Testers kept assuming they were gordon freeman

>Half-Life: Alyx spent roughly four years in development, and for about one-and-a-half of those years Alyx Vance had a crowbar. The iconic Half-Life melee weapon was ultimately cut, though, because testers got it stuck on everything while assuming they were Gordon Freeman, who is not the star of Half-Life: Alyx.

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>Much like how playertesters being fidgety and impatient led to the trimming down of dialogue scenes and a much shorter introduction, issues with the crowbar became evident when testers got their virutal hands on it. In an interview with Kotaku, Half-Life: Alyx programmer Robin Walker said a big reason for cutting the crowbar was that players kept getting it stuck on things while they were walking around.

>"The lack of force feedback meant that players would often hold their crowbar out of their sight, because that’s what you do when you’re holding a real crowbar—you wouldn’t look at it all the time," Walker told Kotaku. "But then they’d hook it on stuff. They’d be walking along, and then they’d hook it on a door."

who cares?

>that one retard that keps running circles in a cave

no wonder valve's games are so linear, where the fuck they find these people?

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>"It didn’t matter how much we told them, like, literally at the start of the game, that they aren’t Gordon," Walker said.

>Having a crowbar also meant players assumed it was a melee weapon—and why wouldn't they? We've been bashing monsters, soldiers, and crates alike with the crowbar for over 20 years. But Valve never got melee combat working in a way it liked and decided to keep Half-Life: Alyx strictly a shooting game.

>Another major reason for leaving Gordon Freeman's signature weapon out of Half-Life: Alyx was that players holding a crowbar simply assumed they were playing as Gordon Freeman, rather than as Alyx Vance. After playtests, Valve would ask players to describe the story and events they'd experienced, and players would think they've been playing the whole time as Freeman. There was little Valve could do to change their minds.

pcgamer.com/valve-cut-the-crowbar-from-half-life-alyx-in-part-because-players-kept-assuming-they-were-gordon-freeman/

Valve playtesters strike again

>Having a crowbar also meant players assumed it was a melee weapon
what the fuck else would it be for? opening shit?

based retards
unironically

Goddamn those playtesters
Valve made positive changes to HLA based on community feedback. Do make use of this if you don't want HL3 to be beyond fucked.

You greatly overestimate the average intelligence of people. On average we're dumb as fuck.

>But Valve never got melee combat working in a way it liked and decided to keep Half-Life: Alyx strictly a shooting game.
Not being able to beat headcrabs to death with a brick sucks, but I guess I get it after playing Blade & Sorcery.
>"The lack of force feedback meant that players would often hold their crowbar out of their sight, because that’s what you do when you’re holding a real crowbar—you wouldn’t look at it all the time," Walker told Kotaku. "But then they’d hook it on stuff. They’d be walking along, and then they’d hook it on a door."
This seems the more pressing problem, really. Hope they can figure it out in time for Half-Life 3. Go play Boneworks and get to the platforming levels if you want proof that crowbar puzzles don't work.
Half-Life 3 has VR and Pancake modes where flat-screen players are Gordon, playing against a VR player, who is Alyx working for the G-Man to stop him.

>Much like how playertesters being fidgety and impatient led to the trimming down of dialogue scenes and a much shorter introduction
This is a good thing. I fucking despise HL2, and it is mostly because of the droning monologues they force you to listen to, with tons of shitty dialogue and you are locked in by invisible walls so you can't just keep playing.

I'm almost convinced Valve's playtesters are just a myth to handwave away them not bothering to implement something. Besides saying you designed a game based around the feedback of retarded playtesters is practically admitting you have little creative integrity.

They should change the place where they are hiring those dumb fucks
Holy shit

sounds cool as fuck

>game praised for "revolutionizing" narrative delivery in shooters by getting rid of cutscenes
>game forces you into rooms you can't leave or do anything in and makes you listen to an NPC drone on for 5 minutes in what is effectively a cutscene

And the teleport could be justified by her using G-Man's portals to zip around and confuse Gordon.

