How to bring FF a New Generation

[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.

[Undecied]

4est: Anyway, what's your Fortress Forever question?
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: well bascially the story goes that i heard about FF from a guy on a random tf2 server
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i tired it and i found it pretty niffty to say the least
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: after a day or two staff members went on a server and asked people if they could make videos for FF since one of them didn't have time and one didn't have hard drive space
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: so i decied to try and help out and made this (was a video i made)
4est: ohhhhh
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: it isn't super good
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: it like my first video
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but it 1080p and i fixed the awful captions to atuaclly macth what it going on
4est: heh - funny thing is - I've never seen the tutorial
4est: That was soooo long in the making
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: bet it was
4est: There were just always bigger fish to fry and the torial kept getting delayed
4est: I like it though - this is sweet
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: the video is just me doing it so it has some mess ups
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but i thought it was ok to show hwat not to do
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: what*
4est: it give a good intro of what things can be done in the game
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: I agree that the tutorial does help with movement mechanics
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but a tutorial on the classes is probably needed too
4est: The movement and speed of TFC hooked me... back in.. wow how many years now? It might have been 1997?
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i tired TFC on steam and couldn't get into it
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: it made no sense to me
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but the tutorial helped ease me into FF'
4est: TFC is much better in a league environment or on a server frequented by league players. I've not played since FF beta.
4est: Yeah - FF released and then TF2 released like two weeks later. FF did not have a turorial and a lot of people just didn't get it.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: But now alot of people are getting bored with TF2
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: so FF could get a huge influx of players that want something new
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but that the main problem i keep coming back to and why i messaged you
4est: I sure hope so
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: FF has 0 publicity
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: nothing
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: I heard from a FF teacher that they making a competitve video
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: that seems downright stupid to me condsidering the coumminty is so small
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: so i just wanted to offer some help if you guy wanted it, but it realyl hard since there is no good way to contact the staff
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: guys*
4est: yeah - most of the devs just went inactive. I went about 2 years without playing until the release on STEAM.
4est: Squeek. is the one to message on the forums or possibly on STEAM or IRC
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i tried to friend him like you
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but he hasn't accepted
4est: He's been the lead for quite some time. A ton of content, ideas, and help have come from people who just wanted to help. I got on the team from doing beta testing, a ton of forum work and eventually making the installers for the game. We only had zip file releases up to that point.
4est: Anyway - I think it's great you want to help. Lets see what I do.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: yeah i think i can at least record some things for you guys
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i don't know how to edit
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but i can compress the stuff
4est: I think the forums might be a place to start. There is a "Fortress Media" section.
4est: Maybe if you made a post stating you'd like to help create promotional content, you could get some replies.
4est: Hopefully some likeminded guys would have ideas to work together on new promos.
4est: I've been out of contact with the team for so long I just don't know who is doing that sort of thing these days. I only started playing again upon the STEAM release.
4est: oh - let me check some of the dev forums for any promo stuff
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: yeah form the sounds of it they need to make it easier to figure out how to talk with them.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: the steam group is only good for find the top people since it has 100,000 + random people in it
4est: Good point - we need feedback from new players and those with suggestions
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: ok it 4,000 +
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but yeah
4est: well our "PR" thread is pretty dead other than a recent post about redoing the website.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: yeah it kinda seems like it hasen't got an update since they started
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: werid considering the home page looks modern
4est: OH - we do have a "Public to Team Communication" forum
4est: (Was the link to the public to team communication forum)
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: guess i need an account
4est: yeah - the General area might be a good place to though out your thoughs to reach the most people and then follow-up with a thread in the "Public to Team Comm" forum
4est: throw*
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i'll try to do that
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i want this game to succed because it really good in my eyes
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but without a big coumminty it will only be the same 20+ guys playing every day thogether
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: together*
4est: Yeah - releasing at the same time as TF2 just killed us. However, a lot of the team just kept going. The whole reason this mod was built was because hardcore TFC guys gave up on the version of the game ever being made by Valve.
4est: You are totally right - new players are the lifeblood of any game and we need promo.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: yeah
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i dont want this to become super monday night combat the game wtih 5 guys
4est: Occassionally we get a video review but the reviews seem to never know how to play affectively and don't show the game in the best light.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: yeah it all works off each other
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: FF needs publicity, an update to the webstie to make it easier to understand and look more modern, the game needs to have at least a tutorial on the basics of each class, etc.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: I not saying that easy at all
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but they need to get done
4est: We do have a Wiki with a lot of info but that requires a lot reading and jumping around. Accessible info in-game would help.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: yeah
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: a wiki should be extra help or be full of intresting facts for people trying to understand mroe aobut the game's underlying mechanics
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: not nescessary
4est: true
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: the biggest thing that needs to happen in FF is to try and help people that come from TF2.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i really think that where the new player base can come
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: from
4est: yes - and well - do have a little help for that but it's from teh Wiki again - one sec.
4est: "TF2 Player's Guide to FF" (Was a link to a steam guide on how to play FF for TF2 players)
4est: It's amazing to see how many scouts go attacking other's or playing defence. That's an immediate sign of a TF2 player.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: and it not thier fault
4est: The gameplay is different enough that a new person can just get owned and not know what to do.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: not to mention a few coumminty members are a bit mean when someone does something like that
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: like they expect them to know
4est: yes - people are idiots. You never insult newbies for being new. We need newbies.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: also that guide does has nice tips i will admit that
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but it blandly designed
4est: Making that into some sort of in-game link would help a lot
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: yeha
4est: oh - definitely bland - it's just a wiki
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: (Was a link to the classes section of the TF2 offical wiki)
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: taht how a game wiki should look
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: intresting, full of pictures, and fits the games theme
4est: That is nice
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i not trying to dump on Ff
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: that why i talking to you
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but FF needs to "step up its game" as it were if it wants to live
4est: It's just hard to pull off after all these years and a volunteer only staff. Getting paid to make things like a Wiki makes a HUGE difference. So most of the effort has gone into the game and very little into the items you've mentioned.
4est: I really hope the new interest sparks more "energy" and work on the game.
4est: My shift changes soon so hopefully I can go back to being an active contributor to the game and community.
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: that would be nice
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i do think that people want to do stuff like me
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: but it so hard to try and find someone to talk to that they give up
[-XRC-] [CG] The Undecided Gamer: i thought you guys just blocked me becuase of the rampant phipsers
4est: Yeah - we need a pathway to contributing
4est: Please do join the forums and make a post about this in the General area. Be sure to include how we need to make it easier for new people to contribute.

