Why does Counter Strike suck so much now?

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Originally Posted by Nalano

You're kinda like the guy who has to get his pedantic point across long after everybody else has gone on to discuss something more interesting.

It's all the more comedic when winning that detail doesn't change the point.

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I'm not really sure what the point is. It doesn't seem particularly coherent to me nor has the thread moved on significantly.

The point is that population density in western europe, where most of the posters here live, is significantly larger then the US. As a result, the pings in the US are usually significantly higher then those in Europe. Therefore, netcode that can handle high pings is still a requirement in 2013.

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Originally Posted by gwathdring

Two isn't all that bad. There are neighborhoods near where I live that don't have a choice. I'm sure there are larger communities in more rural areas that don't have any choice, either. Yay for communications monopolies and price gouging!

Is Europe better though? I don't know much about the cable networks of Europe. I would be surprised if European telecommunications networks were substantially better or cheaper in a way that wasn't roughly proportional to their increased population density. More people in a small area means more people served by similar amounts of laid cable. The US isn't very dense.

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Yes it is when you compare it to other well-developed countries. We have monopolies and cartels offering us speeds of 20 MB/s for over $100 a month while Europe and Japan are getting double that for about half the price.

This is why we can't have nice things like no lag compensation.

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Originally Posted by Shooop

Yes it is when you compare it to other well-developed countries. We have monopolies and cartels offering us speeds of 20 MB/s for over $100 a month while Europe and Japan are getting double that for about half the price.

This is why we can't have nice things like no lag compensation.

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Hmm. I guess that makes sense, even though no one's provided any robust cost comparisons. How much are telecommunication companies in Europe owned or subsidized by the government? We cut a lot of government ties to communications in the 60s and 70s. Also, are there more competing telecoms companies? Healthier competition combined with Europe's more aggressive stance on monopolies could be at least partially explaining the cost differences too.

I guess another thing to look at would be the raw infrastructure. As mentioned by several people, higher density means more people served by the same cable which means cheaper service. It also means a single company can more easily serve a wider area because they have more paying customers per square foot of cable they lay. Companies that lay cable in rural America are paying more to get materials and supplies out past their centers of operations and getting less in return because of the small customer density.

So I suppose it's not entirely fair to call the companies here more greedy--I don't remember if anyone said that, though.

Another question: how often do European telecoms companies gouge the price by throttling bandwidth and splitting it between too many customers? Are you really getting connections that are twice as fast that often, or are you just being sold faster connections?

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How much are telecommunication companies in Europe owned or subsidized by the government?

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The EU has liberalized the Telecommuncation market in 1998. Which, to answer your question means: Not at all.
The EU is, however, actively working to increase the amount of competition in the sector, as well as doing the basic EU stuff: Decreasing the costs of inter-national telephone communication, for example (EU has this no-borders principle - they can force this stuff with laws). The EU, as well as my own (dutch) government, has made it significantly easier to swap between telecom providers.

And I can tell you that was REALLY needed. Honestly. We spent two months without internet because our former company tried as hard as possible to prevent us from actually swapping - and this was a general practice back in the day, to discourage dissatisfied customers. This today is no longer the case. Thank God.

I don't think that it is any subsidies that are doing their work here. EU's agressive anti-monopoly and pro-competition stance probably is a big factor though, as is, off-course, the population density. Rural areas do get significantly slower speeds even in the Netherlands- there is no "good internet for everyone" government program.