Team Fortress 2

[episkopos]

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1687161

Maybe if Team Fortress 2's feature creep gets to a certain point, FF might not look so bad.

On a more serious note, this is why FF needs a good tutorial.

[Bridget]

Team Fortress 2's beginner integration is intimidating because the game offers so much. Fortress Forever's beginner integration is intimidating because the game offers so much unintuitive bullshit. In Team Fortress 2, the standard is pretty low. Doing something like a Rocket Jump is exceptional due to its difficulty. In Fortress Forever, difficult mechanics are not exceptional. They are accepted as the standard. This is why people don't give two shits about playing this game. It's purposely difficult to appeal to people who think they're pros because they grow a tolerance to bad design choices. It's really comparing apples to oranges.

[stray kitten]

TF2 Rocket Jump
Aim down, jump/fire rocket, direction you go depends on movement speed and angle of projectile along with splash effect from in game objects.

FF Rocket Jump
Aim down, jump/fire rocket, direction you go depends on movement speed and angle of projectile along with splash effect from in game objects.

Exceptional?

The timing is a little harder in TF2 to be consistent plus you take more damage until you get a damage reduction item. Wait I wouldn't say harder, just different. They do use different engines after all.

just sayin' However the main point of this thread is missing. New FF players aren't pros. Any assistance that can receive to enjoy the game is welcome. Any good game on the market comes with a tutorial to orient the new player to the environment. In fact it's not just considered standard. It's now expected and reviews of the game can suffer within the industry when it's lacking or not sufficient.

[Raynian]

Bridget's probably QQing about stuff like bhop and conc jumps again - things which are OMGSOHARD to do.

Yep, hold down space (or jump queue if you want) and strafe+turn the mouse. It was a lot harder in TFC, but in FF it's so easy you can teach a newbie how to do decently well in 10 minutes, provided there's a tutorial.

Which we need, of course.

Concing is easy as well when you have a tutorial (jump as your conc goes off - for added boost, swing your mouse like a baseball bat!), as is trimping and and other movement skills.

Honestly learning all the shit in TF2 is aggravating as hell, but nowhere near the frustration of having to GET all of it. There's a huge skill curve in TF2 I see all the time. Experienced players will rock the shit out of pubs, and I have no clue how they manage it. Clearly there must be SOMETHING to strive for. I'm certain newbies to FF get the same feeling, but at least the barrier isn't "you can't do this until you play 500 hours or spend $50", it's instead "you can't do this until you ask someone how to do it (or watch a tutorial)".

I'd go with FF's style any day of the week.

[Crazycarl]

The only problem I have with TF2's unlocks is with the spy. It's confusing as hell until you figure out exactly what gear the spy is using, and then if your team doesn't catch on you're still screwed.

FF's problem is we are balancing the game specifically for skilled players and the skills they've been honing for years. I mean, if we assume that people can reliably circle sentries and conc scoop the flag, and we buff defense with that in mind, we risk making things prohibitively hard for new players. You should be able to play without ever bhopping or aircontrolling, just less effectively.

[Majesty]

I like FF, although my dev tag is like wearing an FF t-shirt, I initially enjoyed it. There are so many good players and not so many on my level which I consider intermediate: I can RJ/ Bhop/ Conc, etc, but I'm still learning the ins and outs of the levels. The main cause of displeasure is getting ratios like 20 to 1 because of bastards like skeed, chef, elmo, to name a few. Elmo telling me he is bored of medic because he played it for 8 years, lol. My jaw dropped and I thought of soul calibur's intensive learning curve.

TF2's new items did feel refreshing. Now after reading the OP's thread about TF2 items, I'm somewhat intrigued as every solution seems to create some type of problem, eventually. Although, the ops friend quitting after 3 hours seems a bit, well, lame. I agree with the points about MMO(item based games/my loot is better than your loot)-- an aspect that shouldn't be in TF2.

The thing is, whether we like it or not, most of the gaming population are not very good at gaming. Movement has become drastically simplistic to accommodate new gamers and the console controllers. And now adept gamers(oldschool PC gamers) have to wait for the rest of society to play catch up. Halo(crouch), COD(sprinting/proning), Black Ops (leaping), Mirrors Edge(parkour), Brink (Combines black ops, mirrors edge, TF). It seems console games are progressing, but then what happens when the next generation of players who pick up the controller and can't understand what to do? Thoughts?

[Ink.]

This was one of my initial thoughts when I started playing this game a few days ago. Execution wise, FF is way easier than TFC. I applaud the way FF handled Bunny Hopping which just totally shunned out novices in TFC. Now it is easy to do.

FF needs a more loud and flashy tutorial. One that really says "hey ass hole, read this shit!". Perhaps it can be like TF2 where with every load screen, they'll be new information.