The crowbar issue could've potentially been fixed by giving Alyx her own signature melee weapon. But seriously, where does Valve find these people? Did the versions they tested simply not have Alyx talking? That could at least explain why they thought they were playing as Gordon.

Valve to their credit are pretty creative in pandering to retards, it has always been their mission to make accessible easy to consume cinematic shit that grows PC gaming (aka bringing in people who weren't into it before)

yea i think these beta testers actually got ptsd from hl2 so of course they are gonna make them remove dialogue
>having dialog at all
i only remember it because i played the game a thousand times

Oh there are surprisingly dense people out there. Just watch any popular streamer play this game

Alyx is a scrappy survivalist type, so having her scavenge and use a multitool and stuff feels truer to her character than getting in a zombie's face.

>"But then they’d hook it on stuff. They’d be walking along, and then they’d hook it on a door."
Now I'm just imagining a Three Stooges situation of Alyx very carefully walking around some area and suddenly falling to the ground just because she got hooked on a door.

WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE TESTERS
HOW ARE THEY STILL FUCKING GOING EVEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS OF VALVE GAME DROUGHT

THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

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What the hell is wrong with Valve playtesters?

HL3 will not be VR confirmed.

Probably yeah. I assume shit like pulling off boards that you now do with your bare hands used to require a crowbar like in the og games. It probably also doubled as a tool for physics puzzles. Maybe there were more problems like the winch holding up the shotgun zombie that require you to stick something in to hold it in place.
Really wish there was still melee though, especially for the fucking manhacks

She actually was planned to have a socket wrench in Half-Life 2, but they never went through with it.

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still, having some kind of melee like the user suggested would be very cool

Reminder that Valve playtesters got rid of this vehicle because "it looked too much like the HL2 buggy"

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>i-it's not a gimmick

But a Wrench is Shepherds weapon.

I dont get it, how? Their own voice ingame is female, jesus christ, freeman never even had a voice ingame. I always read about these playtesters, are they a static group of people that never changes and they all have subpar iq or what?

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It's easier to fuck up than you think, especially with no force feedback. In real life, if you're carrying a crowbar and it gets hooked on something, you feel it make contact and adjust your hand without really thinking about it. Since VR only has rumble feedback, you can't do that, some people are so dense that even rumbling at full power they won't figure it out, and when they stop moving they can't figure out why and get pissed. And how do you lock her hand in place if you're trying to move away from the door and can't? It's confusing and upsetting and takes you out of VR until you figure it out.

Compare it to the more visceral and implementable feeling of having a headcrab jump on your face and having to rip it off and kill it.

Valve never really cared about the gearbox expansions.

the testers are clearly from Yas Forumseddit

I mean, it did. The EP2 jalopy wasn't bad or anything so why does it matter

Shame. I think it would've worked nicely. Not as iconic as the crowbar but still.

alyx had a socket wrench, shepard had a monkey wrench

They probably thought they were just overhearing people chattering on the earpiece
Also these are probably normal people who don't play video games so much. If you put anyone out of the depth, they instantly turn stunningly retarded. Valve wants their money because there are 1000 of them to each of you.

Do they intentionally pick the dumbest testers possible? That would explain a lot about modern game design.

they do actually attempt to find testers that are at a low skill level, and a high level, just to see what they would do

This is what you get when you try to sell your produ- hem... game to as much people as possible. They aren't dense or retarded, for them videogames are just an hobby like watching netflix or listening to spotify

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They should have gone for the socket wrench or just a wrench

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Player A had trouble with this part but Player B didn't
So we'll just remove it entirely and now neither player has trouble
Net happiness has increased! :)

>produ- hem... game
What the fuck are you trying to say? No shit games are products, what the fuck kind of bullshit are you trying to suggest? Like I'm a hardcore anticapitalist IRL and I still can't fathom what you're trying to say.
Also, is the girl in your picture pregnant or have cancer or something? No way you get a gut like that with a nice rack and no double chin.

