Counter Strike 2 update wipes nearly $2 billion off skin market value by making fancy knives and gloves easier to get
Counter Strike 2 update wipes nearly $2 billion off skin market value by making fancy knives and gloves easier to get
virtual speculative shit gonna do virtual speculative things
What a weird fucking world we live in where this is a headline.
Is Counter Strike ever going to innovate or just keep monetizing with empty fluff?
I got bored in the 1.6 and CS Source days, are people even playing different maps or is it still the same 5 maps over and over and over?
This is like watching someone turn an especially satisfying lever toy with a great tactile CA-CHUNK when you pull it into a slot machine over the course of 25+ years without ever changing or adding substantially to the toy mechanism/lever part of the machine.
Think the biggest innovation they did for csgo was molotovs, and for cs2 was smokes being affected by bullets and explosions. Other than that, I think it's been largely the same.
Though do keep in mind, I have about 30h across source, csgo, and 2 combined; odds are I missed stuff.
Missing all of the fun custom maps people made, like surf, gun game, glass, think there was some zombie game mode where Ts were Zombies
Just to clarify I am not saying I don't understand there being a core competitive game that is meant to stay relatively unchanged like a sport... but CS2 doesn't have destructible environments, it doesn't have vehicles, it doesn't have any innovation at all other than being more like a slot machine than the last Counter Strike which was basically the same as the Counter Strike before it.
A game this big I expect to have a core competitive minimal core that stays relatively unchanged, yes, but I also expect a bunch of more fun, varied and changing stuff surrounding it that keeps most players actually engaged who aren't fully committed to an endlessly repetitive sweaty grind. No I am not talking about skins and shit, it makes me want to vomit even looking up that stuff and how many results you get for how to "invest" in CS skins (eeeeewww wtf?) I mean actual different gameplay with novel experiences to sustain and compliment the competitive unchanging core....
I see modern Counter Strike as a natural next step of de-evolution of FPS design in late stage capitalism. Halo 3 was the last time a big budget FPS game company really tried to wow players not simply addict them with casino mechanics and dark patterns. Halo 3 had splitscreen multiplayer, full co-op campaign, vehicles, custom multiplayer match settings galore, forge mode... the list goes on.
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 4 then roared onto the scene and demolished that practice by showing business suits in the industry who didn't give a shit about videogames that you didn't have to try that hard, you just needed addictive carrots on sticks like giving players a purposefully hamstrung weapon and making them grind to make it fun to use....
Counter Strike 2 is the natural endpoint of that process and it just makes the game come off as tired and boring to me.
CS 1.6 with War3 mod was peak. Classes, Skill Trees, leveling up based on kills and rounds won.
Reviving teammates, insanely OP grenades, partial invisibility, and other ridiculous abilities.
Yeah that was really fun and really helped with community servers bridging pepe together
Over pixels?
Nah, you got what you get.
Oooh I feel like that might be a bad idea for valve, but might be good for everyone else. I don't personally play, but I would assume some of their player base is invested in the gambling. If they feel discouraged, it might be enough for them to stop.
I want to see ohnepixel face on this one.
Haha! Sucked in, idiots!
Oh, no!
Anyway ...
On a more serious note, if this is what people choose to waste money on, that's of course their right. It's just NFTs with extra steps.
yeahhh at least in this context there's a built-in playground where you can show off your expensive purchases. NFTs are insufferable because NFT owners are always trying to talk to you about their NFTs. I think CS players know that their skins are only cool to other CS players. lol
The whole concept of in-game purchases is just foreign to me. I wasn't even willing to pay 99 cents for a few extra lives in Candy Crush. This market being worth billions is frankly unfathomable.
NFTs are at least independent and won't disappear if one corporation goes down. Other than that, they're one and the same, and it's insane that the same gamers who worship Valve are often the first to bash NFTs.
NFTs with fewer steps, but yeah.