Slashdot Mirror
Counter-Strike Opens Weapons Market
kalpatin writes "The ever so popular game, Counter Strike:Source developed by Valve, has a new feature added to the game: A virtual marketplace for the weapons and equipment. According to Valve, every item's price will be updated on a weekly basis depending on the global market demand. Some users have posted their anger toward the new change on the Valve forums and have even started a petition to stop the change. Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community, or are they merely spicing the game up?"
Based on TFA, it seems like this is not optional. (Although it's not explicitly stated)
What the heckfire are they playing at, eh?
http://www.truecombatelite.net/ - free team based realism mod for the free version of Wolfentein Enemy Territory.
Started playing it a year ago and haven't picked up CS since. It's awesome.
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
It's ok, if you don't like it just don't download the patch and just continue playing it your way with your mates on the local LAN...
Oh, wait, it's a Steam Game.
Guess you are screwed then. This is what happens when you buy locked down products - and if you want more examples, just look at what happened to SWG (did you get a refund when the game turned into something that you were not sold? could you carry on playing the game you *were* sold?) or World of Warcraft (goodbye, forty man raids, around which a lot of players have built their guilds).
What happens in the future when this kind of crap gets extended to other aspects of life via DRM? Lucas might 'upgrade' every release of star wars automatically when he finishes the new tri-gital remastered version, now with 3D Jar Jar Binks. Apple might cut down the number of times you can burn your purchased songs to CDs without giving you a chance to stick to the old terms and conditions.
Normally such a rant would end with some message of hope for the future. Well here it is: In my case I'm going to work very hard to make sure I'm on the end doing the exploiting, so I get to enjoy it all the way to the bank.
Beep beep.
My first reaction to reading the title was "oh, so they finally decided to sell real guns?"
Well,
Like a lot of people on here, I ran out and bought HL2 when it first came out. I had my reservations about steam but wanted to give them a fair shot. That's what I did, and that's why I'm never buying another one of their products again.
You see, this issue just brings into light the whole concept that is so bad about publisher over-the-net supplied games. Let's compare this to a regular CD/DVD/etc game. Lord of the Rings BFE2 just came out with a major patch that completely changes unit times/strengths, etc. It's almost like playing another game. Not getting into a debate of if it's good or bad, but if **I** decided I don't want to apply it then I can keep playing. As long as others out there don't like it too, I can even play on-line. In CS:S, we are screwed if we don't update. You can't play period. That not only gives steam control over when and where you play, but your game experience. Don't like what they've done now, too bad.
Who knows how long they will continue to support HL2. But without their auth/update servers, the game will not work. I won't be buying anything like this again for that very reason. Anyone else notice this is the new trend. Even MS is moving toward this model. Complete control, and I'm not going to give it. Voting with my wallet, suggest you do the same too.
Matthew Reilly Rocks!
http://www.matthewreilly.com/home.htm/
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
I'm beginning to suspect that the submission guidelines contain a paragraph I've missed about taking a dig at Microsoft whatever the relevancy to the subject at hand.
So guns that everyone wants because they're good/cheap/whatever will end up more expensive. The game will balance itself so that all guns are equally used.
I think it sounds neat.
But then, I don't play CS.
/dev/random
The CS community always complains about any significant change prior to actually seeing how it affects the game. The recent radar change was a prime example. So many people were moaning about it when it was announced, and yet now it's been rather well accepted as a good update.
:)
This marketplace idea is the same sort of thing. It sounds interesting to me. I'm looking forward to seeing how it changes the game.
I do have a couple of small reservations though:
1. It could "unbalance" clan matchs. If Clan X plays Clan Y one week when the M4 is expensive then they'll have a very different game than when they play Clan Z when the M4 is cheaper. While each game is fair I think any comparison of games (we beat Clan Z, how come we lost to Clan Y?) will be skewed.
