The Dynamic Weapon Pricing website
Dynamic Weapon Pricing (sometimes referred as the Weapons Market) was a major overhaul to Counter-Strike: Source and its weapon pricing, which was released on November 1, 2006. It sparked controversy among fans and since been removed due to strong opposition.
Overview
Dynamic Weapon Pricing was a system intended to balance the in-game economy by mimicing how market prices are influenced by supply and demand. Each Monday, weapon and equipment prices would fluctuate based on their usage during the previous week. For example, if 10% of all dollars world-wide are spent on the Maverick M4A1 Carbine, then its price will increase by 10%.
Each week, the total number of weapons purchased world-wide since the previous week's change is counted. The purchase data is gathered directly from game servers. Every 24 hours, game servers would upload a file to Steam and list the quantities of all items purchased over the course of the previous day. To promote transparency and player engagement, Valve launched the "Counter-Strike Weapons Market" website, where players could track real-time statistics on weapon purchases, view price change graphs, and anticipate upcoming costs based on global trends.
The feature could be optionally disabled on the server by setting the console command mp_dynamicpricing 0.
Development
Pre-release
In December 2003, Valve developers began considering changes to the Counter-Strike's economy.[1][2] The main reason was the outdated reward system, which was adapted from Hostage Rescue mode and was not suitable for competitive games.[1]
On January 15, 2004, an update was released to address this issue, but Counter-Strike co-creator Jess Cliffe did not want to stop there and shared plans to rework the entire in-game economy. In March, he posted a patch log with modified weapon prices on the Counter-Strike forums to gather feedback from the community.[3] However, on the next day he abandoned this idea, stating that the changes were "simply overly radical".[4]
After two and a half years, on September 22, 2006, a new feature called Dynamic Weapon Pricing was announced for Counter-Strike: Source.[5] On October 11, 2006, a beta for Dynamic Weapon Pricing was added. During the beta, for unknown reasons, the ability to purchase ammunition was removed. After three weeks of testing, the feature was fully implemented on November 1, 2006, without restoring ammunition purchasing.
Post-release
After the release, Dynamic Weapon Pricing system began to falter. The main issue with this feature was that it made difficult-to-use guns underused whilst promoting normally lesser used "spray-and-pray" guns such as SMGs. As of February 2007, prices for the M4A1 and AK-47 had approximately doubled, while the cost for submachine guns like TMP and MAC-10 had dropped below $500. This led to increased use of easier-to-handle guns, which went against the competitive nature of Counter-Strike, making Dynamic Weapon Pricing wildly unpopular.
Under this system, certain guns were almost impossible to be purchased or made completely impractical. For example, a Desert Eagle usually had cost more than $5000, making it more expensive than an AWP. It also meant that not only it was unavailable for pistol rounds, it was also a pointless purchase later on and almost impossible to buy if on the losing team. Additionally, the Scout would usually cost more than twice the price of an AWP due to it being normally less used, making it completely impractical due to it being more expensive and being weaker than the AWP. Conversely, since the Glock-18 was normally almost never purchased by anyone due to its low power, the price fell so much that players could potentially spam buying the weapon and possibly cause the server to lag and even crash.
The system was heavily criticized by the community, leading many users to disable it on their servers. It was swiftly removed just a few months after its introduction. Counter-Strike creator Minh Le, who also contributed to its development, explained the situation in this way: «Everybody just wanted to buy the AK-47. [Players] didn’t really want to pay top dollar for it <...> It just became so ingrained, people became so used to the current system that when we do something so radical like that they go "woah!" They had to relearn the whole meta. So a lot of players at that time weren’t really keen on relearning the meta of the game.»[6]
Gallery
Trivia
- The mechanic was referred to in Counter-Strike: Source's files as "Black market".
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 gotFrag - Show me the money!!!; Valve's Project Manager response. Archived from the original on 2004-02-13.
- ↑ gotFrag - Interview with Valve's Jess Cliffe. Archived from the original on 2004-02-01.
- ↑ CS-Nation - Cliffe On Balance. Archived from the original on 2004-04-03.
- ↑ CS-Nation - No Price Changes.. Yet. Archived from the original on 2004-04-03.
- ↑ CS-Nation - New CS Weapon Pricing - The CS Market. Archived from the original on 2008-04-09.
- ↑ Fandom - ‘Counter-Strike’ Creator Reflects on 20 Years of FPS Dominance.
External Links
- Steam - Counter-Strike Weapons Market. Archived from the original on 2006-11-09.
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