2 hours to install & play on 56k Modem

[Jonny211]

Hi all,

Good game once you get it going (apart from the stuttering) BUT it took 2 hours from popping the DVD in to actually being able to play the game!

Unfortunately I'm back on 56k modem after moving house and the various steam updates, creating an account (several attempts) etc etc takes ages.... why?!?

Also I can't play in offline mode so out comes the modem cable again! I presume every time I go online steam will check for updates and download them, probably taking another few hours. Hmmm... Is this all because Valve got their game posted on a warez site before it was released and now they have a Big Brother mentality on who plays their games and when?

 

[meganox]

didn't take much less than that for me on 512Mb...

any normal game you install off the cd you could play right away, but it would probably be buggy and so you'd still have to download patches at some point. i can't count the posts i've read by idiots complaining about a buggy game who've never even heard the word patch. so it might be annoying that steam doesn't give you much control over when patches are delivered, but at least everybody's playing with the latest version of the game (very important in multiplayer games). the reason the downloads take so long is because of the quality of the game -- it's just a huge game!

as for the big brother thing, i don't think steam really care who's playing where and when, they just care about getting ripped off, and in my opinion steam is the best anti-piracy measure i've seen. you can play in offline mode, if you pull the modem out the wall and that doesn't work (you just get a message saying "updating steam" for ages), try disabling your dialup connection in the network connections folder, that's what i have to do with my lan connection (blocking with my firewall dowsn't work, you have to make steam think there's no connection at all)

also, offline mode will not work unless you have 'don't store account information on this computer' UNCHECKED and 'remember my password' CHECKED when you login (but you knew this) and the applications must be fully up to date. you can prevent applications from updating by right-clicking in 'play games' and choosing properties, but be aware that when you play a game this will be reset to automatic

i know it's hard for you stuck with 56k, i was for a long time too, but you can't expect companies to wait for the few at the expense of the many. it does say that an internet connection is required to run half-life, it's my opinion that they should've specified ISDN as the minimum

 

[Kyorisu]

56k is fine for me.

I would have thought though that Valve could have made a product that times out properly.

Steam will allways thinks theres an active internet connection when you have an active Lan connection. Lan can be confused as a permanent net connection, but why does it take 5 minutes for steam to realize it can't access the WWW through it.

Sheesh I have to disable and re-enable my Lan everytime I want to play offline.

 

[Korgoth]

it took me somewhere around 8 hours before I could even see the loading screen when i bought it.

 

[meganox]

maybe steam thinks 5 minutes is how long it's going to take to get a response when the servers are taking a hammering?

 

[Jonny211]

... I'll have to check those account info and password boxes again... again.

 

[meganox]

IIRC, when i used to disable my dial-up connection in network connections, i had to restart to get it back, which is a pain in the ass. you could try checking the 'never dial a connection' box in internet settings?

 

[twinscythe]

Hmm. Why are you complaining that install takes time? It isn't like the end of the world and/or your rights were violated. Yes, 2 hours isn't 2 minutes, but when you install something, you don't need to do it again everytime you play. It feels as if you're trying to look for things to complain about.

 

[Varsity]

What exact message do you get when you try offline mode?