• TF2 General Chat and Speculation Station V14 - The Bargaining Stage
    999 replies, posted
I feel like this has been a long time coming though. I'm not happy that we've reached this point, but I accept it, since TF2's support has been declining steadily for years now. Games get old, support dies off as companies move onto other ventures. I think we can all agree it's monumentally stupid of Valve to mistreat TF2 the way they've been doing, considering the numbers it continues to pull in to this day, but that's kinda out of our hands. There's nothing we can really do about it, so why fight it? Why get angry when the writing's been on the wall for years now? TF2 has had an amazing run; I believe we'll get the Heavy update in 2019 (even if it's still literally over 365 days away), but after that I think 2018 is going to be the precedent for TF2's future. A few community maps on Halloween, some cosmetics and bug fixes here and there, maybe some new content in the form of non-seasonal maps or weapons once in a blue moon if we're lucky, and nothing more. Valve, as a company, just doesn't make video games anymore. And that sucks, but barring some radical and unpredictable shift in management or profits, they have no reason to return to their glory days. TF2 remains arguably my favorite video game of all time, to the point that I can't really ever see myself giving up on it for good, even if we never see a major Valve-made update again. I see a lot of people saying things like "it can't die now, they haven't fixed bugs X, Y, and Z", and while I agree that that's an issue (companies shouldn't leave bugs un-patched, especially in games that still have an active, paying playerbase), I'd also propose the idea that if TF2 still feels broken or incomplete or unfinished after all these years of updates and mods, maybe it's time to take a break and find a different game. Nobody's happy that this is what TF2's come to, but I feel like we've had more than enough time to acclimate to the idea of Valve supporting it less and less, not to mention the fact that the game, as is, remains one of the greatest FPSes of all time (as far as class-based shooters go, I'd say it's in a league of its own). The base game is still there, and if the idea of playing it isn't appealing without the incentive of new updates on the horizon, then maybe it's time to move on.
If this is the end of valve's support of TF2 beyond the occasional modern Scream Fortress kind of update (90-100% community made), then it would be nice of them to formally declare it. I understand that it's very unlikely since they're bound to make more money leading people along as though they are backing the game into the future, but if it really were the future of TF2 then I'd like to see them make an effort to formally hand over the reigns to the community. As it stands, without Valve adding maps in an update, the vast majority of players will have no way of discovering community content like custom maps when they are itching for something new. I doubt that Jungle Inferno was the last major Valve update, but their end doesn't seem to far off into the future.
The wait between MyM and Jungle Inferno was longer than the wait between Jungle Inferno and now. It's a nuts amount of time but it's the same situation we've been in for the past couple years, nothing monumental has changed. With the current team size, major updates seem to just take a year and a half now. It's really disappointing but it's not the same as "valve doesn't make major updates any more".
I want to believe that the success of TF2 and failure of Artifact will wake Valve up to what we actually want from them and get them to start actually fucking supporting TF2 more, but I'm worried even more at this point that they'll just take Artifact as a reason not to make or develop games anymore and just sit on their Steam money.
I'm not saying "I called it" here because my sarcasm was overly optimistic. We did get a new case, with the same tired unusual effects on hats only. That was a given. We didn't even get a new war paint case. Not that I have any interest in such things, but I do note its absence. I was mostly right on the new cosmetic items as well. The elite grade one is NOT furry bait, it's the almost amusing Bread Heads. The Millennial Mercenary is so bad in all facets it impresses even a cynic like myself. The Crack Pot is sort of funny, but also a really old joke about soldier done better with earlier items. The The Polar Pal, Harry (the cat), The Puggyback ARE furry bait, and their prices reflect as much. The Catcher's Companion is fine, but TF2 is already full of birds. I quite like the Paka Parka, but the last thing I need is another coat for Heavy. But hey, we have rotating clouds on 2Fort now!
According to teamwork.tf there was no change in amount players on the servers. Which means 118k players peak was due to people launching tf2 to get a free gift.
