Major Update Speculation XXVI: Much Ado About Nothing - Games

i have yet to see a round that ends being stalemate-ish on asteroid. junction suffers from two control points that can be easily held down by the defending team with a sentrie on each side, wich often requires a coordinated uber to take them down, and asking for a single coordinated uber is usually asking for too much on pub games. even then, its the last point of junction the main offender, putting the control point on a small room on high ground with only two entrances thatn can be defending with basically anything. even egypt's cps had at least three and more routes and no a single sentry nest has natural terrain defenses(sans putting a sentry on the top of the arch on the last point of stage 3) on asteroid, even if your enemy holds a section of the map, there's at least a guaranteed route to flank it. even if you put a sentry on every robot spawn and on the core itself, there's enough cover for you to destroy the sentry effectively and/or keep collecting points.

[QUOTE=-=NARH=-;47945907][QUOTE=CoolJosh3k;47945844]There was the photo of the hat wall on page 3 of the MyM2 event. There is a symbol and other notes on that wall, but too hard to make out. No one has gone to take a photo yet :([/QUOTE]I'm pretty sure MyM was a community only thing[/QUOTE] It was confirmed that 3 things were provided by Valve. IIRC it was the interview, comic sketches and the photo of the hat wall. Everything else, such as the "They're Coming" alien theme stuff was just a bit of fun from the MyM team. They did such an amazing job, but after the confusion with the real clues, things spiraled into a negative pool of comments.

MUS XXVI: Complaining about past updates

Asteroid is great but I really wish the core room was more easily accessible. It'd be better (in my opinion) if cores were stolen more often but it somehow encouraged not hanging around to fill the meter. Maybe a maximum point limit for the core to carry. Might speed up the map a bit because as it is it is incredibly slow to finish a round.

[URL="http://steamcommunity.com/id/savant99/recommended/4920/"]An interesting read[/URL] (now that we're approaching an offical comp mode) about how Natural Selection 2, being somewhat in the same field as tf2 in regards of being a class/objetive-based fps went from a promising into a desolated tragedy as they focused gameplay patches and balances exclusively on the competitive scene of the game, leaving the casual playerbase out and thus effectively killing the playerbase. it makes you wonder if tf2 would had benefit more from a more robust comp mode earlier.

I don't think that makes anyone wonder, the answer is a definite "yes". [editline]14th June 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Chicken McFly;47952646]Not the ceilings or that other stuff, I mean the spirit of the map. Fast and fun. 2fort, turbine, etc, IMO the best way to summarize those maps in a single sentence is that, indeed, fast and fun.[/QUOTE] Restricting people's access to movement options with small ceilings and extreme chokepoints is not the best way to make it "fast and fun". Asteroid is fairly open though - it's more akin to something like Doublecross than anything else.

[QUOTE=Tinker;47953940]I don't think that makes anyone wonder, the answer is a definite "yes". [/QUOTE] why though, the game has been out for several years without the need for it, and the player base is still far from decaying. even if you use the argument of "overall skill levels" on said player base, the comp scene has barely ever made any significative impact on tf2's development, either as weapon balances or map development.

[QUOTE=Metaru;47953970]why though, the game has been out for several years without the need for it, and the player base is still far from decaying. even if you use the argument of "overall skill levels" on said player base, the comp scene has barely ever made any significative impact on tf2's development, either as weapon balances or map development.[/QUOTE] But competitive TF2 hasn't had ANY support of official patches in any way, unless you count the addition of often-played competitive maps. It's impossible to tell the "need for it" if there hasn't been anything to go on, at all. Do you really think it would've been a detriment to the game had a competitive mode been added earlier? It only does CS:GO and Dota 2 a lot of good, because it takes the game outside the game itself and makes it into a spectator sport as well.

but Cs:GO and dota 2 were built with competitive gameplay in mind, where tf2 development its competitive gameplay over the course of the years on behalf of the community's effort to do so. i'm not talking about this as something negative though, since comp tf2 has existed for a long time and the only thing matchmaking should add is a more streamlined process to get into it, what i wonder is if comp matchmaking would had gathered more people into the game as, for example, becoming free to play. to me, feels more like comp tf2 is arriving at the right moment.

Competition isn't so much good for getting new people to play the game (although the allure of frag videos and such shouldn't be underestimated, see Quake) but more a way to have people who are playing stick around. A step up to a higher level of skill can keep a community going and actually have something to talk about beyond updates that take half a year. It's not like things like free to play and casual play can't exist right next to a competitive scene, anyway. People have been saying competitive TF2 has been dying for a long time (with decent reason: there have been multiple leagues that just completely stopped existing due to a lack of interest). I just don't see eight (!) years after release as the right moment, that seems kind of silly.

