By Jim Rossignol on April 15th, 2011 at 8:27 am.

Yep, no headgear this time, just other stuff. There’s a smaller Badlands map for King of the Hill, there are tweaks and optimisations to visuals and hidden clevers like memory usage. More importantly, perhaps, there’s some basic stuff to help out newbies, including new basic training and a coaching system that will matchmake coaches with people who need to learn to play a bit better. That’s nice. The full details are here.


Yay
Also, curious how the new voting system works.
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I’d imagine the answer to that question is “like Left 4 Dead”.
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this is rediculous I refuse to play this game now
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Did your ass just say something?
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Hatters gonna hat.
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This literally made me lol.
Thank you, fine sir *tips hat*
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I love the new updates! Especially the memory optimisation thingies! I hope that it helps with the mac players too!
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That is probably the best Scout face I’ve ever seen.
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The heavy have the same expression as this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-kM-guQtk
I saw a video of how the coaching works and that’s pretty neat. Hopefully I can get back to playing this again soon since my graphic card has been acting up.
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Isn’t one of the big features of DOTA2 a coaching system? Sounds like they are trying it out in TF2.
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That was my first thought as well. Valve’s using this to sort of test out how the community reacts to a coaching system.
DOTA 2′s going to depend on that heavily, the DOTA community is pretty much renowned for being one of the most hostile gaming communities ever.
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My computer won’t blackmail me. Not if I take incriminating pictures of it and the cat FIRST!
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What? No hidden ASCII in the inverted Lightmaps for the new map? For shame, valve. Forshalve.
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I’m trying hard not to laugh at that.
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Scroll to the very bottom of the page. :)
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The new mapvoting feature is essential. Because if the players don’t chose a map through the new system themselves, the server tends to crash when trying to switch. For some payload and control point maps, the server will also decide to end the map part-way through the first round. The inventory server seemed to be down for everyone, too.
I’m really surprised all of this stuff got past them in the beta.
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Lots of interesting weapon balances too. Been a while since they did anything that major to the weapon set.
Some of the changes sound great. Cannot believe this game is getting so much love after so many years.
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Yep, the Flare Gun is now terrifying. The Backburner has been saved from uselessness and they’ve finally fixed the silly melee weapons so Eyelander Demo’s can no longer just run around aimlessly swiping and need to use the Targe charge effectively to get themselves anywhere.
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They’ve made the Fists of Steel not so hilariously overpowered though; punching sentry guns to death was great fun. What a shame.
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@Monchberter – I’ve had many a fine time with the Backburner… If you can get yourself behind a group of enemies (esp. a heavy/medic pair), it can be devastating. It does limit you to a rather specific role, but we’ve had some good times.
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I am sad to see the Powerjack nerfed, but it was pretty OP, and nasty in Medieval.
Batallion’s Backup nerf, it make no sense. Most Soldiers I’ve seen prefer the Buff Banner or the flexibility of the shotgun.
Concheror gets a boost though, totally not because it’s a new toy and most people with it will have paid for it one way or another (Steam pre-order or Mann Co Store).
Sun on a Stick also gets a boost and is now giving an axetinguisher to the most mobile class, so there’s going to be a lot of pyro + scout raep if teams can find two players who can actually co-operate.
And tutorials? At this late stage? Who are they for?
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I have a friend who bought TF2 about ten days ago. I’ve been helping him learn the ropes.
He complains that the game is “hard”, which is… pretty reasonable, considering the people he’s been playing against have been playing for years!
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I’m disappointed that this is just an update that contains stuff that isn’t hats, instead of being an update that removes all the existing hats or allows a ‘hat-free’ server or client mode which makes everyone’s hats invisible.
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I agree.
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I can’t see Valve adding a ‘vanilla’ mode as hats are far too lucrative and getting stuff keeps people playing!
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All of this was tested in the (now open) TF2 beta. Having said that, not all the player feedback was unqualified praise – especially with regards the melee weapon nerfs.
I’d like to claim the Flaregun buff was inspired by a ‘mod’ I’d been trialling on the TF2 pyro forums with exactly this change (but it probably wasn’t). But I’m less than excited by the backburner buff, because it makes the BB less distinct from the other flamethrowers, and I had come up with what I thought was a much more interesting idea…
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Aww coaching.
Valve’s mission statement is secretly to introduce “being cool to people” to our planet, after Internet 1.0 taught us to embrace insult and douchebaggery.
Also they like making cash, but cuddly cash. Sort of modern day capitalist buddhas, armed with plushies.
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…and I really thought that in Web 1.0 we were all nicer and cooler…
It’s in Web 2.0 that we got all rude in my opinion!
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I blame youtube comments
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That screenshot is priceless.
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Free Hat!
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Hat Free!
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So how many hats does this update introduce?
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/facepalm
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I think you missed the joke.
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Rofl. I really should install Team Fortress 2 again. Every time a new update comes out, I giggle at the superb writing on the update page, and then promptly forget.
I’ll get to it, one day.
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I like how their performance improvements this time mean that I’ve gone from the old box just about handling bot matches to crashing to desktop with a client library error after the load screen.
Ten pages of crashes. What was the beta for again?
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nooo! damn you valve i want more hats XD
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Performance improvements?
Did they finally add LoD models for all the revolting added hats and weaponry?
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