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

The biggest problem is that every time they [I]do[/I] talk about the update, they're pretty much just saying "Sorry about the wait guys, but we're just dealing with soooo muuuuch content it's hard to keep in touch!" without actually elaborating. It's almost like the "my girlfriend from another school" trope

[QUOTE=Vincentor;52507344]all this could be fixed if they were just more open to letting us know what they're up to, like a blog post saying 'here's why we're taking a little longer' or 'here's some undecided changes, we list our ideas, you tell us which to try' their silence is the only thing making the community ramble about and lose their minds about expected updates and when they're coming out they've made blog posts promising to let the community know what's going on multiple times, but they never keep it up for longer than just the following post[/QUOTE] Valve's MO of saying fuck all about anything is one of the key things that's hurting the TF2 community. Like you said all it would take would be a semi-regular blog update saying "hey guys this is what we're working on, it might not come to anything but what do you think of this?"

Cant we at least get a blog post? this wait is crazy and they said they would communicate more... I dont want school to start without this update.

[QUOTE=Firetornado;52507435]Cant we at least get a blog post? this wait is crazy and they said they would communicate more... I dont want school to start without this update.[/QUOTE] same. it wouldn't just affect those at school, but sales for the update would be piss poor since many people would be too busy to even play the damn update.

ill barly be able to do half of the contracts if the go away and the update drops after august like 25 or when ever school starts. it would be cool if you could get all the contracts at once, or if they didnt go away and you could let them pile up and grind away at em in big chunks

Something tells me that our school/jobs/trips and seasoning in general doesn't concern Bellevue, Washington in the slightest

[QUOTE=Vincentor;52507344]all this could be fixed if they were just more open to letting us know what they're up to, like a blog post saying 'here's why we're taking a little longer' or 'here's some undecided changes, we list our ideas, you tell us which to try' their silence is the only thing making the community ramble about and lose their minds about expected updates and when they're coming out they've made blog posts promising to let the community know what's going on multiple times, but they never keep it up for longer than just the following post[/QUOTE] Or they could just spend a few minutes writing up the answers to the rest of the VNN interview questions since one of them is the now hilariously wrong "Late June or Early July?" I've been pretty happy with the TF2 team trying to communicate more this year with the Reddit AMA, the VNN Dave Riller interview and the weapon balance post (I'll be pretty disappointed if we don't get one of these before every re-balance) but yeah the lack of communication from the TF2 team now is getting to be pretty disappointing. It's been 5 weeks since the balance blog post and even longer since the "Get Your Jungle Stuff in the Workshop" blog post. The team really should give us some hint on what's going on or an approximate release date.

I think that valve really needs a member on the team that is responsible for the communication between the community of one of their games and the game developers,if that was the case we would atleast have a source of info from valve that could answer our questions when realise that something fishy would be going on. Basicaly something like jill or eric but their position would be with communicating with the users of their respective game.

[QUOTE=Big Snake Bos;52507631]I think that valve really needs a member on the team that is responsible for the communication between the community of one of their games and the game developers,if that was the case we would atleast have a source of info from valve that could answer our questions when realise that something fishy would be going on. Basicaly something like jill or eric but their position would be with communicating with the users of their respective game.[/QUOTE] I think VNN stated on stream recently that he wants to petition valve for that exact job eventually. If he gets a good enough reputation.

[QUOTE=Chuggoth;52507727]Reputation? I don't think that compiling facepunch posts will add much to his experience as a journalist.[/QUOTE] Im paraphrasing dont take my word 100% Plus he does way more than that, adds his own speculation, digs through files and interviews people. Hes got pretty decent content as of late.

[QUOTE=Firetornado;52507757]Im paraphrasing dont take my word 100% Plus he does way more than that, adds his own speculation, digs through files and interviews people. Hes got pretty decent content as of late.[/QUOTE] I would make a clickbait joke but he's actually been a bit better about that too

