The Declining State of Counter-Strike

[ominousone]

Zips, I have to agree with something 110%



" I'm frankly tired of progress on this game being stunted due to a community that cannot accept change."



That is one of the most truthful comments ever made. Progress, changes in structure, changes in leagues, in everything related to CS, the community immediately shuts down. No one better even try to deny that. CAL is a prime example. CAL is so precious to so many teams that SUCK ASS it's not even funny. Even some of the worst teams think CAL is "worth" their time and tend to ignore other smaller leagues that might be able to give them some fair competition instead of getting their asses beat by teams that should be CAL-M but are CAL-O because CAL admins are a bunch of fucking idiots and can't pay attention to the fact a team is reformed from old CAL-M or CAL-I teams... seriously.



Back to the CS side itself. any change in gameplay, people bitch. Any change in league rules, they bitch. If a league isn't Just like CAL, they bitch. There is no compromise, there is no happy medium. This community is a bunch of whiney little spoiled brats.



I know what some of you are thinking, "who the hell is this bozo" - well, I have played CS since beta 1. I put up with this shit for 7 fucking years. This game used to be awesome, it used to have a good community behind it. But when 1.4 came out the bitching began. First it was bitching about the anti-bunnyhop jumping, then it was about steam when steam was released... Anything major at all that was changed, people bitched and complained and couldn't seem to adapt. I can only imagine what this new dynamic weapons system is going to do to the community... - I was a league admin/director for 5 years. for 5 years I listened to teams piss, bitch, and moan about the littlest shit. About how someone was a hacker b/c they were able to AWP them from all the way across a map. About how because people could listen, they were suddenly wallhacking... Too much shit. Too much crap. It finally forced me to retire early this year, because if everything wasn't just right, if everything wasn't jsut CAL standard, then it didn't make the community happy... Funny thing being most of these teams never had a chance of being out of CAL-O EVER.... but whatever.



Kids will be kids and that's the damn problem with this community today. It's all whiney children, who shouldn't even be playing the game to begin with as it is rated 17+ Of course parents today don't know how to dicipline their children and keep them away from these games, but I think the maturity level has proven quite well why they shouldn't be joining into an adult community. The kids scared the adult gamers away. Am I that old, no, I'm 23 almost 24, but I have been a part of this community since day 1 and have seen all it's ups and downs. If people could just learn to compromise and take everything with flow as it goes, then things will be better.



It's the community killing itself, not Valve, not the makers, it's the community. So think about that, the next time something comes along to maybe help improve things or make them different. If you bitch and complain about it, you're only keeping more people away and making it uncomfortable for everyone.



GG.

[Scanner]

I'm going to defend Zips in one way: He actually posted the article. He could easily have scoffed at it and ignored it if he was 100% biased in Valve's favor. Instead, he brought it up for discussion here, while stating his opinion while posting. I might add that most articles mods post here are stuff they're interested in, so it's not surprising you'll mostly see positive statements in the "moderator's comments" section.



I also thought the article was very one-sided, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the points they were making are invalid.



Pros still don't take CS:S seriously, even though I personally can't figure out why they won't give it a shot and stick with it. (Ok, perhaps if it were my livelihood, I might object to any downtick in skill level until I could get back up on top of the learning curve. And I might even make a huge fuss about how much it sucks and threaten to withdraw from the CPL if they changed it, just so they wouldn't and my success would be more likely. Pro: "If another game existed that did similar things in a fresh way, I'd be gone." And CS:S does have a ton of changes in it.)



The netcode did suck horribly when CS:S first came out. I turned off interpolation for a while cause it was incredibly inaccurate. That reputation has stuck with it (undeservedly so, but it has).



I also agree with the article's statement that Valve had better fix the problems or perceived problems with CS:S or risk losing CS 1.6's player base to other games. I don't think it's quite as drastic as the article makes out, but to some extent they're correct. From a Valve I-want-more-money standpoint, even Valve probably agrees with that statement.



Just because the article only included a snapshot of a single instance in time, I don't think it changes the fact that more players play 1.6 than CS:S. Maybe the margin is larger sometimes than others, but it's still a deficit for CS:S.



Cheats still do exist in both 1.6 and CS:S. If CS:S guaranteed an end to hackers, it's debatable if you'd see all the pros rush to upgrade. But I'm pretty sure the pubbers sick of hackers sure would. It's not immune, and not winning converts because of its security. The article kinda wandered afield there, debating whether or not Valve was actually going too far with banning hackers, and actually hurt its argument there, but overall the point was valid.



Overall, Zips is probably correct that the article should have been presented as a "CS-Source Sucks: My Personal Rant" editorial--not an objective report, but he is incorrect that the article was a journalistic waste of time.

[Ryosuke T]

Edited by [user="216545"] @ [time="1160639418"]

lol i like this guy. i agree. lol. watch im gonna get burned! but oh well. battlefield 2142 baby >=D

[rasterman]

I usually never post but I must point out that no-one is talking about Condition Zero which I feel was also a let down! I have also switched from

playing CS/CZ to BF2142 as nothing from Valve has made me really want to go back to CS/CZ.

[[+Duracell-]]

I sympathize with ominousone above. I've been playing CS since the late beta days (when 6.6 came out), and I loved a lot of the changes that came out since then. Of course, some were controversional, but in no way affected my gameplay at all.



I just recently converted to CS:S, and I find it to be a great extension to CS 1.6. It's enough to still feel like CS 1.6 a bit, but CS:S is its own game as well. I don't care about the larger hitboxes (means it's easier for me to hit them as well as them hit me, right?) and the lesser recoil, and the subtle things I still need to get used to, but it's still a good game.



Everyone just needs to accept change sometime. If a game stays the same for ever and ever, it just stagnates and doesn't grow. As long as it doesn't drastically change the core gameplay, then I'm all for it. Adapt and grow...



That being said, this new pricing change may be interesting. Probably won't affect what I buy, though, as long as the prices don't change a lot. Still don't know how I feel...but we'll see when I play it more. From what I see on the CS Market, though, the Vest+helm is going to be expensive because everyone buys it lol.

[omgomgz]

Here's the difference:



CS isn't about realism. Half-life was based off of quake, an arena deathmatch game. Hasn't anyone else noticed that people have complained more and more with every patch that has been released for CS? It's because Valve has tried to make it more realistic through each patch.



CS is fun because it's a realistic type game that's made on a deathmatch game. When you combine realism with abstraction, you get the fun of CS.



CS:S is a totally different game because nearly all of its deathmatch principles have been ironed out through the years.

[ph03nix(k)]

Id like to note that BF2142 is fucking horrible.