Valve, for being such an amazing company, they really blow my mind sometimes. In 2007, valve released one of the best gaming packs ever to hit this planet, the orange box, the next year they follow up with an amazing shooter, right on the leading edge of the start of the huge gaming zombie craze. It seemed like valve really couldnt go wrong.
Then they release left 4 dead 2, only 10 months after the first, it left a huge majority of the community pissed. A company whos known for supporting games for years after release, superceded there own game not after 10 months, not to mention with full price. Valve was left with the weird situation where a chunk of the community didnt buy the new game, the community was split in two, neither grew to near the hieght they could have, and today only a year after left 4 dead, you would be suprised to see more then 5 or 6 games online.
Ok, company's can make mistakes that's fine, I supported valve and bought both, twice (for me and my wife). But now with this latest move I am dumbfounded again. After 3 years after the release of TF2, they introduce an addon, which allows you to buy every upgrade in the game, followed by 5 new class updates.
They make the new gear sets, the strongest yet, introducing set bonuses that give some very hefty rewards. Every new item in the game you can find or craft in the game, but theres a few exceptions to note. Each set requires a few weapons, and a then a hat. The weapons arnt bad, with the new trading system, and with some decent luck you could get 3 or 4 new weapons in about 10 hours or so. But the hat... now thats a differnt story.
Rewarding players with time invested is a great idea, gives me a reason to sink as many hours as I do, but with the option of paying $17!!!! for a hat... that gives my scout an extra 20% health, drives me crazy!
So is it worth it? no... $17 for a hat is insane, I would rather earn it, but with some quick math you will see how insane it is.
it takes 2 guns to make a scrap metal, 3 scrap metal to make a reclamed metal, and 3 reclamed metal to make a refined. It takes 4 refined metal and a class token for a chance (1 in 9) to produce the new hat. So lets add that up.
thats 72 guns for the metal, and an extra 3 for the class token, then do that 9 times for the hat, and factor in anywhere fromm 25 minutes to an hour to get a gun that comes to a grand total of!!!!!
225 hours - 675 hours......!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, before this update that was fine, hats were fun, they were rare, and they were 100% cosmetic. Now its unfair and overpriced.
Valves excuse was they needed money, thats fine. It is understandable that they would cash in on there biggest game right now, but why not make a TF3? or an expansion? or a classic DLC that cost $20?, or make the prices low enough so people will spend the money, not $50 for a game that costs $10.
Is no one else noticing Valves decisions these last few years have been questionable?
I defended this decision for the last few days, but with my entire friends list vacant since this last update, I am quite sad...
Anyone, I am done ranting.
Valve Corporation
Company »
The developer of many acclaimed game franchises such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota. They are also responsible for the massively successful PC digital distribution service Steam.
Valve, wtf?
Valve, for being such an amazing company, they really blow my mind sometimes. In 2007, valve released one of the best gaming packs ever to hit this planet, the orange box, the next year they follow up with an amazing shooter, right on the leading edge of the start of the huge gaming zombie craze. It seemed like valve really couldnt go wrong.
Then they release left 4 dead 2, only 10 months after the first, it left a huge majority of the community pissed. A company whos known for supporting games for years after release, superceded there own game not after 10 months, not to mention with full price. Valve was left with the weird situation where a chunk of the community didnt buy the new game, the community was split in two, neither grew to near the hieght they could have, and today only a year after left 4 dead, you would be suprised to see more then 5 or 6 games online.
Ok, company's can make mistakes that's fine, I supported valve and bought both, twice (for me and my wife). But now with this latest move I am dumbfounded again. After 3 years after the release of TF2, they introduce an addon, which allows you to buy every upgrade in the game, followed by 5 new class updates.
They make the new gear sets, the strongest yet, introducing set bonuses that give some very hefty rewards. Every new item in the game you can find or craft in the game, but theres a few exceptions to note. Each set requires a few weapons, and a then a hat. The weapons arnt bad, with the new trading system, and with some decent luck you could get 3 or 4 new weapons in about 10 hours or so. But the hat... now thats a differnt story.
Rewarding players with time invested is a great idea, gives me a reason to sink as many hours as I do, but with the option of paying $17!!!! for a hat... that gives my scout an extra 20% health, drives me crazy!