2. Weapons that are available to both sides will always have more spent on them than weapons unique to one team. For example, the M4 and the CK are only available to the one side, while the AWP and the P90 are available to both sides. That presumably will mean the AWP and P90 have more spent on them in any one week, pushing them into the top 50% half where prices increase. I hope Valve have thought about that, I'd hate all the shared weapons to increase while the unique weapons fall. Not just coz I'm a P90 spray'n'pray player of course..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
This game is not just used by casual gamers. Professional competition gamers play this CS:Source in tournaments both online and offline. I wonder if the weapon prices will affect the way tournaments are held. If a LAN doesn't update Steam in a while, could they possibly have old market prices? Will Valve allow servers to control whether or not their server abides by the market rules?
All I know is, the competitive community is absolutely opposed to this update. We just want a fun, team oriented game to play. Not an RPG.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
But pretty much given it up - it's totally dominated by people wioth too much time on their hands who have memorised a routine for every map and just stick to it again and again and again, which gets boring fast. Hopefully this will do something about that, though I'm not in the least bit suprised to hear complaints.
have even started a petition to stop the change
War games are hell.
I guess to get the old CS back, I'll just have to play 1.6...
As every round takes an extra few seconds to sort out the price of the week. This sort of thing would be a fine optional plugin, or something tuned at the local server level... but to base 'demand' on all the servers globally? Hmmn. Can't say that I like it.
Would be nice to see them fix some bugs rather than add new features. Every time I start up the game and load up a list of servers, my menus are all crunched together. Every month or so it wipes out my favorites and history files - making me dig up the IP address of the servers I haunt. Strikes me as amateur hour, anyhow, so an update like this scares me.
(Course, Defcon is out the end of the month too - so Steam may have CS sorted by the time I get back to it)
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
The traditional Counter-Strike weapon system was one of the biggest flaws of the game, in my opinion. Sure, it added a nice touch of realism and a bit of strategy, but the pricing structure made 90% of the guns effectively useless. It's very rare to join a server and see someone using a gun other than the Colt/AK or sniper, because they're so overwhelmingly powerful and still pretty cheap.
Basically, this means that the weaker guns will now have a purpose, since they'll be much more affordable. I'm sure the Colt and AK will still be heavily favored, but at least now it'll be harder to get them in the second round of a match.
And a note to the critics: If you don't care for these changes, CS 1.6 is still alive and well. CS:Source is a great opportunity for Valve to play around with the previously stagnant formula (by adding a new radar system, for example) without alienating older players. Let's not ruin that... we don't need two versions of the same game.
Who looks at the prices when buying these weapons...? This is totally useless.
Having the value of weapons reflect the real world demand is a very nice idea, and in theory should make the game a perfectly even playground. Although having the players balance the game for you seems almost lazy...
I agree though that the fact it's not optional is crap. You don't expect that from a PC game. However, the HL series has always been easily moddable - can't someone mod this out of counter-strike for those who don't want it? Or is modding an official mod not allowed?
Of course, Steam basically means that people who aren't happy being dictated to don't have HL2 anyway, so I don't see this affecting CSes popularity.
My second thought was that this is hackable. Run a ton of servers, populate them with bots (yours, not official ones), have the bots spend all their money on sniper rifles, et voila: no more snipers. Presumably they'll control against this somehow, but it seems like something fun to play with.
What happens when the unscrupulous player decides to falsify the buying habit information to steam, and sends a million hits to the guns they dont play, just to drive the price of the guns they want back down?
Colonel Cranium this is Rectal Reconnaissance, we are on a collision course sir, Abort Abort!
throws entire match strategy right out the window.
Oh no, god forbid you have to change your strategy in a 10 year old game. People, get a grip. I love that some people are crying out for the Wii because it uses a new controller that according to them will revolutionize the way games are played, and yet they still bitch and complain about a change like this. Most times when I play CounterStrike, you usually end up with $16000 really quickly and dominate the match wit hteh best weapons, or you constantly lose and have the SMGs that can't compete as well with the rifles.
I applaud Valve for bringing a change like this. It's time for games to start taking more advantage of the global internet and stop creating a world that is server and instance based. So many people play MMO's nowadays that really, I don't see games like CounterStrike keeping up with them. You're constantly starting from zero and whatever stats are saved are server based only so if you want any progression you need to constantly use the same server. I only hope the "newly announced" TF2 encorporates more of this stuff.
