J
johnbames
Guest
Hi, here is a copy of a thread I posted over at the Steampowered Forums. It was not meant to be offensive but to open a real issue. Guess they didn't like it as it was removed after 10 minutes by a moderator and I am now completely banned from Steampowered forums ! Cannot even read them :cheese:
It seems Valve is very open to the comments of their customers...
Here it is (hopefully I typed it in Notepad and did not close it yet):
"Hello,
Wanted to share my experience with you, as it raised some issues that, in my opinion, should be answered by Valve.
I installed HL2 2 days ago, with a lot of problems and frustration during install that I will not detail here because there are already so many posts abouts all this.
After a few hours of play of the excellent game HL2, I was still marginally pissed off about Steam by my 'bad install frustration', so I decided that my life would certainly be happier without Steam on my machine. I dug up an (unofficial) patch allowing to start HL2 without Steam. In fact, this patch was a loader that would execute the GCF files bypassing Steam in the process.
Now, what was my my surprise when I discovered that the game loaded MUCH FASTER this way and that the in game STUTTERING WAS GONE !
To fix the ideas, here are some benchmarks on my 3.2GHZ Intel, 1GB RAM. Each was chronometered after a cold Win XP start followed by a 5 min wait (to ensure that WinXP had really finished scraping the HD). Steam was in offline mode.
*) Start the game (from clicking on the launch button to the main menu) :
- Through Steam : 1 min 52 sec
- without Steam : 53 sec
and that includes a 5sec pause for the Valve animation.
*) Start a new game (from the menu to appearance of the "half-life²" logo) :
- With Steam : 2 min 25 sec
- Without Steam : 1 min 35 sec
*) Exiting the game (from the "half-life²" logo to the desktop, waiting for complete redraw and stop of heavy HD activity (which happen at the same time BTW)) :
- With Steam : 51 sec
- Without Steam : 7 sec
This is very consistent, and the update of today changed nothing at all...
In game Stuttering also disappeared, as saving hardly stops the game for a fraction of a second, and quickloading in the same level is done in under 3 sec (about 20 before). This I like very much, as i like to test funny approaches to some situations, and I often happen to restart the same 'battle' more than 10 times, just for fun...
I think Valve should clearly explain what Steam is doing ! It is not normal to force an unsolicited program upon customers, especially when it is impairing the game experience like that !
Look at it this way : legit users get annoyed, while people using pirated copies finally get a smoother, faster and better game experience, that is really unfair !!!!
So please, Valve, make the use of Steam officially optional for offline play !
In the meantime, I downgrade my opinion about Steam from 'an unsolicited collection of annoyances' to 'an unwanted downright pile of s**t'
And thanx again to the maker of that excellent loader)"
That's it... And please don't spam me with replies like "Piracy is bad" and the like. That is not the point, I bought the game, and, under the laws of my country, am perfectly entitled to modify it for my own, private use...
The point is : Steam may well be the cause of a part of the performance problems that a lot of people are reporting.
And now, it seems to me that Valve is just hiding the problem from their customers... that plain sux ! ;( :angry:
It seems Valve is very open to the comments of their customers...
Here it is (hopefully I typed it in Notepad and did not close it yet):
"Hello,
Wanted to share my experience with you, as it raised some issues that, in my opinion, should be answered by Valve.
I installed HL2 2 days ago, with a lot of problems and frustration during install that I will not detail here because there are already so many posts abouts all this.
After a few hours of play of the excellent game HL2, I was still marginally pissed off about Steam by my 'bad install frustration', so I decided that my life would certainly be happier without Steam on my machine. I dug up an (unofficial) patch allowing to start HL2 without Steam. In fact, this patch was a loader that would execute the GCF files bypassing Steam in the process.
Now, what was my my surprise when I discovered that the game loaded MUCH FASTER this way and that the in game STUTTERING WAS GONE !
To fix the ideas, here are some benchmarks on my 3.2GHZ Intel, 1GB RAM. Each was chronometered after a cold Win XP start followed by a 5 min wait (to ensure that WinXP had really finished scraping the HD). Steam was in offline mode.
*) Start the game (from clicking on the launch button to the main menu) :
- Through Steam : 1 min 52 sec
- without Steam : 53 sec
and that includes a 5sec pause for the Valve animation.
*) Start a new game (from the menu to appearance of the "half-life²" logo) :
- With Steam : 2 min 25 sec
- Without Steam : 1 min 35 sec
*) Exiting the game (from the "half-life²" logo to the desktop, waiting for complete redraw and stop of heavy HD activity (which happen at the same time BTW)) :
- With Steam : 51 sec
- Without Steam : 7 sec
This is very consistent, and the update of today changed nothing at all...
In game Stuttering also disappeared, as saving hardly stops the game for a fraction of a second, and quickloading in the same level is done in under 3 sec (about 20 before). This I like very much, as i like to test funny approaches to some situations, and I often happen to restart the same 'battle' more than 10 times, just for fun...
I think Valve should clearly explain what Steam is doing ! It is not normal to force an unsolicited program upon customers, especially when it is impairing the game experience like that !
Look at it this way : legit users get annoyed, while people using pirated copies finally get a smoother, faster and better game experience, that is really unfair !!!!
So please, Valve, make the use of Steam officially optional for offline play !
In the meantime, I downgrade my opinion about Steam from 'an unsolicited collection of annoyances' to 'an unwanted downright pile of s**t'
And thanx again to the maker of that excellent loader
)"That's it... And please don't spam me with replies like "Piracy is bad" and the like. That is not the point, I bought the game, and, under the laws of my country, am perfectly entitled to modify it for my own, private use...
The point is : Steam may well be the cause of a part of the performance problems that a lot of people are reporting.
And now, it seems to me that Valve is just hiding the problem from their customers... that plain sux ! ;( :angry:
