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Comment by ericzawo | Hacker News Reader

I sunk many hours of my life into this beautiful, beautiful game (starting at the tail end of 1.5, however!) and sometimes tune in to watch CS:GO competitive matches. I know Valorant is apparently stepping up as a spiritual successor to Counter-Strike, but I just love this game for it's emphasis on pure skill, and I really am surprised few other games have come as close as 1.6 to perfecting a team-based FPS that lands all players on an almost perfectly level playing field.

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While plenty of people will likely move over to Valorant, as someone who's played a bit I think there is still a distinct difference between the two games.

The main thing shared between the two is the feel while shooting. It's hard to explain, but you feel the "weight" of the gun and it's rate of fire really well and it's satisfying when you land shots.

But, the abilities, while not overly broken, does change the feel and strategy considerably. And Valorant maps are really bad in comparison to CSGO. So much useless space, bad angles, etc.

So, while I hope Valorant pushes CS to get better, it's unlikely that the pool of players or viewers will be 1:1. The CS pros moving to Valorant are basically doing so because they either can't have a CS career (Brax, perma ban for match fixing; iBuyPower) or haven't been good enough in a while/never were good enough for a T1 CSGO team.

Valorant is already dying. I doubt it will do anything to displace CSGO. If anything the toxic and racist community GabeN has cultivated will do CSGO in before a competitor will best them in gameplay.

Seriously sick of hearing this.

The Internet has been "toxic and racist" since, oh, the first chat room...

Kiddies in a game can't hurt you. Worry about the important shit, like being killed or thrown in a cage by law enforcement.

> The Internet has been "toxic and racist" since, oh, the first chat room...

In any respectable community, those sorts of people tend to get unceremoniously ejected from the community - from IRC channels to web forums to community-run game servers of old.

Now, games are match-made and game companies are pretty much forced to exercise discretion about what kind of community they want to have playing their game. Personally, I no longer have the patience for losing 30+ minutes of my life to a game that was lost because there's a 3-stack on my team who do nothing but throw, team-kill and think they're the height of comedy because they say offensive things or have a swastika as their profile picture.

if you don't have a porn spray, are you even really even serious about playing CS 1.6?

Food for thought: kiddies playing games might one day work in law enforcement

Law enforcement that gets triggered by insults seems pretty dangerous too tbh.

Are you trying to justify online toxicity and unsportsmanship in multiplayer video games by comparing them with the tragedy of George Floyd?

I...what?

You think he's the only person/race very ng killed by police, then, you're the problem.

> Valorant is already dying

Hard to take this seriously considering they had 3 million DAU during the closed beta and it's averaging 100k+ concurrent viewers on Twitch during the day (North America).

> The CS pros moving to Valorant are basically doing so because they either can't have a CS career (Brax, perma ban for match fixing; iBuyPower) or haven't been good enough in a while/never were good enough for a T1 CSGO team.

I think it is really early to use this as some sigil for how good the game is or how well it will do as an esport. Of course the first people to move are the ones outside of a current CS contract! Why would you give up your share of multi-million dollar prize pools while the other game is a week and a half old? it isn't necessarily an indictment of Valorant, its just the sensible business choice this early in the game.

I'd like to provide a counter point. As a person coming from Quake 2, I find CS shooting mechanics at the very least annoying. I can't find anything pleasurable in them.

I still played CS but mainly because of the team play it added. Simple, flexible, and enjoyable.

Unfortunately, it seems like Riot plans to take the same approach they do with League of Legends, and introduce new agents consistently and frequently. With the need for unique and interesting abilities to drive interest, Valorant will end up being much closer to Overwatch than CS.

I would say it’s still fundamentally different from overwatch in that players who prefer CS-style may not like Overwatch but would like Valorant.

Overwatch is much more abilities-heavy while Valorant is still more aiming heavy.

I think CS will keep its popularity. Only players who can't cut it at a high level in CS are bailing to Valorant.

You mean like Skadoodle?

or Hiko for that matter.

So instead of "couldn't make it top", we're talking about players "who couldn't stay at the top" ?

I think “can't cut it at a high level“ was meant to cover both.

It's different for professional players, isn't it:

>'On June 3rd 2020, it was announced by T1 that he has resumed his professional career but in Valorant - reuniting with ex-iBUYPOWER teammates Braxton "swag" Pierce and Keven "AZK" Larivière in the process.' (https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Skadoodle) //

If Valorant is less aim-based (I don't know) wouldn't that make sense for a retiree from a more aim-based game?

Also Valorant could have just paid a load of CSGO "names" to move to their games as part of their marketing.

For sure. I don't know about all you, but I would go nuts if I had to stay in the same job forever. Sometimes you desire new challenges or greener pastures.

