Counter-strike still wins?

piscian18

piscian18

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Sort of a follow up to an ancient thread I made when Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out. It had more players than Counter-strike for quite some time, but I was surfing the Steam Stats regarding Homefront and noticed Counter-strike is back on top. Both of them???

Thats right Counter-strike. Not source! Counter-strike a now 12 year old mod has more people playing daily than every version of Call of Duty Multiplayer combined. This is made most interesting by the fact that MW2 and Black ops are steam games if I'm not mistaken. Sure some people might have reporting disabled but it's unlikely they account for the vast difference in number of players online.

So what is it? I mean there's plenty of other games similar to Counter-strike. What keeps drawing people back, by the thousands everyday? Is it here to stay like Nuclear waste? What makes Counter-strike so special?

What do you guys think?

You can check steam stats live here

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Just goes to show how stagnate PC gaming actually is. One could argue that CS is popular because it can be used on older equipment, which is, in part, true; but, the reality is that there has been so little innovation in 3D gun games that it remains a valid option for consumers.
 
I play CSS now and again, and I have to admit, for PC shooters, its still the best.
 
CS is king! I think its so popular because of the community. Most people who play CS have been playing for years and years and have established a relationship with people who play on the servers they play on. I kind of look at it as going to a bar with friends. I play on the East Coast Guardians server.
 
because of the community behind it, the mod, the maps and everything else

CoD stinks, no custimization, no dedicated servers, people just got sick of all the hackers.
 
Nice to see, loved cs back in the day. Although I imagine if you factored in consoles COD would win hands down.
 
I agree, it is just a flat out awesome game. I still have not found any other games that can keep my attention for more than a few hours.
 
if you keep an eye on [H] steam group you’ll notice it may be the most popular there too :D

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I have it in my steam but I used to have another copy for the non-steam servers because some of my friends play there. non-steam servers has A LOT of players too and I’m sure a lot more in servers based on tools like Tunggle, Qtracker, HLSW, etc.

I guess my K/D ratio in Crysis2 is around 0.3 because I get killed all the time from behind or by invisible players and campers, I prefer to play Crysis2 now but I miss CS:S days where it would require REAL skills to kill me
 
Starcrossed said:
Just goes to show how stagnate PC gaming actually is. One could argue that CS is popular because it can be used on older equipment, which is, in part, true; but, the reality is that there has been so little innovation in 3D gun games that it remains a valid option for consumers.
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or how cheap people are.. or how people are unwilling to change... i could come up with a bunch of different reasons.. but most people are just unwilling to change.. i mean shit i preferred RTCW:ET over BF2 even though BF2 was a far superior game. i just wasn't willing to spend the money nor try playing a new game..
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
or how cheap people are.. or how people are unwilling to change... i could come up with a bunch of different reasons.. but most people are just unwilling to change.. i mean shit i preferred RTCW:ET over BF2 even though BF2 was a far superior game. i just wasn't willing to spend the money nor try playing a new game..
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I agree with this :D.
 
I go back and play time to time because it is the benchmark for twitch shooting. If you can master that game, you can master them all.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
or how cheap people are.. or how people are unwilling to change... i could come up with a bunch of different reasons.. but most people are just unwilling to change.. i mean shit i preferred RTCW:ET over BF2 even though BF2 was a far superior game. i just wasn't willing to spend the money nor try playing a new game..
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There's certainly some of that in play, too, but let's face it: Some of these "older" games still have some substance and meat on them that a number of newer and prettier looking games don't.

And especially when you have a robust mod community in place.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
or how cheap people are.. or how people are unwilling to change... i could come up with a bunch of different reasons.. but most people are just unwilling to change.. i mean shit i preferred RTCW:ET over BF2 even though BF2 was a far superior game. i just wasn't willing to spend the money nor try playing a new game..
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This. Its nothing to do with innovation. CS plays well on dirt cheap systems / older systems. Its well supported and there are tons of community content for it generated each month. This stats seem perfectly in line with what you would expect.

