TF2 General Chat and Update Speculation Station - One of Several Edition - Games

[QUOTE=C. Blades;52589392]What the genuine fuck do they mean they don't have a date for the pyro update. They whiffed Halloween and smissmass last year, and [I]it's been over 400 DAYS.[/I][/QUOTE] It'd probably be very hard to nail down a date for an update they're trying to perfect. This update is going to make or break TF2, so there is a lot of pressure on them right now to get it right. Hope is what keeps us sheltered in dire times, friend. Let them take their time.

I understand valve is doing thier best, but this statement raises serious questions about the development process. [QUOTE=Scott713;52589402]They don't have a date they can [I]share.[/I] That could really mean any time. They don't tell us a week earlier, "Hey, the update will come out next week.", not how Valve works.[/QUOTE] This is the longest amount of dev time for an update ever, and they've said they're [I]still finishing up[/I]. This means they've either been: A: procrastinating/working critically undersupplied since before last Halloween or B: preparing the biggest update to the game possibly in it's history, as the uber update didn't nearly take this long. Option B comes with its own concerns, as why stockpile vital game improvements for release in a massive delayed update vs getting them into the game as soon as they're ready? Especially if they're features that were irrationally removed from the game for no reason during MyM in the first place?

Interesting change for the case system. It seems that the taunt unusualifier introduced in creepy crawly case was a bit of success. If this change goes positively and more people will open these cases and crates, the game will propably have a longetivity in further updates. That, or they just want to squeeze last money out of it and put it on it's final journey. Time will tell (sarcasm included).

[QUOTE=C. Blades;52589432]B: preparing the biggest update to the game possibly in it's history, as the uber update didn't nearly take this long.[/QUOTE] I thought this was confirmed?

The only change I want to the crate system is a way to combine or craft them so they're not 100% worthless.

[QUOTE=ics;52589436]Interesting change for the case system. It seems that the taunt unusualifier introduced in creepy crawly case was a bit of success. If this change goes positively and more people will open these cases and crates, the game will propably have a longetivity in further updates. That, or they just want to squeeze last money out of it and put it on it's final journey. Time will tell (sarcasm included).[/QUOTE] I still have my personal gripes with it, since they decided to make community made unusual effects even more rare than they are now.

If they're going to make huge changes to the game through this next update, I want them to take as much time as necessary. Procrastinate as much as you want to, because hell's fury will break loose if they don't do their upmost on it.

[QUOTE=C. Blades;52589432] B: preparing the biggest update to the game possibly in it's history, as the uber update didn't nearly take this long.[/QUOTE] i think the content confirmed alone makes it the biggest update in tf2 history (contracts, major balance overhaul, new weapons, new tf2 short, Class rework{to an extent not done before *allegedly}, new maps, new cosmetics, new formats to mention some specifics). Not to mention the matchmaking overhaul alone is a huge feat; an elo system and what i would imagine a casual format (being able to look at inventory while searching and possibly other new improvements), is a huge task that could be what's taking majority of the time and as such longer than any other update.

Watch the rebalances from the blog + the Pyro weapons/rebalances be the only ones in the update. That would definitely be worth a year and a half of waiting.

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;52589576]Watch the rebalances from the blog + the Pyro weapons/rebalances be the only ones in the update. That would definitely be worth a year and a half of waiting.[/QUOTE] That'd be pretty bad considering the Pyro update and that blog not even mentioning him at all lol.

I honestly think that since they're working on something as miscellaneous as crates, that they're finishing up the update. They are asking for feedback, so it may not come out next week or the week after. I think a pretty accurate estimate would be early September. Then again, they may come across a game breaking bug or something of the like, and that'd push the entire update back another week. Bottom line, September is a pretty good estimate.

What if unboxing increased your odds of getting an unusual, ever so slightly? Assuming the current chance is 0.5%, it could increase by say 0.01% each time something else is unboxed. This means those who go 200 crates without an unusual, would have a bonus 2% chance.

I just hope they release a crate alongside the cosmetic and weapon cases, so that we could finally enjoy certain Stranges such as the Short Circuit, Eureka Effect and a few multiclass weapons. (I would be rockin' the hell out of a Strange Ham Shank in pubs.)

