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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."
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
You mean the old "Hunted President" map?
Hell yes, that was great. I haven't played a lot of TF2, but back in the days of old I was a big player of TF (over quakeworld, not over HL, the original TF!). Is the old "Rock" map available too?
Actually, the number of engine features and intense shader-reliance make the game very CPU intensive, even compared to other Source games, though IANAGD(game developer). This would make a Nintendo DS port difficult, to say the least.
The graphics themselves aren't so bad; maxed out, I rarely lose any noticeable number of frames without the map design being abhorrent, on a years-old mid-range GPU. The CPU and memory load, on the other hand, is quite large, even with a dual core running at 4ghz and enough RAM to choke anything with less than 64-bits. While I'd honestly be impressed if anyone could manage to get the Source engine ported to a system with specs like the DS, I have my doubts about that happening any time soon, short of a complete butchering of the game, and the release of "Team Fortress 2: Puzzle Pack Extravaganza [Deluxe Edition]". The graphics are simply too complex, despite their retro and simplistic appearance.
Hopefully, though, once handhelds get enough power to become sentient, we'll see quite a few installs of TF2. Since, logically, every sentient being wants to play TF2... or at least Left4Dead.
I used to love the original QWTF, I thought it was fantastic, perhaps the game I spent more time on than any other, despite having to pay dialup costs per minute back then.
I followed TF ever since it came out, and when TF2 was originally announce as a mod for Quake II I was excited, I was equally excited when it was slated as a massive combat game with commanders and people dropping down out of helicopters as the screenshots showed for Half-Life and then it's own game. After around 5 years I got bored of waiting then something like 9 years on it finally arrived.
Yet, when it arrived, everything new had been dropped and it turned out to be some copy of the original TV, minus some pretty damn important features like grenades and coupled in with some horrible graphical style. Now they talk of some of the classic maps and game modes, perhaps they'll even bring grenades back.
But my point is this, whilst TF2 is great, people obviously want more. It's taken them 9 or 10 years to end up back where they started, mimicking QWTF and even then not quite (again no grenades, lack of old favourite maps). Surely the lesson to be learned by now is that if they want to immitate the success of the original then all they needed to do all along is simply immitate the original albeit with updated graphics (minus the cartoony theme change).
Yes, I very much miss the QWTF days, but it does really seem Valve is only just in recent years beginning to realise what the old QWTF fans said all along- just stay true to the original. They've had a decade to figure this out.
The absence of grenades is one of the best parts of TF2
Not inventive? You've got to be kidding me. I love it that there's 9 classes each with it's own weaknesses and strengths. That's different from most FPS'es I know.
And the graphics are fantastic. The cartoonesque atmosphere is a lot more fun than a realistic one would be.
The grenades were removed because of very valid reasons, like the stupid spamming at the beginning of every map. Too bad they had to include critical hits which ruins the game for me in a completely other way
Really, I don't understand what you want. You want innovation but at the same time you're mad at Valve because they didn't copy stuff from the old Team Fortress? That's pretty contradictory. And don't forget that a bad economy is not good for innovation, companies are more likely to stay with the old tried and true methods, because it's those which bring in the big bucks.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
Dear AC:
Please play TF2 on a PC: The platform that TF2 (or any fps for that matter) was meant to be played on.
Thanks
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
For example - Of course the characters look cartoonish. They're rocket and sticky jumping around, they're being healed by a giant blue raygun and they're fighting over bases they've built 100 feet from each other.
Parent - just play on a no-crit server.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
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. Consoles are good for playing my BluRay, watching my NetFlix and playing Rock Band!
Disclaimer: I grew up on consoles so don't read that the wrong way.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
You can now buy a PC perfectly capable of playing TF2 on high settings for around $400-500, not including the OS or monitor.
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3486&p=3
Take that machine, and spend $100 on a video card, and you have a gaming PC. Now, if you spend a bit more for the "budget" system they have listed, then you'll have a complete, balanced computer. But spending "thousands of dollars" is no longer necessary for gaming; it's frivolous spending.
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