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Valve Discusses Team Fortress 2's Future
The Escapist chatted with Valve's Robin Walker about how the Team Fortress 2 team has been listening to feedback and continually updating the game to fix problems and add to the gameplay experience. Walker mentions that ideas for new classes are "floating around," and that a new mode of play will be introduced soon.
"'Players have driven our entire approach to designing achievements, the way we tie unlockables to those achievements and the design of those new weapons themselves. The choices we made within the Medic and Heavy updates were very much the result of the ways that players have used that combination of classes within the game. The addition of the payload game mode came from players requesting an old Team Fortress Classic map called Hunted, and describing what they did and didn't like in that map.' ... The Scout is the next class slated for the special treatment, and Walker expects the update will be available early this year. Additionally, the team is juggling a number of side projects at the moment, including finally bringing a year's worth of the downloadable content and upgrades to the Xbox 360 version of the game. A new Payload map is in the works, more community maps are on the way and the team will soon unveil a very different new game mode."
I love that console users *expect* updates now. Even last-gen consoles never got updates.
That would have been pretty amazing if they did. Hard drives and broadband were only standard on the XBOX. Current gen consoles could and do handle it just fine. TF2 has been updated a few times, but that seems to have been just to prevent cheating. Halo has had substantial updates.
Buying for the console is silly anyway. You pay $10-$20 more than you do for the PC version so that you can play the game using a terrible controller.
How is the used PC-game market treating you? And you have to love that DRM. Also the games that don't get to PCs. And then there's the computer maintenece and updates, which we all know are more fun than actually playing games as soon as you turn on the console. You pay hundreds of dollars every so often just to play a smaller selection of games!
Disclaimer: I do PC game, but you have to realize that PC gaming is not perfect either.
Dear cornflake,
I have an 8 year old PC that serves my computing needs but can't run TF2 and can't be updated to that point. Spending thousands of dollars on a gaming rig for one game (two maybe, I would probably play the updated HL1) is a decision so stupid even I wouldn't do it. I also don't even have enough free time to where I should be posting this, so I do not have enough time to set up said computer.
Therefore, please send me a gaming computer set up and ready to play TF2 and I will indeed play it as it was "meant" to be played. Until then, try not to assume what works for you will work for everyone.