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

Great article by Brian Holmes.

I have been playing CS:S for about a month now. I have seen some cheating but overall I am having alot of fun in there. I hope Valve fixes the issues listed by Brian but in the meantime I am going to still play the game and do like I do now...leave the server if I see cheating.
 
CS:S has stopped crashing for me......as soon as i opened up ports for every computer on my router. But the cheating is sort of ridiculous right now.

Half Life 2 is playing fine for me now...no issues, but do we need 50 small loading times evrey 5 minutes? Why not a far cry like load...one giant load at the start of the level?
 
When I notice some of the AWP snipers and long range pistol users have gotten a little TOO good, I tend to leave.

Although I do admit I will continue to play CS:S. It's still a great MP game. It does need expansions and it does need NON STEAMED connectivity for LAN parties and less headaches.

I do want the character models back along with some of the original maps.

Word on the street is Valve is releasing a mapset in December. That's yet to be seen though.
 
miek said:
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!
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Premium prices demand premium products. If Valve or any other developers can't create good games any longer, then either sell them at reduced prices or make them right in the first place. I think it's the developers that want it all. They want to shove out crap and still get paid; to give us less for our money while jacking up the prices and creating more hoops we must jump through.
 
CS:Source seems to be fine on my rig....normal old CS type gameplay with some better looking graphics...?


But cheating in the original CS ruined the game for me, completely and utterly.

I would have people on a server tell me "you can't cheat punkbuster is on" so I would have to go load up the wallhacks, radar, and aimbot, and prove to them that PB does jackshit. I always told the people on the server I had the hacks on, trying to convince them...usually did too. At best I was an intermediate player, so going on and smacking the field around would usually make people know I had a hack....


But I still uninstalled that trash and quit playing years ago because of all the cheating, flaming, and kicking that would go on. Seems like everytime you would get a couple headshots, someone would call you a hacker, or if you used your sound for goodness sake, and heard a guy coming and then stepped out with guns blazing, they said you could see them through the walls...even I got booted many times when I was not cheating...


I have not played the new CS:Source online yet...I feel no need to, and besides my attitude about is not good, I bet there are cheats out for it too...
 
miek said:
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.

snip...

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!
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Good points, and I could even be convinced to agree with you if the timeframe we were talking about was back when you were involved with firearms. However the last year has see Valve discontinue that community supporting attitude. It took months and months and months of near constant complaints before they released any CPU optimizations for 1.6, in the meantime we saw things like the crosshair size change come out or a new cvar that allowed html motd's. We saw months of bitching about the horrid VAC support then 1.5 months of fanatical praise for the weekly updates that started happening and yet we've not seen a VAC update for 1.6 since July and no ant-cheat whatsoever yet for CS:S.

Also take into account things like the shield which came out with 1.6, it was horribly buggy and seriously unbalanced the game initially but valve refused to listen to the overwhleming public derision of it and either fix it or remove it, UNTIL CS:S (over a year). So while Valve may have once been supportive of the community its been some time since they were.
 
I do not own half-life 2; this is because I do not own a computer that could run it. I am a big half-life fan, and I was there from the earlier stages of counter strike (I started when they first introduced the AK47). I also experienced the joys of playing against hackers and having the online experience entirely destroyed because of them.

I find this whole situation extremely ironic. To the tenth power, cubed. We have valve, who is rightfully very protective of their intellectual rights. So they setup a system that theoretically would make things difficult for those that choose to illegally play the game (i.e. don’t pay for it).

However, just yesterday, that’s right, yesterday the day Half-life 2 was officially released, I noticed a patch had been released on “the scene” that allows for offline authentication. It’s a small 12k download, and while I have not used it myself, I assume it removes the headache that everyone is experiencing with this online authentication stuff.

That’s not all; this patch is not going to be easily accessible by your average gamer/customer. It will mainly be used by those who have an illegal copy of the game. Basically, Valve loses again. They are hurting those that actually pay for the game, and those that are causing all these problems to begin with avoid the headache.

I don’t blame valve for trying, but it’s a difficult situation to handle.
 
I think Kyle was just trying to get Valve to see their mistakes using his fanbase.... :D
 
I'm pretty sure Valve wouldn't go on much longer without addressing the cheating problem. After all, CS is the #1 multiplayer game in the world, with a lot of people to whine for it (including myself). As many people said above me, the community of CS gamers are too dedicated to just let out a sigh and move on, so hang in there CSers.