I know a few people who I use to play with long ago still play CS or CS:S every day like clock work.
 
MW2 was ahead of CS in the Steam stats for a while before Blops came out, but that effectively divided the CoD community such that CS has now regained the lead. Interestingly enough, MW2 has been gaining back numbers in recent months, while Blops has been declining. I remember the day Black Ops came out it had over 70,000 players on Steam, while MW2 had only around 7,000. Now MW2 is ahead again, which I think is great (much better game IMO).

As was mentioned earlier, Steam stats for CoD only take into account one platform for a franchise that operates on 3 (PC, PS3, 360), and with console numbers included CoD would most likely blow everything else away. Another factor that I think contributes to the lasting popularity of CS is that it is sort of the "Everymans's FPS," cheap to buy, cheap to run, and with a fan base that goes back a long time into the past.
 
I would like to make a sidenote. I do enjoy CoD4 and though the steam stats say only 500 or so people are on it's not a Steam game and the servers are plentiful and populated I think quite bit more people still play it. Couple thousand at least. Comparing the graphics CoD4 looks the same to me that I'm not paying for those goddamn map packs. They can go suck a dick if if they think I'm gonna go from counter-strike servers with so many maps you could go 24 hours without playing the same map twice to paying 15 fucking dollars for four measly maps.

Sorry I meant to be nice but went straight ranty

TL;DR

Cod4 is still good go play it.
 
I think the reason CS is still so popular is the game model itself. Face it.. it's a lot more fun when you can simply log in and have access to the exact same equipment as everyone else in minutes. As opposed to the unlock/ranking system implemented by most of today's FPS games. That "grind" is why I stopped playing WOW and now even FPS online games seem to be adopting the MMORPG model. "Grind" up your gear/rank or be at a disadvantage to the people with hundreds of hours to spare.. casual gamers need not apply.

CS simply has a superior system IMHO for casual gamers. Even with the dated graphics and headshot happy hitboxes... it's still fun as heck. Wish more game devs would take notice of this trend.

My2c.
 
Most people, yes even PC gamers, want things that are relatively familiar and simple. CS is very simple on a basic level compared to other FPS games out there. You can literally get someone playing at a basic level in a few minutes. And yes I would say it is simpler than the traditional arena shooters (quake and UT) it replaced despite recoil gun mechanics, as you do not need to memorize level layouts as much. Also most maps are generally setup for "heads on" type confrontations, you can't just spawn and have someone behind you for instance. Also the real life basis of CS is simply more familiar than those of Quake/UT.
 
Starcrossed said:
Just goes to show how stagnate PC gaming actually is. One could argue that CS is popular because it can be used on older equipment, which is, in part, true; but, the reality is that there has been so little innovation in 3D gun games that it remains a valid option for consumers.
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not sure how accurate these stats are. it only counts versions that are being played on steam... which all copies of CS are, and not all copies of other games are.
 
So you all think Counter Strike is still the best because of community, mods, some pointless steam stats.....and other irrelevant stuff?
990201-cpl-logo.jpg

The reason games like this don't die is one word "COMPETITION". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberathlete_Professional_League
Now while CPL is dead and other companies like ESL, or whatever their names are, have taken over, the game list has remained consistent up to the year 2011. I'm not saying there isn't a solid competition even in the crappiest games like Call of Duty or Fifa, but they are just not considered on professional level where the big prize money are. Nor they test the skills of the player to the max. Let's say hypothetically all these old games are removed from the future list in order new competition to raise, there is already games out there knocking on the corporation doors asking to be used for the next tournament event due to their established solid base. Games you may heard of but never played....Urban Terror (Open-source) and Warsow (Open-source). Console ports simply have no chance of reaching such high levels as they were design simply for fun. Hence the expression "PC gaming is dead"

Agreed?
 
