Play casual matches! They only match you with players nearby and its a lot of fun. I regularly see the same people and its a lot of fun getting to know everyone and banter throughout the game (I only play the hostage gamemode as well).
The only issue I've had is the amount of bots. When I play I regularly get into matches where 19/20 players are all bots and they auto kick you the moment you join. Its very frustrating
colejohnson66•45m ago
An all bot server kicking the only human player?
rtldg•29m ago
Yes. People make software to control accounts (botting) and to farm experience in CS2. They'll later sell the accounts or use them for spamming reports against real players and other such things. So they fill up a Valve-ran casual server so real players cannot join and report the bots to Valve.
homebrewer•44m ago
I recently looked at 1.6 servers for the first time in maybe 10 years. There are tons of active servers out there now, far more than there were ten years ago, and they're filled to the brim with bots, which definitely was not the norm back then. You used to see just a few active servers filled with real players, and the rest were simply empty, with either zero or just a couple of players who knew each other.
What changed? Was this lunacy adopted from CS2?
Aeolun•21m ago
Just another variation of Eternal September?
beckthompson•4m ago
I'm pretty sure the bots are farming "Drops" which they'll sell for money. Every week you get a free case (or skin I think) which the bots are taking advantage of
leftyspook•23m ago
That really is not a solution.
Third party servers used to host plenty of non-standard gamemodes that Valve does not provide. Retakes, mentioned in the blogpost, is one of those modes.
beckthompson•5m ago
of course! But there isn't much else to do so I'm just giving a solution that works for me
Aeolun•22m ago
I feel like it should be up to valve to fix this no? It feels like it should be possible to require an email for everyone that wants to start a server and then boot all of the ones that cannot be bothered to reply to your messages to stop spamming the server browser.
xeonmc•19m ago
They could also use the Minecraft approach, where you're free to join servers via IP/domain addresses from a simple UI instead of being obliged to trudge through the browser.
diath•13m ago
Has anything changed in CS2? You could always just `connect host:port` in the console in Counter-Strike.
leftyspook•8m ago
Nothing changed, you need to know that host:port first, and that's where the problems with the official serverlist being flooded with fake entries become apparent.
beckthompson•53m ago
The only issue I've had is the amount of bots. When I play I regularly get into matches where 19/20 players are all bots and they auto kick you the moment you join. Its very frustrating
colejohnson66•45m ago
rtldg•29m ago
homebrewer•44m ago
What changed? Was this lunacy adopted from CS2?
Aeolun•21m ago
beckthompson•4m ago
leftyspook•23m ago
Third party servers used to host plenty of non-standard gamemodes that Valve does not provide. Retakes, mentioned in the blogpost, is one of those modes.
beckthompson•5m ago