HL2 + Steam = CRAP!

[DurocShark]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: DurocShark

Originally posted by: skace
Two hours and it automatically grabbed every patch and update available. That isn't bad. But lets spin this and pretend its fvcking horrible and that if you had to install it all manually and go find each site for each patch it would be soooo much faster.

So tell me again why I need 2 hours worth of patches?

Cause that's how big they are.

Why can't I just install and play the @#$^$# game? Why do I need to go through all this BS?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: DurocShark

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: DurocShark

Originally posted by: skace
Two hours and it automatically grabbed every patch and update available. That isn't bad. But lets spin this and pretend its fvcking horrible and that if you had to install it all manually and go find each site for each patch it would be soooo much faster.

So tell me again why I need 2 hours worth of patches?

Cause that's how big they are.

Why can't I just install and play the @#$^$# game? Why do I need to go through all this BS?

Fixes.

 

[DurocShark]

Well, sandorski just gave a great reason to avoid valve's games. 2 hours of fix downloads required before you can play.

yay.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: DurocShark
Well, sandorski just gave a great reason to avoid valve's games. 2 hours of fix downloads required before you can play.

yay.

Hehe, sorry. My last post was an admittance that I had no good answer to your question. That's just the way it is though. Not much you can do about that situation, but to avoid it or accept it. Choose one or the other and live with it.

 

[DurocShark]

All good. I know where you're coming from. And from a technical perspective it makes sense. (Considering what I do for a living, that's where I'm usually coming from anyway.) But from an end user perspective it's crap design, crap QC, and crap implimentation. There should be a "plug'n'play" option so you don't have to wait for all the fix downloads, security garbage, etc, before you can play the story.

 

[Xyclone]

I personally like Steam, it keeps everything updated and organized.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: Patt

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: DurocShark
I know it's old, but it's been a while since I installed HL2. Plus I had hoped they'd changed things to make it easier.

Why do we let companies get away with stupid crap like this?

Join the thousands who won't buy from Valve anymore.

Yeah right, you'll buy Half-Life 3 when it comes out ... 😛

If they continue to use this garbage, I will never buy anything from Valve. I dang near threw the game in the garbage shortly after purchasing it. It was uninstalled for nearly a year before I bothered to reinstall. It's going to get uninstalled again soon, for good.

I'm with you. I won't buy another game that uses Steam again. It's been nothing but aggravation for a game that wasn't even as good as its predecessor.

 

[mOeeOm]

Whats with all this hate against steam, its great, 0 issues here.

All my games download and run great. The only disadvantage to it is that you can't play singleplayer without being online and logging onto steam, but really, thats the fault of the pirates.

 

[DurocShark]

Originally posted by: mOeeOm
thats the fault of the pirates.

Yeah, we saw how Id went under after all the pirating of Doom, Wolf3d, and Quake 1.

Oh, wait.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: mOeeOm
Whats with all this hate against steam, its great, 0 issues here.

All my games download and run great. The only disadvantage to it is that you can't play singleplayer without being online and logging onto steam, but really, thats the fault of the pirates.

*quotes durocshark* companies haven't gone under due to piracy, however rampant it may be.

let's take Warhammer: DOW for example.. if you try to log on for an online game, you're prompted to download the latest patch. otherwise, you can go ahead and play the SP campaign. WTF would i need an internet connection to play SP? i shouldn't!

 

[DurocShark]

Exactly. I'm sick of companies blaming "pirates" for the world's woes. "Wah. If we sold 100 million copies instead of 99 million copies we wouldn't be filing bankruptcy!" Right. If you put out a quality product, enough folks will want the true product instead of the pirated one. Pirates don't kill companies. Companies kill themselves.

Since I have no desire to play HL2 online I'm looking for a hack to kill the steam crap and just let me play the friggin game.

 

[EpsiIon]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: skace
Two hours and it automatically grabbed every patch and update available. That isn't bad. But lets spin this and pretend its fvcking horrible and that if you had to install it all manually and go find each site for each patch it would be soooo much faster.

Plenty of other games have built-in patching that causes ZERO overhead, unlike Valve's Steam. I don't know how many times I have to say this, but Valve is doing nothing special except screw the customer. Lots of games offer their games for download, lots of games have streamlined patching(hell, you can get free services like Xfire that get the patches for you), and none of them cause overhead like Steam. None of them require you to be online to play their single-player game either. Steam is not convenient, it's inconvenient.

