FF alive or dead? - Page 6

battery · 05-05-2009, 02:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ihmhi

FF is only dead if you let it die. I can only do so much as a P.R. guy. It ultimately falls to the community to go out there, play, and introduce other people to the game. And even then, only the pub community would be dead. We're gonna keep working towards our collective vision of what we want FF to be. You can make your case - and many of you have - and we will listen to it.

The sooner you forget this backward concept, the better it is for the future of FF. The evangelical community you imagine does not exist. It failed to bring in people. Yes. It tried and failed. This is worse than not trying at all, because, before it tries, one can have hope that the community may be capable. After the failed attempt, we have proof that current small community we have here, can't be rely upon for outreach activities. There isn't enough peer pressure for new players to stick around and learn to play the game right.

Please don't fall into the trap of trying the same thing over and over, wishing for a miracle. Keep trying, but try something different. Encouraging us to play the game and spread the word certainly MAY help. But do realize this is nothing more than counting pennies. I think Orange Box and publication on Steam are more promising approaches.

Ihmhi · 05-05-2009, 03:22 AM

Did you perhaps miss the parts where I said we are not yet publishing on Steam and Orange Box is still a work in progress?

battery · 05-05-2009, 05:03 AM

Those are promising approaches. That's why you guys are willing to invest time in them.

But why put everything in one basket? Doesn't it make sense to brainstorm other marketing ideas while Orange Box is in development?

R00Kie · 05-05-2009, 05:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHURCHMOUTH

i think it was in PC gamer magazine like back before it was even out or something? anyone else remember that

EvilIguana966 · 05-06-2009, 08:43 PM

I think that in order to attract new players, FF will have to scale back some of the complexity that allows experienced players to be so powerful. I don't think you have to go as far as TF2, lest you remove the features that differentiate the games, but you do have to attempt to look at this mod through the eyes of a new player. If you are a newbie, and your first experiences are against a skilled grenadier or a scout moving at what seems like light speed, you will be intimidated and quite likely write the whole thing off as insane and counter intuitive. Here are a few of my thoughts on how to alter the game to be more intuitive.

Grenades

The TF/TFC/FF grenade system makes little sense. Why can these people throw grenades while shooting their other weapons? As it is, grenades seem like a tacked on feature that just makes you click an extra button for a kill rather than anything tactically interesting. Simply making you unable to use your weapons between priming and throwing a grenade (think Crysis style) would give grenades an actual drawback, and force them to be used with more thought rather than just as an extra attack button you use on hard enemies. This change would require re-balancing the various grenade types so that they each have useful roles.

Speed

Although I don't mind the game speed, I don't think anything was gained by increasing it over what we had in TFC, and for many people it may be uncomfortably fast. Slowing the game physically down a little bit, as well as implementing a respawn timer, would make each life seem a little more consequential and each kill a little more useful.

Armor

One thing TF2 got right was eliminating armor and just using a single health pool. The TF/TFC/FF system of hidden armor types is unintuitive, while also seriously limiting the ability of the medic to have a useful utility role. FF should dump armor and use health.

Medics

One thing TF2 got wrong was its medic. I'm not opposed to medics having a utility role, but in TF2 medics are both extremely powerful and extremely easy to play. So they end up being both absolute necessities and dreadfully boring. Every class in this game should be fighting to some degree, so I support medics having a role beyond "stand behind the heavy and hold mouse1". Doesn't mean we shouldn't be making the medi-pack useful, we should just be encouraging the medic to fight when there is trouble and heal between the fighting parts.

Duplicate Weapons

I don't think many people have a problem with their being a better version of some weapons. The super shotgun and super nailgun exist because some classes deserve better versions of those weapon types. However, it seems a bit odd to give both types to a single class (soldier, HWguy), or to have two similar weapons together (sniper's AR and nailgun). With a bit of work you could adjust things so each class only has one of a given style of weapon.

Concing

The ability to use blasts to move players is too integral an element to remove, but some of the things that people can do with concs are just too powerful. Conc jumping needs to be toned down and multiple conc acrobatics need to be nerfed significantly. A new player is likely to be highly frustrated when he gets no chance to take a shot at a guy who flies through his base at 95 mph.