[QUOTE=Chuggoth;52589712]To people like Lord Exor and the shitposting сollegium(including myself). Do you all remember how bad last summer was? Did they fuck up last time? Oh yeah, they sure did. You can blame them for MyM all you want. It was the most unsatisfyingly broken update we've got so far, it's justified. At the same time, you have to understand that for TF team it was also a failure. That they have to make up for that year, and 2017th in [B]one[/B] update. If even this one fails, we'll probably never see major updates ever again. Can we have some respect and wait patiently instead of pleading for momentary satisfaction, please?[/QUOTE] The Pyro update isn't going to be the last major update. TF2 is still still very popular and profitable, and Valve knows that they have to update it to keep people interested.

To be fair, have they ever shared a date for an update with us in the recent history? I think it's always just nothing until they drop the one or multi-day blogpost. I do think though with them asking for feedback the update is not "next week" close. Lot's of energy to the TF2 team.

Hurry up your jungle items

[QUOTE=Chuggoth;52589712]To people like Lord Exor and the shitposting сollegium(including myself). Do you all remember how bad last summer was? Did they fuck up last time? Oh yeah, they sure did. You can blame them for MyM all you want. It was the most unsatisfyingly broken update we've got so far, it's justified. At the same time, you have to understand that for TF team it was also a failure. That they have to make up for that year, and 2017th in [B]one[/B] update. If even this one fails, we'll probably never see major updates ever again. Can we have some respect and wait patiently instead of pleading for momentary satisfaction, please?[/QUOTE] If a year long and growing wait for an update is something considered anywhere remotely close to a point where the company still worth giving the benifit of the doubt, you've got a bad case of sunk cost bias. The second people try to rationalize that by saying it will pay off is both allowing valve to think it's an acceptable treatment of their game as well as setting yourself up for disappointment when the update is actually just alright and requires another 2 months of tweaking to reach a proper state. 300+ days is NOT a point of "waiting patiently". What in the everloving fuck could possibly take up so much time that they can't even be fucked to communicate more than trivial shit like minor case tweaking I'll never know.

Yeah, while I'm grateful for the few blog posts they've been putting out, it's still a a shit way of handling things, just merely less shit than no blog posts. The lack of communication and the lack of even small updates worth caring about is a terrible way to treat a game as popular as TF2. They are, at the very least, slightly better than Rockstar Games, who communicate with the fanbase solely through cease and desist letters.

[QUOTE=Scott713;52589402]They don't have a date they can [I]share.[/I] That could really mean any time. They don't tell us a week earlier, "Hey, the update will come out next week.", not how Valve works.[/QUOTE] The way they word it saying they don't have a date they can share yet makes me think they do have a date in mind but aren't willing to say it because the community likely wont be happy if they don't make that date.

[QUOTE=Chuggoth;52589712]To people like Lord Exor and the shitposting сollegium(including myself). Do you all remember how bad last summer was? Did they fuck up last time? Oh yeah, they sure did. You can blame them for MyM all you want. It was the most unsatisfyingly broken update we've got so far, it's justified. At the same time, you have to understand that for TF team it was also a failure. That they have to make up for that year, and 2017th in [B]one[/B] update. If even this one fails, we'll probably never see major updates ever again. Can we have some respect and wait patiently instead of pleading for momentary satisfaction, please?[/QUOTE] They wouldn't have to try and make up for MyM if it hadn't been a complete dumpster fire. What's more is that a lot of its problems wouldn't have arisen in the first place had they actually listened to community feedback on competitive from the beta testing, and further not tried to fix something that wasn't broken by replacing quick play with casual. The failure of MyM is completely on them and could have been easily avoidable were it not for their complete dismissal of the community in the lead up to it.

Its hard to make a good update that everyone unanimously loves, that's very true. But it's far less hard to produce something that at the very least isn't a dumpster fire.

I think they just have too much on their plate to do, not just in regards TF2. Individual people on the team i mean. The time they actually get together on work on things is limited. Then a month passes and they get together for few days to actually work on the game, all of them together and not just each on their own and see have they managed to get to the goals they set before the last meeting and work on the things they were doing each on their own or small teams. I cant believe it takes over a year to launch an update if 16 people work on the game every single day most of the time they are at the offices. Should have been out sooner. Then again, i'm not a game developer. I just do maps and know how long it takes to do one.

