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Halflife2.net were recently at the Eurogamer Expo where we had a long chat with Valve writer Chet Faliszek, best known as the project lead on the Left 4 Dead series and wingman to CS:GO project lead, Ido Magal. In the first part of our three part interview we chatted to Chet about the CSS & 1.6 split playerbase, whether CS can keep up with modern shooters and how PS3 Move players will keep up with PC K&B players.[br]
Chet tells us we can expect a higher skill ceiling than CSS but the rules of CS:GO will be what we all know and can relate to.
Check out the rest of the interview after the break with part 2 coming soon![br]
GLENN: What do you think it said about CS 1.6 alone that Valve never needed to do any updates for it, any new content, any community building, yet it persistently has those highest placed Steam stats? Why is that?[br]
CHET: Well, I mean, with CSS right next to it - it's seven years old and the other's twelve years old. It's because it's really competitive. There are a lot of shooters out there now, that they rev every year and that kind harms the community in a way, right? Because you want to get really good at your game, and - they don't change the rules of soccer very often, that's football for you guys, right? They've been around for a long time. There's a reason for that, which is is everyone wants to know what they're doing and playing against. Same with the maps: we have dust2, still coming out again, because there's map you can test yourself against.[br]A lot of shooters now have a lot of dressing around them - don't get me wrong, they're great, they're fun, I had fun playing Battlefield 3 and I can't wait for it to come out - but when it comes down to it there's going to be a lot of things around the game or around you playing that are gonna kill you. Here, it doesn't matter if you killed three guys ahead of the guy you’re about to fight; it’s you and him at that moment in time, and who’s the better player. And that’s what decides.[br]
SULK: Do you think that CS - or the rules of CS - are robust enough to last and still appeal without actually having any major changes to them?[br]
CHET: We think so, and one of the things we want to do with CS:GO is we want to make the best version of Counter-Strike. So we’re talking to the 1.6 pros, we’re talking to the CSS pros, and their ideas - I think with CSS we probably clamped the skill ceiling down too much. You have this problem that if you don’t have skill-based matchmaking, and you make things for the really good players, and let them be really good, that just means they’re gonna stomp the hell out of the really bad players, right? So these really bad players are gonna have no idea, wait, wait, there’s a - there’s a method to the spray that comes out of the gun? What the hell are you talking about? [br]
So, skill-based matchmaking lets us say hey, you know, that’s true and the really good players can know that, and when they’re competing against players of the same skill level, those are the choices that are going to make them win or lose. But the really bad players or the people starting out can get in and they’re just happy with the controller. So us having skill-based match-making allows us to bring back this high skill ceiling which will let those really good players demonstrate their abilities.[br]
SULK: Okay, you’re actually relying quite a lot on your matchmaking system in order to make sure you don’t have the accusations of what angry internet screamers would call ‘consolize it’ or ‘dumb it down’?. [br]
CHET: Yeah, yeah, you don’t dumb down anything in the game, you give places for the various skill levels to live.[br]
SULK: Hence the two game modes, I guess?[br]
CHET: Well - those in a way. Because even if you’re new to the game or a bad player, you still want to be able to play the competitive side. The social side really is - we see this a lot ourselves with Left 4 Dead in particular, where sometimes we’re playing serious, and sometimes we’re just talking about what’s going on in life, and what movies we’ve just seen, while we’re playing the game. We want to have those communities to be able to play the games in different ways.[br]
SULK: So there’s actually very little in the game that’s not optional which would have made the teenage wannabe pro gamer of my youth scream ‘I can’t believe they did that!’ [br]
CHET: Oh yeah, no, it was really important to us while making Counter-Strike G.O. to make sure we were making Counter-Strike - not reacting to something else that’s going on. The longevity and popularity of Counter-Strike exists because of those things in it which some people find hard or take a while to get into - and we just want to make sure those still exist, but at the same time open it up so that new players can get in.[br]
GLENN: Do you think it’s a problem that you’ve got this split - essentially I think it’s almost half and half of Counter-Strike: Source and CS 1.6 - that the players who play those games will be looking for probably different things? Are you trying to meeting them in the middle?[br]
CHET: Well, a couple of guys have been making posts about that, saying they would like to see the 1.6 community get bigger: it’s about prize pools, about competition, about the size of the environment, right? But it can only get so big because new players look at that game with its graphics and say ‘that kinda looks like shit.’ And fair enough, it’s a 12-year old game, It does. And then CSS players, they can do this thing where they’re working at a lower DX level, they’re doing all this cheap shit to get to be the highest in competition. So we wanna say with CS:GO, you can jump in, the DX level’s the same for everybody, and you’re not going to be running it crap to get a lesser effect on the flashbang or anything like that. [br]
So talking about those kind of ideas, they got excited about that. Because they just want to have one game to focus on, one game that they’re playing, it helps with the sponsors, it helps with the size of the pool of players. But we can’t force them to have it, right? What we can do is make the best game - react that we’ve maybe done things with CSS that hurt people coming over from 1.6. You know, there’s this weird mystique that people think -oh, people playing 1.6, they’ve got a crappy computer, they have a lousy internet connection? But no, there’s a ruleset there that they enjoy over CSS. We need to make sure that we’re making a game that people can get into, and if they move over or not, it’s up to them. We’ll just make the best possible game we can and then let them move over or not. But I think our eyes are a lot more open going into CS:GO than they may have been in CSS.[br]
GLENN: So we’ve just played CS:GO on PS3 with a controller but the PS3 will also support Move?[br]
CHET: Yeah, with the PS3 you can do Move, you can do mouse and keyboard, or you can do controller.[br]
GLENN: In testing how does a person with a mouse and keyboard fare against someone using Move?[br]
CHET: Well, so, there’s two modes you can play all the classic stuff with - the whole game essentially - competitive mode, and the kind of social mode that we’re playing here, where you have unlimited weapons, there’s no money involved, you don’t really buy anything, no friendly fire and all of that. If you want to play the competitive side, where it’s all basically skill, there’ll be skill-based matchmaking. So we don’t care about your input device, because you’ll end up playing with people of the same skill level.[br]
GLENN: Right, kind of makes it about how good you are with the input device rather than about the device itself. [br]
CHET: Exactly, exactly. That’s why when you see people on the PC forum complaining that we’re going to have PS3 players in the same pool maybe...well... [Evo: Only if they’re good!] Yeah! It’s only going to matter that either they’re bad, or the PS3 guys are really good. But in general we find the mouse and keyboard is the better input device and more predominantly PC people are good.[br]
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1hhV8YNo_qI?hd=1" frame allowfullscreen></iframe>[br]Sulk gets knifed, oh the humiliation!
[br]Part 2 coming soon.[br]Glenn & Laurence (Brindle Blog)
Was a really insightful interview to listen to at the expo 
