HardOCP's "Valve's Counter Strike:Source – Beta at Best"

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FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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"There are many Counter Strike:Source players out there asking a lot of questions about the recent release of CS:Source. Many of us think that it is a BETA release at best, and at worst, just a Half Life 2 marketing tool. The following editorial addresses our concerns and grievances."

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njkx

Please feel free to discuss in an adult manner.
 
I just read your article on CS: Source. Just read a bunch of threads in your forums about HL2 problems like stuttering, hitching, sound looping, etc. etc etc.

So I’m apparently not alone here -- I just got through with the most horrible game loading/playing experience of my gaming life. The Steam/HL2 install took over an hour and I was shocked to learn you have to go through the internet every time just to play the single player game. WTF is that?? Then gameplay was so bad with the locking up, the kicking out, the sound looping, blah blah that for the first time ever, I am going to return a software game.

I didn't even bother trying CS: Source.

Wow.
 
I got it offa steam had all my preloading done atleast 3 weeks ago maybe less. I do have a couple stuttering problems with the gameplay here and there, but not too many. I had no problems with the install took maybe 10 mins here. even last night at exactly 3am when it was unlocked. I could be the minority here though since i've no zero problems aside from the stuttering.
 
As much as I am enjoying playing cs:s and hl2 I have to agree that it is "beta at best". When probably 50%(not really) or more of a games audience cheats, why would valve want to fix the cheating problem. :D just a crazy theory

Someone should show that article to the steampowered forums, I see people out there complaining but they are drowned out by the noob questions.
 
How do you figure around 50% of the community cheats? I dunno, I may be out of it... most of my internet multiplayer experience the past two years has been with a single mmorpg where cheating is obviously much reduced (exploits of minor balance bugs are more common than outright hacking and the sort), but if that guess is even close to the truth that's pretty damn sad.

Guess I might be looking for more quality single player games 'till my next mmorpg (quit the last one a couple months ago, got stale after three years and I was lacking time). The last multiplayer game I reall got hooked on before this mmorpg was in fact CS and I was glad when I left it behind due to the cheating (but Punkbuster was barely taking off back then, I guess the point of the article was exposing this step back that has taken place).

This sorta thing will keep the gaming community from ever gathering a more mainstream interest if it carries on. Some people may not care about this but broader audiences bring more variety to industry expansion and computer gaming is something a lot more people could grow to enjoy. Won't happen when some of the biggest developers disregard this type of problem though.
 
Having not played the origional counter strike. I found CS:S to be pretty fun but it is, as you said, a beta at best. There are times when frame rates would not go over 30 and nothing is happening (no gun fire or anything) while it is usually pegged at 70-80. Also i get random freezes in game for a few seconds and it all comes back to normal.

I ran into a few cheaters the second time i played. This constant bombardment of cheaters leads to a feeling of paranioa. .That every one who is very good could very well be a cheater. It ruined teh origional CS for a friend and Delta Force 2 for me. I have been called a cheater and I stink.

Overall i think it could be a great game but i don't think the community should fix what is actually vavle's job. Especailly if valve refuses to give them the right tools.
 
Good read and I agree, source is not ready.. yet. My biggest issue is the fact that some of the most famous maps are non existent? Where are inferno, nuke, and train? These are much better maps than some of the crap they redid first. There really isnt anything new in source, its just missing elements. I've been playing CS for a good 4 years and its starting to get boring. Valve needs to make some new maps that don't suck and maybe add some of the fast paced action back from pre 1.4. Sure it was harder for new players but the game's flow was much faster. The days of pubbing with the two to three players leading rushes are over. Its not objective based, its now based on camping without objective in mind, only kills on 90% of the servers most players enter. An interesting bit of information is the fact that counterstrike become the #1 online fps BEFORE it went "retail".. Something was obviously right :) So yeah, my biggest problem with Valve is how they haven't really added anything to the game, they just take elements away... Seriously what has valve done to the game besides slow down jumping, slow down weapon switch time, slow down the awp zoom, and make guns less accurate, especially pistols while moving. So yeah in conclusion CS will continue to be the dominate online fps and source will fix itself eventually. I just feel valve is going away from the roots of cs and making it too realistic, where the fun can be taken out of it.
 
heh, not that your complaints isn't legitment, but valve has a habit of ignoring the community. TFC players have been putting up with this for a while. At one point TFC was the HL MOD, and valve let that dwindle by not fixing some of the oldest bugs ( http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=102551 ) and by not marketing TFC(Look at the popularity of both dod and cs after retail packages were released for both of them).