[QUOTE=Contra132;52507085]Left 4 Dead was huge. That game had advertising and fucking [I]everyone[/I] was talking about it when it came out. That TF2 never got the same treatment is a travesty.[/QUOTE] Left 4 Dead is also a game that basically died content-wise nearly after a year. It only received one addon update, before L4D2 was released and only 1 common one later. It was a dead end for it, but TF2 still thrives. With L4D2, they tried something similiar for few years and then it got left on it's own and again TF2 still has a very large userbase with more or less frequent updates. Reason for this is simply similiar than with L4D vs L4D2, they saw more beneficial to do another game with same style, but different mechanics and levels instead of TF2 where they keep updating the original. TF2 on the other hand is a game where they did the base game and still had all these ideas cool for new gamemodes, new weapons, items such as hats and maps over time. TF2 was only for multiplayer, where L4D series was a hybrid, so updating TF2 over time just like they did with counter-strike series made more sense. TF2 also was a game where Valve was developing certain features into Steam and it was a great testbench to test those out as first game that used them. Like the ingame market, community added items, whole workshop thing. It's something that has been going on nearly 10 years and no one saw this coming. In my opinion, TF2 got the same treatment and even more over it's lifetime.

I don't think that applying the same rules to Valve as other companies is the right course of action. Sure, they should do all the things people are suggesting, being more open and all that. The problem is that who is suitable to do that. It's not like TF2 team has a dedicated community manager. Of course, it's all a fault of the Valve's structure as a company, but honestly, I REALLY can't blame them for choosing it.

[QUOTE=knifekeeper;52508095]I don't think that applying the same rules to Valve as other companies is the right course of action. Sure, they should do all the things people are suggesting, being more open and all that. The problem is that who is suitable to do that. It's not like TF2 team has a dedicated community manager. Of course, it's all a fault of the Valve's structure as a company, but honestly, I REALLY can't blame them for choosing it.[/QUOTE] Valve doesn't have spesific community managers because every employee needs to be contact with the customer aka players if need be. They can spesifically tag into some issue instead of hearing it elsewhere and not being able to ask more questions and information if needed directly from the source. If someone just tells you "i received mail, this is broken, please fix it" they propably go "ok ill fix it but i need more information how to reproduce this." So the community manager mails and asks more about it and gets back to developer, which then says "ok, but i need more spesific on x" and again same thing starts over. Its way more easier if they do that directly, themselves and its way more beneficial.

I mean, we [I]will[/I] get an Update either this or next week adding the two medals, given their events start/end this/early next week. The big 'ol question is if this will be the Update we want or Valve being insane enough to patch out a tiny patch when the community is more anxious than your average anime club Let's hope it's the first...

[QUOTE=ics;52508125]Valve doesn't have spesific community managers because every employee needs to be contact with the customer aka players if need be. They can spesifically tag into some issue instead of hearing it elsewhere and not being able to ask more questions and information if needed directly from the source. If someone just tells you "i received mail, this is broken, please fix it" they propably go "ok ill fix it but i need more information how to reproduce this." So the community manager mails and asks more about it and gets back to developer, which then says "ok, but i need more spesific on x" and again same thing starts over. Its way more easier if they do that directly, themselves and its way more beneficial.[/QUOTE] But then, many would think there's more to being a community manager than just a bug-report-forwarder. Often when people say Valve needs a community manager, what they mean is there needs to be more of a dialogue between Valve and the community as opposed to the oft-rare reddit comments and emails. Seeing something like the Diretide fiasco a few years ago (where an "annual" halloween event was originally postponed to instead work on a major update, without the community knowing so people went mental and spammed GIVE DIRETIDE everywhere. I blame Twitch chat.) that got as big as it did simply because it took ages for Valve to respond and say "Yep, we screwed up, here's what we're doing." It's hard to say "Valve doesn't need a community manager" when such giant shitstorms can occur from a lack of communication.

Valve's current system of the developers interacting with the community would probably be okay if they actually interacted with the community more (and they had more employees but that's a whole different discussion we've had before). Maybe the entire team replies to emails but 99.9% of the time that's never going to be seen by the community. I was so excited when Dave Riller made an official Reddit account for the Gabe Newell AMA because I thought he would start posting on the tf2 subreddit but he hasn't posted a single time since. It shouldn't just be Jill's job to post on Reddit, tf2maps.net, tftv or here, everyone should be doing it occasionally.