So is it worth it? no... $17 for a hat is insane, I would rather earn it, but with some quick math you will see how insane it is.
it takes 2 guns to make a scrap metal, 3 scrap metal to make a reclamed metal, and 3 reclamed metal to make a refined. It takes 4 refined metal and a class token for a chance (1 in 9) to produce the new hat. So lets add that up.
thats 72 guns for the metal, and an extra 3 for the class token, then do that 9 times for the hat, and factor in anywhere fromm 25 minutes to an hour to get a gun that comes to a grand total of!!!!!
225 hours - 675 hours......!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, before this update that was fine, hats were fun, they were rare, and they were 100% cosmetic. Now its unfair and overpriced.
Valves excuse was they needed money, thats fine. It is understandable that they would cash in on there biggest game right now, but why not make a TF3? or an expansion? or a classic DLC that cost $20?, or make the prices low enough so people will spend the money, not $50 for a game that costs $10.
Is no one else noticing Valves decisions these last few years have been questionable?
I defended this decision for the last few days, but with my entire friends list vacant since this last update, I am quite sad...
Anyone, I am done ranting.
Left 4 Dead 2 I think split the community right up until the point that it was released and everyone bought it anyways.
And Valve is still supporting both L4D 1 and 2 to this very day with DLC.
Also I think the majority of people who enjoyed Left 4 Dead 1 wanted to buy L4D 2 not wanted to boycott it.
As for the TF2 updates effectively making it broken (in my opinion) was their way of taking a game that is 4 years old and creating more streams of revenue because new people aren't playing it, the same dedicated fan base is playing it. So if they choose so, they can spend their money on a game they love.
I don't mind the disagreements with Valve and some of its business decisions but there is no need to panic. Valve still runs one of the best digital distribution services for video games ever, they still heavily support their games and the fans of those games, and Valve is a long trip away from being a horrible company like Activision.
"... Valves excuse was they needed money, thats fine. "
Say, don't Valve make money from every single game and piece of content sold on their Steam platform?
The way I feel sometimes is that Valve has never actually built a new game in a long time. Sort of.
I mean, it seems that every popular IP they have was actually created by somebody else. Especially Left 4 Dead, which was originally by Turtle Rock.
And then I feel like Left 4 Dead made them so much money, that they decided to try it again with the sequel, and not to actually improve and build on the first game, but to create the same product for cheap.
Can TF2 be classified as an RPG yet? I have over 800 hours of TF2, and I can't say I really care about people buying stuff, I mean the game is fairly balanced anyways, I don't think I would use any of the new items that were just released, and hats are hats, so whatever. It's more interesting if I get stuff as a random drop instead of just buying it all in one go, you know... spread the "reward" across a longer period of time. I don't play too much now because school has started, but it's still fun when I have the chance.
The reason they're building MicroTransaction into TF2 is because that those platforms for microtransations can then be used by other games. They should just allow server options that allows you to dictate what weapons can be used,etc...
I do think they should either get rid of the set bonuses or just make you get them without the hat.
Otherwise though anyone whining about TF2 needs to shut up, the game has had amazing support and it's all been free.
" Can TF2 be classified as an RPG yet? I have over 800 hours of TF2, and I can't say I really care about people buying stuff, I mean the game is fairly balanced anyways, I don't think I would use any of the new items that were just released, and hats are hats, so whatever. It's more interesting if I get stuff as a random drop instead of just buying it all in one go, you know... spread the "reward" across a longer period of time. I don't play too much now because school has started, but it's still fun when I have the chance. "There not just hats, like I said. For my scout its gives me an extra 20% more health. That is not balanced.
" I do think they should either get rid of the set bonuses or just make you get them without the hat. Otherwise though anyone whining about TF2 needs to shut up, the game has had amazing support and it's all been free. "I would love to support valve with some addon content, its been 3 years. Asking $50 is insane, and so is $17 for a hat that breaks the game and could take hundreds of hours to get otherwise.
The "majority" of people were super excited for L4D2, and rightfully so. The people that tried to boycott it were a very tiny minority, and all of them ended up buying the phenomenal game anyways. L4D2 sold gangbusters.
