CXG Troubles

[CSN NewsBot]

The Inquirer reports of the numerous problems which have plagued the Cyber X Games. As a result, they have declared the main Counter-Strike tournament to be canceled. Just what was one of the reasons why this anticipated tournament came to an unfortunate turn?

To make matters worse, it put out a 3MB patch in the middle of the gaming session. 1200 people at 3MB per head is 3.6GB, or enough to tie up every line the games had for the better part of 24 hours. Things crawled to a halt very very quickly. Add in that the only way to get the patch was over the fragile Steam network, and you have a recipe for disaster.

With that said, there are much more to be read in this article. It is quite a shame for CXG, really, but you may read the fine article right now to fill you up with the details.

[Dis Guy Here]

If there was no steam, this wouldn't have happened. :|

[xlokix]

i can't remember the exact thing that happened, but supposively valve was supposed to help this from happening, but they didnt show up, so everyones blaming valve

[gumplunger]

That's too bad.

[Thortok2000]

Edited by [user="152360"] @ [time="1073798481"]

The problem is not in Steam, the problem is in VALVe. I've always disliked VALVe's attitude towards consumers. "Oh, those things? They give us money and that's all they're good for, since they just whine and whine about problems and stuff."



Something is going on at VALVe. They got hacked and HL2 was spread around. Condition Zero is late. CounterStrike for the Xbox was basically a re-release of a five year old game with a couple new touches.



The 1.6 patch still has bugs. Steam's network is fragile, has bugs, and they have to update the thing every week in order to stay on the road towards improvement, and they still really haven't got a 'finished product' in Steam (although when they do, it should probably be useful, but I doubt worth all the stress it took to get there).



I'm not really in on the whole clan thing (I'm not really that good and I just pub) but I would estimate that nearly 50% (or more) of all CS players are either in a clan, interested in being in a clan, or interested in hearing about the clans. This is largely due to the fact that pubbing is a nuisance, where the only people with any control are the admins and only people with the money to buy a server (or are in a clan!) can get admin. Without the control, hackers, lamers, unbalanced teams, frag-matches instead of objectives, etc. can totally screw up the game.



I for one know that when I play my best with teammates of roughly equal skill (or better) against opponents of the same quality, especially on varied maps (instead of the same dust/2, italy, and aztec), I have quite an enjoyable experience. However, when I get online, have no teammates who can (or will) back me up, playing against one or two people who don't seem to get hit by bullets, and can turn and headshot you in a split second even if you out-think them and sneak up behind them, then, obviously, the game isn't that fun. The frustration level of dying in a split second before you can even do anything (either to an awp or a headshot, especially a headshot from an M4 or AK at EXTREMELY long range, without even getting a bullet other than in the head, and you spent money on body armor with a helmet, too) is enormous. How are you even supposed to fight that? You can't DO anything if you're dead, and you can't practice your reaction time if you don't have time to react!



Anyway, enough about that. The point is that VALVe has little, if any, customer support. Console commands are almost always spread by word of mouth, and are more for programmer-type people than user-friendly. There's little if any information on when VALVe will address annoying issues. They fix a little every week, yes, but the main bugs (like spec_menu) take forever, with not even a "we're working on it" to tide you by.



All of this makes it look like VALVe had an 'accidental hit' in Counter-Strike and Half-life, and due to circumstances beyond our knowledge, is slowly beginning to crumble a bit around the edges.



Anyway, I hope VALVe can get its act together and start being a little more user-friendly, especially with 'features' (such as the console) and tech-support. Also, get Steam up and working, fix Counter-Strike 1.6's remaining bugs, release Condition Zero and get working on HL2.



This may seem like a lot to ask of an already stressed company, but seriously, they said they were going to do this, now do it already!

[Andeh]

Thortok2000 wrote..

There's little if any information on when VALVe will address annoying issues. They fix a little every week, yes, but the main bugs (like spec_menu) take forever, with not even a "we're working on it" to tide you by.

I couldn't agree more, they have their heads so far up their arses, the just dont even noticed the simple bugs like the spec menu bug, its never gonna get fixed, I think thats obvious, they will always be just tweaking stuff we never use or know about. As for condition zero? I am willing to bet money that CZ will get scrapped and HL2 will be in development for the next year at least. If CZ is actually released I will eat my hat!

[gobd]

Valve is probably just fixing easier bugs first, they obviously know the spec_menu bug exsists but their programmers are probably just lazy and fixing easier things first and saving the harder things for when there are no more easy things to do.

[Thortok2000]

gobd wrote..

but their programmers are probably just lazy

I couldn't've put it better myself. VALVe needs to shape up.

[Pomme]

freecell on lan with 1200 peeps must be cool

[Pressick]

Pomme wrote..

freecell on lan with 1200 peeps must be cool

isnt freecell a single-player solitaire game? and yeah...stupid valve.

[t774]

Valve. Big. Mess-up.

[Chavez]

I don't think this would have happened if Steam was more LAN friendly (ie Offline mode?!). Come to think of it, the community has been asking for an Offline mode since Steam and CS 1.6 had been released.



The LANs that I have been to are still currently using 1.5 due to the fact that Australia, can't afford to get a decent Broadband service up and running (our main BB solution is 512kb ADSL), any thing that is a greater pipe to the internet is costly.



Shame on you valve, you should have designed steam with offline play, and also not being able to choose which content servers you prefer downloading stuff from (I hate d/ling sh1t from Netherlands when I have a local server in my country).

[RaptorRage]

If they wanted a LAN game they should have used CS 1.5. It has been common knowledge that CS 1.6 requires Steam, which currently requires an internet connection.



Unless of course Valve could have set up a LAN server for CS 1.6 as was apparently done at one of the recent CPL tournaments...

[naem]

I have seen some excuses for delays in CXG that account for less than a day. The unanswered question still lies in my mind: why cancel the entire event instead of just delaying it a bit?

[DchozN]

why cancel the entire event instead of just delaying it a bit?

that would make clans that flew to las vegas from all other parts of the us, europe, and other countries (mmm brazil), hotels, and airlines a bit too unhappy.