I've been playing CS since beta 6.5, and stopped shortly after 1.6 got released. From my experience, cheating has both increased and decreased at different intervals, with cheats usually coming out after each new release. CS: Source is no different. Just give it some time, be patient, and I'm sure Valve is not going to sit by while millions are leaving the game for other multiplayer games just because a few thousand cheating losers. You know who you are! :mad:

Anyways, even if gamers tried to leave CS, they'll be back someday when the cheating clears up. Heck, I tried leaving CS many times from frustration as a result from cheaters, and I'm practically salvating at the chance of getting back in with updated Source-engine graphics. :D
 
Thanks for the article. I just starting playing CS:S and I haven't notice that many problems. The lack of maps is a bummer. I'm sure the modding community will have something to say about that. I didn't think cheating was as widespread as the article claimed. No wonder I'm dying so frequently. A quick question for you all though. Is there any way to keep personal player stats, kills/deaths etc...?
 
nothing that you can track yourself. There are a few stats programs that have limited support for CS:S such as Psychostats 2 which we currently use at [H]ard|Gaming however there are some recent reports that the log files may be missing or misreporting kills so the accuracy of those stats is in question, and in any event thats something only server admins can use to track stats for the entire server.
 
miek said:
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.
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Problem seems to be Valve's Head Chef promised us a Souffle' (pronounced Soo-flay - A light, fluffy baked dish made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a main dish or sweetened as a dessert.) but neglected to put the eggs in :eek:
 
The article, I think, is a little short sighted. It completely fails to take into the account the constant updating that was done to Half-Life and to CS over the past few years. I am in agreement that CS:S is beta quality right now but I completely disagree with the bleak outlook. I think that now that HL2 is out there will be alot of effort put into multi-player issues and support. It is what made HL and I dont think they are going to ignore that.
 
Mr. Holmes did a great job being subjective while not forgetting about what he was talking about. My Favorite: "Similarly we’d like to believe that Carmen Electra will walk up to me in the supermarket and offer to browse the “zucchini isle"

Great article, fun to read.

- Pal
 
I don't know if anyone has brought up punkbuster yet, but punkbuster was working great for cs in the beta and pre steam era. Games like quake 3, far cry, rtcw and cod all have it built in, and i'd say it does a damn good job in those games. I think that was valves downfall there, not integrating punk buster.
 
I worry that Valve may be trying to take too much control over the game. What made games like Quake & CS great were the FREE mods & maps that were added on to the game that you purchased.

I like the server navigation of Quake style games. I dont like to have to log in to things like Ubisoft, Steam, Mplayer, Heat.net, etc.. Some of the best things for the games have been free tools for various mods... which come with easier admin, server settings, voting, etc..

Ex:
Quake3 ---> Rocket Arena 3 mod (great maps and slightly diff game play)
SOF2 ----> RocMod, Various maps like Italy map from CS, etc

I hope the free mods & maps come out soon. B/c I'm not buying HL2 or CS until they do.
 
Premium games do demand premium quality....even more so for valve. I think i read somewwhere that with normal game the developers get 9 dollars avg. With games purchased through steam they get nearly 30 dollars per game. So shoulnd't we be holding CS:S and HF2 to higher standards if they are getting triple the profit for a sizable portion of their game sales (since store bought is excluded from triple profit)? You can't put out beta game and gain more profits without some sort of backlash....or can you.
 
I would have to agree with most if not all of the things brought up in the cs:s article on the front page today. Really this game has a whole host of problems that need ot be addressed.

IMHO these things should be added to the list game play wise:
1) the head hit boxes need to be shrunken
2) autosniper needs to be nerfed a bit
3) need to slow down the bullup and add more recoil while scoped
4) ah thanks for the plethora of maps to play... i mean come on all they did was port the engine they could have at least done a couple of maps for it.
5) speed h4x????? we have all seen this and we all know it empties a server.

I have a couple more complaints:
why is it that i am a highly trained t or ct (in the game of course) yet i cant walk around a barrel or over a cinder block without getting stuck or bouncing off of it.

I dont know maybe I am being too critical... but i again i have to agree with the front page article... this game does not show promise of taking valve through the next 5 years. Hell i dont see it lasting more then one year. I can't help but to think that if doom3 would have had co-op, an alien v predator style assualt game type that lets one side be the monsters and one side be the humans, or all in all.... instagib that didn't suck I would still be playing that. Hopefully Carmacks peer to peer multiplayer system pays off in the long run.

