TF2 General Chat and Speculation Station: Whiteboard Blues - Games

[QUOTE=ethanciavo;52694666]Maybe the blog being broken is the dev team trying to tell us that they're "forbidden" from releasing the update?[/QUOTE] Maybe its because anything TF2 related is a buggy mess, reminiscent of TF2 itself.

[QUOTE=fendermcbender;52694476]i'm not here to compare the two games and whine about support between the two but check out the concise verbiage on the latest dota 2 blog post: "Ahead of the Frostivus season, we have a couple other things in the works. Our next big release will be The Dueling Fates update. We are still hard at work on it and don’t have an exact release date, but we are expecting it to take about another month to finish the content. We are also putting the finishing touches on the next True Sight episode, scheduled to be released on Tuesday next week. We have put together a teaser for it, check it out here."[/QUOTE] At the very least, that essentially confirms that the TF2 team's reticence is their own decision, rather than birthed from any company-wide guideline. I'm not entirely sure what benefits they see in being either vague or silent at this point in the game's lifetime.

[QUOTE=socks_;52694686]Maybe its because anything TF2 related is a buggy mess, reminiscent of TF2 itself.[/QUOTE] and the TF Team itself

[QUOTE=Contra132;52692885]How much would it shake up TF2 to have every gameplay-effecting weapon available from the start? Would such an event severely damage TF2's economy? Would the health of the game overall increase as a result? few bonus rounds for fun: round 1: all pre-existing tradeable weapons become vintage round 2: achievement weapons prior to this update become vintage and tradeable round 3: newly-released weapons can only be crafted or purchased for 1 week after release. feel free to mix and match conditions interested to hear any and all answers, but especially from folks like Geel[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Drury;52692916]Weapons and metal from them are practically worthless to the common man, and who gives as shit about what impact this would have on people like Geel, they're such a small minority. Besides he's a businessman, he could find another way to exploit the market. If anything this could be a great opportunity for him, shifting markets are the most exploitable. From a non-economical standpoint, people who racked up a ton of hours in the game (most of us here) already have most weapons we need if not all of them, so the change wouldn't really be felt. F2Ps would feel the change the most. With their limited backpacks, they can't hold on to all weapons at once, so if they had all the weapons from the start it'd be like christmas. A possible downside would be that they'd be robbed of the euphoric feeling of finding a cool new weapon from a drop, especially if it's one they died to a lot of times and looked forward to getting. Instead they'd have the whole complexity of the game dropped on them and the amount of options could be overwhelming. To F2Ps it'd be more of a sideways step if anything, to us veterans it'd be a barely perceptible change, and everyone else isn't really worth considering. So yeah.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=geel9;52694043]We don't even make any money from scrapbanking.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;52692983]I think having every weapon available from the start would be way to overwhelming for new players, but with how many weapons are in the game I do think Valve should take a look at weapon drops. I think the current weapon system is one of the things that's kinda unfair to new players since they can't really control what weapon drops they get, so they either need to hope to get the weapon they want, trade for it or buy it. Even though we know Valve doesn't design weapon drops to be better than stock (but sometimes it happens of course) a new player might look at all the weapons they don't have and think the game is pay 2 win. Only having weapon skins/taunts and cosmetics are buyable items feels a lot more fair. I think maybe having something like you unlock weapons as you get achievements for each class could potentially work. Add a bunch of new achievements for each class and achievement milestones. Maybe even let players decide what weapon they want to unlock when they get a milestone. Maybe have every weapon unlocked for a class within 10 hours or so playtime for that class on average. Maybe also have weapons unlock with playtime as well if players aren't earning enough achievements. Of course many weapons in the game are community made and they get a cut of the sales from the Mann Co store so Valve may have to work out some kind of deal with the item creators depending on the terms of their contracts with the item creators. Now I don't know how removing metal from the economy would affect it. Metal is free currency anyway and I bet Valve doesn't exactly love free currency constantly entering the economy, but TF2 was the first in game economy they made and they probably didn't exactly know what they were doing.[/QUOTE] Not as many answers as I'd like, but these are pretty good ones. To avoid overwhelming new players, I agree that it may be a good idea to simply make sure that every new weapon is unlockable through achievements, so it's still free but still encourages them to get familiar with the individual tools of their kit before progressing to new ones. I also totally overlooked that a change like this would likely mean no more new metal, unless people opted to craft together their vintages to create scrap metal. This would make it much more difficult for free-to-play players to actually acquire cosmetics and the such they like without paying for it, but then buying stranges/cosmetics with metal alone has steadily become a more and more tedious process over time. Is it possible that this could stabilize the inflation of scrap metal and make it more valuable?

