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I wrote this up to post on STEAM - what do you think? ---------------------------------- 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.

Well I hope it can be resolved soon. It appears to me that it would be much better OFF on noscope. Consider this - if somebody plays competitively CS:S the dynamic pricing is a terrible penalty to the buying habbits... Personally I would not want to go near that but I can't do it alone - it's up to the server operators to decide.

I wonder what would it take to switch this server to have dynamic weapon pricing OFF. It the general topic the voting goes 62% against it in general - far more than simple majority. I can't enjoy the game anymore with this eBAY addon. The weapon pricing goes totally irrealistic and the whole game is just ruined big time for me. What is the rational behind keeping this server with dynamic pricing active? Can somebody please explain? thx

Well I just saw it today... did not find this topic first so ended up opening another one... anyways... I agree with those who does not really like this feature. 1. the variable pricing bends the game in a way Counter Strike should not go. This is a realtively "realistic" shooter where the weapons should not be the main focus of the game. CS went through a long evolution (even before source) and the weapon pricing / strenght / usability reached a very nice balance. Also good players buy cleverly depending on the needs for the round, etc... This game is not eBay with the "feature product of the week". If I want simulated economy I go and play with a game that is developed for that... 2. With most of you I hope that it is only a bug that all weapons come with full load of ammo at the beginning of the round. This is stupid. It should never happen. Buying ammo should be the player's decision. 3. I also got very confused with the modified keyboard layout. Buy menu for equipment is no longer on the B-8-... path, but on B-6-... I always buy using shortcuts and now I'm totally cut out. I used to be able to finish buying in 1-2 seconds, now it's all gone wrong... I'm very sad that VALVE hasn't been able to recognize the spirit and "heart" of this game and took a wrong path in improving it. There could be several ways to make the game better - in my opinion this update was not one of them. I was also a serious advocater who said CS:Source should take the place of CS1.6 in league play. However if VALVE continues to do what they do here with the CS:Source I'll have to revert back to 1.6 in order to enjoy playing it - even with the less appealing graphic... For the vote, I mostly play on the Scopeless MidWest Mayhem. I'd like that server to run this new feature turned OFF.

Thanks! This helps a lot. So you're with NFO now I did not know that. I'll keep trying as I said and you're right in saying that should this be a server side issue most probably every "client" would feel it. I tend to agree that client side setup is a huge contributor to issues, however what makes me crazy that I have been trying a lot of things on my side - without tangible effects... I did two passes to see if there is any significant anomaly... but nothing special. 1st PASS: Tracing route to c-216-52-143-40.internap-chicago-2.nuclearfallout.net [216.52.143.40] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms 192.168.0.1 2 11 ms * 12 ms gw03.ym.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.90.17] 3 9 ms 10 ms 12 ms gw01.ym.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.93.5] 4 12 ms 10 ms 9 ms gw02.ym.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.80.210] 5 50 ms 56 ms 53 ms igw01.chfdrl.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.81.1] 6 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms p10-0.core01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.10.33] 7 39 ms 39 ms 38 ms te3-1.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.206] 8 39 ms 37 ms 37 ms v3488.mpd01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.26] 9 37 ms 35 ms 36 ms savvis.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.10.246] 10 43 ms 40 ms 37 ms bpr1-ae2.ChicagoEquinix.savvis.net [208.175.9.134] 11 36 ms 36 ms 37 ms dcr2-so-4-3-0.Chicago.savvis.net [208.175.10.237] 12 36 ms 38 ms 36 ms acr2-so-0-0-0.chicago.savvis.net [208.172.3.82] 13 37 ms 36 ms 36 ms 208.172.10.202 14 44 ms 45 ms 44 ms border10.ge2-0-bbnet1.chi.pnap.net [216.52.128.14] 15 46 ms 35 ms 36 ms c-216-52-143-40.internap-chicago-2.nuclearfallout.net [216.52.143.40] Trace complete. 2nd PASS: Tracing route to c-216-52-143-40.internap-chicago-2.nuclearfallout.net [216.52.143.40]over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 11 ms 9 ms 11 ms 192.168.0.1 2 * 11 ms 9 ms gw03.ym.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.90.17] 3 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms gw01.ym.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.93.5] 4 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms gw02.ym.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.80.210] 5 52 ms 51 ms 52 ms igw01.chfdrl.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.81.1] 6 38 ms 37 ms 38 ms p10-0.core01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.10.33] 7 38 ms 37 ms 37 ms te3-1.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.206] 8 * 42 ms 37 ms v3488.mpd01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.26] 9 37 ms 35 ms 36 ms savvis.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.10.246] 10 * * 37 ms bpr1-ae2.ChicagoEquinix.savvis.net [208.175.9.134] 11 36 ms 35 ms 36 ms dcr2-so-4-3-0.Chicago.savvis.net [208.175.10.237] 12 36 ms 37 ms 37 ms acr2-so-0-0-0.chicago.savvis.net [208.172.3.82] 13 37 ms 37 ms 36 ms 208.172.10.202 14 36 ms 37 ms 36 ms border10.ge2-0-bbnet1.chi.pnap.net [216.52.128.14] 15 36 ms 36 ms 36 ms c-216-52-143-40.internap-chicago-2.nuclearfallout.net [216.52.143.40] Trace complete.

