TF2 General Chat and Speculation Station V6 - Year of the Guard Dog SURVEY IN OP - Games

if valve genuinely had any interest in tf2's comp scene they would had dropped cash prizes, held tournaments and sponsor said tournaments. the international was "THE" place to host a big, annual CSGO/Dota2/TF2 Tournament Finals and gather everyone around all their IPs in a huge fest of lve and shenanigans. no need for shitty "everyone is putting matchmaking in their games thats totally the answer for comp" updates that introduced yet even more useless content no one ever asked for. if they had done it back then [I]when valve were the good guys[/I], at their apex of their popularity. back when we joked about Gabe's ban hammer in his inventory or having an all out match vs robin walker was the way to go. in retrospective, it was better for them not to do it tho. because people would hate them even more now if they canceled it after the first time.

The thing about Valve is they're just... neutral. They don't do much of anything. The last major things they've done were the paid mods fiasco and forced steam mobile authenticator or face trade holds, and replacing greenlight with steam direct. What's worse, making microtransaction filled premium priced games or not doing anything anything besides things no one asked for like paid sprays, replacing quickplay, and artifact.

They spend the first six months of the year gathering artistic inspiration, then they get hard at work.

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;53130253]They spend the first six months of the year gathering artistic inspiration, then they get hard at work.[/QUOTE] super real leaked transcript from valve hq: "what do we do about balance this update?" "have we nerfed heavy yet?" "yes, eric, we've nerfed heavy. we've nerfed heavy every time you've asked." "have we nerfed...[I]spy[/I] yet?" "...think you're onto something, dave."

would it kill valve to drop the "all is well" facade tho?

[QUOTE=TheBorealis;53130223]Dosn't the team increase in size as work on the next update progresses than goes down after the update to restart the cycle? That might be why we only get four pieces of content a year, the late spring cosmetics case, the major update, halloween, and smissmas. edit: all of Valve is working really slow as of late, steam beta is getting less frequent updates, csgo hasn't gotten a case in a while, dota hasn't gotten new content in a while but the biweekly updates may fix that, pretty much everything is slow except the steamvr beta which gets updated like every other day. edit2: fixed extra new line, and I just remembered csgo did get an update changing some map layouts and adding the new shotgun spreads in regular games[/QUOTE] I would assume we have core programmers like Eric Smith, Dave Riller and Jill who working on TF2 year round with people like map makers/artists/animators/writers/sound engineers/etc rotating into the team as needed.

[QUOTE=Hell-met;53130308]would it kill valve to drop the "all is well" facade tho?[/QUOTE] All I want for Valve to drop is their [I]"do what you want as long as it makes money"[/I] infrastructure. As cool as the freedom is and how great it worked in the past, it clearly doesn't work now. Yes you can live off the money that steam literally prints for you but what put you on the map was the games. When games with undying fanbases, loyal players whom have been making content for it for YEARS starts to dwindle, becoming more of a mess because developers are given the choice to abandon and go work on something else. Leaving chunks of unused code and assets making it just more of a mess and a turn-off for future developers to even want to look at. It gives off the image your company couldn't give a shit...And that's exactly what I get from Valve for the past few years, more so recently to be honest. And this isn't just happening with one game anymore, CSGO is slowly receiving less updates even with its huge playerbase. HalfLifeTeam, PortalTeam, L4DTeam all none-existent. And the only things that seemingly seem to have huge amounts of dedicated devs are Dota, VR and this 'artifcat' card-game which I don't recall anyone piping up and saying [I]"Man, I wish Dota had a card game"[/I] It's depressing to see Valve lose its charm what made so many fall in love with the company all those years ago, the fact they were so communicative with their fans and developers working on their engine. And yet we're still waiting for Source 2 to be public and Hammer to be updated to benefit map makers. And I believe part of that is their infrastructure to be blamed.

It's not surprising there are so few devs working on TF2 anymore. It must be a nightmare to work on, and there's no real incentive to. The game doesn't print money anymore. It doesn't serve that many players either - it turns out the whole "hey it's still in Steam's top 10, they must do it for all those players!" argument was bogus all along, and Valve definitely knew too. It's ridiculous to say things would be better if Valve dropped their policy of letting devs choose where to work. If there was an actual organized management at Valve, it would recognize TF2 is a waste of resources, instantly terminate it and allocate all devs towards towards other, more perspective ventures like Steam or VR.