So if one gun is sold more why don't the manufacturers start producing more of that weapon? Then the cost of each individual gun would fall, and they could sell it for less.
All those companies who use micro transactions think too small. Forget about selling weapons -- sell ammo!! 500 rounds for 5 bucks. or maybe gas for the cars.
Just right click on the game in your steam menu and tell it not to automatically update the game. There you go.
Were you dropped on your head as a child, or do you just ignore certain details to whine about "locked in" platforms?
Let's say I hate a particular weapon. The popular weapon to hate, last I was there, was the AWP, so let's use that as an example.
Set up a server with unlimited buy time and a few million dollars of starting money. Now, start the spammage. Buy, drop, buy, drop, buy, drop. Before you know it, the AWP is completely impossible to afford, no matter what server you're on.
Suppose only one purchase per round counts. Ok, fine, now add a custom map, and do it with a friend, dropping buy time and time between rounds as much as you can tweak them. Now you alternate. Buy, snipe, respawn, buy, snipe, respawn. You don't even have to drop it this time -- whoever got sniped will have dropped their AWP.
This can be done for any weapon. Before long, someone will have written a mod that does it automatically. Imagine -- someone doesn't like that weapon you're carrying? They punch one button and their server starts spamming Valve with new price information. If you manage to kill them, they'll never be able to afford that weapon again.
It's an interesting idea, but Valve is about to learn that it's much more difficult to balance an MMO market, where so many things are in the players' control, than to balance arbitrary weapon prices or abilities. They should've just quietly collected statistics, and then set the prices based on those statistics, probably still having to manually tweak them, and tell us when they're all done, thus giving no one the opportunity to exploit it. Here, they're just asking for trouble.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I know a lot of people are fuming about the nature of Steam and having patches forced upon you, I understand that because I've hated steam from day one.
But does anyone else think this is a really, really good idea? If a weapon is popular, it becomes expensive, if a weapon is unpopular, it becomes cheap. This will ensure that a fair price is given for every weapon, a diversity of weapons are used and the game isn't saturated by the same overpowered weapons. Weapons will cost the right amount because they cost what people are willing to pay for them. Isn't this every game balancer's dream?
The problem is that it sounds a bit like one of those shifty real money for virtual items scams that game manufacturers are running these days. Which of course it isn't, They should call it "laissez-faire pricing" or "free-market weapons" costs or something that sounds like the inbuilt game feature it is, rather than a exploitative "service".
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
TCE is awesome, it plays better than CS and is more realistic than CS. But the most amazing thing about TCE is that there are actually nice friendly people playing it. And it's free as in beer!
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
...can be seen here: http://www.steampowered.com/stats/csmarket/ Though I agree that forced mods stink, the change to the game will likely be insignificant.
So, what you do on your server (and it has to be your server, in order to be able to tweak the options like you want), you can do this. But it won't affect anyone else.
Tweaking game play is one of the hardest aspects of developing a video game. You're balancing personal preferences against what works well for the most people. I wrote the original Star Wars arcade port for the C64 for Parker Brothers. The project manager couldn't make up his mind on how the cursor should feel and so I ended up coding a roll-your-own cursor feedback tool for him so he could tweak the acceleration parameters himself. It was far more productive to write the tweak code and let him fart around than it was for me to burn a prom give it to him, have him say something like - "it should be more responsive" or "it's too responsive."
By making this patch, Valve has in essence, coded their own version of letting the players roll their own parameters. Instead of a small group's opinion on what the prices should be, it's the combined player's opinion that matters.
For the younger players, it's an introduction to price/demand responses. Of course, it's artificial in that the comodities have no production cost so from the producer's perspective, the weapons could be free. Nonetheless, it conveys the message to younger players that tho more people do or don't want something, that will affect the price of the something.
and it SHOULD be free as in freedom. TCE is a GPL breaker.
The problem with traditional CSS gameplay is that all too often it ends up with a bunch of people buying M4's against a bunch of people buying AK's. This system could potentially force players to use different types of weapons.
