By Jim Rossignol on September 30th, 2010 at 7:43 pm.
So with the biff and swish of an amusing comic, a reason to use the Steam Wallet is born: The Mann Co. Store. It’s going to allow players to trade TF2 inventory items in-game using their Steam Wallets. So hats and stuff can now be sold off or purchased for real cash. Here’s another thing: “Additionally, community contributors will receive a percentage of sales on items they’ve created!” Ooh, you say. Hmm, I mutter, my beard aflutter.
What does it mean? And why? Well it doesn’t look like it will change the game much, aside from people being able to get the kit they want for cash. It seems to be a way of generating a bit of extra cash with purely cosmetic items, essentially allowing the completely capitalist Valve Corporation to have a reason to keep developing TF2′s free updates, aside from being nice. FAQ here. Also PCG point out the prices. That’s a pricey knife.
I bet the content of my non-existing Steam wallet that this will unleash a huge shitstorm all over the Steam forums.
I find it a clever way for Valve to investigate new payment methods and I have absolutely nothing to say against it. I’d love to check it out, but apparently “the Steam servers are too busy to handle your request”. Well, I can wait.
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I’m watching unfold on an IRC channel right now. Class updates have shown that while the theory is that new weapons are just different to play than the base ones, not better, they’re not great at balancing this, so the “buying an advantage” problem rears its ugly head.
There are also rumourings of some items which you can only buy, not craft or find, and things that make you immune to Sniper headshots. Allegedly from here.
I can only assume Valve are wearing a massive trollface right now.
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@LionsPhil
Stop spreading rubbish sonny Jim.
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The things you can only buy are entirely cosmetic.
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Q: Will I have to spend money to remain competitive?
A: No. Any items affecting gameplay, and even most purely cosmetic items, will still be obtainable simply by playing the game.
Q: Did you adjust the drop rates for existing items?
A: No. We haven’t made it any harder to obtain existing items through gameplay.
salient quotes from the FAQ
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@ Lionsphil: Whats this about rumours? All the items (plus their attendant bonuses) can be found here, while the FAQ seems to cover most queries.
As for the headshot immunity, the wording (“The wearer cannot be killed by headshots”) suggests to me that headshots will reduce the headshot recipient to 1HP if they are struck by an otherwise lethal shot. But we’ll see how that shakes out in practice.
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You all seem to have missed the part where Valve know full well this is the kind of thing which will happen.
Also, sniper anti-headshot kit, along with the other sets: http://www.teamfortress.com/mannconomy/item_sets/
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Ah, where would the online gaming communities be without their regular Valva drama, conspiracy theories, and sissyfits? I bet the GOG general forum is bursting right now.
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Valva, eh? Make that Valve.
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The weapons in that kit have far better synergy with other weapons than each other.
Beyond that, what idiot is going to be headshooting snipers? That is what spies, soldiers, and etc. are for. The set bonus is worthless, except to pathetic worthless 2fort snipers who only snipe other snipers, who will LOSE THE ABILITY TO MAKE A HEADSHOT EITHER WAY.
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I thought that “not being able to be killed by headshots” could mean that shots to the head count as body shots and therefore aren’t headhots, but it does suggest that you will be immune in the cranial region. That’s a rather severe addition.
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I like how Lionsphil conveniently ignores the fact that to gain headshot immunity the sniper has to give up his primary method of killing, ie. headshots.
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…and instead gains the jarate effect at full line-of-sight range, making him an assist machine. This is a team game.
God, you lot. I’m not even saying THIS IS THE END OF TF2 YOU CAN BUY INVULNERABILITY NOW. I’m saying Valve must surely be aware of the kind of idiocy storm that this kind of stuff can whip up (see: this subthread) and must be trollfacing so hard at the Internet ruckus they’re kicking up that they’re going to get face cramp.
Although it took a lot longer for this article to reach three pages of comments than I expected.
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I bought a team based FPS, can I get a refund now that the game has fully transformed into a grindy korean MMO?
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Bless your heart!
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The worst grinding experience you could ever possibly have in this game is achievement farming to unlock weapons, and that’s not even hard. Everything else is cosmetic.
I don’t see how the comparison applies, even as a joke.
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Could always go back to Team Fortress Classic. When was the last time you conc-jumped, or infected the enemy team with deadly and contageous diseases?
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I’m missing the part where its grindy, Korean or MMO.
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You wont be able to unlock the new weapons with achievements, so, I have to agree, it is sounding more and more like a Korean MMO with every update lately. Ah well, i dont play TF2 much anymore so im not complaining.
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Imagine the shitstorm if this was an Activision game.
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Activision would sell maps, make weapons non-craftable/non-dropable and wouldn’t pay the creators of the community content.
Justified shitstorm right there.
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Activision would also have fired/chased away most of the dev team by now. Oh and the game would have been shit to begin with.
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I think it’s very interesting that the transactions can go both ways, and you can actually sell stuff for credit in your steam wallet. Veeeery interesting.
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Can you? I’ve seen the announcement and FAQ (and the two hidden pages), but I didn’t read that anywhere. Where’s that from?
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Any credit that content creators get into their Steam wallets are still basically the same as store credit. Unless there is a way to actually extract real money from the wallet, all the money from the sales eventually goes to Valve. The content creator gets some free shit in return on Steam though. Not too bad really, especially since I imagine that people who make items for TF2 will probably be frequent Steam (store) users… but still…
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true.
but you can gift games to people for real money. they pay you 20 bucks for 25-30 dollars game and you use your steam wallet credit.
nothing like second life where you could make a living but you can make some extra cash. or at least never buy a game again.
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freud: the shitstorm on this will be monumental. and rightly so.
what a terrifying turn of events.
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Oh god, the internet is exploding. I love it!
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Once again, I would like to remind that corporations have one single aim and that aim is making money. Valve was never your friend and will never be your friend.
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This is only strictly true if it’s a publically-traded corporation. Valve is not.
Charities are ‘corporations’.
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And once again, you are wrong.
Privately owned companies (such as Valve) can be about whatever the hell they want. In Valve’s case it appears that what they want is to make good, successful games, and earning plenty of money to afford their huge staff and long development times are part of that. But I could find you dozens of small companies that have other aims that making the maximum amount of money they could do.
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Well said. Positech Games is a corporation, but its just me and 2 cats, and not done purely for money. If I wanted money, I’d have kept working for Datastream in the banking sector.
Bah.
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Cliffski – please, please, PLEASE send me a link to the Companies House register (I think that’s what it’s called in the UK), or the appropriate equivalent if you’re not British where you’ve registered your cats as co-directors of your company. PLEASE.
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Datastream? Jeebs, Cliffski… a lucky escape…
As said above, private compaies, corporation or no, have no legal duties (beyond those of care) to anyone.
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Cliffski, does this mean we’ll be seeing lolcatspeak (whatever it’s called) in your upcoming games?
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I think we now need a race for GSB who’s ships are all giant space cats complete with eye lasers and claw missiles (possibly a centrally mounted hairball cannon too).
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I see some people just can’t handle the truth.
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I’m sure Frictional Games also has only in mind to make as much money as possible.
That’s why they develop such risky projects as Amnesia.
Wait, what?
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Q: Will I have to spend money to remain competitive?
A: No. Any items affecting gameplay, and even most purely cosmetic items, will still be obtainable simply by playing the game.
All you need to know.
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Hats are rarer and harder to craft than weapons. Hats complete sets. Some of the sets give flat bonuses without downsides. That’s all you need to consider.
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Set bonuses are the only thing I am against of. The idea of the shop itself is fine.
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The set bonuses are (mostly) balanced by the fact the weapons in them are not synergistic with each other, but would work well with DIFFERENT weapons.
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Please stop using the word synergy, I feel like I am in a sales meeting. Bleah.
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Hmm.
Bit surprised by this move. While the micro-transaction model is becoming more commonplace, I still tend to associate it with the more scammy end of the gaming spectrum. I’m sure Valve realise the extent of shitstorm that will be kicked up over this decision, but if I understand their current modus operandi its to bite the bullet, throw lots of shit at the fan, and see what sticks; meanwhile my modus operandi is to mix metaphors to produce a thoroughly disgusting image.
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I like your M.O.
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I dunno. The model worked pretty well for Just Cause 2, where you could buy kind of insane weapons for just $.99 or packs of three for $2.99. They also did deal days for them, where weapons or vehicles were only $.49. They are a way to extend the value of the game without being too intrusive.
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Yeah. I almost said I hadn’t got any micro-transactions stuff, then remembered the JC2 weapons.
I think there are additional issues with multiplayer games. You either end up giving a competitive advantage, or you end up making things that are only cosmetic, one risks damaging your bottom line, the other cuts in to the number of people interested in the micro-transactions themselves. Opening up ‘new playstyles’ is another possibility, but that sort of thing is going to be incredibly difficult to balance, especially in a competitive FPS. I suppose MMO’s have been at it for a while with their expansion packs, imagine if players could unlock the Worgen in WoW for £2.50, rather than having to buy an expansion pack.
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Awwww Mr GrumpyGills thinks the world is all doom and gloom.
I’m theoretically against cash shops, but it’s become pervasive. At least Valve have a record so far of being a relatively honourable business. Who knows, maybe this won’t be all bad.
Maybe valve ARE our friends :o
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My intial reaction can be summarised thusly: “Ugh!”
On further reading though it doesn’t seem quite so bad given that items will still drop in the normal way as well as being hhngh…micro-transactions.
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Tacky.
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having not quite fully understood what the fuss is about, I just want to say that comic is ace.
Nice jab at jazz guitarists, Saxton’s right, they’re only one step above hippies. And we all know hippies hate stairs.
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Take five, then take that back!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn27IcAapPI
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I’d like to be angry but Valve have put such a huge amount of time into this game and all of their others that I really just can’t. I just can’t.
All of their DLC and updates up until this point have been utterly free and so lovingly crafted, always involving the community and just having a whole lot of fun in the process. They deserve this. If I could let this fly with anyone, it would be Valve.
Especially because I won’t be spending a fucking dime on it. Ever.
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And the best part is you don’t even have to!
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Exactly! =]
I always thought randomly finding the items was way more fun than using them anyway. It’s like people who download completed game saves… it’s not the destination, it’s the journey that counts.
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I can’t really see why anyone can have any (lasting) problem with this, sure you will be able to buy items… but you can earn them all just by playing the game anyway. It’s a shortcut for those with a big enough wallet to bother, without inhibiting those who don’t have said wallet.
Seriously guys. What’s the issue?
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So… Steam Wallets eh? Seems odd for Valve to only introduce this special micro payments for one game. Admittedly might be something that they intend to allow other developers to make use of… but I suspect they’ll be reluctant to do so. So what does this mean? Maybe we’ll see micropayments for Alien Swarm?
(I know you can use the steam wallet to buy games but there’s no advantage for this over regulaar buying so I’m guessing there are bigger plans afoot)
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Someone brought up a over the TF2 Steam forums.
If things haven’t changed since I last played MapleStory (I know…), Nexon implemented a similar system in that MMO where players can buy/sell items with/for cash in the game. With that, the black market for in-game items and currency dwindles and suddenly it isn’t so easy to earn money by putting a bunch of chinese guys in cramped rooms with old computers to play MMOs 24/7.
You’ll see lots and lots of websites selling in-game items outside of other games’ virtual environment, and a bunch of problems and holes arise, such as scamming. Diablo 2 is a good example of a game plagued with in-game item selling that many of you recognize. Perhaps Blizzard will watch how this whole thing unfolds, because they certainly don’t want the same mess on Diablo 3.
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Dangit, I forgot to close the tag.
Here’s the thread y’all should read:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1448350
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No wonder I couldn’t start Mount & Blade Warband anymore. The steam servers are getting hammered.
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I was fine with this right up until I read about those item sets. They’re just wrong.
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It sets a president IMHO. The quotes from the FAQ about remaining competitive are a bit of a non-starter. From my own personal experience actually getting a random drop takes many hours of gameplay. I’m certainly not guaranteed a drop every time I play so to collect a whole set would take many weeks/months/years to acquire through traditional means.
Valve’s TF2 has become one big experiment for them trying various things, at least that’s the impression I get from the recent PC Gamer interviews. I hope through whatever profit Valve get from this latest experiment that they realise their reputation as a game developer that releases many free updates they don’t get blinkered into micro-transactions as their future. The reason they have so many TF2 players is because of the free updates, hopefully they won’t be idiots and ignore that.
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Sorry to nitpick, but that’s ‘precedent’, not president.
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I like the part where it says “This game is not avaible at the moment” and “Connect to steam to see your backpack”. I prefered part is the “Mann Co. Store is closed at the moment”
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You can view your backpack outside of the game:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bciokefdacmpikbpagkdjlbjoghekode
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If this works, then people will be able to buy games WITH HATS.
This change everything.
Or not.
I am not really interested in TF2, is not my taste of TF.
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They made TF2 into LoL. HELLO DOTA2!!!
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Despite the good intentions and the excellent behavior of Valve so far I fear that the monetization of games will really step up over the past few years. DLC is pushed within weeks of a games release (Mafia 2 as a recent example), maps are no longer free in the most popular FPS games and even MMos with a monthly subscription fee are adding item stores (Champions Online, Star Trek even World Of Warcraft!).
I appreciate DLC can let developers do more content they might have never been able to push but Activision and Cryptic are successfully pushing a future with poor value for money.
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It was bound to happen as the production costs and profits of games rose. Just choose to support with your wallet what you like, agree with or believe in. This *is* what you do with everything else you buy after all.
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Yeah, just to spell things out:
A: If it has stats on, it can be found just by playing. Same as always.
B: Getting the items you want will be a lot easier now as you can trade with other players. Have three of a weapon you don’t like? Trade them to people for better guns. Or hats!
C: The only ‘shop-exclusive’ items are purely cosmetic. If you want to pay top dollar to play pretty dolly dress-up, you can, but it’s not going to make your guns any shootier.
Valve have been releasing honking great addons for TF2 for the price of ‘free’ for ages now. And they’re continuing to do just that to this day, only you have the option of dressing up all fancy-like if you have money burning a hole in your pocket.
Personally, I don’t plan on paying a penny. It’s a first-person game. I don’t care what my character model looks like!
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OMGZ! You can buy a hat instead of playing for hours and hours and hours and hours and hoping you get lucky.
End of the world.
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I like the part where it says “Lodout not avaible- could not connect to steam” and “The Mann Co. Store is currently closed”
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I’m ok with this.
Seriously, people are shitting themselves way to much over this kind of stuff.
And yes, if it was any other company then I would call them sell-out assholes. But this is Valve, and I’m a hypocrite.
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Suits me. I was so bored with TF2 I assumed I’d never launch it again. There’s a fair bit of new content here, though, which in my situation is simply a couple more hours for the £8 or whatever I paid for it all those years ago.
I can understand people feeling differently, but I have difficulty imagining that the game would be somehow better off without these intrusions. The vast majority of multiplayer FPS have run out of players by this far down the line.
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I like that the reason Valve hasn’t dropped the entry price and made the game entirely free-to-play is because they still want a barrier to cheaters getting back in quickly.
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I don’t really get the anger people have with the micro transactions.
These new buyable items won’t grant their owners an extra edge in combat, which is crucial for maintaining the balance of the game. It’s just for people who want to have a cool new hat to wear, and are willing to pay for it.
In my view, it’s win-win for everybody: Valve gets a bit of extra cash; the players who want to buy stuff, can do so; and the people like myself who just play the game because it’s ace, still have their lovable War Themed Hat Simulator (now with 50% more hat!).
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You know you can also buy all those new weapons, and the only other way to get them otherwise is to get a random drop (or trade, duel etc. we’ll see how effective that is).
The new weapon sets also seem quite powerful. For the short term future they will give players with money a boost as they can do things others can’t.
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I just gained 10 gigs of hard drive space out of this, so I’ll consider that a plus.
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This, gentlemen, is how you do a MMOFPS.
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And it works…
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…not really
Only the backpack works, store still closed.
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Ok, I freaked out when I thought you could only buy the Polycount pack. But if you can find those and the “items” then that’s not to bad.
To the Bat-Idle-server!
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It’s 24 players in a small space, hardly MMO.
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It’s dead, Jim.
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Welp I’ve finally uninstalled after having it rest on my hard drive, I looked at the weapon pack and not only do you kinda have to purchase them (or wait 6 months and never get them because you’ll instead get 500 flare guns.) All the items are pretty random unbalanced and generally dumb ideas that break what they had. They had a beautiful game before this which was balanced very well and then they went and screwed it up. This is it, I’m done with TF2, I can’t take this game anymore. It seems Valve can do wrong.
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I need a river. Cry me one.
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Six of those flare guns (or 3*2 of any other weapon you don’t need) plus one specific weapons (FaN for the peppergun, Jarate for the milk, etc) will get you any Polycount weapon you want.
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WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?
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I think if I ever go back to playing TF2, I will play on the classic servers. I have no idea what half of the stuff that’s in the game now even does. And they just keep adding more stuff. Just browsing through the new items, it looks like knowing what they do is an important part when playing against them.
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But updates make the game fun again. I never would have played 900 hours if The Pyro pack, Medic pack, or spy pack were never released.
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Arthur: Define ‘fun’.
Personally, I think it’s a bit odd to have an fps with such a system. Why have drops at all and not make decorative things available from the start? That’s not fun, that’s an intentionally annoying mechanic to keep people playing (and now paying). Also, it’s wholly unnecessary to have such things in the game at all.
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Heh, the anagram your name reference is pretty funny.
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“Hot Anal Sex”. Hmm, this raises questions of whether Valve had made that a possibility originally. Man, they plan ahead.
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If this means we keep getting completely free updates for a three-year-old game that is brilliant and fun… I think I can stomach some people having better hats than me. I know this makes me less of a man, but I’ve already made my peace with that.
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But the dress-up DOES serve a function.
The thing I like about TF2 is that it is an instant feud generator. Very shortly after I join a battle I am emotionally invested in it. Having to aim at someone to find out who they are is impersonal and artificial. Being able to recognize someone by accessories is a much more natural way of building an instant personal rivalry with someone on the opposing team.
