English Mobster
L6: Sharp Member
- Jul 10, 2011
- 355
- 299
I've reached the point where I don't even care anymore.
"Oooh. There's an all-class hat that looks like the hats those tiny guys with the yellow eyes wear in Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy? Neat."
"There's a Doctor Who bowtie for the Medic and Spy? OHMYGOD."
Yeah, it doesn't fit with the style of the game. It gets rid of the silhouettes, and it's another way for Valve to make money. But as long as it doesn't impact gameplay, I'm fine. I'll know a Medic is a Medic whether he was a halo floating above his head, a top hat, or a mage's hat, and regardless of if he has a tiny bow tie around his neck or a classy pocket handkerchief tucked into his shirt pocket.
The game is 4 years old. Most game developers don't support a game longer than 1 or 2 years. You don't see new DLC for Halo 3, Activision doesn't support Call of Duty 4, 2K doesn't still patch Bioshock. It's great to still get new official maps and new environments to play on even if it means putting up with side metagames that don't effect gameplay. And all of this new stuff is free. You don't pay Valve $5 to play Viaduct Event or Gullywash. Payload wasn't an exciting new gametype that could be yours if you give Valve $10. It was free, done for a long time as a thanks for the community playing the game.
Nowadays, with sales drooping, Valve has turned to adding in a metagame alongside the stock game, that doesn't effect gameplay. They make money off of this, giving them incentive to continue supporting the game. If there was no money involved, if everyone who would have gotten the game already would have bought it, then they would have given up support for the game long ago.
While it's true that they've recently allowed this to take over the TF2 business model and created this new way of earning money through metagames rather than the old way of doing things to thank the playerbase, at the very least they're keeping the player base strong, keeping the game fresh and preventing everything from going stale. Think of hats like the Horse Armor DLC in Oblivion, purely cosmetic things you can buy to make yourself look better.
The moment they begin making weapons that effect gameplay and are uncraftable and undroppable, then I shall be upset. But for now, at least this game is still alive.
Try joining a server from any other non-Valve game released in 2007. See how long it takes you to find a full one.
E: Ninja'd by Grazr. You make valid points about paints, but I do raise a question about all-class hats. I concede most of the point, assuming a class wearing an all-class hat is in cover and you can only see the top of their hat, but how often does that situation occur? For the most part (although not always) cover is high enough where you can't see a character at all, or low enough to expose their head. I disagree with items like Monoculus or the HHH's Head which obscure the entire head of a character, but for the most part, hats don't make a character any stronger or weaker. The only time it may have any effect is in a VERY situational... situation, and even then you wouldn't be able to kill them anyway, since hats don't modify hitboxes (or at least I don't think so).
If you see the top of a hat exposed, then if that class WASN'T wearing a hat, you wouldn't be able to see it at all. If anything, it gives you a bit of an advantage, telling you that there is someone there, hiding, where otherwise you wouldn't know.
I do agree with you on non-team colored paints. A lime green Ghibus poking out the top of a piece of cover would warrant me shooting some rockets at it, even if it turned out the owner was a teammate.
Immersion... Well, that differs from person to person, doesn't it? I've always thought of TF2 like a big cartoon. The plot doesn't always make sense, and nothing takes itself seriously. While I agree that going down the path of things that don't fit characters was a bit of a mistake (Saharan Spy, Wee Booties, Machina, Bison, etc.), it's over now, there's no going back. I can't justify it in game logic, so I assume it's just sort of the cartoon aspect, where anything goes and nothing has to make too much sense if you think about it long enough. I get immersed by stories, and story in TF2 isn't exactly the strongest thing about it. 2 teams hate each other, the world is owned by corporations, these corporations hire mercenaries to beat the hell out of each other and try to put the other out of business. With lasers. And missiles. And bombs on minecarts.
It doesn't make much sense, but I enjoy it. Although I can't say I'm completely immersed to the point of Skyrim, which has thousands of READABLE individual books, each the length of a considerably long newspaper article, as well as a complex mythology dating back thousands of years with very few contradictions compared to other stories with a mythos of its size (Star Wars Expanded Universe, lookin' at you), it's enough to make me laugh. I never have taken TF2 seriously, even back in the day before the Medic or Scout updates, back when TF2 first came out.
I don't play TF2 as often, either. My current gameplay statistics screen looks EXACTLY like yours, minus the Warhammer. Not because I don't like TF2 or don't find it fun, but simply because I haven't found the time to play, and the people I play with in the pubs have no skill whatsoever and it's simply not as fun to sit there and backstab the same Pyro for the 12th time because he has no idea how to find and kill me. For the time being, I have Skyrim taking up my free time, and I'll probably continue to play Skyrim and Minecraft until I get the urge to dominate people that don't know what a rocketjump is by Market Gardening them to death in TF2. Or until the next TF2M gameday or impromptu, when I can actually fight people of equal or greater skill.
I would use TF2 Lobby if it didn't take so damn long to get a group of players together, if everyone wasn't afraid to deal with the stress of being a Medic, and if half the players didn't drop by the time we finally got ingame.
