Hello, Since there seems to be server issues, and since the network is not always up, why couldn't this game be offline for those among us who don't necessarily want to play in MP? That would certainly relieve the server, and more importantly, would allow us to bypass those temporary annoyances. Is that a planned feature? I must admit that I would have hesitated to pay for an online-only sim, had I taken the trouble to enquire about it. I just assumed that type didn't exist anymore, Steam allows offline sessions normally.
I agree, it should be better, they know they need to improve it. Not sure whats better, but harder to cheat etc..
@Sean Kenney , do you mean with cheating in the sense of hacking license/content protection? Assume that is a primary reason the core engine needs to be online. Their front-end is also heavily designed around the competitions, the whole account/community/store... That's all really just web-sites I think. Not sure who is actually using the channels by the sponsors (seems a bit weird pseudo facebook style to me, maybe that was the original intent when the game first got released). So yeah likely several components that are designed around this always online mode... Very likely some choices they would like to partially undo
A common architecture is using localhost servers in single player/offline, and connect to external servers for multiplayer sessions. I don't really know how this one is working though, nor whether they have contractual obligations to sponsors and so on - such as displaying at least x times messages on each page from a particular sponsor, for example As for the protection, it's provided by Steam, isn't it? Which allows offline mode, at least for a while. Seems perfect to me And I don't think cheating would be any concern in offline mode (leaderboards is of course in the multiplayer part).
4th straight day of this crap - $170+ dollars of game unusable - I'm pretty much done. Been a huge supporter of this game and have bought everything their is to buy but Ive had it. Off to to Rfactor2 and SCE
Down again for me. Not being able to access the game makes developing add-ons for it a bit of a challenge
Hem. The purpose of the thread wasn't for everyone to report the servers are still down. Please keep out-of-topic posts in other, more relevant threads Actually it was for the support team, not sure whether they're around those forums?
Spending money doesn't always entitle you to a working copy of whatever you spent money on It's called terms of service / agreement Same with services like steam, they can take away all your game-keys and get away with it. You accepted the terms anyway.
Easier for them to lose money to piracy. You could argue that it brings more customers to the game, people that crack it and then find out it's an amazing game and actually buy the content. Yet I think that's unlikely gonna happen, since the multiplayer isn't exactly the most alive one.. Free always sounds better than paid, doesn't it? I think multiplayer for this game is better.. They need the money. They can't accept people walking around, pissing about in their (amazing) sim, while not having bought the cars/tracks they use...
That would be an argument S3 could use, it's weird that you, as a customer, should use it to oppose an idea you could benefit from. Anyway, it's just a different strategy. Either they enforce online sessions and - hope their system is secure enough - it will not stop piracy, there are many examples of such failures such as the MS Windows activation system; - lose potential customers that don't like the idea, or existing customers than don't like the idea anymore (like Mike above, though we might see him again); - must pay more for the server infrastructure and its maintenance; - and suffer larger consequences from any outage, like this week's. Or they propose offline sessions, using a proven security scheme already adopted by many others, at the cost of some extra changes. Nothing is perfect, so they also risk a bit of piracy, of course, as in the other option. Neither of us has enough data to tell which option is best for S3, but I don't see any disadvantage from getting such a choice as a customer.