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?"
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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]
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
As every round takes an extra few seconds to sort out the price of the week.
Hey I've got an idea, figure it out once and then just don't forget it for a week.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
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.