Molester · 05-06-2009, 09:44 PM

To be honest people just moved on from tfc long before FF was made its really that simple.The player base for tfc was dead or slowing down in 2004 by 2006 it was dead or dieing I mean whatever term you wanna use to explain it slowing down.
I think if FF came out in 2004 even 2006 you would have seen it more popular than ever.
I notice people talking about bhop lets be honest here bhop was a great thing that made tfc worth playing but it was the most exploited thing ever.People used _special to bhop in the beginning then once that ETA mod came out or whatever it was called that stoped the _special command from being used people just used cheats "dll" to bhop which is just a cheat.
And I have a feeling people are using something to the same effect in FF even when they made bhop so easy to do.
I mean trust is a part of the gamming community and I think trust in the tfc gamming community was lost long ago when the loged PP cheats were made and the list was put out of over 80 people that were using this PP cheat those are just the one's that got caught.I really do think this is a part of why more people quit playing tfc or just didn't care anymore.
People in the gamming community started losing trust and just quit playing tfc and moved on for whatever reasons.

Also I wanted to add I don't think everyone cheats i'm just saying that this may be a reason.
I've watched a few matches as best I could with the FF HLTV half the time being crap I never saw anything.

Wisp · 05-06-2009, 11:16 PM

Perhaps instead of trying to tackle all of these issues at once, do it in chunks.

For example, the developers could say...

In v2.4 we are going to focus solely on perfecting the UI and making it easy to understand.
In v2.5 we are going to focus solely on making the maps and game modes easy to understand.
In v2.6 we are going to focus on making the movement style easy to learn.
In v2.7 we are going to focus on making the weapons and classes easy to understand, be unique, and remove any redundancies.

This way the focus is on that one particular issue and no one gets overwhelmed by trying to fight a war on all fronts.

Once the current state of the game seems acceptable, move onto the Orange Box code, deal with bugs, and begin to add new features into the game which turn Fortress Forever into a unique and exciting game. (v3.0)

The ultimate goal of Fortress Forever should be to make this a different game than Team Fortress Classic: Source. But not any time soon, in my opinion.

zE · 05-07-2009, 03:33 AM

All this posts are kinda tf2ish for me, turn the mode = to tf2 and ill nuke u guys !

KubeDawg · 05-07-2009, 06:33 AM

To me, FF will be alive once it's on the OB SDK. Till then, I probably won't be playing much. I still have faith in the current developers and beta testers though. Even if we don't see the OB version soon, it will be out eventually, and that will be a good day for FF.

chilledsanity · 05-07-2009, 11:01 AM

As someone who used to love FF and has basically abandoned it, I thought I'd give some input as to why I quit and rebut a couple points, you can take it as you will. Basically I played TFC/FF for AvD and some of the fun gametypes. I never got into leagues or pickups and CTF pubbing has always felt boring to me. 1.0 I thought was awesome, but had a lot of room for improvement. From 2.0 onward, offense got a lot of bonuses and defense never got anywhere near enough to compensate. This totally skewed gameplay for AvD and it never really recovered. So not only were those kinds of games less frequent, but they became less fun. I ended up loving murderball, but nobody played it. I liked hunted now and then, but it got ridiculously easy as spy and a pain in the ass for bodyguards. I loved waterpolo, but later on everyone would freak out and rock the vote the few times it did come up and usually win. I even saw clan members griefing waterpolo games when they couldn't get their way with rtv. At that point I realized that the people who enjoyed the same gameplay I did left a long time ago and I was feeling like a fool holding out for games I'd enjoy. I was able to get some friends to play those gametypes with me for a while, but the cumulative changes to the mod basically made it too hard for us to defend and too easy to play as offense (on AvD) and no other players seemed to want to play fun maps.

Also to people thinking lack of orange box effects, better animations, and models is what caused things to fail, give me a break. This is a MOD, it's goddamned amazing what's been accomplished on the aesthetic level. I love the look of it and people who won't play it because of graphics probably won't have the attention span for the gameplay anyway.