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To all the people saying the items that can only be purchased wont affect game play I would like to remind you of one thing:
“Golden wrench drops are random”
Just because valve says something doesn’t make it true
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They were random, ‘pre calculated’ random, not on the fly random like most people expected it to be. Valve did’t actually lie though.
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Can’t find the exact quote, but I think it was something like “everytime time you craft you have a random chance of getting a wrench,” which was not true.
Also the engie update day one page says that there was “no per-day limit on the number of golden wrenches found.” How can that be true if the drop times were pre calculated?
Looks like Valve was not being honest to me. It seems to me that Valve has slowly been changing over the last year or so, and they are moving away from the Valve I love and admire.
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Eh
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A Question: When, exactly, did this whole weapon-unlocking, pointless-shit-gathering, non-core-game-mechanics-cruft begin infecting multiplayer shooters?
So when I was young I played single player games like Monkey Island and two-player console games like Contra. Then I found Quake1/QuakeWorld in 1998 (somewhat late) and I became a multiplayer fiend. For five years I primarily played online shooters: QuakeWorld and Half-Life Deathmatch and Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike Beta and Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and Day of Defeat and even some time in Halo 1 PC & BF:Vietnam. Then I kinda burned out and switched to single-player FPSes and RPGs and other SP games. The only real multiplayer shooter I’ve put much time into since then is Left 4 Dead, campaign-only, which has a pretty non-standard structure, and Quake Live, for some old-school nostalgia.
The point is: In those thousands of hours I poured into those FPS multiplayer games over those five years I never once unlocked a hat. Or a weapon (other than the per-round CS system). I never leveled up my character. I never went grinding for achievements. I never got rewarded for a “killstreak”. I never crafted or traded or paid for an item, cosmetic or not.
Man, what was I doing all that time? Oh, right: I was playing the game. I was shooting guys. I was capturing flags. I was picking up weapons of my fallen foes. I was working as a team. I was dominating in a deathmatch.
If Epic released a Hat Mutator for UT ten years ago I would have asked: does it change the gameplay in interesting ways, like the Runes Mutator? If not: who gives a shit? UT was about shooting people, not playing dress-up.
Just, seriously: what the fuck?
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I have pretty much the same history with games that you do, although I started multiplayer FPS games with Doom1 and never stopped. The first game I played with unlocks was Battlefield2, and I have to say it improved the game.
I put countless hours into CS (from 1.0 onwards) and the last game I played was pretty much exactly the same as the first. Whereas playing Battlefield 2 I can vividly remember the first time I got to use the G36A or the Barrett. It inject new life into the game and gave you a reason to try and achieve high scores beyond just a desire to win.
Now the difference was, they weren’t exactly better, just different, and you didn’t need to do anything stupid to get them, you just needed to have scored enough points in your “career”.
I don’t like the sense of grind, the thought of micro transactions giving people an advantage, or stupid achievements for unlocks, but in principle I think progression in multi-player FPSs is the future of the genre.
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Oh, I also don’t think the BF2 system was the best. It was too hard to get to the higher echelons (although you could choose any unlock at each stage). Actually I think Modern Warfare does a pretty good job of continually dropping tweaks without making you feel like you’re outmatched or having to grind.
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TF2: brilliant team-based FPS spoiled by the inclusion of way too many poorly-designed gimmicky items whose functions are ineffectively communicated in the game. For example, how are you supposed to know when a player has an item-set buff? You can’t. Seems to go against the original design philosophy of the game — THAT’S what bothers me, all the silly items, not the microtransaction stuff.
Some of the updates have been brilliant and entertaining as hell, but I’d pay money to remove all the nonsense like “no head shots!” or “immune to fire damage when equipped”.
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Well, regardless of whether you like the update, don’t like it or are indifferent one thing is certain, there will be a lot less players playing it now due to outrage and that is bad news.
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Unlikely. Remember how much rage their was over L4D2? Remember how many people said they’d boycott it? How many actually did?
Most people are incredibly hypocritical, they’ll moan, complain and generally take up arms against anything they don’t like then a week later they’ll quietly line up with everyone else for their fix again. I can’t see anything more than 10% of the whiners quitting, possibly less, and let’s face it those who actually rage over this enough to quit are the dregs of the community who we frankly don’t need anyway.
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Some would say it’s the other way around.
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The reason for this? Valve’s experimenting again. Trying a new business model. I say this based on the recent PC Gamer interviews which were very enlightening in terms of understanding Valve’s thinking.
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@RagingLion
I totally agree with you.
The reason Valve are doing this is purely to see what happens when they do it. It has nothing to do with money whatsoever. They want to see what sort of a reaction they get.
I loved Tom Francis’ quote about Valve being scientists among businessmen. It’s so true, and very much applicable here.
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Just reminding people that there are quite a few ‘pure’ servers out there that run just the basic class loadouts. No special weapons, no surprises. The game is hugely moddable, too. If it’s not to your liking, find a server that is. Don’t whine or throw tantrums saying that you were forced to uninstall because this patch (which just came out an hour ago, so how the hell you can judge it is beyond me) has apparently ruined the game.
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Are there servers that let you play with ALL the unlocks?
(That are VAC protected)
If there is not, I do not believe the game is moddable enough.
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The prices are certainly… high.
£29.99 for the items from the polycount update.
Up to £11.99 for a hat.
Up to £3.49 for a weapon.
I don’t think Valve have quite got the grasp of microtransactions yet, like they never really grasped episodic releases.
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The pricing is indeed off the scale. As they are the prices are waaaay too high. I have no problem with paying 2,50 for hat, maybe 5 euro max. But 17,49 for the Fez or that ridiculous no headshot croc helmet? Nowai.
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Those prices, while high, are pretty much standard for this kinda stuff. They’re largely there solely for people with way more money than sense.
Keep your sanity – just ignore the store, and play the game normally.
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I can’t vouch for my mental sanity if I can buy a Prussian Pickelhaube for 5 euro.
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£30 is a discount, too. The pack is normally $135 (can’t access the store to check in pounds).
