cpoint: hot water Valve

[Helkite]

I feel most of the problems at Valve are due to the ineptitude of one individual in particular. I'm not going to name names, but you can probably guess who I'm talking about. This person is easily the worst person I've ever met during my time within the "video game industry," and that's saying a lot, considering that this business is filled with superstar jerkwads like... well... me. I don't feel that he does his job properly, and he isn't what I'd consider to be a decent, trustworthy, or moral human being.

Who is this mysterious individual?

[Polishnerd]

Counterstrike was a mod not made by Valve at all. They just bought rights to CS, and the reason they update so much is because they have Steam which kind of allows them to do it without problems. They just have to stream the update data to your computer. BTW, when was the last time we saw an update for a game Valve made themselves, like Half Life? A long time ago.

[I2o[G]uE TacT-X]

I'm going to guess Fragmaster was talking about Doug Lambardi (no idea how to spell that).

[Deletable_Man]

Polishnerd wrote..

Counterstrike was a mod not made by Valve at all. They just bought rights to CS, and the reason they update so much is because they have Steam which kind of allows them to do it without problems. They just have to stream the update data to your computer. BTW, when was the last time we saw an update for a game Valve made themselves, like Half Life? A long time ago.

*must resist urge to get technical* bah well someone else will

[Frost_311]

Great Counter-Point! I loved it, covered lots of people's opinions. I am a Valve fan boy, have been playing CS since Pre-Beta days and I still love it. Making gameplay changes keeps the game fresh, good players can adapt to the AWP delay or no bunny hopping. They are almost always for the best and yet Valve gets so much heat, I just hope they stick to their guns and continue what they've been doing. Also, new content would be great, I've played more hours of Dust then I've spent on all the other maps combined. It is a great map, but so are almost all the others, having some new ones would be great... btw any updates on Aztec 2?

[DeAceShooter]

Very very well written. Excellent viewpoints from the both of you.

[Polishnerd]

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?

[lockhart]

I'm going to air out all my complaints about CS right here, just to get them out of my system. *deep breath*



The jumping change. I've been against this change ever since 1.4, I played the beta once, jumped, and realized how much it sucked, and never played the beta again. Once the final version came out, it was terrible. It was an overreaction to bunny hoppers. It's one of those things where everyone gets punished for the actions of a few, and that's what sucked so much about it. If you wanted to stop bunny hoppers in that way, just put the damn stutter step AFTER the first jump. Or, you could fix it the right way, and actually go into the code and change it so bunnyhopping is impossible. You can still bunnyhop using scripts, even in 1.6.

I'm used to the change now, but it still frustrates me, just because it was so unnecessary.



I dislike Steam. A lot. I dislike it because it's turned the community into a constant beta tester system. When Steam was released, it was supposedly the "final" version of CS 1.6. When it came out with that "final" tag on it, the community went crazy and nuked valve's servers. When you release a "final" product to the largest gaming community ever, you have to realize that your servers are simply not going to handle it, which valve did not. So we were all stuck trying to download hundreds of megs of cache files because the conversion of all the 1.5 content on our hard drives was incredibly buggy and untested. Finally once Valve realized it's mistake, it released the cache files for download, so they could be mirrored, like every other release of CS ever.



The shield is a joke. First off, it's ridiculous even within the framework of the game. Bullets can go through 12 feet of concrete but not 6 inches of metal? Second, it's been extremely buggy throughout all of it's implementations. The hit boxes are off, there have been numerous invincible exploits that allow you to shoot, and even when it's not being exploited, it throws off the whole game. Have you seen what happens in Condition Zero? The bots know how to kill a person with a shield, and that is by staring at them until they bring down the shield. But they will stand there and stare at you forever, actually causing me to win a couple of rounds by time-out. Humans will obviously not do this, but just think of what will happen once the shield is put into competitive matches. It's an idiotic and unrealistic thing to watch. Real terrorists can just toss grenades at these shielders that will KILL THEM, instead of doing '53 damage' with their one grenade. Not to harp on realism, because in CS, FUN is emphasized over realism, but that's exactly it, the shield is not FUN.



The supposed 'nice' thing about Steam is that they can fix bugs with a simple small update, but the thing that has frustrated me the most is that they force gameplay changes on everyone on whatever whim they had that day. Every time they fix a bug, they introduce some other annoying aspect. The scope change is a perfect example. Why did this need to be changed? We haven't seen an explanation for this change from Valve, it's just there. When they do some of these changes, they might be nice fixes, but they are untested. They send them out and then realize, "Oops, we need to recall this update."



