I was having internet problems so I created an offline char, and it got me to thinking, why even play online? I don’t like the market, so I always go CoF, and the chat works even when playing offline mode. . .
Are there other reasons to play online mode?
Maybe not for this season since I have so much already invested in my online chars, but when next season comes out, I’m thinking of just playing offline chars
Any cosmetics you own can only be used while online, it’s the only reason i play online and i hate it.
I really wish they would relax this restriction or at least put in place some verification process so that stuff you own is enabled offline.
Only if you play with a friend to share some stuff or care about skins. Otherwise offline.
You are playing fake offline (it should really just be renamed to single player). That means that when the servers go down, you still won’t be able to play.
You need to go to steam properties for LE and change to “Launch full offline”. This is the client that will let you keep playing when servers are down. And with this mode you won’t get chat either. There is zero connection to the servers.
So, to your question, the differences are:
-Both offlines modes don’t let you use MTX (for now anyway and the foreseeable near future).
-Fake offline won’t let you play when the servers are down.
-True offline won’t let you chat.
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Something to add, as that might not be obvious to inexperienced people:
The “fake offline” and “full offline” mode share save data (characters and stash), thus in terms of online vs offline they can be considered the same thing.
You can play “fake offline” when servers are up, you have an internet connection and you want to chat and look at leaderboards (leaderboards can also be looked at in your browser, so kinda irrelevant). And “full offline” is there for you if you just want to play, without requiring an internet connection or connect to Steam, servers, chat, etc. You can switch seamlessly between them.
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Yeah, I wish cosmetics would be available at least in “fake offline” mode. Then I’d have an incentive to spend some money on the supporter packs other than just financially supporting the devs.
Right now cosmetics aren’t reason enough for me to play online. Most of the time while playing I wouldn’t be able to see my cosmetics anyway, because there’s too much stuff going on on screen. I don’t necessarily need even more clutter and effects. 
So if you don’t care about the cosmetics then there is no reason not to play offline (COF). It’s nice to have an option when the servers are down
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