Trackmania Forever won't let me play solo tracks due to lack of Steam friends.

[tom_mai78101]

Is this some kind of marketing strategy or something that forces consumers to make friends while playing a game?

This is really pissing me off only because of me living in a region where hardly any Steam players are around. Even if they are around, they are mostly either playing Counter Strike, or Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. And this game needs friends that are playing TrackMania Nations.

I was expecting myself to play (and enjoy the last bit of) TrackMania Nations Forever on my own for the entire game. When it said "Play Solo", it shouldn't expect me to have a requirement of a lot of friends in order to play.

What can I do?

And of course, TrackMania Nations Forever is Steam freeware.

 

[seph ir oth]

Probably some weird Steam version.

I just downloaded from the Trackmania site. Why play through Steam? No silly requirements and the servers found through the Trackmania server are the best and most challenging.

 

[tom_mai78101]

I'm just playing Solo, where there are 15 tracks per flag. There are 5 flags, each color represents its difficulty. I'm just trying to beat each gold medal racers in all of the tracks. My interest is only that. The servers are a bit hard for me to grasp.

 

[seph ir oth]

Sounds related to if you just downloaded it from their website. Are only specific courses limited because you don't have enough friends, or are they whole flags (can't access black, red, etc.)? In the regular version from Nadeo, there are certain requirements to play certain tracks, however they are overridden if you play offline (disconnect the internet).

 

[tom_mai78101]

Whole flags are affected. And do you mean, I must play TrackMania online?

 

[seph ir oth]

Whole flags are affected. And do you mean, I must play TrackMania online?

Well, that stinks.

Are you able to play Trackmania offline (internet disconnected), or do you have to be connected to the Steam network to play at all?

What I meant was this: with the original client, if I disconnect from my internet completely, I have all courses on Trackmania fully unlocked and free to play with no requirements (no medal req's, nothin). However, if I connect to the internet and wish to play single player, some courses will have requirements (medals, 3-5 friend req's).

 

[tom_mai78101]

Checked again, and it's what you've said at the bottom of your post.

I am able to play TrackMania offline. With and without Steam intervention.

And it looks like it fixed my problem up pretty much if I didn't connect to TrackMania servers, whether my Steam client is online or not.