[TM2] Medal ghosts unavailable in offline mode

[PurplePants]

If there is no Internet connection the single player mode doesn't work. That is, it can't be selected. Maps can be individually browsed to and played, but doing this loses the medal cars so it's not the same by any stretch of the imagination.

I thought there had been a statement during the beta to say that offline play would be fine for single player. Was that erroneous or is this simply a bug that needs fixing?

[jonthekiller]

It's not a bug, for the moment, maybe all the time I don't know, medal ghosts are available only in solo mode online and not offline.

[PurplePants]

Do you know if this is going to change?

During the beta there was a lot of fuss about Ubisoft's DRM and having to be online to play the game. Hylis said this wasn't going to happen, apart from an initial authentication process.

Today I was online but couldn't play with medal ghosts because the master server was down, and it seems to me that Ubisoft have maybe slipped in their DRM on the sly after the fuss about it died down. Had we known it would be like this during that beta discussion I'm willing to bet Hylis wouldn't have had such an easy ride.

[mistertl]

There is no Ubisoft DRM in the game.
The solo mode saves your records, medals, etc. online at the masterservers, so it is synchronized with all computers where you play TrackMania/ShootMania/Questmania. That's the only reason why you couldn't play solo when the masterservers were down.
You can play on all maps offline via Local Play, use the editor, mediatracker, etc., but you can't play that solo campaign due to its online functions.

[PurplePants]

I appreciate that you can't sync medals and such when there is no connection. That didn't stop TMUF letting you play (and presumably syncing up when next online). In TM2 you can't even get into that part of the game but have to browse for the maps. Worse, the constraints made on you (need golds in previous maps, etc) are no longer effective so you can browse and play maps you would normally not be good enough to play.

I accept that Unisoft has nothing to do with this, and also that this probably seemed a reasonable way to do it at the time (particularly blocking access to the maps until the link is donw). Nevertheless, I think it should be recognised as not a good thing to not have the single player mode accessible.