By Alec Meer on May 22nd, 2009 at 7:06 pm.
I’ve been out of the TF2 scene for a few months now, as all that focus on achievement-whoring and increasingly technical play turned me off the game somewhat – paranoia I couldn’t keep up with The Kids as much as anything else. However, the combination of a masterful marketing effort and the promise of new toys that didn’t require incredi-skill or soulless grinding to attain lured me back in today. Clearly, I’ve had a great time – the current free weekend means there’s a palpable excitement on the servers, and some of the community maps that have sprung up during my time in the wilderness are pretty spectacular. (There’s one with biplanes in the sky and an underground ice cave which was particularly gorgeous). The new weapon unlock system though – not so keen, and you may have caught some folk venting in our other TF2 threads.
Top bit of info to know before your bonce explodes in rage, however – I bounced a quick mail to Valve’s very own Saxton Hale, TF2 lead-guy Robin Walker, who reckons there’s some sort of bug in the system that’s meaning people aren’t getting unlocks even after hours of play. “Not at all how it’s tuned,” apparently. Which is, I think, the first time I’ve been relieved to hear a game has a bug – it means the problem will get fixed. Read on for my thoughts on the change and word on how it’s supposed to work from the goodly Mister Walker.
Here’s what the controversial change is in, a nutshell. Previously, gaining a new weapon/item required earning a certain number of achievements – some of which were pretty easy, some were enjoyably challenging, and some were just a silly grind that was totally divorced from what you’d naturally get up to in the game. Valve nobly tried to tweak the number and manner of achievements required for a new toy into something that wasn’t quite so intimidating for the more casual TF2 player, but it never felt quite right – it was always a rich get richer system, the most practised players being rewarded with stuff that would make them only more fearsome on the battlefield.
So, with this update, Valve did the gentlemanly thing and scrapped the reliance on achievements to gain these unlocks altogether. Now, anyone can get any unlock – be it from the new Spy/Sniper pack or the old Heavy, Scout, Pyro and Medic ones – no matter how good/bad/laughably bad they are at the game. It is absolutely, entirely fair, and it ensures people are genuinely playing the game rather than disappearing into a cheerless, artificial pattern of achievement-hunting. And that’s what these updates are for – to get people playing TF2, as TF2 is supposed to be played. This way, the playing field should be entirely level – a quiet acknowledgement that maybe everyone should have had everything in the first place after all. It also means the servers aren’t as swamped with Spies and Snipers as one might have expected, as winning an upgrade is class-agnostic – so a Scout might win a flare gun, or a Heavy a piquant Jarate. It also means those creepy achievement servers are less in demand.
So all’s fair in war and war, right? Technically, yes – but in practice, it feels unfair. I clocked up four hours of play since the update went live, and won nothing. Returning later in the day, I was granted Natascha whilst walking across a bridge, which was nice – but not one of the new incredi-toys. The presentation of it was disappointingly naff too – no sense of having found something, despite it being described as such – just a pop-up screen out of nowhere. Someone else said he’d won three flare guns, and that he’d already unlocked the flare gun during the Pyro update anyway, so he must have been really miffed. Meanwhile, I saw messages about others finding Ambassadors and Razorbacks occasionally pop-up, and I just stared aghast, gripped by childish jealousy of these obscenely lucky strangers and unable to do anything whatsoever about it. Where did they get those wonderful toys? Yes, it is true: I briefly became an Angry Internet Man.
The concept is certainly sound, but some combination of the execution and this bug has made for a frustrating experience today. Especially given the new weapons have been a big lure for lapsed players, but now they’re finding they can’t get access to them. Without seeing the intended frequency of drops in action, it’s impossible to judged whether there’s genuinely a problem with turning that concept into practice, or if everyone would be as happy as a Scout with a Taco if it weren’t for this unfortunate bug.
We’re told there’ll be a post on the official TF2 blog, explaining exactly how the system works, soon. That’ll be fascinating in and of itself, as hearing people repeatedly come up with crazy theories as to what the behind the scenes maths is, only to have it obviously disproved moments later, has made for some laughs. It’ll almost be a shame to ruin the mystery… Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan became a whole lot less interesting when we found out he was a teacher, y’know?
Here’s the full skinny from Robin Walker:
“As in everything else we do, we want to iterate, so this is really the first step towards our desired implementation. We also think we have bugs in the system as well, since we’re seeing some players not finding any items after a few hours of play, which is not at all how it’s tuned. We want unlockable drops to be a pretty regular occurrence for players, with the cosmetic hats being the rare finds.”
Which sounds reasonable – I suspect a frequent trickle of items would be exciting rather than, as it currently is, frustrating. It almost make some sense of the current oddball collection of multiple duplicates – having more Flare Guns than everyone else could become a point of pride. Hope the problem’s fixed soon, anyway – I want my jar of piss, dammit.
Update – the TF2 blog now has more details, including the revelation that item trading is on its way. The problem seems to persist for a lot of folk despite an apparent patch, however. This certainly hasn’t been Valve’s finest hour – but again, let’s hope the planned changes make up for it.
22/05/2009 at 19:08 Jim Rossignol says:
We all want our jar of piss. (And in the game!)
22/05/2009 at 19:10 Torgen says:
So this is all nothing but a tempest in a piss cup?
22/05/2009 at 19:10 Smee says:
The Jarate is so much like Left 4 Dead’s Boomer Bile it’s uncanny. The screen goes all green and slimey and *everyone* in the vicinity aims for you. Dead!
22/05/2009 at 19:12 Chris R says:
Make sure the server you are playing on is connected to steam… I was connected to steam myself (as I could see my friends list and chat with them), but the weapon loadout page told me that I was NOT connected to steam and I was unable to select different weapons, even the ones I had already unlocked. When I joined a different server, I was able to choose different weapons from the loadout screen. All the servers are being hit hard, so just be patient and jump to another server if you can’t access your loadout screen.
**edit**
Oh, and I started to receive unlocked messages after I switched servers to one that was connected to steam (presumably). While I was on the other server with the goofed up loadout screen, I received no unlocks, nor did I see anyone else receive anything either. After I switched servers, I received 1 new unlock, the Cloak and Dagger, and a bunch of stuff I already had (4-5 existing unlocks). All at random, while just goofing off and not really helping the team out at all.
22/05/2009 at 19:15 James Tao says:
Suddenly I feel much better. Thanks RPS!
22/05/2009 at 19:15 Vinraith says:
I don’t even know what the point of having an unlock system IS if you’re just going to hand out items randomly at a rate of more than an item of hour. Very shortly everyone will have everything, at that rate why not just give everyone access to everything to begin with? For me, the achievement unlock system motivated me to play (and frequently motivated me to play better, as I tended to go after the achievements that represented what that class should be doing anyway). it was something to work for.
I’d decided I wasn’t going to come back to the game for this update already, but I’d always figured that down the road (once the class rushing and the “LOLZ PEE JARZ” crowd died down) that I’d come back. Without anything to work for, I’m not sure I’ll find the motivation to make that happen.
22/05/2009 at 19:18 P7uen says:
I thought John was the goodly Walker :(
22/05/2009 at 19:21 The Poisoned Sponge says:
I covered Alec with enough piss to fill a few jars, so I’m sure he wins somehow,
22/05/2009 at 19:27 Rosti says:
I got a jar of pi-iss!, I got a jar of pi-iss! And guess what’s inside of it!
Really looking forward to the explanatory blog – I’ve not played TF2 properly since the Heavy pack and jumping back in today was a proper blast.
22/05/2009 at 19:29 The_B says:
I stole his identity. I still didn’t get anything. I feel slightly cheated.
22/05/2009 at 19:40 RagingLion says:
I certainly share some of Vinraith’s sentiments. It is quite nice to work for achievements knowing you’ll get a tangible reward at the end of it.
On the other hand I often just play for playing’s sake, trying to do well for the team which means I neglect the kind of activities needed to complete many of the achievements, so given that the new system is useful.
I also heard a rumour while playing today that maybe Valve are going to introduce a system for swapping unlocks, hence a reason to have multiple items. Not sure if that has any grounding.
22/05/2009 at 20:26 Some Guy says:
6 hours and a second backburner, “fun”
22/05/2009 at 20:29 Josh says:
See, what I don’t understand is why they would do this. If you don’t play often enough to get the new weapons under the old system then you probably wouldn’t have used them much anyway.
Under the new system though, Captain Nubba can join the game, get all of the acheievements in one playthrough and leave the best player in the server with nothing.
Please tell me their fix will be going back to the achievements, they’re useless if you can’t unlock anything with them.
22/05/2009 at 20:31 Chippit says:
This is what Walker gets for firing everyone! Poor Stavros can’t get everything working all by himself.
22/05/2009 at 20:34 Sparvy says:
I honestly cant say Im unsatisfied, I consider myself a fairly skilled player but I have not unlocked the ubersaw, the KGB, BONK! through achievements yet. Today I spent a few lovely hours on the RPS server and unlocked the KGB, the Razorback, the jarate and the Dead Ringer, and had a blast doing it by simply first playing classes I like, and then changing to check out all the cool new stuf I got (Heavy Boxing on Redfort :D). Yeah sure its abit frustrating seeing people get stuf you dont but really, Im getting things faster and having more fun getting them now than I did before.
However, I just looked through my achievments, apparently I got the Dead Reckoning achievment (Kill an enemy with an arrow while you’re dead) even though I havent unlocked the huntsman, and I remember someone getting an Enemy at the Gate (Kill an opponent within the first second of a round) halfway through the match on ctf_aerospace (on which it is impossible to kill someone right away). And then there is the fact that the Ambassador can shoot through the gates at the beginning of rounds (kinda like the sandman or the flamethrowers, except more reliable). All in all there seems to be quite a few bugs that sneeked into this update.
22/05/2009 at 20:54 Wulf says:
I always loved the Valve unlocks, I was a huge fan of them. I loved watching a Heavy beat a wall with boxing gloves whilst waiting for a match to start, and I had loads of fun watching Scouts blast themselves into the stratosphere, only to get taken down by a headshot by a sniper (silly scouts).
But the thing is, the achievement system was borne of stupidity. There are only going to be two people who could love such an ugly-stick beaten bastard child: Live bois, and WoW-grinders. You know, the people who can transform a fun game with which one may while away a little time into a second job, which they believe is as serious a consideration as any other part of their life.
There are those that are like that, and those that… well, to be honest, those that aren’t.
