Major Update Speculation XXVI: Much Ado About Nothing - Games

[QUOTE=BanthaFodder;48126211] What if they updated some old maps with new Game Modes? Like, what if with a future update, we get cp_2fort, ctf_gorge, and pl_egypt?[/QUOTE] those all sound terrible

[QUOTE=Damoman;48126255]Three maps every four months(ish) isn't that big of a stretch. I would imagine the cut from the campaign sales will incentivise map makers to tweak their back-catalogue/make new maps.[/QUOTE] Yeah i imagine that the sales of these campaign passes is going to spur more TF2 map development then anything we have seen before.

[QUOTE=Tinker;48126256]they could just make the money go to the map makers wherever you play.[/QUOTE] Multiple options for this undoubtedly were discussed. We proposed several, the community favourite was tracking the map that every single crate was dropped on. When a crate that was dropped on a community map is opened, Valve pay a small % of the key price to the author. That way maps gain a revenue proportional to the amount their map is actually played, rather than by the popularity of whatever unrelated feature funds them. Since this hasn't happened, we can only assume they like this method more. I mean, it's worked out in the past for CSGO, and based off my own back of the envelope calculations it's worked out this time for TF2 too.

[QUOTE=poptart TF2;48126275]those all sound terrible[/QUOTE] they already exist and are indeed terrible

[QUOTE=Youme;48126068][U]HUD:[/U] We were promised that once the map was basically complete that Valve would code a HUD for us, until then we're stuck with screenoverlays which are horrible to work with. Because it was cut, it never got the additional changes to the HUD that we wanted[/QUOTE][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/p9DKrmS.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=Tinker;48126090]That's too bad, but the KOTH version is still really fun and Arena is pretty much a dead gamemode, anyway. I'm enjoying the map a lot.[/QUOTE] It's only dead because Valve refuses to add it to quickplay.

[QUOTE=Doom64hunter;48126415]It's only dead because Valve refuses to add it to quickplay.[/QUOTE] it's dead because you sit in spectator 90% of the time

[QUOTE=Snowshoe;48126426]it's dead because you sit in spectator 90% of the time[/QUOTE] It's dead because It doesn't add new content.

[QUOTE=Snowshoe;48126426]it's dead because you sit in spectator 90% of the time[/QUOTE] Didn't stop CS, either

[QUOTE=Youme;48126068][U]HUD:[/U] We were promised that once the map was basically complete that Valve would code a HUD for us, until then we're stuck with screenoverlays which are horrible to work with. Because it was cut, it never got the additional changes to the HUD that we wanted [U]Voice lines:[/U] Again, we were promised voice lines at the start of the project but by half way through it became apparent that there was 0% chance of getting any voice lines. [U]Train being outlined:[/U] We tried it with and without, even in late stages of testing. Overwhelming response was to have it outlined. [U]Music:[/U] Wasn't my choice. I'm not a fan of it but didn't dislike it enough to veto it. I have mixed feelings about the music in MvM too. I like to listen to music when playing TF2 and any music played by the game clashes. I don't always though and in those times the MvM music is awesome. [U]Suijin:[/U] Freyja is really bummed out that Valve asked for the koth version rather than the arena version because it was made for arena and she (rightly) thinks the koth version is just not as good as the arena version. [U]As far as snowplow/suijin/any community map being good/bad/whatever:[/U] By the time a map gets put into the game, most of us have spent so long working on it that we're tired of it, many of us aren't thrilled with Valves choices, we have our favourites from our maps and it bums us out when Valve chooses the ones we wouldn't have. You can't please everyone either, I play a [I]lot[/I] of new maps, sometimes I really like them, and sometimes I hate them, but virtually every time there's someone else on the server expressing the opposite opinion. [URL="http://subtleallusion.com/images/misc/excavator_13.JPG"]And that's all I have to say about that[/URL][/QUOTE] All the good posts are while I'm asleep. HUD: For the HUD, I actually made mock ups in photoshop (crappy mock ups) of what the HUD could look like, and how it could work with the mode. Oh well, maybe if we get Source 2 UI functionality I'll add it. Music: In terms of Music, that was my idea and I thought it was a really good substitute to the missing voice lines. We actually wanted to add more music to different aspects of the map. The sound guys were busy with other things, so we didn't get all the music we wanted in. Ah well. Suijin Like YM said, it was originally made for Arena. If you like Koth_Suijin, you'll love the Arena Version. And, as YM said and others have pointed out, there's a LOT of custom maps. Even if Valve did 3 new featured maps, every 4 months, they'd probably be set for a few years if all the maps on TF2Maps.net and other various sites that are high quality got posted to the workshop. (Shameless plug for [URL="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=454203134"]my maps[/URL] ... shameless plug for [URL="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=454723600"]TF2Maps.net workshop collection[/URL]) The content is there, and it always has been. It's just a matter of getting it in front of people in an easier manner. Workshops the first, and very big step, but there's a bit more to go until we're a huge custom-map-friendly game community.