This division in what TF2 should be and with what sort of mindset it should be played isn't just about people that like the competitive side of TF2 in the strict sense of the term, it also concerns plenty of us that mostly play pubs, but have years of experience in the game and find being forced to play on silent, anonymous teams mostly made up of kids and people fairly new/not very competent at the game ([B]people that should be matched into different servers of a different skill/experience bracket[/B]) to just be an extremely bland, generic and frustratingly random experience where a few guys per team decide the outcome of games and plenty of newbies get frustrated by what they perceive as ''pubstompers'' invading their little entry-level havens. I'll chime in yet again with my grievances regarding the current state of pubbing - say what you will, but I insist that Valve's rotation servers becoming the dominant, default way of pubbing at the expense of community [I]rotation[/I] pubs of old (who've slowly lost their regulars over the years and have harly gotten any new ones thanks to QP in general and especially the default settings change about 1.5 years ago) have left me and many other more experienced players that primarly play pubs with an unsatisfying option of soulless, generic, non-admined Valve servers with next to no sense of community and wildly varying differences in skill/experience level and mentality. This isn't just about a purely hardcore, dedicated competitive mode with a strict set of rules - if they're insisting on turning a blind eye to community servers (primarly rotation ones, which are in direct competition with Valve servers) and effectively forcing even long-term pubbers to play on Valve servers, they really ought to come up with a few basic tier/skill brackets for their servers. The system as it is now just randomly dumps random players with thousands of hours and years of experience into random, generic servers with a sea of random beginners, kids and very casual/sunday TF2-ers, and it mixes people that enjoy playing TF2 normally, objectives and a little bif of effort and all that ([I]while[/I] having fun, I feel like the definiton of 'tryhard''s become ridiculously perverted among portions of the community) with people that deliberately fool around and try to enforce friendly parties and tired, repetitive memes on a server with a playerbase of mixed dispositions (a great many folks, including newbies, don't take them as 'jokes and random tomfoolery' servers). I'm not being elitistic, I'm far from being good, just experienced enough to feel and claim that things used to be much better as far as pubs with a map rotation and a decent level of skill/experience/basic teamwork go. As recently as a couple of years ago. I don't mind all the free-to-players, kids and people that find current Valve servers a reliable and good enough option enjoying themselves, I just feel that Valve should finally recognize that certain categories of players simply don't mix well as far as balanced games and mutual enjoyment goes, and that the game should either give more love to community servers (especially rotation ones) or at least [I]finally[/I] come up with a basic system of matching very different sets of players into different tiers/brackets of Valve servers. This isn't elitistic segregation, just recognizing the fact that if you put 10 kids and/or relative beginners, 4 people fooling around or using silly, ineffective loadouts, 6 average pubbers that scream ''tryhard' or 'pubstomper' at anyone that's noticeably better or has a friend by their side, and 4 skilled players thrashing most of the server and almost single-handedly deciding games just with pure skill and some basic pocket+healer teamwork in the same game, there will be issues and friction. Wouldn't it be better to finally come up with a system of making sure newbies aren't continuously matched against dominant players way out of their league, or players with 2000+ hours regularly finding themselves in games where most of their team is so green or young that they're getting almost zero support and pretty much have to lone-wolf games with classes that can carry a team the best?

You already see that through community means, too: there's a lot of people, [i]even incredibly inexperienced ones[/i], that go to TF2Center and the likes to play some games with a little more strategy, with a little more sense of self-improvement. There is a clear audience for that throughout all skill levels, not just the upper echelons of incredibly good players. Why not cater to that?

-fail-

[QUOTE=Radaghast;47955394][video=youtube;mezdOghKnUs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mezdOghKnUs[/video][/QUOTE] Incoming FGC tears Seeing their posterboy in a "fake fighting game" must hurt

[QUOTE=Razi The Red;47953033]Did you mean Junction or Asteroid? [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=omegasupreme1;47952741]I can sort of understand that for 2fort and Turbine, but "Fast and Fun" is the complete opposite of how I would describe [B]Junction[/B]. It's a slow, stalematey shitfest[/QUOTE] Asteroid actually does a pretty good job at avoiding stalemates despite the terrible layout

I just noticed that I posted the video on the wrong thread.

[QUOTE=Rumia;47955416]Incoming FGC tears Seeing their posterboy in a "fake fighting game" must hurt[/QUOTE]Ryu stopping by in a party game, good on him.

[QUOTE=Radaghast;47955603]I just noticed that I posted the video on the wrong thread.[/QUOTE] At least that didn't stop multiple people from replying with snide remarks anyway!

Personally one of the things I am waiting for is ,that when we actually get the major update, MUS' spam of 900 new posts just scrolling through them being like "ok yes" Another interesting thing to see is how the first posts after the update are a giant Valve circlejerk and 400 posts later people go "it was ok"

[QUOTE=Fluury;47956643]Personally one of the things I am waiting for is ,that when we actually get the major update, MUS' spam of 900 new posts just scrolling through them being like "ok yes" Another interesting thing to see is how the first posts after the update are a giant Valve circlejerk and 400 posts later people go "it was ok"[/QUOTE] Ive never really seen this thread be content with an update. Immediately after an update it is "Well X is good, but A, B, C, D... are horrible wtf volvo"

[QUOTE=TheJukebox;47956799]Ive never really seen this thread be content with an update. Immediately after an update it is "Well X is good, but A, B, C, D... are horrible wtf volvo"[/QUOTE] The thread was enthralled with the Love and War update if I recall correctly.

[QUOTE=gigazelle;47956816]The thread was enthralled with the Love and War update if I recall correctly.[/QUOTE] With basically any major one, I remember it perfectly fine : Scream Fortress 5... Love and War... The Smissmas update.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/yuInRwn.jpg[/IMG] That's the exact situation we're having with the TF team. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Reaction image" - Craptasket))[/highlight]

[QUOTE=Radaghast;47957325][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/yuInRwn.jpg[/IMG] That's the exact situation we're having with the TF team.[/QUOTE] Nope, this is: [IMG]http://puu.sh/ioYnU/7e426f6fc1.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=omegasupreme1;47957338]Nope, this is: [IMG]http://puu.sh/ioYnU/7e426f6fc1.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] Allow me to correct this a small bit. [IMG]http://s017.radikal.ru/i439/1506/32/c6dbd8b0545e.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=hawk18727;47957377]Allow me to correct this a small bit. [IMG]http://s017.radikal.ru/i439/1506/32/c6dbd8b0545e.png[/IMG][/QUOTE] [IMG]http://puu.sh/ioZ11/64b7767e93.png[/IMG]

More like [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/AJPDcxl.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://puu.sh/ioZQ1/a941aec43c.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://puu.sh/ioZYf/003f717e93.png[/IMG]

and this is the community: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/UkKYNEz.png[/IMG]