Anyways, on back to CS:S specificly. Not having rcon is atrocious, and it looks like it was rushed out. I've talked to a lot of my friends who are CS players and they all found CS to be supperior to CS:S.

Valve Ruins Counter Strike
Click to expand...
No valve did not ruin counter-strike, but I hope now people realize what they're buying when they get hl2 I know plenty of cs players who will buy hl2 just for CS:S. Sure they'll play hl2 for around 30 min and quit(Most of them havent even touched HL).
 
there are so many things i can say, but its what we are already thinking abot after reading that article. only original thing i can say about it is cheating: why i stopped playing CS at BETA 7!!!!! thats right, i haven't played it since beta 7 because i hate cheaters and there would always seem to be 1 in every server. then steam came out and ruined it the rest of the way.
 
Aside from the gameplay changes instituted when CS became Valve owned (which I feel have changed the game for the worse), there are still some blaringly obvious gameplay related bugs in CS:S.

  1. Physics is still roughly integrated. Barrels are the biggest culprit. They seem to have a forcefield around them which prohibits moving around them.
  2. Hitbox issues where hit detection is seriously screwed. Often it is noticeable with the nake eye in game which indicates a major problem.
  3. Valve's adapted netcode isn't coping well with the new engine. At the same latency/loss/choke this game seems much laggier.

These are my major problems with the game. I have never been terribly bothered by cheaters, but sometimes it does get a bit much. I am quite surprised to hear about the problems with server administration. That's definitely a major portion of any online, sefl-hosted game. I just sit and remember the days of beta 7.2 and wish everything could just revert to this model. While I find the new game fun, the experience is much more detached due to the changes Valve has instituted, the bugs, and incompleteness of it all. I too hope Valve is able to buckle down on this problem; or in particular for Minh Le and Jesse Cliff to bring the game back to their original vision. Luckily I'm not to invested in CS anymore, but it still pains me to see a game I've played for 5 years become what it is today.
 
Although it may sound like I'm face deep in Kyle's ass, I couldn't agree more. Valve delivered an acceptional product Tuseday. It was fine tuned, it was tested, and it is doing its job. Entertaining.

But then you have the other side of Valve that has absolutely no clue what is going on. They think that just because they scored to big with CS the first time, they can do it again without any work. I'm sorry, but I've seen more sound products delivered by mod teams. I would not say I am a anti-HL2 or anti-CS guy, but I would say I too am quite suprised that Valve has done what they've done... or am I?
 
Trust me, you cannot play HL2 if you shutdown steam after you authenticate it. This should be taken out of this write up, offical line or not, its false.
 
SpitFire said:
My biggest issue is the fact that some of the most famous maps are non existent? Where are inferno, nuke, and train?
Click to expand...

These are all in the game now (and have been for a month). The biggest thing "missing" is all the player models.
 
I might as well add my perspective on this matter.

My name might be Deathlizard here, but my CS name is [SmD]Frylock. For two years I ran the CS server "[SmD]Anarchy Server", and coming from an admin perspective I can agree with most of the problems brought up in this article.

You wont see me bashing steam too much, primarialy when it first came up live we adopted their region settings within the first week and were pinged amoung the top 20 servers on the east coast for almost three months. basicially our traffic went up 10x to the point that we were handling 40000 connections a month according to our psychostats.

With a 16/16 to 22/22 server constantly filled all the time (we rented from recongamer and we changed our player size to 22 when we started getting popular) all kinds of hell start breaking loose. The first thing was "Asshole Management". We always used adminmod (an admin tool for CS Servers) but with new players comes new assholes, and since our clan wasn't on all the time especially during the morning hours, we took a more automated approact to it.

We first installed ATAC 2.3.7b to handle team attacking and killing, which was promptly discontinued on the adminmod platform to the amxmod platform (another admin tool), which I refused to run since we rarely crashed even with the huge load we had under adminmod. I ended up recoding the unsupported one for our needs only and that worked for the entire life of the server.

The next thing was cheaters. This was a real pain in the ass overall. There is basicially two things you must know when handing anti cheats for a CS server.

1) VAC Sucks.
2) Unitedadmins isn't much better.

