Valve: Been shooting themselves in the foot lately.

[Xbowhyena]

It IS too early for L4D 2. No one is saying the game will be bad, it just is too early.

 

[TMAN10112]

Here's a bit of cheese to go along with all that whine you have.

Spoiler: I hope it's enough

 

[Slayer_2]

Valve isn't that great. I wish everyone would stop kissing their ass, then acting all offended when they let one rip. I know I'm probably going to attract all the valve fanboys and then they're gonna whine about how "valve is teh best111one". Half-Life was mediocre at best, Portal was good for one play-through, L4D is cool for a few days, but it gets boring quickly. Seriously, Valve is a large software development company, no better or worse than Microsoft, EA, etc. If you're a fanboy readying up your flamethrower, don't bother, I don't really care about what you think and crying/screaming over what I've just said proves how big of a fanboy you are.

 

[gmer412]

$20 says HL3 is complete and this L4D business is engineered to direct attention away from it. Hell, it might show up in the L4D2 box.

It's the kind of crap Valve would pull, and I would love them for it.

Still, smug bastards.

That would be a new kind of awesomeness.

 

[oliveira8]

Well, if we look at the numbers (according to Wikipedia):

Blizzard, employees: 2700
Current games in development: Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, new MMO IP, comes to 900 working on each project.

Ubisoft Montreal, employees: 1800
Current games (of particular note) in development: Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassin's Creed II.

Valve Corporation: Approximately 190
Current games in development: Left 4 Dead: 2, Half-life 2: Episode 3 (?), additional Team Fortress 2 content. Comes to about a little over sixty developers for each project.

Maybe someone in EA ought to send Valve a memo that getting more bodies working for them doesn't dilute the quality of their games. The big bruisers in the industry like Ubisoft and Blizzard are proof of this.

Considering Valve's catalog you just made every company out there look exteremely bad, when Valve with just 200 people puts out better games than everyone else.

 

[Agiel7]

New unlock system in TF2 is amazing. It has it's flaws, yes, but at least you don't have to farm certain achievements - which, indeed, are fun but HIGHLY impractical.

Uber a scout and get x kills? (Well, that might work if you're with a good scout and no soldier/pyro/heavy/anything nearby)

Kill a total of 2003 people as a scout?

And things like that. Sure, the achievements are fun, and they are still there. But the new unlock system lets people get the alternative weapons (alternative, not better. That's what achievements are for, right?) without swarming servers with one class of the latest update.

Playing on teams of 10 medics or scouts or snipers is NOT fun. At least the new system makes it easier to have a decent game while unlocking things you might like to use later on.

And it took me maybe 20 hours tops to unlock all the new weapons - I got them all easily over one week.


And for L4D2, I really don't see why everyone's whining. Well, I kind of do. They are making massive changes to the whole game, and it's a bit early to criticize it.

Meh, Valve's great.

Well, to achievement farming's credit, it is actually hilarious to see 16 heavies all yelling "Cry some more!" while I calmly pick off their heads from all the way across the map as a sniper. Valve implementing a new system was a step in the right direction, but it starts getting frustrating once you've gotten your fourth ham and swiss sandvich in five hours, as opposed to me getting all the unlocks I should have gotten in an hour three weeks ago in achievement maps.

I don't see why Valve doesn't just give us the damned unlocks right off the bat, seeing as they aren't upgrades so much as they are new options to play a particular class.

 

[Jamous]

In Valve's defence: Name one other devolper which provides as much after release content as Valve? Did they charge for the DLC for Left 4 Dead? No. Team Fortress class updates? No. So the less you ungrateful moaners say the better. Let's face it Valve is one of the best if not the best video game deveolper of this current time. I think we should cut them some slack.

Oh and everyone knows that the spy got hold of their E3 presentation...put it this way Left 4 Dead 2 is actually Half Life 2 Episode 3. Promise.

He stole it like he stole the intelligence! Bastard Spy. Hang on... Don't I play Spy? And just let Valve work all those who are harassing them!

 

[runtheplacered]

Sometimes, despite all the great things Valve has given us, from one of the most mod-friendly games in existence to Portal, it becomes difficult to see method in Valve's madness.

