CharlesCS

Join Date 08/2006

+81

Steam has disappointed me for the last time

I own 2 games I bought thru the Steam client, Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2. While I have not dedicated much time to Bad Company 2 at this time, it’s a shame it will be the last game I ever buy on Steam. Not necessarily because of Bad Company 2, to be honest, it’s not necessarily because of Modern Warfare 2 either although it is in part.

Last night (like almost every other night) I was playing with my Clan friends online. We have been playing Modern Warfare 2 for quite some time now, it’s the game of choices at the moment. Here’s the thing about Modern Warfare 2, it’s the game you hate to love and love to hate. Had it not been for the lack of dedicated servers, the useless and horribly designed IWNet and the can’t_catch_a_hacker_to_save_its_life_if_it_had_one VAC system, Modern Warfare 2 could have been one of the best Call Of Duty’s to date. I like the game itself, all the new perks, the killstreak rewards, the new maps. The game is actually fun. Until you get kicked from the server.

When ever I play the other Call Of Duty games, the only waiting time I get is the time it takes to load the next map or if I’m on a modded server first the first time I have to download several files and maps. But normally I go from map to map with the same people with only Punkbuster to be dumb enough to kick me. Basically, playing on dedicated servers can be seamless most of the time and hackers are usually dealt with pretty quickly and usually permanently.

Modern Warfare 2? I spend more time in the game lobby some days than I do in games. The most common connection errors? “Unable to migrate host”, “server disconnected”, and my favorite “Steam disconnected”, all of them happen during game play. There are times when we try to enter a game 3 to 4 times before we finally start a game. Not to mention when ever we go in as a group, someone always gets kicked during the process of entering games forcing us to back up to pick them up and try again. Combine all of this with the enormous amount of hackers on Modern Warfare 2 (can hardly find a server that doesn’t have one) and while I can’t stay away from the game because the game itself is fun, when it works, I wish I could just delete it and shove it up Infinity Wards ass.

The next Call Of Duty version is coming in November, called Black Ops, it’s being created by Treyarch. Although Treyarch does not have a great reputation when it comes to Call Of Duty (World At War was not exactly that great though was fun most of the time) with the exception of the Zombie mode in World At War which was an interesting addition to the game, we hope they take advantage of Infinity Wards complete disregard for PC gamers and give us a game that could rival Modern Warfare 2. Of course odds are they’re more likely to throw a rehashed version of World At War to us but we can still hope for the best. We already know it will have dedicated servers so that’s a plus for me. Lets just hope it’s not as dull as Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Steam will only remain on my PC because of the fact that it’s the only way for me to play Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 but otherwise, never again will I buy from Steam as I am tired of not being able to play my games just because Steam decides to AWOL on me from time to time.

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Punk Buster is the worst piece of crap ever added to a game.

I play BF-BC2 on Moongamers which is an excellent community and pretty good at catching and banning cheaters and glitchers. Also an active Teamspeak3 channel MOONTS.sytes.net

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Isn't that 90% MW2's fault, and not Steam though? You sometimes get Steam disconnects too of course, but it seems most of the issues are due to the lack of dedicated servers.

And anti-cheating programs are hilarious. Any sort of cheat is going to be written to work around the most common anti-cheat programs, making it as useless as most DRM schemes and Windows Defender.

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Punkbuster is a miserable failure.

As for MW2 server problems, that's IWs fault, not Steam, giving you things like "Host Migration" and "Server Disconnected" issues. The only time Steam is the issue is when you get the "Steam Disconnected" problem. Which, unless you have some sort of serious Steam malfunction, is a moderately uncommon occurrence.

You can play BF:BC2 AND MW2 over Direct2Drive, EA Online Store, GamersGate (I think? I don't remember) and a couple places in the UK as well. It's not your only choice. I think your foisting a bit much on Steams end here.

(Though admittedly, in the last month or so, Steams disconnect issues had gotten troublesome. They seem, seem, to be clearing up. Remains to be seen.)

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Funny how Steam gets blamed when the reason for his problems are other issues.

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Punk Buster is the worst piece of crap ever added to a game.

Agreed, having moderators in the servers who can kick people is much better. Ban them for life as far as I'm concerned.

I play BF-BC2 on Moongamers which is an excellent community and pretty good at catching and banning cheaters and glitchers. Also an active Teamspeak3 channel MOONTS.sytes.net

Gonna check that out. Sounds interesting.

Isn't that 90% MW2's fault, and not Steam though?

Yes most of the problems are IWNet related. Either it doesn't know how to pick a proper host or it can't even set up a game properly without kicking half the people getting in.

You sometimes get Steam disconnects too of course, but it seems most of the issues are due to the lack of dedicated servers.

Yea, but the fact that the game is liked to Steam in full is what makes it worse, I can't even play the game without Steam. When ever Steam decides to go bonkers MW2 pays the price.

And anti-cheating programs are hilarious. Any sort of cheat is going to be written to work around the most common anti-cheat programs, making it as useless as most DRM schemes and Windows Defender.

Exactly. Most people avoided MW2 because of the amount of hackers yet ironically every game they played had hackers as well. That's why I like dedicated servers where a moderator can be present or called upon and quickly boot them.