I fall into the latter camp, as I don’t want to waste my life on playing games as a job, not unless I’m being paid to beta-test anyway, that’d be different, because that would be a real job, but there’s no way I’m being suckered into a virtual job which I’d perform in my free-time.
So I only got a couple of unlocks, some very basic ones, and those were awarded for simply playing the game as it was intended. For those who play the game as a game, it’d probably take them the rest of their lives to unlock a few of the incredi-weapons, and that’s just rather sad. Not to mention that it fosters a bad mindset for playing the game.
What I’m hoping is that this new system allows for that, that it allows for people to play the game as a game. I’m a bit baffled why they don’t just give everyone everything at the start (as one person said), but if they really do have a proper system of distribution there, then I’m all for it, just as long as it doesn’t require me to engage in a second job.
What could this do? It could introduce a number of players who play for fun, this could create a more friendly atmosphere in TF2, which is friendlier as a whole, and more pleasant for newcomers. This would mean more sales for Valve, because since the first round of unlocks tied to achievements, TF2 started looking like an insurmountable and unfriendly thing.
Now people can just jump in for a quick game. We’ll have less WoW-grinders in the game and more everyday PC gamers, and that’s a good thing, because it raises the bar for what a TF2 game can be like. I’m hoping that it really will remove the silent, and almost militaristic nature that’s been prevalent surrounding these updates.
If Valve can make a more social game out of TF2, which always looked like it was supposed to be more of a fun, silly game, then they’ve won. Regardless of what Angry Internet People might think.
22/05/2009 at 21:06 James says:
I think I land strongly in the middle for fans here – when I play, I’m more than a casual fan, but I’m not “hardcore” by any means. That being said, I always thought the achievement-based unlocks were fun and challenging. I was a bit annoyed that some were antithetical to the game (such as ubering 50 scouts), but for the most part, I always felt like I’d EARNED the unlocks that I’d received. I suppose the fact that I never found myself in Achievement Box proves I’m not hardcore.
I also thought the crazy free weekends of pyros and heavies were a blast, cause you knew they’d even out in a few days. I guess that’s not the message Valve wants to put forward with their free weekends, but I’m a little wary of the new system. Originally, I was always a Heavy or a Pyro, and the Medic update and Scout updates made me not only learn another character I wasn’t familiar with, but made me appreciate them, too. I’m disappointed I won’t get the same experience with the Spy and Sniper. I guess I’m a comfortable and lazy bastard, and won’t get out of my comfort zone except for rewards.
22/05/2009 at 21:11 James says:
P.S. And in the game.
22/05/2009 at 21:11 roBurky says:
I like this new system. I think it’s almost the best way of dealing out the unlockables while still keeping them unlockables.
It is, at the very least, monumentally more fair than the old system, where those who were willing to cheat or use achievement servers got the unlocks first, then those that focused on achievements at the expense of the other players, and then, several weeks or months later, those who were playing normally.
This way, everyone plays normally, and everyone gets the stuff in the end.
Only problem left with it is the few ways in which people can still get to the stuff by acting unusually – like just spectating and going afk.
22/05/2009 at 21:12 Redford says:
I am fairly sure that a large number of the complainers are also the same people who, on release day, would go to an achievement server, and not play an actual game until they had unlocked everything with the barest minimum of effort.
This is clearly Valve’s reaction to this – you must now play in order to get your items, even if we have to force you to do it.
Amusingly, the people who exploited the system the worst are now complaining about a change which was motivated by their exploitation of the game.
This is an old story in most MMOs but not nearly as often seen in FPS games.
In the end, if you want achievements, then play for achievements. If you want to play for points, then play for points. This method will allow all players to collect all items more fairly and is in the end, better for everyone on average.
Also, in the end, the worst of the lot (the achievement server people) end up on the bottom, which is poetic justice at it’s finest.
22/05/2009 at 21:12 ZomBuster says:
I think the problem is that Valve left too much unexplained. How does it even work? Even after reading too much gaming news then that is healthy for me I still have no idea.
They put too much time in silly things (which are great) and completely forgot to explain this.
22/05/2009 at 21:12 Walsh says:
I thought the achievement unlocks were ridiculous, some of them were impossible to get. I play TF2 maybe once a week for an hour or two. This is the perfect solution imho. The argument that casual players won’t try use unlocks is a straw man.
22/05/2009 at 21:15 Neut says:
Hang on why are any of the weapons unlocks at all? What’s wrong with just giving everyone access to all of them straight away?
22/05/2009 at 21:17 bacon says:
I’ve been playing since before the Medic update and I still don’t have the ubersaw (despite the fact that I am a stone’s throw from completing the Chief of Staff achievement), and I don’t have the last two scout achievements. I’m not going to complain when (read: if) I get them though random drops, but I can’t help thinking that it’s going to feel like a hollow accomplishment. When you complete some of the crazy achievements like Chief of Staff or the million burn damage one for pyro, you really feel like you did something, and if it unlocked a weapon it was even better. While the actual achievement will still be impressive (to, um, some people I guess) it will have no impact on the game, so why bother going after it?
I only play 5-10 hours a week, and based on some of the estimates I have read stating that it takes 30-40 hours of play to get all of the unlocks, I could be playing for anywhere from 3-8 weeks to get these things. That just blows.
22/05/2009 at 21:18 Nels Anderson says:
The bit I find frustrating is you don’t have any control over which unlocks you receive. Spy has been my preferred class since launch, but even though I’d really like to try their new gear, I’m as likely to get a Heavy unlock (a class I’ve played for all of 22 minutes) as I am a Spy unlock (a class I’ve played for ~10 hours).
Maybe when the full explanation post goes up it will be revealed that the drop percentages bias toward classes with more playtime. But currently, not knowing whether if it will be two days or two months until I get Spy gear is saddening.
22/05/2009 at 21:20 SWW says:
As someone who plays TF2 maybe once a week for an hour or two, as well, this is the worst solution. I can’t get anything, even if I work hard at it! Statistics says it’ll take 60 item drops on average for a new player to get all these items, after duplicates. I doubt I’ll ever put that much time in…
The new items tend to make new playing styles available. Playing styles that might have caused me to enjoy different classes more. Too bad I’ll never be able to use them!
22/05/2009 at 21:23 Blast Hardcheese says:
The most probable reason that it wasn’t explained beforehand is that they wanted to see how it panned out, and to discourage cheating the system. Since it’s bugged right now, the explanation may have ended up changing.
Also, the complaining about the new system never stops. Ever. It may be bugged, but damn if I didn’t find an AFK guy and +attack to get three medic achievements so I could get the Ubersaw since my teammates were never capable of doing what I needed like “kill five people” or “punch two dudes”. I’m amazed I got the Pyro one to set three people on fire while healing.
22/05/2009 at 21:24 PleasingFungus says:
Hey, I get a reference! (Unless there are two guys who have managed to get a pair of flare-guns on top of their old, achievement-earned one, and nothing else.) I feel all warm and glowy inside.
Anyway, I’m not really bitter at all. There’ve been tinges, here and there – all those people running around with the Huntsman! (For a bit I was afraid that there was some sort of bug meaning that I got the weapons for the class I was disguised as – been playing a ton of Spy, disguise as Pyro by default out of habit. Though the improvements to the masks mean that I’ve been experimenting with disguising as spy/medic instead.) It’s been a splendid update, great new maps, classes that I’m actually pretty good at. (Had no fun with the Scout update, though I tried to enjoy it.) And the fact that apparently the weird paucity/irregularity of weapon-drops is a bug reassures me.
Would be even happier if the game stopped crashing on me, but you can’t have everything, obviously.
@Josh: “…going back to the achievements, they’re useless if you can’t unlock anything with them…”
I’ve actually heard that from a friend as well. It bemuses me more than a bit. They’re achievements! They’re inherently useless – there to demonstrate that You’ve Done Something Cool (in theory), not to do something cool themselves. I’m glad that they’re ‘useless’ now – it makes them pure, so that people who don’t care about them but do care about weapons can just ignore them. I do like achievements – they’re delicious! – but I do approve of the change… the achievement-servers, and the whole culture underlying them, just seems fundamentally twisted to me. “Game as work”, etc.
(One last question: does anyone know how to reproduce the new crab-spy taunt? It seems to be tied to the disguise kit, somehow…)
EDIT: @Neut: Don’t ask that question! You’re not allowed to ask that! Quick – someone, silence him before it’s too late!
22/05/2009 at 21:32 Vinraith says:
@Neut
It’s the logical question, isn’t it? If you’re just going to give them out randomly anyway, why not just unlock all of them for anyone playing the game and be done with it? That I could at least understand. It still renders achievements totally pointless, but at least no one gets screwed outright.
22/05/2009 at 21:34 mgl says:
Someone suggested (on RPS? somewhere else?) that weapons unlocks should be tied directly to points, and I thought that seemed like the best option, kind of a hybrid of the achievements system and the new one.
Say the weapons unlocked at 25, 50, and 75 points of play as a particularly class (or 50, 100, and 150, whatever). That way, you’d play the game as you normally would, and the unlocks would track with your progress. I rarely play Scout or Spy, for instance, and I can’t be bothered to get good enough to win some of the achievements, but a points-based system would encourage me to learn.
It wouldn’t kill achievement farm-type behaviour, of course–you’d still get people logging into those servers simply to rack up 100 kills in 15 minutes–but for those of us who enjoy actually playing the game, a points-based system would make us feel like we had actually achieved something.
22/05/2009 at 21:39 Random reader says:
I don’t know who is managing your TF2 server but if you need to kick someone in order to make someone else enter the server because the server is full (or whatever reason), you should announce it before.
Being kicked without any reason is very unpleasant.
Sorry for my english.
22/05/2009 at 22:06 Vinraith says:
@mgl
Unlocks for points, now there’s a system that would have made more sense than the old one OR the new one. It’s a shame that, with the random drops having already been handed out, it’s kind of too late.
22/05/2009 at 22:12 PleasingFungus says:
@Random reader: sometimes they do, but not often. I feel your pain.
@mgl: You mean points in one life, right? Because – call me rubbish if you like – I’ve never gotten more than 28 points in any life, ever. (Was a heck of a life, mind you.) So if you’re suggesting that you unlock a weapon for 50 – 100 – 150 points in one life…?
That’d be worse than the achievements, really.
Or do you mean cumulatively – across play on one map/server, or lifetime-wise? Because that seems pretty trivial.
