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

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;52503966]If you use the word [I]quintessence[/I] some people think you're pretentious... for some reason. On topic, I completely agree with you on major update content being segmented and spread throughout the year. Blackavar inquired over this a few months ago, and Jill gave him a perplexing and vague response involving what "makes sense" for their development cycle.[/QUOTE] This was my email: [quote] Hello, I am Blackavar, a regular on the TF2 section of Facepunch, and the creator of the past 3 "Major Update Speculation" threads. I am sure many people all around the world have emailed you constantly about the state of the game, about how the TF Team communicates with the world, and what you plan to do with the game in the future. But while those are valid concerns, these questions do not focus on them as I hope the near unanimous-in-style feedback from the rest of the community guides the team to make better decisions in the future. I sent this email to Eric S yesterday, but I have no clue if he read it so I am also sending it to you just to be sure. 1. What's keeping the team from balancing weapons a little every minor update? -snipped because cringe- 2. Why was the beta discontinued? This is a question I certainly have, but I'm more interested in talking about why bringing it back is a good idea, and the changes that ought to be made for it to be meaningful to the team. For one, major updates in the past few years have been infamous for breaking things on day one, something I'm sure the members of the TF Team never anticipate or want to happen. If updates are released early on the beta for significant playtesting by the beta userbase, perhaps those bugs can be fixed sooner than days after the official release of the update. Second, it would allow the TF Team to see at a greater degree issues with balancing before those balance changes are released to the public. Of course, for this to be effective, all players involved with the beta would have to be given all the non-reskin weapons in the game, since the beta is separate from standard TF2. I hope this helps. Should this email be read, thank you for your time.[/quote] His reply: [quote] Apologies for the late reply. We do read all the email we get, but it can be hard to reply to them all. Without getting too much into our development processes: Weapon balance is only one of a number of things we are working on currently. With our present development resources, it often makes more sense focus on certain areas as a team. Balance, in particular, requires playtesting and evaluating often noisy data, and benefits from being pushed into larger sets of changes from a development-time perspective. As for the TF Beta, we found that the burden of maintaining an essentially separate copy of the game universe was not the best approach. Low participation makes for less reliable feedback, and comes at a non-zero maintenance cost. We have talked about ways to introduce more lightweight beta features for balance in particular, but don't really have anything worth talking about at this point.[/quote] basically he just destroyed all my hopes and dreams in one fell swoop. Besides this line, of course: [quote] We have talked about ways to introduce more lightweight beta features for balance in particular[/quote] That email was received January 11.

With all due respect, how much playtesting is required for most of those June 20th changes? Do you really need to rigorously evaluate the effects of a Crit-a-Cola Scout being marked for death? Crit-a-Cola functioned this way for years before Valve mangled its balance in 2013. How much time is necessary to examine the impact of a Dead Ringer that doesn't reclaim cloak charge from ammo kits? That answer makes sense for some weapons--the ones that introduce new mechanics such as the GRU and Vita-Saw--but a good majority of them could have been figured out and implemented a long, long time ago with negligible assessment on their part. Valve also conveyed to b4nny at one point that the weapon changes listed on the blog were considered to be "controversial." I don't know in what context they judge that, but none of those Scout balance passes appeared controversial in the slightest. Other than the Ambassador change, what seems debatable? Would you consider buffing Heavy's miniguns to be a hotly contested topic?

We're not f-ing getting the update this month, get that through your thick skulls. Testing the changes and suggestions isn't as easily done as you people think it is. stop hyping yourselves up and give other people false hope [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Shitpost - Rude" - icemaz))[/highlight]

What if they are working on using Steam Audio for TF2? Afaik TF2 uses DirectSound on Windows, however the Linux one despite using PulseAudio can use OpenAL's HRTF and it can be enabled with the dsp_slow_cpu 1 command. For the best results (According to ArchLinux Wiki) you can use these: [code] snd_spatialize_roundrobin 1 dsp_enhance_stereo 0 snd_pitchquality 1 [/code] Just remember that it won't work in Windows.

[QUOTE=CoolJosh3k;52502916]Pretty sure we will see a blog post in the next few hours. Then tomorrow Tyler will post that his email questions have been answered and to expect a video soon.[/QUOTE] ha

A part of me wants to believe what's taking so long is that there is some insanely fickle bug possibly involved with one of Pyro's either new core mechanics or something having to do with his new weapons. Just to make it seem to me that all this waiting is justified. :<

Still with the "the update is coming toweek i can feel it in my bones" posts?Atleast post something more creative than that like with fluury's update bell

