Having bot support without offline support is the most pointless thing ever.
The whole purpose of having bots is to provide a fallback mode, a way to play the game if the servers are down or if you have connection issues. The pandemic made things much worse as far as internet traffic and routing because of a lot more people working from home.
Not having an offline mode means that we are dependent on factors (like routing or server availability) that are completely outside of our control.
Not having offline support also decreases the perceived value of the game because it essentially has a kill switch at its core. I personally consider the lack of offline support deeply anti-consumer.
It turns games into perpetual rental services, it puts an expiration date on them.
Depressing time to be a gamer, honestly. Instead of being excited about new releases these days the first thing that comes into my mind is "what's the catch? what did they screw up this time?"
Having an offline mode to play with AI wouldn't hurt anyone who owns the game and has an internet connection all the time so I don't see why a certain group is against it. It's such a shame to see people against something just because it's something that wouldn't benefit them. It doesn't hurt them either so I don't see what the issue is.
This wouldn't really affect me because I probably would have my internet connection (hopefully) on even if I'm playing bots but I can see how it benefits a lot of people. I would assume the internet connection is just to tie this mode to the game's progression system (and possibly have some achievements around it) and to prevent users from using a cracked version of the game and play vs AIs for free (though I'm not sure if it actually deters them)