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;52508469]It shouldn't just be Jill's job to post on Reddit, tf2maps.net, tftv or here, everyone should be doing it occasionally.[/QUOTE] hasn't he only posted here like 2 or 3 times in like the past year

[QUOTE=Curly Bill;52506711]was waiting for item server to be back up and then the casual server i was on said "match is over thanks for playing" and ended. I think it was because there was too little amount of players? does it do that when theres less than 5 players?[/QUOTE] this happens if the GC is down. usually goes down with the item server - again tuesday maintenance. agreed its got me a few times lol

All I'd want to see is one single person who gathers what everyone has been working on or has to say and sums it up neatly in a blog post. Kinda like: [I]"@Someguy has been working busily coding [whatever] for the upcoming [???] update. In addition he has been scouting workshop for the best unique maps fitting its theme, you better get working on it community!" "@Newbie spent some time working with @Someguy to implement animations as well as help tinker and tweak stat ideas for some bright ideas for new weapons." "@PottedPlant spent the day off due to family issues involving cacti."[/I] And so on... Not exactly like that, but just someone to send out a post once a week to know what time is being spent on. And hell if it's top secret then just keep it hush-hush and mysterious.

VNN said something about them being all in their 40s except for Jill. I mean the TF2 team could easily be our dads. They're gonna waste their time driving Corvettes listening to Rush mixtapes over shitposting on Facepunch and reddit.

[QUOTE=Drury;52508623]driving Corvettes listening to Rush mixtapes[/QUOTE] i don't have a corvette but i really don't see a problem with this

[QUOTE=Drury;52508623]VNN said something about them being all in their 40s except for Jill. I mean the TF2 team could easily be our dads. They're gonna waste their time driving Corvettes listening to Rush mixtapes over shitposting on Facepunch and reddit.[/QUOTE] New blood will eventually flow in

[QUOTE=Drury;52508623]VNN said something about them being all in their 40s except for Jill. I mean the TF2 team could easily be our dads.[/QUOTE] Ummmm....I'm 30 so they're probably cutting it a little close to be old enough to be my dad. ;) But yeah Dave Riller worked on Half Life 1 and Eric Smith joined Valve in 2000 according to the Valve contact page so they've both been with the company almost 20 years now.

[QUOTE=Drury;52508623]VNN said something about them being all in their 40s except for Jill. I mean the TF2 team could easily be our dads. They're gonna waste their time driving Corvettes listening to Rush mixtapes over shitposting on Facepunch and reddit.[/QUOTE] That sounds amazing... Actually I don't think I could finish a whole rush album. Jimi Hendrix maybe?

what I mean when I say we need a community manager isn't what most community managers do, instead of being the only communicating person, instead he'd only be responsible for questions that doesn't need developer's attention when a bug is reported to him, he'd forward it to the devs which then ask the required questions directly having a community manager doesn't mean devs can't interact, if we had a community manager, we could ask him what's up with that update, and he could respond with either "it looks promising, it will be great, but there are many final steps that needs to be taken first so I wouldn't expect it till next month at the earliest" or "they're putting the final touches and testing it right now, depending on how it goes, you might hear some news about it any day" a community manager shouldn't be a barrier between devs and the community, but instead offer more help with communication and answer questions that doesn't need to distract the devs, and shitpost and the blog, that's my opinion at least

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;52508717]Ummmm....I'm 30 so they're probably cutting it a little close to be old enough to be my dad. ;) But yeah Dave Riller worked on Half Life 1 and Eric Smith joined Valve in 2000 according to the Valve contact page so they've both been with the company almost 20 years now.[/QUOTE] Well, the game itself is around 10 years old. If you started playing at release in your 20s, you are in your 30s now. I've been using Hammer and making maps for a decade now (though only 7 or so for TF2) That is insane to me. The entire situation is pretty unprecedented. There are other games with very long lifespans, but they're mostly RPG grindy games, not FPS games. TF2 still has tens of thousands of daily players, a very active community with content creators and competitive matches and trading and gimmick play, and most importantly the potential to be even stronger. It's a fairly unique and very interesting situation.

I had an update dream some people were having. I can remember people freaking out cause a taunt video was uploaded on the Team Fortress youtube channel. The thing that pissed me off was that when I woke up, for a brief moment, I thought it was real.

I really love that the TF Team can apparently be summed up with "Dads and Jill"

[QUOTE=Fluury;52509047]I really love that the TF Team can apparently be summed up with "Dads and Jill"[/QUOTE] "Hi ready, im dad"