to play civ5?

Man, what an absurd comment. I have a decent computer but don't have a persistent internet connection, I have to log on. There's also lots of people that still need to use dial-up because broadband isn't available in their area. And there's plenty of people who can afford a connection but don't bother for various reasons, like being able to go online at work, or they just aren't interested in the Internet at all. Then there's people like students that may have had a computer given to them but are trying to save a few dollars by not connecting.
 
Putting aside the nebulous definition of 'active accounts', how do you know there's only a handful of people suffering problems, or that their problems are minor?

You would hear about it more. CS:S players are notorious whiners and whenever there is a problem they all pile into the forums and raise holy hell. Moreover it's a voice enabled game, and whenever anyone has had trouble with anything you will hear them moaning about it in game.

So I guess it's an informal survey, but from playing CS:S and from several other games with voice enabled / community features I hear very few complaints about *steam*.

What you hear them whining about all the time is VAC.
 
So lets see.....I'm supposed to spend $2,000 and $60 per month for satelite internet so I can play a solo offline game of CiV?
All of us, some who have reasonably good computers and have been playing civ in all its forms since CIV (no number), do not live in your wired world. I realize, to you, we are of no account but do you have to be so abusively smug about it!

You only need to have access ONCE to activate the game. After that you do not need to have internet access to play--you can play in offline mode.

In installed Civ4 via steam and I can tell you that it's my favorite game to play when I'm on an airplane...
 
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