Major Update Speculation V35 - A Distinctive Lack of Communication - Games

can some explane the whole promo thing, im confused

[QUOTE=AD/HD;51595710]can some explane the whole promo thing, im confused[/QUOTE] Gabe Newell, a few years back, invested in a independent food company called [URL="https://www.chefsteps.com/"]ChefSteps[/URL], producing a new [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide"]Sous-Vide style[/URL] cooking machine called the [URL="https://www.chefsteps.com/joule"]Joule[/URL]. Now there's a new taunt in TF2 where Heavy cooks a meal on the ChefSteps branded cooking Machine, the Joule. You get the taunt if you buy the machine, or you can get one if you already own the machine. It's identical to the taunt from Smissmas, except the Crock Pot is now the ChefSteps Joule.

I dont understand why dev numbers has ever been an issue. Be it two developers or be it two-hundred, some of the choices valve makes has seemingly zero logic and is based more on personal work convenience than it does for the good of the game. Example: Rushing MM through beta. It clearly wasnt ready, it clearly wasnt made with the intention of being fully functional on release, they just wanted to get it out for summer. Now flip it, instead of a premature release, theyve decided dead silence accompanying countless release delays seems to make for an easier work week than it would a simple blogpost updating us on the progress. Or fucking crazy idea, maybe even be open enough for the community to help them create a good pyro update. I dont care if theres only one dev, they suck ass at communicating and i take pleasure to the idea that they might actually suffer a notable loss in player numbers and profits. That's clearly the only way they'll ever feel obliged to be open to more than only a handful of community members and office visitors.

[QUOTE=geel9;51595004]There's a core group of TF2 devs who really care about TF2 and people join and leave as the development cycle progresses. Jill, Driller, EricS, and others I'm unaware of don't really work on anything besides TF2.[/QUOTE] Well that's good to hear, but it still doesn't inspire confidence for the future of this game if their output within the span of a year is this sparse.

[QUOTE=Punchy;51595856]I dont understand why dev numbers has ever been an issue. Be it two developers or be it two-hundred, some of the choices valve makes has seemingly zero logic and is based more on personal work convenience than it does for the good of the game. Example: Rushing MM through beta. It clearly wasnt ready, it clearly wasnt made with the intention of being fully functional on release, they just wanted to get it out for summer. Now flip it, instead of a premature release, theyve decided dead silence accompanying countless release delays seems to make for an easier work week than it would a simple blogpost updating us on the progress. Or fucking crazy idea, maybe even be open enough for the community to help them create a good pyro update. I dont care if theres only one dev, they suck ass at communicating and i take pleasure to the idea that they might actually suffer a notable loss in player numbers and profits. That's clearly the only way they'll ever feel obliged to be open to more than only a handful of community members and office visitors.[/QUOTE] I don't think they really rushed matchmaking through beta, it seemed like Valve intended to launch MyM before the Steam sale started but kept on delaying it and doing betas for the comp matchmaking that was currently in the game to try to get it working. There was also the issue of Valve okayed B4nny telling people that competitive matchmaking was coming in MyM so they probably didn't want to back out of that, and with the changes they made to the way Valve servers run they probably wanted to ship all of matchmaking at once, which is understandable. And to be fair to Valve, we did see a similar issue with matchmaking a large number of maps and modes with Halo the Master Chief Collection. The matchmaking in that game was broken for months after launch and that's Microsoft's biggest franchise (and I'm sure there were way more people working on that the TF2). It's possible that a huge number of Valve employees did test the TF2 matchmaking to see if it worked but the issue is that it's impossible for Valve to simulate a real world environment, so they needed some real world data. I do agree that communication could be better. They are better then they were before 2015 since we actually have a TF2 dev posting on reddit occasionally, but it would of been nice for them to say in the blogpost for Smissmas why it wasn't a big update. Hopefully we'll get another what we're working on blog post soon.

[QUOTE=geel9;51595004]There's a core group of TF2 devs who really care about TF2 and people join and leave as the development cycle progresses. Jill, Driller, EricS, and others I'm unaware of don't really work on anything besides TF2.[/QUOTE] If thats the case, then what are they even working on? I really can't buy a "really care about the game" plea when I honestly think I could put out more content then they do for the game alone.

[QUOTE=Oizen;51596049]If thats the case, then what are they even working on? I really can't buy a "really care about the game" plea when I honestly think I could put out more content then they do for the game alone.[/QUOTE] Well we do get around 50+ patches a year and it does take time to track down bugs and fix them. I imagine they also work on a lot of stuff that never sees the light of day. Remember the blog post before Love and War about the different weapons they had tested and rejected, like the face stabbing knife? We also had reports of people visiting Valve a few years ago who saw them testing water balloons and nothing ever seemed to come from that (besides maybe being an early version fo spells?) Any changes to weapons probably requires hours of play testing on different maps to see if it's unbalances (at least for big weapon changes). I do think it would be great if Valve published some get to know the TF2 team posts on the blog. At least the core members of the team could have a little bio on what they've done, why they wanted to work for Valve and on TF2, and maybe a little bit about what they do every day.

