cpoint: hot water Valve

[Spike kojima]

"You're entitled to pay $50 to play a game. That's it. Anything else that gets added on, that's gravy. Valve's gravy may be a bit lumpy at times, but they sure do give us a lot of it."



Now thats a quote to remember...

Well said asspennies and rizzuh, very good read..

[David Johnston]

Good fair commentary... nice work guys.

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

DoD just went through some major updates maybe 2 weeks ago, and TFC doesn't have the kind of community support anymore to justify spending lots of extra time on it, when they could be spending that time on TF2 instead.

Stupid community not playing one of the best class-based, team-based games ever... grrmble.... it's FUN and isn't that what we want? grrmbmblemb...

[Mr. Tortoise]

Making comparisons between Steam and battle.net is largely pointless, in my opinion; they're both fundamentally lacking in different areas.

Steam is currently very buggy, but the time will come when it's not and I have no doubt that by then it'll be superior to battle.net in every way. It is certainly very ambitious and the feature list reflects this; an integrated gaming platform with a working IM service and content delivery system would be most people's equivalent of gaming mecca :p As of now, Steam is updated very frequently and while there were (major) teething troubles to begin with it now all happens very smoothly, the recent CS update being a good example.

Battle.net on the other hand is merely (as others have said) an in-game server browser. Compared with steam it receives almost no support from Blizzard; they release the occasional patch for the games, and that's it. If you've ever played Diablo II you'd know it to be to rife with spambots and, for the more unscrupulous players, diablobots. Up until recently there had been for the longest time a multitude of hacks for the game. The only thing battle.net users have to be thankful for is the fact that battle.net exists in the first place.

Contrast this with C-S, and the constant stream of VAC updates. While not eliminating all the cheats, it is far better than nothing.



By the way, about the "3pm gameplay dishancement" meetings - I would like to think that some of the recent changes to the game had been discussed at least a little bit. I for one would love to have been there when the Valve designers decided the shield was a good idea!

[skankuser]

What I'm saying is that Valve is pretty fricking lazy. Instead of making games themselves, they make stuff like CS:CZ and then some of you idiots would go play the average game and buy the hell out of it. Of course CS wasn't made by them, but they saw the dollar signs, and oooLALA! Money for everyone! I'm not anti-valve. I'm just saying they want the money more than pleasing the fans. I even doubt they WANT to please the fans, as long as it leads to MORE DAMN MONEY.

[^nopicture]

Great read, U go girls...

[TuRd-BuRgLaR]

too......... much.........reading!!!!!!!11

i need to go back to the ol' mailbag, that way i can laff as rizzuh makes fun of teh comedy replys!!!!!!11

[Polishnerd]

After reading the whole article, I agree that Valve should just stay away from making big changes to the game. Save those changes for CZ, and CS 1.7, but leave 1.6 alone for everything exept bug fixes.

[DaRk-AnGeL]

sykotic.angel wrote..

Just too bad you can't change the attitudes of the stubborn, spoilt, ignorant self-centred people that tend to make up the youth of today.

I agree, bloody whippersnappers are never happy. TBH the majority of the "bugs" in counter-strike are used as a scapegoat by newbies who have nothing else to blame their crap skills on. Granted there are major bugs that have to be dealt with, but when you think about it you shoot to kill, and if you're any sort of a decent player you'll get the kill and not start whining about how the hit boxes are buggered etc... Anyways all the hitbox issues will be sorted when counter-strike:source comes out, so the less time people complain about this version of cs, the quicker we'll see the next version of cs come out...

[MechMykl]

<agrees, but now my eyes hurt x0

[slowJusko]

People still play Counter-Strike? :)



Anyways... Valve hasn't released anything decent since TFC - they have simply been riding the success of Counter-Strike since it hit the mainstream.



I am sick of it, but I totally understand it.



It makes them money.

Moola.

Do$h.



Valve's PR might suck, but they are one hell of a business - a business that (thankfully) employs some very talented people.

[HankPym]

slowJusko wrote..

Anyways... Valve hasn't released anything decent since TFC - they have simply been riding the success of Counter-Strike since it hit the mainstream.

I think maybe, just MAYBE, they've been working on a sequel to Half-Life for a while now, that may have prevented them from releasing too much.

[bozer]

Great read, great writing by both of you guys. Color me impressed.



My personal opinion is that if Valve made a competitive based edition of CS (with tons of config settings for things like the AWP, hopping.. ect), a ton of bitching would go away from both ends of the spectrum. Thats really what it comes down to I think. The difference in opinion between the people who play the game competitively, or those who play just for fun in pubs.. is what causes most of the drama. Allow the competitve side to tweak the game the way they want it, and leave the basic CS up to the masses.



Other then that, I think this should be the one thread where all the bitching goes, and it should be kept out of future posts (which is an impossible dream, I'm sure)

[ravage777]

Polishnerd wrote..

If anything they make money by keeping Steam up and updating games. What do you think all those ads are for when you connect to a server?

Er, I'd think bandwidth would cost more than what internet advertising pays :S

[I2o[G]uE TacT-X]

I see advertisements for groups that provide content servers.



By the way, today's the end of the CZ card contest. =P

[Polishnerd]

I hopes I win. I hopes they can ship to Poland.