To be honest I was expecting some more factual support on this. Perhaps I put up my questions at the wrong place? Maybe I'll open a topic in the "trouble tickets" section. My problem is that even if I perfectly understand the concepts of choke/loss and stuff I still have issues. (I copied the best explanation on these matters below if somebody is interested.) The issue is that even if it is a coincidence in my case the "choke" is started to get high around the time when GC switched IPs for the servers - it might be a coincidence but new IP could mean a lot of things including a new network provider from the GC side, different machine, different server configuration, etc. Trying to set-up the client side correctly not only depends on the network provider of the client but some server side factors too... right? Like take these SERVER SIDE variables that might contribute to the client's performance: sv_minrate <0-25000> Min bandwidth rate allowed on server. Default: 0 (unlimited) sv_maxrate <0-25000> Max bandwidth rate allowed on server. Default: 0 (unlimited) decalfrequency Amount of time in seconds a player can spray their decal. Default: 10 sv_maxupdaterate Maximum updates per second that the server will allow. Default: 60 sv_minupdaterate Minimum updates per second that the server will allow. Default: 10 Anyways. I'm going to keep adjusting my client side CVARS, however I would appreciate some input as if on the server side everything is the same as it was [before the IP change for example]. --------- Here is the client side "best" guideline for CVARS I found. it is from www.nuclearfallout.net I'm trying to follow these recommendations, but yet on GC servers (Chicago noscope mainly) I have trouble almost permanently now... Q: How can I optimize my client settings (cvars) so gameplay is as smooth as possible? A: There are three main settings to look at on the client-side. These are rate, cl_updaterate, and cl_cmdrate. rate determines the speed, in bytes per second, that your client allows itself and the server to interact at. This setting is needed because your client has no idea how fast your connection is, and it doesn't know how to find out. The rate setting tells it the maximum speed at which it can transfer data. If it is set too high, your connection may not be able to handle it, and you will get packetloss; if it is set too low, choke and latency will increase, possibly making your game stutter or lag. Half-life is generally able to compensate for choke fairly well, as long as there is not much of it; however, when choke gets too high (over 100), it has to start dropping packets (and we all know how bad packetloss is!). I recommend a rate of 8000 or 10000, since most broadband connections can easily handle it (try 10000 first). cl_updaterate determines how many updates per second the client will accept when it is interacting with the server. A higher value can make gameplay more smooth, although it often makes your ping appear higher due to the added latencies on both ends from extra calculations involved. I recommend a cl_updaterate of 40, which I have found balances ping and smoothness fairly well. Feel free to try higher and lower values. A value too high can cause choke if your machine or your connection can't handle all the packets; a high value can also make your ping look much higher than it should be. Some people blindly set this variable to 101 -- that would be an example of a too-high value. cl_cmdrate determines how many commands your client sends to the server per second (such as moving, turning, jumping). I usually recommend that users set their cl_cmdrate cvar to the same value as cl_updaterate, because they are so similar. Too-high or too-low values (like 101) may lead to the infamous "shots not registering" problem and high values can also cause high in-game pings.

