[Undecied]

Hello everyone one I’m Undecied (yes I know it's wrong I spell it that way on purpose). For the past few weeks I've been introduced into the world of FF. I've grown to love the game for its high energy, pretty nice community, and just the craziness of game modes like water polo and hunted. Yet, I can't get my mind off of a lot of problems that this game has, and I’m not talking about things like "is pyro OP?" or "is medic too good?” I feel that there are many things holding this game back from becoming the next big thing on steam. So I came here to try and say my piece on that subject. Know that I will be brutally honest with you guys as I feel that’s the best way to get my points across.


The first major problem that this game has by FAR is image. The problem being that it has none at all. This game is almost invisible on steam and to the steam community. True, one of the problems is that when you try and search up this game it takes you almost having to spell out the whole name to get any responses. However, the big one is just general word of mouth. Let's take my introduction into the world of FF as an example. I was just playing on a random server when a guy just started talking about this game. Everyone in the server (including me) was utter confounded as to what Fortress Forever was. I mean no one but the guy himself has any idea what he was talking about. However, my curiosity was peaked and I decided that I would try out this game, eventually my experiences led me here.

Now some of you may not view my experience as evidence that this game has no publicity, and you would be right in not taking one piece of evidence as proof. However, just look at the state of the current player base right now. I've played 25 hours according to steam and the story every one of those hours is that I’m playing with the same people. The people are generally nice and cool to play with no doubt, but playing with the same people on the same servers every day becomes a bore after a while. It's just insane to think that this game doesn't have enough publicity when the game only has about 40+ people that seem to play it every day. I do think that this can be fixed however.


The best way I see to give publicity to this game is by the way of videos. From the look of the media section very few videos are been posted about this game from the community, and the ones on you tube have very few views (notable exceptions being Valve New Networks "Fortress Forever Mod Review" and Machinima's REALLY old "Fortress Forever (With Source Mod Todd)") . Now, I’m not saying I know of a way to magically make people suddenly view Fortress Forever videos. However, I feel that if more of us tried to spread the word with videos that it would help the community grow a lot.


On a side note, it turns out that a fellow FF community member (homie in reboks') had the idea of making a competitive video for FF. I applaud his commitment to the FF community to spend time making a video for the community and I wish him the best of luck in how the video turns out. I still stand by my statement that I feel we need to make more people interested in the FF community with general videos before going into competitive aspects of the game. That doesn't mean I don't feel that the competitive aspect of FF is any less important than the non-competitive side. I just feel that to have a good competitive scene we need a larger player base than the one we currently have.


The Second major problem with this game is the ability to get in contact with anyone on the staff. Now you may be saying right now "but you're on the forums right now dummy!” which is a good observation to make. That is just it however, this site is just plain ugly and old looking. It looks like it hasn't seen any use since the space jam site came up. The general layout of things I admit is quite easy to follow, and it has a gigantic FAQ (props to whoever did that must have taken forever). Yet, this doesn't matter if anyone looking at the site things "Jeez this looks old...I guess it's dead." That was my first thought on seeing these forums and I only discovered they weren't dead by looking around a bit. This seems quite strange since the homepage for FF is very modern looking and looks quite nice, but it leads to this old looking section. I've heard from the staff member 4est, who gave me the idea to post this that this site was going to be remade possibly. If so, then I strongly urge you to do it as fast as possible so more people can get the message from visuals along that this game's community is still kicking.


On a side note, the staff should allow comments in their home pages one steam to allow people to talk to them about thing there are well. I send friend requests both 4est and Squeek and had to wait days before 4est eventually accepted my request to even try and talk to a staff member from there. I realize that this forum may have been your main mode of communication between community members, but since you're on steam you should try and take advantage of the fact you now have yet another way of communicating to those who don't know about that yet.


The third problem with this game is that it is very complicated in nature and way different from TF2. NO, I’m not saying to make the game like TF2 at all or "dumb down" the mechanics. However, for new players this game is really strange compared to most modern FPS games and I feel that the TF2 player base is the one that is most likely to give this game a try. This puts making the game very accessible to new people very high up on the chain of priorities. Now, it's true that the game gives you a lot of hints when playing the game (sometimes the pop up so frequently it a bit annoying but whatever), and the game has a tutorial on how to do important movement mechanics right inside the main start up menu. To be fair, these things are quite nice and can really help a new player coming into the game, but there are problems with them.

