A rant to valve.
- Thread starter MASTACHIEFPWN
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Not because they are free, but it is being over used. When they started to do it, it was funny, cute, amusing, whatever the word for it is, but now when one stops, another beginins. They are starting to rely on it. Bad sign.scnj said:
Considering Valve hasn't mined the standard multi-player scene for a while, that's not terribly surprising. Personally, I don't think anyone really has much of a chance at competing with Halo and Call Of Duty right now. Unless someone can come up with a truly unique angle for FPS multiplayer, those two will likely keep on trucking for another couple of installments minimum.MASTACHIEFPWN said:
Valve did do something fairly unique with Left 4 Dead which combined elements of co-op and firefight. And that seems to have done well enough for them. I'm really not sure what they'd gain by updating Team Fortress or Counterstrike... both of which benefit from the PC community, which so far hasn't been replicated on the consoles. If the PC gamers are clamoring for it, it's probably best to just keep those going.
Mostly Valve has become something akin to the PC's last stand and they're making money hand-over-fist servicing PC gamers. This frees them to make games they want to make instead of impotently trying to be the next Halo/CoD killer.
And, seriously, fuck multi-player. I'd rather someone release a killer single player game than release the next, marginally better on-line game.
Not saying they were never popular, Saying they are not currently popular. Look at the people playing counterstrike and tf2, combined this doesn't equal a blops playlist. (I know, black ops is new, but with valves past couple new games, they aren't that popular either, LFD2 is like what, a year old, and it has like 1000 players? I just think valve needs a new open ended online game.RanD00M said:
GoldSrc engine
Half-Life (1998)
Expansions, CS, TF, DoD, and so on.
Source engine
Half-Life 2 (2004)
Expansions, sequels, Portal, L4D, and so on.
That's how Valve does it.
Sure, I wouldn't mind with some new Valve games, but they've been rather consistent. The "rant" kind of went right through my ears, or eyes, without any effect.
Half-Life (1998)
Expansions, CS, TF, DoD, and so on.
Source engine
Half-Life 2 (2004)
Expansions, sequels, Portal, L4D, and so on.
That's how Valve does it.
Sure, I wouldn't mind with some new Valve games, but they've been rather consistent. The "rant" kind of went right through my ears, or eyes, without any effect.
HL2 beat out Halo 2 in sales. That is pretty fucking amazing. It beat halo 3 in sales as well. (And reach!) so yeah they can do it, they are just being lazy.Netrigan said:
Those numbers are a bit optimistic.MASTACHIEFPWN said:
Halo 3 rarely has more than 170k players over any 24hour period now, usually a lot, lot less than that.
Reach averages around 7 to 800'000 players over a 24hour period. That works out as 33'330 players per hour, a lot less than Counter Strike's 30-70k at-any-one-time number. Halo is just over 7'000 players per hour.
It's hard to compare that to Steam's numbers as Bungie don't show Peak and current player numbers (the best I could manage was the 24h player number divided by 24 to give players per huor). But both Halo games appear to have less people than CS does. Which isn't a huge surprise, console games tend to lose players fast, the lack of extra content and on the fly balancing will do hat.
What the shit? I ask again, where are you getting these numbers?MASTACHIEFPWN said:
1; As far as I know the L4D2 community is still really active, but I don't play it so I wouldn't know. But I can tell you that even L4D is still fairly active.
2; Valve have enough on their current plate to be adding anything more to it.
Valve is a company that came from the comunity of modders, and still to this day its directed for that community along with the world.
So youre rant is because theyre not greedy, or a corporative of assholes that are selling themselfs out? Thats idiotic to say the least.
Valve supports designers and the "small people". Hell i like it. For example when they make a game they focus in one of the caracteristics of the game more and then the other (HL2 single player, TF2 multiplayer), and now they are offering more and better (L4D, Portal 2 - Single+Multy), and has a independent company they dont sell themselfs out or rush theyre products.
I like that, Valve has set a Standart and keeps by it, if they want money, they make something the community will like. They reach to the people ask to them what they like, they see works from others and speak with them (many companies steal ideas from others), and they even hire people (like modders) to work with them.
And they even include maps, and mechanics suggested by the community.
