News Team Fortress 2 goes back to beta

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/12/03/team-fortress-2-goes-back-to-beta/1

 

I was debating giving this a go, but after seeing what the initial changes are I think I will give it a miss. The drops being disabled is putting me off, I seem to only play tf2 to get hats, isn't that the point of the game

I got a random drop of the little umbrella hat for the heavy, have been rocking that out the past few days, I don't want my natascha being nicely balanced, the only thing that makes up for the slow bore of the heavy is the fact you can cut people down in seconds.

 

The good old days of TFC are getting further and further away. :-(

 

I honestly think that nostalgia is what's "killing" PC gaming. Change is fine, especaily if it's Valve.

On topic though, I think this is a great idea, because they can see the public reaction without unbalancing the full game.

 

Hopefully the beta will cut out bugs like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRxMoVn4aGA (still works today - as an admin it gets quite boring banning people for doing stuff like this)

I've signed up.

EDIT - sounds like they might have patched it, finally!

 

I used to play TFC all the time but I just couldn't get into TFC2 at all

 

I hate TF2, why can't this level of commitment come out for L4D(2)?

 

that exploit needs fixing , is that even vac ban-able

 

It's nice to see that they're focusing on improving the gameplay now instead of simply add a load of cosmetic stuff that myself and many other players simply don't care about.

 

I hate TF2 as well.

So little substance, so much fanfare.

 

Meh, Mann CONomy killed TF2 for me. I used to be quite happy just playing for acheivements and enjoying the satisfaction of the reward for my efforts. Pay to win sucks.

 

This is in no aspect true.

Yes, you can buy items from the store, but you can find all of those items except for some non-invading (Keys, Sounds) ones ingame. Every regular player has a buttload of items, so the only 'imbalance' this brings is that advanced players can buy the item they need or noob players can get all items and still have no skill.

Every buyable/findable weapon has an advantage as well as a disadvantage, Valve balances these weapons out all the time so noone is ridiculously overpowered.

 

I still think TF2 has lost some of it's magic since the vanilla '3 weapons per class' game. I find the game more frag-tastic than ever, but such pastimes as axe-only pyro have become more and more difficult. I also quite enjoyed being able to look for exploits whenever a new map came out, but now they seem to be patched too quickly Maybe it's just that I've moved on to other games and lost my skillz though, so I can't be sure.

 

+1

Play two rounds on each map and you'll find the worst of the imbalances already, internal testing should have caught quite a bit more than has been let out.

Most broken one I've found so far is a little gimmick myself and two clan-mates pulled as Engineers. Two of us set up our sentries far out of automatic fire range and started holding down fire with the Wrangler while a third continuously resupplied us and waited on Spy-watch. Assuming Spies could even get to us, some of the old maps let us shoot at their spawn doors.

 

It can take an age for a random item to drop and in some instances you will be at a disadvantage. Something like the Heavy's Gloves of Running Urgently enables him to move around at a much faster pace, pair him with a Medic (who doesn't have to slow down to wait for the heavy to catch up) and it cancels out the negative affect of the gloves. I'd call that an advantage.

Now that you can craft the G.R.U it avoids the eternal wait for a random drop, but they weren't craftable when they first appeared on Mann CONomy.

 

Actually, the Milkman hat provides free health to the wearer if they have the full set, and the likelyhood of ever attaining that hat without trading your lungs or paying money is slim (or at least takes a while). So I may get into a fight with a Scout who beats me with 19 hp left, all because he payed to get a straight out buff with no downside.

 

This is why I said Valve balances them out all the time, it is also probably one of the reasons this beta is here: there are too many items to balance them properly, so big changes are coming.

 

The disadvantage is no ranged attack, switch time to the minigun is fairly long.

 

Devil's Advocate says that it requires the entire set and set as a whole may be balanced.

I agree with you, though. Scout is my favorite class and it makes me die a bit inside to know that I can get 25 health by paying $17. And I can't see how the set is balanced, either.

Shortstop:
+Tigher cone of fire gives longer range and greater potential for all pellets to hit close in
+Higher rate of fire
+Faster reload speed (reloads all four very quickly)
+Slows enemies making it easy to catch up to them and easier to hit them on following shots
-Shares ammo with pistol Irrelevant because you have no pistol with the set
-Lower capacity Largely irrelevant because it reloads very quickly and reloads all four at once
-Harder to hit enemies with tighter spread

Milkman:
+Can put out fire
+Applies team wide debuff to enemies
-Takes away pistol Largely irrelevant, Shortstop does equivalent damage at a range

Holy Mackarel:
+FISH KILL humor

Hat:
+25 extra health

All in all, the set bonus makes this the superior Scout layout. Its only downsides are largely situational and can be overcome with a reasonable level of skill. The only time I ever find myself wanting to switch is to grab a bigger spreading primary weapon for fighting other Scouts.

 

I pretty much stopped play TF2 after they started to add all the items and drops. There is way too much stuff in a game that used to be about 9 classes and their 3 weapons, I don't mind change to maps and class' but it really ERKS me when game developers throw all this "candy" into games and it either does nothing but confuse the crap out of me by changing the way each class looks and gives die-hard players any advantage other than skill and play style. If you want to go grinding for gear, go play Warcraft, which BTW, is also a broken game ever since they removed server ranking to get gear. Back in the day when high warlord or grand marshal really ment something to the other PVP'ers on your server.