There's many reasons that CS is still king, one of them being its skill scalability. It's a great game for anyone from the casual guys just fooling around, to weekend warriors who pub a lot, to clans who play competitively, all the way up to pros who get paid to play the game. Easy to learn difficult to master. Many other games have a skill ceiling which is too low to be a true success competitively, especially in this age of the console port.

Believe it or not the number of CS players is actually quite a bit higher than steam stats show as it does not count the vast majority of servers in the eastern world or south america because they use no-steam versions of the game(s). (especially in brazil, eastern europe, china, india, russia and south korea) - those countries have many millions of gamers and many thousands of servers which don't show up on any kind of statistics trackers, except the internal data from GSPs in those countries. Every now and then a major LAN tourney gets held in one of those countries, and reporters from the western world interview their competitive gamers and GSPs (game server providers), whose stories paint a more global picture.

Steam stats would be "fairly-ish" accurate if you are talking about north america, western europe and australia. But not for most other regions of the world.
 
Evil Scooter said:
I think the reason CS is still so popular is the game model itself. Face it.. it's a lot more fun when you can simply log in and have access to the exact same equipment as everyone else in minutes. As opposed to the unlock/ranking system implemented by most of today's FPS games. That "grind" is why I stopped playing WOW and now even FPS online games seem to be adopting the MMORPG model. "Grind" up your gear/rank or be at a disadvantage to the people with hundreds of hours to spare.. casual gamers need not apply.

CS simply has a superior system IMHO for casual gamers. Even with the dated graphics and headshot happy hitboxes... it's still fun as heck. Wish more game devs would take notice of this trend.

My2c.
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Bingo. While I would agree a fair amount of people still play CS 1.6 because it is the only game that will run on their computer, I disagree that that is the main factor. CS is still my favorite MP fps game, and competitive CS is so superior to any alternative. Unfortunately I have virtually no time to game anymore, but if I did I would still squeeze in the occasional CS
 
Drexion said:
There's many reasons that CS is still king, one of them being its skill scalability. It's a great game for anyone from the casual guys just fooling around, to weekend warriors who pub a lot, to clans who play competitively, all the way up to pros who get paid to play the game. Easy to learn difficult to master. Many other games have a skill ceiling which is too low to be a true success competitively, especially in this age of the console port.

Believe it or not the number of CS players is actually quite a bit higher than steam stats show as it does not count the vast majority of servers in the eastern world or south america because they use no-steam versions of the game(s). (especially in brazil, eastern europe, china, india, russia and south korea) - those countries have many millions of gamers and many thousands of servers which don't show up on any kind of statistics trackers, except the internal data from GSPs in those countries. Every now and then a major LAN tourney gets held in one of those countries, and reporters from the western world interview their competitive gamers and GSPs (game server providers), whose stories paint a more global picture.

Steam stats would be "fairly-ish" accurate if you are talking about north america, western europe and australia. But not for most other regions of the world.
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they arent reported cause they are all pirated copies..lol

i set up a cs:s server here at work once, and i had every other 2nd a pirated person trying to connect to the server.
 
Anyone else remembers Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis? One of the most unique and impressive games ever, but too complicated for kids who just like to run around and shoot rambo style. It was a far superior game to CS or COD.
 
This is just Steam. There are many other servers and systems. Blizzard is one of the most popular developers and WoW, Diablo, and Starcraft are all massively popular, but won't show up on Steam's site.
 
Thank you captain obvious, but if you do check most of those games, they are all FPS's

also no point in comparing WoW, we all know they are huge but you also dont have to get ripped off for $15 a month to play cs:s online.
 
There are a few reasons but pretty much Counter Strike is balanced as all hell, has a low PC requirement, and is completely skill based.

Call of Duty takes some type of skill, but there are always bullshit kills every map and just general bs. In Counter Strike if you die, you die because you got beat.

I played Counter Strike from Beta 6 something all the way up to when WoW was released (and in between) finally quit WoW and went to L4D/L4D2 & consoles.