That and paying a dollar for each duel minigame thing just about sums this whole idea up. It won’t affect me, no matter how abhorrent it is, but it does make me feel guilty that I’m playing a game with this kind of shite in it. :-/
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Interesting concept. I’ll stay tuned to see what happens.
Also, entire playerbase is babies!
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I prefer to be called an infant or perhaps little grasshopper.
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They should sell some kind of sparkly flying horse you can ride, I bet they could charge a lot for it.
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Et tu, Valve?
I understand their rationale for this, but I’m not getting myself into a situation where I’m paying for TF2 items. At least by making the same stuff craftable means it shouldn’t turn into the “haves” and “have-nots”.
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I… im sorry im so apathetic to the whole thing its taken me 5 hours to type this. Even then i feel as though it was far too much effort
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I’m… surprised VALVe would do a microtransition ANYTHING at this point.
And before you jerkoffs go into you”B-b-b-but they’re not FORCING you” and all that other hogwash, I know. That doesn’t make this any better, this is a whole new low for them. With the rate hats drop and everything, this is almost strong-arming you.
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I find it hilarious that people are using language like ‘strongarmed’ about this update.
I looked over the new weapons. I don’t really want any of them. I definitely don’t want to wear any of the sets, except maybe, maybe the soldier’s one. And because I’ve been playing TF2 for awhile– I can craft everything I need for it other than the hat right away. And I just heard that hats will now be specifically craftable, too, so I can probably do that.
Buncha whiners.
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I totally lost interest in TF2 when it became an MMO. Bummer it’s going even further in that direction.
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Am I the only one that isn’t overlooking the obvious?
What happens in every single game that has persistent in game items that can be traded between players? A secondary market springs up around selling the items to people willing to buy. The ONLY way to effectively combat this is to set up an official store with fixed prices.
Ignore their financial motivations, if they had done trading without a store you’d have seen ebay listings inside of a week and we’d all be getting random steam invites from “Hats 4 sale! Cheap!”
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Exactly this, by creating an official store with official pricing Valve precludes crazily priced items through secondary markets.
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1. The solution to this is not to create a trading system at all.
2. The solution to people feeling the need for a trading system is to not intentionally create a system where players have to grind for items. Which they did, undoubtedly with this possibility firmly in their minds.
Regardless of your opinion on microtransaction-fueled games, see the bigger picture.
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So all the items you can buy you can also get by just playing? Right?
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Seems to me people are happily deluding themselves about Valve’s reasoning. There was absolutely NO third party market for TF2 items prior to this update. The destruction of such is absolutely not a reason it was introduced.
If you want to make up some excuse for this which doesn’t paint Valve as a nickel-grabbing microtransaction vendor, then knock yourselves out and I hope it makes you happier. But sadly you’re currently grasping for nonexistant and illogical straws.
Valve have introduced microtransactions because they haven’t tried it out yet, that’s all there really is to it. Do you guys not remember Gabe et all talking to PCG about how they like to experiment and see what works? TF2 just happens to be the game they’ve tried it on because it’s the one game of theirs mostly likely to see successful microtransactions and because it has the most goodwill amongst the gaming press and amongst gamers at large.
I am hugely disappointed in Valve over this. I had thought they had taken a moral stand over ‘DLC’ being free; the idea that supporting the game was its own reward in that it drove continued sales. Whether it provides in-game benefits or not (and it does — the drop rates are so low that people buying these packs will have in-game advantages months or years before those who rely on drops) the fact still remains that Valve are now attempting to wring profit from people who’ve already paid for their game.
Yes, Valve have supported TF2. And yes, it’s been fantastic. But it’s been fantastic because that’s what EVERY company should do. I don’t feel like I owe them any slack, and nor do I feel that they’ve somehow “earned” the right to price gouge for items.
This is the moment that Valve jumps the shark. Remember it well. The last major good guy producer now openly views its players as sources of income. Is this the day that the games died?
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when L4D turned out to be unfinished, I forgave Valve. I figured they would support it like they did TF2. When that turned out not to be the case, and L4D 2 came out, I forgave them. I figured every company makes mistakes.
after this I’m going to find it very hard to trust valve.
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They did finish it though, and they are still supporting it – maybe not to the insane levels that TF2 enjoys like everyone expected – but honestly that was a stupid expectation really. One fairly innocent dev quote and suddenly it was written on stone in blood that valve would offer freebies for that game every few weeks until the end of time.
I agree that L4D2 was too soon, but it was an improvement in almost every way when it comes to gameplay – and they are supporting that.
Still I said then and still say now they should have offered a 25% discount to owners of L4D1 (lowering the cost to expansion pack price)… though anyone with any willpower whatsoever waited until the first steam deal, which only took 2 months or so dropping the price to below what a expansion costs for most games.
I also call bullshit on Valves support of TF2 is what “every company should do”, Valve’s support of TF2 was nothing short of mind bogglingly generous (especially for a game that was stupidly good value at launch- though I still remember people whining that the Orange box was too expensive back then, because Valve was going to sell it $10 cheaper as the black box and was ripping people off…), and it is basically only thank to the success of Steam that Valve have the luxury to be able to do so – no other company would, except maybe blizzard.
TF2 was grown into a full priced stand alone game in terms of value – but was sold for people at 1/3rd that – I’m seriously shocked valve has not tried to earn more from it until now.
If valve was my company I’d have had them work on a single player component and then sold it as a bolt-on to TF2 for £20 ($30) in fact I’d wager that they probably are – though it may be part of TF3.
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There was no secondary market for TF2 items before this because it was impossible for there to be a secondary market. There was no way to trade items between accounts. The possibility for a secondary market hasn’t existed until this update when trading was introduced.
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@Legionary:
Nah, this is the day the PC community turned indie and found a lot of awesome games there that easily rival any published game.
Fully agree with your post though I saw this coming a long way away.
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I thought “well, that’s not that bad. I mean, Valve know what they’re doing…I know they know it. I mean, they’re Valve. They’re going to be reasonable and do the right thing. They love their community, they’re supporters of mods and…stuff”, I was even thinking about buying the soldier bundle.
I looked at the pricelist:
24,97€ for the soldier bundle! (3 items)
17,49€ for a frigging useless single fucking hat?!
