The End of the Line Update

[EArkham]

When the EotL crates started dropping, I sent Fr0z3n a message on steam, congratulating him for the work on the map and a hopeful future of cooperation between the TF2 team and the map making community. His response was somewhat grim, and amounted to basically "we'll see." Now I realize that they must have been told that same day that snowplow was getting cut. :\

I'm disappointed that the map didn't get in, but I'm more disappointed that this might mean we're all back to square one as far as fostering a stronger line of communication with Valve regarding community maps.

There was a general thought that they want maps that do something fresh and different. But apparently not too fresh and different, because then that would be "too complicated."

I'm just... I dunno, for me this event was all about the first new community map in a long time. About a hopeful future where community maps were a regularly included feature of new releases, and not ridiculously rare. Just not sure I see things heading that way now.

 

[ics]

I've come to conclusion that Valve wants basic maps with simple layout. Everything different from that seems to be a big no-no, unless they do it themselves (asteroid). They also seem to think that the players are idiots and can't learn out new things.

What they don't seem to understand is that the game needs new maps, not new unfinished works that drag on for 6 months. I think the Showcase of TF2maps.net would be a pretty good place to find few, but i don't think they bother even digging in.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

When the EotL crates started dropping, I sent Fr0z3n a message on steam, congratulating him for the work on the map and a hopeful future of cooperation between the TF2 team and the map making community. His response was somewhat grim, and amounted to basically "we'll see." Now I realize that they must have been told that same day that snowplow was getting cut. :\

Yea, the day we found out the map was cut, the day the crates started dropping. You weren't the only person to say this to me since then. Kind of hurt a little that I had to grin and bear it until release.

 

[Muddy]

Damn, that's really shitty.

On an unrelated note, apparently people from r/tf2 started spamming r/volvo with EotL and Snowplow posts. Because that's still funny, right??

 

[takabuschik]

We aren't complaining because Volvo are not fulfilling their promises. They never promised a thing, and all we knew for sure is that there will be a video, which there is. The video is really great and I had a great time watching it, as I'm sure everyone had. But we are complaining because what we think, as a map making community, is that maps are better, and more important than hats and cosmetics or rubber duck crap. And we believe, as the community which the EOTL map came from, as the community who used their servers for the testing of the map, that that map should have been included with this update.

I never played Snowplow, because I didn't want to ruin the surprise for myself. Turns out that there is no surprise. Still, I've heard that it's a great map.
Many people were talking about the update, that was supposed to be awesome, and have new weapons and a video and a map and all those great things that all the good updates had. It's not too much to ask. Look at some recent updates. 2 cities, for example, had 3 (!) maps- rottenburg, mannhatan and swampwater. It had major gameplay changes for MVM. It had new weapons with the effects.
The previous summer update had 2 maps- standin and proccess, and lots of old-new readjusted weapons.
These two where great updates. And I thought that the EOTL update will be one of them, the MAJOR major updates.
-Then, all we get is the movie, some hat cosmetics stuff, and the ducks.

I think we have a propper reason to be dissapointed, even if according to valve we were not to expect anything.

 

[LeSwordfish]

This also means, surely, that valve paid zero attention to snowplow through its entire development cycle? It's not like the map got more complex recently.

 

[Trech]

Is pl_cactuscanyon a unfinished EotL map or have I missed something?

Related:
Spoiler

 

[Idolon]

All of the payload carts have been turned into EotL carts.

 

[Trech]

Ohh, nvm.

 

[Idolon]

Double posting because it felt weird writing what I felt about the whole #noplow situation in the same post as a response to something reasonably unrelated.

===

I think the biggest issue with TF2/Valve is the lack of communication between Valve and the community. Chances are, Valve's viewpoint on Snowplow is a lot different from ours. They probably made the decision to cut the map without the knowledge of how many people were working on it, how many people enjoyed it, much much people enjoyed it, etc. I really wan't to stress that Valve made the decision because they thought it was in their own best interest, for whatever reason that may be. We don't know what reason that is.

I see "Valve doesn't know what they want in TF2" get thrown around a lot. I feel like this is most likely closer to "We don't know what Valve wants in TF2." Again, a symptom of poor communication between Valve and the community.

Also, It's very hard to predict how the community is going to react to a decision. Fr0z3n is very familiar with this, I'm sure, from his experience in planning contests. He's a part of the community itself, polls the community regularly, and still has a hard time getting things right! Valve has even less communication with an even larger and more diverse community.

I'm not a fan of the decision to cut Snowplow, and I really do think that Valve should reconsider. That being said, there's no reason to get in such a shitstorm about how amazingly idiotic Valve must be to decide to cut content. They're actually pretty competent! They made TF2 in the first place! The main issue, I believe, is that they just have poor communication withe community, and almost every other grievance the community has with the game is just a symptom of that one issue.

(and let's be honest - when have computer nerds been good at communication?)

 

[A Boojum Snark]

I briefly glanced at the page last night before I went to bed and thought "hey cool, snowplow is finally in", come home today and watch the video, and then come here and find... there is no map? ...so what was the point?

I mean seriously. Not to depreciate the work that was done on the video, but it is just a video. All kinds of people make really great SFM shorts. That is not an update to the game. It means fart to the game.

Why did this even get pushed through if 80% of the content was canceled?

 

[Bakscratch]

I feel like the community is all over the place at the moment, I do feel that McVee does deserve some of the complaints, he said there would be new weapons and map (the map is another thing) but he said weapons would be the focus and we received nothing. Imo he should of kept the weapons to himself as 1 it would of made more excitement (if they were added) and 2nd things like weapons are hit and miss at times.

The not including of the map feels really out of place and somewhat confusing, as the map has had a lot of time from us here/ other communities and valve. Its weird how they don't want to include it seems like a huge missed out opportunity for Valve, Eotl Team and the TF2Mapping community to show the rest of the gaming world what people in the community can do when they are all inspired. I do feel good knowing that the TF2 community are supporting the map (and custom maps) ignoring all the spam all forums and such, they have been really passionate about the map and the game its self, the community survives of new and interesting things which are some times accepted and sometimes not but they all still have an audience. I feel Valve should rethink the way they address community updates, maybe trying to get more of the community involved rather than a few select number of people and keeping it so secret. Props to McVee on keeping the video to himself but other items like Items/models/map/sounds would be much improved by open feedback, which we all saw from the public Snowplow tests.

I think we should all get behind YM and Frozen for the work and time they put in to get the map ready for the update. I hope you 2 keep updating it and making it better and better, turn it into the unofficial official eotl map.

 

[Moonfixer]

Duck tails. Aaahwoooo-ooooo!! ... Couldn't help it...