Basicially to justify #1, Vac updates were somewhat marginal at best and horrendous at worst. They would release updates once a month, and in most cases, cheats were back within hours of them releasing them. hell there was one out there that was and is still VAC proof. Once a Year Valve would declare what I would call a "Cheat free month" where they would update daily. once the month was over it was business as usual for VAC, the last cheat free month was the last update ever for VAC, sometime around april-may.

Unfortunetly Valve already gave Punkbuster the middle finger before I admined so I was stuck with three things to use, VAC being one of them. The other two being hlguard and Cheating-Death. I tried CD for awile and it was gone within two weeks. Half of the clan members not to mention the playerbase went nuts because it would screw up play half the time. Hlguard was a better fit and it worked, but when the soundhacks started to appear and hlguard's aimbot detection stopped working well the only thing it did was stop names like [myg0t], [RaGe-X], and &Spec_ (Yes the "Execute code in the playername" has been a problem since steam was released). This is not even getting into the fact that the Unitedadmins staff were basicially starting to strech themselves to the point that all the good coders were leaving everything and the people left couldn't handle it. HLGuard started updating at a snail's pace and was bug ridden when it did release. Statsme (a stat component of unitedamins that ATAC used) wasn't much better off either. basicially updating anything unitedadmins became a "lets see what they broke this time" kind of game.

Steam authentication was a joke from day one and still is. when it first came out it did no email authentication, so cheaters basicially would put an email like [email protected], give it a keygened wonid and it would happily spit out a steamid for you. When they finally fixed that they hacked it a better way to a point where stopping cheats was nearly impossible. I would resort to blocking entire ISP's from our server because of one guy. for example we had one guy that was tormenting our userbase for almost a month, after I banned 30 steamids I said screw it and blocked roadrunner austin's entire subnet. He didnt come back until 6 months later, when I blocked Verizon Austin.

This is not getting even started on the player end of things. Basicially on our forum we had a forum named "I Got Banned and I'm a Whiny Bitch" because people would protest any ban for any reason, even when it was clearly their fault. I would personally publically humiliate them with the logs in the forum if they got banned and it was a legit ban.

Server CPU side, Once Steam released the Linux people got screwed. If you weren't running a windows server I hope you have insane horsepower, cause you were going to need it. the windows version actually saw a very small cpu drop, although our server actually killed one of recongamers server because of the load and they were still arguing that it wasn't their end and they didn't do anything until one of my clanmates got our playerbase to start emailing them like crazy.

So why did I quit? well, apart from the above, the fact that it's practially a second job that I pay to do instead of getting paid to do it is the main reason. the other is that source CS was coming out and from all indication was going to be the same thing, only prettier with less admin utilities and with CS going in a decline phase I decided to go out while on top instead of taking a spiral with source. When you go to cheat sites and already see cheats for CS Source and the thing hasn't even been released, you know adminning CS source is going to be a living hell.
 
It's an OK article, but there are some things that are just wrong and grossly overexaggerated. For example
The Article said:
To make matters worse, other cheat friendly bugs existed, the common “sv_cheats=1” setting used in many games for single player cheats was not disabled by an online servers setting of “sv_cheats=0” This means that a player could use the built in Counter Strike:Source cheats while playing online. Instead of making a strong statement that cheating was not going to be tolerated Valve’s CS:S actually seemed to encourage it.
Click to expand...
That doesn't encourage cheating. sv_cheats 1 allows the use of impulse 101, which gives you $16,000. This can be handy for teams that are practicing and don't want to be troubled by concerns of money.
 
the existence of sv_cheats=1 isnt the problem, the problem was that sv_cheats=0 on the server didnt disable it. And it allowed far more than getting some extra money. There are numerous screenshots of cvars enabled with sv_cheats=1 that allow wallhacking and a map overlay in normal gameplay.

The "encouragement" of cheating comment was directed at not having sv_cheats=1 able to be overridden by server settings in a released game.

Please point out anything else that was "just wrong" or "grossly overexaggerated"
 
kick@ss said:
It's an OK article, but there are some things that are just wrong and grossly overexaggerated. For example
That doesn't encourage cheating. sv_cheats 1 allows the use of impulse 101, which gives you $16,000. This can be handy for teams that are practicing and don't want to be troubled by concerns of money.
Click to expand...
Well, I would consider being able to purchase "unlimited" weapons and equipment a "cheat" but for the sake of argument, where exactly does your definition fit, "gross overexaggeration" or "just wrong."