You ever notice how few bugs console games have compared to PC games? I realize that PC games have to play on millions of different systems as opposed to just one, but there are many, many, MANY bugs that are simply gameplay bugs, bugs that happen across all systems. Console games aren't released until they're FINISHED because there's no way to really fix them once they're out there. CS is a PC game, and therefore there are going to be some patches, which is why we had version updates. But by locking version updates as one large patch, you NEEDED to test certain things, and make sure they worked on all systems, and that the changes which are implemented had been tested by a number of different people and significant gameplay changes were planned out in advance, and even minor tweaks were vetted by tons of people. Steam has turned every single CS player into a beta tester.



First off, you have the bugs. If you're going to use Steam to continually fix bugs, then you haven't done your job in the first place. Why was the shield implemented before it was ready? Simply because they had the attitude of "Oh we can just fix it later." Second, and the most importantly, they have used Steam to make major gameplay changes and small tweaks from week to week. If somebody comes up with a cool idea, they just change it. This was good in the case of the money system: Shaguar said, "This is broken, and needs to be fixed." But then bad things come too: the scope change being a good example. I could ask again why they made this change, but it'd be getting off my point, which is why make gameplay changes within one version of the game? If you really want to change something, put it aside for CS 1.7, test it with a limited number of people, and then release all these gameplay changes at once. Even when this system does result in good changes, I would rather see them packaged as one full update as opposed to individual releases one week apart.



Here is a simple way to reform this system, to make it make more sense and be more effective overall: Do it like Mozilla does. Release a nightly version of CS via Steam that allows you to test all these changes with people who want to test them, and let everyone else play one version of CS that is consistent, the way that the betas and 1.0-1.5 were.

The jumping change is a perfect example of this. How do you think people would have reacted if we had 1.3 jumping all the way up until, say, yesterday, and then Valve says in their update, "Changed jumping so that bunnyhopping is fixed," and everyone goes in, and there's say, a CAL match the next day. It's not fair to keep doing this. The 1.4 beta was a perfect way to introduce a controversial change like that: I don't like it, but I've gotten used to it because it was tested beforehand and not just released on a whim. The people who felt it was big enough to quit over did, and everyone else stayed. I think that people are just going to get fed up with the constant gameplay tweaks and quit CS, whereas they might not have if they came all at once in an actual version update.



This is all opinion, but here is my real editorial and most debatable comment: Valve has continually made skill mean less and less and randomness mean more and more, so that the newbies get better and the top players get worse. The skill gap between the best and the worst has gotten smaller in comparison to other games where skill is the ultimate factor. A great UT player is always going to beat a good UT player simply because it's all aim: the weapons go where you shoot them. When you're talking about CS, you're talking about random recoil control, so the great CS player is not always going to beat the good CS player, and because of this, it becomes harder and harder, and I'd say impossible now, for skill to overcome slightly worse tactics. Having the team with the best tactics win all the time isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a bad thing when one lucky round CAN top better tactics. I wish CS could be a game in which the team that plays the best wins all the time, not when a team that plays slightly worse but gets a lucky round causing the other team to save wins.



I've quit Counter-Strike because I no longer am in a clan, so I don't play in CAL and that competition was the only fun thing for me left. CS is not fun for me to play in a pub, because it's too frustrating for me to die because the other guy got lucky. The scoreboard no longer means much; the players on the bottom can get the same lucky kill that the players on the top can get, and I don't like it like that.

[jagPanzer]

Not the time for me to read through <<yawn>> I fell asleep twice trying to read all this.

Nice article and good talking points. In the early days, I was biased against Steam & ValVe for denying access to 1.6 and other issues. My view has changed for the better even with all the inconveniences of the updates.

[lockhart]

Edited by [user="25310"] @ [time="1087551166"]

1,467 words, and if I put it in office and double-space it, it comes out to 4 pages.



College is fun, it makes me write lots of stuff.

[Polishnerd]

Nicely done, lockhart. I agree with you about the shield, and Valve not thinking about things like how much their servers can dish out. A recent "update" forced me to stop playing 1.6 for 3 days because it just wouldnt go. I agree with you about the random recoil, too. The bullets are just too "off".

[Mr Bond]

Edited by [user="6450"] @ [time="1087544632"]

asspennies wrote...

That said, all of the community's bitching about Valve, and in particular the infamous Fragmaster rant (previous page), befuddles me. It even makes me a bit angry.

...

And yet, he complains. And it's not just that he complains, it's that his complaints are so petty and juvenile. He shows a real misunderstanding of how a business works, and an extremely unsophisticated view of the industry in general. To top it all off, he takes every instance in which there may have been questionable judgment on Valve's part and interprets it solely as a slight against him.

We all know the regular Valve-bashing, but I think you're trying to paint a more informed opinion with the same brush. True, the backlash against Valve for the delay was one of the most idiotic outbursts the community has managed in recent times. But it was hardly unpredictable. When you're dealing with that sort of hype, and a hundred-thousand anxious teenagers, matters are obviously a little delicate. I think it's pretty clear that we should have been told about the September 30 release sooner. As moronic as the general outcry was, it wasn't all baseless in that respect. The fact that a long-serving member of the community came to the same conclusion backs that up.



