Team Fortress 2 Update To Bring Maps, Sniper and Spy Upgrades 88
Over the past several days, Valve has been releasing details on an update to Team Fortress 2. They first revealed that the Sniper was taking its turn in a series of class upgrades, getting a bow and arrow that's capable of pinning an enemy to a wall. Next, they showed off a pair of new maps — a sawmill arena map that's in the midst of heavy rainfall and a circular map built around a doomsday weapon. Valve also mentioned a new game mode called Payload Race — it's similar to a regular Payload match, but both teams have a cart to push. The next day brought about an electrified shield for the Sniper, and hinted that the Spy would be getting an update as well. The following announcement confirmed it, introducing a device that would allow the Spy to feign death, and another that lets the Spy remain invisible permanently, only draining their power while in motion.
Payload Race (Score:5, Funny)
Payload Race - When you and a co-worker return to work from lunch at the same time and have to race to the single bathroom.
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Huzzah. (Score:1, Informative)
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Great, now update the XBOX version already.
Haha, oh wow. Playing an FPS on a console. Priceless.
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consoles are for side scrollers. Mouselook + keyboard > joypad when it comes to FPS games. Hell mouse + keyboard > joypad when it comes to RTS games too.
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Re:Huzzah. (Score:5, Interesting)
On the contrary, the PC version of FPS games have the following advantages:
1. Mouse + Keyboard standard. While you can add them to most consoles these days, the controls must be set up for controllers first and foremost. The mouse is considerably more precise than a controller's analog sticks.
2. Game modifications. Depending on the game, this could be game or server side. Sourcemod is one popular library for Half-Life 2 multiplayer games. Valve's Steam system has even started including popular mods for download.
3. User-created content. Specifically maps. These are other kinds of user-created content, but those usually involve game modifications.
4. Lack of monthly costs. For whatever reason, Microsoft has managed to convince people that paying a monthly fee for their matchmaking service is a good thing.* They actually force you to do it to play online games on the 360... I will never understand how they managed to convince people to buy into this. I don't pay a monthly fee to Valve to use their Steam system...
5. Ease of updates. Big surprise here. When all games are installed to hard drives, they're much easier to update. Particularly games like Team Fortress 2 that are updated a lot.
The examples I used Valve specific; Valve is the current market leader in FPS games for the PC.
* I refuse to pay it; my Xbox Live account is only Silver.
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While 5 is slightly easier on the 360 because the headset plugs into the controller, PC headsets are not hard to find. Heck, I have one plugged in right now!
Convincing people its better to use a headset than a desktop microphone or built-in mic on a laptop is a trick, though. non-headset mics tend to pick up background noise.
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I bought a 360 because of the excellent live service; people are far less likely to glitch, grief and hack if there's money on the line. The good and bad people you flag also propagates to all games you play, meet someone cool on TF2 and play gears with them etc. Meet a griefer and avoid them for all games.
360 also has a hard drive, for updates.
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Great, now update the XBOX version already.
Haha, oh wow. Playing an FPS on a console. Priceless.
Three words. Fiftyeight inches tv.
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Hate to break this to you, but you can use your "Fiftyeight inches tv" as a monitor for your PC as well.
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In case you haven't figured it out, Gabe hates consoles. TF2 on xbox was just a cheap cash grab to fund further pc development.
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Your PC can't play TF2? I have an old (6 years i think) PC i built for ~£300* (P4@2.8+some nvidia card+1.25GB), it handled HL2 fine. I also used the same setup to play the updated dod:s and dystopia(makes heavy use of effects) under wine. Valve are great at supporting old systems, so unless you have a really old setup / old laptop i doubt youll run into too many problems
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While it's still considered the Source engine, Team Fortress 2 (released October 2007) does have higher system requirements.
They even call this version of the engine the "Orange Box engine" and it's also used by Portal, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Day of Defeat Source. It's also the basis of the Left 4 Dead engine; Valve even backported some of the new things from Left 4 Dead back to TF2.
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Re:Huzzah. (Score:5, Insightful)
In case you haven't figured it out, Gabe hates consoles. TF2 on xbox was just a cheap cash grab to fund further pc development.
No, the reason they haven't updated isn't that "they hate consoles" or the paying customers who use them. They are a business. The reason they haven't updated was first because MS didn't want them to give anything away free, and now they're having problems fitting the updates in and keeping the game within the 360's system requirements.
You could make a stronger case that MICROSOFT hates consoles more than valve, they're the ones who had been holding it up and who don't want consolers to think for a minute that they can get anything free.
And cheap cash grab? To adapt it to the console they had to go through a lot more troubles in development. Cheap cash grab would mean releasing all the games of orange box separately, and probably just lumping console users with mouse and keyboarders in TF2, which would put them at a severe disadvantage but would probably be easier for valve.
Which is not to say Gabe Newell is a fan of consoles, just that Valve is actually pretty great to all their customers when it's in their control. And it wouldn't exactly matter beans even if they did hate consoles.
