How do I enable offline mode? We've had a few storms and my ISP was down--couldn't play. That is ridiculous for an SP game. Once validated--the game should run without connecting to steam.

:facepalm:
"Cutting off the nose to spite the face" comes to mind...



I was under the impression that it automatically offered "Offline mode?" when it couldn't connect. In any case, if it does manage to connect, a bit of UI exploration reveals that the Steam menu at the top has the option "go offline".




1: You never really own ANY game, you just have a license to play it.

2: Why are you making it out that Steam is some evil corporate overlord that kicks puppies for fun?

3: OFFLINE MODE! :banghead:

Should be optional, but it didn't work automatically for me. I seem to recall Halflife giving the option.
I'll turn off my modem and give it another go.

They pretty much always are. And if it turns out that they're offline for one hour, go in offline mode. It's not like you're constantly installing games from the servers, you can still play installed games offline.. Unlike Ubisoft's DRM which prevents you from accessing your savefiles if their servers are down.

All kinds of DRM are ineffective in the end, but publishers often insist that games have some sort of DRM, in which case you can do far worse than Steam. And it's the only kind which actually has advantages too.

Believe me, I see that too. I'm not some Johnny-come-lately who thought it might be cool to get on the Steam hate bandwagon, I've been looking at Steam since it's very beginning. Back then I thought that is was a good idea, poorly executed. I still think there are some very good ideas coming from the Steam developers, unfortunately they are buried beneath Technocratic Arrogance (Doesn't everyone have 12+mbps connections? Discs are dead) and Corporate Shortsightedness. (If we can get our system to be mandatory everyone will love us and we will have no competition)

Trust me, I hate the fact that it has come to this. I hate the fact that I am reduced to whining like a petulant five year old about how I can't play these games, especially because I have made a conscience decision of abstinence. I understand the desire by the publishers to protect their property, I appreciate that they took the time to try to do so in "as unobtrusive way as possible"; but in that they failed. Yes, Steam is a lot less obtrusive than some forms of DRM, but way more intrusive than others. It is still just as discriminatory to those with slow or no internet connection. It has also not stopped one single software pirate scum bag from getting the game illegally, if anecdotal evidence is to be permitted then Steam has actually encouraged this behavior. And at the end of the day, to answer the OPs question; Steam does not add one iota to the game. There is not a single feature, option or game-play mechanic that that is absolutely dependent on the existence of Steam. If a Non-Steam version were released and played along side a Steam version the two would be identical in every way. If a Non-Steam version were made available, legally by the publishers/developers, it would not impact the Steam users in any way, shape or form. There is not one single player who would suffer if Steam were an option, because it is mandatory there are unhappy players and there has been an impact on game sales, granted it's probably too small to have been noticed.

^ Well said, although I am content with using steam as a medium for pc games I can really respect your sentiment. IMO steam has become a necessary evil however. I think it has done alot more good for the pc industry than bad.

Even I feel it can be intrusive sometimes, especially to those who do not wish to use Steam in the first place. I'd take it over GFWL any day though if I had to choose.

Anybody without a good collection of DVD cases above his desk can't call himself a gamer...

Achievements. Unless you want to go with GFWL or spend money developing your own propriatary achievement system.

I personally don't like achievements much, but for a lot of people, this is a big deal.

Also, being able to download the game from everywhere you've got a decent interweb connection if you lose the disk. That's another advantage pretty heavily dependent on steam.



That's just it. Producing a non-steam version would harm everyone who isn't an anti-steam zealot, simply because the developers have to spend money making and supporting an extra version of the game. They've therefore got less money and time being spent supporting both versions, which means less content, less patches, more bugs, etc because they have to split their efforts with two versions instead of one.

steam is a non issue for me. I play on a console. The biggest problem I see with steam is that you are forced to used it to play a game. which is kinda dumb if you want to make the most money off a game.

Two version would of been smarter. either way some code junkie is going to crack the game if the demand is enough.

Also not everyone either can afford a broadband connection nor may want one. Some people choose not to have internet altogether.

this doesn't make much sense to me, Please correct me if I misunderstand but it sounds like you're saying beth would have to make two separate PC patches?

Wouldn't it be more productive to make one patch & send one copy to go through the Steam certification & the rest of that process & another copy bundled up in an installer to be put on a server for dl

granted it would take a server, but I don't see how it would hinder how many patches, bug squashing or limiting any content the patch makers add.

That's like saying how has a new breed of Apples improved your Orange eating experience. NV is a single player game, none of the community aspects of any service are relevant.

But if Bethesda really had some cojones, they would have done an inter-game promotion of some kind like Valve has done with Telltale, i.e. Steam preorders would get TF2 hats in New Vegas (Scotsman's Stovepipe: +20% damage with explosives while under the effects of alcohol) or a 1st Recon beret for TF2 (+5% crit chance in TF2 = RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE.)

steam games require different coding for steam works than a game without it, so in fact they would have to create 2 different patches. How much of a difference it would make idk.

Achievements have no effect on gamplay. It's not like food in a Non-Steam game will stop healing you once you've healed a cumulative total of 9,999 hit points because you don't have access to the Desert Survivalist Achievement.



Again, no in-game benefit.