Also, I'm SURE that there will be a server variable to turn this change off. I dobut that valve would cast off the old fixed-price weapon system for everything, especially since it's crucial for match play.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
This isn't a radical departure, the outcome of matches will not be drastically effected by this. All it will mean is that its going to reduce the chance of getting that favourite weapon in the second round. I see this as a big positive, the weaponary will now slowly evolve to a static price based on usage!
Value++
BOO
AK-47: $16000
M4: $16000
AWP: $16000
MP5: $5000
Everything else (since the deagle is apparently excluded to "preserve the pistol round"): $1
Game... blouses.
I only play gun game, no buying involved.
personally, i like the idea, although i think it should be optional if players wish.
Counter Strike is an online game. Valve is trying to more of a community out of CS. This is no different than the auction house in World of Warcraft - supply and demand. Blizzard regularly changes things in WOW with patches, this is what Valve wants to be.
Steam supports server side scripting such as http://www.zombiehorde.com/. The marketplace would be something that could potentially be dissabled server side if you feel like it. My isp has a wide range of game servers with different maps and server rules it is something that could be customised to allow for people that like the old prices to stick to thair own server with just the default prices and not be part of the new wepons economy.
...should cause the price to go to zero. Demand only drives up prices when there is scarcity in the market. This is a world in which a weapon exists because a server says it does; how does that translate to scarcity? I suppose you could look at valve as the sole vendor so they've got a monopoly or something.
If they really want to introduce economics to the game, they should make money persistent from session to session and server to server and let each server set their own prices either fixed or with their own weighted algorithm. Once prices were posted and aggregated for the multitude of servers, people would presumably flock to where they could get more equipment for less money. Admins could drive up traffic by lowering prices, etc. In which case, real world economics could come into play and admins could start advertising on server splash screens or something, which of course Valve would want a piece of.
Perhaps that is why they're introducing it now... Maybe they're on the path to a new revenue stream.
I think you're making a big deal over a small thing here. I really liked HL2, and I really liked getting it over Steam. I've reinstalled, changed computers, etc, several times. I didn't have to worry about where the hell the CDs were, or about CD keys and crap like that. This kind of convenience for me far outweighs the loss of control you're complaining about.
As for the change itself, it seems like variable weapons pricing will provide more balance and variety to the game. Instead of everyone getting that same weapon they've chosen (or 2 weapons based on price bracket), there'll be incentives to use others. Besides, it's not a MUD or MMORPG where rebalancing has just borked the Lv60 Cleric of Crapacity you spent 2 years and destroyed a marriage to create. A little perspective please.
Counter-Strike: Source isn't realistic in the first place. The fact that it uses cross-hairs instead of sights and horrible weapon simulation is enough to prove this. How are they making the game realistic by adding the market, and where are they getting their info from when it comes to the prices?
Steam is about the most "friendly" content delivery platform I've ever seen at this point, barring some rather stupid technical problems that plagued the earlier releases (way to fail to learn from beta testing Valve).
I don't get why people are so hostile about it. I highly doubt that if one day Valve shuts down they'll just say, "lol, tough luck guys" and leave us with gigs of encrypted games we can't touch. That's about the biggest legitimate thing one can worry about, and judging from the size of Valve's money hats and the interest Steam is drawing from other publishers I don't think we have to worry about them running out of cash anytime soon.
Everything else is a non-issue or people don't get it. You DON'T have to update any of your titles unless you want to, it's just on by default. You DON'T have to be online to use Steam (yet another option people mysteriously overlook). You CAN burn backup copies of your games (there's an option to spit out backups in CDR and DVD friendly chunks, I just reinstalled from a backup a few months ago when I got my new rig built). There's no restriction on how many PCs you can install your games on. Shit, I can go to any internet-enabled PC, install Steam, and have access to my games whenever I want (well, after downloading 2+Gigs of stuff, buh!). That's fucking awesome IMO.
