Bring Back Offline Mode Please

General Discussion
1

I don’t play ladder, or coop, or even arcade. I play the campaign, or some custom campaigns that I download and manage through another app. There is no reason for me to need to be online or connected to battle.net. It’s really annoying that any time I want to play a quick mission I have to launch the bnet app, wait for it to load, fairly often wait for it to update, and then EVERY time I go to launch the game itself, I need to wait for it to ‘update.’

There is nothing to update 99% of the time, and on the rare occasion that there is, it isn’t relevant to what I’m trying to do. There’s no reason for me to waste a minute of my 30 minute break waiting for nothing at all. If I play four times in a day, I wait four times, and each of those times there is no update, but I still have to wait for it.

If it seems like what I’m typing is redundant, maybe your starting to get my point. There’s no reason to repeat the same NOTHING over and over.

Just let me set it to play offline and make me deal with a massive patch when (if) I ever want to play a part of the game that requires connecting to Bnet. Or at least give me a reason. Explain why I need to click update and then play.

1 Like
2

i support that. i have an internet connection with data limitations, meaning that if i use too much, i will be offline for at least an hour. some times the rest of the day.

3

yall noobs, theres is 100% an offline mode. disconnect your internet then login, i wont be able too and ask you if you want to play offline. lol noobs.

4

I have considered this, and tried it before. Of course, someone who types like you and has 400 posts on a forum probably isn’t really trying to help, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

The offline mode has requirements, one of which is having logged into the game within the last 30 days. I could enter Bnet in offline mode and play for a couple weeks that way before having to log back in. Of course, that assumes that I’m not trying to use Bnet for anything else. Even if that’s the case, it’s still an extra couple of totally unnecessary steps every month.

5

quit being lazy, wow you have to login a couple of times a month, woopity doo, instead you want the devolepers (who are gone) to come back to work for blizzard and enter in probably a months worth of code just so you dont have to login a couple of times a month…geee it makes so much sense.

1 Like
6

Seeing that the Bnet launcher is what keeps all the games up to date, you’ll have to login everytime a patch is pushed as well. So it’s not just a matter of every 30 days.

In other words, just use the launcher. It doesn’t hurt anything. If it’s hogging your system’s resources, just set it (in the settings) to close when you launch a game.

And as for offline mode, it’s not likely ever going to happen. First, SC2 used to have offline but it was gotten rid of, meaning Bliz wants it gone. Secondly, the game reached end of development almost three years ago. Outside of bug fixes, changes to the core of the game are over.

7

I remember playing offline when the game was new. That’s precisely why I’m so annoyed by the change. They actively removed a feature to force you through their client so they can push ads for their other games. It provides me 0 benefit to me and results in a repeated minor frustration.

I have games I really like and that I return to often. I still play Heroes of Might & Magic III and Shogun: Total War. If I had to go through a third party launcher and wait for phantom updates, I probably wouldn’t. So if the goal was to get people to stop playing their game, then forcing the launcher and updates was a good move.

I don’t really expect anything to get changed, but I posted with the hope of one of two results. Either, someone has figured out a workaround and shares it, or it spreads the opinion that I (and at least a few others, likely many more) hold; that offline mode is a good feature which belongs in games.

8

They didnt remove offline to force people into using the launcher because the game doesn’t require the launcher to play. You don’t even need the launcher to login for online play. The launcher is only needed for updates.

If you set the launcher to open to the last game you played, it will skip past the “Home” tab. Opening directly to the last game played should only show ads for SC2.

Phantom updates? The only thing I’ve seen that would qualify for something like that is the one second long update that occurs when I exit the game. Otherwise, all the other updates are quite real.

The work around, as mentioned, is to launch the game with internet disabled, with periodic logins, which are very infrequent. And regardless of opinion, again as mentioned, the game is no longer being developed.

And a goal of making people stop playing the game? Come now. That would be a catastrophic business decision. One that you know full well is not the case, DrPineapple, especially since the conversion to fully online was with the HotS patch… right in the middle of the game’s life.

2 Likes
9

Thank you for a response that is at least attempting to be helpful.

If I run Starcraft II.exe it brings up the launcher. If there’s a way to have it run the game instead, that’s good, and I’ll look into it.

