Recent reviews by PCGameit

I have been using ESEA, CEVO and other services for Match Making for a long time even before Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the idea of Match Making is not something Valve invented and services like ESEA's has existed for a long time.

Originally posted by ESEA:

ESEA is a third party matchmaking program that uses the industry leading anti-cheat (ESEA Client) to protect matches. ESEA currently has PUGs, Scrims, Ladders, Events and runs one of the largest open format leagues in the world. ESEA Premium is used for CS:GO and TF2 on the ESEA Network.

Like quoted, ESEA is a Client for Match Making and it has its own in-built Anti-Cheat, which pretty much works on the same premise as EAC and others like that, which means no delayed bans as it bans whenever Cheat is detected.

In my Optic that is how Anti-Cheats specially Anti-Cheats for Match Making should work, deal with the problem as soon as it detects cheaters and get rid of them, rather than flag them and wait to detect more cheaters before getting rid of them.

I am not sure why people are focused on the bitcoin farming and whatelse intrusive stuff they think ESEA did in the past but let the past be the past and moved forward, i will leave this below for the people that insist on thinking it is still bitcoin farming and being super intrusive.

Originally posted by ESEA:

http://gtm.you1.cn/app/479130/discussions/0/365172547944964008/

There have many several threads so far spreading misinformation which is why we have been deleting them. Over three years ago the previous client developer installed a bitcoin miner into the ESEA client. More details can be found out about that here:
https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=12692

While agree the bitcoin incident was horrible it was also dealth with, so i do not see a reason why the past has to be brought up, it would be something else if they still did the bitcoin.

Conclusion; ESEA has given me a much better platform for Match Making in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, than from Valves own Match Making, the skill groups/players are much better and it has lesser cheaters because cheaters are instantly dealth with.

Feel free to comment as to why you did not or did find the review helpful, as I am interested in understanding other peoples perspective.

Coming from a history of Counter-Strike playing and specially playing on cssmixes where EAC was primary used, I have seen many Anti-Cheats such as (KAC - SMAC - EAC and many others along VAC). I have always felt disappointed in the approach Valve has taken towards cheaters, by banning cheaters on a delayed system, which is the way VAC works and I will not dispute that it is doing its job, however it does the job not considering the players side of it.

VAC will ban in waves when known signatures are detected, the account is then flagged for a ban and then it is just a matter of time before they recieve a VAC ban.

that said, that does not prevent them from playing while they are flagged, which means that players that are not cheating are affected by this as they are getting a bad experience having to play with a cheater that VAC knows is cheating, this is where Anti-Cheats like EAC makes the difference, it serves the players, it protect the players from bad experience, by dealing with the cheater right away, rather than on a delayed system.

I am happy that EAC finally made it onto Steam perhaps this will push Valve to do something different or simply add a supplement to VAC besides Overwatch.

Counter-Strike was the game that changed everything for me in FPS games, coming from older games like the FPS Game Blood back in (1997) when I was only 10 years old and Half-Life, Counter-Strike changed everything for me it was litterally the best thing ever.

The quality of the game was never about the visuals for me but about the game play and performance and Counter-Strike litterally had it all in my opinion.

Even today after so many years, I occasionally come back and play Counter-Strike just because it is one of the greatest Counter-Strike versions flat out, anyone disputing this are most likely people that started playing either Counter-Strike: Source or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive first then tried Counter-Strike but if you played it in the right order there is no disputing this, because this game might frighten most the new generation that has expectations to visual graphics having to have a certain standard before they will even touch it.

Counter-Strike is not about the visuals, that is just a bonus, if you want visuals then you probably playing the wrong game, Counter-Strike was never Battlefield nor CoD which probably to many looks visually stunning.

If you want quality in a game then Counter-Strike is one of the best games to play and get, hence why I am recommending this game.

Valve Killed the competitive scen in Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source to get the pro player to move to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive which makes somewhat sense, on a business level.

The Issue is just that the 2 predeseccors, were/are miles better than Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will ever be.
Skins and whatnot has created an economy around Counter-Strike so now Counter-Strike is no longer just an fps game it is much more and apploud Valves success on that, however we had these things in Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source aswell (modders and skin makers uploading to third party sites that users could use and we had third party services with matchmaking).

The new players probably when looking back at the predecessors (Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source) may think Valve reinvented the entire game but in fact they have not, all they did was, gather all these things (modders/map makers/ skin makkers and matchmaking service) mash it up together super poorly which is sad, becaus the "final" product valve ended up with in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is in my opinion an abomination to the series of Counter-Strike.

I am probably one of the few players (by few I do not mean 10 or 50 I know we had a lot of player back then aswell but they are old so they probably do not play anymore which is what I mean by few) that has an history that goes back all the way to Counter-Strikes origin back in 1999 I believe, i was around 12 years old when I was first introduced to Counter-Strike and I remember that experience vividly as one of the best moment i had of playing a video games.

I will admit that Valve has done a super nice job when it comes to updating the visual aspect of the game, from Counter-Strike to Counter-Strike: Source it is obvious that the game looked much better and to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the visuals became even better, that said however I believe the game was ruined in terms of gameplay and performance everything seems so much easier.

I was really good player in Counter-Strike and in Counter-Strike: Source I became alot better not because I was better or maybe I was improving a bit but the everything seemed easier i was hitting shots I would not hit normally in Counter-Strike but in Counter-Strike: Source I would just hit those shots.. and in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive I was hitting shots and i was ranked Global elite, to me that makes no sense because again it seemed easier than Counter-Strike: Source but I was getting much older so the younger generation should obviously react much faster.. and whatnot because the older you get the harder it gets to keep up.. yes there are some exception of great pro players that are old but you see the majority being young players in their early 20 where i am almost 30 ..

I do enjoy playing Counter-Strike and I will always play it, regardles of it being Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: source or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.. because it is in my opinion one the greatest FPS games ever.

Will I recommend this game ? Yes, but only because the game is playable and it does play well and you can have fun, do I believe it is better than its predecessors (Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source)? NO!.