[QUOTE=Lord Exor;52504052]With all due respect, how much playtesting is required for most of those June 20th changes? Do you really need to rigorously evaluate the effects of a Crit-a-Cola Scout being marked for death? Crit-a-Cola functioned this way for years before Valve mangled its balance in 2013. How much time is necessary to examine the impact of a Dead Ringer that doesn't reclaim cloak charge from ammo kits? That answer makes sense for some weapons--the ones that introduce new mechanics such as the GRU and Vita-Saw--but a good majority of them could have been figured out and implemented a long, long time ago with negligible assessment on their part. Valve also conveyed to b4nny at one point that the weapon changes listed on the blog were considered to be "controversial." I don't know in what context they judge that, but none of those Scout balance passes appeared controversial in the slightest. Other than the Ambassador change, what seems debatable? Would you consider buffing Heavy's miniguns to be a hotly contested topic?[/QUOTE] With every moment of thinking what takes so long with this update - more and more of optimism leaves me. If that stuff was considered [I]controversial[/I] - it's one of the two: either b4nny is misinformed/lying, which is doubtful, because he's basicly the Church between valve and [del]pariahs[/del] [del]casul shet[/del] playerbase, or they were struck with flak so hard back at MyM, that they decided not to do anything loud and potentially upsetting this time, least risk route. Also development time starts to look comically stretched, as assets for map were finalized back when Fight Songs released (i don't think soundscapes are done before map is finished and polished), and they had general ideas on balancing month ago - which surprises me by itself, as it took almost a year to [I]formulate[/I] only part of intended changes, if i'm getting it right. All stuff we know about would easily fit into one update, and they are promising 2-3. What else are they doing ther?

[QUOTE=st00pid;52504257]With every moment of thinking what takes so long with this update - more and more of optimism leaves me. If that stuff was considered [I]controversial[/I] - it's one of the two: either b4nny is misinformed/lying, which is doubtful, because he's basicly the Church between valve and [del]pariahs[/del] [del]casul shet[/del] playerbase, or they were struck with flak so hard back at MyM, that they decided not to do anything loud and potentially upsetting this time, least risk route. Also development time starts to look comically stretched, as assets for map were finalized back when Fight Songs released (i don't think soundscapes are done before map is finished and polished), and they had general ideas on balancing month ago - which surprises me by itself, as it took almost a year to [I]formulate[/I] only part of intended changes, if i'm getting it right. All stuff we know about would easily fit into one update, and they are promising 2-3. What else are they doing ther?[/QUOTE] I imagine the soundscape and art assets for a map are likely done by different people so the soundscape for the Jungle map being done in time for the Fight Song album doesn't mean the art assets necessarily were.

How big was Meet Your Match's filesize? I wasn't around then.

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;52504294]I imagine the soundscape and art assets for a map are likely done by different people so the soundscape for the Jungle map being done in time for the Fight Song album doesn't mean the art assets necessarily were.[/QUOTE] Assets not being fully done would support the fact that they decided not to release the assets before the update launch for the map makers while also keeping them as a secret up untill the release of the update. I would love to add into the conversation about the things i've heard and seen during the past 3 days but i'm not going to do that. It would end up being pointless speculation that would lead nowhere untill the update is actually here, when we will see which of the things i saw and heard was actually true. But the 99% certainty of update not releasing this week is most likely true. I'd wait for it next week at the earliest.

[QUOTE=Drag0600;52504488]How big was Meet Your Match's filesize? I wasn't around then.[/QUOTE] Around 800 MB

[QUOTE=ics;52504510]Assets not being fully done would support the fact that they decided not to release the assets before the update launch for the map makers while also keeping them as a secret up untill the release of the update. I would love to add into the conversation about the things i've heard and seen during the past 3 days but i'm not going to do that. It would end up being pointless speculation that would lead nowhere untill the update is actually here, when we will see which of the things i saw and heard was actually true. But the 99% certainty of update not releasing this week is most likely true. I'd wait for it next week at the earliest.[/QUOTE] You're crushing my soul with your potentially bad news about this week ics. :cry:

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;52504540]You're crushing my soul with your potentially bad news about this week ics. :cry:[/QUOTE] Each time i see someone post "toweek is the week" i feel frustrated, because that has been feeding the conversation here and many many posts have been promising it week after another to that week at hand in duration of whole 2 months already! And same thing starts every monday. That if anything adds into the frustration even more. But there is a slight chance i'm wrong.

[QUOTE=ics;52504582]Each time i see someone post "toweek is the week" i feel frustrated, because that has been feeding the conversation here and many many posts have been promising it week after another to that week at hand in duration of whole 2 months already! And same thing starts every monday. That if anything adds into the frustration even more. But there is a slight chance i'm wrong.[/QUOTE] Given how Valve's pretty much gone radio silent I think there's a lot of people here who very much appreciate letting us know what your guess is based on what you've heard from the mapping community.

[QUOTE=ics;52504510]Assets not being fully done would support the fact that they decided not to release the assets before the update launch for the map makers while also keeping them as a secret up untill the release of the update. I would love to add into the conversation about the things i've heard and seen during the past 3 days but i'm not going to do that. It would end up being pointless speculation that would lead nowhere untill the update is actually here, when we will see which of the things i saw and heard was actually true. But the 99% certainty of update not releasing this week is most likely true. I'd wait for it next week at the earliest.[/QUOTE] The only thing that I dont find logical is why would they call it a summer update if they release it at the end of the summer, havve they ever released a mayor on august?

