TF2 Blog: "Scream Fortress Is Coming Soon! Let's Talk About Gifts"
108 replies, posted
[url]http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=14798[/url]
[quote=TF Team]There's a long list of reasons why we look forward to the Team Fortress Halloween update every year. It's a chance for us to try some fun new things within the framework of a time-limited holiday. We're all really excited to see what you think of this year's event.
It's also an opportunity every year to revisit decisions we made it in previous years and see what we've learned and what we want to do differently. As one specific example, we've spent a bunch of time internally talking about the Halloween gift drops. We have a bunch of amazing content we're about to ship and we wanted to evaluate the gifting system to figure out if it was a good method for distributing some of that content.
When gift drops were introduced way back in 2011's Scream Fortress update, they were intended to be a small value-add — a simple bonus for all players participating in the update. As time went on and Halloween updates came and went, however, some players spent more and more time focusing on gifts, often to the detriment of the players they were playing with. The Halloween experience for many players now consists of sitting idle in a custom server while a plugin teleports them from gift spawn point to gift spawn point.
Ordinarily we don't mind if players do things that we don't personally enjoy as long as their fun doesn't harm the quality of experience for other players. In this particular case, however, because the overwhelming majority of gifts claimed went to a tiny handful of accounts, we feel comfortable characterizing the current system as blatantly and transparently unfair: While some farming accounts claimed more than five hundred gifts just last year, the median numbers of gifts claimed was only five.
As before, we're continuing to iterate on gifts for this year's event. In line with our original goals of giving all participating players some free Halloween content without affecting the core experience, this year we'll be giving every player one guaranteed gift bundle just for logging in during the event. This bundle will contain a random sample of some of this year's content, including some that would otherwise only have come from crates. To keep some of the fun of getting multiple gifts through the event, all players can earn a secondary bundle by completing some of the event achievements. Put together, these two bundles will grant more items per player than the median five gifts from last year.
Because historically the total number of gifts has been unbounded, and the distribution incredibly skewed, we have been greatly limited when it came to what sort of content we could distribute. As we're now more tightly controlling the distribution, we can grant a wider variety of more interesting content and we look forward to seeing you all get your hands on some of it in just a few days.[/quote]
That's a pretty great way of dealing with it, TF Team. Now I can just play the Halloween maps I want to play instead of desperately running around to find gifts on Eyeaduct or Ghost Fort. Cheers!
Say what you will about the Valve TF2 team, but I think it's pretty neat how they're always considering how to make stuff like this fair for everyone. A different company probably would of stopped support a long time ago.
I swear to god if the achievements are incredibly repetitive bullshit like "Win 136 rounds on Spookville" or "Perform 31 dominations while in The Devil's Foyer" I'm going to get mad
[QUOTE=Mr. Jelly;46348057]I swear to god if the achievements are incredibly repetitive bullshit like "Win 136 rounds on Spookville" or "Perform 31 dominations while in The Devil's Foyer" I'm going to get mad[/QUOTE]
Hey if we can shrink and enter other players and effect them Bowser's Inside Story style I wouldn't be complaining.
[QUOTE]...we look forward to seeing you all get your hands on some of it [I][B][U]in just a few days[/U][/B][/I].[/QUOTE]
Whelp, looks like odds are good the update isn't coming out until Thursday?
[QUOTE=G. Verloren;46348091]Whelp, looks like odds are good the update isn't coming out until Thursday?[/QUOTE]
Well why would they not release the Halloween update on halloween? :v:
[QUOTE=Bynine;46348007]That's a pretty great way of dealing with it, TF Team. Now I can just play the Halloween maps I want to play instead of desperately running around to find gifts on Eyeaduct or Ghost Fort. Cheers![/QUOTE]
Agreed, it was definitely a hassle avoiding triggering the gift drops on other maps.
[QUOTE=sirdownloadsalot;46348102]Well why would they not release the Halloween update on halloween? :v:[/QUOTE]
Because they've never waited until the 31st in six years of updates.
[QUOTE=sirdownloadsalot;46348102]Well why would they not release the Halloween update on halloween? :v:[/QUOTE]
cause that's the day irl Halloween stuff happens
Looks like i'm not the only one who is curious about whose hands those belong to and thinking its the new boss :v:
[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;46348138][IMG]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/news/14798/crystalballgifts.jpg[/IMG]
Mannequin/fortune teller machine/puppet boss?[/QUOTE]
Considering the nails, maybe a robo-admin?
