Anybody else playing the CS:GO beta?

[Ennui]

Just wondering if any of you fine folks have been accepted into the CS:GO beta yet. I know that some other staffers have keys but it seems like most don't play much. I play quite often and I'd love to have some folks to play with and chat and whatnot.

Pre-emptive response: No, I don't have any spare keys I can give you just now

Also if anybody who isn't in the beta has questions about CS:GO in its current state I'm happy to answer them, I've been in the beta since day 1 (late October) and have seen it grow and improve a lot in those months. I have about 50 hours played of it total.

 

[taviow]

I'm sure I would be, if I had a key.

Hint hint.

 

[eQUIV]

Nope, but I'd love to as soon as I can get my hands on a key.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Don't have a key, but would enjoy giving it a shot.

 

[sixteenth]

Totally interested, but, sadly, I'm in the same boat as everyone else in this thread.

 

[ktimekiller]

For those playing.

Is it actually simlar to 1.6 as promissed? or is it simlar trash to what CSS turned out to be

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

For those playing.

Is it actually simlar to 1.6 as promissed? or is it simlar trash to what CSS turned out to be

What was wrong with CSS anyway? Granted I never played at a serious level but it seemed better to me.

 

[Stigmata]

CSS, to me, felt really floaty and slidey compared and had a frustrating implementation of physics. Like it was "CS, on the Source engine!" when it should have been "CS, directly improved". But I also never played professionally so someone else is probably better qualified to be describing these things.

 

[Edeslash]

Guaranteed replies!

btw: need a key

 

[Dr.IndianaJones]

I'm in it.

If anyone else has it, let me know so we can play. The only thing I hate is that none of my friend's have it.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

No, but I check my email entirely too much just to see if I've received a key! I used to play semi-pro CS 1.x and have a lot of CSS hours as well.

I'd put an emoticon after that sentence, but the new ones make me want to throw up.

Haha, oh dear. this article appears on Steam's very own news feed for CS/CSS. Something tells me even with the delay they'll have a very hard time swaying 1.6 players.

Pro Counter-Strike player slams CS:GO: “It’s not fun. It’s a terrible game right now.”

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

CS 1.6 die-hards probably won't change anyway. They didn't ask for a new game all this time and that's the real problem. They bought their tickets; I say let 'em crash!

I hope it will be successful, but with the way the game currently is and how I believe it will end up without listening to us

At this point I felt the urge to join Valve in not listening to him

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Yeah, some of them seem like rightful shitheads. But to them, it's their well being--and I don't envy that at all.

 

[Ennui]

It's not like 1.6 or Source, it's something entirely different - kind of like they started in the middle ground between the two and then set off in an entirely new perpendicular direction. I like it better than CSS, I'll say that up front. It has a similar recoil pattern to both previous titles (first few shots are accurate with vertical recoil, after that horizontal spread kicks in to form a sort of T shape) and movement already feels better than Source and is constantly being improved.

I'm cautiously optimistic that it will ultimately succeed as a esports title - Valve has been listening to feedback and updating accordingly like I've never seen before from them and I think they'll listen to the competitive community and make it a viable competitive replacement for 1.6 (like Source never was), especially now that 1.6 is finally, truly, and undeniably dying, although its last legs have still been impressive with something like 200k simultaneous viewers watching the 1.6 IEM finals a few weeks ago. Some 1.6 diehards will never be satisfied by anything that isn't simply a direct copy of 1.6, but I think others can be brought over. Pros like the guy in the PC Gamer article are worth listening to even if their attitude or presentation can come across as snobby, pessimistic or entitled because they do understand what CS:GO needs to be in order to rekindle the kind of competitive scene 1.6 had.

I might be overly optimistic purely because I desperately want CS:GO to reignite FPS esports... center stage has long since shifted to Starcraft and PvP games like LoL in the word of esports and the only shooters that get much coverage are Halo and Call of Duty, both of which are weak and pathetic competitive games compared to the titan CS was throughout the past decade. Only Quake can really hold a candle to CS's crown.

/rant anyway here are a few videos I've recorded recently in the CS:GO beta. Not intended to be skill vids or anything just want to show you guys who aren't in the beta yet what it's like:

20 minutes on Dust2:

15 minutes on Train:

 

[Gman]

How do you even get a key?

