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Counter-Strike Opens Weapons Market 284

Posted by CowboyNeal from the arms-dealers dept.
kalpatin writes "The ever so popular game, Counter Strike:Source developed by Valve, has a new feature added to the game: A virtual marketplace for the weapons and equipment. According to Valve, every item's price will be updated on a weekly basis depending on the global market demand. Some users have posted their anger toward the new change on the Valve forums and have even started a petition to stop the change. Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community, or are they merely spicing the game up?"
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Counter-Strike Opens Weapons Market More

Counter-Strike Opens Weapons Market

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  • or you can play True Combat Elite and not worry (Score:5, Informative)

    by spazimodo ( 97579 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @10:33AM (#16166955)
    http://www.truecombatelite.net/ [truecombatelite.net] - free team based realism mod for the free version of Wolfentein Enemy Territory.

    Started playing it a year ago and haven't picked up CS since. It's awesome.
    • TCE is awesome, it plays better than CS and is more realistic than CS. But the most amazing thing about TCE is that there are actually nice friendly people playing it. And it's free as in beer!

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by It'sYerMam ( 762418 )
        Having not played CS, I can't comment, but I'd like to echo the fact that most of the people you come across on TCE are funny and friendly. For people thinking of downloading it, be aware that the new version, 0.49, is coming out on 29th, so you might want to wait. The maps and gameplay are, apparently going to change not insignficantly. Many of the changes are directly down to comments on the TCE forums on realism flaws. Looking forward to trying out the new gametypes and the new official maps (which look
      • I just tried TCE and got kicked from the first server I joined after only two rounds because I accidentally shot a teammate (me and another player went around a corner and some guy far off started shooting at us, we returned fire and I killed him, turns out he was one of our guys), so I'm not sure if everyone is nice and friendly. Oh well, I'll keep trying.

        /Mikael

    • Looks good, I'm downloading it now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bcmm ( 768152 )
      Or NS:CO [ns-co.net], for Quake 3. I prefer it to True Combat in everything except the aiming system. TCs aiming system is brilliant from a realism viewpoint. The only problem is that there are not always many players online.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Lord Aurora ( 969557 )
      Along the lines of TCE (which I haven't played, but sounds fun, if I can tear myself from FFXI) is the Army's recruiting-tool-turned-awesome "America's Army" game (which I have played). I'm too lazy to link to it, but go to the Army website and poke around, you'll find it. I played it a while ago, before the new update "Overmatch" came out, and if it was fun before, it looks like it rocks now. Most of the people playing are free from "WoW syndrome" (read: free from being a fucktard in general towards anythi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )
      Are there a lot of people playing this mod? About a year ago, when I checked. Not many people played this and it was hard to find Internet servers. :(

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Airon ( 108830 )
      As one of the developers of TC and TC:Elite, I can only say that many of us made this game because we did not like certain aspects of Counterstrike. While I do play an occasional match of CS:Source(it looks good and sounds alright), my favorite games are True Combat and True Combat Elite, because in those games it is a challenge to get the better of your opponent.

      Crosshairs no longer tickle my fancy. It completly destroys the immersion for me, which is why I'm a fan of COD2 as well, though not for multiplay

  • Can't it be both? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community, or are they merely spicing the game up?
    Couldn't it be both? i.e. they're spicing it up in a way not wanted or needed by the community.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tribbin ( 565963 )
      Even some president uses this fallacy, why shouldn't we?

      "Eighter you are with us or you are with the enemy!"

  • We are screwed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @10:34AM (#16166965) Homepage
    It's ok, if you don't like it just don't download the patch and just continue playing it your way with your mates on the local LAN...

    Oh, wait, it's a Steam Game.

    Guess you are screwed then. This is what happens when you buy locked down products - and if you want more examples, just look at what happened to SWG (did you get a refund when the game turned into something that you were not sold? could you carry on playing the game you *were* sold?) or World of Warcraft (goodbye, forty man raids, around which a lot of players have built their guilds).

    What happens in the future when this kind of crap gets extended to other aspects of life via DRM? Lucas might 'upgrade' every release of star wars automatically when he finishes the new tri-gital remastered version, now with 3D Jar Jar Binks. Apple might cut down the number of times you can burn your purchased songs to CDs without giving you a chance to stick to the old terms and conditions.

    Normally such a rant would end with some message of hope for the future. Well here it is: In my case I'm going to work very hard to make sure I'm on the end doing the exploiting, so I get to enjoy it all the way to the bank.
    • In my case I'm going to work very hard to make sure I'm on the end doing the exploiting, so I get to enjoy it all the way to the bank.