22/05/2009 at 22:12 Serondal says:
People complian about the unlock system because it is to slow, now Vinraith complains because it is to fast, other people complained when you had to work for it! Obviously it is impossible to make everyone happy, at this point I think Valve is just trying to amuse themselves by f@#$@# with your head and so far they’re doing an awesome job. They must be bored :P
22/05/2009 at 22:17 Marz says:
So far I’ve played maybe 12 hours (yes I have no life) since the update went live and have “found” duplicates of everything I already worked my ass off to achieve while obtaining achievements. Seriously, this is a terrible release.
22/05/2009 at 22:19 mgl says:
@PleasingFungus:
Well, I’m a pretty trivial kind of guy. But I meant cumulative points, the actual amount to be determined by those fervent playtesters at Valve. The kind of thing where you get one unlock relatively quickly, then the other two perhaps further away as you get better.
Hey, even let the player choose which class unlock s/he wants each time! Want the KGB before the Sandvich? Go ahead!
The thing is, I really only play Pyro, Medic and Demoman with any regularity, followed by Heavy and Engineer. Soldier, Scout and Sniper rarely. Spy never. Tying unlocks to points would encourage me to learn those classes more seriously. Just giving them to me randomly may encourage me, but not so much.
22/05/2009 at 22:19 Dave says:
@ PleasingFungus:
Getting multiple flareguns would be fantastic if you could dual-wield them. :)
Despite my previous complaint, despite crashing a couple times while backstabbing, and despite generally hating getting sniped and not really wanting to encourage snipers… I’ve had fun with this too. Maybe it’s the sudden license to run around like mad as a spy, disguised as an enemy spy, and actually get some kills for a change instead of just a wrench to the face.
Way more fun than the scout update.
22/05/2009 at 22:21 Fat Zombie says:
As a person who has only managed to unlock the pyro items out of all the released unlocks so far (and pretty much almost went gibbering insane whilst trying to unlock the flare gun*), I approve of this new method.
Instead of having to worry about points, or whether I need to do this thing with this class at this exact time, the knowledge that unlocks will be random fills me with relief. I can concentrate on enjoying myself, rather than the unfun OMG MUST BE BEST attitude, and if it takes a while to get the right unlocks, then I’ll just enjoy it some more.
*Why did I need to unlock the flare gun, you ask? Because flare guns are awesome. If there is a flare gun in a game, I must have it. No matter the cost.
22/05/2009 at 22:22 Mad Doc MacRae says:
I thought the unlock system was fine. :/ Guess I’ll wait for another patch to fix the new not-as-good system. :/ I’m not excited to keep getting things I’ve unlocked over and over again though. :/
And mind you, I haven’t even gotten all the medic or scout unlocks. So I stand to theoretically benefit from this but I still don’t like it unless they change it to remove finding duplicates.
22/05/2009 at 22:25 PaulMorel says:
as someone else said, the depressing thing is that you have no way of knowing when, or if, you will get the drop that you want. and that really repels some people who love the game.
I know a couple spies and snipers who are seriously upset that some nubbies have all the cool new weapons, and they have nothing, or 3 blutsaugers.
anyway, this system is less fair than the old one, imho. having a choice between random drops and achievements would be nice.
22/05/2009 at 22:28 armless says:
The way they should have handled the unlocks is by making achievements based almost entirely on doing things you do on normal play, i.e gaining points and killing ppl. They should have been relatively easy to get and your reward should be class specific unlocks. You could have got one for 50 kills one for 200 etc. That way you would have had constant reminders of how close you were to unlocks.
This new system is way better than the old ones ( i think its ok actually) with the ridiculously idiotic achievements but it could be better. Cant believe all this unlock business came from the intelligent people that made the half life games and the awesome basic gameplay of tf2. Its absolutely ridiculous, like they had a brain bypass for a brief duration.
22/05/2009 at 22:42 Serondal says:
Armless – these are the same people that made the origonal team fortress mod , they can do whatever they want with it ;P They followed the basic COD4 formula in which unlocking achievements gets you new weapons.
22/05/2009 at 22:49 Little Green Man says:
While tonight I had one of the best TF2 games in a long while on the fair RPS server with a bunch of other people, and it was a lot of fun seeing how unlocks worked, and there was an even balance, I was still slightly pissed off that almost everyone else had the new weapons, and all I got was 2 extra ubersaws and Jarate (after 3 hours). There was also occasional bitching among people playing that they couldn’t play with the ONE THING that they wanted to, which other people had. It’s just annoying when you can’t feel any progress and it is completely arbitrary over whether you get one or not.
22/05/2009 at 22:53 Norskov says:
Yeah, sure was a great game tonight.. one thing i still don’t know is do the flaming arrows have a bonus?
22/05/2009 at 23:00 Serondal says:
Flaming arrows? I haven’t actually seen ANY of the new unlocks in action. How do you get fllaming arrows, shoot the arrow while you’re on fire or shoot it through a pyro firing off his flame thrower?
22/05/2009 at 23:01 Norskov says:
You can get a flaming arrow, if you get a friendly pyro to set the huntsman on fire, but I’m not sure if it’s purely cosmetical or if it has a bonus.
22/05/2009 at 23:01 invisiblejesus says:
I’m not nuts about what I’m hearing here (I’d have preferred to have everything available as well, and scrap unlocking), but it’s a hell of a lot better than the achievement system. If I wanted to spend a lot of time doing inane stuff that has next to nothing to do with how I’d actually play in a normal game I’d go play an MMO.
22/05/2009 at 23:03 Some Guy says:
been playing for 8 hours, 1 backburner that i already had, its beyond a joke, bring back achevments
22/05/2009 at 23:04 Serondal says:
Well that sounds like it is worth exploring by going on a server and getting a pyro to help you test it ;) Then ask the victim how it felt , for posterities sake. To which they will reply *whimper/cry” and you will say *interesting” as you write down their response in your journal with your six fingered hand O.o I’m BORED! One of you must pull some strings and get me off work early.
22/05/2009 at 23:07 Norskov says:
Well, I tried, but it seemed that everytime I had a flaming arrow I missed ;)
22/05/2009 at 23:07 Biscuitry says:
I was personally relieved to hear about this new system. I used to love TF2, but the double-whammy of the unlocks and everyone and their dog playing whatever class was getting it at the time killed it for me.
I might start playing again.
22/05/2009 at 23:09 Serondal says:
LMAO I went online early last night and the server had 6 spys and 6 snipers , I played as a pyro to which I heard “WTF why would you play a pyro you idiot!” and I said “I don’t judge you on your class I demand the same respect from you”
Of course this was before everyone knew you didn’t need to play the class in question in order to unlock the new items ect. I had a good time burning the flesh from countless weekend spys and snipers that obviously never played them normally.
22/05/2009 at 23:12 Male John Doe says:
@Redford
Except that’s not how it works. You can find unlockables even when in spec… so rather than achievement servers that actually required people to play, now all you need to do is find a server with no idle kick and sit there.
Great solution.
22/05/2009 at 23:15 dash says:
The whole update is broken and it’s not much fun playing the game now…
Worst things i’ve noticed so far:
Ambassador can shoot through gates and can hit enemies while actually missing them (try it, intentionally shoot near someone and you will hit him). You can now kill anyone and anything (sentries & etc) with your knife-taunt while fully invisible O_o (poor engies)…
I have no idea how those things could possibly slip trough beta testing…
About the new unlock system: its just plain moronic.
As much as i hated achievement farming, i hate random drops even more (even if they would work like intended). :/
I get a feeling that new updates are now mainly serving a purpose of fishing for new customers (after peeps at Valve have discovered increases in sales after the releases of medic+heavy updates) and for not balancing/making a better game.
Competitive TF2 gameplay seems to be less possible with every new update and i bet we haven’t even seen valve’s “best” yet…
Anyway, my point is: if its not broken don’t to fix it (or at least get some feedback from pro-players before making any changes).
22/05/2009 at 23:15 Serondal says:
Or levae your computer running over night.
This will haven no effect on pros or competitive play as it has been stated before there are servers that do not allow unlockables to be used, hence if you really want a competitive match you will play with these unlockables off. Are there even TF2 leagues ?I haven’t really kept up with it but I imagine if there ARE TF2 ladders or leagues they don’t allow the use of unlockables any how.
22/05/2009 at 23:23 roBurky says:
Woah. Invisible taunt-kills sounds rather broken.
22/05/2009 at 23:23 dash says:
@Serondal
Yes there are.
And yes, we play on servers with weapon restrictions and few other “vanilla” tweaks.
22/05/2009 at 23:26 Norskov says:
The invisible spy taunt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-o0iXy9zi4
xD
22/05/2009 at 23:30 DeliriumWartner says:
The main things I liked about the previous unlock system were that I could find something to aim for, rather than just “help the team” which is a rather nebulous request at the best of times, and that I felt in control.
That is, I think, the thing that wounds most of us. We’re no longer in control of our arsenal-based destiny. It seems arbitrary to gain random rewards rather than celebratory as it did before.
22/05/2009 at 23:39 Nighthood says:
@PleasingFungus: I also got the flare guns, but I got 3. I win at failing. :)
Also, it may have been me they were talking about, I was on the RPS server when I got the bloody things.
22/05/2009 at 23:42 Vae Victus says:
Just to weigh in on the unlocks debate:
I think I know why Valve changed the system. They just want people to play TF2 as it is meant to be played. Especially during the free weekend. The main thing that I noticed as a result of the new unlock system: the servers weren’t crammed full of snipers and spies trying to get achievements. Each team had a balance of classes. I’m all for that.
I’m a career soldier so it’s nice that I can still get some perks from my awesome 10 point kill streaks.
22/05/2009 at 23:50 Gorgeras says:
Why you all crying over this(ok not all, some)? I haven’t got anything yet and you don’t see me crawling into a ball and crying. You are all weak! You are all BLEEDERS!
22/05/2009 at 23:50 Serondal says:
Actaully at first they were crammed full of spys and snipers until everyone realized it had no effect on anything.
22/05/2009 at 23:53 Neut says:
@Serondal: Yes there are :) I think Enemy Down have banned the use of all the new unlocks in matches til they decide on how balanced they are. The Sandman is banned in matches unless both teams agree to it being allowed, which made our squad scout sad as he loved it (before it got nerfed).
23/05/2009 at 00:04 Noob Gamers says:
I’m sure valve will make another update to fix what they broke in the first place.
