It's quite possible that others have found something else. If my comment was taken to be that of a troll, it wasn't intended as such. I just recall the uprising within the steam forums when the beta was released and those that have CZ thought they were golden, yet CZ still isn't selling as much as Valve would probably have liked it to. To me, CZ is to CS and Source as Win ME is to Win98 and Win2K. It's just something to fill the gap between CS and Source to appease the customer base and attempt to get valve more return for the money they spent on it's development. Usually, when a new game is released, it is an updated game experience. CZ was not.
When CZ was with Gearbox, it was a totally different game experience with CS to be the multi-player portion of it. Consumers didn't have a problem with that. Then, it was changed mid production to what it is now, which is to say, nothing more than a cosmetic patch to an old game. Nothing really new included with it and most gamers aren't thrilled at shelling out $39.99 for skins/maps/sound packs.
Then, to tempt the consumer base with the Source beta, oh, but wait, you need CZ to play it. Consumers of today aren't what they were in 1998. They've learned the way of software businesses. The general public is more into computers and software than it was in the 90's. Consumers are basically "gun shy" because they've been burned on too many things software wise and hardware wise and simply aren't willing to part with the cash as easily anymore. One would think, that with over 8000 different servers using hlds and over 2000 of those with active players at literally any given time, it would be in everyone's best interest, to truly test this software, to use that client base for the testing. Instead, they opt to release it to cafe's and CZ owners only which has resulted in approx 160 servers with less than 200 clients on them. While I have the utmost respect for those employees of Valve that assist us within this mailing list, the upper management's logic is faulty for not using the largest pool of diverse hardware and software they have for their testing. I just feel that if Valve was truly interested in performing a proper beta test for Source, they would have chosen to allow everyone to test it. Otherwise, it's nothing more than a cheap ploy to boost CZ sales and I for one, am not interested. I have other software that I can purchase to entertain me.
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Micheal Patterson
----- Original Message ----- From: "Nelson Marques" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 8:46 PM Subject: Re: [hlds_linux] CS:S Maps
Or maybe people found a more attractive formula with Frag.Ops powered by Epic's Unreal Engine. Despite of all the CS clones that are around for many Engine's including comercial and open source, I still can't figure what makes CS so special, but then again, what does make DoD so special ? In the past years I bought pretty much games concerning WW II, including:
Medal of Honor Spearhead RTC Wolfenstein Call of Duty
Then tryed others:
The Red Orchestra Enemy Territory The Third Reich
Still, the only one I play on a regular basis is DoD. First the community is not that large (unfortunatly the lame people from CS have arrived in strengh and the united community because suspicious and mined).
WW II for me, as close as it gets to real war experience comes with DoD (crosshairs should be removed and added iron sights only, the only thing it misses). For those who have been in a war, or close to war, either engaged or either in UN special mission, like in Timor, or Bosnia, trust me, the closest you get to the real fight is present in DoD.
It's a pitty Valve doesn't make a stand-alone game for WW II with the same ingredients from DoD.
As for CS, I only fell confortable playing CS in LAN Houses (eventually on HomeLAN, though don't step there for a long time, since the pings accross continents are too high for me), because cheaters usually get taken care off when caught there.
As for the rest...
Chill out and let them work on their stuff and solve their legal issues with VUG... and some russian pirates...
I will get HL2 if there's a conversion of DoD to the new engine, else I will continue cursing ID Software for not being able to play Doom III on a super-computer at Ultra over 15 fps, spitting on Epic UT2004 fucked up CD's that they refused to swap, with their dumbass support claiming I should have my SCSI Plextor 40x drive set on PIO Mode 4 for it to work...
Oh well... Thats the kinda shit you pay when you get into a business where your products have an average life of months... SDK's have changed it... Mod's take people to buy keys... else what ? ;)
Oh... I am sure many people will love the day when ID's Q3 Engine comes open source, or when the Tenebrae2 project gets stable (if not dead)...
As for my personal opinion if still reading all this... Grab one of those Cohiba's on the black oak box on top of your desk, get a glass and the 30 year old James Martins, seat back... and enjoy... Tomorrow is another day for gossip, problems, troll handling and so on...
Greets.
Micheal Patterson wrote:
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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