It will definetly mean that a wider range of weapons will be used over time, instead of just the M4A1, CV47 and Magnum. This also means new tactics will be developed to suit the new challenges. Thats very positive for a game and its positive for all players who like to face new challenges.
You can always argue wether its a good or bad thing that the provider controls the content and not the customer. One thing that speaks for the provider is the ressources needed to run the servers and scoresystem and so on, which are essential in any competitive game. If you had to support 10 different versions it would require more ressources, so its quite understandable that the provider chooses to only have 1 version running.
Im excited to see how it plays out ingame and i personally think it will give the game a fresh new twist.
This is a viral signature. You are now infected!
What is Counter-Strike anyway? I've been playing it since the very first beta - and quite frequently so. In retrospective, I feel obliged to say that Counter-Strike hasn't been consistent in its content at all. How much is actually still the same from the original betas?
The physics of a player are totally different (i.e. weapon handling, bunny jumping, etc). Weapons are different. CS_ maps are no longer played and are basically replaced in favor of the DE_ maps. The list is very long and could be expanded forever.
My point is that Counter-Strike has never been Counter-Strike, simply because it is changing so frequently that the game can only be defined as a tactical FPS. Looking at other games, such as Quake III: Arena or even QuakeWorld, these games are easier to define because they haven't changed much at all.
I don't think Valve will stop making changes to CS and CS:S. At least that's what history has told us so far.
Full Tilt
I have binds for binding and buy items quickly because I KNOW THE PRICE OF THE ITMES. Now you go and buy a rifle and guess what? The 10% price increase means you won't be able to afford ammo. Good luck!
And someone's threatening to make me think again!
Sure, it sounds great on paper. But, this isn't World of Warcraft. I see NO reason on earth to do this. Valve has had a habbit of adding silly shit that nobody wants over the past few years. Anyone remember shields ? Another idea that sounds great on paper, but didn't work very well in the wild. It took a long time to wake them up.
Valve does not care what its players think. They know CS is a very popular game and people will generally play it regardless. Something like this should be an OPTION on the server, which most admins should keep off. A change like this will have a huge impact on matchs, for no good reason.
I stopped playing CS a while ago for a good reason.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
I think people care less about this now than they used to - players of the Counter-Strike franchise are probably used to the aggravation - whether it's valve changing things stupidly and failing to listen to the community while leaving stuff that needs changing to stagnate, or being inundated constantly with whiners
.49 release - the only game any self-respecting cs (up to 1.6) veteran with a brain would upgrade to - and it doesn't require windows and steam, or paying money to play it.
and little kids and having the whole feel of the game rearranged. Lots of people are just resigned to making the best of what they've left of the game.
Like lots of people, valve can do what it wants as far as I'm concerned - I'm counting down the days to True Combat: Elite's big
Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community
No. Here's how it works.
Company A builds widget because it thinks the public wants it. Noone asked them to make it. Company A isn't entirely sure whether or not their widget will sell, until they try to sell it.
Successful companies make this gamble, and it works because the public actually needs or wants their widget. Unsuccessful companies make this gamble, and it fails. Companies that fail to try to innovate stagnate and fail, even if their first widget was successful. Companies that just go along with what their customers want will fail simply because some other company will come along and make something nobody thought to make before, and beat company A at their own game.
Did anyone ask for this feature in CS? No. Did anyone want this feature in CS? Apparently not. Was Valve wrong in putting it forward? No. At least they bothered to take the risk to make something they thought might sell.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I'm sick of this stuff... given just about any change someone is going to object and be able to convince a few other people to object. How many people are objecting... state a ballpark figure if you can't get the exact #... but this "some" bullshit is stupid. If it's 10 people I could care less... and for this story if it's 200,000... well I still could care less.
I started playing CS since version 1.1 and the game has gone downhill every update since then. In 1.3 the head hitboxes were modified so that people were getting headshots left and right. Prior to that update crouching used to be a skill, since your head hitbox was so much smaller. ALMOST EVERY SINGLE UPDATE has been geared toward making the game more friendly for new players. They have also recently changed the hit boxes on CS Source to make the game easier. Remember the riot shield?