Also, if there is anything that you would like to point out as being factually wrong, we would happily correct it.
 
Some brief comments: Sometime I'll set down and write out my thoughts of what clearly went wrong at Valve during development as I read the recent 25 ad-filled pages of Gamespot. Mostly it boils down to management never having a true focus, two years of solid crunch time which made things worse, and what appears (to me) a serious lack of quality assurance training and experience.

Hey, it happens all the time in the game industry and it's why your games suck so bad. The industry uses too many young programmers, burns them out which leaves no one long-term with any experience.

I've contributed to three books on the subject of quality assurance in gaming and it seems that I'm the only one doing it. Frankly, no one really cares except the consumer. There's no accountibility. You just skate along until your bugs become so bad in your releases that no one buys your product and you go out of business.

I'd write more, but everyone should just go out and read Secrets of the Game Business and Game Design Principles. The third isn't out until spring and that's a college level textbook. I'm also trying to present a lecture on the subject at the next Dallas IGDA meeting. At least I'm trying to change the situation by teaching future generations. I just hope someone listens.
 
Duck said:
the existence of sv_cheats=1 isnt the problem, the problem was that sv_cheats=0 on the server didnt disable it. And it allowed far more than getting some extra money. There are numerous screenshots of cvars enabled with sv_cheats=1 that allow wallhacking and a map overlay in normal gameplay.

The "encouragement" of cheating comment was directed at not having sv_cheats=1 able to be overridden by server settings in a released game.

Please point out anything else that was "just wrong" or "grossly overexaggerated"
Click to expand...
Are you certain that updates didn't fix this? I was under the impression that this was fixed in an update.

Also, numerous games are being released with tons of bugs and glaring issues. Nothing is going to be perfect upon release. It's quite possible (and very likely) they simply overlooked this and are not encouraging cheating, whatever that means. Look at games like BF:V. Just about every game developer is guilty of having some bugs in their games. How they handle them is what defines the company.

Valve Ruins Counter Strike
While there could be better admin tools, it definitely doesn't RUIN CS. All problems with admin related stuff can probably be easily fixed. Disable FF if you have problems with team killers. People being annoying on the radio? Mute them.

Valve’s Failure to Fix Counter Strike
VAC does need to be enabled for CS:S, I agree. I wouldn't say they ignored it, but are working on it. People were moaning and complaining about the game never being released, so it was probably released as soon as possible. Your other option would have been to wait another few months or so without any CS:S. I'll gladly take the few months of flawed CS:S as opposed to no CS:S. PB and HLGuard are definitely not the end all be all answer to the problem, those would have been hacked too. I'm not sure exactly how easy to detect cheats, but I'm assuming that since cheating basically exists in almost every game it's not that easy.

Our CS:S Hopes Dashed
You seem to abandon hope very quickly. What's to say they won't fix it? When Steam was first released wayyy back when (in the beta phases) and I was testing it along with two people from Valve, they seemed very interested in the problems. Also, they DO fix things, one of the more recent gameplay oriented things they fixed was the money bug for competitive play. Another thing is, some of the problems might be complex. It's not that they're not doing anything, but rather that it will take time to update it.

STEAMed up?
Steam is not that bad. Yes, it did have some problems when it was hammered with HL2 preloads and upon the release of HL2. I guess that's just something that happens when you're the first company to try a new idea. The rest of the time Steam works great. You make it seem like the few days that Steam did encounter problem are not the exception, but the rule. This is not the case.
I've never had a problem playing CS on LAN... it's really not that hard. I don't see where people are getting so frustrated over it.

Basically, where you're being overly dramatic is
- Valve is going to do nothing to fix CS:S
- Valve ruined CS
- Steam is an evil tyrant that doesn't work, ever

After all that, you go on to show that Valve has made some changes and is fixing problems. If they fixed the problem, why are you writing a lot about it?

What's happening is the following. People are spending all their time moaning and complaining about the bad things but spending very little time raving about the good things. Thus, the silent majority (people enjoying the games and not having tons of problems) are not being heard over the vocal minority. Another problem with those who are vocal and criticizing things is that they often don't even know what they're talking about. I've seen numerous people who have never even used Steam, but were complaing about it (and most of the stuff they were complaining about was wrong).
 
the cheating issue is why i stopped playing CS in the first place. and gladly so. it was also the only reason i owned HL.

so if HL2 is along the same lines as the original HL, but just looks better and has a some gravity gun, i dont know if that is enough to warrent me buying a copy. i just never found the game interesting for too long of a period.

and with this press of CS:S and how valve has not really even bothered to maintain CS. you can really count me out. i refuse to play with ppl who abuse the game. it is a total waste of my time.

just imho.
 