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For tf2's requirements, a pc capable of playing it can be had for under $300, provided you build it yourself
Right, spend over $300 on a game I already have so that I can get the little extras like updates. And this of course is going to be worth it to all customers.
To be fair, I am going to be building a computer that can run TF2, but running TF2 is not my only motivation there. If I were completely happy with my current computer, but it couldn't run TF2, and had a 360 that could run it, or just didn't want to deal with building a computer myself, that would be a ridiculous waste of money.
I know you consider it
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Has the PS3 version been updated?
While the PSN Store has some pretty ridiculous DLC cash grabs on it (Need for Speed, Disgaea) they also release some games and add-ons for free, and there's not monthly/yearly fee.
The Xbox fanboys rave about Live being worth the money, but I haven't seen any argument for it that applies to me. The friend management on Live is much better than PSN but I either play locally with friends or online with random people.
Sony actually seems to understand that you can give stuff away
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The reason it hasn't updated is from what I remember, Xbox 360 games patches can be no larger than 10MB in size. Also, Microsoft's cert process is very long.
So they're waiting until they have a good number of updates out on PC, and then the 360 TF2 is going to get all of them as one big update. Due to MS's lengthy cert process, they couldn't get away with the hotfixes they do after each update.
Now, patches are free on 360, you can't ever charge for them (1, because MS doesn't allow it. 2, because there's no
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Er... what's the difference between patches and DLC? Because I know DLC has no such 10 mb limits.
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Patches are updates to actual code, and Live automatically updates them. They -can- contain new data such as textures.
DLC is content that sits in the game folder and can be deleted at any time. For example, Bungie patched a couple bugs in Halo 3 using the patch function, but maps are released as DLC since they're 150MB each minimum.
Basically, data is DLC.
New functionality and code is added via patches.
Damn it! (Score:4, Funny)
More feature creep! More BLOAT! NOOOOO!!
Wait... Thats a good thing this time.
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Good thing? Maybe.
I play TF2 allot and MY classes are Spy, Pyro, Engineer and scout. I am not the best player out there but damn they keep making it more difficult to play an "honest" game. The more class updats they add the more difficult they make certain maps.
A spy with infinite cloak will be a problem on maps like dust bowl where a ninja cap will be a 1000x easier as a spy (or two) can stay cloaked indefinitely next to the point. Other maps with multiple cap points will not suffer that much such as payl
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No, there's nothing more lame then a team full of engineers which sit there constantly repairing making it impossible to win a round.
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You probably know, but they took out all grenades, class-specific and generic, in TF2. Thank God. The demoguy can still launch pipe bombs which can work, but there's not the suicide bombing like there was in TF1.
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Looking forward to this (Score:2)
Valve is really paying us some fan service. Spy backstabs the sniper in the middle of his spotlight? Classic! Feign death has been sorely missed and should add a whole new dimension to what is already the most rewarding class in the game. Glad to see Arena mode is getting some love, the server I play on - 74.86.155.168:27015 - has only the stock maps so it will be good to see some more "arena only" maps by Valve (Watchtower doesn't count). Hopefully this should breathe some more life into the game; the "old
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Did you see the crab-walking kit [teamfortress.com] on clearance? I love it.
For those unfamiliar, there are no actual crabs in the game. Crab walking is this really bizzare motion due to his spindly arms/legs that the spy has if you crouch, look straight up while selecting the disguise menu. Sort of the ultimate spy-taunt. Oh, I am looking forward to all the new taunts(!) all games should take note and add taunts.
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Except Bungie wanted to release much more maps than Microsoft allowed. But since Microsoft owns the Halo IP, Microsoft decided to chop off half the Mythic Map Pack and only include 3 maps instead of the original 6. It was so botched by Microsoft because Bungie had all 6 maps named in their patch in September '08, but Bungie could not legally discuss the maps. Even though the NAMES WERE RIGHT THERE. And they still can't talk about Longshore, Heretic, or Citadel, even though we can see the map names in the ac
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Arena mode: because we wanted to add some counter strike to your team fortress.
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It's not a bad idea. Counter Strike is getting pretty long in tooth but it's a very, very (arguably THE most popular game on the planet) popular game. If Valve could siphon off even 10% of that community to TF2, they'd all be driving gold plated Ferraris. Well maybe not, but they've owned that IP for quite some time now and while they're clearly profiting off it, they haven't done much with it until Arena came along. Since there's no AWP I gladly welcome any CS:S players who jump ship to TF2.
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Feign death has been sorely missed and should add a whole new dimension to what is already the most rewarding class in the game
Feign death was never useful in the original. It gave you an advantage for a few games, then people learned to always shoot corpses as they passed.
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maybe, but it's being handled differently now. It leaves an image of your corpse, and makes you invisible for a few seconds. So shooting a corpse more wouldn't help.
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You mean crouch on top of and crowbar corpses, right?
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There's a reason Valve hasn't been releases Valve-branded CP maps... they outnumber the Valve-branded maps of others types.