      Well. At least you have a plan. :-)

    • Ummm, you don't have to update it actually. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23, 2006 @11:25AM (#16167339)
      Just right click on the game in your steam menu and tell it not to automatically update the game. There you go.

      Were you dropped on your head as a child, or do you just ignore certain details to whine about "locked in" platforms?
    • Of course Valve could make it so you don't have to update the game if you don't want to.

      Oh wait, then the servers would kick you for not having the correct version.

      This update doesn't really have anything to do with Steam. If the server admins want to use the variable money, then they will. If they don't, then they won't either by turning it off or by giving everyone tons of money. So it doesn't matter if the user can control whether they patch the game or not. It is all about what the people running th

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Cold-NiTe ( 968026 )
      "It's ok, if you don't like it just don't download the patch and just continue playing it your way with your mates on the local LAN..."

      I really don't see how this can compare. Maybe I'm just not cool enough to have 47 or 31 some friends ready to hop onto a game of counterstrike at any time of day or night. But something tells me that you don't either, and the option you presented was just to fuel your argument, rather than a feasible choice that anyone else would make.

      To be honest, I bought my enti

    • Re:We are screwed (Score:4, Funny)

      by edunbar93 ( 141167 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @01:57PM (#16168425)
      This is what happens when you buy locked down products

      And this is what happens when you don't:

      k3w1d00d: H3y b1tch3s! l00k1t wh4t 1 c4n d0!
      k3w1d00d: H3y b1tch3s! l00k1t wh4t 1 c4n d0!
      k3w1d00d: H3y b1tch3s! l00k1t wh4t 1 c4n d0!
      k3w1d00d: H3y b1tch3s! l00k1t wh4t 1 c4n d0!
      k3w1d00d: H3y b1tch3s! l00k1t wh4t 1 c4n d0!
      k3w1d00d: H3y b1tch3s! l00k1t wh4t 1 c4n d0!

      non-wanker1 was killed by admin
      non-wanker2 was killed by admin
      decentplayer was killed by admin
      IHateGriefers was killed by admin
      IdontCheat was killed by admin
      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      sumyunguy was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin

      k3w1d00d: h4w h4w!

      non-wanker1 was killed by admin
      non-wanker2 was killed by admin
      decentplayer was killed by admin
      IHateGriefers was killed by admin
      IdontCheat was killed by admin
      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      sumyunguy was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin

      k3w1d00d: You're all my bitches now!!

      non-wanker1 was killed by admin
      non-wanker2 was killed by admin
      decentplayer was killed by admin
      IHateGriefers was killed by admin
      IdontCheat was killed by admin
      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      sumyunguy was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin

      IHateGriefers has left the game

      non-wanker1 was killed by admin
      non-wanker2 was killed by admin
      decentplayer was killed by admin
      IdontCheat was killed by admin
      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      sumyunguy was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin

      IdontCheat has left the game
      decentplayer has left the game
      sumyunguy has left the game
      non-wanker2 has left the game
      non-wanker1 has left the game

      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin
      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin
      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin
      DontKillMeImOnly8 was killed by admin
      absentadmin was killed by admin

      k3w1d00d: W3ll, th15 15 14m3 n0w. Y0u guy5 5uck.

      k3w1d00d has left the game.
    • If there's enough of you guys, you'd think there'd be a server variable to toggle the rule on and off, and servers that advertise themselves as disabling this feature. Fuck, there's already tons of stupid ass mod servers, what's one more type?

    • Guess you are screwed then. This is what happens when you buy locked down products - and if you want more examples, just look at what happened to SWG (did you get a refund when the game turned into something that you were not sold? could you carry on playing the game you *were* sold?) or World of Warcraft (goodbye, forty man raids, around which a lot of players have built their guilds).

      As far as WoW, the current 40-man dungeons will remain as such. The new limit affects the dungeons that will appear in the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      Lots of multiplayer games use a central server and require you to update your client to the latest version before you can play with others. Some of these are to close exploits, some are general game balance, but basically all of them are because the game creators think it will be a positive change. And these are usually required updates because the game code uses tricks to keep in sync with eachother, and the biggest simplification is to assume that everyone is on the same version of the code.

      SWG was an e

  • OH, this is on the internet (Score:5, Funny)

    by lemur3 ( 997863 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @10:35AM (#16166987)
    My first reaction to reading the title was "oh, so they finally decided to sell real guns?"