Mr. Holmes did a fine job of echoing sentiments from the
CS:S community. Cheat hacks and no LAN play are the
nail in the coffin for me.

HL2 authentication went real smooth for me and I'm loving
the game as much as Doom3. Some stuttering issues
and minor sound looping occasionally but it hasn't detracted
my love for the game yet. What's with all the loading times?
Thought Mr. Newell said it was mostly seamless??

my 2 cents ;)
 
The focus of the article was that CS:S was not ready to be released. Released implies that the game was done, ready for prime time and all features were present. The secondary focus of the article was to show that Valve has no concern for the needs of the server admins who run the game and provide a place for their customers to play it. Without the server admins CS doesnt exist.


Also the place i spoke about the sv_cheats bug was in relation to the state of the game the day it was "released" at which time the bug clearly existed. Yes the problem appears to be fixed although its not listed as fixed in any of the official Valve update reports. I clearly outlined this in the "Has Valve fixed anything?" section

Next you mention that "all admin problems can be easily fixed" Do you run a public counter-strike server? I can't imagine that if you do you could possibly beleive that. The admin options were either broken or missing at release. Yes some have been fixed but we dont even have the options we did with 1.6 so much as what I expect from a modern multiplayer game. Disabling FF is simply not an option for a competative server. Also "muting" a player is to my knowledge impossible in CS:S but thats really outside the focus of the article since a) you cant mute text and b) an admin cant globally mute an unruly player.

VAC etc.. MY entire point in the article was to say that CS:S was not ready to be "released" if they had left it as beta while the bugs were being corrected and while the extra features were being developed then this article would never have been written. But the day they declared it released and started charging money for the game these all become valid issues.

Steam has had problems consistently for the last year since it became the default authentication method for CS. No its not every day it has problems but its far more than the "one or two days" you mention below. As far as lan play let me give you some examples. At quakecon i helped no less than 12 people fix steam problems to be able to play CS I personally spent almost 2 hours re-installing steam and updating it simply because the default auth server saved in my preferences wasnt responding correctly and would not let me play. Name one single other current multiplayer game that involves that level of difficulty to play on a lan.

Finally, if i could find anything "good" about admining CS:S i would have mentioned it. However that simply isnt the case. In every respect running a public CS:S server is far more time consuming and far more frustrating than even CS 1.6 was. Our standard admin tools have been downgraded and the 3rd party tools aren't available because there is no SDK. All of the things I wrote about I've personally experienced and most of them on a daily basis.

You mention in your first paragraph that "Just about every game developer is guilty of having some bugs in their games. How they handle them is what defines the company." and you are absolutely correct. Sadly Valve's handling of bugs and issues is severely lacking at best. to speak of just one issue the %n bug, the bug was reported in late august by a beta server admin. The bug was still present and became an overwhelming problem 3 days into the release however it was 12 days before a patch was released. For a bug that caused such huge problems that sort of response time is unacceptable to me.
 
Duck said:
The focus of the article was that CS:S was not ready to be released. Released implies that the game was done, ready for prime time and all features were present. The secondary focus of the article was to show that Valve has no concern for the needs of the server admins who run the game and provide a place for their customers to play it. Without the server admins CS doesnt exist.
Click to expand...
Without players CS doesn't exist. You need both players and admins to make the game work. If one goes so does the other.

Duck said:
Also the place i spoke about the sv_cheats bug was in relation to the state of the game the day it was "released" at which time the bug clearly existed. Yes the problem appears to be fixed although its not listed as fixed in any of the official Valve update reports. I clearly outlined this in the "Has Valve fixed anything?" section
Click to expand...
If it appears to be fixed, why does Valve have to officially state that it is?

