Enter… MONOCULUS!

[A Boojum Snark]

quick question - what's so special about the halloween drops that people are so disappointed they don't get them, plus is it worse than last year or something because to me this sounds like the exact same bs again everybody complained about a year ago already

I think it is less about the drops being special and more about not getting them. It is supposed to be a holiday event, free stuff! gifts for playing! woo! But because Valve does things in a dumb way, people don't get an acceptable/expected amount of gifts, and I think you're one of those people who can appreciate that Valve releases ill-conceived ideas

 

[Trotim]

Oh yeah I'm not saying the complaints are out of place, what I'm saying is Valve didn't improve anything about it since last year since I guess the system worked too well in terms of money made (all players need to do is spend money and time, giving players fun back is just a secondary way to keep them playing when addictive item systems do it much better).
And why bother balancing, that's way further down the list of priorities and when you have a large enough community they will never reach a consensus - instead what will happen is constant discussion about how badly designed the weapons are which again keeps people near the game. It sounds too out there but I wouldn't put it past Valve to do it like this on purpose

And yeah I checked, only cosmetics are given out. There's a YER reskin that's actually a downgrade because it has the same stats but is not part of the set which is just silly (plus it looks dumb)

 

[grazr]

Well wasn't it some chump at Valve who said Blizzard had a good idea going in terms of how they kept players coming back and they wanted to replicate an RPG element in TF2 also, to keep people playing?

But it doesn't seem to matter how good their intentions are or how they execute this concept it always ends being that shitty WoW grind in the end. A grind to play the game to receive drops, countermanded by idle servers. Along with the grind to acquire achievements, particularly those with a limited set time period.

 

[Terwonick]

The "Unarmed Combat" is the only weapon/item from this update that i'd ever use... altogether i'm pretty disappointed with it. Although, I like how they're tying up loose ends that were never loose. (I really do like the new comic better than all the others)

 

[Pocket]

I just really hope the costume sets are only equippable during the Halloween event, because the Soldier's (hilarious) robot suit is the first accessory set I've seen that actually completely fucks the silhouette recognition.

They're equippable during Halloween and on a full moon. How they actually calculate that (Date on the calendar marked as such, within Valve's native time zone? The actual 24 hours that it's at its fullest?) is anyone's guess.

Someone on the one server I was playing on made an excellent suggestion: Instead of every full moon, they should be equippable any time you're playing on a Halloween event map.

 

[TheKieranator]

They're equippable during Halloween and on a full moon. How they actually calculate that (Date on the calendar marked as such, within Valve's native time zone? The actual 24 hours that it's at its fullest?) is anyone's guess.

Someone on the one server I was playing on made an excellent suggestion: Instead of every full moon, they should be equippable any time you're playing on a Halloween event map.

That's how it works (according to the wiki). "Full Moon" meant maps with a full moon, i.e. the event maps.

From now on, only make maps with full moons.

 

[tyler]

The wiki is wrong, it's literal full moons.

 

[Retroid]

"I played on a shitty server and it was terrible. This event sucks!"

I played on a lot of shitty servers, registered servers - the only ones that drop presents, so if it weren't meant for so many people why are the majority 33?

Highlander and this would be a lot of fun but as it is; it plays worse than 2fort.

 

[Turbo Lover]

AutoQueue Servers. How do you think I got enough masks for a Saxton Hale AND one of every Class.

 

[YM]

That might have been true if it was handed out to 1 player in the server every 5 mins as a weapon/hat drop, but it is not. You have to compete against the chances that A) you are not dead, B) it drops near you, C) it is not stolen by a faster more mobile class than you and D) you are not prevented from reaching it by griefers. I would have thought you'd have realised by now you can't define TF2 gameplay with a bunch of base figures like dividing against the number of players present.

I said it averages out to about 1/24. Since the other guy has just as much chance of being dead as you do, and has equal chance of being killed/beaten to the punch by a faster mover, those things don't really make a difference in the long run, only in the short term.

All of the things you mention afflict the other person too, and since there are definitely things that move faster than scouts, even not playing as scout won't skew your chances that heavily.

4 hours for a 65% chance? Because there are things eating into that time like map load time and humiliation, it basically means flip a coin every 4 hours, if it's heads you've got a gift.
That's pretty damn unlikely.

 

[A Boojum Snark]

so if it weren't meant for so many people why are the majority 33?

Uh, that applies to the entire game. Most players don't give a damn and just want to shoot guns. The game was meant for 24 people, it launched with a max server size of 24. People found a way around it and made bigger, Valve patched it, people bitched and found a new way, Valve gave in and unlocked the cvar. The game is still meant for 24 though.

Though I should say, while nothing has intrinsically caused it to not be a 24 person game, at the same time pretty much nothing of the original design ideas are left.

 

[grazr]

I said it averages out to about 1/24. Since the other guy has just as much chance of being dead as you do, and has equal chance of being killed/beaten to the punch by a faster mover, those things don't really make a difference in the long run, only in the short term.

All of the things you mention afflict the other person too, and since there are definitely things that move faster than scouts, even not playing as scout won't skew your chances that heavily.

4 hours for a 65% chance? Because there are things eating into that time like map load time and humiliation, it basically means flip a coin every 4 hours, if it's heads you've got a gift.
That's pretty damn unlikely.

Well yes but you're kinda missing what i'm trying to say. It's not so much that players are competing against each other as much as they are against the nature of the game, which is why it's difficult and that all of those things combined make it a pain. The fact that competing/griefing players are also present only makes it worse. The kind of odds you're talking about wont average out for the better in 96 (or more realisticly less than 24) hours. Then reduce what ever play time you do have by 50% when you consider the average player appears to live for less than a minute on eyeaduct and will spend 20 seconds in the spawn wait + 5 seconds for kill cam and about 5 seconds journeying out of spawn. On top of that you still need to also account for being away from monoculuses teleporter drop and/or grief killed in the underworld or that nobody kills the monoculus before the round ends which will happen for most people most of the time.

Don't get me wrong, I can see your point of logic but i know too many people on the bad receiving end of chance to believe those odds are actually an accurate statistic for a 1 weekend period; and i can see and understand why. I want to believe it but i just don't see it.

 

[tyler]

I played on a lot of shitty servers, registered servers - the only ones that drop presents, so if it weren't meant for so many people why are the majority 33?

Highlander and this would be a lot of fun but as it is; it plays worse than 2fort.

I'm glad someone else answered this because I probably would have got mean

 

[Batandy]

Now that there is this new boss... i request a DOG BREAD replacement for it.