The Future of Compensation for TF2 Mappers: A Community / Valve Discussion

[Vel0city]

Sunshine. Don't forget Sunshine.

Valve won't add a map workshop until they can figure out how to profit from it. Unlike cosmetics and weapons maps are 100% free and can be used by everybody. Map stamps were an attempt to get some revenue from maps but I don't think that has payed off.

 

[RaVaGe]

even if they aren't quite as good as a map like Snakewater or Process.

Made my day.

 

[Kube]

Sunshine. Don't forget Sunshine.
Map stamps were an attempt to get some revenue from maps but I don't think that has payed off.

Wait, doesn't all of the proceeds from map stamps (not including tax, of course) go to the respective mappers?

See the wiki

I personally think that Valve won't go down the 'pay-for-map' scheme, especially with how easy it might be to bypass. Valve makes a larger profit every time they release a new map due to the influx of players into TF2, a percentage of whom are buying items from the Mann Co. Store, or other purchases on Steam.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

They've stated that they would never charge for a map in TF2.

 

[Zed]

Valve won't add a map workshop until they can figure out how to profit from it. Unlike cosmetics and weapons maps are 100% free and can be used by everybody. Map stamps were an attempt to get some revenue from maps but I don't think that has payed off.

If you'll notice, Valve doesn't profit from Portal 2's map workshop, nor does it directly profit from CS:GO's map workshop.

 

[henke37]

I think it is fair to say that the tf2 team is either lazy or understaffed.

 

[Vel0city]

The team isn't understaffed. However the decisions that they're making makes their own job a lot harder than it has to be. What they NEED to do is balance weapons the good way and make sure the game's stable. What they are doing is wasting dev time on Mannpower and try to balance weapons and then failing miserably at it. All of this can be solved with a lot more community input, but Valve either doesn't want that or doesn't know how to handle it.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Yeah the post release TF2 team has never been huge, I believe Robin said during Valve dev days that the post release the TF2 team has never been more then a dozen or so people so 6-8 people isn't a huge difference. Of course they also said there are a lot of new people on the TF2 team and only a couple of them are long time Valve employees, that probably causes development to be a little bit slower then in the early days of mostly veteran developers, along with the sheer amount of content the game already has making it harder to develop new, balanced content for the game.

I do question a lot of their recent decisions though, they seem to have a lot of focus on Mannpower which just doesn't feel like TF2 to me. Doing things like cutting Snowplow and barely adding in any community maps to the game anymore when they can barely produce any maps themselves also seems like a very bad decision to me a well.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Hmm looks like enigma made a correction on the thread about the podcast on teamfortress.tv (post 178). Apparently the Team Fortress team is around 20 people, which is a lot of people for a company the size of Valve.

 

[UKCS-Alias]

All of this can be solved with a lot more community input, but Valve either doesn't want that or doesn't know how to handle it.

That is also because the size of the community and the the quality of the general input. Just look at the most popular ideas on SPUF and you instantly will understand why they wont listen.

Most of those ideas just make something contain more gimmics and make the game even more complex. Not to mention that those gimmicks are often only making it worse.

And the team is understaffed. As when they have enough staff they can playtest maps a bit more. They could even have some playtesting staff. They have nothing to say but can take the job of testing the stuff valve made. That already would have solved alot.

 

[Pocket]

They're desperate to keep the game from dying a slow death, and they have no idea how to do that. It's probably a safe bet that they assume new maps in existing gamemodes won't be enough to be worth the investment, hence why they keep throwing in more and more radical ideas that mess with the fundamentals of the game and might as well have been released as separate games entirely.

As for adopting new maps, it probably says something that the non-5CP ones that have been recommended are all several years old at this point. Specifically, I think it says that with the shift towards quickplay, no new maps have had a chance to get any traction with anyone BUT the comp community. Maybe that's the real reason Valve's most recent acquisitions have all been comp focused, not that they're deliberately catering to that group. And that's why we desperately need the workshop.

 

[Crash]

Comp maps get played a lot. Valve wants to pick up maps that are played a lot, as they are proven to be appreciated by the community. Quickplay is hurting non-comp maps chances drastically due to this.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Comp players are much more willing to play/download custom maps then regular players, which is probably why comp focused maps often get played more.

I do think Valve should be adding a mix of comp focused maps and non comp/pub focused community maps to the game. Just because a map is comp focused doesn't mean it's going to be popular with pubs, although Process and Snakewater are great they aren't played a whole ton on pub servers.

 

[henke37]

I think it is as simple as casual players being idiots who barely understand that there is more than one map in the game. They need all the nudging they can get.

 

[Bunbun]

Why don't we just kidnap Gaben?

 

[CommodoreKong]

Why don't we just kidnap Gaben?

Not a bad plan, we don't give him back until the TF2 team adds at least a dozen new community maps, so they'll probably never get him back.

 

[takabuschik]

Yeah let's kidnap him. Sounds like a good plan. We force Valve to get snowplow and another bunch of community maps into the game, release source 2 for tf2 as well, and everybody goes back home happy.
But where should we store him? in the forums? in the server? I'm afraid both places are rather easy to get to and if the rest of Valve would try to rescue him they will find him rather quickly.

 

[Géza!]

Yeah let's kidnap him. Sounds like a good plan. We force Valve to get snowplow and another bunch of community maps into the game, release source 2 for tf2 as well, and everybody goes back home happy.
But where should we store him? in the forums? in the server? I'm afraid both places are rather easy to get to and if the rest of Valve would try to rescue him they will find him rather quickly.

A Gaben containment unit must be constructed, containing a variety of special novelty knives to distract him from calling Valve or the authorities.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Well it's looking pretty likely that the Steam Summer Sale will start June 11th, which means we will likely be getting a major TF2 update soon. Who knows maybe this update the TF2 team will finally buy some more community maps.

 

[Crash]

Suppose it's worth mentioning here, but there have been some rumors of a map workshop possibly coming in the near future (Valve time). We should hear more about it soon.