23/05/2009 at 00:08 Rabbitsoup says:
The whole unlock/drop thing is stupid, why not just give everyone all the wepons and let them have fun using them? really any reason at all?
If random weapons come out I would prefer to just to your +ves and -ves within the parameters of the system than waiting for the gun I want.
@Serondal : In some leagues Sandman is banned because it decides the scout battle at middle, the new stuff is banned because not everyone has it and thus it’s unfair.
(also sandman is LAME)
23/05/2009 at 00:13 jackflash says:
This sounds nice in theory, I hope it gets nicely tuned. The whole unlock system and my stopping playing entirely happened at the same time. I kept playing and playing and never unlocked a single thing. And then I kept getting backburnered by pyros, got frustrated, and uninstalled the damn thing. This sounds a little more egalitarian, at least. The old system made the game feel like a frickin’ MMO.
23/05/2009 at 00:21 dreamless says:
I’m with the commenters who say “Just give us all the items already”. Many of them have drawbacks not all players use them permanently once they get them. I myself can’t stand to play with the backburner, I just like reflecting rockets too much.
23/05/2009 at 00:21 Rabbitsoup says:
Urgh it seems the ambassador is also bugged to hell :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQW58xRYebc
also “they” say it does ZERO damage to structures
23/05/2009 at 00:25 Squark says:
I’m one of the one affected by this bug, I’ve racked up at least 10 hours of play today and not a single unlock, while others seem to be getting Ambassadors and Huntsmen all around me. It’s making me feel frustrated and annoyed.
With the old system you felt like you had earned the weapons rather than just receiving at random.
The Backburner has also been rendered useless, with the compression blast now able to put out burning team-mates.
23/05/2009 at 00:25 WhiteHawke says:
Well I’ve played for around 8 hours so far, and I’ve gotten two unlocks I already had. I was really looking forward to trying out the new stuff, but that hasn’t panned out at all. To add insult to injury, my graphics card seems to be one of the ones that gets destroyed by the jarate effect (my screen goes completely white). Other people get green and brown 70′s style shag carpet screens that are opaque. I’d really like to test out the new toys, but I won’t be anytime soon I guess….
23/05/2009 at 00:40 PleasingFungus says:
@mgl: Sorry, trivial is the wrong word. (I overuse it. It’s a vice.) Thinking about it, it’d be grind, again… but a much more benign sort of grind. (The idea of choosing your unlocks is also a nifty one, by the way.)
@Dave: I wish.
@Nighthood: Works for me either way. (And I bet you wish you could dual-wield even more than I do.)
23/05/2009 at 00:43 FatHed says:
I disagree with the entire premise of randomly awarding existence.
Eventually, everyone will have the weapons, making trading pointless unless they make it so you don’t get all the weapons. I personally don’t want to deal with deleting or trading a duplicate weapon and would prefer to just not get them.
The hats are just one step down a path I’d rather not see the game go. Eventually I expect things like that to give you an advantage, +5 armor or whatnot. Iteration is key to Valve, and putting them in is just step one of that iteration. It also seems to go against some of the original design goals for the game, breaking up the visual recognition of the characters. This first set doesn’t do it too much, but again, iteration.
The achievement system doesn’t reward just skill, it also rewards dedication, killing 50 people from behind using the force of nature is more dedication than skill, so that argument suggestion that it’s a escalation of winners isn’t really true, and if you want that, play some CoD4.
23/05/2009 at 00:54 Monchberter says:
I had no problem with the ‘reward’ system of achievements. Some people just can’t deal with the idea of earning something.
I don’t buy the argument of “I bought the game, i should be able to do what i want”, because to be honest the unlocks aren’t all that exciting and i don’t consider any of them to be ‘upgrades’ (well, apart from the Blutsauger) if anything, the way they are implemented makes it harder for unexperienced players to use them effectively and in that case they are a fitting reward for skill and practice.
I think Valve released TF2 for players to learn to work together (‘TEAM’ Fortress) and EARN the achievements and weapons as in a sense it isn’t as friendly to the unexperienced as its looks portray as a lot rides on your ability to play as part of a unit. With the way the system now works, i just think they’re trying to open up an inherently skill based game. I’m worried that it’s going to leave everyone unsatisfied.
All well and good that everyone can get the unlocks, i just find the arbitrary nature of random drops to be frustrating and far too opaque.
23/05/2009 at 01:55 Swainy says:
It’s a good concept but so far it’s poorly executed. Plus i was never a fan of drop rates such as in RPGs. My luck with that tends to suck.
Personally I preferred achievements. Heck i was proud of myself to be among the few to have an ubersaw when it required ALL the medic achievements done. Back before they made it easier, and the achievement servers started popping up anyway.
So on one hand i like to point and laugh at the people who try coordinate in achievements servers. Yet it doesn’t really solve the issue.
Now it’s based on luck. I hate that personally. I’d rather be able to influence my chances of attaining an unlock. It’s frustrating to see one person get two new weapons within a single round while i only 3 blutsaugers over 12 hours.
Why they even give duplicate items is beyond me.
But we shall see how this turns about after the supposed bug fix.
23/05/2009 at 02:05 Nurdbot says:
I’m more annoyed at the lack of an expanded 2fort for thirty players or new CTI maps. The unlocks don’t really bother me much, I’ve got most of my main classes (Medic/Pyro/Heavy) anyways…
23/05/2009 at 02:12 Ethan says:
The obvious solution is to base it on kills. For every kill you get there’s a 1/whatever chance of you getting a new item. Or every whatever kills you get one. That way it’s at least partially skill based, though newbs can still get items, and people can’t just leave the game on and go somewhere else to get items.
23/05/2009 at 02:56 Pattom says:
Swainy: according to a new entry on the TF2 blog, you receive unlocks you already have in order to trade them for other people’s unlocks. They have not yet completed the mechanism for trading unlocks. Anybody else starting to see a pattern?
And what I find so loathsome about this update isn’t the fundamental change: in principle, it’s an excellent idea for all the reasons Alex stated. But hopefully this is a bug, because I’ve seen an awful execution so far (one Natascha after an hour’s play, then nothing for the following five hours). They should have used the random drops in conjunction with some other method of getting unlocks: keep the achievements, or let you actually pick it up from a corpse instead of turning it into ammo.
23/05/2009 at 03:09 RealHorrorshow says:
So I might have to play for a couple weeks to MAYBE get a couple of the new items? This is so stupid. Why go through all this nonsense when they could just GIVE people the items cut and dry. What would be so wrong with that? Does no one actually want to play the game to actually enjoy the game anymore? There’s always got to be some little trinket at the end of the tunnel?
Argh.
23/05/2009 at 03:12 The Fanciest of Pants says:
The post is up on the TF2 blog:
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2535
Sounds like they’ve already fixed SOMETHING…
23/05/2009 at 03:13 Über Nerd says:
Imho Ambassador and Jarate should not be given to just anyone. Especially Ambassador, thought the skin looks like sh*t it made me play and win a couple of games without ever disguising or backstabbing.
23/05/2009 at 03:16 TF2isRPG says:
Item trading? Is an auction house next?
23/05/2009 at 03:16 DragonSix says:
It should be 1 achievement = one random unlock (but no duplicate), or point based like mgl said. Anything else is ridiculous.
23/05/2009 at 04:20 armless says:
Serondal says:
“Armless – these are the same people that made the origonal team fortress mod , they can do whatever they want with it ;P They followed the basic COD4 formula in which unlocking achievements gets you new weapons.”
Serondal -I never said they couldnt do what they wanted, i said what they did was bad. I’m well aware the people who make the games can make em how they want ..
And I know how the system works, but valve themselves admitted the achievements for a lot of the classes were silly so they moved to this new system. In fact the best thing to do would have been to change the achievements imo.
23/05/2009 at 04:29 Zeg says:
Personally, I had no problem with unlocks via achievements. I liked having a reason to play classes I didn’t play as often usually.
The big problem with the achievements was that too high a portion of them were things that you wouldn’t normally do playing the game. Myself, I had no problem reaching all the early milestones without doing anything more than playing normally, I didn’t need any of the silly achievements.
The scout update nearly broke that. In that set, there were too many achievements that relyed on already having the unlock weapons… so it took me a relatively longer time to reach the first milestone than the other packs, and then to get the second and third it was almost required that I use the unlocks even if I didn’t prefer them over the regulars.
All Valve needed to do to reduce achievement ‘farming’ was to make them more things that happen naturally during play. Sure that makes them in itself a little less interesting to get, and sure it will never entirely stop people going on farming servers if they just can’t stand to play a little longer normally, but I don’t think they needed to entirely drop that system.
Now, I almost don’t want to play incase I randomly get given a new unlock for no reason… I wanted to earn them, and to learn to better play the classes by doing so. I was excited by seeing the Ambassador, because I’m so bad at doing proper spy type things that I just end up gunning alot anyway, but I knew that in order to earn that I would have to at least try to get a little better in the other aspects of the spy too.
23/05/2009 at 04:38 Xyzzy says:
I actually prefer this method over the old one. In less time than it took me to get some achievements (11 sniper, 8 spy) I had already gotten one new weapon, the Huntsman, which is a ridiculously fun weapon, and two previous weapons that I had already gotten from the Milestones (Bonk! and Axtinguisher). It’s a great addon, and the hats and fluctuating level weapons to come will be great.
23/05/2009 at 04:40 the affront says:
Eh, guess I won’t play until that’s fixed, then. Can’t be arsed playing for days on end getting shitty random unlocks when the game without them is somewhat boring to me at the moment already (plus my luck stinks), I’d much prefer jumping onto an achievement server and whoring the shit out of it for an hour and knowing _exactly_ what it is I get for my time – even if that is only the slightly less shitty option of the two.
Bottom line: unlocks in a multiplayer FPS suck, no matter which form the mechanics take (unless it’s Planetside, but apples/oranges :P).
23/05/2009 at 04:44 armless says:
It turns out you can get unlocks just by spectating lol. Apparently theres already modified idle servers where people just sit in spectate getting weapons. Nice one valve. This really is a monumental fuck up, because half the point of the update ( valve said themselves) was to get rid of the silly achievement servers and now they are just being replaced by sillier servers.