If you go back about two years ago, you can probably remember that bewildering announcment that there would no longer be a "Black Box" for all the new games for those who had already bought Half-Life 2 and Episode One. I'm surprised that there wasn't a huge back-lash to this announcement, as clearly it was Valve's way of justify making their core audience pay an extra 10 dollars for games they already had. Then this past few weeks, Valve implemented a convoluted unlock system in Team Fortress 2 that has only induced more headaches than the single class rushes that characterized previous class updates in the game.

Come E3, we expected the final installment in Valve's botched attempt at episodic content, and... hey... wait, hold on a second...

Oh... what the fuck, Valve?

Now, I'd feel a lot better about the L4D 2 announcement, had it been given at least another year, or if it was going to be part of some form of DLC. However, the thing that incensed me the most was that we've given Valve three years (remember that Episode 3 was announced to be in the works shortly after Episode 1 came out) and they've decided to already focus on something else entirely. For god's sake Valve, at least a story teaser with a flash of the G-Man's face and "Episode 3: Coming Soon" would suffice.

At this point, to say a gaming company has sold-out has become almost cliched. But unfortunately, as much as I loved the Half-Life series, there's no two ways about it this time.

How many times can it be said that Valve is divided into more then just one fucking team? The developers that made Left 4 Dead? Turtle Rock Studios. Not the same people that are working on Half-life episode 3. So you can ***** and moan at Valve all you want that your game isn't out when you want it to be, but quit drawing a parallel with L4D because there isn't one there to be drawn.

 

[Xanadu84]

Sometimes, despite all the great things Valve has given us, from one of the most mod-friendly games in existence to Portal, it becomes difficult to see method in Valve's madness.

If you go back about two years ago, you can probably remember that bewildering announcment that there would no longer be a "Black Box" for all the new games for those who had already bought Half-Life 2 and Episode One. I'm surprised that there wasn't a huge back-lash to this announcement, as clearly it was Valve's way of justify making their core audience pay an extra 10 dollars for games they already had. Then this past few weeks, Valve implemented a convoluted unlock system in Team Fortress 2 that has only induced more headaches than the single class rushes that characterized previous class updates in the game.

Come E3, we expected the final installment in Valve's botched attempt at episodic content, and... hey... wait, hold on a second...

Oh... what the fuck, Valve?

Now, I'd feel a lot better about the L4D 2 announcement, had it been given at least another year, or if it was going to be part of some form of DLC. However, the thing that incensed me the most was that we've given Valve three years (remember that Episode 3 was announced to be in the works shortly after Episode 1 came out) and they've decided to already focus on something else entirely. For god's sake Valve, at least a story teaser with a flash of the G-Man's face and "Episode 3: Coming Soon" would suffice.

At this point, to say a gaming company has sold-out has become almost cliched. But unfortunately, as much as I loved the Half-Life series, there's no two ways about it this time.

1) This argument just holds no water. Really. Oh no, people have to rebuy episode 1 and Half Life 2, what a rip off...except that means that 40 bucks will only get those players 3 games instead of 5. People were complaining that they were getting a ridiculously good deal instead of a ludicrously good deal. Honestly, I have no sympathy for these people, and I AM one of these people.

2) Convoluted? Not at all. They made the weapons unlock randomly instead of via achievement. That's pretty simple. And anyways, they immediately afterwords implemented the old system again, re-introduced milestones unlocking weapons for Spys and Scouts. So its just like before, except unlocking is even easier.

3) Yeah, the Pyro-rushes were pretty stupid. But what else can you expect from releasing regular content updates? If they did them all at once, we still wouldn't have had any updates. However, Valve adapted, and released 2 updates at once: Not only that, but there 2 updates that balance each other out, keeping the entire game overall balanced. And it worked, Spys and Snipers are definitely prominent, but the games still balanced. Next update, I bet, will be Demoman and Engineer, and they will balance each other out.

4) I would love Episode 3. Who wouldn't? But by far, I would prefer it to be perfect. Valve has a lot on its plate, what with providing free content for stuff we have already paid for, and therefore there efforts won't do anything for them except earn our goodwill. If there creative process it taking a while, fine, that's there prerogative as artists. They haven't promised a deadline as far as I know. Valve is doing everything right here, because its this kind of dedication and attention to details that makes us look forward to episode 3 so much in the first place.