I would like to see where Valve says the TF2 store is "because they needed the money". Valve is quite likely the second richest development house on Earth (behind Blizzard). They make money that rivals most mid-level publishers. The store was undoubtedly to make money, but probably more that they needed to justify the costs of TF2, which is constantly updated with free shit. Maybe they needed the money for TF2, but not Valve itself.
And TF2 is not "their biggest game right now". Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 are both absolutely massive successes on Xbox and PC. Counter Strike Source is still the most widely distributed shooter on PCs, and far more people play it than TF2. TF2 is a fantastic game, but it has a playerbase of a few hundred thousand. Most of those people probably acquired it in the Orange Box. They've essentially gotten three years of massive updates for free. If Valve wants to charge for hats, good for them.
"Then they release left 4 dead 2, only 10 months after the first, it left a huge majority of the community pissed."Blatant hyberbole. First, both games were released on November 17 one year apart. Second, where does this "huge majority" figure come from? Here on the internet, it's always the incredibly vocal minority that seems much larger than it actually is.
no the worst part of it is those fucking crates. crates are common drops.. but u have to pay 2.50 to open the god damn things. then u only have like a 2.5% chance to get one of the real nice hats. some of us opened like 20 crates and got nothing. yet others have like 4 unusuals. it is a joke.
They're making the hats easily craftable, in case you didn't know. The pay-for option is still there if you don't want to wait, but by no means is it required. At first I was surprised at the prices, but I also realized that it prevented a black market-like eBay thing happening with the trading system. It also let's Valve test out a new way of interacting with their consumers, and I imagine they'd include it in future games (more than likely in their DOTA game they're said to be working on.) Team Fortress 2 has always been their testing ground for new ideas.
As for the Left 4 Dead stuff, I've never had a problem with it. They've continually supported the original (no matter how much people like to say they haven't or that "survival wasn't good enough" or that the new campaign "was too short.") Quite frankly I'm amazed Valve continues to do what it does, because some of their fanbase act like the most entitled brats I've seen.
Going through this thread is just a reminder of how annoying everyone was about Left 4 Dead 2. Especially the boycott communities because nothing pisses me off more than a great sequel to a great game.
Valve has been giving you free updates for the past 2 years. They are not forcing you to buy anything, merely giving you (and more specifically, newcomers) the option to buy items. I don't want to surprise you, but not everyone has 400 hours to kill in TF2.
I know personally by the time L4D2 came out I had pretty much stopped playing L4D. But with L4D2 I ended up playing 30 hours more than in L4D in the same time frame (1 year), so apparently for me they added enough.
And as far as TF2, like other people said I think the main reason they released this is so other companies can put micro-transactions in their games. It is also a really good way for them to get more content for TF2 because of the fact that the people who make the items get some of the money. My only concern is that other companies won't handle micro-transactions as well as Valve. In TF2 you can pretty easily craft all the weapons you want and as far as the hats go, if you really want a hat all you really need is another hat to trade for it. The only thing I don't understand is why some stuff is as expensive as it is, who pays $17 for a hat?
Then don't buy the hats?
I still love the game and really don't see why it's something to pee yourself about.
Simple. Don't buy them.
Step 1: Don't Buy.
Step 2: Idle farm for items.
Step 3: ????
Step 4: PROFIT!!!
This to me just looks like another situation where Valve gets shit just because they have previously given gamers a great value with their products. Create brilliant games and support them for free a very long time, but don't you fucking dare to try to make money after you have spoiled us!
People have no right to feel cheated by Valve. They were given TWO YEARS of FREE, well-made and regular content and now if they want to get recoup some money for that in non-obtrusive way to the game experience, then I have no problem with that whatsoever. You are still able to craft, trade or randomly find all the weapons that are being put on the store so nothing has changed there. The only things I think that you can't get are a couple of hats, which are cosmetic items only.
EDIT: I just looked it up, I guess you mean the bonuses different classes get from wearing all of the a certain set of items, seems pretty balanced to me, i mean the update has just been released, haven't played too much or seen much use of new weapons, but hopefully valve will continue doing "balance" changes for what they are IF balance problems occur...
anyways, I'm glad they didn't release more achievements to get the items, holy cow.. can you imagine?
I dont think many of you even read the post.