23/05/2009 at 04:46 .ShizzY says:
i’d rather have to work at it to get the unlocks, this new system is ridiculous. i’ve gotten dead ringer, cloak and dagger, and a few dupes (which i have deleted). even if a trading system is implemented, i see no reason to keep unlockables for medic/scout/pyro/heavy. only people who will want to trade for them would be newbies who are too lazy to get achievements for them or people who accidentally deleted them. i, personally, will not enjoy playing tf2 until i get all unlockables; this is the reason why i strive to “grind” for achievements when they update. i get all the unlockables, try them out, choose which ones i like, and enjoy the game. now i can’t do anything. i’m pretty sure this system was put in for money. if free weekenders come in and see everyone playing using 1 class grinding for achievements, they’ll decide not to buy the game. what a greedy move to make, the loyal player (who they already have money from) get nothing but the occasional random drop. i loved the achievement system, true they could change it and make it different (but better), this random thing irritates me. even if i choose to quit tf2 because of it, they don’t care, they have my money. i see free weekenders getting all these spy/sniper unlockables and i just get so jealous which adds to my anger. skill doesn’t matter anymore. even the worst player can get it (now, i see more people joining and going afk which I do not prefer over class spamming for a few weeks when updates come out).
but one thing that might make me quit the game is that i heard they want to make random drops AND random stats for weapons i.e. an original backburner grants an additional 50 hp, soon you’ll see people who have backburners that grant 53 hp or 55. this is meant to back up the trading system they are trading to put in. which i think is pretty lame. i loved the original fps. this game is been about balance all this time. all classes have their purpose. all unlockables have pros and cons.) if this “random stat” thing is added, i will surely quit.
23/05/2009 at 04:52 Rich_P says:
Heh, as someone who dislikes the unlocks, I welcome any system that makes them more difficult to use, equip, achieve, or appear in a game I happen to be playing. :D
(As a general rule, though, I detest the idea of a unlocks and random loot drops in “sporty” FPS games like TF2. Give every class its weapons from the start. My opinion changes somewhat when dealing with a persistent FPS like PlanetSide.)
I still wonder why Valve wants to spoil the wonderful elegance of TF2 with these silly, utterly unnecessary appendages to the base game. How is this system more fun than giving the player the weapon to play with from the start?
23/05/2009 at 05:01 An Innocuous Coin says:
Was TF2 ever a sporty game? Honestly, I like the unlocks; “basic” TF2 might have been balanced, but it certainly wasn’t perfect; additions allow them to adapt to the playerbase’s desires as the game grows and changes. I don’t think TF2 would be nearly as good without them.
That said, I do hope they continue to support people who aren’t interested in them – one can’t say they don’t work hard for their customers.
23/05/2009 at 05:31 Snuffy (the Evil) says:
Personally, I think weapon unlocks should be dispensed purely via drops, for example having to walk over a dropped Sandvich or Force-a-Nature. New unlocks would be given to a small group of random players, who would play on their servers, die, and hence give the unlocks to other people. This way, players have to actually play for their unlocks, without having to resort to achievement servers or permanent spectating.
On a completely different note, I’ve noticed Valve has implemented blended ragdoll animations to certain situations, a la Left for Dead. A small touch, but so very pleasing.
23/05/2009 at 06:01 qrter says:
Speaking as someone who doesn’t play TF2 as I generally am not fond of the ‘online gaming experience’, the unlocks simply meant I wouldn’t touch the game with a fucking barge pole.
These random drops don’t make it more appealing, I have to say. I agree with Rich_P – let everyone start out with the same gear, making the game about the actual, you know- game.
The idea that all of this drop/unlock stuff is to attract new players is baffling to me (especially because I do believe this is why Valve is implementing them..), seems the perfect way to make the game seem unapproachable.
23/05/2009 at 06:02 leonardo says:
This New “Weapons Unlocker” is One SHIT!
I Play This Game for 12Hours and Nothing of New Weapons, oly the Shit of “Kritzkriëg” and “Sandvish”.
I Love Play With Spy, but wen i See noobs with 35minutes played with spy using a Ambassador i Want Explode the Valve Server’s.
Fuck u All.
23/05/2009 at 06:27 mgl says:
Heavy? Is that you?
23/05/2009 at 06:38 DragonSix says:
The worst is that they didn’t warn us of this… it is really the worst surprise ever.
23/05/2009 at 07:06 Nayon says:
qrter- I think they are doing it to keep the game fresh, not necessarily attract other people, since to other people every new weapon is just another weapon.
23/05/2009 at 07:17 MD says:
leonardo for president of RPS!
23/05/2009 at 07:37 Blast Hardcheese says:
“Is this the way we’ll find items from now on?
* Like everything else we build, we’ll be iterating on this system for a while, and have a lot of features planned. Some of the next things we have planned are:
– Item trading. This is why you’re finding duplicates.
– Giving players a method to influence the system so they can work directly toward getting specific items.
– Adding more rare items like the hats.” Stolen directly from Teamfortress.com
There’s also details in there about the problem, but I’m sure Alec will get better details than Saxton Hale’s yammerings at us.
Also, having the items start from a group of people? Can you say “different type of achievement server”?
23/05/2009 at 08:01 Dave says:
After a few more hours’ play, and finding just one extra flare gun — AFTER the patch that was supposed to have fixed things — I am just not at all impressed.
I’m going out of town for Memorial Day Weekend, and I just hope that things improve while I’m gone.
23/05/2009 at 09:05 Warskull says:
I agree with the sentiment that unlocks in general are bad (aesthetic only or things that don’t impact gameplay are fine though.)
However, a random drop system is better than the achievement system. It doesn’t break the game while everyone farms unlocks, it lets you just play how you want and play naturally instead of jumping through stupid hoops, and with trading it would left veterans gift their newbie friends and catch them up quickly. The initial rate just needs hammered out.
The achievement farming drove me from the game. I find this system much more acceptable.
23/05/2009 at 09:47 I Am Thermite says:
I would have been okay with waiting for them to work out the trading system first, before releasing the update. This is just awful. At least then I wouldn’t have to stare on with unbridled hate at a teammate who got a second huntsman.
Man, all I want is the bow and the cloak & dagger. Instead I get a second sandvich, the anti-backstab shield, another KGB, and the Ambassador. groan.
23/05/2009 at 10:56 clint lolzwood says:
I played for three hours yesterday, and the only weapon I got was the backburner, which I already had. This new system doesn’t make much sense, and is complete and utter rubbish. At least until they fix it.
23/05/2009 at 11:14 Alec Meer says:
Still no new toys for me after a few hours of further play- I don’t think the patch has really fixed the problem. Either that or the system wasn’t broken after all – just grrrrubbish.
23/05/2009 at 11:36 TheSombreroKid says:
played it from 7 to 11 last night and got nothing :( other people had loads of the new stuff stuff (i was killed by a spy with the ambassador in 1 hit and was thurilly confused), but i didn’t see anyone get an unlock while i was playing, also the servers i was playing on had 4 spys and 4 snipers on each team this is a 24 man server you understand, a pain in the ass if you’re trying to play as the medic but beutiful if you’re a pyro.
23/05/2009 at 12:22 Hidden_7 says:
I think they have fixed it somewhat. The first day I played about 6 hours, and at the end of that got Bonk. Today I probably played a similar amount, and got a Cloak and Dagger, a Sandvich, two Jarates, and two Sandmans. The Cloak and Dagger was one I was actually looking forward to trying out, so that was nice. Two extra Sandmans I could do without, and I’d much rather a Huntsman than Jarates, but oh well.
23/05/2009 at 12:35 ...hmm... says:
im still uncertain as to how it actually works.
Do you get rewarded it for play time?
Is it random drops? a combination of the two?
and its my birthday today :D hurrah
23/05/2009 at 13:26 Thirith says:
I never played much TF2, but I’m thinking of taking it up a bit more. Any tips for a new player? Also, is there much voice chat in the game?
23/05/2009 at 13:42 Calabi says:
So I guess I’ll be looking at up to six months to acquire all the items or perhaps even just the ones that I need, as I only play a few times a week if even that.
In general I dislike things weighted upon averages, I am not an average person, there is probably only one average person and everyone is agreggated either side of that person.
I also hate relying on random drops in non random systems to monitor my enjoyment. All it does is raise hate in that system. There should be some way for it to be placed on player efforts or skills.
Why not have before a match a player set goal as in the are going to bet for an item that they are going to beat some statistic that they have done before, like I’m going to get more head shots in a round than I did last time, or I’m going to play for more minutes than I did last time, and if they do it then they win an item.
23/05/2009 at 14:05 TheSombreroKid says:
@Calabi
because they want to disassociate your play style from the unlocks, people will just sit and heal or sit and snipe regardless of how the teams doing or what they need, thats not team fortress you want it’s world of warcraft.
ps i played for another 4 or so hours today and got 1 unlock so i’m getting them at a rate of 1 per 8 hours play :o pretty slow i reckon.
23/05/2009 at 14:15 Walter says:
Thirith: Play Pyro, Soldier or Heavy. People are going to expect you to know what you’re doing if you are playing Demo or Medic. Sniper and Spy are not newbie friendly i.e. you’ll be useless to your team. Don’t even bother with the Scout. Don’t recommend playing Engineer now, too many Spies around and you probably wouldn’t know where to build anyway. What you should do though is look where other Engineers are building and see how it works out for them.
As a Pyro “Spy Check” friendly players by seeing if you can burn them. I’d also recommend making it clear that you’re new to the game. You won’t get yelled at as much and people will help you.
Voice chat varies from server to server.
23/05/2009 at 15:09 Thirith says:
@Walter: Thanks!
23/05/2009 at 15:15 Mark says:
7-8 hours of play and no unlocks for me yet, don’t have any of the old achievement earned ones either (play mostly sniper).
It is annoying to finally get a sniper update (have 13 sniper achievements now) to find the system has changed and random other people who don’t play sniper/spy are unlocking the items I want.
23/05/2009 at 15:18 pkt-zer0 says:
Fifteen hours of play since the update, only got a second K.G.B. Yay.
23/05/2009 at 16:19 Calabi says:
An even simpler way is you just buy them. You get points from each match, you use that to buy the items that you want.
23/05/2009 at 16:49 Rich_P says:
Have an in-game Mann Co. catalog so players can order new items with points they earn. The game already awards points based on kills, captures, defenses and contributions to the team. It reasons that more playtime = more points = more items you can order from Mann Co. So the buy system achieves the same thing, but without some random and frustrating drop system. Furthermore, players know exactly what items they’re getting and how to get them.
Besides, Mann Co. is already well-established in the TF2 mythos; random drops are not.
Maybe Valve wants to avoid blatantly using the Counter-Strike weapon buy system?