"We don't have a date to [B]share[/B] yet" means jackshit, you all know that, right? They never have one to share, they primarily say that so they have a net they can fall on if some major bug happens that might take 2 weeks to fix. This quite literally could mean anything. With this blog post and the recent b4nny-man "leaks" - I'm still eyeing up the last week of August.

Yes, Valve is massively, astoundingly, pathetically, blitheringly understaffed. It shows in all of their products, not just TF2. For a month now, OS X Steam client silently crashes at least once per hour, sometimes more. That's just one example that, ahem, is vexing me at the moment. If they had, you know, actual departments and team leaders and bosses, they might actually function like (stop me if I sound crazy here) a company. I've been playing a lot of GTA Online recently. It's a silly and fun game to play with friends (much like TF2). It has many flaws, but I am amazed at how well it works. GTA is the product of over 1000 people ...who have specific jobs and people to whom they report. It shows in the end product. The opposite could be said of the leaning tower of duct tape and bailing wire that is TF2.

[QUOTE=Ultravod;52589916]Yes, Valve is massively, astoundingly, pathetically, blitheringly understaffed. It shows in all of their products, not just TF2. For a month now, OS X Steam client silently crashes at least once per hour, sometimes more. That's just one example that, ahem, is vexing me at the moment. If they had, you know, actual departments and team leaders and bosses, they might actually function like (stop me if I sound crazy here) a company. I've been playing a lot of GTA Online recently. It's a silly and fun game to play with friends (much like TF2). It has many flaws, but I am amazed at how well it works. GTA is the product of over 1000 people ...who have specific jobs and people to whom they report. It shows in the end product. The opposite could be said of the leaning tower of duct tape and bailing wire that is TF2.[/QUOTE] The reason that Valve is understaffed is because half of the ~300 people working at Valve are working on fucking VR instead of actually working on the things that pay for VR. Valve really needs to fix its internal structure when it comes to employment and employees, because this whole "do what you want" attitude isn't working anymore.

[QUOTE=Chuggoth;52589712]To people like Lord Exor and the shitposting сollegium(including myself). Do you all remember how bad last summer was? Did they fuck up last time? Oh yeah, they sure did. You can blame them for MyM all you want. It was the most unsatisfyingly broken update we've got so far, it's justified. At the same time, you have to understand that for TF team it was also a failure. That they have to make up for that year, and 2017th in [B]one[/B] update. If even this one fails, we'll probably never see major updates ever again. Can we have some respect and wait patiently instead of pleading for momentary satisfaction, please?[/QUOTE] MyM failed me, but not in the way it did the playerbase's hive mind. Casual/Competitive matchmaking was never of any concern to me, as I had never once involved myself in Valve's servers since their introduction in 2011. Moreover, matchmaking as a concept is anathema to me, and goes against everything I believe in when it comes to the social component of multiplayer shooters. No, you see, I found MyM, and indeed, the whole of 2016, troubling for a different reason. The balancing present in MyM was pitiful, either missing the mark entirely (Righteous Bison, Buffalo Steak Sandvich) or being far too lukewarm to realize the intent behind them (Crit-a-Cola). What really compounded this misfire was the fact that we wouldn't receive any further balance passes for the duration of the year, with Smissmas sacrificed for the sake of this upcoming update, and God forbid we'd see minor patches tackle anything important. June 20th's balance blog post amounted to what is essentially the biggest tease of this game's life, given that nearly all of the weapons addressed have been amiss for years, some up to nine. Think about that for a moment--two Presidents of the United States have been in office, and many TF2 players, former or otherwise, have received at least two degrees in that time span. When the blog post was first made, I was elated that these longtime mistakes were at last being mended. I concluded that the update would be imminent, and I was awash with glee. Two months later, that glee has rapidly transitioned into resentment, exacerbated by the announcement of [I]Artifact[/I]. I've waited so long for what essentially amount to quality-of-life improvements to the very foundation of the game, and I'm at my wit's end, after having played for eight years, with all the griefers abusing the Sandman and other poor Valve decisions. Enough is enough, I'm tired of waiting for the fixes to my basic gameplay experience that should have been implemented half a decade or more ago. I don't care about fixing matchmaking, case systems, the jungle maps, or the art assets Valve loves to include on the landing page of every update; the simple, logical balance improvements introduced on the blog should not be held hostage to this behemoth of an update if it's going to take this unfathomably long to complete. Oh, and the reason I still wouldn't be satisfied even with the overdue changes from the blog? Time--Valve's had too much of it to produce only that, especially given the infrequent, poor, and ultimately sparse balancing we've received in the past. You can scoff at my pessimism all you want, just keep in mind that it isn't by nature, it's informed by years of letdowns and bemusing decision making. I have a hard time believing anyone that has enjoyed this game as much and as long as I have doesn't share these sentiments to some degree.