I've since switched to Quake Wars and while there are things I miss about FF, it has a lot of parallels and is much more reliable for the kind of gameplay I enjoy. It has varied classes with important roles, it has pretty good action (FF at its best still beats it though), it has a relatively fast pace, it has nothing but AvD gameplay, the medic is way the fuck more intuitive and effective, individuals can still shine and make or break a game, although not to the extent they could in FF. The game also has many things some of you say are the reason FF is failing. It has a HUGE learning curve, much worse than FF's. It has VERY deep gameplay. Between airstrikes, artillery shots, rockets, mines, and grenades, it has plenty of spam (though I always loved the spam in FF). It doesn't have bunny hopping, but you do get a speed advantage by constantly jumping and there are some minor trimping mechanics. Between vehicles and sprinting, the speed can still get pretty fast.

Anyway, my point is not everyone jumped ship to TF2, so I wouldn't assume you change FF gamestyle to imitate it. You're not going to win over the masses simply for the fact that FF isn't an official valve release the way TFC and TF2 were. I think what happened as far as the playerbase was that the radical changes introduced in patches alienated the old schoolers, and they broke balance for people like me who liked the more wild end of FF gameplay. The changes in FF feel like they were trying to add features for the hell of it rather than having a need for them and it turned into a one-size-fits-no-one situation. Anyway, sorry for such a long post, I just wanted to give feedback.

xks · 05-07-2009, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EvilIguana966

I think that in order to attract new players, FF will have to scale back some of the complexity that allows experienced players to be so powerful. I don't think you have to go as far as TF2, lest you remove the features that differentiate the games, but you do have to attempt to look at this mod through the eyes of a new player. If you are a newbie, and your first experiences are against a skilled grenadier or a scout moving at what seems like light speed, you will be intimidated and quite likely write the whole thing off as insane and counter intuitive. Here are a few of my thoughts on how to alter the game to be more intuitive.

Grenades

The TF/TFC/FF grenade system makes little sense. Why can these people throw grenades while shooting their other weapons? As it is, grenades seem like a tacked on feature that just makes you click an extra button for a kill rather than anything tactically interesting. Simply making you unable to use your weapons between priming and throwing a grenade (think Crysis style) would give grenades an actual drawback, and force them to be used with more thought rather than just as an extra attack button you use on hard enemies. This change would require re-balancing the various grenade types so that they each have useful roles.

Speed

Although I don't mind the game speed, I don't think anything was gained by increasing it over what we had in TFC, and for many people it may be uncomfortably fast. Slowing the game physically down a little bit, as well as implementing a respawn timer, would make each life seem a little more consequential and each kill a little more useful.

Armor

One thing TF2 got right was eliminating armor and just using a single health pool. The TF/TFC/FF system of hidden armor types is unintuitive, while also seriously limiting the ability of the medic to have a useful utility role. FF should dump armor and use health.

Medics

One thing TF2 got wrong was its medic. I'm not opposed to medics having a utility role, but in TF2 medics are both extremely powerful and extremely easy to play. So they end up being both absolute necessities and dreadfully boring. Every class in this game should be fighting to some degree, so I support medics having a role beyond "stand behind the heavy and hold mouse1". Doesn't mean we shouldn't be making the medi-pack useful, we should just be encouraging the medic to fight when there is trouble and heal between the fighting parts.

Duplicate Weapons

I don't think many people have a problem with their being a better version of some weapons. The super shotgun and super nailgun exist because some classes deserve better versions of those weapon types. However, it seems a bit odd to give both types to a single class (soldier, HWguy), or to have two similar weapons together (sniper's AR and nailgun). With a bit of work you could adjust things so each class only has one of a given style of weapon.

Concing

The ability to use blasts to move players is too integral an element to remove, but some of the things that people can do with concs are just too powerful. Conc jumping needs to be toned down and multiple conc acrobatics need to be nerfed significantly. A new player is likely to be highly frustrated when he gets no chance to take a shot at a guy who flies through his base at 95 mph.

Grenades must stay, the way they work might not make a whole lot of sense but the system does work and it is extremely rewarding and fun to utilise them successfully. The problem with them is that the way to utilise them and the best way to use them is not immediately obvious and this creates a massive gulf between experienced players and new ones.