23/05/2009 at 17:27 Atalanta says:
Actually, the random drops are what made me try TF2 last night for the first time — I’m new to gaming in general, and the idea of jumping into a game where everyone has all the neat toys was really intimidating. Maybe I’m just happy because I was lucky enough to pick up the backburner after falling in love with the Pyro class.
23/05/2009 at 17:28 clint lolzwood says:
Great idea about buying rather than this useless randomness. But I guess once you can trade items, it’ll be tolerable the way it is, at least, and everyone will get everything eventually. Apart from the apparently mega rare hats.
23/05/2009 at 18:46 Balls says:
15 hours straight of TF2 gameplay: 0 unlocks whatsoever!
New system hates me!
23/05/2009 at 18:53 A Delicate Balance says:
I played a bit last night and unlocked the sandman, which I didn’t have before. Thing is, I didn’t realise it wasn’t a bug overall – I thought I’d been mis-awarded it. It was a bit of a disappointment when I realised I hadn’t earnt it.
Whilst it will make it “easier” to get the new unlocks, especially the spy (since I don’t play as him much) it will also mean I’ll probably never explore the spy, because I have no reason to play as him. If they had used the old system I would have had to learn the spy to get his unlocks and spent a lot of time playing him.
23/05/2009 at 19:09 Walter says:
@ Atalanta: You’re going to love the flare gun and axetinguisher. Pyro unlocks are by far the best!
I love shooting people with the flare gun on arena maps and then running away while they burn to death and our team wins.
@Rich_P: Funny you should say that because sometimes I feel like Valve is blurring the lines between their games. E.g. Day Of Defeat: Source and TF2.
23/05/2009 at 19:10 Seth says:
Getting the new spy weapons made me want to play as him for the first time, I did and it was great.
If the only reason you would play a class is so you can grind achievements for the items then you are officially Doing It Wrong.
23/05/2009 at 19:43 Hidden_7 says:
I don’t know about that. Scout was one of my least played classes, but as a completionist I decided to seek out the Scout unlocks, which forced me to play as him. Not only did I get much better at a class I was pretty much useless with before, but I also learned to appreciate playing as him and I’d probably put him in my top three.
Perversely I was looking forward to being “forced” to learn the Spy the same way, since I’ve always wanted to play Spy but haven’t been much good at him, and with that particular class I feel pretty terrible playing as him when I’m not very good, since a badly played Spy does not help your team at all. However with the unlock/achievements my selfishness at wanting new stuff usually manages to outweigh my sense of duty towards a team of strangers and I’ll play the class to get the unlocks and be forced to get better with them. There’s something to be said for the forced acquaintance with a class that you get from seeking out their achievements.
Without that I pretty much just play Pyro/Medic because those are the only classes where I feel I’m making a really tangible contribution to my team.
23/05/2009 at 19:58 Good And Lost says:
It’s a shame the trading system isn’t already implemented. I received two Jarate’s from playing last night, and they seem to be in high demand. I barely even want one of them, since I don’t play as the Sniper much.
23/05/2009 at 23:11 choobie says:
i understand getting duplicates, but since other weaps from medic/scout/pyro/heavy already have milestones, meaning u can get them from achievements, why whould anyone trade for it. unless they are lazy or accidentally deleted it.
24/05/2009 at 00:40 Down Rodeo says:
I’ve always maintained that there are enough achievements that can come up in playing a class normally to get the unlocks eventually. Eventually being the important word. People seem so impatient; I managed to get every unlock save Bonk! without resorting to achievement servers… or even achievement whoring on normal servers. Only recently did I get 1,000,000 heal points and I am a long way away from 1,000,000 burns. Likewise 2004 kills. I can’t think of many situations where I have been screwing up my team’s play by playing the ‘wrong’ class or fucking around. Quite often I’ll go medic. Or just choose the class that has no other players or seems best for the moment. And while I have played a lot of TF2 over the past year and a half, I don’t think I’ve played a ridiculous amount; certainly I know of others who have done a fair amount more. I didn’t have a problem with the old system; this one seems hollow. I’m even coming round to the idea that all unlocks should be released to all players. Then I could feel better about my achievements, could use the new toys, and wouldn’t feel the need to jump into a class immediately as I can play with the unlocks any time.
Those who purport that the unlocks lack balance belie a certain lack of understanding of how to use them or the original weapons. They are different, not better. (Some might argue about the Sandman, personally I find the loss of double jump crippling. Obviously the newly released ones have their issues but they will likely be changed in time as the previous sets were.)
24/05/2009 at 00:44 Kastanok says:
I’m wondering if there’s some way I can show Valve I’m actually pretty content with their game. :)
Spent several hours today on the RPS server having fun and just sitting back relaxing – playing the game the way it’s meant to be played – and congralating people when they got unlocks. People got exceedingly excited when someone randomly got the ‘Soldier’s Stash’ hat, not bitching that they hadn’t got a hat too.
24/05/2009 at 02:12 Hidden_7 says:
I’m actually slightly annoyed with the fact that they made the flame thrower extinguish flames in this patch.
I was always a fan of the Backburner, since I’ve been playing TF since Quake and the Pyro has been my class this whole time. The airblast is a relatively new tool in the arsenal, and thus I haven’t really gotten used to using it. Much better at traversing the map for ambushes. Add to the fact that the airblast is hard to time in online games with variable latency.
However, with this new addition community opinion has swung pretty completely against the Backburner, and now people expect you to put them out when they are on fire, and when you don’t they chastise you for choosing the Backburner and you have to defend your choice.
One of my least favorite parts of MMORPGs is having to defend choices I make that maybe aren’t optimal, but ones that I have more fun with, or are just the way I like to play a character. I really don’t like having that come into my FPS as well. I already get enough grief for using the Flare gun.
I actually think they could stand to revist having the Backburner add some health. 50 was overpowered, but maybe 25 might be a good trade off.
Also, putting out fires just seems antithetical to what the Pyro is all about. I figure he’d be pretty cool with anything being on fire, even if it’s his own team.
24/05/2009 at 02:35 A-Scale says:
Given the new changes to TF2 (no goals regarding weapons, no possible way to earn weapons, only a small random chance of getting what I want per hour of play) and the lame ass memes and responses to the update on RPS (denigrating legitimate concerns by calling people “internet angry men”, using the pathetic fallback of “it’s just a game!” in times of desperation, which is every bit as moronic as Roger Ebert saying “they’re just movies!”, and the reader responses of “oh well this is grand, now as a casual player I get to enjoy it more, also it’s now no longer like an MMO” despite the fact that casual players are now totally out in the cold because they don’t play enough hours to get many of the weapons, and despite the fact that TF2 is now less about team tactics and shooting and more about winning random chance drawings for special guns and “trading”), I’m just about ready to quit both.
24/05/2009 at 03:23 TCM says:
@A-Scale:
ANGRY INTEREN–nah, I’m just messing with you.
The update’s broken in many numbers of ways. But I am still content, mainly because I am a lucky git with the Ambassador.
24/05/2009 at 03:32 An Innocuous Coin says:
I got a Flare Gun! :D
…after multiple hours of play.
…..I already have a flare gun. :/
24/05/2009 at 03:51 armless says:
You can still earn weapons through achievements, just not for spy and sniper, and the weapons u can earn through achievements can be found randomly.
24/05/2009 at 03:58 Seth says:
@A-Scale
Really? It’s not about tactics and shooting anymore? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve been doing for several hours this weekend.
It’s about trading and random drops if you (you) obsess over trading and random drops because you’re jealous that someone else has some shiny whatzit of questionable strategic value.
Oh and by the way? It’s just a game.
24/05/2009 at 04:13 Wulf says:
@Kastanok
You and me both.
I’m actually fond of the idea of trading too, as it’ll only help foster a social environment in the game. In fact, the recent changes seem to be moving towards creating a social environment, and that’s something I wholeheartedly support.
For example, when we have silent grinders (oh yay, grinders) in the team, we don’t get any real audio cues from them, and that’s annoying. Meshing as a team and communicating properly is vital, and as a Pyro I always appreciate hearing “Hey Pyro, we have a Spy around ‘ere, let’s throw a barbecue in our back yard!” and the likes, but I can always tell someone who’s there for achievements because they’re so bloody quiet (and that annoys the snot out of me).
So we lose achievement-grinding, and we gain trading… trading, not AH, no trade channel, just trading, which means that people will actually have to talk to the other people on the server in order to get new items. We can even put up casual trading servers for that, so that people can come in, chat, and exchange their bits and bobs.
I agree with some that the system isn’t perfect yet, but really, the only people we stand to lose from this are the unsociable types. And frankly? Good riddance.
@Hidden_7
If anyone is like that they should GTFO, or you need to find a better server with more intelligent players.
The reason I say this is because as you said, TF2 isn’t an MMO, so you can’t have this militaristic approach that you do in MMO raids where people are told what button to spam and whatnot as part of their “strategy” (been there, done that, never want to again). In TF2, the team has to work as a team, with no clear cut leader, you have to be prepared to trust your team-mates, and only doubt them if they do a poor job.
I mean, seriously, are they going to be angry at the Demo-man for not having played a Pyro (to put people out)? As long as you’re doing what you do well, and you’re working well within a team environment, you shouldn’t have to explain yourself, and anyone expecting you to is frankly a very challenged individual.
The problem isn’t with Valve, the problem is with the special kind of idiot that would play TF2 as an MMO and therefore would expect you to obey them, and those people just leave me cold. Thankfully, I haven’t found them to be in the majority, and when I have encountered that… I point out the above. Usually after explaining it a couple of times they’ll shut up.
Poor TF2 players need education, rehabilitate them into functional, sociable, people! Or at least try, and failing that, just ignore them. But whatever you do, don’t feel you need to defend yourself, and don’t even bother, TF2 isn’t that kind of game. And with the achievement grinding gone, perhaps that kind of person won’t be so prevalent any more.
Who knows?
For everyone else who thought TL;DR: If a team member is doing a good job at what they choose to play, they should be trusted instead of being idiotically forced into playing a role which they might be less adept at. You wouldn’t force a Heavy-addict to play a Medic, because the resulting Medic would be so hopeless it’d be just about as pointless as not having a Medic at all (and you’ll probably lose a decent Heavy in the process). In TF2, people need to do what they’re good at, and try to trust that the next person is doing the same.
24/05/2009 at 05:16 Freudian Trip says:
Free-weekender here. I’ve played for probably about 6-8 hours and unlocked Cloak And Dagger and the Whatever The Sniper Shield Is Called.
