I can only speak for myself on this.
I was thrilled to hear that the beta would be out shortly for CS Source. However, like many I assume, once I found out that it was a "limited" beta, available to only those that were either a cafe or those that purchased CZ, I was turned off by the beta project. Not so much at the beginning but when I read the faq that clearly states that the CZ owners can't keep Source after the beta period, it turned the tide for me at least. Especially with the release date of HL2 in the flux that it's in. I just don't feel it appropriate or economical for me to purchase CZ, when HL2 could be available at literally any time or never. For me to purchase CZ, just to play Source Beta, doesn't seem economical to me in the least. Even at $29.99, I can take that, and approx $40.00 more and purchase HL2 the day it's released.
In my opinion, the opening of the beta to CZ owners is nothing more than a ploy to get people to purchase CZ. My guess is that it's not selling as well as Valve had hoped it would. Here's my reasoning behing that statement folks. There's no need to flame, the numbers are available to anyone who wishes to check them with their own steam client.
Based on a current check via Steam:
Total CZ Servers: 526 With Players: 185
Total CS Servers: 8042 With Players: 2208
CZ simply isn't as popular as the old basic CS is and I feel that Valve is using the source Beta to boost it's sales to decrease it's losses on the product. No thanks.. I'll wait until it's out. I don't want CZ, and as soon as HL2 and CS Source is released, CZ will be a dead product in the light of the end users for the most part. Those that purchased CZ, I'm sorry, but I feel you've been jacked in a major way. You can flame all you wish, but the numbers of servers that anyone of us can pull from steam, at any given time, simply don't lie and they spell out JACKED.
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Micheal Patterson
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 3:38 PM Subject: RE: [hlds_linux] CS:S Maps
I fully understand the meaning of beta test, but what use is a beta test without a decent amount of data, feedback and updates.
There has been a massive drop in the number of players on all "beta" servers and the biggest question I see in logs is maps, I asked the question Alfred was kind enough to reply.
I am resigned like many to a long wait for both HL2 and CSS and have been for many years already. I was just expressing my concern at the lack of players we were seeing and therefore the lack of feedback we can offer. If valve really needs this "beta" testing then we need to see more regular fixes and or something to keep the interest of players. Because without players this beta test is useless, I can’t force people to play on the servers and without players on servers there is little we can test outside of the server working on our hardware setups.
As you said people get bored and just want to play but there are some of us that want to help however without controlled servers from valve we all have to do our own beta testing this thin's out the real testers and you can’t test fully playing alone.
Maybe the next stage is to release this to whole CS community at least then we would have a much higher number of players for servers.
I don’t care if I host 5 servers, 200 servers or none what I do care about is that I do my best to help and give as much feedback as possible I am happy to offer all the feed back from an empty server but I am sure this is of little help to valve, this is why I am thinning down my servers as the numbers of players fall unlike others who are just using them to advertise.
I should have really thrown a smiley on the end of the comment about the release as it was a tongue in cheek comment.
Mark
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