Duck said:
Next you mention that "all admin problems can be easily fixed" Do you run a public counter-strike server? I can't imagine that if you do you could possibly beleive that. The admin options were either broken or missing at release. Yes some have been fixed but we dont even have the options we did with 1.6 so much as what I expect from a modern multiplayer game. Disabling FF is simply not an option for a competative server. Also "muting" a player is to my knowledge impossible in CS:S but thats really outside the focus of the article since a) you cant mute text and b) an admin cant globally mute an unruly player.
Click to expand...
I don't run public CS:S servers as I don't have time. When I had more time (prior to CS:S) I used to admin about 25-30 CS servers and personally run four of them and a CoD server. I didn't let the problems get to me. I realized one thing - morons will be morons and there's no point in getting worked up over what some idiot is doing because then he wins. You can't mute text, but the number of people willing to actually spend that much time typing out tons of annoying comments is minimal.

Duck said:
VAC etc.. MY entire point in the article was to say that CS:S was not ready to be "released" if they had left it as beta while the bugs were being corrected and while the extra features were being developed then this article would never have been written. But the day they declared it released and started charging money for the game these all become valid issues.
Click to expand...
I still think it's in a beta phase too, but where I differ is I'd rather have the beta NOW as opposed to waiting 3-4 more months for a "release quality" version.

Duck said:
Steam has had problems consistently for the last year since it became the default authentication method for CS. No its not every day it has problems but its far more than the "one or two days" you mention below. As far as lan play let me give you some examples. At quakecon i helped no less than 12 people fix steam problems to be able to play CS I personally spent almost 2 hours re-installing steam and updating it simply because the default auth server saved in my preferences wasnt responding correctly and would not let me play. Name one single other current multiplayer game that involves that level of difficulty to play on a lan.
Click to expand...
I've never had a problem with Steam in quite some time, and most of the CS players I talk to have only encountered minor problems, almost all of which they caused. Of course some people have problems, but that's just how it is with software.

Duck said:
Finally, if i could find anything "good" about admining CS:S i would have mentioned it. However that simply isnt the case. In every respect running a public CS:S server is far more time consuming and far more frustrating than even CS 1.6 was. Our standard admin tools have been downgraded and the 3rd party tools aren't available because there is no SDK. All of the things I wrote about I've personally experienced and most of them on a daily basis.
Click to expand...
Well, I personally never found admining to be that fun or that much of a good experience directly. I found it to be more like tedious work and boredom when I actually had to do something to servers. I admined so I could provide a quality gaming experience for myself and friends, and I occasionally met cool people along the way.
I won't argue that CS:S's admining tools are pretty crappy compared to what they could be, but I don't think it completely ruins the game.

Duck said:
You mention in your first paragraph that "Just about every game developer is guilty of having some bugs in their games. How they handle them is what defines the company." and you are absolutely correct. Sadly Valve's handling of bugs and issues is severely lacking at best. to speak of just one issue the %n bug, the bug was reported in late august by a beta server admin. The bug was still present and became an overwhelming problem 3 days into the release however it was 12 days before a patch was released. For a bug that caused such huge problems that sort of response time is unacceptable to me.
Click to expand...
The thing with bugs is, we don't know how hard it was to fix it. Maybe it was a simple fix and they just ignored it. Maybe the bug was deeply rooted inside the code and numerous things had to be changed to fix it. Since it's impossible to know, I don't pass judgement upon them for it unless the timeframe is really rediculous. Also, you must realize that at the same time CS:S came out they were probably busy finishing up HL2.

Personally, I think Valve's handling of bugs has been just as good as most companies, if not better in some cases. Steam really makes getting rid of bugs easy as the updated are automatically applied. When I had issues beta testing Steam upon it's initial beta release (and other things too, like Tracker - now Friends), Valve always seem interested in problems.
 
on the text muting thing... i recall a function when i was a CS admin. it was called "llama" or something stupid like that.. anyway, it would replace the text of the user with something that would look like the sound of a llama. hilarious and it was quite effective aswell. they eventually shut up and settled down. :D
 
Jason711 said:
on the text muting thing... i recall a function when i was a CS admin. it was called "llama" or something stupid like that.. anyway, it would replace the text of the user with something that would look like the sound of a llama. hilarious and it was quite effective aswell. they eventually shut up and settled down. :D
Click to expand...

Yup something that is available through adminmod and I think AMX as well. Both of which don't work with CS:S yet due to no SDK
 
Great article. I agree 100% I'm a server admin with major headaches due to valve. Perhaps since [H] is a popular site Valve will actually listen.
 