[QUOTE=FireStarw;46348206]Considering the nails, maybe a robo-admin?[/QUOTE]
i don't think it's robotic. It looks wooden, and if it was robotic it would be much more advanced than grays bots which only have squares for fingers
[QUOTE=zp92;46348189]Looks like i'm not the only one who is curious about whose hands those belong to and thinking its the new boss :v:[/QUOTE]
I'm guessing Sniper's mother, she got blasted to the moon in an Australium rocket, who knows what that amount of australium can do to one person?
I bet spooky puppets.
Spooky puppets of the mercs are gonna be bosses.
actually nvm, looks like a fortune teller
So now instead of gift hunting we will be cheevo hunting
[QUOTE=meppers;46348403]So now instead of gift hunting we will be cheevo hunting[/QUOTE]
Which will also mean we'll get a ton of new Halloween achievements.
Hype.
I wonder if this year the gifts will give cosmetics, or new things completely.
How about a tool called the Antiweener, that removes Halloween restrictions on any item? They could be gift drops only and marketable.
:Edit:
Why disagree, though? There's certain Halloween items that are less obtrusive than normal items already in game...Seeing Magical Mercenaries in every other server be damned, I love seeing players mix n match stuff in unique ways and Soldiers' space set from last year would look great on RD_Asteroid...
[QUOTE=meppers;46348403]So now instead of gift hunting we will be cheevo hunting[/QUOTE]
like the good old days
[QUOTE=Mr. Jelly;46348057]I swear to god if the achievements are incredibly repetitive bullshit like "Win 136 rounds on Spookville" or "Perform 31 dominations while in The Devil's Foyer" I'm going to get mad[/QUOTE]
If they are like that I might as well use SAM.
[QUOTE=MrCasual;46348473]I wonder if this year the gifts will give cosmetics, or new things completely.
How about a tool called the Antiweener, that removes Halloween restrictions on any item? They could be gift drops only and marketable.[/QUOTE]
If any item can have the restrictions removed, then the entire point of restrictions is thrown out the window, because the art style and canon is broken to absurd degrees regardless. The point of restrictions is not to poop in your cereal, the point is to stop bird-headed zombie scouts from running around all the time.
[QUOTE=MrCasual;46348473]I wonder if this year the gifts will give cosmetics, or new things completely.
How about a tool called the Antiweener, that removes Halloween restrictions on any item? They could be gift drops only and marketable.
:Edit:
Why disagree, though? There's certain Halloween items that are less obtrusive than normal items already in game...Seeing Magical Mercenaries in every other server be damned, I love seeing players mix n match stuff in unique ways and Soldiers' space set from last year would look great on RD_Asteroid...[/QUOTE]
hehe weener
[editline]27th October 2014[/editline]
dong joke
[QUOTE=G. Verloren;46348091]Whelp, looks like odds are good the update isn't coming out until Thursday?[/QUOTE]
still a chance it was kind of a typo and it comes out tomorrow
[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;46348508]because the art style and canon is broken to absurd degrees[/QUOTE]
That ship sailed a long time ago. Not that I'm complaining.
[QUOTE=theWILL2fight;46348577]still a chance it was kind of a typo and it comes out tomorrow[/QUOTE]
Yeah that "not releasing the comic today" thing was definitely a typo.
[editline]27th October 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Vipes;46348586]That ship sailed a long time ago. Not that I'm complaining.[/QUOTE]
Everybody says this but it doesn't change the fact that there's nothing even vaguely close to a zombie-monkey engi in terms of crazy lore-breaking shit in the main game.
Truthfully a lot of the "restricted" items would fit right in normally. Only a small few deserve to be restricted.
[QUOTE=Vipes;46348645]Truthfully a lot of the "restricted" items would fit right in normally. Only a small few deserve to be restricted.[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Scream_Fortress_2013#Cosmetic_items"]https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Scream_Fortress_2013#Cosmetic_items[/URL]
At least 2/3 of these cosmetics have no business being in the game outside of Halloween, simply for breaking lore too much. Almost all of the rest are otherwise Halloween-themed and would be tacky outside of Halloween restrictions. I know that 'tackiness' isn't exactly a disqualifier for an item being available year-round, but if they pick-and-chose which items got restrictions and which didn't, it would encourage people to make less interesting and original stuff.
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