The hats are NOT cosmetic they produce insanely heft rewards and you pretty much have to buy it since the time invested is far beyond anyones capability. Its either luck or $$$.
Also, I know valve didnt NEED the money, they wanted. I worded it wrong. In there blog they said the wanted money from this game. If they offered a $20 expansion, I dont know who wouldnt buy it. But what they did is super lame.
I think the thinking behind the whole microtransactions move, besides maybe setting something up for a later game, is because somewhere around like 25 percent of the people that play achievement farm. I have friends who just sit in idle boxes while they sleep or while they are at work. They aren't really earning their gear as much as the person who buys theirs are. There are people who are willing to pay for that stuff because they don't have the time to play as much but would like to experience new content. It's not like you are being forced to buy anything.
Yeah, my love for Valve as a company is mostly gone from this (and Left 4 Dead 2).
Their promise used to be "pay for this product once and we'll support it". It translates to customer loyalty, which means most of their customer base will buy their future products and use their storefront.
As far as I'm concerned, they've reneged on the spirit of this promise twice by exploiting that customer loyalty twice now:
- Left 4 Dead 1, while still being supported, was made obsolete by the release of Left 4 Dead 2. This means that the money we spent to buy L4D1 was pretty much wasted.
- Team Fortress 2 microtransations are in-your-face in the game and are marketed to make you feel like you are missing something if you don't pay rather than celebrating the value already there.
Neither of these issues makes L4D2 or TF2 bad products or bad values by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that Valve used to promise more for less, and now I feel like the only did that to gain our loyalty and to now exploit it.
I'll still play my Valve games, but I'll think long and hard before buying another one that I'm on the fence about. To make $5 from me in TF2, they've cost themselves a lifetime of $50 purchases.
In all honesty, hats can drop as well. It's rare, but it happens.
Having it as an option to buy it is fine by me, to be honest. They've also added a lot of fun gadgets that will stress their servers pretty badly with nametags for weapons, paint for clothes and whatnot. I've been given so much free stuff in TF2 with maps and other content that I honestly can't see what OP is on about.
Sounds more like OP had managed to get together/find a hat that few people had, and now that "everyone can buy it", OP is pissed about not feeling unique.
Seriously, Valve has the most awesome fanbase I know about, but amongst them lures the CS kiddies.
" @loldetaerleo said:Additionally, what the hell are you on about?" I do think they should either get rid of the set bonuses or just make you get them without the hat. Otherwise though anyone whining about TF2 needs to shut up, the game has had amazing support and it's all been free. "I would love to support valve with some addon content, its been 3 years. Asking $50 is insane, and so is $17 for a hat that breaks the game and could take hundreds of hours to get otherwise. "
Have you even looked at the damn bonuses? The negative parts of the items you can equip? The stuff they've released does not make for an "imba set lol" that makes you steamroll the enemy team, TF2 has never been about that - the sets simply allows for a different play style for the class of your choice.
"Breaks the game". Now you're starting to sound like a damn troll.
If you think it's overpriced then don't buy it? If most people feel the same way then they won't buy it either. At the end of the day I highly the game is going to change that severely. Besides I still don't get all the bitching: this feature was requested by A LOT of users, and now those same users are crying that they actual decided to go ahead with it? You can't make anyone happy these days.
Is no one else noticing Valves decisions these last few years have been questionable?The blind fanboys won't, but Valve has changed. At the same time they're one of the few companies still trying to give us a good value. They're holding out as best they can, but at the same time saying Valve can do no wrong is also stupid.
Also an expansion would have the same effect that the current system does. Namely those who bought it would have access to something you don't have? There's no reason to suppose that that all of the new expansion content would be perfectly balanced so really how different is an expansion from the current system? I suppose this is like a different way of selling that expansion content.
The only questionable decision Valve has made in the past few years was the whole DotA thing. I have no doubt it'll be good, just seems random if you ask me.
About TF2, if people are willing to buy hats then Valve would have to be insane to not sell them. At the end of the day, they are a business and if a ton of people are willing to literally hand them money for the bare minimum of work and resources on Valve's end then I see no reason not to take that opportunity.