  • Why HL2 is the last valve game I buy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linuxkrn ( 635044 ) <gwatson@lRASPinuxlogin.com minus berry> on Saturday September 23, 2006 @10:39AM (#16167003)
    Well,

    Like a lot of people on here, I ran out and bought HL2 when it first came out. I had my reservations about steam but wanted to give them a fair shot. That's what I did, and that's why I'm never buying another one of their products again.

    You see, this issue just brings into light the whole concept that is so bad about publisher over-the-net supplied games. Let's compare this to a regular CD/DVD/etc game. Lord of the Rings BFE2 just came out with a major patch that completely changes unit times/strengths, etc. It's almost like playing another game. Not getting into a debate of if it's good or bad, but if **I** decided I don't want to apply it then I can keep playing. As long as others out there don't like it too, I can even play on-line. In CS:S, we are screwed if we don't update. You can't play period. That not only gives steam control over when and where you play, but your game experience. Don't like what they've done now, too bad.

    Who knows how long they will continue to support HL2. But without their auth/update servers, the game will not work. I won't be buying anything like this again for that very reason. Anyone else notice this is the new trend. Even MS is moving toward this model. Complete control, and I'm not going to give it. Voting with my wallet, suggest you do the same too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by also-rr ( 980579 )
      Like a lot of people on here, I ran out and bought HL2 when it first came out. I had my reservations about steam but wanted to give them a fair shot. That's what I did, and that's why I'm never buying another one of their products again.

      You would have thought that the whole SWG thing would have given people a heads up about how publishers think of their players and made everyone stear well clear of anything where the game could be yanked out from under their feet.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 )
      I think that, for the most part, the responsible thing to do is make all updates tweakable, unless they fix an obvious bug. So, for instance, if they suddenly decided to change the gravity, they should make sure those of us running our own servers can tweak sv_gravity.

      This, I think, is far superior to what you're describing with LOTR. In that case, if you don't like the patch, you can't usually uninstall it, you'll have to reinstall the game from scratch. Oh, and good luck finding the 1.1 patch if there'

      • I think that, for the most part, the responsible thing to do is make all updates tweakable, unless they fix an obvious bug.

        The responsible thing to do would be for publishers not to try to have megalomaniacal control over the game after it's sold!

        For my money, I don't know about you, but I buy a game because I like it now, not because I want to enshrine it forever. It's always nice to be able to go back and play the original Half-Life or Doom, but really, if I was able to play through a game a few times,

        • Look, you may consider games to be "consumable," but they're still property if you've bought them. Don't you care about that?

          I do, but I've made a compromise. Another compromise, in this case, and one I'm not sure I regret: I knew Half-Life 2 wouldn't be very playable on Linux, and that it'd make me keep a Windows partition around.

          But nevertheless, if you've read my other post, you know I think I got a good deal. While technically Valve could shut everything down tomorrow, or plaster Coke and Pepsi ads

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Thansal ( 999464 )
      Well, first up, you don't have to patch it. (tel lsteam to not update it)
      you can thus still paly on LANs, and servers that have not updated.

      next up is the fact that some one will disable this rather quickly.

      This is going to work in 1 of 2 ways:
      1) hard code the numbers into a patch released each day/week/hour/whatever.
      2) Stream the data from a central server.

      If it is option 1 then you just use any of the Admin Mod/what ever the other server mod utils are plugins that lets you set prices. (Wow that was hard)

      O
    • Blizzard was probably one of the earlier companies to start this. If you want to play on Battle.net you MUST be running the most recent version. If you don't have it, it automatically downloads and installs. Don't want the new version? Tough. Go play direct IP.

      Steam is a bit different though. With steam you have less control over when your content gets updated. Although I must say the writing was on the wall with this feature. Anyone remember the patch for Episode 1 in response to people having a ha
    • I bought it too. Worked on a mod team. It was a single player game they slapped an example of a MP mod onto, a bad example, but I suspect from a mod team POV that they thought opening their code the way they did would lead to a whole slew of great MP mods.

      Thing is, it didn't happen. I've only participated in a few mods but coding a mod in C++ seems like it was a major contributing factor. While other mods I've played around with newblets could mess with the scripting, learn some of its idiosyncrasies and
    • Ever hear of MODS?

      They allow you to MODIFY the game so that it plays the way you like it. If people don't like the patch, they can run a modded server. Simple as that.

      I like the fact that Steam auto-patches my games. I hated looking for patches for all my previous games, and being confronted with stupid sites like fileplanet that charge you for faster downloads, or even ACCESS to the patch you needed to play.