Because i would not mind playing.

 

[Simen]

How do you even get a key?

Because i would not mind playing.

take valves survey and you might get lucky or you have to get it from competitions, giveaways etc. Been trying to get a key for 3 months and no luck yet :/

 

[Xewt]

Hey. New to this forum. Long time looker, first time poster (I'll take my answer off the air).

I have about 26 hours on the beta thus far and I'm having a blast. Demolition is my go-to mode when I'm looking for fast-paced action and short round times. Competitive is a bit frustrating for me because the skill level of some of these players is daunting, and some of these same players' attitude are F****** annoying.

SteamID: Xewt

 

[Unfocused]

Was there a new batch of keys released or something? I just got a message on Steam saying that I received an additional CS:GO key to give away, which surprised me, because I didn't get any prior info that I've been given beta access. I checked my library and there it was, ready to download, so I'm guessing I got lucky?

For some reason though, that additional key doesn't show up in my gifts list.

 

[Stigmata]

Have you tried turning it off and on?

I've been trying to find some community servers with more than 10 playerslots for CT and T, but to no avail. Anyone else?

 

[Shamrock]

I haven't found any servers more than 10 players. I've been having a good time that's for sure. I haven't noticed MUCH difference in the feel of this game over CSS and 1.6 then again I've only played about 3 hours worth. I'll load it up now and see what I feel.

Overall, I'm definitely happy with the direction Valve is taking this game, and hopefully, they'll provide more content for it in terms of official CS maps as well as community maps they deem official. I'm not saying they need to go crazy and allow everything TF2 does, but just to that extent where you do get new maps every couple of months. I mean that's all I really can ask for. I have a problem when a map isn't official, I don't want to touch it.

Anyway, I'm going to load it up now if anyone wants to join.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Matchmaking standards are pretty weak right now, despite being fun. Server vars can fix that, but here's the gist of my crits:

A bit of interface work, additional features to set itself apart from a CS-like shooter with game modes already freely available as server mods in previous CS games and a revamp of every game mod barring Competitive.

I love the pacing, most of the maps and most of the new gun additions. I dislike that we lost the MP5 Navy in favor of the flimsy stupid M7. It's a good gun in some situations, but they cannot take out THE iconic CS gun. They better add it. Decisions like switching to an M4A4 are odd, the game seems to take place at the same time, with the same special forces. That model also ****ing blows in terms of positioning.

The models are often laughably bad. Most notably the sniper rifles. Sound needs all kinds of work and we need those CT silencers.

Hit detection and boxes are still wonky, but so far, Source itself hasn't found a way to beat out its predecessor in this department. It's just clunky sometimes. Perhaps they can tune it as well as they have for DotA 2 at least.

Aresenal is dumb and boring. Their gun game also lacks punch--if they want an arcade style game mode with an emphasis on a single winner, they need to at least add the sound elements and more UI feedback, and offer to switch around weapon order.

Casual should not have a different style pistol round. Deagle starts are definitively CS and it's a system that works, and is fun. Don't pigeon hole us into the highly situational and poorly tuned Tec.

Maps are getting better, but Aztec still feels inconsistent aesthetically. Then again, I think Aztec has been a shit map since 1.4--so I avoid it.

Quick switch is a tiny big buggered, I'd like them to return it to 1.6 style. I'd also like to see better pistol, shotgun, and SMG models. Scoping is mostly tasteful, but they still haven't fully worked out making the hitscan work properly after you full stop. There's a delay that you can notice, even at low latency.


Spread needs tweaking, it will need tweaking throughout beta, and after beta. Bullet randomization and grouping needs to be at least CS 1.6 level--better preferably. The new guns are just stupidly random sometimes.

Flash nades are far too powerful right now, as is smoke density. HE nade buff is appropriately hefty but I dislike the heavy modifier based on armor. CS wasn't intended for realism and it creates balance issues.

I'm not a fan of wall-humping (this is finding places in material that wouldn't otherwise be penetrable, but is, sometimes within the same piece of terrain) I often debate if they should remove this from CS if it wants to get globally more competitive.

You can still bhop and two hop, that's fine where it is--I hope they don't try too hard to fix it. Strafe seems OK for now, I'd like it to be sped up. Very incrementally. ARs are defined by stand strafe, so it's a touchy thing. It'll never be perfect.