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;51596078]the face stabbing knife[/QUOTE] who needs a facestabbing knife when shitty netcode gives it to spy mains like me for free? :v:

[QUOTE=Upgrade;51587607]To be fair, the comics ought to have been run through spell-check at least once for all the work and time that goes into creating them. These two panels still haven't been corrected since 2014. [t]http://i.imgur.com/ab9PPTZ.png[/t] [/QUOTE] [QUOTE][B]Yeah, the waiting game! Works every time, eventually![/B][/QUOTE]

Valve also never fixed the place holder link they had for the Scream Fortress link in the [URL="http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=19044"]MannPower out of beta[/URL] blog post.

Did we ever have an Update on the first week after Christmas?

[QUOTE=Fluury;51599002]Did we ever have an Update on the first week after Christmas?[/QUOTE] Nah.

Do we ever have an update in the first 5 months of a year

when was even the last update with tangible content? oh right tough break. 1 year

2017 might as well be the year to announce TF2 being ported to Source 2, since the game hits its 10th anniversary. wich, at any given point its the only and true update this game needs.

[QUOTE=Metaru;51599309]2017 might as well be the year to announce TF2 being ported to Source 2, since the game hits its 10th anniversary. wich, at any given point its the only and true update this game needs.[/QUOTE] Porting TF2 to source 2 is probably more work than its worth for valve.

[QUOTE=Hell-met;51599259]when was even the last update with tangible content? oh right tough break. 1 year[/QUOTE] Even if you discount Halloween for being time limited it was Meet Your Match in July.

mym's content were the slim balance changes. but they were so horrible I'd rather forget about it. so that defaults back to Tough Break.

[QUOTE=Oizen;51599334]Porting TF2 to source 2 is probably more work than its worth for valve.[/QUOTE] sweet dreams are made of this.

I genuinely don't count MYM as a major update. Every part of the update was a complete mess and showed how entirely out of touch they are. The fact that for the most part, nothing that needed retooling after the update has been touched only exasperated that fact

A matchmaking system should not be the sole attraction of an update. It should've been part of a bigger update.

[QUOTE=Oizen;51599334]Porting TF2 to source 2 is probably more work than its worth for valve.[/QUOTE] Honestly if they gave the game a revamp for a new release or sequel that update would have the potential to rival esports like overawatch or dota 2 easily But that's the issue, it's dependent on dev interest as well as available workers (eg everyone isn't busy with vr or other things) So a tf3 would definitely be worth the work. But again, it requires company interest and we're at an all time low for that.

at this point, I can't expect a source 2 port, although the game needs it pretty badly, remaking the game in source 2 sounds more reasonable, or just give up and make a proper sequel. can't get over the fact that Dota 2 isn't really the hot new thing anymore, it's over 5 years old, and they remade it like 3 times already.

[QUOTE=Zeos;51599441]I genuinely don't count MYM as a major update. Every part of the update was a complete mess and showed how entirely out of touch they are. The fact that for the most part, nothing that needed retooling after the update has been touched only exasperated that fact[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=DrCactus;51599485]A matchmaking system should not be the sole attraction of an update. It should've been part of a bigger update.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure how you don't count Meet Your Match as a major update, besides the matchmaking system it had 3 community maps, the final version of Passtime with a new map, new taunts, new core class gameplay changes and new weapon rebalances.

Honestly surprised valve hasn't implemented adding money to the trade window for TF2 (and thus other steamworks games...) considering how much they love the smell of $$$. Would be kinda nice to just buy something immediately with cash in the safety of the steam ecosystem than to do risky paypal trades or to buy keys then wait 20 years till they're tradeable.

The only worthwhile additon from the update was the 3 maps. Pass time was already in the game prior to meet your match, and weapon rebalances can only get you so far, especially when most of them were as poor quality as MyM's. So, the only truly "new" gameplay elements were making current weapons work slightly different (and for the most part either worse, or relatively unchanged)

I don't remember where, but I heard that porting tf2 to source 2 would make it impossible to do things such as rocket jumping. Can anyone confirm?

It's all purely speculation. If they truly wanted to, they could easily make rocket jumping 1:1 to source 1 TF2.

[QUOTE=housejojo06;51599738]I don't remember where, but I heard that porting tf2 to source 2 would make it impossible to do things such as rocket jumping. Can anyone confirm?[/QUOTE] I don't see why that'd ever be the case... If the default way source 2 handles explosions didn't like it, they could easily make it a custom job. Probably more time and effort than valve is willing to put in to one of their cornerstone games, but oh well. And honestly I don't see how any source 2 features other than graphics/performance would benefit TF2. Things like shatterglass would be useless to current tf2.

[QUOTE=DrCactus;51599736]The only worthwhile additon from the update was the 3 maps. Pass time was already in the game prior to meet your match, and weapon rebalances can only get you so far, especially when most of them were as poor quality as MyM's. So, the only truly "new" gameplay elements were making current weapons work slightly different (and for the most part either worse, or relatively unchanged)[/QUOTE] i mean clearly competitive matchmaking was [I]supposed[/I] to be the big exciting highlight of the update, enough to replace new weapons and/or a campaign and carry the update all on its own, to the point where the whole update was named after it they just weren't expecting competitive to flop like it did