      And I know what I am doing when it comes to computers, for the less educated users I am guessing it

  • Yes. (Score:2, Funny)

    by ltwally ( 313043 )
    "Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community, or are they merely spicing the game up?"
    Yes.

  • The CS Community (Score:5, Interesting)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @10:48AM (#16167077) Homepage
    The CS community always complains about any significant change prior to actually seeing how it affects the game. The recent radar change was a prime example. So many people were moaning about it when it was announced, and yet now it's been rather well accepted as a good update.

    This marketplace idea is the same sort of thing. It sounds interesting to me. I'm looking forward to seeing how it changes the game.

    I do have a couple of small reservations though:

    1. It could "unbalance" clan matchs. If Clan X plays Clan Y one week when the M4 is expensive then they'll have a very different game than when they play Clan Z when the M4 is cheaper. While each game is fair I think any comparison of games (we beat Clan Z, how come we lost to Clan Y?) will be skewed.

    2. Weapons that are available to both sides will always have more spent on them than weapons unique to one team. For example, the M4 and the CK are only available to the one side, while the AWP and the P90 are available to both sides. That presumably will mean the AWP and P90 have more spent on them in any one week, pushing them into the top 50% half where prices increase. I hope Valve have thought about that, I'd hate all the shared weapons to increase while the unique weapons fall. Not just coz I'm a P90 spray'n'pray player of course.. :)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by The MAZZTer ( 911996 )

      1. Servers will probably be able to toggle a CVAR to use old prices.

      2. If Valve thought this through carefully enough to separate pistols from other weapons, I think they would've thought about this by now. The game probably considers them both the same weapon price-wise.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Leffe ( 686621 )
      I'm assuming a cvar will be introduced with which server admins can disable this feature.
    • Changing weapon prices would only add to the dynamic of can x vs clan y vs clan z. It'll be something equivalent to weather changes in football. "Oh, we played team X and beat them, but when we played team Y in the rain/snow, we lost." With the exception of some indoor sports, very few games can realistically offer identical conditions for every competition.

      Plus, what's more boring than players who memorize and exploit unchanging systems like video game levels?

    • 1. It could "unbalance" clan matchs. If Clan X plays Clan Y one week when the M4 is expensive then they'll have a very different game than when they play Clan Z when the M4 is cheaper. While each game is fair I think any comparison of games (we beat Clan Z, how come we lost to Clan Y?) will be skewed.

      I agree, but there are also two sides to the story. This could make it more like 'real life' where weapon prices and availabilty affect battles. I don't know which side of the fence I'm on, but I think I'm go

      • The AK and M4 are almost a complete 180 of one another.

        M4:
        Expensive
        High cyclic rate
        Low recoil
        Low bullet damage

        AK:
        Cheap
        Low cyclic rate
        High recoil
        High bullet damage

        This leads to m4 style generally being "spray and WIN" and AK style being two round bursts and single shotting.

  • Competitive Play (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oskard ( 715652 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @10:52AM (#16167097)
    This game is not just used by casual gamers. Professional competition gamers play this CS:Source in tournaments both online and offline. I wonder if the weapon prices will affect the way tournaments are held. If a LAN doesn't update Steam in a while, could they possibly have old market prices? Will Valve allow servers to control whether or not their server abides by the market rules?

    All I know is, the competitive community is absolutely opposed to this update. We just want a fun, team oriented game to play. Not an RPG.

    • There's no way to not update Steam without cracking it. You have to be online before you switch into offline mode, and if there's an update it will download automatically.

      And I'm sure there will be a cvar to turn off special pricing.

  • I guess to get the old CS back, I'll just have to play 1.6...

  • It's about time. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rohlfinator ( 888775 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @11:00AM (#16167157)
    The traditional Counter-Strike weapon system was one of the biggest flaws of the game, in my opinion. Sure, it added a nice touch of realism and a bit of strategy, but the pricing structure made 90% of the guns effectively useless. It's very rare to join a server and see someone using a gun other than the Colt/AK or sniper, because they're so overwhelmingly powerful and still pretty cheap.

    Basically, this means that the weaker guns will now have a purpose, since they'll be much more affordable. I'm sure the Colt and AK will still be heavily favored, but at least now it'll be harder to get them in the second round of a match.