"Oooh. There's an all-class hat that looks like the hats those tiny guys with the yellow eyes wear in Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy? Neat."
"There's a Doctor Who bowtie for the Medic and Spy? OHMYGOD."
Yeah, it doesn't fit with the style of the game. It gets rid of the silhouettes, and it's another way for Valve to make money. But as long as it doesn't impact gameplay, I'm fine. I'll know a Medic is a Medic whether he was a halo floating above his head, a top hat, or a mage's hat, and regardless of if he has a tiny bow tie around his neck or a classy pocket handkerchief tucked into his shirt pocket.
The game is 4 years old. Most game developers don't support a game longer than 1 or 2 years. You don't see new DLC for Halo 3, Activision doesn't support Call of Duty 4, 2K doesn't still patch Bioshock. It's great to still get new official maps and new environments to play on even if it means putting up with side metagames that don't effect gameplay. And all of this new stuff is free. You don't pay Valve $5 to play Viaduct Event or Gullywash. Payload wasn't an exciting new gametype that could be yours if you give Valve $10. It was free, done for a long time as a thanks for the community playing the game.
Nowadays, with sales drooping, Valve has turned to adding in a metagame alongside the stock game, that doesn't effect gameplay. They make money off of this, giving them incentive to continue supporting the game. If there was no money involved, if everyone who would have gotten the game already would have bought it, then they would have given up support for the game long ago.
While it's true that they've recently allowed this to take over the TF2 business model and created this new way of earning money through metagames rather than the old way of doing things to thank the playerbase, at the very least they're keeping the player base strong, keeping the game fresh and preventing everything from going stale. Think of hats like the Horse Armor DLC in Oblivion, purely cosmetic things you can buy to make yourself look better.
The moment they begin making weapons that effect gameplay and are uncraftable and undroppable, then I shall be upset. But for now, at least this game is still alive.
Try joining a server from any other non-Valve game released in 2007. See how long it takes you to find a full one.
E: Ninja'd by Grazr. You make valid points about paints, but I do raise a question about all-class hats. I concede most of the point, assuming a class wearing an all-class hat is in cover and you can only see the top of their hat, but how often does that situation occur? For the most part (although not always) cover is high enough where you can't see a character at all, or low enough to expose their head. I disagree with items like Monoculus or the HHH's Head which obscure the entire head of a character, but for the most part, hats don't make a character any stronger or weaker. The only time it may have any effect is in a VERY situational... situation, and even then you wouldn't be able to kill them anyway, since hats don't modify hitboxes (or at least I don't think so).
If you see the top of a hat exposed, then if that class WASN'T wearing a hat, you wouldn't be able to see it at all. If anything, it gives you a bit of an advantage, telling you that there is someone there, hiding, where otherwise you wouldn't know.
I do agree with you on non-team colored paints. A lime green Ghibus poking out the top of a piece of cover would warrant me shooting some rockets at it, even if it turned out the owner was a teammate.
Immersion... Well, that differs from person to person, doesn't it? I've always thought of TF2 like a big cartoon. The plot doesn't always make sense, and nothing takes itself seriously. While I agree that going down the path of things that don't fit characters was a bit of a mistake (Saharan Spy, Wee Booties, Machina, Bison, etc.), it's over now, there's no going back. I can't justify it in game logic, so I assume it's just sort of the cartoon aspect, where anything goes and nothing has to make too much sense if you think about it long enough. I get immersed by stories, and story in TF2 isn't exactly the strongest thing about it. 2 teams hate each other, the world is owned by corporations, these corporations hire mercenaries to beat the hell out of each other and try to put the other out of business. With lasers. And missiles. And bombs on minecarts.
It doesn't make much sense, but I enjoy it. Although I can't say I'm completely immersed to the point of Skyrim, which has thousands of READABLE individual books, each the length of a considerably long newspaper article, as well as a complex mythology dating back thousands of years with very few contradictions compared to other stories with a mythos of its size (Star Wars Expanded Universe, lookin' at you), it's enough to make me laugh. I never have taken TF2 seriously, even back in the day before the Medic or Scout updates, back when TF2 first came out.
I don't play TF2 as often, either. My current gameplay statistics screen looks EXACTLY like yours, minus the Warhammer. Not because I don't like TF2 or don't find it fun, but simply because I haven't found the time to play, and the people I play with in the pubs have no skill whatsoever and it's simply not as fun to sit there and backstab the same Pyro for the 12th time because he has no idea how to find and kill me. For the time being, I have Skyrim taking up my free time, and I'll probably continue to play Skyrim and Minecraft until I get the urge to dominate people that don't know what a rocketjump is by Market Gardening them to death in TF2. Or until the next TF2M gameday or impromptu, when I can actually fight people of equal or greater skill.
I would use TF2 Lobby if it didn't take so damn long to get a group of players together, if everyone wasn't afraid to deal with the stress of being a Medic, and if half the players didn't drop by the time we finally got ingame.
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