Ultimately, what is any backlash going to do? If you take some 25,000 users compared to 3,000,000 active PC Steam users, and untold hordes of console people, whatever those PC users think doesn't affect a whole lot in the short run, I'd say. If all 25,000 of them ran out and bought the $35 Portal 2 from Best Buy with the $10 gift card, that might make Valve lose a little bit of money, but it's not like anyone will stop playing Valve games, especially not this one.theinfinityissue said:
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Valve's fake, rigged, waste of time Progress Quest troll Portal 2 ARG
- Thread starter V_Ben
- Start date
Discotheque
Banned
Trickster said:
I meant the events leading up to this potato sack nonsense. And anyways the last part of the ARG should have been related to playing Portal 1.
Valve is one of my favorite developers but I can't really argue with him. They're generally good to their community but not really good at communicating about things outside of updates to their current games (TF2 blogs and such). I think they've nailed that aspect of fan interaction, better than anyone else, but in general there's a lot of mystery surrounding them.Spire said:
I take it you are sarcastic? Yes, people are upset, but they're upset over the retarded ARG grinding.Palette Swap said:
In the context of what i theorize, it meant Valve is keeping the appearance of an early release (for PC users) without upsetting console users (imagine how pissed they would've been if you played it on PC since friday).
@TheExodu5: is that graph legit? If so, i'd say it is proof enough that it is fixed and if it really constitues proof, it might be added to the thread title
Spire said:
It's not. Are you new to Valve games or something? They never talk to the community, ever. When TF2 beta was releasing 23 hours and 55 minutes after expected, the community didn't get a single message from Valve for the entire day. They didn't pop in to say "hold up guys, we're working on some fixes!". They did nothing. They released the game at 11:55PM PST without a word.
They do this every time.
Treefingers
Member
Yup I gotta agree with this.TheExodu5 said:
shuyin_ said:
Yeah, it's legit.
The only way I could see this not being fixed is if the CPU contributions are also proportional to the overall online userbase. Since the CPU count fluctuates pretty much in accordance to the online userbase, the (total CPU count)/(total online users) ratio stays pretty constant.
Twig said:
Yeah those are awesome. I love Gabe's responses. They just need to work on consistency here.
TheExodu5 said:
They don't do that every time. Look at how they handled the L4D2 thing, or Steam, or TF2 in general. They've been pretty damn good about letting us know what's in the pipeline and what they're doing recently. "One of the worst developers in the industry" and "do it every time!" are beyond hyperbole.
Blizzard said:
Actually, it does cause a few issues in the long run, mainly that a core group of those 25k (say about 10k of them) are influencers in their own right. They blog or podcast, they are the most informed customers of all. If they start being negative about the company, it has a negative impact on the reputation overall. Thats one of the reasons why Valve try hard to show how much they value their own community. The ARG itself was a great success, what's happening now will be highlighted as an epic failure by gaming sites after the launch of Portal2, which again, will have no direct impact on sales, but indirectly affect the companies reputation in the long run.
A lot of people were mentioning HL2's launch and its failure, which had a huge impact on the success of the service during its infancy. They had to work really hard to prove to customers and clients that they improved the service from that point.
Again, worse than useless without consulting the games. Their completion directly affects the global average (which is what determines the bar and the rising line), the numbers bear this out. At the time I looked into it, there was only "fudging room" for two hundredths of a percentage point.TheExodu5 said:
Further, I have reason to believe the specific page you link to is malfunctioning or something. I've seen a more informative graph pop up in place of it several times (same url), that had a red completion line hewing quite close to a beige CPU count line. If I can figure out where it keeps "going", I'll by all means share it (or screenshot it, if its transience continues).
No, if you look at the game specific charts, the rate the bars fill is a near 1:1 correlation with the accumulative number of players playing the game at each update sample. The main problem is the Potatoes do very littleshuyin_ said:There is no proof that it is or it is not fixed.
However, i think common sense and logic dictates that it is. Just my two cents, but i already posted my view on it:
I doubt they would've risked getting complains from console users for screwing them over if PC users had played it on friday or even saturday. I believe they scripted the bars to fill in such way that the game would be released a few hours earlier. Thus they are keeping the appearance of an early release, without upsetting anyone.
EDIT: looking at that graph, if it's legit, i'd say we have proof that it is fixed))))
Looking close, It does look like the Potatoes may tie into the Work Factor though, how much each CPU changes the bar. Amenesia needed 2900 players to increase 1% 36 hours ago, now it needs just 2385. Its is a bit unclear just how the Potatoes tie in though. The Potatoes have gone up 185k in 36 hours, but the rate has only increased 20%, so they may actually do nothing and the rate of increase could be fixed.
I just wonder when it tallies up. It seems to only do it once an hour though.
CrookedRain
Member
You're fighting a losing battle here. He's the same person that kept on quoting that hasportal2releasedyet site saying we were 4 minutes ahead of schedule after it was posted many times that they were calculating it completely wrong.Botolf said:
I would say that the HL2 thing is different than this. Any backlash from this would be more along the lines of say, L4D2 sequel backlash, or Modern Warfare 2 dedicated servers backlash.syoaran said:
Both of those games went on to be very successful, and the COD game line is tremendously successful.
If say, Penny Arcade and Notch asking everyone to help release Portal 2 didn't make much of an impact, I find it hard to believe that influential bloggers/podcasters would hurt Valve. Say they do hurt Valve, and Valve's reputation goes down among PC gamers. What happens then? If Valve announces another game (episode 2 or Half-life 3), are you going to boycott it? Could you honestly bring yourself to pass up a Valve game no matter how you are treated?