I think we've been over this argument before, but I wanted to point out that you don't have to be online to play single-player games.

I've only ever had minor problems with Steam. Other than its rather ugly interface, I think it's great. I find it very convenient.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: skace
Two hours and it automatically grabbed every patch and update available. That isn't bad. But lets spin this and pretend its fvcking horrible and that if you had to install it all manually and go find each site for each patch it would be soooo much faster.

Plenty of other games have built-in patching that causes ZERO overhead, unlike Valve's Steam. I don't know how many times I have to say this, but Valve is doing nothing special except screw the customer. Lots of games offer their games for download, lots of games have streamlined patching(hell, you can get free services like Xfire that get the patches for you), and none of them cause overhead like Steam. None of them require you to be online to play their single-player game either. Steam is not convenient, it's inconvenient.

I think we've been over this argument before, but I wanted to point out that you don't have to be online to play single-player games.

I've only ever had minor problems with Steam. Other than its rather ugly interface, I think it's great. I find it very convenient.

It would seem that way, wouldn't it? But I made sure to look through my Steam options the other day to make sure my games were all updated so Offline Mode would work at the LAN party I went to on Friday night. Of course, Steam refused to launch once I was there without an internet connection. :roll::thumbsdown:

 

[skace]

Didn't check back on this thread after I posted, but anyhow... I think from a company perspective it is a good thing that the game forces you to be completely patched before you do anything. It saves the company from having to deal with 9/10 tech calls where they go "update this, update that". No, everyone is up to date, you have to be and that is a good thing.

It is also a good thing from a user perspective, there could have been an sp bug in an earlier version that corrupted save games or ruined the campaign right in the middle. There could be balances and all sorts of fixes. The patched version could run better on your video card. You don't know, but I've certainly had all these problems on unpatched versions of games so I don't see how it is bad that a game takes a little longer to install the first time around. Honestly, I don't install games every day.

Maybe if I had a need to install and uninstall HL2 every other day of the week I'd be more angry over this.

 

[kurt454]

I played HL2 through a couple of times when it first came out. Backed it up with SteamBackup. I wanted to replay it with my new 7800GT vid card. Initiated the backup. Went to launch the game. It began downloading updates. 2 hours later, I gave up. I am on dialup.

I am stuck in a rural part of the country that will not offer broadband for the next 10 years, or more.
My situation may be unique, but I can guarantee that I will not be buying HL3. If I want to play my copy of HL2, apparently I will have to update the machine all night long. That is ridiculous for a single player game.

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: dug777
Ridiculous.

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: meltdown75

Originally posted by: dug777
Ridiculous.

the thread, or Steam? 😀

The spelling.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: kurt454
I played HL2 through a couple of times when it first came out. Backed it up with SteamBackup. I wanted to replay it with my new 7800GT vid card. Initiated the backup. Went to launch the game. It began downloading updates. 2 hours later, I gave up. I am on dialup.

I am stuck in a rural part of the country that will not offer broadband for the next 10 years, or more.
My situation may be unique, but I can guarantee that I will not be buying HL3. If I want to play my copy of HL2, apparently I will have to update the machine all night long. That is ridiculous for a single player game.

thats steam downloading all the updates u mised. takes a while even on broadband. probably some way to skip the update process and just make it decrypt the file as is..

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: mcvickj
It doesn't help you now but you can backup your game files to one large file and burn it to a DVD or CD. That way if you have to reformat you don't have to redownload everything again.

Yep. The retail version of HL2 is basically a glorified backup disc.

 

[EpsiIon]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: skace
Two hours and it automatically grabbed every patch and update available. That isn't bad. But lets spin this and pretend its fvcking horrible and that if you had to install it all manually and go find each site for each patch it would be soooo much faster.

Plenty of other games have built-in patching that causes ZERO overhead, unlike Valve's Steam. I don't know how many times I have to say this, but Valve is doing nothing special except screw the customer. Lots of games offer their games for download, lots of games have streamlined patching(hell, you can get free services like Xfire that get the patches for you), and none of them cause overhead like Steam. None of them require you to be online to play their single-player game either. Steam is not convenient, it's inconvenient.