[QUOTE=Snowshoe;48126426]it's dead because you sit in spectator 90% of the time[/QUOTE] That's why CS:GO is such a dead game, right?

Has anyone noticed that it's always Valve's fault, or the sound guy's fault, or so on and so forth, but it's never YM or Fr0zen's? I mean, shit, you guys replaced a timer with a bottleneck! Fucking up that bad takes [I]talent[/I], and succeeding in spite of such fuck ups takes... I dunno, months of Reddit begging into some poor bastard's work email?

"muh CS" Yes it's so much fun to watch a spy run around with cloak and dagger all day or dead ringer whenever someone sees him. It's also fun to sit out the entire game even though you were the one actually doing something. My point is CS gameplay in TF2 is shit, that's why it has failed, not because of quickplay. It failed LONG before that ever happened. The only reason it's even around on some servers is because of custom gamemodes like saxton hale and freak fortress.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/tN4Bzhc.jpg[/IMG] I'm just going to assume that this is karma for my last two posts.

Probably pointing out the obvious, and might be late with this, but this image... [IMG]https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/thumb/6/6e/Cp_powerhouse.jpg/800px-Cp_powerhouse.jpg?t=20150704003528[/IMG] ...looks very much like the blurry, tiny image of a supposed new Valve map on the photo of Valve's Hat Wall in Meet Your Makers 2. The white thing in the middle turned out to be the central CP and the muddy, brownish stuff around it was the dirty water. So I guess we can cross out the ''mystery map'' that Void hinted at in the list of things to look forward to.

[QUOTE=Snowshoe;48126535]Yes it's so much fun to watch a spy run around with cloak and dagger all day or dead ringer whenever someone sees him.[/QUOTE] Imagine if Arena maps had a capture point for this exact reason. How cool would that be?

[QUOTE=Kapellmeister;48126589]Imagine if Arena maps had a capture point for this exact reason. How cool would that be?[/QUOTE] What about those "No Capping!" assholes?

[QUOTE=The Kins;48126485]Has anyone noticed that it's always Valve's fault, or the sound guy's fault, or so on and so forth, but it's never YM or Fr0zen's? I mean, shit, you guys replaced a timer with a bottleneck! Fucking up that bad takes [I]talent[/I], and succeeding in spite of such fuck ups takes... I dunno, months of Reddit begging into some poor bastard's work email?[/QUOTE] We can't program in our own HUD, nor can both of us compose/make sounds... along with a lot of other things. So all that was [I]legitimately [/I]out of our control. But, from me at least, you're right, it does appear we're throwing blame on Valve and other people more than ourselves. Things that are our fault: The Crashing at initial launch back in November. The clipping bugs Train crashing HUD not resetting at the start of a round. Various gameplay issues that I'm sure everyone could name. ... and more stuff that we've noticed and other people have noticed since this recent launch. We did what we could in the time we had, with the resources we had and with the obstacles we faced. There was a vision for the map and we did our best to hit the visions we wanted to see, while still making it a fun map. I'll happily fess up to not being perfect and being only human.

[QUOTE=Stric_Matic;48126574]Probably pointing out the obvious, and might be late with this, but this image... [IMG]https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/thumb/6/6e/Cp_powerhouse.jpg/800px-Cp_powerhouse.jpg?t=20150704003528[/IMG] ...looks very much like the blurry, tiny image of a supposed new Valve map on the photo of Valve's Hat Wall in Meet Your Makers 2. The white thing in the middle turned out to be the central CP and the muddy, brownish stuff around it was the dirty water. So I guess we can cross out the ''mystery map'' that Void hinted at in the list of things to look forward to.[/QUOTE] I already mentioned this in the update to the recap on the OP.