Not too moderate for me. While I get 3 times more issues from host migration or server timed out errors, I get Steam disconnection errors quite often. Too many in the past week alone to be honest.

MW2? I thought this was exclusive to Steam. I have not tried D2D yet but now you got me curious.

(Though admittedly, in the last month or so, Steams disconnect issues had gotten troublesome. They seem, seem, to be clearing up. Remains to be seen.)

I had never seen it as bad as this week. I have actually gotten frustrated over the Steam disconnected error.

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I think you might have a more specific problem, Charles, with Steam. I haven't D/Ced from Steam in a week or so, so I'm due for one. But the last time I had a major one (more than 10/15 minutes) was during the Altitude week.

And, I was wrong on MW2, sorry about that. They aren't selling it because it does require Steam. Which is annoying, to say the least. I know BF:BC2 is sold elsewhere at least.

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Most knew what IW was doing to the PC version of the game before it came out. Buying it just supports them on it. Now the reward for is the described problems and telling IW "Yes, bend me over some more on the next one, I'll buy anything.". The game could be the most fun game you've ever played, but it isn't worth a Superman 64 with the issues described above being the norm.

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Quoting Orvidos,

reply 6

And, I was wrong on MW2, sorry about that. They aren't selling it because it does require Steam. Which is annoying, to say the least. I know BF:BC2 is sold elsewhere at least.

And since it requires Steam, is built around Steam, I don't see a problem with the OP giving some blame to Steam. Like DethAdder said, IW came out and pretty much gave a middle finger to their PC customers. It was unfortunate those customers opened up their wallets anyway.

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Quoting Nesrie,

reply 8

Don't get me wrong. Steam is entirely part of the problem, especially if he's having that many disconnects. I'm simply saying the not all of the onus should be placed on Steam. A fair bit of it, though, certainly.

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Quoting Orvidos,

reply 9

Don't get me wrong. Steam is entirely part of the problem, especially if he's having that many disconnects. I'm simply saying the not all of the onus should be placed on Steam. A fair bit of it, though, certainly.

I would have to agree with you. There is plenty of blame to spread around.

For games built around Steamworks, it's difficult to separate the two so I think it's perfectly fair to drop the blame in both their laps, well all three really, Valve/Activision/IW. I've not heard great things about MW2 for the PC in general so as far as I am concerned, it reflects badly on all three of them. The Stimulus Map thing is just the last two though but not a part of the OP'd issue.

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Shouldn't EVERY game be having these issues then, if the problem is Steam? It was known before release that MW2 wasn't going to be PC friendly...but Steam gets the blame?

I haven't played them in awhile, but I played BFBC2 & L4D without any problems (once the first day server crashes got fixed, which again I don't believe was due to Steam).

I just don't get the "it's built around Steam, so it's Steams problem" argument. You bought a game from a company that considers the PC platform bottom tier - put the blame where it belongs.

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Quoting KickACrip,

reply 11

I just don't get the "it's built around Steam, so it's Steams problem" argument. You bought a game from a company that considers the PC platform bottom tier - put the blame where it belongs.

Perhaps you missed the part where Steamworks is involved. It's part of the game. It's built in, which means its not just built around steam... it is Steam. They get part of the blame. Valve just has to live with that and so do you.

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Quoting KickACrip,

reply 11

I just don't get the "it's built around Steam, so it's Steams problem" argument. You bought a game from a company that considers the PC platform bottom tier - put the blame where it belongs.

See, if he weren't disconnected from Steam so frequently, I'd agree with you.

But! Like all games with Steamworks;

Game With Steamworks;

If Steamworks = Down - No Multiplayer Functionality

If Steamworks = Up - Multiplayer Functionality (It's been a long time since any sort of math class, and I suck at it. I apologize.)

If your game requires Steamworks, it requires Steamworks to be functioning. Otherwise you are ker-fucked. End of story.

So yes, the decision to make it Steamworks only? IW/Activision (Though after the IW kerfuffle, I'm willing to say more Activision)

Not being able to play because Steamworks is offline? Valve.

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Quoting Nesrie,

reply 12

Quoting KickACrip, reply 11

I just don't get the "it's built around Steam, so it's Steams problem" argument. You bought a game from a company that considers the PC platform bottom tier - put the blame where it belongs.

Perhaps you missed the part where Steamworks is involved. It's part of the game. It's built in, which means its not just built around steam... it is Steam. They get the part of the blame. Valve just has to live with that and so do you.

My point is - EVERY game that uses Steamworks would be crashing then and having numerous multiplayer problems, if the problem was Steamworks. Sounds more like the problem is lazy developer who isn't too involved with their game - oh wait, we knew this was the case before MW2 was released.

Oriv - What game are you talking about, and when was the last time it was down? The only reply I have is - you guys seems to be getting much more disconnects that I did. Like I said, I haven't played a multiplayer game in a few weeks, but a d/c wasn't something regularly that happened to me. Try Steam customer service if you need to, when I used them in the past they were very good.