FWIW I've played the same game competitively for the past 11 years, while also doing the same job (programmer). Not sure how that reflects on me haha, but despite doing the same thing, the "meta" and skill level is dramatically different for both.

Sure, it takes all kinds.

However, I feel the need to point out the difference between playing something competitively (hobby) versus playing something professionally (job). The first is something you do to unwind after a day of work... the second is work. There's usually a large difference in time spent and focus.

Or players past their prime.

On the one hand, with TTKs the same as CS, it's unlikely it will ever be as ability heavy as Overwatch.

On the other hand, unless Riot deviates massively from my expectations, they will release new agents so often, and with such power creep, that it will get pretty damn abilities-heavy and approach Overwatch.

Valorant appears to me to be an uninspired clone with a few gimmicks and a lot of marketing money behind it. It's the same way that LoL was a clone of DotA with extra marketing and a few gimmicks.

I don't understand why anyone knowledgeable would be installing a "free" game that includes a kernel level rootkit.

https://www.techspot.com/news/84841-valorant-anti-cheat-soft...

1. Overwhelming majority of the (potential) player base is not "knowledgeable" as per your comment

2. It worked for LoL, which has made something like 10x the money of Dota 2. Valorant doesn't have to be "the best" in its category, as judged by connoiseurs, to win its market.

League was the first free derivative of the mod (Dota 2 was released nearly four years after it) and the complexity of the game was massively reduced to the extent that it's marketable in a way that Dota 2 just isn't. Valorant is trying to fight the incumbent while dealing with an inevitable balance trainwreck, and although Riot is going to throw a lot of money at it, it's not clear they realize how spoiled they were with the success of League. I'm sure the game will be around in a few years, but the odds of it largely supplanting CS don't look very good.

A kernel level rootkit is a usual form of an anti-cheat software nowadays (BattleEye, EAC).

You can dislike it, you can question whether you can trust such software from a Tencent-owned company, but it doesn’t make Riot’s solution somehow different.

I've seen Valorant blow up in my little circle of online content/professional gamer types. Personally I haven't taken to it, I think the graphics are not very inspiring and the game play seems derivative of almost every team vs team shooter in the last decade. That being said, marketing means a lot and if they flood the digital airwaves, they might just reach critical mass.

I believe you are wrong , Dota2 was a rip off of LOL.

Interesting you mention the root kit - you realise Steam monitors urls Your machine has visited right? They also didn’t confirm whether or not these are then uploaded to their servers.

Dota 2 was a (almost carbon) copy of a DotA map for Warcraft III (there was even a settlement between Blizzard and Valve about this). Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but it makes more sense to claim that LoL was inspired by a DotA map.

The '2' in the name should clue you in to its inspiration, which was not LoL.

What areas does CS:GO fall short in when compared to 1.6?

No one thing, specifically. Maybe it's just a muscle-memory thing, but I think the early 2000's polygonal PC graphics look lends well to knowing about hitboxes, certain techniques like defending against BHoPpers and it's overall response. But, to be fair, I've never played CS:GO on a 240hz monitor with a gaming rig (my laptop manages all low and I still do well when I wanna scrim Dust2 :) but there's something about 1.6 that just feels, almost arcade-y? This could all be nostalgia talking. I love CS:GO, but it is getting a bit dated now, too!

If bunny-hopping was eliminated in CS:GO, that might be considered an improvement for some (and not so much for others).

There's not a lot of difference in gameplay, but CSGO destroyed the sense of community and enabled toxic players. Prior to CSGO, there was a vibrant community of player-hosted servers, run by clans. The best of them had active admins who would kick/ban cheaters, trolls, and toxic people. It was hard to find good community servers, but once you did, it felt like home. It's much easier to get into a match now, due to the automatic matchmaking and different playstyle and skill grouping options, but the communities are gone. You can still run a private server, but hardly anyone does. I used to be in a half-dozen clans and now I'm in zero.

Community in gaming is still just as strong it's just shifted from custom servers to discord servers.

Back in the day I remember mailing $10 every month to someone splitting hosting costs on our clan's 1.6 CS server. It felt like a clubhouse I'd pop into after school to hang out with all my online friends.

Nowadays I get the same experience from joining voice chat in my regular Discord channel with people I know, then grouping up with whoever's online for a few comp or quick play overwatch games.

This is why, when given the choice between CS:GO and predecessors, I'll usually pick CS:S. In the CS1.x days I had a "home" server, we BSed and played together all the time, and cheaters / troublemakers were promptly dealt with. Afterwards, I had a CS:S "home" server for years until it shut down a while back. Maybe 2018? I just don't get that same experience from CS:GO.