I think we've been over this argument before, but I wanted to point out that you don't have to be online to play single-player games.

I've only ever had minor problems with Steam. Other than its rather ugly interface, I think it's great. I find it very convenient.

It would seem that way, wouldn't it? But I made sure to look through my Steam options the other day to make sure my games were all updated so Offline Mode would work at the LAN party I went to on Friday night. Of course, Steam refused to launch once I was there without an internet connection. :roll::thumbsdown:

Strange. I've never had that problem. Did you try troubleshooting it or did you just give up? If you tried troubleshooting, I'd be interested to know what you tried and what the results were (if any).

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: EpsiIon

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: skace
Two hours and it automatically grabbed every patch and update available. That isn't bad. But lets spin this and pretend its fvcking horrible and that if you had to install it all manually and go find each site for each patch it would be soooo much faster.

Plenty of other games have built-in patching that causes ZERO overhead, unlike Valve's Steam. I don't know how many times I have to say this, but Valve is doing nothing special except screw the customer. Lots of games offer their games for download, lots of games have streamlined patching(hell, you can get free services like Xfire that get the patches for you), and none of them cause overhead like Steam. None of them require you to be online to play their single-player game either. Steam is not convenient, it's inconvenient.

I think we've been over this argument before, but I wanted to point out that you don't have to be online to play single-player games.

I've only ever had minor problems with Steam. Other than its rather ugly interface, I think it's great. I find it very convenient.

It would seem that way, wouldn't it? But I made sure to look through my Steam options the other day to make sure my games were all updated so Offline Mode would work at the LAN party I went to on Friday night. Of course, Steam refused to launch once I was there without an internet connection. :roll::thumbsdown:

Strange. I've never had that problem. Did you try troubleshooting it or did you just give up? If you tried troubleshooting, I'd be interested to know what you tried and what the results were (if any).

A lot of people had this problem. In fact, some people had the problem where Steam would get upset after a while because you weren't online and it would boot them out. Irregardless, the game should NOT require a secondary app in order to function! It's ridiculous and inconvenient!

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: kurt454
I am stuck in a rural part of the country that will not offer broadband for the next 10 years, or more.
My situation may be unique, but I can guarantee that I will not be buying HL3. If I want to play my copy of HL2, apparently I will have to update the machine all night long. That is ridiculous for a single player game.

That sucks, I couldn't imagine still being on dialup 3 years ago, much less now and not even a concept 10 years from now. In 10 years, I expect to have some sort of 1gbps both ways type connection.

 

[tuteja1986]

I love steam update... Like I don't have to wait for a freak-en month before EA/Dice decide to release a patch for BF2 :! With steam , valve can release a small update anytime if some thing major bug and issue are found.

I always do a steam backup on DVD every few months or so : Currently I backup : HL 2 , CS:S , DOD:S , HL 1 , DOD , CS , HL Blueshift and Opposing forces. then when i reformat my pc.. all i do is install steam and resort the back up from My DVD. let steam activate and update for few mins and i am done 🙂

 

[rstrohkirch]

Originally posted by: Kurt454

I played HL2 through a couple of times when it first came out. Backed it up with SteamBackup. I wanted to replay it with my new 7800GT vid card. Initiated the backup. Went to launch the game. It began downloading updates. 2 hours later, I gave up. I am on dialup.

I am stuck in a rural part of the country that will not offer broadband for the next 10 years, or more.
My situation may be unique, but I can guarantee that I will not be buying HL3. If I want to play my copy of HL2, apparently I will have to update the machine all night long. That is ridiculous for a single player game.

In the steam properties for any of valve's games there is an option that says "do not update content for this game"

Have you tried this?

 

[Gooberlx2]

I can understand that argument both ways. Yes, I think it's stupid for Valve to require an online app to play an offline singleplayer game...in the sense that disabling that requirement is a PITA of jumping through hoops and settings (so this thread would have me believe).

OTOH, when I first installed the game last week (yea I'm a little late to the whole HL2 scene) I thought it was very convenient to have steam grab and update all the files for me. Honestly, with computers nowadays, the overhead that steam produces should be negligible compared to a plethora of other apps/processes one has running in the background. Hell, ever keep a couple IE windows (or FF tabs) open in the background?