What were they bloody thinking?! This is outrageous! And it’s really hard to get me upset about some DLC-esque stuff. This is insane. It’s even worse than the Wow-Pegasus-thingy for 20$. Atleast you have to buy it to get it. But the TF2 items drop randomly and can be crafted. I’m really shocked about the prices. I thought a hat would be something around 1€ and a weapon maybe 1,2€
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I’d like to think that this would damage Valve’s reputation more than it would benefit them financially. But unfortunately there are a ton of hypocrite gamers out there (especially on Steam) so I think that the actual outcome will be both damaging to their reputation and lucrative. People will bitch, but that won’t stop them buying into this.
Buying Valve games used to be a matter of just trusting them to add a significant amount of content after release. So you didn’t have to bother about the fact that it only had four maps to begin with. Then that kinda went out of the window. Now I have to wonder whether the game’s going to get monetised too? Wonderful. I’ll be extremely cautious about buying another one of their games now. Which is a shame.
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You can craft some of the new weapon sets.
Direct hit and some metal = The Black Box
Buff Banner and some metal = The Battalion’s Back Up etc…
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Horse Armor 2.0
I feel like the high prices were set to prevent everyone and their mother from jumping on the buying bandwagon. This way the barrier is high enough that only the rich and/or foolish will take the plunge.
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Yeah that’s totally fair. To avoid a rush of the new weapons, overprice them so only rich people or people with no fiscal responsibility can get them! They’re not overpriced so that the game will still be playable, they’re overpriced so Valve can milk as much out of this as possible.
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Much more likely they are overpriced so they can do an “awesome sale” later.
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Well, what the fuck mr. Newell?
“Micro”transactions are way out of what one would expect of Valve…
Pretty shitty move there.
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*Ahem*
They could use the money to improve Steam or whatever. Or charity. Dunno. But for experience? That sounds like “for the lulz” to me. =D
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Is this a joke?
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Yeah, I’m not going to pay good money for cosmetic bullshit. Or even useful bullshit, for that matter. Honestly, maybe if it all came in a pack for like 10 dollars, but 20 dollars for each bundle? It’s ridiculous.
Also, what is this ‘dueling minigame’? I don’t want people interrupting me and bothering me while i’m trying to play tf2 with a request to play a stupid minigame.
I can appreciate that Valve needs money (although I thought Steam was taking care of that) but honestly this is a really bad idea.
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Uninstalled, and good riddance. Cunts.
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Well that’s a bit much, honestly.
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Sure is over-reactions in here. They’ve implemented trading, so theoretically, no-one will need to buy ANYTHING as long as they have a friend willing to trade. As far as I’m aware, everything can be crafted/drops normally. People with money to burn can buy their side-grades or cosmetics and get exactly what they want. Valve are a trustworthy enough company, and the only way third-parties are going to be able to make any money is by creating/botnetting literally thousands of accounts, all of which would need a paid-for TF2, and grinding drops to sell on cheaper – which is going to be pretty unviable as a business model, given how long it’d take to accumulate and sell a decent stock of the rarer/more expensive stuff.
The majority of the people complaining will NEVER use the shop system. Therefore, they aren’t being shoe-horned into using the Steam Wallet, and it won’t affect them beyond jealousy/scorn for those who have used it to get MacGuffin Set X. If these people really care that much about a few hundred kilobytes of data that translate into a digital hat on a digital character… well, it says a lot about them, whatever side of the argument they fall on.
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That is the bottom line isn’t it KidA, people are complaining because well, they like to complain.
THis move will have no impact on them unless they choose to let it impact them. They can still get the weapons from drops, crafting or trading, no one at Valve is forcing them to buy them. As Valve has said the only things you can not earn in game are a few utterly cosmetic only items. Anyone who -needs- a vanity item that badly should be milked for every penny they can, a stupid tax.
I think some people just have this inbuilt hatred of micro-transactions, and frankly I think valve has spoiled it’s customers, and too many of them do indeed act like spoiled brats.
One thing I disagree with you on Kid, is that 3rd parties would be non-viable – they’d be very viable if Valve had not set up their own shop. I think you’d be shocked at how low the costs for such a item grinding set up would be and how quickly it would see a profit – especially for very rare items that people might be willing to pay high values for. Hell hack duping methods might be found (just like runes in Diablo 2), at which point you’d be laughing.
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I should be clear when I am saying many Valve customers act like spoiled brats, I’m no so much talking about anyone in this thread (though there are some over reactions) but more the reactions on the steam forums – which are almost as bad as battlenet forums for the crybaby whiny man-children that occupy them.
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I’ll take my Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and leave, please.
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I have something to say to the people who keep on telling everybody that all the items can be obtained through playing the game. Yes, that is true.
But have you considered how poorly thought out the drop system is? If you want to craft the new items, it takes a weapon + a reclaimed metal. That’s 19 items right there (apologies if I’m wrong), and let’s not forget the cap on dropped items each week. By far and beyond the easiest way to get a new item you want to play with is to buy it. If you want the new items in TF2 without paying, you’re at the hands of the drop system. Which is completely random and capped.
Not exactly a fantastic system, if you ask me.
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Have you played the game since the update was implemented?
Everyone is trading. Constantly. If you play the game you will get items, maybe not the ones you want but you will get items. All you have to do is say “Does anybody have x item to trade?” and someone will say “What for?” and then you tell them what you have. This would be incredibly unreasonable without the trading system but now that it exists getting the item you want is not going to be difficult at all. There will be forums and websites dedicated to trading in-game items with people.
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PC Gamers: We’ll Complain About Anything
Bang-up job, gents.
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Ahem.
Looking at my steam stats, I checked the number of hours that I put into TF2.
505.4 Hours. 21 Days, 1.4 hours. Of continuous playtime.
I bought the Orange Box for $30. That means that I spent $10 dollars on TF2.
If I had known how much enjoyment I got out of playing this game, I would have spent far more. I have already put some money into my steam wallet.
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This is honestly pretty stupid. Don’t experiment on things that most people don’t like… I don’t really know of anyone who actually LIKES the pay for extras deal. I play a decent amount of League of Legends and I’d be a hella lot happier if it was a paid game and there weren’t any gimmicky skins or whatnot.
