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Gosh... I have been far and away since end of 2007, however I still keep checking the news... This one hit even me hard. I still remember playing with him on servers and even exchanging posts on the forum. I have been living in Canada at that time so I felt being even close to Canadian members such as him. He was amongst the people who helped me feeling better and comfortable in North America during my time there. Now he looks down to us from above. We won't forget him ever.

This is looking great. One stupid question is if there is need to pre-book or reserve equipment. I would need it for sure. Or it can be arranged on site that day?

anonymo, That was good. Round 6 ended yesterday. It is really crazy. 900million clicks for the winner. And the good point is: what could the effort put into this by those "fanatics" buy for the world?

I booked a room during the weekend. There are a few points to consider: 1. The central website (first link on the FFOHIO webpage) reports that the rooms are sold out 2. The hotel's own webpage (2nd link) gives plenty of free rooms. However - while the first link assumes you go for the special rate for the event the 2nd one just gives you the hotel's regular rates. My guess is that the reserved rooms under the FFOHIO promo code got sold out but the hotel still has availability for regular price. Perhaps Fatty can shed some lights or make arrangements to adjust the rates once you contact him with your details... The hotel has 230+ rooms, I doubt they are full...

Thanks, I really hope it's a GO. OFF Well I started to play again a few weeks ago after a break - I'm far not at my best. The GC servers are always very high at skill. Some people strongly challenged my nickname there ON If this paintball is a go it might be a good idea to put it up to the standard thread for PRE-EVENT signups so we see who's coming? I'm not that worried about price but it would be good to know if we have to advance reserve equipment and the site, etc... Can I be at any help around organizing this?

Thanks. The STEAM ID should be in the payment record comment on paypal. If not, let me know and I'll e-mail it for you.

Hi, Can somebody please check if my membership got reactivated? I paid the fees last week Friday - the server is still kicking me from the reserved slots. Please. Thx.

Guys, Is this paintball going to happen really? I'm planning on to come to this FF from Toronto and one major reason to get there early is this paintball event. Any chance we gonna know in advance if it is a go or no-go? Please?

I think you hit the nail on the head. The "war" is now dependent on a few programmers coming up with tools that can "sneak" in the generated "clicks" and do it faster than the competitor's. Also there is a notable element: before submitting clicks there is a block that usually needs manual intervention: a code to be entered to proceed that is displayed on a picture... So the coders built tools to create a database of these and have them automatically recognized by the "clicker" programs. Community is organized to feed the database with the resolved codes provided by humans... After all even if the objective is really questionable what amazes me is the organization and skill that has been put behind it by a few people who started to take it seriously. Also notable that the tool capable of getting over the manual input request for a picturized code is rather dangerous. I believe a system like that in the hands of spammers could result in auto-regging zillion of e-mail addresses for example... Anyways. I'm from Hungary and I see the heroic fight the small Hungarian team put up against Japan and Taiwan recently - yet 50% behind with clicks as of now over the 500 million mark... Just imagine if some US developer takes it seriously one day... US is a country of 230+ million - won't be difficult to get some support...

Well obviously it's a bit extreme, but some people take it quite seriously. After all there are communities organized around it and of course developers came up with tools to generate more clicks Nobody spends their time clicking one by one - just host programs that do that...

Guys, Just wanted to raise some awareness that there is a gigantic and fun "cyberwar" going on on the internet. It is simple. The more the people click on a certain web-page the better. Countries are competing with each other. Japan and Taiwan seems to be winning, US is ranked 28th as of now, Canada is 29th. Have a look: www.clickclickclick.com

As a member I support this decision. I also thank to the board for the effort to make the "consolidated" server very balanced with regards to features. (AWP and other elements.) It is very unfortunate that traffic is on a decline but watching costs is key to make survival until the trend turns. I personally noticed recently that at any point in time I was playing the two servers combined had around 50% of the slots taken so having two servers just reduced the "concentration" of players... This also justifies for me the rational of the decision. As always: if there is anything I can do for the coalition over and beyond being a regular member let me know. GO GO GO!