Speed I like but I think FF goes a little over the top. Back when I played TFC at the top levels we didn't have a bunny hopping epidemic and the Medics/Scouts that came on offence used co-ordination and technical skill to thwart the defence. There might have been slightly less caps but every single one of them was a whole lot more rewarding. Right now it seems like FF has been 'Americanised'. By that I mean it's been turned into an offensively biased sport to create high scoring games in order to boost 'excitement'. I don't see anything wrong with having a delicately poised and tense game where one or two caps could really make the difference. Being more like Football (the real football) and less like Basketball would be more enjoyable in my opinion.

Armour I disagree with, why remove it, it's something that helps differentiate between the classes and I really don't think we need such over-simplification. It should however be more obvious to new players what their classes strengths and weaknesses are in terms of weapons and armour, what classes they are good at taking out, where they should stand to do this and what classes they are weak against and where they should avoid.

I currently like the Medic, it was one of my favourite classes in TFC simply because going up against a skillful one was a joy to behold. However, Medics have it far too easy in FF compared to TFC for a variety of reasons, speed of the game, offensive bias, poor SG's etc.

Duplicate weapons on the same character never made any sense, there was simply no advantage to having a greater rate of fire with the weaker shotgun, especially since it used the same ammo as the super shotgun.

Concing is fantastic, but FF concing is a little too much when combined with the bunny hopping. People could do amazing things with Concs back when I played TFC and the grenade seemed a little better balanced than it is in FF. FF just seems to have way too much air control/speed at times and whilst I respect what the good players can do with the concs, it's not particularly fun for anyone else - especially on the range of wide open maps that people like to play. It seems like the maps are made purely to make it fun for the attackers and with little thought for the defenders, from stupid ledges to silly angles and overly wide open spaces that make it difficult to defend and easy to attack.

FF needs refinement, not drastic alterations. The sooner you get the code down for OB, the sooner you can start tweaking the game before public release because if it comes out in the current state it's in you will not gain a sustained player-base and you wont have another chance to get them back.

UpInSmoke · 05-07-2009, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xks

Grenades must stay

amen!

Quote:

Speed I like but I think FF goes a little over the top. Back when I played TFC at the top levels we didn't have a bunny hopping epidemic and the Medics/Scouts that came on offence used co-ordination and technical skill to thwart the defence. There might have been slightly less caps but every single one of them was a whole lot more rewarding. Right now it seems like FF has been 'Americanised'. By that I mean it's been turned into an offensively biased sport to create high scoring games in order to boost 'excitement'. I don't see anything wrong with having a delicately poised and tense game where one or two caps could really make the difference. Being more like Football (the real football) and less like Basketball would be more enjoyable in my opinion.

dude did you read my thoughts or something? i'm with out 100% here

Quote:

I currently like the Medic, it was one of my favourite classes in TFC simply because going up against a skillful one was a joy to behold. However, Medics have it far too easy in FF compared to TFC for a variety of reasons, speed of the game, offensive bias, poor SG's etc.

exactly!

Quote:

FF just seems to have way too much air control/speed at times and whilst I respect what the good players can do with the concs, it's not particularly fun for anyone else - especially on the range of wide open maps that people like to play. It seems like the maps are made purely to make it fun for the attackers and with little thought for the defenders, from stupid ledges to silly angles and overly wide open spaces that make it difficult to defend and easy to attack.

again, same stuff in my brain ... the role of the defenders seems to be reduced to stuff holes ...
The concers are far to fast around tight corners, seems they dont have any sort of 'mass' they should expirience much more centrifugal force. And again: hh-concs makes it _far_ to easy to outdo any sort of deffer ... its not skill vs skill, its surprise-effect against reaction-time and/or ping ...

Lateralols` · 05-07-2009, 10:58 PM

All of you guys crying about making this game accessible to noobs need to seriously shut the fuck up. Handouts are never the way to go with anything, ever. All it leads to are mediocre players who fucking whine, bitch, and moan whenever the get slaughtered by somebody better. Handouts are stagnation, lack of motive, and eventual collapse. They are a band-aid, nothing more.

Team Fortress Classic didn't have a training mode, didn't have little movies to show you what to do. What it had was some of the most intense, fast, and incredibly fun gameplay any online game has ever had, which led to its very extensive life. It is 2009, and there are still leagues for TFC, still players who play in pubs, still players who play pickups daily. The fact some of you are bitching about how high the skill curve is truly the death of the game. Without a core fanbase of competitive players, all games die out. Easy games never last, look at Call of Duty. It is on it's 5th iteration, with more being developed this moment. For fucks sake, look at Team Fortress 2, with updates being announced, always meddling and screwing with the gameplay, because if they don't, the game gets fucking boring.