    And a note to the critics: If you don't care for these changes, CS 1.6 is still alive and well. CS:Source is a great opportunity for Valve to play around with the previously stagnant formula (by adding a new radar system, for example) without alienating older players. Let's not ruin that... we don't need two versions of the same game.
    • I can't wait for my autosnipers to be $50

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Cowpat ( 788193 )
      The traditional CS weapon buying system didn't add any realism. Counter Terrorist Soldiers do not have to buy their weapons out of a budget that comes from their own pocket. Their budget is also not defined by wether they got shot last time or not. Any good CT unit will be armed to the teeth (with armour and grenades and anything else they may happen to need) and will probably be all (or mostly) using the same type of gun - interchangeable ammunition clips are good as you can use 'your' gun all the time and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by NMerriam ( 15122 )
        That's what I was thinking as I read this. Which military requires soldiers to buy their own weapons on an open market? This doesn't seem realistic at all, it seems silly.
  • So if one gun is sold more why don't the manufacturers start producing more of that weapon? Then the cost of each individual gun would fall, and they could sell it for less.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kelbear ( 870538 )
      Economies of scale don't exist everywhere. I sure wish it did, but it's not always the case. And even where it does occur, it's not the lone determinant in price. Anyway, it's a game, and they've simplified it down to the very basic supply and demand cross-curves.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand [wikipedia.org]

  • Gah! Exploitable! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday September 23, 2006 @11:29AM (#16167363) Journal
    Let's say I hate a particular weapon. The popular weapon to hate, last I was there, was the AWP, so let's use that as an example.

    Set up a server with unlimited buy time and a few million dollars of starting money. Now, start the spammage. Buy, drop, buy, drop, buy, drop. Before you know it, the AWP is completely impossible to afford, no matter what server you're on.

    Suppose only one purchase per round counts. Ok, fine, now add a custom map, and do it with a friend, dropping buy time and time between rounds as much as you can tweak them. Now you alternate. Buy, snipe, respawn, buy, snipe, respawn. You don't even have to drop it this time -- whoever got sniped will have dropped their AWP.

    This can be done for any weapon. Before long, someone will have written a mod that does it automatically. Imagine -- someone doesn't like that weapon you're carrying? They punch one button and their server starts spamming Valve with new price information. If you manage to kill them, they'll never be able to afford that weapon again.

    It's an interesting idea, but Valve is about to learn that it's much more difficult to balance an MMO market, where so many things are in the players' control, than to balance arbitrary weapon prices or abilities. They should've just quietly collected statistics, and then set the prices based on those statistics, probably still having to manually tweak them, and tell us when they're all done, thus giving no one the opportunity to exploit it. Here, they're just asking for trouble.

    • Uh, not exploitable.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by DarkMan ( 32280 )
      From the article:
      A (somewhat) closed system. In Counter-Strike, each gameserver is its own instance of the game world.


      So, what you do on your server (and it has to be your server, in order to be able to tweak the options like you want), you can do this. But it won't affect anyone else.
    • It's not really exploitable. There are a huge number of CS servers. In order to statistically affect anything you'd either have to a) have your server be churning out orders of magnitude more purchases than other servers or b) run a huge number of unique servers. If valve does any sort of basic spam-blocking A is completely out of the question and B would have to be from lots of different IPs with realistic but slightly skewed purchasing rations. So unless someone really feels like setting up a zombie n
      • I still strongly suspect that there are enough people out there who hate the AWP that -- well, it might not be a zombie network, but there could still be enough people effectively ballot-stuffing.

        Even if it's entirely un-exploitable, I don't think I'm going to like the results of this. But that's another discussion entirely.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by moochfish ( 822730 )
      Your comment assumes Valve either never plays their own game, or that they're morons. Obviously buy spamming could be a problem. So you can restrict the amount of data that gets updated to the server PER LICENSE KEY. Maps that encourage one gun over another will obviously skew their stats. And those types of maps (awp map, anybody?) are relatively popular. Don't you think they would take that into consideration?

      What if instead of total popularity, they looked at CHANGES in popularity, relative to that serve

    • Buy, drop, buy, drop, buy, drop. Before you know it, the AWP is completely impossible to afford, no matter what server you're on.

      I'm sure that they would be able to filter out server that are acting strangely, having buying activity outside of a 'normal' threshold. Take the buying activity from all the servers, create a profile of buying behavior based on all servers, then toss out anything that is in an extreme before doing the rest of the calculations. Statisticians do this all the time.

  • I know a lot of people are fuming about the nature of Steam and having patches forced upon you, I understand that because I've hated steam from day one.