I can't speak much for L4D1 & 2, but the community didn't have to stop playing. I don't think people can say Valve ruined either game as much as they can say "hey, we got tired of playing this and we went to go play something else. I can still pop in fucking Modern Warfare 1 and find a game even after MW2, W@W, and Black Ops are out. Hell, people are still playing the original CS like no tomorrow even though CSS has been out for Lord knows how long. I think it's safe to assume the majority people just lost interest in L4D not for any particular reason, but the hardcore crowd thinks it has something to do with Valve messing things up.
I still find it ridiculous that the one time Valve 'cops out' and releases a sequel a year after the original, people jump all over them. No one talks shit when we get COD and Halo games once a year.
" @Truant19 said:Valve hasn't changed at all. They are still making new games. they are still releasing free content, they are still working with all of their partners to release cheaper games on Steam and they are still actively involved in giving back to the community in terms of tools, content and income. The only difference between VALVe of 2004 and VALVe of now is that there is a lot more money involved in everything they do so people feel they have a right to be more critical. There's an inherent sense of entitlement in that criticality which doesn't actually relate to reality. When L4D2 was announced I was upset at the time because I felt that it was being released too soon after L4D and I didn't buy it. In retrospect, once I actually played the game past the demo, I learned that it was an evolution beyond L4D and I could see where the money had been spent so I ended up purchasing the game. Meanwhile they still added content to both L4D games.Is no one else noticing Valves decisions these last few years have been questionable?The blind fanboys won't, but Valve has changed. At the same time they're one of the few companies still trying to give us a good value. They're holding out as best they can, but at the same time saying Valve can do no wrong is also stupid. "
It's a definite fact that VALVe has a business strategy to monetise various content delivery aspects of their products but that strategy doesn't get in the way of their customers or their games. It's complimentary and it certainly isn't unfair.
" People seem to be confused about the timeline of support for left 4 dead one.....the dlc and survival came out long before left 4 dead 2......and after that support stopped. L4D2 is getting full support and thats great; unfortunately l4d1 got dropped like a bad habit,people stopped playing it all together,and most of the competitive team and players disbanded and stopped playing all together. People don't feel entitled, they are just pissed about steam killing a game because they want to make a couple bucks,which worked out in the short term,but look where both games are at now. Did you ever notice how low the price dropped on the left 4 dead games?I told you so just doesnt say enough, some people may not understand it,but everything left 4 dead regulars were complaining about,ended up happening. I can't think of anything else i would have rather been wrong about. I know this probably seems like trolling,and maybe it is. It just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when i see people talking about left 4 dead gamers' complaints as if they were petty,while both games are selling at half price and are less active than they have ever been. "People still play CounterStrike and HL2 : Deathmatch and neither game has had new content added for years. The last update to CounterStrike was in 2008 when they added Widescreen support and HL2 : Deathmatch hasn't had any content added since 2005. L4D has a ton of mods and map packs which are community made and people play them quite a lot.
" @W4ke said:This. Plus L41 got two DLC packs and Valve has said they will continue to update it along with L4D2. And you can't account people leaving the game because the sequel came out and of course people want to play the newer version. Thats like saying no one is playing Modern Warfare anymore because Activision didn't support it enough." People seem to be confused about the timeline of support for left 4 dead one.....the dlc and survival came out long before left 4 dead 2......and after that support stopped. L4D2 is getting full support and thats great; unfortunately l4d1 got dropped like a bad habit,people stopped playing it all together,and most of the competitive team and players disbanded and stopped playing all together. People don't feel entitled, they are just pissed about steam killing a game because they want to make a couple bucks,which worked out in the short term,but look where both games are at now. Did you ever notice how low the price dropped on the left 4 dead games?I told you so just doesnt say enough, some people may not understand it,but everything left 4 dead regulars were complaining about,ended up happening. I can't think of anything else i would have rather been wrong about. I know this probably seems like trolling,and maybe it is. It just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when i see people talking about left 4 dead gamers' complaints as if they were petty,while both games are selling at half price and are less active than they have ever been. "People still play CounterStrike and HL2 : Deathmatch and neither game has had new content added for years. The last update to CounterStrike was in 2008 when they added Widescreen support and HL2 : Deathmatch hasn't had any content added since 2005. L4D has a ton of mods and map packs which are community made and people play them quite a lot. "
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