From an offensive point of view (and TFs offense is what makes the game so unique), novices would really just need to get the basics of Concing down. There is already advertisement for concing, but there needs to be more. It should be in my opinion, a heavy selling point for the game. If people see that speed is a major focal point of why this game is so fun, they might be eager to play it just due to how unique it is.

[episkopos]

The thread I'm linking to wasn't started by me btw, it was just something I noticed that I found interesting. I'd say I'm of pretty average skill: my grasp of aspect of ff like concing, bhopping, trimping is pretty good, but my grasp of general fps skills like twitch aim is pretty poor.

[KubeDawg]

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

The only problem I have with TF2's unlocks is with the spy. It's confusing as hell until you figure out exactly what gear the spy is using, and then if your team doesn't catch on you're still screwed.

FF's problem is we are balancing the game specifically for skilled players and the skills they've been honing for years. I mean, if we assume that people can reliably circle sentries and conc scoop the flag, and we buff defense with that in mind, we risk making things prohibitively hard for new players. You should be able to play without ever bhopping or aircontrolling, just less effectively.

Have you ever considered that new players might not have a rough time learning how to play? I learned to play TFC all those years ago just by playing and learning how the game works. What ever happened to that? I think a training map is probably the best way to give newcomers an idea just how complex and exciting this game can be.

[episkopos]

Originally Posted by KubeDawg

Have you ever considered that new players might not have a rough time learning how to play? I learned to play TFC all those years ago just by playing and learning how the game works. What ever happened to that? I think a training map is probably the best way to give newcomers an idea just how complex and exciting this game can be.

I can't say I had any problems learning how to play FF, and I'm not a TFC veteran. I played, read the wiki, watched a couple of tutorial videos. It was fun.

[Crazycarl]

Originally Posted by KubeDawg

Have you ever considered that new players might not have a rough time learning how to play? I learned to play TFC all those years ago just by playing and learning how the game works. What ever happened to that? I think a training map is probably the best way to give newcomers an idea just how complex and exciting this game can be.

You will have a rough time if you play with vets and they continually stomp you to the point where you have no chance of success. We could try and separate people by skill, but the community is a little too small for that. The ideal situation would be that players of different skill levels could mix and still have fun. The newbs would do kind of OK but they'd learn faster by being in contact with vets and seeing what they do.

As an example of my earlier point--players may say that SGs are too easy to destroy, because they've been practicing how to kill them for 12 years now. If our response is to make the SG an absolute beast in damage/push/tracking/health, it shuts out the players who don't know how to deal with that. The engy becomes OP in lower-tier games.

So even if we can't make mixed-skill games fun for everyone, we should probably design with that goal in mind, because it helps us balance the game for everyone.

[AfterShock]

Disguising and cloaking are really newb unfriendly, frustrating, and confusing? STOP THE PRESS

[moosh]

Chess is newb unfriendly because it takes time to get good at. Does that make it a bad game?

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by moosh

Chess is newb unfriendly because it takes time to get good at. Does that make it a bad game?

Makes it totally unfair for when noobs play against masters.

[Lynus]

FF needs a more loud and flashy tutorial. One that really says "hey ass hole, read this shit!". Perhaps it can be like TF2 where with every load screen, they'll be new information.

this minus the grammar mistakes.

[Crazycarl]

Originally Posted by moosh

Chess is newb unfriendly because it takes time to get good at. Does that make it a bad game?

If you play chess against a master you will learn something even if he destroys you. The difference between a master and the rest of us is internal--the amount of research and thought and reading they've done about the game. There are no special chess moves that only the pros can do.

[Crazycarl]

Originally Posted by Lynus

this minus the grammar mistakes.

I want this but I've been told that the loading screen is not very customizable with the SDK code.

[GenghisTron]

You guys can continue to tell us your story about how you picked up the game apparently no problem, but your experience doesn't automatically apply to everyone else, and it's unreasonable to suggest that others are in the wrong for not picking up the game so easily. Instead of flagellating yourself, and ignoring the tragedy (Thousands of new players play this game, and magically disappear after a month), how about you guys come up with some constructive criticism. There's *obviously* a problem with the game that is driving new-comers away. Maybe it's too hard to pick up, or maybe there's nothing keeping players playing (some people are harder to please than others). I repeat, instead of aggrandizing your own ego and proclaiming that you don't need vanity items and achievements to keep you playing, or training levels to help you get good, it all means nothing if thousands of potential community members never have the chance to realize the greatness of this mod.

PS: I see nothing wrong with the training level.

[Majesty]

Now that I think about it, most of what I learned came from watching pickup matches

[Pixel]

Originally Posted by moosh

Chess is newb unfriendly because it takes time to get good at. Does that make it a bad game?

It makes it an unfun game