Basically the only game that has ever compared to Counter-Strike time wise for me was WoW and considering I had well over 600 days played that is saying something. I played Counter Strike for probably hundreds of thousands of hours.

Unreal Tournament, Tribes Series, Call of Duty Series, Quake, etc. None of them held my interest as long as CS for various reasons.
 
I introduce you to Travian (MMO browser-based RTS)
where this picture is about everything you’ll ever see...

screenshot2.jpg


no gif’s in it, NOTHING is moving

Along with three English versions, and the original German version, Travian has been translated into over 40 other languages,and has over 5 million players and over 300 servers worldwide
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if you send an attack on another far user (village) it can take 40 real life hours for your troops to reach, and another 40 to come back and the attack result (report) will be like this

battle.JPG


I regret every minute :(
 
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Evil Scooter said:
I think the reason CS is still so popular is the game model itself. Face it.. it's a lot more fun when you can simply log in and have access to the exact same equipment as everyone else in minutes. As opposed to the unlock/ranking system implemented by most of today's FPS games. That "grind" is why I stopped playing WOW and now even FPS online games seem to be adopting the MMORPG model. "Grind" up your gear/rank or be at a disadvantage to the people with hundreds of hours to spare.. casual gamers need not apply.

CS simply has a superior system IMHO for casual gamers. Even with the dated graphics and headshot happy hitboxes... it's still fun as heck. Wish more game devs would take notice of this trend.

My2c.
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Yep. I can't stand playing a shooter months behind the curve and getting stomped simply because I don't have access to the same stuff as everyone else.

Conversely, though, in CS, I can't stand dying once and then being forced to watch the better players play until the round ends. (Unless I am overlooking some game mode with respawns?)
 
PiERiT said:
Yep. I can't stand playing a shooter months behind the curve and getting stomped simply because I don't have access to the same stuff as everyone else.

Conversely, though, in CS, I can't stand dying once and then being forced to watch the better players play until the round ends. (Unless I am overlooking some game mode with respawns?)
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Yeah Team deathmatch is in CS as well.
 
Evil Scooter said:
I think the reason CS is still so popular is the game model itself. Face it.. it's a lot more fun when you can simply log in and have access to the exact same equipment as everyone else in minutes. As opposed to the unlock/ranking system implemented by most of today's FPS games. That "grind" is why I stopped playing WOW and now even FPS online games seem to be adopting the MMORPG model. "Grind" up your gear/rank or be at a disadvantage to the people with hundreds of hours to spare.. casual gamers need not apply.

CS simply has a superior system IMHO for casual gamers. Even with the dated graphics and headshot happy hitboxes... it's still fun as heck. Wish more game devs would take notice of this trend.

My2c.
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I dont really agree. The unlock system is basically there for casual gamers who need some sort of carrot to chase to justify their playing the game. Rather than having a skill based system where you unlock weapons based on how good you are, you unlock them based on how dedicated you are to actually unlocking them.

These days the few MP FPS games I play I only play until I've unlocked most of the weapons then give up because it loses meaning after that. That said I'm not bad enough to follow the COD horde which is basically "so you've unlocked everything in our old game, here, buy another game almost identical to unlock it all again!"

The way most games are designed, you aren't really at a disadvantage for if you only just started playing. Most the useful weapons of the games I've played recently are unlocked within a few rounds.

Also, about the stagnant thing... how exactly do you revolutionalise a genre like FPS. You look down a gun and shoot, there isn't a lot to it. People have tried unrealistically fast movement, slow movement, guns that fire like lasers, guns which spray all over the place, 1 bullet kills, 10 bullets kill, Crysis tried the Nanosuit but pretty much failed. I'm not really sure how you can innovate in a genre that is so limiting by its very definition.
 
I hate counter strike. No...I hate the rude kids that play it. They are the same bunch I run into in L4D on a regular basis. But I agree CS is good for competition. The only reason why I used to play it was because I was making (a little bit of) money.
 
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