Agiel7 said:
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.