Really what I see as one of the bigger possible money makers for valve is to incorperate a mmofps type of game based off of hl2. IMHO they could easily store the player stats and inventories through their steam system much like bnet had done with diablo... what would this mean to me. no life and the most addictive game ever created. Maybe my expectations were to high for the sequel to the game that had about 10,000 servers going 24/7 for the last 5 years.... wait a minute that's bs. 2 H3LL w/valve.
 
Magi said:
With games purchased through steam they get nearly 30 dollars per game.
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I've seen the $30 dollar figure quoted over and over again. For one, that is not a fact. It was a made up number as an estimate. The true number won't be known for a few months when the actual costs of developing and maintaining Steam are known. Valve could actually lose money on Steam.
 
I must state I am very happy with the value I have received with HL2 and CS:S so far. I think what most people seem to not have is trust in Valve's ability to make things better. I think over the last 5-6 years they have shown they do add alot of value to the initial purchase of thier games.

We have just forgotten it takes alot of time to add that same value to a game 2 months/2days old.
 
Duck said:
Good points, and I could even be convinced to agree with you if the timeframe we were talking about was back when you were involved with firearms. However the last year
has see Valve discontinue that community supporting attitude.

snip..

So while Valve may have once been supportive of the community its been some time since they were.
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I can see how that might have happened. I've kind of drifted away from the mod community due to my senior design project (in college). From the Gamespot article, they were super busy with finishing up HL2 end of last year and up until this summer. That might explain their sluggish response to the community during that time.

I fully expect their involvement and promptness to pick back up now that HL2 is out of the door. Like (cant find the post now with who said it) said, it takes time to do things. When you purchased that Silver/Gold edition you not only bought HL2, HL, CS:S, etc.. you also bought free updates for the lifetime of the product. :)
 
Rudyman said:
I think over the last 5-6 years they have shown they do add alot of value to the initial purchase of thier games.
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Really? What exactly has Valve done themselves? All the expansions were done by other people. Counter-Strike... done by the mod community. If you get down to what has Valve done all by themselves, it really isn't that much. I'm not saying they weren't working. I am stating that for five years there isn't much of a large body of work they can point to.
 
I think the article is a bit off base. Of course admin tools aren't out yet; look how long it took to get real admin tools/plugins for the original Counter-Strike/Half-Life. When the full HL2 SDK gets released (in a week or so) I'm sure someone will work on AMX or whatever for CS:S.

The author complains about certain bugs, but most of them have been fixed, usually within a week or quicker. Can you name another game that releases updates/improvements every week, and automatically?

The complaints about Steam are the same tired ones that everyone rags about. I've been using it since the very beginning (during the non-public betas as well) and haven't had major issues because of Steam. I did discover an incompatability that was affecting a lot of Steam users running Netlimiter, though; Netlimiter will break Steam's authentication/logon functionality.

Of course, if you don't like CS:S, then don't play it. You can keep playing the old CS.
 
PSYKOMANTIS said:
Valve has turned its back on the multiplayer community. Valve has made me angry.
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Give me a break. They've been a bit busy working on this huge game.. you might have heard of it.. Half-Life 2?

I'm sure once their after-release-party dies down, they'll focus back on CS:S, DOD:S, etc... they've already said they're planning on porting/converting a lot of the original CS maps to CS:S.
 
Duck said:
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.
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I won't argue the days with you (but for the record, I think you're off on them) -- but even 12 days is pretty quick. Name any other game developer who would have released a patch so quickly...
 
SpitFire said:
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?
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Valve has already stated they will be porting most of the popular maps.. it takes time, so be patient.
 
Look, stfu and sit. Wait and see. How hard is that to do? That article is nice as it points out problems but almost unnecessary because all I see is whining. You don't think Valve knows? Just give them time to do it. Stupid Americans-- no patience nowadays.

-J.
 
GeForceX said:
Just give them time to do it. Stupid Americans-- no patience nowadays.
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You seem to be missing the point. The reason for the lack of patience is that the product in its current state is almost unplayable. Not having the fixes is doing more harm than good. Valve being silent on the subject and not communicating doesn't help. Ergo, vis-a-vie, concordently the seemingly lack of patience.
 
So who here would have been happier with waiting a couple more months for the game instead of having the product we have now?

I am still happy with CS SOURCE... Now I just had a conversation with my co-workers (who got me started on HLDM) and they all sighed when I told them that there was no HLDM.
It is a bummer. We were all looking foreward to playing with the gravity gun and throwing eachother against the wall.
 
