When will Valve learn it doesn't need to be genre-defining. It just needs to be great and that will be good enough

It's the first true AAA VR game. It didn't really need to innovate with VR game mechanics, it just needs to refine it. This resulted in the most polished and refined VR game in the market. However, it's not perfect.

Fair enough, got any VR fps recommendations then? I need new games to play.

Good enough is not a thing on the internet. If it is not the single best game to have existed to date it will be considered a failure by the greater populace and that will damage sales.

When will you learn that their product is Steam and everything else is to build traction around Steam.
They realised this after the first half-life and did LITERALLY EVERYTHING around it since.
>Sudden episodic nature of HL2
>The Orange Box
>Steam market
>TF2 going F2P with microtransactions
>CSGO with Arms Deal
>PS3 collab with Steam services
>Free weekends/sales/valve games free to grab
>Portal 2 Co-op
>Artifact
>Vive, Steam Deck, Alyx, Aperture Desk Job
>"0 billions of dollars"
You fags call out timmy's schemes while wondering about the easiest to explain shit. Grow the fuck up. The next game comes out when it will have the opportunity to grow Steam further, if it's on a new console or a new hardware piece it's purely by extension.

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I have no problem with them only creating a game per technology, the problem is their games have been lacking.

The thing is they were doing the HL2 episodes as a side thing and accidentally wrote themselves into a corner with the ending of episode 2 since there clearly wasn't a plan since they were basically writing it like a TV show. With an ending like that there couldn't just be a "next episode", it would have to be a big deal and explain a lot of shit, starting with how Gordon would even get out of that situation. Then they just focused on other things that made money without making thinking tkk hard. It's whoever wrote Episode 2's fault the series hit a wall.

IIRC. They had clear visions for HL2: Aftermatch (HL3) but decided to try out the episodic format and used HL2 as a guinea pig. HL2: E3 had a draft ready and it ended on a similar cliffhanger E2 ended. I don't recall the true reason they kept going back in circles but they eventually went with a "Half-life 3" as a standalone thing since scope expected from them was much bigger than a single episode to justify the wait and then they just kept going in circles regarding ideas, reasons to actually release and shit, plus how valve works. see youtu.be/f2ADkeCTlG0

If Gayben figures out BCI/full dive I'm hopping on that pronto (after the usual 'wait and see if people's frontal lobes combust like an Nvidia card during play' period that is)

I agree, they played it a bit too safe.
Could have been longer, could have had more weapon/enemy variety.
Upcoming HL2VR is what Alyx should have been more like.

When will people just accept there will never be a HL3? You just have to come to terms with it, kinda like how I had to come to terms with the fact that I'll never get a sequel to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and Captain Scott Mitchell...or how we'll never get another good Syphon Filter game. You just accept it and move on.
And even if by some grace of the devil's nutsack that we did get HL3, it'll be so far down the line that you would have stop giving a flying fuck by then.

Come on now OP. Valve are big boys now, they either define genre or don't bother making games.

Valve has a serious direction problem. Gabe is the business guy all the way but they never really seemed to have a lead director for their games who didn't just leave to Id and then become irrelevant (and rich).

Also, I'll say that VR threw a huge wrench in whatever they might have had going for a potential Source 3 they may have been working on. So fuck Carmack for that.

Some novel new gameplay mechanics would've been nice. Something like Titanfall with time travel level or F-Stop mechanic, something like that.

They could spend time developing the most comprehensive NPC AI in the industry but unfortunately consoomers don't care about that sort shit

Yeah, he also made them drop TF2.

Valve never really did make great games, they just had great worlds that helped make the so so gameplay feel adequate to continue the narrative. They became huge because the simplicity of their engines led to so many other games being able to be built in it. I'd say sure, HL3 should come out and also showcase a new engine, but the game itself could just be standard Half Life that inspires a few things here and there in future games. They never reinvented the wheel or anything.

What did Carmack do to TF2? I've never heard of his involvement with that but interesting if there's a story there.