God I want to gut punch that slampig so bad

What a surprise. HLA shills are fucking morons. Who would have guessed?
>no melee
>because there is no melee, if you ever run out of ammo you are soft locked in the game
>only 3 weapons, of which have very limited and useless upgrades (literally no point in taking reflex sight when you unlock laser sight)
>cannot use more than one weapon at a time
>no actual jumping
>no sprinting
>objects in the environment have very limited intractability (ie, lighting a lighter or spraying the can of paint)
>puzzles are a fucking bore and incredibly easy
>very limited physics based puzzles on SOURCE 2 POINT FUCKING 0 ENGINE
>very limited enemy variety
>dumb as rocks enemies that often times won't move when a live grenade is next to them
>ending retcons previous games
>no vehicles you can use
>incredibly linear to the point that the game could have been a ride-the-rails shooter
>not enough resin to upgrade all your weapons
>very small enemy engagements, typically 3-4 enemies
>zombies and antlions are incredibly slow to match your slow speed
>cannot toggle flashlight despite large portions of the game being indoors and dark
>you play as a voiced protagonist in a virtual reality game, breaking immersion
Fuck, how can anyone even pretend like this game was anything above "meh"?

According to Ep2 commentary, they also redesigned the Jalopy into the Muscle Car in order to make the car feel more like a reward. Playtesters reportedly did not feel very happy with a hunk of junk, especially with Alyx commenting "forget White forest, we'll be lucky to make it to the end of the road"

Common copes heard from HLA Shills in an attempt to defend their shit game (mostly regarding melee and ammo):
>B-BUT IF YOU RUN OUT OF AMMO THEN UR JUST BAD LOL
Not the point. The point that this game breaking soft-lock can happen regardless.
>HL HAD SOFTLOCKS
Yes, and those are shit. Just because a good game has bad things in it doesn’t mean a bad game should have it too. That and those softlocks were not tied to some braindead ammo management system that could easily be fix with adding melee.
>IT’S A SURVIVAL HORROR GAME
It’s not but let’s pretend like it is. At least in good survival horror games you have a knife or something to defend yourself with. Have that in Alyx? Nope. Nothing. Out of ammo? Game’s locked.
>MELEE ISN’T NEEDED
Okay, let’s pretend like the soft-lock didn’t exist. Why NOT have melee? Why take a step back? Why not be able to smash a zombie to death with a brick? Why the less fun for no reason?
>THE GAME AUTOMAITCALLY SPAWNS AMMO FOR YOU IF YOU’RE LOW SO IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO RUN OUT
This is HLA shill propaganda and has not been proven.
>JUMPING AND SPRINTING MAKES YOU SICK
You know what did as well? Moving in general. You got use to it. You will with jumping and sprinting because there are games out there now that let you do so.
Now that that’s out of the way, give me a good argument and not this coping bullshit.

sadly yeah, however like with the looping cave tester, would you really be sad abt 1 less looping tunnel in episode 2?

now you also know why the rest of the free market is shit. A vast majority of people are subhuman filth. And as such, industry and economy tries to accommodate their plebeian tastes. Its also the reason why your politics are such garbage.

Imagine how much valve play testers alone held back this industry

>most people are morons
>valve gets playtesters
>they're morons
>half life: alyx is released
>watch twitch
>they're all morons
dear god i'm surrounded by morons

I don’t care. When is the Artifact relaunch?

>Normal market
>"I want some pink color paper and Im willing to pay $5 for it"
>"Okay here‘s some pink paper I made give me money"
>"Deal thanks"

>Game industry
>We want Gordon freeman
>"Nope nope nope fuck you you‘re Alex nope no crowbar no"

Free market has issues but it's better than a handful of egotist with their heads up their asses thinking they know whats best for everyone.

Nah, I don't get upset about that one because there's a couple vent crawl parts in HL1 that totally sucked and served no purpose

when is ricochet 2