Proper matchmaking in online games is difficult to do well, put simply, but recent patent filings by Valve give users a peek behind the curtain at the various data miners at work in establishing the Trust Factor in CS:GO . There is quite a bit of information in these patents that range from 2018 to 2020 , and of course, not all of the point below can be said to contribute to an individual’s Trust Factor, though in reality most probably are to some deg

For context, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike started as fan-made Half-Life spin-offs that Valve eventually roped into its own official library; fans and mods have always been at the epicenter of Valve’s business model. With how integral the community has been to Half-Life throughout its history, it’s no surprise that the scene is still thriving despite the lack of official content.

Half-Life fans are a dedicated bunch. Even in the absence of content from Valve , the series has thrived with mods, community content, and unofficial games such as Lambda Wars and Black Mesa. Half-Life: Alyx didn’t fully reignite the torch, but it helped to keep the flame fans have managed to carry all these years flickering. There were community forums of like-minded individuals sharing each other’s work, news websites specifically catering to Valve fans after Episode 3 faded into obscurity, and then there was LambdaGeneration.

Players who’ve spent enough time in Counter-Strike 2 Tournaments Source and CS:GO have probably heard of the term bunnyhopping. Essentially, bunnyhopping involves jumping while strafing to get a slight speed boost that can give a considerable edge in close combat encount

Valve’s newest effort at matchmaking assigns players with a value known as the Trust Factor. This is a hidden value that considers several points to help place a player into a match. Valve has made it perfectly clear in this blog post that they will not revealing the specifics that modify this value because they do not want players to alter their behavior in an effort to manipulate the system. This is perfectly fair on their part, as players will go to great lengths to break video games, either just for fun, or to gain a competitive advant

The patent elaborates on this point further, "This is because the techniques and systems described herein are able to match together players who are likely to behave badly (e.g., cheat), and to isolate those players from other trusted players who are likely to play the video game legitimately…[and] may be configured to identify any type of behavior (good or ba

For example, when Tyloo started making its way to major tournaments, most teams played a slow and methodical version of Counter-Strike: GO , with the likes of Navi waiting until 30 seconds or less to execute onto a site. Tyloo, being based in Asia, played in a scrim-like style that was customary for their region, moving at a much faster pace than most top teams were used to seeing and catching them off guard. Soon after, you saw legendary teams like Liquid adopting some elements of Tyloo's playstyle into their own, helping them to eventually earn the top spot as the best t

The task of reaching a bomb site and planting the bomb successfully can be quite daunting as a Terrorist. There are multiple ways of how to approach a bomb site, and a lot depends upon the players’ playstyle along with the

Currently, there is no way to financially support the self-funded fan-site, but there are plans to potentially open a Patreon in the future. LambdaGeneration seems like the inevitable next step in this saga, a hot-spot for Half-Life devotees to enjoy.

Getting better at shooting takes proper learning, and not everybody is good at it. Most guns in CS:GO produce noticeable recoil while shooting, and controlling it is another skill that players developed over a period of t

If, as rumors suggest, Valve goes ahead with franchising, changes need to be made to current models in order to ensure the game's success. Rather than have buy-ins, Valve should institute a format that is like most majors for the inaugural season and allow teams to compete against one another to earn a spot in the league. They could use the same tournaments and assign points to each, which would then help to determine who would move into the lea

Alex's point is an important one. I occasionally jump to Reddit to find out what's going on with the community, perhaps to discuss some wild theories about the G-Man after a long day of bunny-hopping through the waterways of Half-Life 2, but the subs are drowned in memes. So, I go to Twitter, where it's near-impossible to find any structured form of discussion. The only spot to find community content in a neat package was LambdaGeneration, but even then it was curated by fans - what was being lost in that process? LambdaGeneration’s new social media platform addresses all of these issues.

Not all of us have $60,000 to spend on knives, of course, so it can be difficult to find nice-looking but cheap ones. You don't need to worry about spending hours searching, though, as that has been done for you. These are not simply the cheapest knives, as that would result in the list being comprised of just Navaja Knife entries. Instead, the list only features good-looking knives priced at $350 or below, as this is cheap by CS:GO standards. The prices used were the steam community market prices at the time of writ