I still play CS:S.

Source plays the best in my opinion. Of course I pretty much only exclusively play turbo gungames now, so my perception of what makes the game fun has shifted a lot.

Rambling post ahead:

You see this trend in MMOs as well - towards convenience (and fun) at the expense of community.

Back in the old days of EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI, it was almost impossible to do anything by yourself; you HAD to find other people, and ideally a clan. Enemies would destroy you after level 10 or so, and quests were incredibly laconic and abstruse seemingly by design.

Everything about the game was difficult, dangerous, and mysterious. Reaching out to others was expected, and many were glad to help you through those same challenges they too struggled with.

On the other hand, it took hours - often all night - to accomplish just about anything. Once you got a good party going, you basically didn't want to stop, as just getting to that point took two freakin' hours.

On the other other hand, because everything took forever, you would inevitably shoot the shit, because there was just nothing else to do!

Anyways, nowadays you can easily solo pretty much any modern MMO; and any group content just automatically plops you into a party with some dudes that you will quite certainly never see again. Action is immediate with little time to type anything, (there's surprisingly little support for voice chat in these games), and usually easy enough to hardly require spoken coordination.

Just gotta look for people on discord I guess.

WoW ruined community in many ways. They added the Dungeon Finder, so you no longer have to socialize to find a group; they added cross-server battlegrounds, cross-server Dungeon Finder, and even cross-server zones, so all your experiences are with random people you'll never see again; they made it trivial to travel from place to place, so you don't need to go on epic journeys that require banding together for survival. There used to be a role for "community elders"—experienced players who would show newbies the ropes, organize and lead dungeons and raids, etc. Those things still happen, but because they're no longer necessary, it's possible to get all the way to endgame raiding without making any friends (or even speaking to anyone). Since you don't need any community to play, toxic players can succeed—and even thrive—by being selfish and taking advantage of others. There's no social credit anymore.

Yes. You didn't only choose game when playing CS 1.6 you chose servers. I had a couple, me and most players from my region used, then a couple for trolling (no cheating just trying bizarre tactics, spamming the chat or slaying noobs). We also ran servers for special occasions, social circles etc. It was fun.

Different style fps's, 1.6 was low latency, the newer versions of basically any fps trade off latency for better graphics and better physics.

It's quite easy to get 200+ fps on CS:GO, and that's with max graphics settings or very close.

Doesn't fix input latency due to physics, different style games similar to the new quake

I still play source. I could never get into go. Not sure what modding scene go has, but there are a ton of great mod servers in source. Zombie escape gets ridiculous.

I didn’t expect to see another CSS Ze player, given there’s so few of us now. There’s a good chance we play together! Thousands of hours spent playing and making maps, I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

Yes it's a shame, I have so many fond memories of playing condition zero. Used to switch between playing CS:CZ, frontpage and photoshop.

Back when PSD slicing was a thing.

Thousands of hours gone to many a sleepless night of scoutzknivez with friends. Fond memories.

Pavlov IMO is the spiritual successor

Seems to be a VR game, so unless VR suddenly gets a lot cheaper and a lot better, Pavlov will never replace CS.

Looking at the first few seconds of the first video on Steam for Pavlov (https://store.steampowered.com/app/555160/Pavlov_VR/) shows a very low-skilled encounter as well. If they are trying to attract CS players, they need to show it's a game that shows skills, not like that.

> shows a very low-skilled encounter as well

That might be the difference between having to actually aim your gun with hands in front of you, and flicking your reticle to a location with a mouse.

> unless VR suddenly gets a lot cheaper and a lot better, Pavlov will never replace CS.

Not that I think it will ever replace CS, but I think you can side-load Pavlov onto a Quest, and that's not necessarily a high cost of entry depending on what you compare it to. For a casual player, that's probably a lot of money. For people more serious about gaming, that might be equivalent to a few optional upgrades to their mouse and keyboard.

Interesting to me is that it opens up some interesting competitive options, where you could ensure people are all on equivalent equipment, if for example you have a Quest tournament.

VR is 400$ with the oculus quest, no computer needed, no TV needed. Considering that, it's a bit more expensive than the nintendo switch, and cheaper than pretty much all consoles and PC gaming.

I just played Pavlov on it and it works flawlessly, I'm not sure I get your comment.

I feel that you should actually play the game before having such a strong opinion. The store video doesnt reflect most gameplay.

Hell no. The game is basically becoming some garrys mod hybrid mess.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/496240/Onward/

Onward is way better experience.

It’s just VR counterstrike with tons of maps and mods. That’s a good thing because it shows that it has a big community.

I also like Onward better, but Onward is more like a realistic military sim than a spiritual Counter Strike

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