Screwing with the money system will kill clan play for this game unless it is a server variable that can be turned off. There is a reason that CAL opposes these kinds of changes -- the most fundamental reason is that it screws up the expected consistency of the game. It also screws up a players ability to maintain any kind of constant skill level since with every update your skill is diluted by changes that make the game less and less skill oriented, e.g., James Bond for PS2.
Valve has no incentive to freeze the game at a particular point and make it truly consistent and skill based. However, the nature of the game relegates the number of changes they can make to a relatively small domain. So from a seasoned player's perspective they can only screw up what was previously working fine.
CSS = 8<
Once CS stopped being a relatively obscure mod to an aging game the "community" went to hell. Or, rather, it went to a bad grade school in an even worse part of town.
The two best and worst things to ever happen to gaming were the drop in cost for high-speed internet access and the drop in price for computer hardware to play the games on. Those two things, more than any other, opened gaming up to the great, unwashed masses - the lowest common denominator of human stupidity and immaturity - and for some reason a large number of them gravitated to CS.
As someone who played and loved the VERY early versions of this game I simply refuse to subject myself to the deluge of ignorance that public CS servers became (and seem to have remained).
I bought it too. Worked on a mod team. It was a single player game they slapped an example of a MP mod onto, a bad example, but I suspect from a mod team POV that they thought opening their code the way they did would lead to a whole slew of great MP mods.
Thing is, it didn't happen. I've only participated in a few mods but coding a mod in C++ seems like it was a major contributing factor. While other mods I've played around with newblets could mess with the scripting, learn some of its idiosyncrasies and start building an increasingly interesting mod. With HL2 that just didn't seem to happen.
Not that there aren't *any* good mods for it, but certainly nothing I'd call great. I don't think making possibly one of the worst MP mods available helped. Not using steam to distribute mods (at least in the beginning) probably really didn't help either. People didn't even know mods existed unless they were A) junkies who read all the sites B) mod fans who knew where to look or of course C) modders.
I worked with and on the HL2CTF mod team. I've got nothing but good things to say about the people and the experience. But it was shit. It was an uphill battle that was demoralizing. I was working on more of the config hacking. Menus, recourse calls, symbols/fonts. When I didn't work on that I was working on a variant that pulled the CSS fork into CTF territory. I had to write a bunch of new gun code, bullet type, weight, velocity, etc. Its a lot of work and for things that could have mostly been done just as easily in existing configuration files.
But after watching the CTF mod struggle for so long and not being able to drum up any real support for my own variant (you see, you need a full team, including skinners and modelers as well as coders and resource hackers to do a proper HL2 mod) I simple deleted my VS folder and uninstalled HL2.
I'm sure Valve thought they were doing all the right things. But they killed any serious mod community by not actively supporting them early (no visibly = no players), making a TERRIBLE MP mod as their 'example' (which most HL2 MP players stuck with, I imagine any serious MP gamer would have seen it and moved onto another game leaving us with a much less sophisticated group...in general) and making such a complicated SDK (granted, being able to access the real code has some real advantages, but combined with the lackluster MP game and the lack of support and you just don't have the motivation or support you need).
Of course I know this original article was about CSS so I'm ranting (in response to, but not against the above poster) so I'll leave off.
FWIW I think my CTF mod of CSS would have probably been greeted with pretty mixed feelings. CSS players, purists would have really not liked it. I have no doubt. But it would have been something nice for CTF players who don't like the cartoonish game play HL2 MP offered. I'm a bit of a realism fan and hell, as much work as the mod was I *had* to be doing something I thought I'd enjoy too.:)
Quack, quack.
I still strongly suspect that there are enough people out there who hate the AWP that -- well, it might not be a zombie network, but there could still be enough people effectively ballot-stuffing.
Even if it's entirely un-exploitable, I don't think I'm going to like the results of this. But that's another discussion entirely.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Valve is just taking the same approach as the players. "All ur CS 4r3 b3l0ng t0 us."
Jack Thompson would have had a lawgasm so strong he'd explode. The tremors would be felt through the bowels of the earth, and his black and rotted innards would fall down as corrosive rain, burning the skin of holy men.