    But does anyone else think this is a really, really good idea? If a weapon is popular, it becomes expensive, if a weapon is unpopular, it becomes cheap. This will ensure that a fair price is given for every weapon, a diversity of weapons are used and the game isn't saturated by the same overpowered weapons. Weapons will cost the right amount because they co

  • The actual numbers (Score:3, Informative)

    by harrsk ( 654320 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @11:40AM (#16167439)
    ...can be seen here: http://www.steampowered.com/stats/csmarket/ [steampowered.com] Though I agree that forced mods stink, the change to the game will likely be insignificant.

  • Smart idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @11:59AM (#16167561) Journal
    Tweaking game play is one of the hardest aspects of developing a video game. You're balancing personal preferences against what works well for the most people. I wrote the original Star Wars arcade port for the C64 for Parker Brothers. The project manager couldn't make up his mind on how the cursor should feel and so I ended up coding a roll-your-own cursor feedback tool for him so he could tweak the acceleration parameters himself. It was far more productive to write the tweak code and let him fart around than it was for me to burn a prom give it to him, have him say something like - "it should be more responsive" or "it's too responsive."

    By making this patch, Valve has in essence, coded their own version of letting the players roll their own parameters. Instead of a small group's opinion on what the prices should be, it's the combined player's opinion that matters.

    For the younger players, it's an introduction to price/demand responses. Of course, it's artificial in that the comodities have no production cost so from the producer's perspective, the weapons could be free. Nonetheless, it conveys the message to younger players that tho more people do or don't want something, that will affect the price of the something.
  • AK-47: $16000
    M4: $16000
    AWP: $16000
    MP5: $5000

    Everything else (since the deagle is apparently excluded to "preserve the pistol round"): $1
  • Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community, or are they merely spicing the game up?
    Didn't they start introducing these a long time ago, with Steam and that silly online activation scheme?
  • Counter Strike is an online game. Valve is trying to more of a community out of CS. This is no different than the auction house in World of Warcraft - supply and demand. Blizzard regularly changes things in WOW with patches, this is what Valve wants to be.
  • It will definetly mean that a wider range of weapons will be used over time, instead of just the M4A1, CV47 and Magnum. This also means new tactics will be developed to suit the new challenges. Thats very positive for a game and its positive for all players who like to face new challenges.

    You can always argue wether its a good or bad thing that the provider controls the content and not the customer. One thing that speaks for the provider is the ressources needed to run the servers and scoresystem and so on,

  • can't quickly buy anymore (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blindbat ( 189141 ) on Saturday September 23, 2006 @01:33PM (#16168231)
    I have binds for binding and buy items quickly because I KNOW THE PRICE OF THE ITMES. Now you go and buy a rifle and guess what? The 10% price increase means you won't be able to afford ammo. Good luck!
    • I have binds for binding and buy items quickly because I KNOW THE PRICE OF THE ITMES. Now you go and buy a rifle and guess what? The 10% price increase means you won't be able to afford ammo. Good luck!

      So develop new strategies and tactics on the fly, instead of repetitively pressing exactly the same buttons again and again and again and again. I got bored of CS about five or six years ago because nothing new ever happened, and nothing really changed. Except, in this case encouraging players out of the safe
  • Is Valve turning into Microsoft by introducing features that are not needed or wanted by the community

    No. Here's how it works.

    Company A builds widget because it thinks the public wants it. Noone asked them to make it. Company A isn't entirely sure whether or not their widget will sell, until they try to sell it.

    Successful companies make this gamble, and it works because the public actually needs or wants their widget. Unsuccessful companies make this gamble, and it fails. Companies that fail to try to innov
  • I'm sick of this stuff... given just about any change someone is going to object and be able to convince a few other people to object. How many people are objecting... state a ballpark figure if you can't get the exact #... but this "some" bullshit is stupid. If it's 10 people I could care less... and for this story if it's 200,000... well I still could care less.
  • ...according to real world market prices for weapons! I'm not talking about imaginary world or server prices in an isolated ecosystem...I am talking about Valve linking the price of a AK-47 in the game to the market price of an AK-47 in Oakland, CA. Or in Iraq. Or whereever. For example, on http://www.atlanticfirearms.com/ a California legal AK-47 is $749. Of course, an actual economic model to help preserve the correct market price for weapons in the game should be implemented, to provide realism for
  • Heh, server admins will just script around it for their servers using something like EventScripts [eventscripts.com].

    For those not fond of other Valve decisions, there are hundreds of server-side scripts/mods to change the gameplay of CS:S. (Here [mattie.info])

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