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I don't know if any other game crashes since I only play MW2 on Steam. I have yet to dedicate enough time on BF:BC2 to see if it has issues although not being able to connect the first week it came out was enough to kill the "new game" buzz I had when I got it.

I blame Steam because of the "steam disconnected" error I have gotten quite a few times. Keep in mind I usually play with my Clan friends so there are usually 8 to 9 of us playing at one time and most of us get this msg at the same time.

IWNet is crap, plain and simple. This was the worst idea anyone could have come up with. I bought the game because while not having dedicated servers, I figured we could deal with not having them and just play. I never figured host migrations, server timeouts, bad host picking and Steam disconnects would be so often and so bad. You will never know if you like something till you try it. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and now I have learned. It's not a total loss as the game is still good just a pain to get into a server. I'll have to live with it for now.

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Quoting KickACrip,

reply 14

Orvi - What game are you talking about, and when was the last time it was down? The only reply I have is - you guys seems to be getting much more disconnects that I did. Like I said, I haven't played a multiplayer game in a few weeks, but a d/c wasn't something regularly that happened to me. Try Steam customer service if you need to, when I used them in the past they were very good.

MW2 was more or less guaranteed (Is that spelled right? It seems right, tells me it's not) to be a black sheep/red-headed stepchild/half-breed on PC. I agree on this point.

The point I'm trying to make is, Steamworks is a pain at times.

I had three separate occasions in the space of an hour while playing Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising on Steam, where the Steam servers went down and I couldn't get back into Last Stand, with two people I was on Ventrilo with. The last time it was down was for about 20 minutes three days ago.

I'd have to scrabble through my games list, but there are several games (at least) that have this problem. Team Fortress 2 tends to be a major offender in the idea. If your server can't connect to their server (for a multitude of reasons, not just Steamworks failing) you can't use ANYTHING you have earned. This generally requires a server restart to fix.

Another problem Steam has had for a long time is "This game is currently unavailable" I have no clue what causes this. I have no clue what the exact problem is that this infers. How is the game not available if I have it downloaded and was playing it an hour ago? This is guaranteed to happen to me once a week, for several hours. It's entirely random, which game I lose access to. On two occasions, I lost access to my entire Steam library for a period of 2 and 4 hours respectively.

I defended Steam a bit sidelong in the Civ 5 topic. I don't see the major problem with the service itself. It works 8/10 and that's good enough for me. I do see what people are talking about when it comes to 'closed platform' gaming. If your game is going to use Steam and nothing else, be damned sure it doesn't prevent you from playing the game every couple hours.

Which, is what is happening to Charles.

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It sounds like you are having issues more with the Games themselves than Steam. I am not defending Steam but most of what you stated doesnt lead me to believe theses are Steam issues. I think there are much worse things out there than steam, having said that I like Stardock and Impulse much better. I use Steam becuase there isnt many alternatives out there and it has a large user base.

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CharlesCS: the issues you describe are issues of the game, not Steam. Except the "Steam disconnected" thing, which can happen from time to time, but should be very rare. At least compared to the other issues.

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I don't know about you but to think that the problems he may have are game related and not necessarily Steam does not make sense. Why? Simple, what are the odds of several different games having similar issues and the one thing they all have in common is Steam? Considering the msg I get clearly says "Steam disconnected" I can't bring myself to think it's the game itself.

CharlesCS: the issues you describe are issues of the game, not Steam. Except the "Steam disconnected" thing, which can happen from time to time, but should be very rare. At least compared to the other issues.

That is pretty much what I said in my article, except in this case MW2 is connected directly to Steam. But the fact that Steam randomly goes down for long periods of time at least 2 times a week for me (during my gaming hours) is not a feature I would expect from something like Steam. I will wait till Black Ops comes out but will not get it thru Steam, instead i will get it thru Impulse if they get it. Give Impulse a chance to see how it works.

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Quoting CharlesCS,

reply 19

I am not sure what you mean about Impulse. If it Black Ops has Steamworks, it's not going to be sold on Impulse. If it doesn't have Steamworks, it's going to use some other connection type service which would have nothind to do with Impulse. Feel free to correct me on these points, but I've yet to see Impulse do anything like host or connect players outside of maybe SD's own games maybe.

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but I've yet to see Impulse do anything like host or connect players outside of maybe SD's own games maybe.

Logic since that kind of functionnality is in Impulse::reactor, which won't be available to other developpers until late summer. And Stardock's Elemental will be the first game to use Impulse::reactor feature.

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Quoting Peace Phoenix,

reply 21

but I've yet to see Impulse do anything like host or connect players outside of maybe SD's own games maybe.

Logic since that kind of functionnality is in Impulse::reactor, which won't be available to other developpers until late summer. And Stardock's Elemental will be the first game to use Impulse::reactor feature.

Well that's what I thought, but the Charles is either referring to something else, or is mistaken in what he thinks Impulse does (aka, it's not another Steam with a new skin).

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My assumption is that Black Ops will be like World At War in that you can just either download it or buy the CD (DVD), install it and play it without any concern over something like Steam. If so then a client like Impulse can sell the program just like it does the other Call Of Duty games. I believe it will have dedicated servers so that's a plus right there.

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