[QUOTE=rolfum;53128087]the only reason pyro took "skill" before was because he was working with invisible damage boxes a large chunk of the time, nothing's really changed about pyro's skill except that now his flamethrower's hitboxes are actually accurate with it's particles, and I've only ever seen one person since JI that actually uses one of those flail and spin binds that everyone is going crazy about, and even if it would be nice to fix that along with pyro particles remaining after death, there's no way to make pyro's flamethrowers take more skill without completely overhauling his flamethrowers into something that just isn't a flamethrower[/QUOTE] No, the current damage system doesn't reward accuracy, meaning it takes far less skill than it should to get high/max DPS. Before, even knowing the hitboxes wasn't enough, since you had to learn how to have a constant stream of hitboxes on the enemy. Now, all that matters is that there's at least one hitbox on the enemy at any one time, which is far, far easier to do. I also think the flamethrower being able to hit someone behind someone else made it easier to use, since positioning matters less. Combining both of these issues means you can get high DPS on anyone within flamethrower range with little skill, flailing or not.

[QUOTE=Drury;53130418]It's not surprising there are so few devs working on TF2 anymore. It must be a nightmare to work on, and there's no real incentive to. The game doesn't print money anymore. It doesn't serve that many players either - it turns out the whole "hey it's still in Steam's top 10, they must do it for all those players!" argument was bogus all along, and Valve definitely knew too. It's ridiculous to say things would be better if Valve dropped their policy of letting devs choose where to work. If there was an actual organized management at Valve, it would recognize TF2 is a waste of resources, instantly terminate it and allocate all devs towards towards other, more perspective ventures like Steam or VR.[/QUOTE] oh its printing money, its in the top 20 of profit makers of steam

[QUOTE=Drury;53130418]It's not surprising there are so few devs working on TF2 anymore. It must be a nightmare to work on, and there's no real incentive to. The game doesn't print money anymore. It doesn't serve that many players either - it turns out the whole "hey it's still in Steam's top 10, they must do it for all those players!" argument was bogus all along, and Valve definitely knew too. It's ridiculous to say things would be better if Valve dropped their policy of letting devs choose where to work. If there was an actual organized management at Valve, it would recognize TF2 is a waste of resources, instantly terminate it and allocate all devs towards towards other, more perspective ventures like Steam or VR.[/QUOTE] Isnt VR still only like 0.5 percent of users? Even less being Vive users? I dont get what people are expecting with their VR titles but unless its HL3 i dont know anybody who would invest in VR for a valve game.

[QUOTE=Metaru;53130241]if valve genuinely had any interest in tf2's comp scene they would had dropped cash prizes, held tournaments and sponsor said tournaments. the international was "THE" place to host a big, annual CSGO/Dota2/TF2 Tournament Finals and gather everyone around all their IPs in a huge fest of lve and shenanigans. no need for shitty "everyone is putting matchmaking in their games thats totally the answer for comp" updates that introduced yet even more useless content no one ever asked for. if they had done it back then [I]when valve were the good guys[/I], at their apex of their popularity. back when we joked about Gabe's ban hammer in his inventory or having an all out match vs robin walker was the way to go. in retrospective, it was better for them not to do it tho. because people would hate them even more now if they canceled it after the first time.[/QUOTE] Uh no, they still haven't figured out what format they want comp to be, cash prizes will only be dropped on a working game, and before you talk about any games that had tournaments while they still sucked, those games aren't 10 years old, the sole reason they had tournaments was to advertise the game

today is valentines day doesnt matter if we get our "meet your match 2" update, the jungle inferno removal update, or no update at all, go out and spread some love even sparing that single friendly youd normally kill is doing good

What if festivized weapons gave you a second style option that removed the lights (basically making the weapon look normal).

you gotta be a special kind of stupid to complain about random crits when you're wounded and any regular hit would've killed you regardless. pubs never stop to amaze me even 10 years later

Beating a dead horse at this point I guess, but while trying to do some map contract bonuses I realized how the TF2 Team got the defense and capping objectives ass-backwards. The contracts usually have the capping requirement of 3 or so, while the Defense bonuses require you to defend the cap a whopping 12 or 20 times. Anyone who actually plays this game knows that capping a point is a simple and reliable action (just stand on it long enough), while Defenses are something the game registers only under very specific conditions. You have to be standing on the point when you make a kill or block a capping attempt, which goes totally against the fact that almost all sucessful, non-desperate defenses are made by killing the enemy team before they even get on the point, or killing them while they're standing on it and you're further away. Only last-ditch desperate Hail Maries are made by throwing yourself on a point being capped by enemies, exposing yourself to ramp-up damage and concentrated fire by several players in most cases. I really hope they learn the lesson for the next campaign and make capping bonuses have a much higher requirement while Defenses are decreased to like 3. I've played a bunch of successful Mossrock and Mercenary Park games as RED, gotten loads of kills and clear victories, and I have like 4 registered Defenses per map/contract to show for it...