I don't see the problem in overwhelming new players. Would you say TF2's unlock system is as complicated as a MOBA's upgrade hierarchy?

Just thought I'd point this out. The latest dota blog post says the next update is about a month away still. However, Mike Morasky said in his interview the music for the update would release "as early as next week" which leads me to believe the update he's referring to isn't dota related. Makes me thinks it's definitely TF2 he's talking about, considering how much TF music he has done in the past.

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;52694798]I don't see the problem in overwhelming new players. Would you say TF2's unlock system is as complicated as a MOBA's upgrade hierarchy?[/QUOTE] It's not that complicated. After i got my first three milestone achievements i put it together.

My Pyro Update Wish list. 1.Remove Random Crits. 2.Remove Hackers. Literally the only things that would make me play the game more often. Just played like 10 casual games today, met about 3 hackers...They're not even hiding it, they're fucking proud of it, It disgusts me. One of them even had unusuals...

[QUOTE=Contra132;52694782]Not as many answers as I'd like, but these are pretty good ones. To avoid overwhelming new players, I agree that it may be a good idea to simply make sure that every new weapon is unlockable through achievements, so it's still free but still encourages them to get familiar with the individual tools of their kit before progressing to new ones. I also totally overlooked that a change like this would likely mean no more new metal, unless people opted to craft together their vintages to create scrap metal. This would make it much more difficult for free-to-play players to actually acquire cosmetics and the such they like without paying for it, but then buying stranges/cosmetics with metal alone has steadily become a more and more tedious process over time. Is it possible that this could stabilize the inflation of scrap metal and make it more valuable?[/QUOTE] Stop dropping weapons, make a progressive system to get the weapons for free, migrate the drops to be only skins, significantly reduce drop rate, allow crafting skins to metal Maybe make them only drop in casual, like in csgo you can only get one drop a week by leveling up (skins only, cases are still random and you can get them on community servers) Doesn't affect community servers imo, since it's only one drop a week

[QUOTE=Metaru;52694421]I got a 20k killstreak as a phlog pyro and it felt amazing. its literally the first time i've ever reached that much and oh god. cue in me being the only one who enjoy this shit.[/QUOTE] I went on a 99 killstreak as a Phlog Pyro back when Mannpower was a thing with the Regeneration powerup. A gibus precision Machina Sniper shot me and I died. The guy I was chasing died from my afterburn immediately afterward and had I not died would have been my 100. I've never wanted to scream at any point in my life more than that moment. Every fucking time I think of that I get really angry at everyone that plays sniper ever

[QUOTE=Nebrassy;52694835]Stop dropping weapons, make a progressive system to get the weapons for free, migrate the drops to be only skins, significantly reduce drop rate, allow crafting skins to metal Maybe make them only drop in casual, like in csgo you can only get one drop a week by leveling up (skins only, cases are still random and you can get them on community servers) Doesn't affect community servers imo, since it's only one drop a week[/QUOTE] Make drops available only when you level up on casual. Would literally fix all the drop system. Get drops till lvl 150, at lvl 150 prestige to get an In-Game medal ( smilliar to CSGO medal after lvl 40 ), start again from lvl 1 and so on.

Super hypothetical what-if here: What if you had an incredibly low chance to craft unusual hats? And I'm talking INCREDIBLY low.

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;52694798]I don't see the problem in overwhelming new players. Would you say TF2's unlock system is as complicated as a MOBA's upgrade hierarchy?[/QUOTE] That's like saying you don't see the problem with the un-intuitive control scheme of early X-COM games because it's more complicated to pilot a 747. Dropping 5 very different wrenches on a new player when they're not even quite sure how one of them works can be pretty problematic. It's not an[I] insurmountable[/I] hurdle to try and figure out what the weapons do when you get them all at once, and there's something to be said for giving new players access to all their options from the get-go (especially with certain classes having unlocks that are much better options than stock), but you can't just ignore the problem of making new players sift through the hundred-something unlock weapons, many of which are completely useless, all at once.

[QUOTE=slapdown3;52694856]Super hypothetical what-if here: What if you had an incredibly low chance to craft unusual hats? And I'm talking INCREDIBLY low.[/QUOTE] If that were to happen everyone would go out of there way to craft all there metal, no matter what the percentage is. All the idle and crafting bots will be making as many unusuals as they can and slowly crash the unusual economy.

[QUOTE=slapdown3;52694856]Super hypothetical what-if here: What if you had an incredibly low chance to craft unusual hats? And I'm talking INCREDIBLY low.[/QUOTE] That would involve valve caring about crafting, something they haven't done since cases were introduced.

Valve doesn't care about people getting free things. I highly doubt unusuals/skins will ever be outside of the crate system and contracts.