Awesome! A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Probably Valve was looking for some boost for the quarterly financial results so quickly generated sales for CS:S licenses Also considering the 10,000 number: According to the server stats at steampowered currently (at the time of writing this post) there are 51,000 players - it means 20% cheats. Every 5th person... Remarkable. If you think a 23 player GC server it mathematically means 4 cheaters when the server is full :D

I still follow some discussion about DWP on the "official" STEAM forum and came across with this post - which I really liked and puts the situation into a different perspective: ==================================== Posted by: vexd0001 Heres a little ditty some may enjoy WARNING: FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS NOSTALGIC AND NOT RECOMMENDED FOR YOUNGER READERS When I started the only scenarios were Hostage Rescue cs maps(The whole reason the game is called Counter-strike) The only weapons were: The Glock, USP, M3, M4a1, Mp5, TMP, AWP, G3-SG1 and PARA Now: In the hands of a good player ANY of these guns were dangerous, AWP doubly so due to its instant death ability and tripley(if that is a word)for the m4a1 due to its scope ability. Remember: These were the ONLY guns created for the game and the entire thing was a mod made by enthusiasts Eventually, due to feed back from users, more additions were created. An entirely new and brilliant scenario called "Bomb Defuse" was born with random members of the CT team equipped with defusal kits forcing them to work as a team to prevent their valuable team members demises with the hope they could get to the bomb in time. New weapons(P228 and Scout) were created to fill in idealogical 'gaps' in the weapons selection. All the while the game was slowly tweaked. Things that were terribly broken where slated for immediate attention. Things that could require a possible overhaul were looked into and finally totally new ideas were dealt with(flashbang+HE-Nades were the bomb, Literally!) Warp to now: 2006 - 7 years after the creation of CS what do we have? Instead of a mod driven by community interests and idea's we have a overbearing gaming house forcing its ideas on its users based on either no-input or sheer "WE CAN DO IT!!"-ability(look I dont know what the word is, but this one will suffice) combined with, in my opinion, a continually younger player-base who's inarticulate complaining causes many issues to become simply ignored. How does this all tie with the "you actually have to use different guns, not just the same ones over and over."? Typical CS gamer says: "Its MY gaming style which *I* created! Its the way *I* intend to play the game and you have NO right to take that away!" My view: "Its my game which I paid for! This isnt an MMO, 'Gaming environment subject to change' was NOT on the box when I bought it. You took the idea of 'Things that were terribly broken where slated for immediate attention. Things that could require a possible overhaul were looked into and finally totally new ideas were dealt with' and totally turned it around. NOW totally new ideas are dealt with FIRST and things which get broken get left til last. The way you play CS:S now is NOT the way the game is meant to be played, its the way the developers think you should be playing" How'd you like it if you bought a chocolate icecream online, went down to the shop and they had for you: Yoghurt. Wouldnt you say "But I paid for a chocolate icecream?" and if they said "Yes! But this yoghurt is so much better, the same price and NEW!!" Thanks to Tiwaking! ======================================

very valuable contribution to the subject...

I'm sorry to break this to you, but it's simply incorrect. The items that are bought the least are decreasing by the most. Consider the timegoggles. Intuitively, less people buy timegoggles than anything else. Even if you don't believe this claim, looking at the purchase volume of each item confirms that VALVe does believe it. Timegoggles are dropping at a higher rate than any other item. It probably is true that there is some correlation between the size of an item's slice of the "money pie" and its change, but it obviously isn't the linear correlation suggested by VALVe's "if 10% of the money is spent on the m4, the m4's price will change by 10%" analogy. -1 for believing what VALVe claims. You're perfectly right! First I just went by VALVE's description of the calculation but now I took all the actual data and tried to recalculate. The logic of which price gets increase vs. decrease is precise. I came to the same results. The amount if increase / decrease is hectic. I can recognize some correlation to the % share in the money pie but obviously there is a secret factor here. Increases are more or less OK but the decreases are in no relation at all. Even the order is different if I try to calculate which gets more and which less decrease. I suspect maybe the weapons itself might carry a "weight" for the calculation and also for calculating decreases there is a formula to increase the % rate as we are approaching the bottom of the list... Well even after this one thing is stands in my opinion - this system creates a huge penalty for popular items by quickly over-inflating them. This is what I see a great weakness. Anyways - thanks for the comments.

