Busy people and Half life

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raul

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Hi, I am sure others are facing the same issue. I know Steam is innovative and all good and stuff but how does a busy person ie someone who works for a living play half life.

I mean I am caught up all day and even at night with work and when I somehow manage to get 30 min free to play half life I have to wait ages for the game to update. And this has happened so often.

When I click half life 2 I want to play the game, not update steam. This is actually quite ridiculous. By the time steam updates and is ready to launch the game I have to get back to doing stuff. I know you can put the game in offline mode but guess what if it launches and the internet is on it will go back to updating itself or the games and you can't play untill thats done. Surely there must be a more intelligent and less disrupting way to update the games and steam. After all I am paying to play not update.
 
I had changed the game setting to disable auto update as soon as I had finished installing the first time and then put it in offline mode and played a bit too.

Its just that the moment steam detects a internet connections it forgets everything and wants to reach Valve pronto.
 
steam updates take a few minutes, tops. while i agree that steam is a little sluggish, the time wasted waiting is nowhere near as bad as you describe.
 
u guys are luck u can at least log into steam... i finsished updating everything yesterday.. bt now after a hard days wrk (bandh:P) i come home and i double click hl2 ep2 it asks me to connect to steam .. wich has become like impossible for me to do since i keep getting this error cant connect to steam blah blah blah...

i mean why do i need to connect to steam to just play episode 2 wich is an offline game...????

what a waste of 800 bucks sheesh....
 
spindoctor said:
steam updates take a few minutes, tops. while i agree that steam is a little sluggish, the time wasted waiting is nowhere near as bad as you describe.
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Not everybody has a super-duper ultra fast 2mbps connection ;)

satanofgamers said:
i mean why do i need to connect to steam to just play episode 2 wich is an offline game...????
what a waste of 800 bucks sheesh....
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Absolutely!

I've found that utterly ridiculous since the original HL2 was released. I would have surely bought the game but the huuge updates and Steam's constant net connectivity forced me to pickup the ahem copy.
 
Orange Box is the first 'official' game I have bought. I don't game so much, just play half life and some race sims. Now with other 'versions' just click and you are ready to go. The steam update seems to be designed for people who have nothing to do but sit around and wait for it to do its thing. This is critical, not everybody can devote hours to play a game, just steal a few minutes here and there, weekends is of course different.

I have a paltry 256kpbs connection that is doing many things, why should steam hog it all the time, or at the very least at least update when I want it to, not on its own inspite of me specifically setting it to do not update.

Try this folks, set the games to not auto update, take steam offline. Now launch steam again with the internet connection on, forget your setting steam will do its own thing.
 
Try not loading up Steam for a week, then see if the waiting while it updates isn't bad.
Steam just sucks, sometimes it will update at 6kB/s ignoring all the available bandwidth.

And yes, Steam does forget auto-update settings whenever it feels like it.

I highly recommend warez'ing all Steam games that aren't meant to be played online (ofcourse as long as you own them), it's much less of a time sink :\

I must be the only one but I really miss the relatively hassle free manual updates...
 
Why dont u guys see it the other way round...how many ppl have had problems with their orange box dvds.If it werent for steam then half of he ppl on TE wouldnt be playing any of the games in orange box..Just think of returning the dvds to the manufacturer and waiting for the new one to arriv..with steam u dont have to wait for it just download the game from steam servers and u are good to go..I have been using steam for over a year now.. and steam has really helped me bcoz i dont need the dvds to play games and i can play on as many comps i want..besides for multiplayer games your game must be updated with the latest patch or u cant join the server bcoz they always have the latest paches...and u must have the same version..to join on it...
 
Dr.ashish said:
Why dont u guys see it the other way round...how many ppl have had problems with their orange box dvds.If it werent for steam then half of he ppl on TE wouldnt be playing any of the games in orange box..Just think of returning the dvds to the manufacturer and waiting for the new one to arriv..with steam u dont have to wait for it just download the game from steam servers and u are good to go..I have been using steam for over a year now.. and steam has really helped me bcoz i dont need the dvds to play games and i can play on as many comps i want..besides for multiplayer games your game must be updated with the latest patch or u cant join the server bcoz they always have the latest paches...and u must have the same version..to join on it...
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Isn't it valve's responsibility to get us good disks? If they cant give two good disks then whats the use of spending 800 rs on it? are we paying for the box? Even road side pirated movie vendors give better ones. I'd rather download other version if i have to, rather than going steam way all the time.
 
Arya said:
Isn't it valve's responsibility to get us good disks? If they cant give two good disks then whats the use of spending 800 rs on it? are we paying for the box? Even road side pirated movie vendors give better ones. I'd rather download other version if i have to, rather than going steam way all the time.
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Ya it is if those dvds are made by the distributer here in india then its their fault and things may go wrong sometime but with steam u have an option of downloading games from their servers but with other game developers u will have to wait for the new cd/dvd n u dont have to carry the dvd with u.There was a lot of problem with steam but it was bcoz of broadband availability in india and the client was really buggy in the beginning but now the scenario is changing..things should improve from now on..
 
As it happened yesterday when i was playing TF2, having really good run as heavy...killing lotsa people K : D = 64:17...and steam decides that i'm not logged in anymore. i restarted steam. i logged me out again :@ . it happened 6 times. then i gave up :no:
 
Arya said:
As it happened yesterday when i was playing TF2, having really good run as heavy...killing lotsa people K : D = 64:17...and steam decides that i'm not logged in anymore. i restarted steam. i logged me out again :@ . it happened 6 times. then i gave up :no:
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Ya i have had similar problems with steam sometimes i cant login but its corrected soon...thats irritating if u wanna play the game..everything has some pros and cons...
 
The problem is bandwidth, I can't afford to spend more than 1500 bucks a month max on internet and that only gets me a 256kpbs connection.

If I had 2mbps plus I would definitely have a better experience with steam and download off it probably, but I don't and that why I bought the DVDs. Because I don't have the bandwidth to download the games from steam.

Steam has its advantages, no doubt about that on every level, but for people like me it is a hassle that you can't play the game when you want to.
 
Steam maybe annoying but it has it's good parts. one of them being no on-access DRM, you aren't required to insert CD/DVD everytime you want to play. furthermore, if the developer releases an update, instead of hunting the internet for mirrors, Steam automatically updates it, whether you appreciate it or not is a another thing; but you can't deny Steam offers much more flexibility than a stand alone game client. I strongly urge to read this article :) After reading that, My hatred for steam has decreased to a large extent ;)
 
evox said:
Steam maybe annoying but it has it's good parts. one of them being no on-access DRM, you aren't required to insert CD/DVD everytime you want to play. furthermore, if the developer releases an update, instead of hunting the internet for mirrors, Steam automatically updates it, whether you appreciate it or not is a another thing; but you can't deny Steam offers much more flexibility than a stand alone game client. I strongly urge to read this article :) After reading that, My hatred for steam has decreased to a large extent ;)
Click to expand...

Agreed that Steam has its advantanges. but still the final control over how it works should be in the hands of the end user. It should not have a mind of its own. Whats the meaning of updating the game when auto update is off. Also though the client updates are small, its not always the case with game updates.
 
the only solution for this i feel is load steam and disconnect the net connection i.e remove the cable frm the back this is one way u can avoid the updating or just disable the net connection frm control panel and be sure to keep the steam in offline mode or somthing.
 
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