I seem to remember they had a Friends list way back in early beta when they were offering some simple games like chess and crap. I had no idea they even took it out.
— Alan
i had crashing error, some dll (can’t recall now it’s been months) on brand spanking new system and steam forums are pretty non responsive so i haven’t played my hl2 or steam in forever.
no crashes until i install hl2, steam on its own is fine. something about dual core nvidia or nforce conflicts with steam, causing one of the dlls to crash.
i still am bitter about my launch week/day experiencing buying hl2 boxed and not being able to activate.
Umm…
The box text starts with “The latest version of the WWII online action game…”
It should include that a hi-speed connection is required, that it is multiplayer and one purchase is needed per pc and also has a notice in a box:
“Notice: Product offered subject to your acceptance of the steam subscriber agreement (“SSA”). You must activate the product via the Internet by registering for a Steam account and accepting the SSA. Please see Steam Subscriber Agreement to view the SSA prior to purchase. If you do not agree with the provisions of the SSA, you should return this game unopened to your retailer in accordance with their return policy.”
I think that is about as clear as you can make it and allows the user to see the agreement prior to opening the box. Considering for most people it is not even an issue, this notice I would have thought would have sufficed for those who want to make something out of it. And none of it really relevant to someone discussing buying the game directly from steam.
rei, forums are for peer to peer support, fill out a trouble ticket and you will get a response.
Chet
Certainly there’s a lot of room for improvement for Steam in its current form. But those people acting like it’s the manifestation of pure evil are downright bonkers.
EDIT: And dare I say… out of touch. ;)
I’ve had very good experiences with Steam. My HL2 experience was ideal. a lot better than my friends who bought it at retail.
Consider yourself lucky Brad, as Steam is still pretty sloppy. Just today when downloading Red Orchestra, Steam said it was 100% loaded. When I tried to launch the game, nothing happened. I found on the forums that you had to “re-validate” your cache at which point Steam would download the final 20% of the game.
Next time I’m at Fry’s I’ll look, but I don’t recall seeing that notice. Could it have been a Euro release or something?
I was furious at Steam when I brought home my boxed copy of HL2 and had all sorts of problems getting it installed.
A year later, though, after returning the boxed copy and buying HL2 online, I dig steam. Easy reinstalls, ability to put HL games on my CD-less tablet PC, etc. I still think the HL2 CD/DVD install setup is stupid, but I have no complaints about the “online” version at all.
Ditto. Set up your Steam account on one day and then install HL2 or whatever another day. It probably still won’t be as bad as it was on opening day at any rate, since they’ve improved the fidelity of their servers significantly (and not everyone on the planet is trying to access them at once).
Too bad HL2 Silver edition isn’t out anymore. That was the best gaming purchase I have made in years. So much content it almost rivals Epic for post release goodness.
Going to disagree with you pretty well 100%. I loved both games and if you thought the AI was weak maybe you were playing it on Easy.
I wasn’t playing on easy and for good or bad the AI being weaker than the original Half Life was something that most everyone notice.
I’m not disagreeing as I’m not sure one way or another, but can you give some examples that show how the AI is weaker in the sequel?
I really don’t want to get into it to much because if Chet even remotely perceives I’ll talking ill about his employer or their products he will get all “Hulk Smash” on my ass.
I’m trying not to say anything negative here because I can recognize that the AI is “different.” Take the soldiers and assassins in the first game. The would work to kill you. Move around to out flank you and caused the battles to be very tough and rewarding. The assassins especially were near impossible on the higher difficulty levels. In Half Life 2, the combine and super combine were the “hardest” of the non-boss characters and they moved along predetermined paths and grouping zones and did little to protect themselves or take you out unless you were right next to them. The only thing I saw difficulty seem to do is make their accuracy go up.
If you don’t lke HL’s combat, you might perfer HL2. Thats all I’m saying.
I don’t know that it’s actually AI we are talking about. In HL the enemy had weapons that did an assload of damage, so I tended to shoot and duck a lot. I don’t think the AI was better really, all it did was find a path to you and take cover when you fired on them. As for the assasins they were just insanely fast and overpowered, that’s what made them hard, not really good AI.
Hey Rob, that is cute. I have not gotten into discussions over the quality of valve games since being employed there (to the best of my knowledge, feel free to show a link), but you have repeatedly made wild accusations about the company or steam only to scream i am being an ass by asking you to show one shred of proof about those accusations. I have discussed delivery methods etc, not quality of product. So you can continue to throw up this bullshit, or you can drop it already.
Chet
You requested links to places talking about Steam’s problems. I gave you links and you couldn’t find them for some reason. Even in that original thread on this forum, other people had similar issues I was having. You could google usenet from CS Zero’s launch to early 2005 and find hundreds of steam problem posts in forums such as:
alt.games.half-life
alt.games.half-life.counterstrike
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Before you pop another blood vessel let me say that since version 3 of Steam came available last fall for me has been running great. I’ve bought several games off it and run it fairly regularly. I’ve even returned to playing TFC every so often. (favorite online game ever).
I’ve also tried to make some peace with HL2. I don’t think my criticisms are any less valid but I can see that the game was made for a more casual gamer and I should accept that.
Oh Please… Look at your own post history. You get huffy if someone even questions a print review of Valve products.
It’s incredibly easy to find forums and posts that talk about Steam’s previous problems. Go check “steam sucks” in Google and you can find quite a few. Many are around a year old however, so they probably don’t reflect the game recently…
Though in the last six months my brother had numerous issues with Steam after buying the HL2 box and couldn’t get it to work over a wireless network at all.
Some of the issues I have are with patching and being informative about what’s going on in the background. You could be patching and have no idea what’s going on because it doesn’t seem to update properly, nor does it necessarily tell you (or be descriptive) about what it’s doing. For instance, DOD had an update a few days ago and there was no way of knowing what was going on.
Speaking of DOD I might as well complain that releasing DOD: Source with only four maps and it’s taken this long just to have six is simply ridiculous.
— Alan
Yes steam had problems, I am not saying it didn’t. But Alan, Rob had made specific claims, said they were backed up by a certain forum. No one but him could find any mention of that specific issue and no mentions of anything close on the forum he claimed contained the information.
He has also posted previously of Valve screwing over this company or that, when asked to explain he once again refused to really explain because i would “attack him”. He continues to post with allegations that he cannot explain, because I will attack him. He ends every post about valve with I would say more but, or i said i would never talk about the games but…
As for the quality of the game, I have stayed out of that because it is subjective. And I continue to stay away from those discussions, regardless of what Rob posts. Rob doesn’t like the AI in half-life 2, thats fine. But to post he cannot talk about it because I will attack him? That is just bullshit he keeps trotting out, so rob its time to stop with the bullshit. Post away.
Chet
Back to the AI issue, I’m not sure which version of Half Life had the better AI, both were pretty good, but I do believe that the scripting was more apparent in the sequel.