I would like to offer some of my observations for discussion. I might have overlooked something but I went back and tried to understand the price determination calculation to really see why it's inflating severly prices. If you look into it some important things can be recongised. My points: Point #1 - the over inflating DESERT - this is an easy catch and flaw in the logic. First of all the pistols are isolated from the other items and they represent a separate "pool" for the calculation. What it means is that the DESERT's price only depends on the other pistol purchases. If we recognize the fact that majority of the pistols are NOT purchased we see why DESERT is the number one. For each player who died the system presents a "gift" at the start of the next round: a new pistol as part of the default gear. You don't pay for this, and it does not get accounted for in the weapon volume. So the point is that if you decide to buy a pistol you always "upgrade" or "exchange" a free existing one - and obviously the DESERT is the most logical upgrade. It's price is going to go up and up since NOT BUYING a DESERT does not mean that you buy something else! it can easily mean that you keep the "free" gun the system gave you! This fact totally undermines the calculation logic and puts the DESERT on an ever increasing path. If you look at the graph on VALVE's pricing page you will see that even when the purchase volume dropped the price kept going up. - however this is also contributable to the next flaw I'm going to describe. The SUGGESTION here is that it would be good for the DESERT if it had been classified as a main weapon - by reclassifying into the other pool it would get a less shocking price... Point #2 - over inflating main weapons such as AK47 - the price determination calculation VALVE uses takes a very "wild" view of the "economy". It says that the absolut value of the price increase/decrease a gun is going to suffer is it's share from the total market volume. So if AK47 represents 10% of the total weapon sales it will get either 10% increase or decrease. So the more popular a weapon are the more it's price will fluctulate (higher % rate). Also the problem is that the calculation uses the $$$ value of the market. So expensive weapons even with less units "sold" will take bigger part of the "pie" hence bigger percentage for increase/decrease. To be honest I can not recognize any reasonable logic behind this. It is mathematically sound but it does not "honour" any kind of economical rule. The decision to increase or decrease the price is a bit better. It says the items representing the TOP half of the number of units sold will get an increase the rest will go down. The funny thing here is that the item dominating in volume ==> popular is going to keep getting more expensive unless a new popular weapon emerges. This is exactly why even when the AK47 and M4 volumes started to drop the price kept increasing ===> unless another TWO! weapons emerges that sells as good as the AK47/M4 those two will keep going up until they become totally unaffordable for anybody. (e.g. more than 16K). Altough this might happen it will take time. Also I don't know how VALVE handles the market calculation. They say each CS:S server supplies with the "weapon sales data" every 24 hour. The question is if they take the data from the servers where DWP is OFF? If yes to hit the roof with AK47/M4 pricing is going to be impossible as DWP OFF servers will make good sales of those items keeping it in the TOP half of the volume sales ==> causing the price increase not decrease. The more analysis I make on this calculation logic the more I realize that it is "head strong" so it puts the popular items onto a hyperinflation path. Which would be OK if the recovery could be equally easy. and here comes my Point #3 - so what does it take to get an over-inflated item on the normalization path. One condition to be met: the number of units sold should drop below 50% of the total weapon sales units. BUT! when this happens another thing happens too: this weapons $$$ sales value is going to drop obviously. And what do we know from the rulebook? That the % decrease will be calculated based on the item's relative share of the total $$$ market value. So WHEN it starts to decrease it will start decreasing SLOWLY. Much slower than it got inflated! My conclusion is that VALVE's system not only OVER INFLATES the items but even if the player community reacts "rationally" the price drop of this item will come very slowly!!!! It's like skyrocket the price with a jet engine and let it drop with a parachute. I do not find it reasonable at all. I might be able to re-consider DWP is VALVE would be open to find a calculation that creates more reasonable results.

It is off on 2/3 of the stock servers. Awesome. Thanks for the info. I did not check yesterday evening - went to the cinema instead to handle my desperate need to play CS:S with regular pricing.

May I suggest to return to the original subject of this topic? It appears to me that now it becomes more a "weapon performance analysis" topic. The major questions is still: Would GC management agree to switch the DWP function OFF on the GC servers? At least until VALVE fixes the pricing algorithm. As the voting stands now 69% voted for DWP to be OFF.

Finally the "penny dropped" for me and realized another thing which might reveal VALVE's original intention. Earlier a lot of people were hoping that the "free ammo" functions (so every weapon gets loaded with full ammo and magazines at the beginning of the round) is a "bug". It does not seem to be. What occured me today that it is not only that you get the free ammo but also the menu system got redesigned: 1. Keyboard shortcut for equipment has been moved to key "6" instead of key "8". Key "6" were the primary weapon bullet purchase, key "7" was the pistol one. So VALVE intentionally REMOVED them. 2. On screen buy menu got redesigned. The ammo buy boxes got removed. All of these makes me to think that the "bug" is not a bug - it's VALVE's decision to get rid of the ammo buying. Why? God knows. They don't even mention it in the release notes.... But after all this I don't expect that a patch is going to fix it in the near future... too bad.

