Potential training mode project

[Tinker]

If you read my last sentence properly you'll notice that I said I believed the approach to training was "flawed", not that the concept of player training was fundamentally "redundant".

That the subtleties of playing certain classes can only be learnt playing against other players (and the maps that the players play), and that anything specific is more efficiently represented in video format, allowing the circumstance to present itself ingame.

Training maps are fine. I just think they are unnecassery and inefficient considering the alternatives.

That's simply my opinion. I didn't say Valve were wrong, just that i don't agree with their approach.

Edit: Valve already have the capacity to make Source videos, as they have done with the game mode video tutorials. So i find it interesting that Valve would go through the hassle of coding new entities and build new maps when they could simply record the actions in the Source video maker and even execute more of TF2's charming humour in the process. Whilst at the same time presenting new players with solutions to real combat issues in existing official maps.

That's just what i would have expected from Valve that we have come to know to love re-using existing material and work to solve new/old issues, reducing total man hours in achieving the same or similar results and get content out quicker.

edit2: The only considerable difference/purpose i can see is that perhaps Valve are more interested in the community and custom content communities response to this aspect of TF2, having multiple agendas to achieve beyond just teaching players w+m1=win.

They explained this. They wanted to keep players in who otherwise would quit after 10 minutes after being killed and dominated by everyone on a public server. A video wouldn't work quite as well - after all, you don't actually PLAY in a video. Actually switching to the rocket launcher and shooting is different from watching someone do it - they'd have to have the new people actually practising somehow. This isn't meant for advanced techniques (for now) or actually taking down other people efficiently at all; this training is meant to teach people who have never switched a weapon or clicked a mouse without feeling unsure if this is the right thing to do. Just watch the free weekenders; or at least remember the old free weekenders. Slowly walking and stopping at every corner, they'd wonder what exactly to do. To get inevitably killed by someone who DOES. The training is meant for those kind of people, and isn't meant (yet) to become the perfect killing machine.