TF2 General Chat and Speculation Station V13 - Heavy times - Games

What if Valve employees simply do not want to work on this game? There's no bonus incentive and there's nothing anyone can do to make them want to work on a project.

When developers relaunch their games with sequels, they do so because that's the monetization model they adopt upon release. F2P live service products are an entirely different beast, and I wish this fact would be recognized by individuals claiming TF2's longevity is a "testament to the brilliance of the game" and not the fact that it's a free-to-play game that enjoyed varying levels of support throughout its lifespan. Contrary to what you may believe, you're allowed to both adore this game and recognize the reality of the situation. League of Legends was released in 2009 and continues to perform better than even Dota 2, and I hope you're around five years from now to see Dota 2's player numbers remain above 300k on a daily basis, because it will be a decade old--just like TF2 was last year. Why should I give a care what Valve employees want to work on? It's a business, and if there's customer demand for a service then they should darn well respect that and deliver.

idk, I feel like you're making conflicting arguments here. Valve is controlled by barons who compel people to leave the tf2 team because they can be more profitable elsewhere, but the employees are also given too much leeway to choose their own games and should be assigned to more profitable projects, regardless of what the employees themselves want. IDK if these ideas can really be reconciled, they're contrary to each other. The fact of the matter is that we've heard conflicting things from former valve employees about internal issues, so we don't know exactly what issues are happening in the company that lead to waning support for popular games like tf2. The most consistent thing that we've heard imo is about hiring. Valve was always founded on the idea of getting the best and brightest or whatever, which seems to have limited their hire pool. The tf team is obviously understaffed, considering that it's december and we're rapidly approaching the possibility of going an entire year, from january to december, without a single major content update. Are they understaffed because people don't want to work on the tf2 team? Are they understaffed because people who do want to work on it are being compelled to join other projects? Is valve as a whole just understaffed period? Is it some combination of these factors? We don't really know, we don't work at valve. All we know is that TF2 isn't getting the attention that it deserves, and that's pretty sad.

I laugh, laugh at people who say TF2 has a "died" because of its age and 30-thousand odd playercount, when Counter-Strike, Half-Life Deathmatch, Day of Defeat, and other GoldSrc games pull in a good few hundred players a week at the least. I started a Sven Co-Op server network two weeks ago and I've already served a good hundred and fifty clients, and I consider that a resounding success, and yet you guys think TF2 is dead? Nobody's gonna let this babe die.

While TF2 isn't dead by any means, it isn't in a great or even exceptional state either. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy TF2, but I still think it could be a better game if it had more people working on it. That is probably really, really wishful thinking on my end though.

Now this seems silly. Ever been at work and had to do something you don't want to? There might be a demand but that doesn't always mean people will want capitalize on it. Comparatively TF2 is old and janky, I don't care much at all for dota (Or artifact) but I can see why people at valve would be more eager to work on something "new" rather than something "old". I can't help you aren't viewing the people that work there as, you know, people.

Except that I'm pretty sure Valve's managers don't give a shit about whether there's demand for a game or not. Who exactly was demanding Artifact? Apparently not many people, judging by how poorly its performing. The problem is the managers were too blinded by the giant dollar signs in their eyes to see that the game was going to bomb because of how aggressively P2W it is. The point I'm making is, they're not just greedy fucks: they're actually fucking terrible at their job, and if Valve didn't have a self-sustaining money printing press in Steam, they would eventually be fired for running the company in the ground. But because Valve is essentially invincible, its more likely that the entirety of the games development division will be fired before the managers ever will. And the worst part is, I don't think Gabe gives a single shit anymore. I'm starting to wonder if the only reason he's staying on as CEO is because he knows that, if he turned the company over to one of his managers, they'd immediately go about trying to offload Valve to the highest corporate bidder in exchange for the mother of all paychecks.