Thats what will happen. The really good cheap guns become expensive, the more expensive ones no one used to buy will become cheaper and then the cycle will repeat itself. It won't happen to all of the items, but I bet it will with some of them. Cheap one week, really expensive the next, then cheap again. I haven't played in a while, but when I did I was the only one to buy the underused weapons. Sounds cool, but I don't think It will entice me to start playing again.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
If you're going to be pedantic you should at least bother to look the damn word up.
`moot':
"has three Standard meanings: "discussable, debatable"; "under discussion, being disputed"; and "without practical significance, academic." Thus a moot question may be open to discussion, in the process of being discussed, or not worth discussing at all, depending on the sense dictated by context."
Columbia Guide to Standard American English (http://www.bartleby.com/68/42/3942.html).
You also could have used "define:moot" at google and seen that the word has many accepted and acceptable meanings. Which, of course, makes your point moot.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
I was hoping it would be based on real life arms selling prices - AK-47 surplus in Africa? CS AK-47 prices go down! M4 shortage in the US? M4 prices in CS go up!
The geek in me just loves the thought of working something like that out in code and actually having interns research gun pricing as a job.
Wait, there's one person who isn't whining about some change to their precious game? All I see and hear is that 'change is bad' and yet, with every change that has stayed, it's been for the better. And the crowd of people who refused to play with the changed version has shrunk to a tiny and insignifigant pool.
I believe the majority, after the change has been around for a bit, tends to enjoy it and that there is just a very small and vocal minority that continues to whine about changes implemented years ago. Bunny hopping, for instance - it made the game nigh-unplayble to anyone who didn't know the technique because those that did could beat them easily. And when it was removed? HUGE OUTCRY!! But you know what happened? More people started enjoying the game.
This is very similiar to the question raised occassionally about including advertising in games. Particuarly dynamic advertising. While it makes no sense for public servers and casual players (who cry and whine loudly about the prospect) it makes perfect sense for competitive players for whom tournaments will be trying to secure sponsorship which = prize money.
This proposed change however makes plenty of sense for casual public players and absolutely no sense for competitive players. The Counter Strike buy system is an important strategic aspect that makes Counter Strike stand out from the alternatives. But it's an aspect only really ultilised by competitve players. If a person is playing on a public server they're just another Rambo. If I'm playing with my team in the finals for WCG and someone can't buy for a critical round because Valve have their heads up their arses and we lose - It's not just hurt pride. It's countless hours of practice, planning and very often financial investment (travel, time off work, investment in decent hardware etc) for at least 6 people (5+reserve player).
Love it or hate it Counter Strike has the potential to be a pillar of what's shaping up to be a gargantuan future for "e-sports". And Valve are absolutely killing it. Please Valve. Focus on the many real problems with Counter Strike Source becoming a true vehicle for competition and stop introducing idiotic gimmicks. If I want to play a gimmick version of Counter Strike there are plenty of mods out there I can amuse myself with.
There's always this one.
Tracking the download down on the army.mil search was useless. A web search with http://vivisomo.com/ got me the pertinent links, should have used it from the get-go.
Don't know anything about how one version is different from another but you can get 'em here:
AA:Special Forces (Direct Action) Vesion 2.5
http://www.army.com/games/aa/
America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch) v2.7
http://www.americasarmy.com/downloads/
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
So that just means supply/demand will drive the price of AWPs to $16,000.
I think it's a great change. Like previous people mentioned, you see servers where it's nothing but deagles, AK's and M4's. All of the other guns get forgotten about because the big three are so powerful and versatile. The other guns may not even exist for all the difference it's made in the past.
.50 cal. hand cannon. If the deagle becomes impossible to get in the first round, buying a P228 would actually be worthwhile. This pricing change will actually make it more enjoyable to play for the majority of people. And I think that's the way it should be.