[homie in reboks']

Any way I could get the condensed version?

[caesium]

Hi! I agree with most of what you say (didn't make it through the second post yet though). Some thoughts of mine...

I'd love to see more well made videos from public server play - footage clearly showing what's going on (I find ppl not familier with FF often complain the footage is too confusing to follow) and conveying the strengths of each class and the point of the gamemodes. Perhaps extended clips that link together to cover the entirity of a cap or even successive caps on avd maps (rather than the usual collection of unrelated highlights).

I've been wanting to make a short (~2 mins) video tutorial for each class explaining the basics and clearly showing it being used appropriately, but I never find the time. It would be great if someone else did this (or helped me!).

In my experience most ppl are nice to newcomers, but all it takes is one dick to be a dick to make newcomers feel unwelcome and unwilling to ask for help. Perhaps then the problem isn't the readyness of most players to help newcomers, but the lack of readyness of most players to clamp down on the minority who are dicks? Whenever we see someone being given the "this isn't TF2 kid" line of insults, rather than just let it slide (which is something I admit I do too often) maybe more of us should step in at that point to offer friendly and constructive help.

[Undecied]

I'm glad you liked my post Caesium and yeah I know that my posts were very long and complicated sorry :C. I just posted a general list of what I said in the first post so hopefully more people will understand what I said in it and be able to more onto the second post easier if they want to know where I got the ideas from.