I really enjoy the discussion around this topic, however I'm still suggesting to turn it off as well. I appreciate the GC management's approach being patient, however in this very topic we have a vote that says (when I type this) that 68% of voters want it OFF. With 2/3 qualified majority even constitution can be changed. If GC admins want to debate the vote results that's another topic... ...but until then isn't this community should serve what the majority would like?

Why is this a good thing? The thing is, it doesnt force anyone to do anything. There are a lot of ppl out there, including me, that will buy only an AK, M4, deagle, or awp regardless of the price. I would rather wait 3 rounds for an AK than buy a mac10. So IMO, this DWP thing is like a test-your-patience mod. Sounds like nobody learned to appreciate the mac-10. I have HS people (while aiming at them!) with the mac-10 from a considerable distance, although not nearly as far as with a carbine. Personally I don't like to be FORCED into these kind of things administratively. This is fun and entertainment. Besides nobody stops admins and map developers to create maps where weapons are limited to show players how to deal with them in a fun environment. Think about ALIVEMETAL. A lot of people love that map where only shotguns and pistols can be used. That is a good way. Or sniper maps. DWP's objective can't be that. There MUCH BETTER WAYS to achieve "weapon awareness". Also - some side-effects such as to get full ammo at the beginning of each round is alone a terrible idea - and I don't even know how it comes with DWP...?

stuttering.john, I'm not skilled enough in baseball to argue with your "contra-example". However one thing is for sure: I hear what you say. I might agree that it would be a good idea to revise weapon pricing - however I'm still not convinced that this is the way CS:S improvements should go. Bigger problem is that the DWP in its current format does not seem to be sustainable. VALVE should work to improve it if they want it to live long. I do not seem to get the point through that the biggest problem now is the "side-effect" of the algorithm VALVE has choosen: Dynamic Pricing seems to mean OVER INFLATING the system. My vote is still to pull the plug. Let VALVE fix this thing and when they come up with the improved version we should try again.

this was in beta testing for a while. not all variables are going to be found in beta testing....like $16k startmoney servers, or restricted servers, etc. valve continues to work on and improve the algorithm (see: m4 projection 24k, m4 projection now 6k). this update is not killing the game. i have personally witnessed people who go as far as saying "they like it." there are a majority that are against change, and any positive comment is quickly washed out/ignored by any "it sucks" comment. "it is plainly stupid." i guess this is one of those comments that gets the mob going, and washes out any positive comments about it. maybe we should just revert back to 1.6, call it a day, and stand our ground against change. Well I have a feeling that I'm being misunderstood. I think I gave a very strong argumentation what makes me say, that this new change is not good, therefore I don't like it. My conclusion could be a bit "harash" saying it's stupid but the bottom line is: this is how I feel. and more importantly I can explain WHY. I hear you saying that if we deny every change the game won't evolve. It is true. However not every change is a GOOD change - I hope you agree with this. The RADAR change for example was on the borderline. I did not like it but I gave time and managed to utilize it. Do I really like it? Not really. However I can live with it, since it makes the gameplay a bit different in a POSITIVE WAY. (the reason I don't like it because it discourages teamwork... radar gives out a lot, even if players in the team does not communicate - CS is about teams after all...) The weapon pricing thing has severe flaws as I pointed out, that results in unreasonable gameplay changes. My problem is that even if you can LIVE with this change it is not strengthening what should matter in CS:S. Let's take an example: I don't know if you're hockey or baseball fan so here is an option: if we would modify the game rules for hockey to say: let's take the stick away from the players and have them play "box match" and the winner can grab the stick - doing this after each game break. Or same with baseball BAT. It would still be hockey and baseball after all but the focus from the real game would have been shifting to something which is IRRELEVANT. (players beating each other for the stick/bat) Weapon pricing in CS:S is not a main factor - it's an enabler for the gameplay. Messing with it is not a good idea - my opinion. What I said to VALVE about changes is the following: "If you [VALVE] want to improve CS:S here are some ideas: 1. Improve VAC! Rampant cheating is commonplace. You can buy subscription for cheats that never gets detected! Figure out something there!! That would help! 2. Try to revitalize the VIP type maps. Or figure out some other "new" gamestyle scenario. 3. Make weapons and gameplay even more realistic. It is still possible that a player can bunny hop all way long in kevlar+helmet+grenades+sniper gun on him. There were some efforts in CS1.5 - not too successful but on the right track.... Work on this! 4. Create new maps 5. Fix engine bugs (shadows through walls, etc...) 6. Improve network connection ping/lag issues. And last: if you want to re-define what Counter Strike is it would be much more fair and better to issue it under a different title!!!" As I said earlier - if I want to play with economy simulation I'd rather fire up a game that has this as a MAJOR objective. You are right in saying resisting change is typical behavior stopping even positive changes live long. But we should not mistake this by resisting against something that is truly wrong. It might be difficult to decide, but just plainly say: "change is good" is a huge mistake!