[QUOTE=turshitposter;52504646]The only thing that I dont find logical is why would they call it a summer update if they release it at the end of the summer, havve they ever released a mayor on august?[/QUOTE] Yes, a bunch in fact: Mann vs. Machine August 15, 2012 Classless Update August 13, 2009 A Heavy Update August 19, 2008

So last night I was playing on a server I help moderate (a 24/7 plr_highertower server with grappling hooks, it's hilarious), and I was playing Spy ([url=http://i.imgur.com/rHXDCuN.png]second least-played class by the way [don't ask about the dumb points on other classes][/url]) and just running around with the Revolver and butterknifing people to death. I end up butterknifing a spun-up Heavy by grappling around and he basically told me that I was tryharding to compensate for my shitty unusual effect ([url=http://i.imgur.com/zWoITPt.png]this was my loadout by the way[/url]) and keeps giving emphasis on the unusual effect and not anything else. I go on to ask him "can I tryhard if I get a better effect?" and continue playing normally under my ~[url=http://i.imgur.com/Nxciw7l.png]new cosmetic loadout[/url]~ except with the added bonus of taunting-on-kill and basically left after I started peppering him with revolver bullets for all of eternity. I just want to grapple around a meme map and play like an idiot, is that so much to ask?

[QUOTE=Doodle966;52504659]Yes, a bunch in fact: Mann vs. Machine August 15, 2012 Classless Update August 13, 2009 A Heavy Update August 19, 2008[/QUOTE] I would actually estimate that this update may hit that general timeframe (middle of August). I am basing this on the fact that similar to how MvM lead to a whole lot of game mechanic changes that needed to be tested thoroughly the tf2 team probably want to make sure the new Pyro game mechanics (and possibly other things?) are totally perfect before release. Hopefully we will get some more blogpost about what is going on before that.

[QUOTE=ics;52504510]Assets not being fully done would support the fact that they decided not to release the assets before the update launch for the map makers while also keeping them as a secret up untill the release of the update. I would love to add into the conversation about the things i've heard and seen during the past 3 days but i'm not going to do that. It would end up being pointless speculation that would lead nowhere untill the update is actually here, when we will see which of the things i saw and heard was actually true. But the 99% certainty of update not releasing this week is most likely true. I'd wait for it next week at the earliest.[/QUOTE] So you are unsure that the things you saw and heard are true yet are sure the thing saying the update ain't coming this week is true, primarily because it confirms your prior beliefs? I know there is the secret tf2 content creators society where they share cooking recipes and make-up tips, but can you be a bit less vague?

[QUOTE=Fluury;52504745]So you are unsure that the things you saw and heard are true yet are sure the thing saying the update ain't coming this week is true, primarily because it confirms your prior beliefs? I know there is the secret tf2 content creators society where they share cooking recipes and make-up tips, but can you be a bit less vague?[/QUOTE] It's almost as if implying you have knowledge is even worse than just talking about it while saying you're unsure. I can at least say from my perspective I haven't heard anything yet, only recently that someone emailed Valve about a specific issue they had map-wise and that Valve gave them a suggestion about what to do, and had heavily implied that no maps have been picked for the jungle update yet.

[QUOTE=UEAKCrash;52504903] I can at least say from my perspective I haven't heard anything yet, only recently that someone emailed Valve about a specific issue they had map-wise and that Valve gave them a suggestion about what to do, and had heavily implied that no maps have been picked for the jungle update yet.[/QUOTE] welp you just UEAKCrashed all hopes for this week see you guys next week

[QUOTE=UEAKCrash;52504903]It's almost as if implying you have knowledge is even worse than just talking about it while saying you're unsure. I can at least say from my perspective I haven't heard anything yet, only recently that someone emailed Valve about a specific issue they had map-wise and that Valve gave them a suggestion about what to do, and had heavily implied that no maps have been picked for the jungle update yet.[/QUOTE] the ride never ends ah?

As much as I want the update already, I'm glad they're taking their time with it.

Optimism is fine but blind optimism is just unhealthy. I've watched some of you say "This week for sure!" for two months now. That has got to be super exhausting, ground yourselves a little and relax.

[QUOTE=knifekeeper;52504962]As much as I want the update already, I'm glad they're taking their time with it.[/QUOTE] On one hand, I'm right there with you. But on the other hand, [i]it's been over a year...[/i]

The moment you set any expectations is the moment you've lost

stop watching this thread hoping for the update to come out go on with your lives and play tf2 or something to kill time until the update hits

[QUOTE=Contra132;52505094]play tf2 or something to kill time until the update hits[/QUOTE] I am actually doing exactly that, making up for all the time I did not play Medic. It is quite fun, hope they figure out some new way to give Medic a medigun in future.

[QUOTE=st00pid;52504257]Also development time starts to look comically stretched, as assets for map were finalized back when Fight Songs released ([B]i don't think soundscapes are done before map is finished and polished[/B])[/QUOTE] rd_asteroid was shipped with unique, finished soundscapes, even all the way back when it looked like this [video=youtube;eZlMdD2jSLo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlMdD2jSLo[/video]