5) The only legitimate complaint is L4D 2, and that is trumped up beyond measure. Valve realized that they can make the game better, but it will require reworking the whole game. Valves sin here is that they are charging money to bring you content they have worked on making, when we are used to them giving us additional content for free. But the fact of the matter is that I want the best game they can bring us. And this will require a retooling to the extent that they need to offer it as a new game. But there giving us a hell of a lot more then a new edition of Madden. So there mistake, as I see it, it makeing a new game instead of an expansion. That's a pretty minor complaint, especially if you look at the (Reasonable) direction the new Starcraft game(s) are taking.

I'm a bit of a Valve fanboy I suppose, but really, I can't imagine these complaints being reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Any company that will sell me a game as good as Bioshock for £5, and I don't even have to leave me house to go get it...is just fine with me.

"I'm a bit of a Valve fanboy I suppose, but really, I can't imagine these complaints being reasonable by any stretch of the imagination."- Xanadu84

It's as the old saying goes. "Give a man a fish, and he will expect you to give him fish all the feckin' time."

 

[Marv21]

If they're going to be charging $50 for it, it better be one hell of a cookie.

Damn Straight

Would be fair if they gave us an extra campaign or 2 to mull over the time it takes for the 2nd one to come out....that seems more than fair!

 

[Scarecrow38]

I think people are just being too cheap. 5 campaigns, tonnes of new game mechanics and weapons.... l4d2 is going to be bigger than l4d. How stingy can someone be to want that for free?? Valve has to make money and I honestly don't mind paying for a game that is going to be even better than l4d.

If you are that self-involved that you expect everything to be free, try to consider it as an expansion pack. Even better, rather than raging that you aren't getting the world handed to you on a plate, just don't talk about it and don't buy it.

 

[thiosk]

its my opinion that the only thing valve has really screwed up is not having the rocket propelled chainsaw in the trailer for l4d2.

 

[CtrlZee]

Your opinion means nothing to any of us, mainly because this thread has been done over 9000 times. Valve are a very well constructed company, and they have been very successful for a very long time.

As Kraken stated, the best way to protest the game would be to not buy it, but I am willing to bet bandwidth that you, and over 9/10ths of you that are against it are going to buy L4D2, because just want something to complain about.

Grow up.

Edit: Half Life has never been one of those games where they make some land, a bunch of enemies and a see-saw physics "puzzle" and throw you in the middle of it. I, for one, am glad that Valve are taking their time with Episode 3.

 

[LewsTherin]

If you don't like the game, don't buy the game. They'll catch on if their profit margin goes down.

I don't see what is difficult here.

 

[toasterslayer]

Valve isn't that great. I wish everyone would stop kissing their ass, then acting all offended when they let one rip. I know I'm probably going to attract all the valve fanboys and then they're gonna whine about how "valve is teh best111one". Half-Life was mediocre at best, Portal was good for one play-through, L4D is cool for a few days, but it gets boring quickly. Seriously, Valve is a large software development company, no better or worse than Microsoft, EA, etc. If you're a fanboy readying up your flamethrower, don't bother, I don't really care about what you think and crying/screaming over what I've just said proves how big of a fanboy you are.

to be fair though that one play through in portal is great. though i agree with the half-life thing.

 

[Ashbax]

I'm so sick of hearing about how Valve "betrayed" everyone. I think it's cool they're updating it so soon, just as long as they have enough good ideas to make it truly better.

You haven't really seen, played, or heard too much about L4D2, so you really can't say anything other than "it seems too early". You really don't know anything. I hope to God it's amazing so all you haters will be 'pwned' by your own stubbornness. Well, and because amazing games are awesome.

yes, people are practically getting ready to throw themselves off buildings. They really need a good slap to the face, and I for one am confident that L4D 2 will be great. Im honestly sick of the current valve 'disappointment' people are whining about. I think most of the ideas are awesome, Except the Tf2 unlockable thing. But you guys know valve dont do many ads long before releases -

they keep us in the dark about stuff usually, until close to the relese, so they dont have to try keep dates, and the longer they spend at a game, the better it usually comes out - TF2, anyone?