you'd be shocked to know that being a free to play game only draws players in. engament is only achieved through gameplay, and tf2 had an already sizeable playerbase before becoming f2p. doing so only secured a fresh batch of players over time. Both derive from an already stablished userbase that was both engaged with the gameplay. The only reason why League of legends outperforms Dota 2 is because Riot invest HEAVILY on marketing, and predates Dota 2 for almost 4 years, wich made him dominate the scene for years to come. if anything has to be said about Dota 2 is that is has managed to stay in the market and still grow over time despite the trend of MOBA-based titles dying over time(like Heroes of Newerth, Monday Night Combat and others). why the hell do you think Blizzard invested SO MUCH IN MARKETING to push overwatch on everyone's table? do you sincerely think the whole incident about blizzard shutting down porn blogs was out of respect for its developers's work? Counter Strike 1.6 is basically ten years old, has multiple sequels and its still actively played - even more than steam says if we take into the account its pirated versions. age factors into a game when last gen games are already subpar and unable to compete with current gen games. with each gen lasting around 6 to 8 years i'd say that if Dota managed to stay alive for 5 more years at a 300k userbase i'd be a god damn accomplishment. here's where you completely miss the point as usual, and its so damn tiring that ends being fucking redundant to spoil it again over and over. Whenever someone says tf2 is great its probably due to it being an actual fun game that is fun to play even despite all the shenanigans asociated to its support - because thats what the game has been until now: supported. even if the game no longer gets dev support and pulls the plug on official valve servers people will mount their own servers and still play the game(people already did for the first half of the game, mind you) people did that with maplestory, with phantasy star online, Ragnarok Online and even with Halo CE - hell, you can probably find active servers for Ultima Online if you feel like being a 40yo and have some fun. I'd love to see you go to Valve's HQ and demand them to work on your tf2.

People call games dead all the time. DotA 2 is dead, Overwatch is dead, etc. etc.

Pretty much this, the moment someone is burned out with a game it's "dead". Because if you don't play it - no one else is.

The game is dead to you. Doesn't meant it's dead for everyone else.

It's work, doing thinga you don't want to do is something 99% of people experience in their careers. Sorry I'm not empathizing with Valve's preposterous tech industry startup culture.

who the fuck cares that pubg has 2 million users. shut the fuck up and just have fun man.

The funny thing is, as an example, yesterday PUBG didn't even hit one million. Not a single game on steam hits a one million player peak and hasn't for at least a week.

pubg having 2million point at some point surely was a testament to the game's quaity.

PUBG's 2 million players is more a testament to A. how a game that fills a niche can be insanely successful if executed right (like GTA3, Garry's Mod, Skyrim, and yes, even TF2 before it) and B. How even if a dev were to actively try and make the game as unappealing as possible, if the core gameplay loop is still fun and unique enough, people will play it. Seriously, you think TF2 has it bad with our year-long drought? Imagine if, instead of getting nothing, we ONLY got a battle pass, that added cosmetics, that were TIME-LIMITED. Imagine if the dev team started a 4-month long campaign to improve the game, but failed to even follow through on THAT. Imagine if in 3 years, the most the game had gotten, instead of a huge update like JI, was an update like EotL, or an update that just added ~2 new maps that were insanely unfun and ~2 new melees. THAT'D be like what PUBG players have to put up with. It goes without saying that I'm exaggerating a little bit, but Bluehole actively drives away players with their "attempts" to """"""improve""""" the game. At least the shit the TF Team does isn't outright poison to the game.

Being rude doesn't help your case any. Heck, I don't even think you have a case, you're simply belligerent because you can't seem to stand that some people aren't as apathetic as you are. You think I don't have fun? Why would I play the game if I didn't have fun? I want the game to not only thrive, but provide me with even greater enjoyment than it does now, because it could certainly use some balance tweaks. It's senseless to demean others for having more ambition than you do.

PUBG was <a trend>. Just like RTS were back in the day, or arena shooters. one executed so poorly it killed itself, eventually out-gunned by an actual competent dev that actually put effort and dedication in their product - wich in turn made everyone get the fuck away from the original the moment it proved that its gameplay what drives player engagement, not fucking spoonfed content. The only reason I can think that its not downright "hightower doesnt exist in other games" is that you have been unable to leave your comfort zone and refuse to dive into another game's meta in fear that you'd have to scrap all the time and knowledge you've accumulated over the years, forced to start all over from the ground up. your only statement so far, semantics aside as usual, is "I like tf2 but i could like it more if it was better". its literally a broken record by now, one that even rivals asic's quest to reminds us that he likes crits for the sake of stating that he likes crits.