Still love it. Definitely buying it when some money comes around. I didn’t even find myself at a disadvantage having no items. I’ve played about 5 hours on Heavy with around an hour on Sniper and Scout each.
I’ve only bothered playing Payloads most of the time but I always crack the Scout out when a CP map comes up.
I haven’t been abused for being a newb once, although 90% of my play I’ve been in the top 3-5 on my team or even the map. Maybe I’m just good at FPS’?
24/05/2009 at 06:52 Peterq9 says:
Just wanted to post this.
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1151/nofarming.jpg
Great job Valve
24/05/2009 at 06:59 catz says:
I’ve played almost nonstop since the update. I ‘ve raked up about 20 hours of play in the last day and a half. It’s all I’ve been doing. I’ve gotten 6 unlocks total. They’re all copies of things I had before, not a single new sniper/spy unlock. On the other hand I see people playing who have only played 2-3 hours and they have about half the new unlocks.
There’s nothing more frustrating than no rewards. I’m dropping 14,15,16 points a life. I get 3-5 kills with almost any class (scout/sniper/pyro/spy) in a single life. And I’m rewarded with nothing.
24/05/2009 at 07:36 Seth says:
Maybe you should think about playing the game to have fun, then. Instead of whatever it is you’re doing.
24/05/2009 at 07:37 MD says:
I’m not trying to be a smartarse, but so many people seem to be stating or implying that the game is a waste of time without unlocks to work towards. What about the fun of playing the game? It really sounds like a lot of you don’t actually enjoy TF2, but are using it to scratch an itch.
edit: heh, beaten to it. In the interest of fairness though, I should point out that I can understand the frustration of not being able to play with interesting new items due to random chance. My comment wasn’t addressed at catz specifically, your post just reminded me of what so many others had said. But you didn’t actually say you weren’t having fun, just that it was frustrating, so maybe my comment doesn’t really apply in this case.
24/05/2009 at 07:38 catz says:
I’m having fun but it just seems unfair. I really want to just try the new weapons but I can’t even give them a go. Rewards for… nothing.. are awful.
24/05/2009 at 09:13 Atalanta says:
@Walter — got the flare gun earlier tonight. I am delighted.
@Freudian Slip — People have been very nice, even to doofuses like me who occasionally get lost and forget what colour they are. I came out in the top three or four a couple of times, mostly thanks to narrow windy corridors and the pleasingly flammable scouts that try to occupy them.
Can’t you still get unlocks for other classes through achievements?ETA: already answered upthread24/05/2009 at 09:13 aoanla says:
@Wulf:
Wait, people who don’t use the voice chat in TF2 are all evil achievement grinders?
I don’t use the voice chat in TF2 because I’ve always found voice chat in games to be far too intimidating (although I’m perfectly happy to pay attention other people’s voice chat). Apparently, it would be a good thing if I just went off and played some other game, though, because I’d just be ruining your time?
24/05/2009 at 10:42 Crispy says:
How it should work:
Unlocks simply unlock after time, but still with a dash of surprise via probability. The better the item, the longer it will take to unlock and the more rare. If you do have any excess items, you can display them on your Steam Profile page and swap them with your friends.
So, after playing at least 5 rounds post-update, the first item would have a 10% chance per round of unlocking. After 10 rounds it would increase by 5% (to a 15% chance). After 20 rounds it would increase by another 10%.
The second item would only become unlockable after 20 complete rounds of play. At this point it itself would have a 5% chance per round of unlocking. After 30 rounds this would increase by 5%. If the first item had already been unlocked, the chance of unlocking the second item would increase by 5%. After 40 rounds it would increase by another 10%.
Items should unlock at the end of a round, so even if you lose the round, you might still win something.
So, for example, to get item #2, you would have to play at least 20 rounds to stand a chance (or you could always wait until a friend has a spare).
- After 20 rounds, if you didn’t already have item #1 unlocked, you would have a 5% chance per round. If you did, you would have a 10% chance per round.
- After 30 rounds, if you didn’t already have item #1 unlocked, you would have a 10% chance per round. If you did, you would have a 15% chance per round.
- After 40 rounds, if you didn’t already have item #1 unlocked, you would have a 20% chance per round. If you did, you would have a 25% chance per round.
This means anyone new to the game will constantly be unlocking new items after at least 5 rounds of play, and there’s absolutely no grind for items that everyone deserves to play with, and you know the longer you play the more likely you will get the item you really want – it’s not purely random.
24/05/2009 at 11:00 MeestaNob! says:
As much as enjoyed being rewarded with unlocks by completing achievements, I grudgingly admit that occasionally being gifted a new weapon is probably the best way of resolving the grind/cheat issue. It’s only a matter of time before you get the toy you want, so just play.
That said, I dearly wish Valve would revoke achievements on accounts where they have clearly used the .exe file that unlocks all of a classes achivements. a) It’s pointless, as the weapons are now GIVEN to you rather than you having to earn them, and b) Whilst they’re only depriving themselves and all that, I feel it cheapens my efforts to play well and achieve them over time. It would be dead easy to detect, and to be honest I baffled why Valve didn’t write something in the code that prevented it this update.
Hope they’re listening.
24/05/2009 at 11:02 Walter says:
At this point I’d just like to unlock something to confirm my account hasn’t slipped between the cracks in the system.
24/05/2009 at 12:00 madhaha says:
The current unlock system is a lottery. It is essentially designed to be ungameable (although people still found ways). Is it really so hard to see why people would be angry at this system in a game that supposedly prides itself on it’s purity? Do you really think this is the way forward?
24/05/2009 at 12:04 The Hammer says:
@Freudian Trip:
Heh, didn’t you say in the previous comments thread that you 100 percent weren’t gonna buy it? Shows how effective these free weekends are! Welcome to TF2. :)
24/05/2009 at 14:47 sinister agent says:
Could a compromise not be reached? Say, after a while, you’d have an item ‘lined up’ but only be given it the next time your team won, or you got a headshot, or killed a pyro, or something. You’d have to work for it a little, so it’d feel like a mini-achievement, but you couldn’t fast-forward the process as you’d only have it available after a certain period had passed.
But anyway.
24/05/2009 at 16:56 Freudian Trip says:
@TheHammer: True :S I’ve been marketed to goddangit!
24/05/2009 at 18:24 Mark says:
11-12 hours played now. Got one unlock, the medic gun (I have 3 minutes played as a medic).
I think its still pretty broken, there seems to be a significant minority of people not getting anything.
24/05/2009 at 20:08 Wulf says:
Partly @Mark and past posts:
I played for 35 minutes earlier, as a mix of the Pyro and the Medic, and I got a Backburner. In the same set of matches, a bunch of other people got a few unlocks they were happy with, too.
There are a number of possibilities here, how likely each of them is is up to you to decide:
1. Some people are playing on servers which aren’t properly connected to Steam, those servers obviously won’t hand out unlocks because there’s no way Valve can track them.
2. There’s a bug related to Steam IDs somehow, and that bug relates to how often or how little a person experiences drops, in which case people should report their Steam IDs, so we can see if there’s a commonality between them, either in spelling (certain characters) or in stats.
3. They fixed the updates sometime yesterday and people are complaining without actually trying the game. How many people who’ve complained have tried the game the same day that they complained, really?
4. Valve has a naughty & nice list for players, much like their list for servers. Players who are jerks, unsociable, and/or exploit a lot work their way down into the naughty category and see no unlocks, whereas the more pleasant players out there see good luck, and preferential treatment for presenting a more positive look for the game. (Disclaimer: This is absolutely ludicrous, fabricated, and here for humour value alone.)
5. The servers I’ve been on are lucky servers filled with Lucky Luck Juice™ which have magically ramped up drop rates for unlocks, and that the players who find those servers have discovered The Golden Land. No I’m not telling you which servers I play on! D: (Disclaimer: This is partly here for humour value, but I’m still not telling you what servers I play on.)
6. There are those who are telling the fattiest and porkiest of porky pies, motivated by perhaps not being able to WoW-grind in the game aymore, by not getting the unlocks they want (MANTRUM!), or simply because they don’t like TF2 and see an opportunity to jump on a hatewagon.
Everything but perhaps 4 and 5 should probably be considered a very possible scenario. So here’s what we should do…
1. Check that the server you’re connecting to is properly connected to Steam. For starters, it should be VAC secured if it is.
2. If you’ve tested the game today and you’re having problems, then consider creating/participating in a thread on the Steam forums where Steam IDs and stats are catalogued, if nothing else it would be a good starting point for Valve to go bug-hunting. And be nice about it, eh?
This won’t help the people tellin’ porkies, and it won’t help those who simply don’t care, but for those who are having real issues, a post like this might help. Pointing out the obvious a bit… yeah, but there you go.
24/05/2009 at 21:21 Funky Badger says:
Got 2 unlocks after about 3-4 hours play – but hey, it was a fun 3-4 hours.
25/05/2009 at 00:37 PheonixK says:
I approve of the new system (pending all bug fixes). The only weapon unlocks I’ve received are ones that I received accidentally, as in I randomly got the first milestone for that particular class. I didn’t spend time working toward achievements – except I did spend more time taunting on the freezecam…
Not working toward the old achievements doesn’t mean I’m lazy, it means I made a choice not to work toward the achievements.
The new system means I’ll randomly get “rewarded” for playing the game, which sounds pretty good to me. Now, as before, I don’t really care if I get a new weapon.
Please keep in mind that Valve is maintaining this game at no cost to you. Whether their updates are good or bad (bugs excluded), it’s free content either way. Appreciate the fact that they are continuing to support a game that, at 19 months old, is at the end of its life cycle (conventional games tend not to release any patches after the first year).
25/05/2009 at 11:36 mcw says:
@PheonixK: I think the millions of active players and Valve would disagree with your statement that Team Fortress 2 has reached the end of its life cycle.
25/05/2009 at 11:48 Psychopomp says:
That, and every new update brings in more sales.
@A-Scale
If you’re really silly enough to think that, go ahead quit. TF2 will be better off.
25/05/2009 at 16:37 Freudian Trip says:
I was wondering. When will the 6.99 price go back up to full price. I’m very much buying this game now but I need to put some money in the bank to do that and it’s the bankers religious holiday today. Anyone know whether it’ll last a week or so?