And those are just skins, at least Riot has enough sense to make sure their microtransactions don’t give players ingame benefits.
Also: who gives a fuck about hats? Hats are stupid.
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The business model wouldn’t exist if nobody used it.
It does and it’s ridiculously successful. All your statement shows is that you and your friends are not a cross-section that represent a wide spectrum of society. People will buy this. I won’t, to be honest I’m in the same camp as you, but to say that nobody likes it and nobody uses it is a completely different thing. The reason so many people are adopting this business model is that it is tried and true. It does work. Very well.
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I don’t see what all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth is about.
Yes, micropayment systems have generally been awful in the past FROM OTHER DEVELOPERS. Now forgive me if I sound like some rabid Valve fangirl (I’m not), but how about we wait and see how they handle this before deciding Valve have a) ruined TF2 and b) heralded the end of gaming as we know it? Nevermind the fact that they’re allowing trading as an alternate route to paying or waiting for drops…
From what I can see, the only people who are really going to be affected in any meaningful way by this are the greedy and impatient. You don’t need whatever they’re selling.
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Having a large number of the same weapon means you could get these items hilariously easy, as long as you have at least one item of the correct class and one item of the correct slot that you are willing to sacrifice.
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Actually you can still do it with tokens.
So that’s
2 identicals or of the same class for the scrap.
3 of the same slot for the slot
(+1 of the slot you want if the three weren’t in the right slot)
3 of the same class for the class
(+1 of the class you want if the three weren’t in the right class)
So 8 if you’re optimistic. 10 if you’re semi-pessimistic. 20 if you’re super pessimistic and expect to get the standard unlockable.
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Exactly, nothing to worry about.
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This whole thing is a load if horse
armourbollocks. Valve will make a lot of money from the people who are willing to pay £4.99 for a weapon, or £17.49 for a fancy hat. (I’m not among them; I recently paid £50 for a fancy hat, but not in the game).Imagine how rightly annoyed you would be if you’d just bought a meal at a restaurant, enjoyed it, and the waiter had the boldness to ask if you might like to also buy a dessert—starting at £4.99? Then he tells you that it’s even a one-time use only! I’d be frothing at the mouth!
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Dick Move Valve.
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Valve Move Dick.
Tune in for more “who move who” madness right here on your RPS!
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Move Dick Valve?
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It’s jammed.
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Toys out of pram again RPS readers. It’s not even a mandatory system.
If anything the only thing of slight annoyance is the way you need complete set including a hat to get the bonus effect. As many people have pointed out, weapon sets are not the best combinations, but i feel that this does add an unneeded level of complexity.
As for cash payments, it’s your call whether you do or not. If you’re that impatient, then that’s your problem.
Valve, carry on.
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The items that cost a lot are the items that were not made by Valve. The money goes to the original developers, and Valve wanted to be sure those devs got paid well for their hard work.
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I know it’s wrong…but I do love listening to the sound little hearts make when they finally – FINALLY – break realising Valve doesn’t love them in the quite the same unwholesome lobotmised way they love Valve.
Saxton Hale is right to feel the contempt he does for his customers. Although, c’mon: hippies? Again? Unoriginal stereotyping much? I thought Valve hired ‘Writers’…
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It was well established in the last Saxton Hale comic that he has a deep, personal loathing of hippies. Always protesting his animal deathmatches, untested experimental superweapons and borderline-homicidal employee training exercises.
What do they know about business, huh? HUH?
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None of which invalidates my point. Having a justification for it doesn’t save it from being a desperately hoary cliche.
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I will also add to my previous post on the other page: With this update a few more PC gamers will turn indie, turn console or simply leave gaming. How many however is up to debate but that it made people go in all of those 3 directions is be a certainty, I think.
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And those people are apparently ridiculous and won’t be missed. (and won’t be welcome in indie games if they bring their silly attitude that they deserve *everything* for free with them)
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No, that’s not even the problem here. You can get all these items for free. You just can’t get them all, instantly. That people are willing to uninstall a game they previously (presumably) enjoyed over this is insanity and hopefully they stop playing videogames entirely.
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From what I’m seeing in the Steam forums and other misc forums around the web, I think there’s a lot of people really angry about this, much more than what those who defend Valve think, the real number seems pretty large, I would go as far as to say it has definitely split the whole community almost in half.
I wouldn’t mind the update or the store, people are free to get what they want, if not for the set’s bonuses and the need to have the hat to have the bonus, plus the prices. Those two things shows me Valve is now pretty much like any other publisher, monetinize the hell out of everyone.
Don’t underestimate the amount of people who are angry at Valve over this and may drop Steam, it is far bigger than many think if all the main PC forums and clan forums are any indication.
Either way it’s safe to say Valve has fallen from grace, they are no longer the saints many portrayed them to be,
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Did you even look at the set bonuses? The soldier is maybe the only one that is worth going for because the weapons needed for it don’t cripple the class.
And there’s no way to say how many people now view Valve as “fallen from grace.” People always overreacted to TF2′s free extra content updates that Vavlve never had to make in the first place. TF2 is still going strong.
Like I said, if you can’t keep perspective on this, stop playing TF2. Do us all a favor.
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Problem is, I’m having more than enough perspective. And I do hate both fanboys and haters in equal measures, I just call things for what they are. And Valve is right now a monitizing company like all others. Doesn’t stop me from playing TF2 thank you very much but I can see where the haters come from. It doesn’t matter that the bonuses are are sidegrades, all the weapons there are anyway, but having a hat to complete a bonus is bad all around.
This has hit Valve in reputation, no doubt about that. Those who aren’t keep perspective of this are the Valve fanboys and the haters, those of us firmly standing with both feet on the ground do know that Valve may have won a lot of money out of this, and they did and will, but they took a serious hit to their reputation. Haters gonna hate, fanboys will be fanboys but the real impact will be with those who were indifferent towards Steam and Valve, and that’s perhaps the biggest share of PC gamers on Steam, and will not look at this in a good way.