I would want to join this choke discussion. I also seem to have choke quite frequently on this server. I tried to edit the CVARS and RATE settings but regardless of what I do the choke is still there. The strange thing is that I never had this problem in the past only since the IPs for the servers changed this summer. I'm saying that there is a direct relationship - just guessing. Correct me if I'm wrong but the CHOKE is more of a symptom of a server side problem. (I do not have LOSS at all). Isn't CHOKE when the server is not able to handle the volume of data the clients want to process OR server is not able to service the clients at an appropriate speed? Having 5 choke is not an issue but for me it goes up to the 30-40-50 range especially when the "situation" in the game gets complicated (e.g. lots of players, lots of shooting at the same time etc..) It is quite evident that when choke is high shot registration is not that good. I try to balance it out by buying P90 for example that has a lots of bullets to compensate this but I would still appreciate some help to fix it... any idea? thx

I was very far away when it happened back in Hungary Europe at work. When I checked the regular news site I read I thought it has been hacked when the front page showed the towers in flames (after the first hit). I quickly had to realize that it's not a joke and things are getting even more serious. All the colleagues gathered around a quickly set-up television to watch the broadcast. Most of us knew that we have a sister company in the US and they operate stores in the towers. The company management later announced that no company personnel has been killed since we were not open at that time. As many of you after that we mostly just watched the TV - mostly CNN and as the events got unfolded everybody got really nervous and desperate. Back at home that evening I went into my archives and dug out the photo where I pictured myself front of the towers back in 1996 when I had a vacation there. I have never thought before that day that it will become history so soon... One of the local internet news sites had a correspondent from New York who took his bicycle and went down to the towers reporting events and impressions every 10 minutes... Only years after [in 2003] when I arrived to North America joining the company [who operates our stores in New York] learned the stories of the people here... ...the post 9/11 recession hit this company big time, however everybody was proud of the fact that the firm did not let anybody go [loose job] because of that. One of the most touching reports I read about the event was talking about the "last calls" from the people got stuck in the towers and the hijacked airplanes. It was said that despite the terrorism and anger all was about "love", "friendship" and "remember me". No hate and demanding revenge. Worth to think about.

This is not going to be nice and I apologize in advance for the offending presumption: How do we guarantee the authenticity of such a record? What if two persons did it by switching from time to time? sorry again to raise this... ...probably I'm just too jealous for his record :D

I had a great time until I was able to stay yesterday. Unfortunately my microphone (or soundcard) had some issues so I could not participate on the TS discussion. I'll have it fixed for the tonight's round for sure Looking forward to it 10pmEST Great idea. PS I even brought the "carrots" required but I don't think a lot of participants managed to notice it behhh

could I just get some info about the TS server / channel we will be using?

Looks like there is a lot of open slots still... Can't we make this Featured Topic of the week to get more attention?

Can you please put me up for the Fri (May 26) @ 10:00 est World Domination event as well? Thanks

This is awesome. Count me in please at least once. I can be available any day announced.

How about now? MCC is winding down... It looks like a great idea... never tried it but want to

Two notes: A) The play style on the servers strongly different depending on which part of the day you play. The most enjoyable for me obviously the evening peak hours when communication and teamwork is the best, plus most of the time the balance between the two sides are OK (skill). This is true for most of the servers (East/Mid I usually play). After 1-2am however things gets changed dramatically. Teams getting strongly unbalanced and lots of players showing up with extreme shooting/aiming skills. Even if I would want to play longer I typically give up as it's not fun anymore at all... It really feels like "demons from hell gets unleashed" Empty servers - well this is never good. I don't really know if it is possible but maybe you could think about more load balancing between the servers. As of now the servers are typically has 25 slots... If you could totally mirror them and reduce the slots maybe even the gameplay could improve as round times would go down... (less players). Just an idea...

First of all thanks for the opportunity for the organizers. They made an excellent job putting this event series together. Everything from prep through forums, servers, scoring and follow-up was great. I was looking forward to this since it got announced as I haven't had the opportunity to be part of this in the past. (newcomer) Although the event as a whole worked really well, from my personal perspective the whole event was a struggle. My team had really great players and skills but somehow it was always difficult to get the 5 together when it was needed. Long story but it does not really matter now. As it was pointed out in the first post individuals decided to join the event have responsibilites. What I would like to highlight is the need for timely communication. It is not a problem if somebody has an issue and can't come when was agreed. The problem is if they don't communicate and let others know about it. In the today's world I can hardly believe that people can not get access to e-mail or a phone during any day... All in all I'm looking forward to similar events in the future, however advise the organizers to make the sign-up a bit more "certified" so whoever signs up understands that it's serious...

