When do you play offline?

[BiscuitWaffle]

Cheating, Team killing, Clan whoring, Kicked because I'm too good, Kicked because I'm not good enough. Empty servers, Full servers, Servers, Whiners, Lamers, Flamers, Punks, Drunks, Crunks, Gangster wanna be's, Pro Wanna be's, Wanna be's, A general lack of common #%#$ courtesy in certain players

And lets not forget, Overkill on tons of random **** I have to download just to play one #%#$ map that ends as soon as I finally get to join (rare but it happens)

Other than that playing onlne is sweet and I love it

haha! so true!

I play online when I get tired of bots doing dumbass things and singling me out in a fight.

I play offline when I want to try out dumb **** with my friends like tons of mutators and mods and when I get tired of people doing all the above.

(I'll add in servers full of sniper-wanna-be's and random awful lag spikes that make me into a sniper-wanna-be. )

[VACkillers]

i play offline for several reasons. A lot of it is due to cheating.... rank systems have become even more worthless of the years as there are so many ppl out there who cheat to get their stats up. when your trying to get good at something, learning and what not, theres nothing like some Awhole who jus fragged you yelling at you to get out of the game because you suck! or plain insults everytime u get fragged lol.. Me personally had been waiting for YEARS to be able to play a multiplayer game type with the computer/bots. before UT99, there wasn't a single game that had bots in a multiplayer atmosphere, i had no idea why it took so long for a game developer to do, but even now, UT its almost solo in this aspect, still, after "nearly" 10 years, there isn't many other games that have bots on a multiplayer map. I wanted this for so long because the absolute LAG i used to get with games like quake, and the original Delta Force games on a 28.8K modem was hurrendous!!!! All these MMO's are great for example, but i tell ya something, i love to play a game where im not FORCED to log online to play if i dont want to, I like to have the option to go online or not, I can jus pick up and play without having to worry about connection difficulties.....
Those are just a few of some reasons why I personally dont really take UT online. Lan games are more my thing if im playing against other players with better performance that way no one can disbute anyone whos winning on cheats and lag heh...

[UndeadRoadkill]

there wasn't a single game that had bots in a multiplayer atmosphere

Not out of the box, but I remember playing with Steve Polge's custom reaperbots for Quake. And now he works for Epic!

[Eulogy]

Practice in GOD mode and to get familiar with maps

[hund_]

before UT99, there wasn't a single game that had bots in a multiplayer atmosphere, i had no idea why it took so long for a game developer to do, but even now, UT its almost solo in this aspect

before ut unreal had them.
the unreal mp was unplayable out of the box and they were fun as well as necessary

[Minimaul]

I play offline when I am learning a map, testing, etc.

Yeah, same. Although sometimes if my network is screwy I'll play offline for a bit.

[bclagge]

I'll play offline when testing settings. Otherwise online is the place to be.

[Xandros]

I play offline when I just don't want to play with and against Humans. I spent three years playing UT offline mainly because I only had dial up but I ended up with bots on Godlike (and tweaked besides the standard settings). I had them named with their own names too.

I grew really attached to those guys. Even though it was just my extended army of artificially intelligent (or dumb if you look at it that way) robotic players, they were my crew and we had some **** good times together *sniff*.

Then I kind of, nuked my computer by accident and... Forgot to save their personalities. But hey, that's why I'm buying UT3. So I can resurrect my army of bots.

[VACkillers]

whoa sweet Xandros... lemme know if u can get ya electronic buddys back... maybe i could burrow them? hehe

[sinx]

I play offline, testing my mod, and play LAN - that way there is some Quality Control over the human players. Occasionally I'll play online but I'm more into variety than playing the same map over and over and over again.

I think the fantasy element is an important point that separates UT from a lot of the other more "realistic/modern day" fps games. I'm glad there is a game where I don't have to choose a current day (or similar) weapon and play in maps based on current day environments - yuck! So from this point of view, the game may lend itself to people getting caught up in their own worlds, with some reasonable AI, and challenging themselves in their own controllable atmosphere, which isn't a replica of today's world....ya gotta love UT!

I get emails from a lot of people that use my mod (mapmixer) to play offline and LAN because it gives them more flexibility and hence more enjoyment (from their perspective) than being stuck to playing a limited number of maps available from online servers. An interesting point is that I've had a lot of people saying that mapmixer has extended the life of the game for them because it introduces a controllable random element and exposes them a lot more to custom user content. This is not always something you get online. (btw, I'm not trying to plug my mod, it just gives me an insight into different types of play.)

I'm not saying offline or LAN play is the best experience for everyone! Online play is the ultimate test because you get to play against a variety of skills but offline play puts the control back in your hands - if that's your thing. Each to his own...Long live UT!

[Hedge-o-Matic]

The online community is what turned me off of 2k4. I stopped playing it online a year after release, disgusted with the nonstop vulgarity and infantile posturing. The mic was a disaster, so I disabled that feature. The text message stream became a literally non-stop flood of abuse, so I turned off the messages. So I was isolated entirely from those I played with, and still had the frustrating experience of non-existent teamplay and the occasional person whose only joy was in messing with their team mates and their team's standing.

Why put up with an anonymous population who aren't satisfying team mates or opponents?

Then there's the fact that I love to play mod gametypes, such as Gemfeeder and Slavemaster. These have zero online presence. Where else to play such a game but offline?

Finally, with Mapmixer and Bot Mixer properly configured, why suffer through yet another game on one of the perhaps three maps the online community has anointed as worthy of play?

All in all, when my favorite community died off (Domination!), there was just no reason to keep playing online, to be honest. I have high hopes for UT3, but these aren't issues that a new game can really fix.

[da ghost]

Warning: Online experience may change

[bazzwano]

other: the thing I love about bots is a can get strait into it, dont have to wait for sevrers. bots do what you say.. quite simply... Bots do what they are told under game objectives, they dont stuff around. they put up good contest and I can get strait into it.. no need for online play.. never need to give it a try because im happy with bots... well UT1 and UT3 bots... but if bots are like they are in UT2004 with CTF then i guess ill have to wait till UT4 again..

[msny]

I play offline when I am learning a map, testing, etc.

Same here.

Check the maps and where everything is first, then go online.

[-Sephiroth-]

how can they know more then half played offline

Imo, they have an exact number of the amount of copies shipped, and an exact number of the the keys with them copies that were used online.