Just stating the facts, whether you or anyone likes it or not. Most of the people like me who were indifferent to Steam and Valve and couldn’t care either way now care in a more negative than a positive way.
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Can you show me the “facts” that demonstrate “most of the people like me who were indifferent to Steam and Valve and couldn’t care either way now care in a more negative than a positive way”?
Like a fairly scientific poll or something? Should be easy to do if we’re just stating facts, right?
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Listen up, lads. No need to worry.
There always was a way to get equipment “ahead” of everyone else – idling. The only difference is that now idlers won’t have to idle, they will just pay Valve, who will happily take their cash. Less idlers, more money for Valve. Deal of the century! All else remains the same.
Carry on, nothing to see here.
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I’m happy with this update, all things considered. The recolouring and renaming are worth a pint of Guiness, and the rest is meh.
Valve were sensible with a lot of it – you can’t craft things you’ve bought, the drop/achievement system is still unchanged. The Polycount pack is horrifically overpriced, but I’m going to go play the game a couple of hours a night and I’ll find enough junk to get the Reclaimed Metal required for the stuff I don’t find by default.
My only complaint is that the best three hats in the game (the Pile of Hats series), which can be worn on any class and are bloody hilarious, are as cheap as they are. Granted, everyone who owned a Pile of Hats now owns a Vintage model, but I never got a vintage one and now I’ll not have any way to tell people I found the item ordinarily rather than dropping money on it. :|
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BTW, is it me or after the update TF2 now has a lot of new bugs, like the death glitch? This update has broken more stuff in TF2 than almost any previous one.
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I want to see the long term effects before I make any judgement. Not theoretical effects. Actual ones. I feel if more people relied on observation and curiosity to changes rather than act solely on impulse, we’d all be a bit happier.
All I know so far is that while on a server last night, a very generous admin showered us with gifts and now I have duplicates of old items that I can’t craft of trade. This begs the question – Which item to I use? The vintage one or the gift one? I figure the gift one will make me smile more when I look at it, knowing that I only have it because of a generous person I’ll never meet.
As a consumer, I’d personally rather pay 10 dollars (or nothing, in LoL’s case) for a game with optional microtransactions for things I’ll earn along the way than 50 dollars for the same game with only the over-time earning system.
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Wow, that server of yours sounds like a great place !
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Well, I’m sure glad I converted all my unwanted items into scrap metal and class tokens. :/
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Newsflash:
‘Half Life 2: Episode 3′ will be released in multiple pieces. For every level you’re going to have to pay, and if you don’t have the time to play the levels, you can even buy already played levels. So you have no disadvantage in comparison to player which play Episode 3 a lot. Oh and of course, you can buy hats for Gordon Freeman.
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I should stop giving them ideas D:
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It appears that unlike most people here I work for a living and so can afford to splash out on what seems like cosmetic items. Sure a vritual hat may cost quite a bit, but that’s nothing compared to what someone may spend on a pair of sunglasses, shoes or perhaps even a razor.
Call me a fool or whatever but I just bought the pack and every single hat that I had not yet found in the game, came to around £98. I joined a game server and almost everyone in the 32 player server also had bought the pack and possibly other items.
Therefore the conclusion is quite obvious the people who want it are buying it and then playing the game, leaving only the moaners to complain about something they don’t want online.
PS: I would be playing right now, but my usual group of servers are down for power maintence on their end.
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How much did that feeling of self superiority set you back? Does your ego hurt as it strains your skull to breaking point?
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Never overlook the sheer altruism of spending £15 to gift an entire server of your choice with a shower of items. Everyone now loves me. :)
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http://www.tf2items.com/crafting/blueprints.php
Think many users here would appreciate this if you don’t already know of it.
As long as you have 6 random items to make a reclaimed metal and an extra corresponding item you can make pretty much any Polycount item that actually matters.
It’s not going to take YEARS to get all the items without buying them, and if you really are low on reclaimed metal, you can always just prioritise the better weapons, because frankly some of the new items seem terrible, situational or not different at all (Sydney Sleeper, Darwin’s Danger Shield, Battalion’s Backup, Holy Mackerel) while others seem quite decent (Shortstop, Degreaser, Blackbox, Your Eternal Reward).
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Holy Mackerel is worth it for the giant FISH KILL message that appears in the textbox.
Also, it lets everyone know how many times you hit your opponent with it.
It is the ultimate humiliation griefing weapon.
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Wow, that server of yours sounds like a great place!
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If this email is to be believed, Valve are already having second thoughts about the system.
But can it be believed?
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It’s the farmville business model. The intentional creation of a grindy, addictive system to obtain pointless, digital trinkets made with minimal effort, and then the offer of paying for those trinkets after you’re hooked. Also, enticing you to get friends into the habit, and to gain sympathy by gifting these digital trinkets, which are not dependent on any kind of supply, to other people.
It’s perfectly well documented how this relies on psychological manipulation and utter contempt for the “customer”.
From this thread you can tell people are already spending dozens and hundreds of pounds on this stuff. There are people saying that Valve only did this to prevent black market fake hat trading, that they’re doing it for your benefit, after creating this environment. Some are apparently oblivious to the long-term planning involved in these things.
Valve has adopted zynga’s business model. Finding this to be an unsavoury fact about the company that is in full control of all your steam games is apparently equal to being a crybaby.
Well, of course it is, because the videogames are, precisely because of things like this, a more indefensible waste of time every day.
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p.s. the fact that not everyone gets taken in by it is no defense. You may not be getting sufficiently manipulated, but they’re certainly trying.
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Well GF TF2 and a big “You are a douch bag” to valve
congratulations!
i’ma go play cod
Atleast their designers know that they are assholes
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I WANT ALL UR HATZ!! :D how long do u have to be off ur computer to get weapons once ur back on becuz i found this vid and he said that u cant play every day :(
btw i cant get any weapons fr sum reason
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You guys are really over-reacting here, the only thing that is even marginally wrong with the new system is that you need the hat to complete a set for the bonus. I won’t be buying any of the items as i’ve already crafted the ones i really want and should find/craft/trade the rest in the next few days. This doesn’t force you to buy items, all it does is allow you to buy items rather than show a little patience. So stop crying!
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