[Undecied]

Yeah sorry it is so long, just felt that I had to get all that I needed to say off my chest. So I will try to give a very brief list of what I generally said:


1. FF needs an image and I think videos from the community would be a good thing to give it one.


The side note was about FF community member (homie in reboks')'s idea on a competitive FF video. I utterly respect him for making a video and truly hope that it is high quality and does FF the justice that I believe he wants to give it. I just stated that I feel that we need to focus more on growing the player base to give the competitive side of FF more significance to a wider audience.


2. The staff need to update the forums to make them look more modern so more people will realize that they are alive.


The side note was about how they need to use steam as a resource to have people talk to them as well.


3. FF is complicated and very different from modern shooters that many people play today. I suggest that the tutorial be more prominent, that they make a new tutorial that talks about the general uses of all the classes and how they work, that they make new videos on YouTube to help people with problems they may find in FF, and make every one of those things accessible by TF2 players.


The side note was about the FF wiki needing a big overhaul to make it both look nicer and give better info.

4. The FF community needs to make sure that they treat new players well and not insult them or else they will never gain a big player base.


Hope that makes it easier to understand.

[homie in reboks']

Originally Posted by Undecied

The side note was about a rumor I heard about the FF staff making a competitive video (i heard it from an FF teacher in gamer) which I think is a bad idea since they need to make videos that draw in people first before making competitive videos.

This was my idea, and I'm not an FF staff member.

Why don't you think competitive videos draw people in? Which has more views: How to bhop in cs:go or NiP vs Fnatic finals match?

[Undecied]

I'm sorry to have been mistaken, as i said it was a rumor and i didn't even know if it was true. I will edit my post to say that you came up with the idea. Also it is true that NiP vs Fnatic does get more views than a random How to bhop in cs:go video, but that is because it already has a gigantic player base set in. If only 40+ people played cs:go would the finals match between NiP vs Fnatic hold any clout to get those massive views? That's my reasoning in the post with regards to competitive videos in FF. The player base is so small that any competitive videos that would be seen by that small player base would only be important to them. So I believe that videos telling people how to first get into the game will allow that player base to grow and then allow those that want to become even better in it go into the competitive scene of FF. In short, I didn't mean to insult you in any way for trying to bring out a video for the community. I just feel that we need to focus on things that will be more important to a wider audience to draw them in first, then go into competitive aspects of the community when that player base as grown large enough to have good intrest behind it.

[Spinge Bill]

¿Shall we tell a Vinesauce member about this game? It could give it a nice popularity, without too many normies.

[Patito]

Originally Posted by Spinge Bill

¿Shall we tell a Vinesauce member about this game? It could give it a nice popularity, without too many normies.

I don't think they will ever do such a thing.

[Spinge Bill]

¿What about Jobel?

[trepid_jon]

Every dev hits walls, sometimes once, sometimes many times...with me and some others, it comes and goes. Currently, there is this post-steam wall that most of us are trying to get through. And personally, there's this old Source wall I'm wanting to get through, but every time I start diving into the 2013 port I'm reminded of nightmares.

I still maintain the best thing to do is get FF on Source 2013 with Mac and Linux support as well as many much moosens worth of Steam enhancements, like workshop first and foremost. All that and/or moving to a new engine, preferably Source 2 but we still know nothing about it haha...so the most logical thing is to go all in on the current codebase and make sure it's all as modern as it can be.

Something I've been contemplating has been prototyping a new hunted. I'm obsessed with that mode and think it'd be cool to make a "nextgen" hunted just to make it. Can't decide if I want to start it in Source 2013 or something else like unreal or unity...or fucking source 2 amiright whaaa. But it could just be ff_hunted2 in current FF with all sorts of new junk thrown in separated from current stuff somehow, not for sure yet.

Anyways, squeek is on point. We'll see what happens now. I really think a lot of motivation could come from people seeing/playing something brand new.

You know, Pepsi was once the choice of a new generation...