Look over all the charts here, and make sure to flip on the Work Factor Line:shuyin_ said:
http://cpucount.zapto.org/
Unless Valve is actually over riding the number of people currently playing to display false values (They aren't), the thing isn't "rigged". They most likely have a very good idea about the range of times it is going to fall in though.
As much disappointment as a lot of us can write about the situation, we can only simmer down and anticipate a Monday mid-day release at earliest. Valve is dead set on Portal 2's release, and there's not much we can do to change that.
The general gamer population doesn't care.
Get some outside air people.
The general gamer population doesn't care.
Get some outside air people.
The Broken Ska Record
Member
I still fail to see how this is a Valve "screwup." Granted they went about this the wrong way, but regardless the game will be releasing on it's intended day.
% completed doesn't look like it's being affected by any other factors. We are making progress on individual games bars, but there's no direct correlation between those bars and overall progress, and potatoes are doing nothing or almost nothing at all.Botolf said:
Really it's not worth arguing over. They are bars. They are filling. The game will probably be out Monday. Just a shame the whole thing rolled to a dead stop before the end.
snoopeasystreet
Member
The Broken Ska Record said:
This.
I was excited to hear that we might get to play it this weekend and am a bit disappointed that it didn't work out that way, but whatever, I get to play portal 2 in two days it's going to be a sweet video game.
mazeedibeedi
Banned
Toki Tori is on its final legs and is picking up a lot of steam (pun unintended).
Is the Potato Multiplier in place?
Is the Potato Multiplier in place?
Zombie James
Banned
mazeedibeedi said:
It doesn't seem like it to me.
dollartaco
Member
still complaining in here?
Rigged in this context might also mean that they made the bars to fill slow on purpose (from the very beginning) so that no matter how many users play the games and for how long, they would still reach the compromise i was talking about (an earlier, but near Tuesday release).Drkirby said:
It's just my opinion, and to me it sounds very logical. What's the biggest backlash:
- people on message boards (that Valve doesn't give a shit about) complaining how the ARG is fixed,
- or (console) paying customers complaining they got screwed (if PC users would have played it on friday)?
To me it is fixed and no matter anybody says, the ARG didn't intend the game to be released a few days early. Only a few hours.
Zomba13
Member
Nope. Potatoes still seem to do nothing and GLaDOS isn't overclocked yet.mazeedibeedi said:
Also this is all thats left of the ARG according to a Valve employee. All the other stuff about the infected and needing to be saved and other things are just distractions. Quite disappointing really.
Lostconfused
Member
No one forced them to put it in such a context where it would be a negative but here we are.Corky said:
Trickster
Member
The Broken Ska Record said:
If this is not Valve's screwup then whos is it?
And yes the game will release on the release date. But that's not exactly what anyone wants when there's a huge "get the game out early" event in the days leading up to it. Especially when the event entails having to buy games + spend hours and hours grinding certain parts of the games.
dollartaco said:
People complaining about stupid shit in topic about the stupid shit. Shocker indeed.
Treefingers
Member
Correction: they failedJenga said:
I disagree. Try telling that to someone who wasted his weekend putting hours into these games, trying to obtain some potatos in the hopes that maybe in the evening or in the next day's morning he might play Portal 2.Lostconfused said:
The context was given by Valve and at this point, i can totally understand the actual people that put hours into this ARG and feel disappointed that their effort means only a few hours.
Any company always cares about paying customers. Valve included. It's just business. If they'd upset someone, they'd choose the people on message boards (like us) not those that are part of their actual market.Jenga said:
Again, the "Computations completed for launch" bar is a precise average of all the games' completion bars (I can do the numbers again, if you like). The Projected Launch timer is desynced entirely aside from the "compensation prize" hours added for filling a bar, it remains the failure state for this thing. If we were working to bring the Projected Launch timer down, you'd have a point, but that isn't how we win this. We win by filling every bar, and thus the global one as well.Crunched said:
Potatoes: The effect is minuscule to be sure, but most sources indicate that they're active (though not yet "overclocked", whatever that means).
Has it occurred to anyone that Valve may have implemented a time adjusted progression curve? I mean, they have mountains of data that tracks the number of players on steam at any given time. They also have mountains of data on the number of players in any given game on steam at any given time. The player count fluctuation almost match the NORMAL fluctuation exactly. If they have implemented a time adjusted progression curve that had progression require more work during peak hours(since there are typically more people playing during peak hours), then the fact that the "player count curve" is basically identical to to the player count curve that is typical would explain why the progression has been constant.
That's exactly it. We as a fan base have been working toward a goal that we've invested our time and money into with the promise of something at the end of it all. We didn't know exactly what that would be, but it was presented as substantial. And then the clues started dropping about an early Portal 2 release, and everyone got even more excited. And then this happens. And it's nothing. It negates all previously efforts by giving us an impossible hurdle. Even if we get over it the reward is so small it doesn't matter.Trickster said:
When the timer switched over from a countdown to the GLaDOS unlock page, this ceased to be an ARG and became a very transparent marketing stunt. We've all been played.
Even considering this the whole thing seems designed to end at a certain time, so user input isn't worthwhile IMO. There's this idea here that we aren't trying hard enough, and that's terrible. It's a very manipulative part of the "game" and doesn't show any respect toward the people who've put time and energy into the ARG leading up to this.Botolf said:
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