>77% of comp players in Australia hide australian threads, ignore australian posts, do not reply to australian posters
A fact that should surprise exactly no one.
Can't you hear the rebel's yell? In the midnight hour~ I'd like to think that even if Valve is ignoring things... which should be obvious by this point based on their behavior ... they wont last long if other companies get their act together. Artifact should be a pretty sizable wake-up call and although I was hoping to see some immediate changes, we're left to wait and see come new year. I'd hate for Valve to come to their senses just in time to see their community go silent, regardless of game/subject. The new Steam UI's half-assed nature, The Store enacting inconsistent policies for what constitutes an acceptable game, Steam Profiles could be so much more and are what keep Steam ahead of Discord, Epic Games, Origin, etc... The use of Google Vision API / Amazon Rekognition to auto censor artwork... List goes on. What keeps me around is not my desire to hate the way Valve is doing things, but my desire to see them do well.
So they fixed func_rotating entities not working in the Smissmas update? I was watching ValveNewsNetworks' video on Smissmas and I saw this comment regarding that: https://i.imgur.com/Mp0a8qQ.png So I searched "func_rotating" and after a little searching, found this sourcemod plugin. And in the thread was this image: https://tf2maps.net/attachments/upload_2018-11-28_16-43-50-png.91755/ Way to go Valve. Forgetting to switch things on for what, 11 years?
dropping frames like crazy all of a sudden
the clouds on gullywash don't move at all (they're missing a spawnflag that tells them to start moving when they're spawned)
Ahahahaha, the plugin fixes that too. Way to go, Valve. Someone email them.
Well, the game's still alive, econommy might not be great but it's still around, and the heavy update gets ever closer. The game's over ten whole years old at this point, I can think of almost no games that are still doing this well for an IP this old, nor any that show so much potential to grow. Yeah, it sucks that not much will probably ever happen, but you can be damn sure there'll always be a server full for the next few years for you to play a good ol' match of dustbowl, teufort, or hightower. Optimistic? No. But this game ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
Yeah TF2's alive as long as I can't get unusuals for less than a dollar.
Team Fortress 2? More like Team "if we don't put a mascot cosmetic in every cosmetic case, we will melt" Fortess 2. seriously what is it with the tf2 team and their thing for mascot cosmetics
Isn't it the same thing that makes no hat mod possible to exist?
OH YEAH BABY PYRO IMAGE SMISSMAS Feels just like 2013 again.
Did you forget about the map stamps?
It's really ironic Artifact has like 3000 pages after they just got a major update out and TF2 surpassed its all-time peak (gift or not, this didn't happen previous Smissmases) after an "update". Guess Valve might think now: "Our update strategy for TF2 is working! We just surpassed peak player counts!" Imagine if they release a gigantic update once 5 years, the game booms to a million for two weeks and then goes back to 50k.
where do people get a hold of this source code, and how do they fix stuff. is it public access, or do they pay for it just to fix things?
Nah this is the plugin source code. It's not made by valve.
Yeah, I linked to the plugin in that post. Should've been a tad clearer, I suppose.
Ive been wanting to get into that stuff; where would I start? ive been wanting to do stuff like editing how things happen when you die among a plethora of other things
There's a new Steam TF2 background! Got if from the Winter Sale gifts. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/items/991980/07e916b4a692ede3a52f4ba1dfb478a3cf81a5b6.jpg
Been away since just after Jungle Inferno... looks like I haven't missed much, eh?
https://i.imgur.com/2816gPP.jpg Courtesy of a friend of mine: "If you get stabbed by a robot spy with the razorback and have crit resistance you get infinite health."
everytime this joke gets made an angel gets its wings
cue in "sniper is op" post
watch out for the invincible huntsmen or the invincible scoped-in sniper that gets perma-bobbed and knocked around and can't do anything anyways Just get stabbed once more and you'll die. Buster explosion probably too. It's a very old bug that's barely worth the time to achieve it, especially when you give up op jarate.
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