My launcher opens right to the page with the update/play button for Starcraft II. Or whatever game I happen to have played last. I still get advertisement pop-ups though. Honestly, they don’t bother me all that much, but I would still avoid them if I could.

What I mean by phantom updates is the required check for updates every time the game is launched. Click update, wait for 5-10 seconds while it confirms there aren’t any, then the button changes to “Play.” I could have phrased that better.

I don’t want to disable my internet to play an offline game for a few minutes between meetings. I’m often still using the internet while I play. I know the game is no longer being developed, but if there’s no point in looking for a change or another way to approach things, why even have a forum? By asking for the change, you’ve given me one thing to look into that might help.

Of course I don’t think their intention was to actually make people stop playing. I’m expressing frustration with the change. I’m far from the only person annoyed with the change. The company decided it was more profitable to force login requirements than to fully offline play. I’m suggesting that there is at least a portion of the audience that feels otherwise.

They make changes to improve profits, not user experiences. If user experience is seen as something profitable to improve, they will likely do so. So I’m saying, if they want my money, make games that I can play without superfluous clicking through ads and non-updates. I bought Warcraft 3 twice (lost my first copy). I didn’t buy Reforged, because I knew it would have the launcher as a requirement.

10

The ads that pop up when opening the launcher can’t be stopped unfortunately, however, they only appear when opened, and not every time.

To launch SC2 directly, create a shortcut to the exe. In the shortcut properties, in the “target” field, add -launch to the end of the path. Keep in mind that anytime the client version and the server version don’t match, you’ll have to use the launcher to update.

Are you switching between regions? If so, there’s a known issue where changing from AM to either EU/Asia (and back to AM) causes an erroneous update. That just started recently and Bliz is looking into it.

Disabling internet isn’t the smoothest method, I agree. But if you keep the networking icon in your system tray, it can be disabled/enabled fairly quickly. If you need internet while playing, then that will be an issue. But with the -launch command above, you can open SC2 without the launcher and remain online.

It’s a centralized, formal location for the community to talk only about the game. There’s more to the forums than making suggestions. Balance whine aside, it’s a place to find info, knowledge, etc about different aspects of the game.

I’d be careful with generalizations like that. Not every QoL change made to a game was to increase profit. Many are purely implemented solely for the users.

In the end, it comes down to frame of mind. I choose to put my anxieties into things like human trafficking, animal abuse, waste, war etc. One click (possibly none) per opening of the launcher is nothing to me. But everyone is different.

1 Like
11

Cool, I’ll give that a try. Thanks.

No region swapping. I had to double check it was still NA, but I don’t think I’ve ever changed it. Out of curiosity I opened timed the little update check with a stopwatch a few times. The three times were 6.7 seconds, 9.1 seconds, and 18.2 seconds (though I admit that one was unusually long). Ultimately not a big deal, but considering the frequency and the fact that it is completely unnecessary, it adds up.

I know there are QoL changes that happen just to improve things, and that there are some good people doing good work. Generally speaking though, ActiBlizzion doesn’t have a very good track record since merging. I’m fine with throwing shade at massive corps who squander wonderful IPs.

That’s part of the problem I have with this minor annoyance. When I want to unwind and play some video games, I don’t want to be stalled out and have my mind wander back into the things that I’m trying to unwind from. I know it seems like making a mountain out of a mole hill, but it’s the fact that they built a mole hill in the middle of a sandbox I paid for that irks me.

Thanks again for the suggestion/info. I’m going to go try that out.

12

I wish it too, I get sometimes burst of anger when I get annotations of forced updates on windows and same applies to video games too. Imagine playing campaing mission when a community patch is being released - but wait something went wrong and the patch actually tuned in campaing balance… :U excatly what I dont wish to see

people like me need time to adjust for patches, patches killed my fun from playing call of duty and I stopped playing it althogether because everytime i got a feeling of playing cod they released another 8gb junk of useless things that would also tweak every little thing that i didnt even know exist but thye would made me adjust my game play.

1 Like
13

they could add a version of offline mode that does not require regular patching.

14

It’s not so much a matter of patching. The move to fully online games, across the industry, was driven by DRM.