25/05/2009 at 16:53 sinister agent says:
I was wondering. When will the 6.99 price go back up to full price. I’m very much buying this game now but I need to put some money in the bank to do that and it’s the bankers religious holiday today. Anyone know whether it’ll last a week or so?
I can buy you a copy today if you like, and you can paypal the balance to me when you have the cash. If not me, I’m sure you could find a person you know who’d do the same. I think the offer ends tonight, not sure though.
25/05/2009 at 17:03 Freudian Slip says:
Although that is a very nice offer sinister I’ll have to decline. It’s bad enough me oweing people money in real life as it is let alone oweing INTERNET MEN. (ANGRY or otherwise) It’s a shame I won’t get it for 7 quid but I guess I’ll just have to get Orange Box. If I did get Orange Box would I have to re-install TF2 and lose my achievements and everything (I got 39 and 4 items) or could I simply add my key to the existing one?
25/05/2009 at 17:07 sinister agent says:
I have no idea. I am happy to send it gratis if you prefer. I’d only spend it on pasties otherwise, which I’m pretty sure are filled mainly with former employees. But fair enough, the orange box thing is probably worth investigating.
25/05/2009 at 17:10 Freudian Slip says:
You know what, I’ve changed my mind. I remembered I’ve already completed HL2 (well I say completed, I mean got bored the same portion of the way through three times) and Portal which basically makes Orange Box worthless anyway. Is there anyway we can contact each other? MSN/Anything? I’m signed up on the forum now if you want to send PMs through that.
25/05/2009 at 17:13 sinister agent says:
I’m [BZZZZZZZZZZTT] wednesday [BZZZZZSSCCHHHKKKRTT]-at in line on the fourth da[BZZZZZZZZZSSSSSHHHHK] Walker, then Gil[ZZZZZZZZZZT]ill them, kill them a[POP]
25/05/2009 at 17:37 Freudian Slip says:
Just like to add something: <3 sinister agent.
25/05/2009 at 18:11 A-Scale says:
Indeed, how silly to believe that people might actually want to USE the weapons they were just cock teased with for the course of a week.
25/05/2009 at 20:34 aoanla says:
@PheonixK:
As has been mentioned far too many times before: I wouldn’t mind Valve “maintaining the game for free” if I could go back and play vanilla TF2 any time I wanted. Which I can’t, since as far as I know, Steam doesn’t like you playing unupdated versions of games it manages…
26/05/2009 at 06:12 amesace says:
@aoanla
there are servers that are vanilla only. i’m in friggin australia and even down here there at least a couple to choose from, so in more populous places i bet there are scads.
@anyone else
does anyone know the name of the map with biplanes and ice caves mentioned in the article?
26/05/2009 at 08:51 Walter says:
@Freudian Trip: You can uninstall and reinstall all your Valve games (I don’t think it works for all Steam games) as much as you like without losing any achievements/unlocks. Everything is saved to Steam Cloud.
@amesace: Vanilla servers only have have spawn times/ team sizes set to default. They’re not unlock free “original” versions of the game.
The map is ctf_ aerospace_b4
26/05/2009 at 11:37 Sam says:
@amesace:
As Walter noted, there’s no way to play the “original” TF2 anymore, vanilla servers regardless. This is a problem with Steam, and presumably any other DRMy game management system, and it’s fairly annoying.
26/05/2009 at 12:27 Simpe says:
I have played now over 20 hours, mainly with sniper (which I never played before) and done all achievements for it which dont need new unlocks. All I got were duplicate items for other classes. Oh and I got also a mask for demoman, yippee.
“It also means those creepy achievement servers are less in demand.” – Seriously?
Old unlock system wasnt excellent but it was atleast challenging. Now Valve is doing same “casual-mantra” what Blizzard have done to WoW hoping to get new players attracted to the TF2 but I fear that it will only make old players to stop playing (Which propably doesnt bother Valve because they got their money already anyway).
There should be atleast something to “brag”, like making hats only achievable via achievements. Or bring old unlock system back and keep it together with the new sucky one.
Everything to everyone without any sweat. Grrr Valve! (And sorry of grammar errors)
26/05/2009 at 13:08 Dr_Zaius says:
I’m getting frustrated with 0 drops after 17 hours playtime!
P.S. I’m guessing the beautiful map was aerospace, we have it on our custom map server and it is brilliant!
26/05/2009 at 13:48 Malagate says:
I think this needs to be emphasised:
This to me is what makes the RPS community server, or perhaps even TF2 as a whole, truly great. The fact is that it didn’t even cross my mind that it was an unusual response to go “ooooohhh” and “aaaahhh” over Andrew’s new hat, truly a positive atmosphere. It was only later that I remembered playing in other games where someone’s fortune or someone who plays the game well gets bitched and moaned at constantly by sore losers.
As for the unlock system, for now it may well be a bit frustrating or even annoying when you don’t get what you want, but I think of it like the lottery.
Yes, I get annoyed when I don’t win the jackpot prize, but it is still a completely random system that is for all intents and purposes fairly made, so it’s silly to me to get angry or overly frustrated. Of course this system is still fledging, in time it sounds like it will become much more impressive.
Also certainly do not add more achievement based unlocks, or at least make achievement unlocks something very cosmetic rather than weapons. I don’t agree with any kind of achievement farming server, idling servers are a lesser evil and seem quite silly to me frankly (especially as even then there’s still no guarantee you’d get what you want for now). I’d say it’s a lot better having unlocks show up during regular play rather than only through achievements, as that could be easily abused and it also affected regular gameplay, with people doing weird things trying to desperately get those last few achievements for their unlocks rather than just playing the game for fun.
26/05/2009 at 21:19 Thranx says:
GRRRRRRRR.
I was actually annoyed yesterday when I recieved Natasha. I was like… wha? I havn’t earned that yet, I’ve hardly been playing the heavy.
Thank you for taking away the fun goal of the achievement system valve. You’ve been delivering greatness for so many years and then you just have to flop flat on your face with this one.
If you want to give people random goodies for zero effort, at least leave in the old system so that those of us who were enjoying trying to achieve for goodies. Both can work together.
I wasn’t playing TF2 “hardcore” or “grinding” I was just enjoying trying to accomplish the objectives to earn the goodies. It makes all the work I felt I did to get all the pyro stuff much less fufilling. I did it legit… now people are just going to get crap randomly. Not cool.
27/05/2009 at 04:57 vic says:
This drop system is the enemy of causal players. Plz just give weaps.
27/05/2009 at 17:49 Freudian Trip says:
Someone said congratulations to me when I cracked about 4 achievements at once. I didn’t say Thank You back because I thought they were talking to someone else as on every other server I’d been on no-one had said anything of the sort.
edit: Not a bitch at other servers. The TF2 community is 500% better than most multiplayer games out there.
Unlocked 4 Jarates yesterday. I don’t play Sniper or any of the classes I have got unlocks for :( I need BONK!
27/05/2009 at 21:52 Wulf says:
@Malagate
No kidding.
It’s not just the RPS server either, it’s in general. And it’s been getting better and better lately (I wonder why).
Clan servers are as annoying and bitchy as ever (kids with something to prove) but pretty much every non-clan server I play on presents an amazing experience, people are good to each other.
Earlier on I was on one server where the Red team (which I was on, yay) actually captured thhe points of a match within a minute or two, we defeated the Blu team a number of times in a row, very quickly. And because of this, this conversation popped up…
B Spies are overpowered!
R LIES!!!
B 5 SPIES = OVERPOWERED!!! D:
R K, can’t argue with that.
B We need SIX spies!
Yes, we had five spies on our team, a few of them had ambassadors. This lead to much hilarity, but despite being beaten a few times really fast, the Blu team were great sports about it.
How often do you see that in an online game? If it was CSS or WoW’s PvP, it’d be more lie ‘spies r cheap’, ‘ur mom is cheap’, ‘ur mom is [minority]‘ (but with much more cussing).
I love TF2, and the less bitchy players we have around, the better.
@Simpe
“There should be atleast something to “brag”, like making hats only achievable via achievements. Or bring old unlock system back and keep it together with the new sucky one.
Everything to everyone without any sweat. Grrr Valve!”
Are you really saying that playing a game can be likened to the blood, sweat, and tears of someone creating a fantastic work of art, or the sweat on the brow of an old miner after suffering another brush with death (as in, the real thing)? That makes me :(
You’re playing a game. It’s not a game that likens itself to art either, there are some interactive experiences out there that try to do that, and (indeed) actually manage it. But TF2 has never tried to present itself as anything other than a fun gaming experience, don’t try to turn it into something pretentious, something that it’s clearly not.
There is no ‘sweat’ involved in TF2, the only sweat that occurs in TF2 would be because of a sunny day and bad air conditioning.
If we establish that, then we can also establish that the only real bragging rights that fit in a game like TF2 are those which are skill-based, and Valve themselves have admitted that only about half of the achievements are, and the rest are only really skill-based if you achieve them when playing the game, instead of farming them.
The statistics of a player, on their Steam community page, say far more to me — as far as bragging rights are concerned — than a player with a certain weapon does. Farming achievements is something anyone can do, having amazing statistics isn’t.
And if someone has amazing statistics, what does it say? It says that they’re good at a really fun game, and such a person doesn’t need to have weapons to overcompensate, because they already know they’re good, and they prove that in every match, every day, just by being who they are and playing a damned good game.
@Freudian Trip
As soon as they implement trading, you’ll have yer bonk. Hang onto those Jarates, there are probably going to be a lot of new Snipers out there who’ll want them.
29/05/2009 at 19:17 Snok says:
The real irony is they were trying to make it fair for everyone and get rid of achievement servers but this system just makes it so the hardcore people who afk 24/7 on idle servers get the unlocks and Joe Casual will get frustrated getting 8 unlocks he already has and then give up. Of all the systems they could have gone with this was probably one of the worst, it feels like an MMO with hours of pointless play waiting for the random number generator to come up with your number…
30/05/2009 at 03:54 Shawn says:
10 hours and I have got nothing. what the deuce is going on here?
11/07/2009 at 21:40 Booton Taichou says:
If you’re going to complain about idling and getting stuff, learn to do achievements and do something that actually takes some skill, you scrub.
29/07/2009 at 08:14 Protobender says:
i have logged a godly amount of hours, over 80 since the update and i have had to clean out my loadout of useless items 4 TIMES
thats more than 140 items ive discarded so dont say that u never get items
also i have the sniper hat only, hats = extremely rare
30/12/2009 at 21:13 NAVO says:
Where’s the unlocks? What happened to them?