[QUOTE=ics;52589884]I think they just have too much on their plate to do, not just in regards TF2. Individual people on the team i mean. The time they actually get together on work on things is limited. Then a month passes and they get together for few days to actually work on the game, all of them together and not just each on their own and see have they managed to get to the goals they set before the last meeting and work on the things they were doing each on their own or small teams. I cant believe it takes over a year to launch an update if 16 people work on the game every single day most of the time they are at the offices. Should have been out sooner. Then again, i'm not a game developer. I just do maps and know how long it takes to do one.[/QUOTE] Well Dave Riller said only 5-6 of those people are programmers. I seriously wonder if that's the biggest issue, that seems like far too few people for the game but of course I can't say for sure. [QUOTE=Fluury;52589913] With this blog post and the recent b4nny-man "leaks" - I'm still eyeing up the last week of August.[/QUOTE] You almost always think next week is the week Fluury. ;) I hope you're right and they're able to do some sort of beta version with the old version of TF2 balance for i61. [QUOTE=socks_;52589924]The reason that Valve is understaffed is because half of the ~300 people working at Valve are working on fucking VR instead of actually working on the things that pay for VR. Valve really needs to fix its internal structure when it comes to employment and employees, because this whole "do what you want" attitude isn't working anymore.[/QUOTE] Yeah 350 isn't enough for all they do. I just have to hold out hope that Valve expands when they move into their larger office later this year (honestly why else would they move into an office twice as large as the current one?) Maybe if Tyler with VNN ever gets to interview Gabe again he can ask him about this because I've also seen CSGO fans saying they don't think enough people work on that game. [QUOTE=Lord Exor;52589933] The balancing present in MyM was pitiful, either missing the mark entirely (Righteous Bison, Buffalo Steak Sandvich) or being far too lukewarm to realize the intent behind them (Crit-a-Cola). What really compounded this misfire was the fact that we wouldn't receive any further balance passes for the duration of the year, with Smissmas sacrificed for the sake of this upcoming update, and God forbid we'd see minor patches tackle anything important. June 20th's balance blog post amounted to what is essentially the biggest tease of this game's life, given that nearly all of the weapons addressed have been amiss for years, some up to nine. Think about that for a moment--two Presidents of the United States have been in office, and many TF2 players, former or otherwise, have received at least two degrees in that time span. [/QUOTE] I think it's really weird that we didn't at least get a couple of community maps, some rebalances, and a new campaigns/skins for Smissmas. I wish they would tell us why this update is taking so long. Maybe it will all make sense when we finally get to see everything in the update but from the outside it just seems so hard to understand why this update is taking so long.

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;52589950] You almost always think next week is the week Fluury. ;) I hope you're right and they're able to do some sort of beta version with the old version of TF2 balance for i61. [/QUOTE] I'm not saying it's next week, though. I have 0 hopes for the i61 week, but more for the following one. Also I noticed something: Even the TF Team isn't sure what to call this update and constantly switches between "The Jungle Update" and "The Pyro Update".

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;52589950]Yeah 350 isn't enough for all they do. I just have to hold out hope that Valve expands when they move into their larger office later this year (honestly why else would they move into an office twice as large as the current one?) Maybe if Tyler with VNN ever gets to interview Gabe again he can ask him about this because I've also seen CSGO fans saying they don't think enough people work on that game. [/QUOTE] CSGO fans honestly don't feel the effects of understaffing at Valve, due to the fact that a whole different studio works on CSGO with Valve. They probably won't hire anyone new anytime soon, but i hope they will because they are in dire need of staff.

[QUOTE=Fluury;52589961]I'm not saying it's next week, though. I have 0 hopes for the i61 week, but more for the following one. Also I noticed something: Even the TF Team isn't sure what to call this update and constantly switches between "The Jungle Update" and "The Pyro Update".[/QUOTE] I don't think they would have said anything if it was just a couple of weeks away. My guess is mid september.