So........whens the last part of the comic coming out

I'm not even sure whether we'll actually get the final part. Apparently the storyboards were sort of finished by Jay Pinkerton before he left Valve (I think he posted something to that effect on Twitter), but I'm doubtful whether Valve still have the drive and priorities to finish the final issue. You still need comic artists to do the visuals, maybe there's still writing that needs to be done etc. Not sure how commited Jay is to finish this now that he's taking a break and is no longer at Valve, if the final issue still requires his input through contract work or something like that.

[QUOTE=Stric_Matic;53130977]I'm not even sure whether we'll actually get the final part. Apparently the storyboards were sort of finished by Jay Pinkerton before he left Valve (I think he posted something to that effect on Twitter), but I'm doubtful whether Valve still have the drive and priorities to finish the final issue. You still need comic artists to do the visuals, maybe there's still writing that needs to be done etc. Not sure how commited Jay is to finish this now that he's taking a break and is no longer at Valve, if the final issue still requires his input through contract work or something like that.[/QUOTE] He said he'll "happily sit with us near a campfire and share the story with us if he cannot finish it". [url]https://twitter.com/jaypinkerton/status/872658263497555968[/url]

[QUOTE=Fluury;53130817]today is valentines day doesnt matter if we get our "meet your match 2" update, the jungle inferno removal update, or no update at all, go out and spread some love even sparing that single friendly youd normally kill is doing good[/QUOTE] Do random crits and playing pyro like you are having a seizure count as spreading love?

no

Does playing MvM count?

[QUOTE=agrastiOs;53130989]He said he'll "happily sit with us near a campfire and share the story with us if he cannot finish it". [url]https://twitter.com/jaypinkerton/status/872658263497555968[/url][/QUOTE] we do not want another epistle 3

It's weird that it's February 14 and Jungle Inferno still hasn't been fully removed. I heard that Valve uses Perforce for source control, which isn't the most flexible thing for parallel development branches, which essentially means you have to release everything when you do a patch. Either they're cooking up something or just getting a lot of bug fixes done. Either way, I'm interested in what this week will bring. (I hope they'll fix the pose parameters not being lag compensated)

[QUOTE=agrastiOs;53131475]It's weird that it's February 14 and Jungle Inferno still hasn't been fully removed. I heard that Valve uses Perforce for source control, which isn't the most flexible thing for parallel development branches, which essentially means you have to release everything when you do a patch. Either they're cooking up something or just getting a lot of bug fixes done. Either way, I'm interested in what this week will bring. (I hope they'll fix the pose parameters not being lag compensated)[/QUOTE] It's been a pretty long time since TF2 has gotten a patch, I'm guessing we'll get some bug fixes as well.

[QUOTE=ASIC;53130867]What if festivized weapons gave you a second style option that removed the lights (basically making the weapon look normal).[/QUOTE] My take on this is that OG Festives (not FestivIZED weapons) should all get a second style option like the Festive Stickybomb Launcher has: white lights. If I could have white lights on my OG Festive minigun, I'd go back to using it.

Above all, I hope they manage to disable the campaign (which basically should just be turning off Contracker's kill tracking and removing the Casual JI playlist) without breaking something. Like resetting people's contract progress or deleting stars/blood money. Considering the game's spaghetti code and how this is the first time they need to deactivate a campaign without shutting off contracts and related functionality like the Gift Shop, I'd almost be pleasantly surprised if something major isn't goofed in the process.

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;53130221]Five people? Nice, looks like we're in good hands.[/QUOTE] That's five more than I thought were working on it. With this recent spat of Nothing, you honestly can't tell...

I wonder in what state some weapons will be eternally stuck in when valve is finally sick of failing at balance attempts :thinking:

[QUOTE=Fluury;53130817]today is valentines day doesnt matter if we get our "meet your match 2" update, the jungle inferno removal update, or no update at all, go out and spread some love even sparing that single friendly youd normally kill is doing good[/QUOTE] Killing friendlies [i]is[/i] spreading love--the love of free kills.