I posted this in another thread - sorry for the repetition but I see arguments here that I would want to argue with - in my long way. So here it is: Counter Strike Dynamic Weapon Pricing A few thoughts. I have to note the following things: 1. I gave chance to this concept so I played the game with DWP feature enabled 2. I'm a massive "hater" of this function. Basically all the visible issues have been listed around this update including: - unbalancing the weapon strenght / price - radically forcing weapon buying habbits to change which is for competitive players terrible - bug that gives "free" ammo for everybody at the beginning of each round - bug that they replaced non configurable keyboard buy-menu shortcuts (equipment moved from 8 to 6) After all this is looks like a terrible mess, but what I want to write about is the fundamentals why I believe CONCEPTUALLY this is a terrible approach to this game. The dynamic weapon pricing tries to "imitate" some economy but a rather simple one. If I understood correctly the algorithm that VALVE programmed, it is basically saying that the more people buy a weapon the more it will cost. While this "rule" looks like a healthy one for the first view if you think about it is seriously sick. In a normal economy what determines price is NOT ONLY how much of the given product the consumers buy. It is seriously influenced by the demand-supply balance that is derived from a zillion factors such as production capacity, wealth of consumers, advertisement, etc. It is absolutely not true that if you buy MORE from something it will become more expensive. Basic economy principles might suggest: in a simplified model if demand is over supply it is RATIONAL to sell it for more. However. Real world works differently. Take an example - if for example pricing of DVD players had followed VALVE's rule implemented in CS:S, by today those prices would skyrocket. Instead where at the beginning, DVD players were expensive (in the time of VCRs few years ago) today you can buy one for a few bucks. And they sell a lot! Economy is more clever than watching out only for one rule. In CS:S the dynamic pricing is "stupid" as there are no real weapon manufacturers behind the price with their rational and cometitive thinking, not to talk about manufacturing capacity for example. The supply is plainly unlimited! AK47 and M4 prices are skyrocketing because that's the most commonly used weapon in CS:S. Their price in the original game were set reasonably. Now it's costing almost like an AWP. Desert eagle also. It was a strong weapon with 7 bullets in the magazine. A fair balance of power-price-usability. Now this logic is gone. There is very little motivation not to buy them since they're the most effective in the game and people will rather suffer a round more and buy one or pick up on the field than start thinking about what else to buy. If I rush I buy an MP5 or P90, if I snipe I buy desert + AWP, if I just want a normal round I buy AK or M4, or if I have less money I buy the "4-1" weapon. CS:S is not an economy game, why would I bother to deal with ever changing prices when it's not the objective of the game? In the real world I doubt that AK47 pricing would increase just because everybody is buying it. Manufacturing can reach optimal level making it CHEAPER! Manufacturer of AK47 competes with somebody for a sale pushing the price DOWN! for the customers. Where is this in CS:S? What is pushing the price down? If I don't buy it? In a real world a product not selling might get a lower price tag but also for a short period of time it might go up - since the manufacturer needs to maintain profit levels. Or the seller might run advertisement to push sales. Or explore new markets. Or alter the product to make it more appealing (Version 2,3 - IMPROVED, etc...) Parts supply might also generate pricig variations up and down. Also the CS:S implementation is sick as the INCOME part does not follow the inflation of the weapon pricing. Startmoney is still $800, you still get $300 for a kill, and the winning team's money reward is still the same. Just the weapons got more EXPENSIVE. It might have been a good idea to make sure the whole system does not OVER-INFLATE. If one weapon's price goes up by $600 another one should go down by $600 so the BALANCE of all price changes are always ZERO. By doing this it would be something more reasonable for simulation purposes - still not for gameplay of course. ----- In summary my opinion is that the major issue with this pricing implementation is not that VALVE actually raised the idea. The problem is that they don't understand what they are doing and the concept is full of flaws. VALVE should have talked to some guys who actually DO economy simulations. This update is killing the game, the concept, everything. It is plainly stupid. NOT because of the IDEA but because of the BRAINLESS IMPLEMENTATION.