We are a family of five and share devices. The tablet has profiles that just switch locally. The switch asks before you start a game which profile to use. The steam deck not only doesn’t properly separate profiles, so you end up accidentally overwriting each other’s save files, it also goes through that whole login process every time you switch them, which doesn’t work if you’re disconnected. So yeah, the deck doesn’t work as well as other devices if it’s disconnected. It’s not that out doesn’t work at all, I know, but profiles and iirc achievements as well just don’t properly do their thing.
I know that it has an offline mode. The fact alone that you have to tell it to be offline now it’s telling, as that’s not the default mode of operation. We took it to a camping trip where we had long periods of being disconnected and e.g. switching between the family’s profiles just doesn’t work if you’re offline.
I’ve taken it to a camping trip and the experience was horrible. There’s all kinds of features that just don’t work properly when being offline, most of all profile switching, which we rely heavily on. It’s great that you had a better experience, but I can’t confirm that.
I’m not subscribed to this community and just found this content via “all”. If you’re in there, you’ll always get downvotes from people who just don’t like this kind of content. Don’t worry about it.