Comment by sseneca | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sseneca | Hacker News Reader

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I think Valve's ineptitude in regards to CS:GO becomes easier to explain when considering their history with Counter Strike.

The game that became 1.6 wasn't even their game. It was a mod for the original Half Life and they hired the modders after it got popular.

Then CS:Source came around the same time HL2 did. That is to say it exists only because HL2 did, and Source is just HL2 with guns (lol). It was very divisive in the pro scene and the majority of professional players rejected it.

GO's history is even worse. It wasn't even meant to exist at first; Hidden Path were porting CS:Source to consoles and Valve decided that it could live as its own game. They release it in 2012 and, by all accounts, it sucks. Nobody plays it. Things begin to change when they create a virtual economy (skins) and admittedly do actually improve the game a fair bit. It's only when the game sees those improvements (2013-14?) that the pro scene finally moves from 1.6 to GO.

So the situation in 2021: The most popular game on Steam is a game which, according to Valve themselves, shares 75-85% of its code with a game released almost 20 years ago (Half Life 2), and which everybody knows is a complete and utter mess under the hood (thanks in part due to the source code getting leaked, also thanks to ex-devs sharing their stories of their time working on CS:GO). This along with Valve being notorious for just not having the internal incentive structures to get bugs fixed (hence GO's spaghetti code)... it's easier to understand (but not excuse!) Valve's attitude for serious security flaws like these.

I am similar to you in that I have about 1000 hours in CS:GO, and I've spent many 1000s of hours watching the pro scene. I love Counter Strike, but with Valve the way it is, I don't see how these fundamental flaws will ever get fixed. Look at how they're allowing Valorant to decimate the North American CS scene, just like they allowed Overwatch to take from TF2's player base back in 2016.

> just like they allowed Overwatch to take from TF2's player base back in 2016

Overwatch isn't really taking TF2's crowd though. On the surface they're similar, but mechanically they are worlds apart. Overwatch is highly polished; TF2 is downright clunky by comparison. But it allows custom servers and player scripting/mods. Blizzard is far too tight-fisted for that to realistically happen for Overwatch. TF2 also has all kinds of interesting movement mechanics due to the source engine, that overwatch just really doesn't have. Overwatch's format of merely 6-person teams means you can't really goof around like you can with TF2's 12 and 16-person teams.

I'm sure a lot of players checked out overwatch but didn't stop playing TF2 as they're simply very different games. TF2 also did release major updates albeit infrequently until the jungle inferno update back in ~2017. Now it's just radio silence apart from small seasonal updates.

I'm not as familiar with CS (only played a few dozen cs:go matches), but just from playing both that and valorant I feel like it's going to be a similar situation. Valorant is more polished but it just plays wildly different due to the player abilities.

Valve is neglectful regarding these games (look at how DotA 2 is treated by comparison), but I doubt trying to compete would've helped very much.

There were people from TF2's competitive scene which is also 6v6 who left to go play Overwatch since there was actual money to be made since Blizzard was funding prize pools.

Almost whole competitive scene (already dying thanks to Valve) of TF2 migrated to Overwatch the moment it was available. When the pro players migrated, so did the casuals.

Overwatch can be a different game now, but when it started it had a huge community that resembled TF2 at the start. It wasn’t at all about the mechanics.

> But it allows custom servers and player scripting/mods. Blizzard is far too tight-fisted for that to realistically happen for Overwatch.

Overwatch got the Workshop in 2019, which, while a fairly limited visual programming thingamajig, still allows for some pretty impressive stuff.

There are some incredibly creative mini games and training scenarios. Very impressive stuff.

Anecdotally speaking, I stopped playing TF2 a few months before Overwatch came out, and playing Overwatch has killed any interest I might have in getting back to TF2. I don't think I'm an outlier.

The games aren't that dissimilar.

Is there an alternative of CS 1.6 that runs on Linux and newer MacOSs and doesn't need a quantum computer run (I mean relatively moderate specs :))? I think CS:GO was made unnecessarily heavy without any substantial improvements over 1.6.

I also liked Project IGI - simple mission game. I am not into gaming really. Sniper Elite is like this by any chance?

These were the only games I liked and I'd like to try something like that again. I like normal/realistic game plays - no extra/exotic powers or sci-fi cartoonish elements to a game.

pure speculation on my part, but I also suspect the people at valve have simply never liked counterstrike. they didn't come up with the core gameplay (nor did they design the most popular maps), and compared against the rest of the valve portfolio, it really isn't their style to begin with.

I'm sure it's a major main to maintain and occasionally add features to such an old codebase, but imo the apathy runs deeper than that.

I agree, this is essentially what I was getting at in my original comment. Counter Strike is not Valve's game. They picked it up when it got popular and since then have done less than the minimum. And despite this they generate hundreds of millions each year off of it? Perfect.

Source was the worst thing to ever happen to North American CS.

I'm old and I liked Source when it dropped. I never understood all the hate.

Direct TV created a gaming league called CGS that played CS:Source because it had better graphics than 1.6. It was the first time pro CS players in the US could get contracts (25-35k a year? It wasnt much). This league forced all of the top talent in North America to move to Source. The game was buggy, trash with horrible hitboxes, netcode, audio issues, cluttered maps (with actual trash in them) and unpredictable, overly-complicated physics.

Source hitboxes: https://youtu.be/fdRpYaQA8cU

At the time, many 1.6 players still had single/dual core CPUs and source would run at 20-80 fps, when gamers were just starting to get 100+ hz monitors. There was no mass migration of players, due to gameplay and performance issues. The game really wasn't ready for eSports level competition (and never improved to that point)

CGS failed after 2 years, and most of the pros retired afterwards.

During that time, the European 1.6 scene was flourishing. The death of the NA scene was a huge blow to international play. The compLexity roster that was drafted into CGS could have been one of the best NA teams of all time.

Fun fact, the first player drafted in CGS was a female. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Championship_Gaming_Ser...

I sucked at CS at the time so couldn't tell a difference. After getting decent at CSGO though I can see how a game with certain changes in gunplay would be a turn off. I enjoyed source casually though and switched over completely.

It split the community. Source had poor weapon balance and the hit boxes were too big.

Are any top players really leaving CSGO for Valorant? Or just washed players and players who could never break into the upper echelon?

Yeah it’s mostly 2nd tier players who can see a salary bump from switching or have been banned from CS for previous rule violations.

I hope Valorant kicks Valve into gear a bit. I have played many hours of both and CS:GO is a much better game (simplicity, balance, opportunity for individual skill) but we will see...

An interesting thing from an esport perspective: Riot tightly controls Valorant matches, whilst Valve will let anyone run and monetise a CS tournament. I think this will make CS a more healthy scene in the long run.

Yes, top players really are leaving CS for Valorant, though this is mainly limited to the NA scene afaik (two examples who were on top teams: Ethan[0] and nitr0[1]).

Other than that, it is mainly those washed players leaving, yes. Which still isn't healthy for the scene, and means the NA CS scene effectively doesn't exist any more (this isn't hyperbole, there are only two good NA teams right now and both were flown out to Europe by their orgs to compete there instead).

[0]: https://www.hltv.org/player/10671/ethan

[1]: https://www.hltv.org/player/7687/nitr0

As with most things in life, those that are at the top have little reason to switch to something new. When everyone else moves on and new talent comes up, that is when you see things change. I wouldn't be surprised though if both games and pro scenes co-exist successfully.

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