I haven't had too much trouble with CS:S. I hardly thought it was worth the $60 I paid for it, but I haven't even started playing HL2 yet. I fully expect HL2 alone to be worth the $60. Yes, I am a server admin, and yes, there are some hassles involved. Going through and banning all of the "%n"s wasn't any worse than several other things I had to do back in the days of hosting and adminning a TFC server in 2001.

Sure, CS:S is a beta. Sure, it shouldn't be. This doesn't make things different than just about any other computer game out there. If you don't want to pay $60 for a beta, wait a couple of months and then pay your money. CS:S will be there waiting for you.

About the only thing I need fixed ASAP is fake steam id generation. Fortunately, we're not one of the most popular servers out there, so we haven't had to deal with many of these people yet.
 
I can't beleive the bugs in the game. For instance one major one that I have encountered.

I installed a custom map pack last week. On certain maps instead of a texture I get and Error sign. I can see and shoot thru the texture now, and sometimes even move thru it. Especially the dumpsters on Office.
 
While I do agree with your points, I can't help but laugh at the overall message. At least you have a game to play, broken as it may be. TFC was Valve's first retail mod, and was once the most popular one as well. Our original game still isn't fixed, much less some sequel. It's been so many years since Valve has paid attention to us, we have community mods that fix the bugs (how f***ing ridiculous is it that fixed code is already out there, and Valve STILL won't implement it). The CS community is Valve's spoiled child compared to TFC, be happy with what you have.
 
Jason711 said:
i would love to see valve publicly address this article.
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I think this is the real problem with Valve. Valve in all their greatness does not listen to the user or admin. They seem to be digging an underground tunnel and they pop-up from time to put something out and then go on working. (The Steam forums are a joke because nothing ever seems to be listen too)

I think that a lot of good would be done (people would love it) if Valve would just open up to the community, which made made them what they are today.

:/
 
PSYKOMANTIS said:
So who here would have been happier with waiting a couple more months for the game instead of having the product we have now?

I am still happy with CS SOURCE... Now I just had a conversation with my co-workers (who got me started on HLDM) and they all sighed when I told them that there was no HLDM.
It is a bummer. We were all looking foreward to playing with the gravity gun and throwing eachother against the wall.
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I'm sure someone will put the HL2 SDK to good use and come up with some pretty sweet add-ons/multiplayer packs, ala Counter-Strike and the original Half-Life.
 
Alias said:
I can't beleive the bugs in the game. For instance one major one that I have encountered.

I installed a custom map pack last week. On certain maps instead of a texture I get and Error sign. I can see and shoot thru the texture now, and sometimes even move thru it. Especially the dumpsters on Office.
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So Valve should be responsible whenever you install third-party software that screws up their game?

Jeez. I'd hate to live in your fantasy world.
 
Seems the crux of the issue here is that some people feel happy paying $60 for HL2 and getting CS:S as a freebie of sorts, even in it's beta state, rather than no MP at all (the supposed alternative). Others feel that if Valve bought CS and pretends to make it HL2's official MP component then it should've been more polished out of the box.

Frankly I would've paid $60 for HL2 whether it came with CS:S or not, and I think Valve could've avoided some controversy if they simply released CS:S as a free 'beta' component to anyone who bought HL2, only incorporating it into the retail package at a later date. Seems like a technicality, and it is, but it's a fairly important one if the industry wants to evolve.
 
delusion_ said:
So Valve should be responsible whenever you install third-party software that screws up their game?

Jeez. I'd hate to live in your fantasy world.
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No. That is a potential cheat, and exploit. Valve should do something about that.
 
I won't be happy until Team Fortress 2 or TFC:Source or whatever is released. That game was sadly underrated, and this from a long time beta CS vetran. Right now I'm very much enjoying the War3 mod for CS. Throws a little more spice into a game this old...and a game most of my friends nolonger play because of the mess of the original steam.
 
Spare-Flair said:
I won't be happy until Team Fortress 2 or TFC:Source or whatever is released. That game was sadly underrated, and this from a long time beta CS vetran. Right now I'm very much enjoying the War3 mod for CS. Throws a little more spice into a game this old...and a game most of my friends nolonger play because of the mess of the original steam.
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Do you play on the SaveXP servers? Not me, I hate them. I don't have time to play on a server for a month strait to get max XP.
 
Jason711 said:
i would love to see valve publicly address this article.
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What would it be worth for me to ask them about it
:D

i just may do that tonite.

I think ill stick with CS LAN only with bots for now :p
 
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