For reference, here are the (pre-Sniper/Spy patch) numbers:
CP (symmetric): 3 (cp_granary, cp_well, cp_badlands) plus 1 user (cp_fastlane)
CP (assault): 2 (cp_dustbowl, cp_gravelpit) plus 3 user (cp_junction, cp_egypt, cp_steel)
TC: 1 (tc_hydro)
CTF: 2 (ctf_2fort, ctf_well) plus 1 user (ctf_turbine)
PL: 2 (pl_goldrush, pl_badwater)
Arena: 5 (arena_well, arena_badlands, arena_granary, arena_lu
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I think everyone here can agree Junction is possibly the worst serious TF2 map ever, to the point that most people have blocked it from their memory that valve ever included it. No I'm talking about a grainary/well/badlands style map that valve carefully put together and playtested. Those are fantastic maps and it shows in their replyability. Junction, Fastlane, Egypt etc are terrible community maps with low replay value. Payload maps are popular, but its 5 pt CP maps that make this game, keep the core grou
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It's funny that you say that. The official stats [steampowered.com] disagree with you. Right now, the top 5 most played maps are (in order):
ctf_2fort
cp_dustbowl
pl_goldrush
pl_badwater
cp_badlands
That's a CTF map, a CP assault map, both payload maps, and then a CP symmetric (AKA 5 pt) map.
P.S. The numbers at the bottom of my previous post were not counting the user contributed maps, so I'm not sure w
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Which of those maps is used in competitive play.
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Beats me. I'm part of the core group of gamers... the people who play just to have fun.
You never mentioned anything about competitive play earlier, you say the "core gamers..." which I took to mean the main player-base, which are non-competitive gamers.
What, you want proof? The proof is in which classes are used in competitive play. As I recall, the normal 6-man competitive team consists of two Scouts, two Soldiers, a Medic, and a Demoman. Which class is t
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It's cp_badlands.
This update is fan service. (Score:5, Interesting)
Over the course of the day the unlock for a sniper shield got darker and darker, then at around 3pm people on the forums started freaking out because there was a spy behind the sniper in the picture. The pictures were swapped in and out randomly till the actual announcement.
They put a note on the blog saying, "When the Pyro hears about this she'll be inconsolable." There's been a debate over the Pyros gender for a long time on the forums. The post was left up for about an hour before it was stealth edited back to the masculine form. Still there was a lot of people going nuts on the forum over this.
They trolled us pretty hard with a lot of this stuff, but overall it shows that they are paying close enough attention to the community to do so. They knew all the right buttons to press to get people talking and started mashing. I know of no other company that is this dedicated to having fun.
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yeah, but do they ever do it any other time?
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Yeah, they have.
Every "game" announcement is a full screen countdown to some mystery. I remember with the announcement of SC:Ghost, when it was discovered that they own starcraft2.com. Rumors everywhere, and no one guessed it right.
In their own way, their sheer secrecy could fit here.
When one of the WoW Community Managers quit years back, they were allowed to post fake patch notes all over the forums. At the time, this was a pretty popular thing to do -- to the point where it wound up being a bannable offen
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They put a note on the blog saying, "When the Pyro hears about this she'll be inconsolable." There's been a debate over the Pyros gender for a long time on the forums. The post was left up for about an hour before it was stealth edited back to the masculine form. Still there was a lot of people going nuts on the forum over this.
More hilariously, they just leaked a "meet the spy" video, dropping a few more subtle hints, or at least things to encourage speculation.
Its funny how these characters who have no real names and nothing besides one liners in game have far more character and personality than many characters in more cinematic games.
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Except they've gone on record that if Valve ever goes under, the last thing they'd do is unlock all the games. You look at it as long-term renting. I look at it as never losing a game by being unable to find the CD again.
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I've never in decades lost a single game.
Well hoo-fucking-rah for you. Through no choice of my own, I've moved 8 times since 2001. I've put things in storage, out of storage, etc. When you have to move that often, shit happens. CDs get lost and damaged in transit. I like a service that allows me to get a game back even after the media's been trashed. And did I mention piracy? No. I don't give a shit about that in this case. I don't look at it as a DRM service, I look at it as a "don't worry about keeping track of discs" service. As for the "not qu
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Sheild? (Score:2)
Not played TF2 but, didn't they add shields to counter strike only to make them the most hated weapon. Snipers should be powerful but weak( and rubbish at close range) adding a shield sounds stupid.
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Not played TF2 but, didn't they add shields to counter strike only to make them the most hated weapon. Snipers should be powerful but weak( and rubbish at close range) adding a shield sounds stupid.
It protects the sniper from one backstab from a spy, after which it shatters. I am not sure if picking up ammo will cause the sniper to receive another or if it will regenerate over time.
It also makes the sniper move slower.
class updates are a pain (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or would you prefer to wait 2 years for all the classes to be released? Perhaps if you played the game without complaining you would realize that they have far more future plans after the class updates with even more additional weapons. Sure the fact you have to unlock the weapons is wrong. But releasing class improvements 1 at a time is more fun,