So i love Valve for that, you have to respect a company that does that nowdays, so i like how they are and i hope they stay like that, fresh, interesting and open to the community...
*EDIT* this message is supported by Chuck Norris himself, he dislikes your hate, and rendered all and any opinion you ever had, futile. He says if you pull this crap again he will be very displeased.
So youre rant is because theyre not greedy, or a corporative of assholes that are selling themselfs out? Thats idiotic to say the least.
Valve supports designers and the "small people". Hell i like it. For example when they make a game they focus in one of the caracteristics of the game more and then the other (HL2 single player, TF2 multiplayer), and now they are offering more and better (L4D, Portal 2 - Single+Multy), and has a independent company they dont sell themselfs out or rush theyre products.
I like that, Valve has set a Standart and keeps by it, if they want money, they make something the community will like. They reach to the people ask to them what they like, they see works from others and speak with them (many companies steal ideas from others), and they even hire people (like modders) to work with them.
And they even include maps, and mechanics suggested by the community.
So i love Valve for that, you have to respect a company that does that nowdays, so i like how they are and i hope they stay like that, fresh, interesting and open to the community...
*EDIT* this message is supported by Chuck Norris himself, he dislikes your hate, and rendered all and any opinion you ever had, futile. He says if you pull this crap again he will be very displeased.
Valve has made many diverse IPs. Counter Strike, Portal, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress.IrishBandit said:
And you're complaining that people still play them.
So what are you promoting here? The COD strategy of releasing an entirely new game every year? The DLC strategy of making players fork out $20 every month to gain access to new features?
If you're bored of Half-Life, make a thread titled "I'm bored of Half-Life!" and tell us why. Because that's pretty much all you appear to be saying.
On the flip side, I get what you're saying about Halo:Reach having more players. But do you know why? Because it's new. It's a new game, so all the Xbox fanboys will go ZOMGHALO and buy it, and play it non stop until Halo:Reach 2 comes out. And the cycle repeats.
tl;dr- CoD, Halo and everything else popular runs on a cult as much as Valve does, Valve just gives their cult free updates instead of 100s of sequels.
I don't want to sound like a fanboy... but... (well, that's a great start, I mean, it's about as good as "I'm not racist, but...")
1. Counterstrike/Team Fortress - I can't say I really like either of them... TF2 sort of amusing because of it's style, but, the gameplay... not the sort of thing that appeals to me. But arguing against either of them is basically going to be the Starcraft arguement - why do you think Starcraft and Starcraft had such a gap between them? It's not because Blizzard were dicking around with WoW, it's because there wasn't really much to do. The formula works, why bother trying to fix something that isn't broken?
(On a side note, I don't particular like Starcraft either, but it makes a good example, so... go figure...)
2. No new ideas - Ok, this is just bullshit. Valve are doing new ideas. Hell, just look at their newest franchises:
Portal - Completely non-combat. Throughtout the entire game you don't fire a single bullet or throw a single punch. Almost no other FPS can claim that, and very few other games in general.
L4D - Co-op. AFAIK, before L4D co-op was just a sidenote in most FPS games. Sure, a lot of games supported co-op (though, come to think of it, Quake and Unreal supported co-op, I can't think of anything between Unreal and L4D that did actually do co-op...), but they weren't built around it. In L4D you need to rely on your companions, they aren't just "other players". I can't admit to being a huge fan of the franchise, but that's something you don't see in a lot of FPS games.
1. Counterstrike/Team Fortress - I can't say I really like either of them... TF2 sort of amusing because of it's style, but, the gameplay... not the sort of thing that appeals to me. But arguing against either of them is basically going to be the Starcraft arguement - why do you think Starcraft and Starcraft had such a gap between them? It's not because Blizzard were dicking around with WoW, it's because there wasn't really much to do. The formula works, why bother trying to fix something that isn't broken?
(On a side note, I don't particular like Starcraft either, but it makes a good example, so... go figure...)
2. No new ideas - Ok, this is just bullshit. Valve are doing new ideas. Hell, just look at their newest franchises:
Portal - Completely non-combat. Throughtout the entire game you don't fire a single bullet or throw a single punch. Almost no other FPS can claim that, and very few other games in general.