I've been here for seven years, and you've been around for six of those years. After all that time, this is all you can come up with to justify why I continue playing TF2? At the risk of sounding conceited, I'm a lot more complicated than that, and I'm pretty sure I've been fairly clear on this in the past. The industry has transformed quite a bit since 2007, and TF2 happens to have released during a turning point in the development of the multiplayer shooter. As such, it retains many elements that would be considered archaic, albeit elements that I find to be superior to what's on offer today. I'll try to contextualize this as best as possible: Due to technological limitations, video games were historically difficult to complete in order to inflate the amount of time customers would spend playing them, increasing their value as individual products. As the capabilities of hardware evolved, game developers explored alternative means of adding value to their creations, which led to the rise of multiplayer. Whereas games had previously offered limited-time, linear experiences for a single person, multiplayer allowed games to offer customers potentially limitless experiences in the form of competition with others. As the industry continued to improve its craft, multiplayer games became more and more sophisticated, allowing players to hone and refine certain skills and match them against challenging opponents. This led to the development of certain games that are still venerated today as the apex achievements in their respective genres, games such as Street Fighter II, Quake 3/Quake Live, and StarCraft. These games required immense dedication, practice, and natural talent to master, oftentimes demanding thousands of hours before a player could even hope to compete at a competent level. While the barrier of entry for new players was quite intimidating, the ensuing product promised years of intricate and stimulating content, and consumers, comprised mostly of passionate enthusiasts, did not seem to mind. Beginning in the late aughts, the landscape of the market saw massive upheavals. With the advent of mobile gaming, free-to-play business models, and faster Internet speeds, the game-playing demographic expanded significantly. No longer considered the exclusive domain of niche enthusiasts, video games were now easily accessible to billions of people across the planet. As a result of this boom, the profitability of video games has eclipsed even veteran entertainment industries such as movies and television. Nevertheless, more does not always equate with better. Casual players—those with less time they’re willing to spend—began to far outnumber the dedicated enthusiast cohort. This, compounded by a steady decline in customer attention spans, has forced game developers to modify their philosophies on game design. Lee Perry, the former lead designer at Epic Games, discovered that 90% of all first-time players wouldn’t bother to play a second round of a game if they didn’t score a single frag. Electronic Arts, in response to this problem, filed a patent for the Engagement Optimized Matchmaking (EOMM) system, a method to dynamically evaluate player metrics and sort games with the intent of satisfying and retaining players with short attention spans. What they term as “churn risk”—or the threat of players leaving the game—is placed as a priority over creating fair and challenging matches. With the industry’s ethos devolving to support the corrosion of consumer time investment, developers actively work to mitigate the skill differential in a desperate effort to maintain a steady consumer base in an increasingly competitive market. But this isn't the only widespread change that has seen prevalence in the industry, and this is where I'm going to get more subjective. Perhaps as a result of those aforementioned demographic shifts, the core philosophies that govern the design of multiplayer games have altered. No longer is individual achievement and empowerment an experience that developers aim for (beyond specific problem examples, but I'll get to that later); rather, the team component is emphasized more than ever. This may seem ironic coming from someone that plays Team Fortress 2, but I have my reasons for being turned away by this trend. Coordination and strategy is propped up in lieu of raw individual talent or contribution, which I suspect is also a method of creating satisfying experiences for today's players without demanding the staggering time investment that legacy games necessitated. TF2 lies somewhere in between (as a result of being released during that awkward transitional period), where team coordination and cooperation is rewarded by its mechanics to an extent not seen in games prior, but allowing enough room for the individual to shine through and achieve glory. That's fine, I was perfectly willing to compromise when I abandoned a dying Star Wars: Battlefront II (a game that played heavily into individual empowerment despite its gargantuan 32 player teams) in 2009 to pursue TF2. TF2 has enough of a balance to satisfy both people like me, and those that seek validation through successful team efforts. Other games? Games that haven't died during TF2's lifespan? Well, it simply isn't the case with them. As for my preference of genre--and sub-genre--I enjoy a fast-paced shooter that tests reflexes while also offering significant variety in how players engage with the game. Class/character systems are something I quickly latched on to during the rise of Battlefield and Battlefront, and I stand by them. Quake Champions is the dying breath of arena shooters, and EA's Battlefronts, while ostensibly desiring to offer that experience of player empowerment I've spoken about earlier, lock that experience behind untenable RNG to "level the playing field." I'm 30-years-old, I've been around the block; I've played mostly every game genre there is that isn't lewd in nature. I would very much like to expand my horizons and branch out into different things, and I'm anxiously anticipating the release of Smash Ultimate, but my passion lies with the FPS. After all this time, that is what has resonated with me the most, and no, the experiences I desire are simply non-existent beyond TF2, which is seemingly the last bastion for them.