[QUOTE=Fr0z3n;48126605]We can't program in our own HUD, nor can both of us compose/make sounds... along with a lot of other things. So all that was [I]legitimately [/I]out of our control. But, from me at least, you're right, it does appear we're throwing blame on Valve and other people more than ourselves. Things that are our fault: The Crashing at initial launch back in November. The clipping bugs Train crashing HUD not resetting at the start of a round. Various gameplay issues that I'm sure everyone could name. ... and more stuff that we've noticed and other people have noticed since this recent launch. We did what we could in the time we had, with the resources we had and with the obstacles we faced. There was a vision for the map and we did our best to hit the visions we wanted to see, while still making it a fun map. I'll happily fess up to not being perfect and being only human.[/QUOTE] Any chance you guys or Valve themselves have the energy and inclination to do some extra tweaks/fixes to the map and perhaps the HUD? I know that many of the CSGO community maps featured in their Operations received additional improvements, bugfixes and tweaks during the events, based on player feedback.

[QUOTE=Stric_Matic;48126637]Any chance you guys or Valve themselves have the energy and inclination to do some extra tweaks/fixes to the map and perhaps the HUD? I know that many of the CSGO community maps featured in their Operations received additional improvements, bugfixes and tweaks during the events, based on player feedback.[/QUOTE] Depends on what it is. I've just been busy with other things, so I haven't had too much of a chance to try and figure out changes. Somethings we can probably do.

I'm really liking this update, Suijin, Borneo, and Power House are fun maps and the contracts keep me motivated to play outside the main objective. EDIT: Are official servers down for anyone else?

[QUOTE=Fr0z3n;48126605]We can't program in our own HUD[/QUOTE]I'm not really on either side here but this point does confuse me a bit. Doesn't Snowplow literally have a custom HUD?

[QUOTE=Kapellmeister;48126589]Imagine if Arena maps had a capture point for this exact reason. How cool would that be?[/QUOTE] How cool would it be if Arena was actually a good gamemode and not a catastrophically failed attempt to shoehorn Counter-Strike mechanics into Team Fortress' class based system which doesn't work well at all? If only there was something... what if we removed everyone except Sniper, and made TF2 a faster paced game designed around killing the enemy team instead of capturing objectives? I think I'm onto something here...

[QUOTE=Freeze;48126693]I'm not really on either side here but this point does confuse me a bit. Doesn't Snowplow literally have a custom HUD?[/QUOTE] It looks like it does, but in reality, it's a thing called [URL="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Env_screenoverlay"]env_screenoverlay[/URL]. One of the artists designed it in such a way so that it looks like it's part of the HUD, even though it's not. So it's not directly tied to the HUD itself (so you can't modify it with custom HUDs, and the minimal HUD option does not work with it)... but it's faked to look like it is.

Yay, I got an fancy item from completing a contract! Boo, the thumbnail doesn't seem to want to generate in the backpack, meaning I can't use it in-game! It's just stuck on the TF icon with a grey border. I think this might have been because my HUD's clientscheme wasn't updated at the time of getting... Anyone else getting this? EDIT: Fixed it, it was something to do with my skins.

I don't understand why everyone is complaining about snowplow. I like it just as it is.

[QUOTE=Fr0z3n;48126712]It looks like it does, but in reality, it's a thing called [URL="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Env_screenoverlay"]env_screenoverlay[/URL]. One of the artists designed it in such a way so that it looks like it's part of the HUD, even though it's not. So it's not directly tied to the HUD itself (so you can't modify it with custom HUDs, and the minimal HUD option does not work with it)... but it's faked to look like it is.[/QUOTE]But why does that mean you can't improve it to make it clearer, which is people's main complaint about Snowplow?

[QUOTE=Freeze;48126946]But why does that mean you can't improve it to make it clearer, which is people's main complaint about Snowplow?[/QUOTE] I did write a post explaining it, but I checked and it turns out I'm totally wrong. Sooooo uh, yeah, we should have doubled the size of the images when we learnt that there would be no properly coded hud. Would have been a <1mb change.

[QUOTE=Fr0z3n;48126605]We can't program in our own HUD[/QUOTE][B][I]YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO.[/I][/B] There's a timer already in the game! It actually works and displays the proper time left! [I]You made a simple game mechanic worse just to be different[/I]. Well, that's not fair. Maybe YM did it.