The Steamworks SDK is a self contained module that gets added to the game very late in the development process. If a game developer wants to add Steamworks to their game they need to have the game at a stable beta before Steam will allow its SDK to be integrated. The core programming is finished at this point, so there is really no major differences between a Steam or Non-Steam version of a game. Case in point; there are many players eagerly awaiting the release of the next patch, not all of them have versions of the game that could be called kosher. When the patch gets released through Steam there is someone out there (probably a lot of someones) who will take that patch, strip out whatever Steam-print it has, and put it out for download. I can guarantee you that this will happen within days (if not hours) of the official release. The point I'm trying to make is that it is the exact same patch, it is based on the exact same coding, it is the exact same game.

o

So, i need all the LFD1 and 2, Orange Box, Fallout 1 , 2, and Tactics, and the others DVDs, to call myself a gamer?. you have the game with Steam, is original no matter if you downloaded it, you dont need DVD for those

so i dont think so

Oh not THIS argument again. You don't need two versions of game. That's just ridiculous what worshippers of Steam can come up with in order to force everybody else to use it. Game is not using Steam to run, it does not require single bit of Steam. There would be absolutely no difference between Steam and Steam-free version except installer which is usually not developed by game developers anyway. So stop lying, nobody would be missing anything, no single patch, piece of content and there would be no single bug more. Only think what would be hurt is false ego of Steam worshippers.

And one more thing. If not Steam, we (PC users) would be using latest patch for at last one week already.

jesus christ man no one is worshiping steam, take it down a few notches. Yes I could be wrong, but there have been multiple instances where a patch has come out for a retail game and it has taken some time for the same patch to be released on steam. Steam doesn't really have a certification process for patches, so that must mean that there has to be some difference between a steam and a non steam game, and those differences are bigger the more that game uses steam works. I am not saying they are 2 totally different games, just that some extra time and/or manpower would have to be devoted to getting both patches out simultaneously, time/manpower that could (no matter how small or insignificant) could be better devoted to debugging this game.

All in all, it is a moot point. Steam is now king of the pc gaming space, and more and more publishers are choosing to go that route. Again I have never heard a single complaint from a developer or publisher about steam, so if they decide they MUST have some form of DRM, I'd much prefer it to be steam over any other, because there are actual advantages for the consumer by using steam.

And I'm a little confused as to why people hate steam so vehemently, because I can only think of 2 arguments against it.
A). You need steam to download your games, so if steam ever went down you would lose the ability to re download your games
B). Steam is an extra program that must be run in order to play your games and people don't like having to waste CPU usage and HDD space on steam.

Am I missing something or is that really it?

I'm happy to play FO3 without steam and I would have chosen to download Vegas on Steam if I had a choice anyway. I personally don't like changing discs to play games and I like the way steam automatically updates all the games. I don't use MSN or similar proggies but I do use the Steam Community becasue it suits me and works well with the games I play online with friends. These reasons though have nothing to do with the OP question which is about whether steam makes it more enjoyable. I don't neccesarily think it does make it more enjoyable but the only rational agrument I can think of for making it less enjoyable would be if you had to download and install steam before you could play the game - that would piss me off!

Does this make me a 'Steam Worshiper' ?

It automatically downloads the latest patches, unless you specifically tell it not to, which makes it somewhat awkward if you want to revert to an earlier version. Then again, it's not Steam's fault when developers release crappy patches that would make you want to do such a thing.

There were several things mentioned in this thread twigg. I mentioned mine reasons for not liking Steam and some others mentioned more.
As for Steam versus no-Steam version, patches and like. There are Steam-free versions out there as we all know and it required no single Obsidian or Bethesda developer to produce them. Its forbidden to speak about piracy here so I will not say more. I will just repeat what I wrote, only difference between Steam/no-Steam versions including patches is installer. And in case of NV even that is the same since game is supposed to install from disk and should require just verification from Steam.

Delay in appearing patches on Steam are most probably responsibility of Steam personnel. I know at last one indie game where it took some two weeks for patch to appear online while we knew when patch was sent to Steam from developers on forum. Some smaller games just don't receive same amount of service as bigger ones. There are hundreds or thousands games sold via Steam and somebody have to manage all that. That takes people and time.

It appears that Steam's verification process on this latest patch caught something, because it went back to Beth for more revision.

Would you rather have had the patch without the verification? Knowing we have no idea what caused it to be sent back?

showler, can you post source of this information? Nobody of course gone complain but I newer heard Steam been debugging games. So without knowing more about it...

Everything has pros and cons; the reason I like steam is for its convenience. I recently replaced my system and for the games I have on steam all I had to do was transfer the hard drive to the new system and install steam. As to the 360 user's comments all I have to say is - MODs.

It's a guess, but if you look at the blog post (http://bethblog.com/index.php/2010/12/10/new-vegas-game-update-available-on-playstation-3-will-be-on-xbox-360-steam-next-week/) about a week after submitting the update to Steam we find out it's been delayed to the following Monday. Gstaff posts that the reason is "The team wanted to make some last minute checks on the update." Last minute checks a week after submission screams "somebody found something" to me....either Steam did or Beth/Obsidian did.

Plus, the German executable on Steam seems to be up already and the version number for it is higher than the version number for the PS3 update.

It's actually the Bethesda/Obsidian team who have been keeping the patch from being released (link was provided in the post above).
No mention of Steam finding something, but Showler's right that someone found something disruptive in the patch.
From the wording it seems like it's only the PC version, so what's keeping the 360 patch?


Encouraged? I think no more than any other DRM that has certain people all riled up.
Several obtrusive features have come from costumer feedback.

Either they made a deal which got them PC-exclusivity or Bethesda/Zenimax thought it was an easy way to go about it. Either way it was a business deal and not some personal attack against your privacy which is how it comes of from those against it in general.
I wonder what more you abstain from, though. Obviously anything by Google is out and there must be thousands of other things on the Internet. Lot's of games fall outside that category. Couldn't really have played Fallout 3 with GfWL and no recent UBISoft games.

As for slow Internet connection, though it can be somewhat annoying these people can still buy the game in store and install from DVD.
No Internet connection I can understand, but I honestly wonder how many gamers don't have an Internet connection, even a basic one.