For starters, the hints are just hints and nothing more. They may help you figure out things a bit quicker by trying to explain what you're doing wrong at the time, but they don't show examples. The tutorial on the other hand is really good and I feel that it really did help me get into the game, and I feel that without it i wouldn't have gotten into FF as much as i did. Yet, it's the only tutorial in the game (plus it's pretty easy to not see it on the menu since it's near the bottom). That's not nearly enough in terms of tutorials when it comes to this game. There should at least be another tutorial explaining the general basics of each class and what they're good and not good at. For example, a player from TF2 may come into FF really wanting to play scout. He destroyed people as scout in TF2 and he is going to do it all over again here. However, when he gets in the game (hopefully after doing the movement tutorial) he starts getting stomped by everyone that he tries to kill. Eventually, he's either going to switch classes or get annoyed enough that he doesn't want to play anymore and leaves.


Now some of you looked at that and are saying to me "you're wrong about him not know that scout can't kill people. It says what he's for in the description of the class." This is true and i admit that those little descriptions for each class are a nice touch, but let’s be real here for a second. When you start an FPS are you really going to look at the small text in the bottom left corner of your screen, or are you going to just click the class and just start fighting. I know I did when i first started playing and I took me a while to get the concept that not every class is made to both do things and kill people like in TF2 (as an aside I have over 2000+ hours in that game so I reasonably know that many TF2 players will make that mistake). I feel that these problems can be avoided however.


For starters, make a new tutorial that is about how each class in general and what their main functions are. This should help people from playing scout like his TF2 version that can actually kill people well. Secondly, make sure that the tutorials are front and center on the main menu to make sure new players see that there is something that can help them get started. Thirdly, start making videos and posting them on YouTube to try and help people who go there first for answers on how the game works. Many people go on YouTube when they need answers and it's both a good way for both publicity and to help new players. Finally, every one of those things needs to be very accessible to the average TF2 player as they could be the new building blocks of this game.


On a side note, I know there is a wiki for this game. However, it’s pretty badly designed. Everything is so boring and bland with the colors mainly being white and black, with just a few pictures sprinkled in. The game should really "feel" like FF with a color scheme matching the game and having plenty of pictures to keep someone interested in what they're reading. It also needs to give more detailed information about things like how fast the sniper charges, the top speed in game, how much hp infection takes away, etc. In short, make it have so many numbers and facts that anyone really interested in the game can learn more about it to get better. As an example of what to do look no further than the Official TF2 wiki's home page (https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Main_Page). It has everything that a wiki needs in that one page and that goes for the rest of the site as well. It has a color scheme that is interesting and matches the game's "feel", it has a lot of pictures to draw in the eye and keep one's interest, and by god when you go to a page like the classes (https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Classes) it has numbers for days.


Fourth and final, this game's community needs to lighten up on new players. Now I know some of you are thinking that this makes no sense considering I said this game's community is pretty nice, and I do think that it's nice. However, when you're playing scout for around the first time and a guy says "This isn't TF2 kid" it kind of gets under my skin a little. It gets under my skin not only for making fun of new players that are trying to get used to a game they've never played before, but it's so counterproductive to what I hear EVERYONE saying about the game. I hear "we need new players!" and I think hear "go back to TF2 noob!" right after, it's just plain madding. I know a lot of you guys have years of experience over me and it may seem like I’m just a random guy with only 25 hours of game time, but that's just the point. I'm the new life blood of your game and this is what I’m hearing to many times in games to other people, it just makes me want to stop playing at that moment. So while I understand that it may be hard to not get mad when that scout trying to kill that heavy, when that medic doesn't heal you goes to crowbar that sentry, and when that sniper thinks he can Rambo a pyro with his assault rifle, just remember that these players are probably trying their best.


So that's my very long and complicated ramblings on what I think can bring FF a new generation of players. I know some may think that I've been dragging on the FF community and staff in a harsh manner after reading this, but it isn't my intention to make people mad or sad. My intention is to help propel a game that has filled a void in my gaming heart for a long time. I loved playing TF2 and used to do it all the time, yet over the years it became clear to a lot of people that Vavle has lost a big amount of their of interest in the game and it has stagnated as a result. This game allowed me to have a fun, challenging FPS that still had the same familiar feel of TF2, but with a few new interesting twists. So I’m by no means saying FF is bad in this post to you all. I only wish to explain what I see are big flaws that are keeping this game from going from 40+ players to 1000+, 4000+, or more. I thank all who were able to read though my rambling and hope that you still have fun playing FF.


Also, below this post is another post with the main portion of my chat with 4est that inspired me to make this post in the first place.