To "provoke" some debate I made some calculations and assumptions for the finals based on the scores so far. My opinion is that based on the patters after 4 rounds it is quite predictable - unless some magic or big surprise takes place. My analysis is limited to the HEROs, maybe somebody will do the other part as well.... So if I add up the results for week 4 the scores looks like the following: Punisher 8 Hulk 6 Spawn 4 Superman 4 Wolverine 2 Blade 0 The 5th round guestimates Hulk vs. Blade ==> Hulk gets the 2 points Punisher vs. Spawn ==> I would like to see my team beating them of course but chances are we won't Wolverine vs. Superman ==> Superman gets the 2 points Result: Punisher 10 Hulk 8 Superman 6 Spawn 4 Wolverine 2 Blade 0 Typically at this point in time comes the "mathematical" calculation of chances in big leagues So IF! Blade would beat Hulk and us (Spawn) beat Punisher depending on the rounds count win/lost we could make it to the final...? at least not impossible...

Yes it was a great match. Despite the fact that we lost I enjoyed it quite much. Just like many others never played this map competitively so the T/CT balancing came as a surprise. Probably over time T strats can grow stronger. I also liked the delayed T strats against us being CT, but in many rounds the result was hectic as we managed to push back the first wave of rush... I regret our decision for the last 2 rounds that I switched with Mr Cool covering site A. I thought as he being a more skilled shooter the team would benefit from sparing him when the rush comes... Apparently Ts figured out a strong long-A rush method for the final rounds and that together with this change costed us the match probably...

I'm not quite sure that you're responding to the original question. Mentioning the play-offs threws the answer to a different track. My original understanding was that the original question was about one particular match and if it is allowed to change players during halftime (e.g. the 5 starting the match from one team can be revised and new players added) In this sense my understanding of the GC directions was that if let's say there is a team where all 7 (seven) players show up for match it should be granted that every one of them can participate in the match. What it means is that when half time comes two of the starting 5 leaves and the two player hasn't played joins and completese the match... From your answer it looks that you assume substitutions related to the original composition of the teams... e.g. the 7 players assigned can be revised...? not sure but definately not clear... could you please clarify?

Well, point is taken. If the GC management does not believe in the mods balancing skill that's fine too. For me it's more a personal "morality" issue as somebody good probably would have been able to keep fragging on the other side as well. Usually I just shake my head and switch server when these kind of things happen but this time I noticed that there is no greater than 1 KD ratio on the "T" side at all which tells a lot. Also a screenshot does not tell the story, however I was there and basically Ts were indeed weak but there was no "idiotism" around. When SIM started to clear the corridors with 3-4 headshots within 5-10 sec everything got decided Anyways... old story I get it. No problem. soldier proceeds.

I wanted to make a mental and physical note to these kind of situations. I started a so called "skill stacking" thread somewhere but it was not related to the NOSCOPE server. The important thing is that I would not make a big deal of it if it had been a single case. Unfortunately these kind of situations are getting (or always were) more frequent. My question is that if this belongs to the "fun" feeling or is there any administrative way to regulate situations with skill stacked teams? I know for fact that some admin-mods offer re-grouping of players based on KD ratio monitoring. This would ensure a bit more "fair" teams. Having unbalanced teams are not uncommon in PUB, however GC enforces teamwork, and also the competition is always there due to the "win 10 round and the map changes" challenge. In such a situation being beaten over 6-7 times in a row is quite flustrating. To the credit of some players I have to admit that from time-to-time there are players with high skills who are willing to switch sides and balance the teams... Unfortunately they are the minority...

Spawn is supposedly us...but we changed to apocalypse So no more spawn....APOCALYPSE FTW! Our name is all messed up but zerodamage can't do anything. Sometimes we show up as "spawn", sometimes "apocalypse". Nobody bothered to explain how this has happened the first place. I guess we have to live with this skizofren duality...

Thanks. It is OK with me now. I like the direction that every player who shows up for match will be able to play at least 15 rounds... other than that: the no STEAM_ID decision assumes a great amount of trust but be it

Dear Organizers, Maybe you can slap me in my face as what I'm asking for is written up in some posts... However. I would like to see and "official" collection of all rules related to this tournament including: - playing teams - who is a sub? in a team - how many rounds, winning criterias - do we use a "CAL" config or something different? Also I would like to see some transparency and clarity on the team members: e.g. request the SteamIDs to make sure every nick has the same person behind it for the entire tournament and stuff like that... I hope what I ask is not too much... Thx...