L4D - Co-op. AFAIK, before L4D co-op was just a sidenote in most FPS games. Sure, a lot of games supported co-op (though, come to think of it, Quake and Unreal supported co-op, I can't think of anything between Unreal and L4D that did actually do co-op...), but they weren't built around it. In L4D you need to rely on your companions, they aren't just "other players". I can't admit to being a huge fan of the franchise, but that's something you don't see in a lot of FPS games.
I'm geting these numbers off of steam. (for the valve games)RanD00M said:
I'm getting the other ones off of xbox and computer.
The LFd community is pretty low, steam says it has 2500 players.
So the crux of the overly worded post is "I think valve should make new games, and I have some magic numbers that say valve is hemorrhaging players of their games."
Yea....
Left 4 Dead is what? 2 years old. And Valve is going to continue to work on and release DOTA 2 after portal 2?
Left 4 Dead was a completely new game and concept, and Defense of the Ancients is Valve's first shot at that type of game. 2 new franchises in the span of 2-3 years is actually pretty damn good for such a small game company. What are the other big publishers doing, another madden, another battlefield, another call of duty, another Diablo, etc. Hell you have Nintendo milking it's main franchises for decades. So I really don't see how you can call out Valve for not making new games.
As for the second point, so how is Valve losing customers? Portal 2 is a game that is going to do amazingly well. Sure it won't reach the obscene numbers of the Call of Duty franchise, but most games never do. There is a much larger pool of players that will pick up games like Madden or games like Call of Duty as opposed to something like Left 4 Dead or Portal, it really is just a matter of what crowd a publisher makes games for. So are you suggesting that Valve pander to the Call of Duty crowd? Who knows maybe they will with Counter Strike 2. But I'd honestly prefer they stick with what they are good at, they have enough franchises and people love them, I honestly think it is ludicrous to demand that a company like Valve keep pumping out completely new franchises.
Yea....
Left 4 Dead is what? 2 years old. And Valve is going to continue to work on and release DOTA 2 after portal 2?
Left 4 Dead was a completely new game and concept, and Defense of the Ancients is Valve's first shot at that type of game. 2 new franchises in the span of 2-3 years is actually pretty damn good for such a small game company. What are the other big publishers doing, another madden, another battlefield, another call of duty, another Diablo, etc. Hell you have Nintendo milking it's main franchises for decades. So I really don't see how you can call out Valve for not making new games.
As for the second point, so how is Valve losing customers? Portal 2 is a game that is going to do amazingly well. Sure it won't reach the obscene numbers of the Call of Duty franchise, but most games never do. There is a much larger pool of players that will pick up games like Madden or games like Call of Duty as opposed to something like Left 4 Dead or Portal, it really is just a matter of what crowd a publisher makes games for. So are you suggesting that Valve pander to the Call of Duty crowd? Who knows maybe they will with Counter Strike 2. But I'd honestly prefer they stick with what they are good at, they have enough franchises and people love them, I honestly think it is ludicrous to demand that a company like Valve keep pumping out completely new franchises.
Pretty sure Halo 3 and Reach outsold HL2... it's hard to tell since the only sales data I can find on the 360 Halo games is fairly close to their release. But it was close enough to HL2 recently updated numbers to suggest that they out-sold them.MASTACHIEFPWN said:
But a lot has changed since then. The PC market seems to have migrated or eroded, and Valve has yet to really crack the console market in a big way. And I'm pretty much convinced that the only way for a company to become a MP sensation is to be attached to a fucking amazing single player game... which Valve hasn't attempted since HL2 (and Team Fortress & Counterstrike became its defacto MP). They'd have to release a HL2 level game with a seriously good MP attached to approach the popularity of CoD and Halo.
They'd probably also have to milk the success like those two franchises have done. The first hit is like the ice breaker, while subsequent sequels are the ones that really capture the ground. Call Of Duty came about because of the MW/MW2 one-two punch. The franchise didn't become a phenomenon until Activision started the milking process.
And I think it really comes down to whether or not Valve wants that. They seem to be happy trying out various things. They certainly don't need a run-away hit to keep their company afloat. If they're that success without completely selling out, then why start now.