The difficult games to master, the ones that take skill, time, and dedication, will be the ones that last. How do you revive FF? In my honest opinion, not possible. It never had a shot because of the incredibly poor v1.0 that was released at the same exact time as TF2. Idiocy at its finest.

Iggy · 05-08-2009, 01:48 AM

I swear that I did not create the post directly above this one.

Although I am in no way a master of all(or even many) FF tricks, strats, etc.... I am in no way opposed to them being in the game. A good bit of work needs to be done, but it's in progress. I am quite proud to be on the Beta team, and I constantly try to think of ways to make the game better.

I know it's a new era in gaming.... but I'm one of those gamers that looks at people playing a game, and asking "How do you do that?" I've learned many stunts, tricks, etc... in TFC, because I asked how to do it. If someone doesn't want to tell me... I'll spec them and record a demo, and try to "reverse engineer" what they did.

Laziness, I tell you.

MonoXideAtWork · 05-08-2009, 03:50 AM

IMO, the key involves in giving the lazy players something to do. They'll never ask "how did you do that?" if they aren't attracted to the game.

battery · 05-08-2009, 05:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lateralols`

All of you guys crying about making this game accessible to noobs need to seriously shut the fuck up. Handouts are never the way to go with anything, ever. All it leads to are mediocre players who fucking whine, bitch, and moan whenever the get slaughtered by somebody better. Handouts are stagnation, lack of motive, and eventual collapse. They are a band-aid, nothing more.

Team Fortress Classic didn't have a training mode, didn't have little movies to show you what to do. What it had was some of the most intense, fast, and incredibly fun gameplay any online game has ever had, which led to its very extensive life. It is 2009, and there are still leagues for TFC, still players who play in pubs, still players who play pickups daily. The fact some of you are bitching about how high the skill curve is truly the death of the game. Without a core fanbase of competitive players, all games die out. Easy games never last, look at Call of Duty. It is on it's 5th iteration, with more being developed this moment. For fucks sake, look at Team Fortress 2, with updates being announced, always meddling and screwing with the gameplay, because if they don't, the game gets fucking boring.

The difficult games to master, the ones that take skill, time, and dedication, will be the ones that last. How do you revive FF? In my honest opinion, not possible. It never had a shot because of the incredibly poor v1.0 that was released at the same exact time as TF2. Idiocy at its finest.

Brighten up, dude. The kind of people who crave challenges as a way of life, don't waste their time on video games.

hlstriker · 05-08-2009, 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by battery

Brighten up, dude. The kind of people who crave challenges as a way of life, don't waste their time on video games.

I'm not sure why there is a skill community then.

**mervaka** · 05-08-2009, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lateralols`

How do you revive FF? In my honest opinion, not possible. It never had a shot because of the incredibly poor v1.0 that was released at the same exact time as TF2. Idiocy at its finest.

you do know we announced first? get your facts right.

Grenboy · 05-08-2009, 05:27 PM

Brand new to FF and have played the last few days some and my input is pretty simple on the game.

I played the original quake tf and some tfc and quit tfc around when the bunny hop erra started. Now i will admit i am bias cause i suck at bunny hopping but i still just find the skill not needed and find myself torn between actually trying to learn it for this game or forget about it.

Yet, one thing i would like to see change is the speed at which gernades are thrown. Everyone moves so fast that the gernades litterally kinda float away from you and stopping someone with one is not possible at all.

Besides that it is fun. Trying to get into it, i can't stand tf2

Bosley · 05-08-2009, 10:42 PM

Also a new player, so my perspective will probably be a little bit different than the people that have been around for a while. I don't want to make this a real long post so I'll just make a list of some of my observations after playing for a few months.