With the deagle soaring to $1,000, it might actually be worth it to get the the P228 pistol, one of the most overlooked pistols in the entire game. You really can't use it when some fool with a deagle kills you in a single shot from a
Another free game, never played it. http://www.army.mil/fcs/f2c2/index.html
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
...according to real world market prices for weapons! I'm not talking about imaginary world or server prices in an isolated ecosystem...I am talking about Valve linking the price of a AK-47 in the game to the market price of an AK-47 in Oakland, CA. Or in Iraq. Or whereever. For example, on http://www.atlanticfirearms.com/ a California legal AK-47 is $749. Of course, an actual economic model to help preserve the correct market price for weapons in the game should be implemented, to provide realism for when the game diverges from the current "peaceful" real world economy, to a WWII like economy. And why limit market dynamics to weapons! Why not do the same for food and uniforms! Nothing like a bunch of naked soldiers...
1. Retaining centralized control over multiplayer
2. making it difficult to use the software without it trying to phone home
3. refusing to make available a version of the newer games that will certainly continue to work if something ever happened to Valve or their servers
4. refusing even to make a strong written commitment that they would create such a thing, etc.
1. They've got every reason to do so, and none not to. Cheating is endemic to CS and centralized control really helps prevent that.
2. I'll agree that that one could have been done better, but it was hardly 'megalomaniacal'.
3. And the odds of that are? So close to zero to not be worth the time spent complaining about it.
4. Why should they? What onus do they have to you that would necessitate such a thing?
When you get down to it, nothing they've done can even *remotely* be considered megalomaniacal, especially considering which measures were used to preventing the widespread pirating of their software and rampant cheating.
People really need to give Valve a break on this. Technical screw-ups? Sure, hold their feet to the fire on that end. But the rest of this birdbrain paranoia? Come on now.
Heh, server admins will just script around it for their servers using something like EventScripts.
For those not fond of other Valve decisions, there are hundreds of server-side scripts/mods to change the gameplay of CS:S. (Here)
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
Luckily, It will be a server-side variable so yes it's optional: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.p hp?s=&threadid=489878
:)
I'm not sure whether or not to enable it on the servers I manage though, we'll try it out for sure. But in the end it's the players that decide if it stays or not. Guess we'll have a vote on it
It would drastically effect their standard cookie-cutter strategy. Though IMO certain maps are so ridiculously unbalanced as it is, adding something that changes the gameplay as much as this on a day to day basis is going to make it even more so.
I havent played CS in about 1.5 years though so I don't really care that much.
Ahhhhhh, you beat me too it. (extinguish flame thrower)
It's very rare to join a server and see someone using a gun other than the Colt/AK or sniper, because they're so overwhelmingly powerful and still pretty cheap.
It's not because they're cheap; people buy AK's and Colt's because they are more powerful than any of the other assualt rifles or SMG's in the game. They have a good clip size (30 bullets) and are very accurate, assuming you are crouched and burst fire.
Heh, CS:S server admins will just script around it for their servers using something like EventScripts. Whenever people aren't fond of Valve decisions they write a script for their use-- hundreds of these for CS:S here.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
They complain because Valve makes wholesale changes to the game *after* it's been purchased. It also wouldn't bother people if they would make these additions *optional* rather than a forced change. They also do annoying things like change weapon names and numbers for no apparant reason.
You either have to have your own server or hunt for those that defuck whatever Valved fucked up in the first place, as opposed to being able to hop on any one of tens of thousands of servers.
So does this mean the nightvision goggles will become free?
I thought free dial-up Internet access ended with the dot-com crash of 2001. Is there still free dial-up available throughout urban and suburban parts of the United States and Canada, or at least dial-up that doesn't charge a setup fee plus $20 for the first month, on top of what the player already paid for the game new in box?
And when Sony screwed up SWG, members of the Community got together to bring back the version they knew, loved, and paid for. In the highly doubtful case that valve doesn't make this be enabled via a cvar, there will probably be a workaround for it immediatly, if there isn't one already just from the announcment.
SWG Is Dead, Long live SWGEmu.
If I had mod points, I would mod you up man. Good english is worth striving for. I actually had to look this one up. Rest assured, I won`t be misusing moot again!