I stopped playing CS:S few weeks back when I saw a [mygot]idiot using a speedhack. At that time I also shut down our 32 player server because lack of anticheat tools and admin abilities. What really gets me is when I used to play CS back before retail 1.0 days this speedhack existed back then to, how can the same cheat carry over to a completely different engine, hmm. I agree with the article 100%, I love the games Valve makes and I guess that is enough for Valve, I will NEVER compete and more then likely not pub in any FPS that doesn’t have a strong Anti Cheat support. Valve we support you, now support us!
 
A very good article that convinced me not to buy this game for now :( ... Maybe Ill buy it if and when the cheating issues have been sorted out. Thank U :) for educating me before I go out and waste the money..
 
Ah - lan parties and steam. There's a mistake I won't make twice. Had a real go at going legit, and making sure everyone got a valid copy of halflife (which half then had to email valve to get a new cd key because existing one was "in use"), downloaded cs/dod, and logged out correctly. It still didn't work for some people, not going to go into the details why, but suffice to say I wasted hours and hours helping get everything downloaded, valid cd keys, etc. before hand, then hours on the day trying (and failing on the day) to sort out issues. It really isn't worth the hassle - there's lots of other good games out there that just work!
 
I'm a litttle confused, and I'll admit I'm too lazy to re-read, but it seems like a lot of the problems you listed in the beginning of the article you listed as being fixed. But from looking at it and a lot of the posts following it, it appears to me that the huge problem is not so much the client being the beta but actually is the CS:S server software being the beta.

edit: And the cheating....did Punkbuster and the others actually fix this though?

Steam had problems in the begining, but it was a public beta test. For the longest time, however, Steam was not plagued with problems. When HL2 came out there were some issues. What that second sentence makes it sound like is that Steam is barely adequate and always crashing, which is most definitely not the case.
Click to expand...

As some one who bought the retail copy and had to wait 3.5 hours to play, and having read a lot of the other threads, I'd have to say that Steam is not adequate for authenticating the user's right to play during the release of a game. As for the rest of it's performance, I can't say because I haven't used it enough.
 
This is my experience;
My and a buddy bought it at the same time. I got home, installed it and got the error from steam but I could still run the game. My buddy couln't, got "invalid media" and all kinds of errors.

But my problem with the entire things is all the damn waiting! First the waiting while installing the massive 4 gigs, then the waiting for Steam and then the unlocking and then the ultimate "preparing to start half life 2" screen when I was reminded of the old spaceballs joke "why are you always preparing, just go!". And then it loaded forever and ever and even in the game it just freezes up and says "loading"...
It's so disruptive to the gameplay I thought more people would have comments about that...

Anyway, good and fun article to read!

/Kristoffer
 
People still play CS? LOL, I quit after 2 years of blatant cheating. And that was a YEAR ago.

There is the tard cheating mode. When you run around with a pea shooter (usp), with full autoaim on doing headshots 8 miles away with a single shot.

That of coarse gets boring real fast, unless the entire team cheats, then it is actually pretty competetive haha. And god help the poor bastard who joins without the hax.

Then you also have the ninja/casual cheating. Only walls on, you gotta aim yourself (haha like that is an issue in CS, half the damn screen is the HS area), but you enjoy blasting your MP3's, sound is no logner important, since you see through walls. Funny thing is, cheaters know eachother quite well, you can see the other knob tracking you through walls.

And yes, if you are dead and watching someone, if for some reason people always pop out in that person's field of view, think twice about their honesty :p ;)
 
I was VERY disappointed that HL2 didn't ship with a deathmatch mode based on the SP worlds/weapons.

Counter-Strike was much better off as an independent mod.

Keep in mind that this is Valve's first time creating their own gaming engine. Last time around (HL1), they used id's Quake2 engine, which is why the netcode and admin tools were already in place and working. I'm not saying that Valve can't do that too, but there will be some "teething pains" involved.

And as an avid LAN gamer, even though I never played much CS, I am very disappointed to hear that CS:S gamers will need an Internet connection. Sure, you can log off the right way and still LAN, but how often do you see people installing or configuring a game for the first time on LAN? What if somebody shows to the LAN and didn't know how to log off right? I would love to see a steam emulator, similar to the battlenet emulators that allowed WC3 to be played on LAN.

I still haven't purchased my copy of HL2 yet, and from the sounds of it, I may not buy it. :( Very sad as I have been waiting 5 years for a sequel to HLDM (which I enjoyed).
 
