You seem to be upset with TF2 for requiring a certain amount of people to take on certain tasks. You want to be able to experience 100% of the content regardless of it's intention, delivery, or challenge. This seems like you just want more free stuff for your free game, this is good, it's a sign that you really like this game and you're frustrated you cannot experience everything about it because you must rely on the public to help you. I can understand that's... sometimes unfortunate, but at the same time you cannot hold this against Valve/TF2.
I'm not sure what exactly you're expecting for TF2 anymore. I mean think about what you've gotten and how it stacks up to any other multiplayer game you've ever played: - TF2 came out in 2007 (you cite Borderlands 2, when the first Borderlands came out in 2009) In this time there have been: a lot of -free- updates. Over 5 years of constant support, new game modes, new maps, new voice actor lines, new models, new weapons, new hats (hooray??), more features, different entire game modes. All of these things have been provided for free, because some people really like those $100 rings. - TF2 is now -free-, 100% free THERE ARE STILL CONTENT UPDATES. This is what really blows me away. This game is 100% free, this entire event was 100% free. Sure you can say the event sucks but why have any events... ever really? CoD doesn't have Halloween events and it seems to be quite fine without them. I'm not sure Halo has any kind of achievements unlocking new weapons, or new maps coming out (for free). - Not everyone wants to play by themselves. I think the fact that you need at least x players to do something is kind of neat - it's not something you see in a lot of other video games, and I mean.... is this really a big deal? It's ONE map during ONE week of TF2, and unless you've been sucked into the trading meta-game (that is cheapening TF2) there isn't anything you 'get' out of this. Then again when I started playing TF2 5 years ago, there wasn't anything to get at anytime. You say that 32 man servers show you can take an idea too far, but what is to stop that argument from being flipped on it's head. Why does VALVE get to tell me how many players I should max out on? If one can say 32+ is too many, I'm comfortable in saying you need 6 to do MvM, unless you regularly are able to 1-man MMORPG bosses or L4D runs I don't see why this is such a strange restraint. (Also side note: what is the challenge in hitting the tank? The challenge comes in splitting your attention, the tank itself is easy but it REQUIRES time, REQUIRES damage. If you have to concentrate on stopping a tank or stopping bomb progress what do you do? That question is the reason tanks exist. They are not difficult on normal, but then again the Normal difficulties are pretty easy.) - Perhaps TF2 is reaching the end of it's idea threshold So MvM isn't some perfect MAN VERSUS MACHINE SHOWDOWN, it's more of a really fancy set of maps and AI logic and hacked up missions. I explain MvM as a super polished SourceMod plugin - and that's a blast. It's a shame it takes up a literal 32 man server, but expecting them to completely change bots/AI behavior within their game at this point in it's lifetime just doesn't many any sense - there is no financial motive unless they plan on re-releasing it as some paid addition. You can't just edit SoldierBot.cs and set useRocketJumps = true. After 5 years perhaps TF2 should just be enjoyed for what it is, instead of being reliant on every holiday update bringing with it more fun. Remember how fun cp_dustbowl was on launch day? It's still that fun, you've just come to expect more, a lot more. My advice is: don't cater to quickplayer. They are users that just mashed "PLAY NOW" and most times have no loyalty to the place they show up at. Take your server off quickplay - get a community of players together that still like TF2 for what it is. If you cannot get those people together, then perhaps your community has moved on from TF2 and Quickplay users were just the band-aid hiding this wound. TF2 is a bunch of fun but it has become a very different game over its lifetime. I agree with your sentiment that the updates now don't feel as "fun" as they used to, but I also see that I have around 2,000 hours of game time in TF2, and I think that's just a lot of time to spend on one thing in general. On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 1:43 AM, dan <needa...@ntlworld.com> wrote: > On 28/10/2012 07:38, Maavrik wrote: > >> I always felt that TF2 was meant to be silly. For instance, the Scout >> knows he's in a video game, not very serious if you ask me >> > > It doesn't follow that in order for the content of the game "not to be > serious" that it doesn't > matter what that content of the game is or how the mechanics of it work. > > If any old crap worked because "It's not serious" then Splash Damage could > be successful PC game developers :) > > As I said, I think it would be more fun had this particular update > considered what happens when you play the map, rather than them (after > finally realising that the random boxes appearing > somewhere on the map was a crap idea) having to sit and think of ways of > making this suck because otherwise their "customers" won't value the items > they've farmed. > > They even make it suck if you don't have the right number of people? Why? > Why can borderlands 2 manage to work with 1 player or 4 players, but Valve > can > only write a game that needs 6 people otherwise they switch off half the > mechanics or it doesn't scale? There doesn't seem to be any shortage of > people willing to pay > for Borderlands 2. Worse are these stupid ideas now that you can't leave a > game, even if your house catches fire "Our game sucks with less than 6 > players and our solution to this is > to get rid of players from our community who have to leave the server" - > err, doesn't that just make it even /less/ likely to get 6 players? Why not > just design your game to work with > however many players there are? The TF2 community manages to do that, as > the 6v6, highlander, 12v12 and 32 man servers show (well ok > the 32 man servers show you can only go so far with an idea) But why can't > I play single player MvM or 2 or 3 player Halloween maps and have it all > work? > > I'm willing to pay for the 3 copies of the game (I thought I'd already > paid for 2 of the effing copies you're now telling me every year I can't > play this mode or that mode > because there aren't enough people. Evidently I didn't pay enough) > > If the answer to all the questions ultimately ends with some nod to the > idea that items have to be valuable, then those answers suck and it's a huge > mistake to take your games down these gaming dead ends imo. Sure, you'll > make lots of money. I can look at how many halfwits are buying rings on > sale and > see that, but it makes the games themselves suck. > > Valuing the game, especially playing it, seems to be no longer an option. > If it ever generated revenue, it doesn't > now (except, I suppose, for the ticket idea in MvM which you could argue > is about paying to play towards the objective to get items. Not > a bad idea but it's MvM where they've taken everything developers could do > with AI in 2003 and made it worse. Where's the challenge in hitting the > tank for example? > TF2 has all these wonderful game mechanics, projectile weapons - the 2 > nade firing guns, for example, are fantastic and really rewarding to get > hits with (I would > argue they are the best weapons in any multiplayer game) and mechanics > like sticky and rocket jumping. All of this rich content was ignored to > instead fight a bunch of AI that just walk in straight lines - so > not only do they not use any of these mechanics but you don't need to use > any of them against them either. My grandmother would probably struggle to > miss them and she's been dead for over a decade. > > Unfortunately, MvM removed all of the good work they did, since F2P, in > getting lots of vanilla servers full of people playing TF2 multiplayer. Now > I find myself > scrabbling around a bunch of badly configured 3rd party servers with half > the server trading or sitting somewhere on the map having "meetings" where > hardly anyone actually plays once again. > The irony here, of course (as we can see from the other thread with folk > noticing their quickplay servers filling instantly) as the Halloween update > brings in a ton of people to play, they are given something that's barely > worth playing > and you say "it's not supposed to be serious", but I don't want it to be > serious, I want it to be fun. > > Yes, some aspects of the map are fun, like the changing health packs, the > exploding pumpkins, the pit you fall down if you miss the jump for the > health and so on, but the first of these have been used for several years > now and most of the new ideas are just content that has been taken from > roll the dice and frog mods and so on - except there is actually a modicum > of sense behind how the RTD servers implemented it. > > -- > Dan. > > > ______________________________**_________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.**com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/**hlds_linux<https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux> > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