I think it's fair to say that Valve learned their lesson in that regard. We're seeing the results this time around with Valve's (much more prudent) attitude to the summer release. The biggest problem I have with Fragmaster's post (and all the outcry, for that matter) was it just wasn't that big a deal.



CP was a good read, though. And don't get me wrong, I consider myself one of Valve's big fans. But I'd also be the first to admit the September release could have been handled better. My point being: yes, it's stupid to be angry at Valve but you're making Fragmaster out to be more childish and uninformed than he is.

[Yams]

I'm just gonna give my 2 cents on this.



I like valve. Thing is, I don't expect anything out of them. I just find it sad that some gamers feel like they deserve the world from valve. I'm glad that Steam is out and maintained. Other companies don't really give a damn after a product has come out. I'm glad that a company like valve has the heart to keep updating VAC and pushing updates through steam. I've never seen this much support for a game on any platform.



Yes I know Valve has botched up, but that is their fault and not for me to kick them down with. I don't shake an angry fist at them because they couldn't get a game out the door or they made an update via steam that I'm not happy with.



Thing is, it's ultimately up to the person if they want to keep playing Counter-Strike. Valve is not responsible for my enjoyment of the game, that is for me to decide. I've read and heard of people "quitting" cs because they hated the changes. It is entirely up to the person if they want to keep going or stop playing. I could just bite the bullet because I can't play when Steam is down and have lost my $30 to a game I can't play. I deal with it, I move on and play other things.

[Smurfzilla]

skankuser wrote..

I know most of you are valve fanboys believe that valve is apparenttly god or something, because you seem to continiously suck up to them. I'm sorry, but what fragmaster said was true. Giving a release date that they thought later couldn't be reached was totally wrong. They should have told it's fans earlier. And it's clearly obvious that having this steam crap and updating all these mods that are based on a 6 year old game is just the lazy way out instead of making a good game that doesn't look like crap anymore. Now be honest, most of counter-strike's success comes from it's ability to play on the crappiest of computers. I bet I could get an Apple II to run it, probably even an Atari. The only way valve is gonna prove me wrong is if Half-Life 2 ships, and it turns out to be as good as people thought it was going to be. But if it doesn't, I'm sure these retards will still be singing it's praises.

Wtf? none of us are sucking up to valve, we are discussin the bad and the good. And no, we dont play cs because we have bad comps, most of us have good comps to play the games better, if u haven't noticed. and if u can make a game that lasts 6+ years, please, PLEASE make it, id love to see you try and beat them. not only are they still making money, fans, and games, but actually update there games. whether or not we like the updates doesnt matter, its not our game, but it at least shows that they update an stay tuned on there own crap. lets take a look here..Halo for example..a fun game, many ppl like it, join tournaments for it, practice it..yet theres not much real reason why u do stuff..just kill, not TOO much teamplay, just deathmatch..so why not play half-life instead? =D And ya never see halo updating now do u?

[SALAMIjedi]

Edited by [user="28333"] @ [time="1087542236"]

i am glad someone said all this,especially you two. i am very proud. My love for CS is slowly coming back because of people like riz and assp (<<he he thats funny)



i actually announced my retirement (in forums im "known" in) from CS a few months back. It was because of people like Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen. These people lack the discipline and maturity most people have. These people should be greatful that they can play a game they bought four or five years ago almost at the same level as modern games. Heck if we rated HL/CS against Painkiller or even CoD, it would only lose in the graphics and sound department. HL/CS has a 13/10 in value! Guess why? replace the "u" in value to a "v". thats right you get Valve. i think that its ironic and symbolic. Valve is that company that works that extra mile to help you.



you may say im a hardcore fanboy. in truth i sorta am. something as dedicated as valve deserves my hardcore praise.



but there goes the saying "the good guy always ends up last" its sad that some "Fragmasters" have to make the quote a truth.



BTW as gamers we dont not have a right to demos, patches, bonus features, up-to-the-minute news, mod support, direct and public contact to the HEAD OF A COMPANY. we, the HL/CS community, are extremely privilaged... even if valve makes some mistakes here and there. AT LEAST THEY FIX THEM



EDIT: to Thortok2000, Lockhart and some others

Battle.net has been around FOREVER! it has had time to grow robust. i remember in the beginning it was very buggy and flaky. i took me over a half an hour to get onto a server, and i had the best internet connection at that time. Steam is flawed, but not as much as other systems. Steam is also incredibly user friendly. it allows to access multiple games at the same time without even entering the game itself (thus saving memory until you really need it) as well. also it auto-updates without a single click. Steam and Battle.net are easily competitors, and Steam still has fresh breath plus a long maturity stage as well. Blizzard's Battle.net is old and its lungs are charred from the diablo of cigarettes.