Also to nitpick, HPE should take note:
**** the mix of trying to add street and contemporary weapons properly--they have to stop arbitrarily renaming guns and remodeling them. They were fine--they represent CS. The prior versions of CS were fine, they shouldn't be trying to modernize it. If that isn't the intent, I'll just say they should leave the existing guns alone and not add fancy new HK shit. It's like they're getting paid for it. Irks me. The exception here is the way the pump and its CT equivalent are tuned. Though they need better models.

The game is great, but it needs a whole lot of work to be the next big Counter-Strike, let alone a competitive gaming success. I speak only having played semi-competitive CAL-I shit, so I'm not a very good player in clan servers and I'm not huge on public ones. But then again half the time I'm playing CS ****ed up and doing silly shit and not trying.

tl:dr The game could go two ways: be the next CZ and fall into irrelevance OR put enough in feature wise to be a game that, even if competitive gamers ignore it, will be popular and take a large portion of CSS players.

I'm starting to sincerely doubt that it can be as competitive as 1.6 and garner attention from non-Valve sponsored e-sports orgs (besides ESEA, which I despise, and requires paypal), but I've been pleasantly surprised by Valve before. Only time will tell.

 

[Stigmata]

CS GO update just released. Can you guess which part I'm happiest about?

Gameplay:
• Updated weapons based on performance metrics:
- Slightly increased the damage for the fiveseven to keep it on par with other pistols.
- Lowered the max width of the recoil patterns for the MG's to make them better for their price point.
- Lowered the spread on the Negev to be more in line with the m249.
• Improvements have been made to burst fire and tapping.
• Added player spawns to all maps to support up to 30 players.
• Player spawns are now randomly selected from a prioritized list of spawn locations in order to better support more players per map.
• Adjusted bot behavior to fix the “antline” looking behavior.
• Added support for server operators to specify tick rate with the –tickrate parameter.
• Physics simulation tick rate now set to be the same as the game tick interval.
• Bullet tracers have had improvements made to speed, visual effect, and frequency.
• Chickens added to Inferno

UI
• The Server Browser sorts Favorites and Lan tabs by ping rather than Tags.
• The radar will no longer display an ‘X’ for dying players when they are not within sight of the player or player’s teammate.
• Weapons with a burst mode will now show which state the gun is in on the ammo panel.
• Input device is now locked to whatever device launched the game session.
• Updated the Kevlar and Kevlar + Helmet buy menu images.
• Updated the Domination icons.

Audio
• Footsteps update position more often by shifting position determination to client side entity tracking.
• Tuned ambient sounds in most maps

Bug Fixes
• Fixed a bug with individual pistol round-based achievements. They can only be earned in Classic game mode now.
• Fix for changing video settings while in game sometimes causing a deadlock.
• Added a popup message triggered when a player attempts to initiate a vote on a server with voting disable.
• Fixed bug where player's nav area would be reported as being on the floor below them causing the radar location to be displayed incorrectly.
• Fixed several UI related crash issues.
• Third party map and _SE map names no longer display in the scoreboard with the #SFUI_MAP_ localization token.

If you guessed "Chickens added to Inferno", you win!

 

[Unfocused]

Now that I think of it, there used to be chickens on Italy in CS:S - I think they removed them later for some reason...

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

If they removed the chickens from CS:GO I think I'm out. Chickens in Italy define CS. ****

 

[kineaesth]

There are chickens

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Yay, praise be to the chickens. I thought they removed them, haven't played in a while.

I saw them in Italy and they explode into feathers, but I thought that was no more. It's a cute little bit of flair in a game that, at times, takes itself way too seriously.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I got it.. I'm enjoying it so far! I'll probably buy it. Stays fairly counter-strikeish, I guess.

Also feels weird to be able to read the graffiti and stuff on the wall in Dust. It's not Pashto, but some of the letters are the same!

 

[william doddson]

I got it.. I'm enjoying it so far! I'll probably buy it. Stays fairly counter-strikeish, I guess.

Also feels weird to be able to read the graffiti and stuff on the wall in Dust. It's not Pashto, but some of the letters are the same!

 

[william doddson]

My friend is playing cs go.. He won his beta key. They do giveaways on facebook. I didn't win one but i play on my friends at his house the game is very good..