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52694867]That's like saying you don't see the problem with the un-intuitive control scheme of early X-COM games because it's more complicated to pilot a 747. Dropping 5 very different wrenches on a new player when they're not even quite sure how one of them works can be pretty problematic. It's not an[I] insurmountable[/I] hurdle to try and figure out what the weapons do when you get them all at once, and there's something to be said for giving new players access to all their options from the get-go (especially with certain classes having unlocks that are much better options than stock), but you can't just ignore the problem of making new players sift through the hundred-something unlock weapons, many of which are completely useless, all at once.[/QUOTE] Reading isn't very difficult, there's no reason to treat new players like invalids.

Heres my Pyro update wishlist: 1. It actually gets released.

They should call it [B]The Vaporware Update[/B]! Or perhaps [B]Pyro Forever[/B].

[QUOTE=Jelman;52694907]Heres my Pyro update wishlist: 1. It actually gets released.[/QUOTE] Wanna Toxx on that? :wink:

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;52694889]Reading isn't very difficult, there's no reason to treat new players like invalids.[/QUOTE] A large number of weapons don't even have item descriptions, the ones that are most different from stock in particular are blank, like the huntsman or the flare guns or even though those are the cases where a description would be most useful. How is a new player supposed to know when they should be using a detonator vs a reserve shooter vs a scorch shot when you dump it on them without explanation or time to try one out? Again, it's not insurmountable, you can just trial and error them, but ultimately when a player is just starting out, drip feeding it to them a bit goes a long way towards accessibility. If you were a completely new player, imagine being told to choose one of 4-5 items for every slot for every class in the game before even understanding how the class works. Early class updates had the right idea, give the player more options once they had a grasp on the class and had played it long enough to earn a few achievements. [editline]18th September 2017[/editline] Like how am I supposed to know if I want burst damage and knock back with the FaN as scout or more sustained mid-range damage with the Shortstop when I'm not even sure what scout's role in the game is?

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;52695113]A large number of weapons don't even have item descriptions, the ones that are most different from stock in particular are blank, like the huntsman or the flare guns or even though those are the cases where a description would be most useful. How is a new player supposed to know when they should be using a detonator vs a reserve shooter vs a scorch shot when you dump it on them without explanation or time to try one out? Again, it's not insurmountable, you can try to trial and error them, but ultimately when a player is just starting out, drip feeding it to them a bit goes a long way towards accessibility. If you were a completely new player, imagine being told to choose one of 4-5 items for every slot for every class in the game before even understanding how the class works. Early class updates had the right idea, give the player more options once they had a grasp on the class and had played it long enough to earn a few achievements. [editline]18th September 2017[/editline] Like how am I supposed to know if I want burst damage and knock back with the FaN as scout or more sustained mid-range damage with the Shortstop when I'm not even sure what scout's role in the game is?[/QUOTE] "know when they should use a gun" Even the so called new players can learn to have preferences by just trying out the new shiny toys the giant fullscreen menus tell them they found. You use loadouts you enjoy because you like those guns. You don't switch guns every death unless you're some sort of bitter loser who gotta rock paper scissors their nemesis.

Pyro update wishlist: 1. New Heavy primary 2.New Demo Primary 3. ANY NEW WEAPONS FOR ENGY also add the Mini-Dispenser pls

[QUOTE=socks_;52695147]Pyro update wishlist: 1. New Heavy primary 2.New Demo Primary 3. ANY NEW WEAPONS FOR ENGY also add the Mini-Dispenser pls[/QUOTE] Pyro update wishlist: 1 Pyro update.

[QUOTE=Man in the Moon;52695155]Pyro update wishlist: 1 Pyro update.[/QUOTE] Pyro Update Wishlist: 1. why even bother anymore it isn't coming out

If they don't release it this week the TF community is gonna implode.

[QUOTE=EmilyVasquez;52695205]If they don't release it this week the TF community is gonna implode.[/QUOTE] Feels like I've hard the same thing each week for the past month.

[QUOTE=EmilyVasquez;52695205]If they don't release it this week the TF community is gonna implode.[/QUOTE] I'm going to start keeping track of how many times this is said

You can guide new players without spoonfeeding them information, they could very easily change some ui elements to make things easier for new/younger players to understand without it being obnoxious or intrusive. To be honest a lot of the menu design could do with an overhaul, it looks pretty bad when you compare it to most modern games. There's even still outdated shit like the Coaching system lying around that likely just confuses new players more than it helps them.

The main technical admin for the group of servers I help run (who hates TF2 at this point, but still does some tech work) is going away for a week long business conference. The over/under for the Pyro update coming out in the next week and it completely breaking some aspect of MetaMod/SourceMod/any and all of the plugins we run just went up.