If you like the single player portion of it, the game is still very much worth the money. If you're buying it mostly for CS or MP, well... the article should set ya straight. :p
 
To jump back up a few posts to the question about Muting player voices - I have no idea if there is a global setting, and I suspect not - but individuals can be muted by pressing escape - going to the players list on the menu - then double clicking the offending player. Why they removed double click the name on the score list is beyond me.


As a CS player - I've been fortunate enough to find servers not plagued by hackers (or at least not by ones good enough to ruin my play experience). The article sheds a lot of light on the problem for Admins though. I can definately see how your lives are hell due to the lack of tools, and the netcode (How I wish I could ping under 110 to Hard Gaming servers...) For keeping on keeping on I thank you.

I'll also second that the great maps need to come out. Dust gets old after a while...

Anyone else miss being able to vote-kick?
 
While I think that the article was well thought out and provided some valid points, I have to disagree with the view that Valve hasn't and doesn't listen to the community that made it so great.

I worked on the Firearms mod for the original Half-life for, oh, about 2.5 years. During this time I saw firsthand just how supportive of the community Valve really is. The give so much of themselves back to the community its amazing. Just look at the depth of the original SDK; up until Valve you might get a level editor and just enough access to the code to make a mod (or it had to be hacked apart), let alone full documentation and tech support. They've held a number of MOD Expos to showcase what people were doing to their game. They've invited mod authors to show off their mods at E3 in the Valve booth. Their employees have always been willing to help sort out problems in a map or errors in code. When they asked the FA Team if they could purchase the right to sell Firearms in boxed editions of Half-life, they became even more involved to help us polish the mod. Valve employees would stop by our IRC chat room to see how things were going, they helped us squash bugs, playtest and implement new ideas. One employee even made a level for us in his spare time.

Fast forward a few years, and they are already working on giving us total control over mods we make for an engine and a game they just spent the past 5 years developing. I think people tend to forget that they've been working 18 hour days for the past year+ to get Half-Life 2 into hands as soon as possible. It takes time to do things, and there are only so many hours in the day. I have faith that if Valve had been able to fix that stuff before the "release" of CS:S they would have and I have faith that since ya'll are complaining about it and brining it to their attention that they will fix it as soon as possible. CS has never ceased in being developed. Why should we think that development has stopped now? Its been, what? 5 years since CS:Beta1 was first released and we've had at least two major releases a year since then with tweaks and fixes and new content.

The problem is gamers today want their cake AND their icecream and they want it RIGHT NOW and it has to be made of the finest ingredients by the best chefs in the world and if anything is wrong with it, the color of the frosting is #3333FF instead of #3333CC we get out the pitchforks and forget how fun the game really is and how despite all the shortcomings that we scream about so loudly, we still keep coming back for more, day after day, year after year.

I can agree with the conjecture that CS:S is still beta, but I can not stand by and let Valve be bashed for not supporting the community. That is just utter BS!
 
Circa 1999 August I started this job here in calm Palos Hills Illinois working in Network Operations.

Nightly my phone would ring and only TWO words were spoken on the other end..."Death Match!" *CLICK*

I'd proceed to kill my co-workers and managers nightly in an orgy of destruction with even me staying 3 hours later at the office just to play games with them. Our favorite was Half Life Deathmatch. It was my first computer game LANned.

Now circa 2002 I was active in LAN parties, playing game after game yet nothing ever came close to HL deathmatch. CS was there but it was infected with cheaters. So I gave up on CS around 1.1.

Up until a couple months ago I cash in my two ATi promo CDkeys for CS:S. Now I hated and mocked all versions of CS till then.
I found myself really liking CS:S. It's a fun game to play yet some things were missing. Only a handfull of maps, models, and tons of administration utilities. I'm like FUCK. This game is gonna be great come HL2 launch when it goes official.

Then comes yesterday... I boot my HL2 up and unlock it along with CS:S. I notice no multiplayer in HL2 and I start to cry. The sequil to the greatest game which I loved soo dearly and brought me into the LAN world made me cry. No Multiplayer. No Multiplayer...........

Goddamnit Valve.

Then I boot CS:S after hammering through 2 hours of HL2.
I'm salivating over the possibility of new maps and finally new models...
I join a Dallas server... Nothing. No new models, no new maps. Same old stuff. I want my L337 Crew... I want my Arctic soldiers... I want my Spetznaz shocktrooper!!! Where the fuck is CS_ASSAULT? CS_747???

I'm pissed... Valve has turned its back on the multiplayer community. Valve has made me angry.
 
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