-A lot of people have said FF was doomed since v1.0. I don't see this being true. One of the reasons I didn't start playing back then was because I didn't know the mod even existed. 'Word of mouth' is an extremely limited way of raising awareness, especially when so many people were looking forward to TF2. I can almost guarantee most TF2 players, even the ones that were disappointed, have never heard of FF.
-Constantly comparing FF to TF2's success seems unnecessary. I'm obviously guilty of this myself, but even if you wanted to compete with Valve, how could you?
-I would support a separate weapon slot for grenades. It would be a little weird at first but it does seem a little counter-intuitive that you can fire a mini-gun and throw grenades at the same time. I know a lot of people like this as a throwback to the TFC days, but this could be one step that is taken to differentiate FF from other TF games.
-A lot has been said about bhopping and I don't really care to continue the flaming, I'll just say that I agree with the notion that it must change. Even if it just gets slowed down. Once again, to differentiate FF as distinctive.
-I see the belief that a small group of highly competitive players is what makes a game successful as blatantly wrong. Competition players are always in the minority, and a lot of them start out pubbing then decide they want more of a challenge. This is how it worked for me anyway. Without a solid base of pubbers competition gets stagnant as those who start out looking for tournaments right off the bat gradually quit, take breaks, etc. No new players = no new competition.
-Recognize that most players, regardless of the game, don't care to compete. The majority play for fun, to relax after work, etc.
-Minor tweaks like improvements to sg tracking or eliminating redundancy will always be necessary. No single tweak will be enough to bring in masses of players they way I see it.
-FF does not need to be dumbed down or more 'noob friendly.' At least not in any extreme sense. Intuitive gameplay, even if challenging, will be necessary though. Training videos or whatever might help, or I don't see how they could hurt. How many people actually quit a game just because it has a training level? What does that say about such a players motivation to actually learn the nuances of a game? Also, how is it a hand-out?
-This last one is a little crazy and I'm sure it will be absolutely hated, but I'll just throw it out there. What about a new class? I have no ideas on what that might be, but it might be cool so mix things up a bit.

So yep, just some general observations I've had based on what I've read on the forums and my experience in-game.

05-05-2009, 03:22 AM	#102
Ihmhi [AE] 0112 Ihmhi SJB Wiki Team Fortress Forever Staff Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Newark, NJ, United States Class/Position: A little bit o' everythin' Gametype: Also a little bit o' everythin' Affiliations: [AE] Asseater, SJB Straight Jacket Brigade Posts Rated Helpful 3 Times	Did you perhaps miss the parts where I said we are not yet publishing on Steam and Orange Box is still a work in progress? __________________ Support FF: Anime: The Thread: Reloaded The one and only anime thread on these here forums. Select the pistol, and then, select your horse.

05-06-2009, 09:44 PM	#106
Molester Join Date: Apr 2009 Gametype: Capture the Flag Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	To be honest people just moved on from tfc long before FF was made its really that simple.The player base for tfc was dead or slowing down in 2004 by 2006 it was dead or dieing I mean whatever term you wanna use to explain it slowing down. I think if FF came out in 2004 even 2006 you would have seen it more popular than ever. I notice people talking about bhop lets be honest here bhop was a great thing that made tfc worth playing but it was the most exploited thing ever.People used _special to bhop in the beginning then once that ETA mod came out or whatever it was called that stoped the _special command from being used people just used cheats "dll" to bhop which is just a cheat. And I have a feeling people are using something to the same effect in FF even when they made bhop so easy to do. I mean trust is a part of the gamming community and I think trust in the tfc gamming community was lost long ago when the loged PP cheats were made and the list was put out of over 80 people that were using this PP cheat those are just the one's that got caught.I really do think this is a part of why more people quit playing tfc or just didn't care anymore. People in the gamming community started losing trust and just quit playing tfc and moved on for whatever reasons. Also I wanted to add I don't think everyone cheats i'm just saying that this may be a reason. I've watched a few matches as best I could with the FF HLTV half the time being crap I never saw anything. Last edited by Molester; 05-06-2009 at 09:53 PM.

05-06-2009, 11:16 PM	#107
Wisp Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Perhaps instead of trying to tackle all of these issues at once, do it in chunks. For example, the developers could say... In v2.4 we are going to focus solely on perfecting the UI and making it easy to understand. In v2.5 we are going to focus solely on making the maps and game modes easy to understand. In v2.6 we are going to focus on making the movement style easy to learn. In v2.7 we are going to focus on making the weapons and classes easy to understand, be unique, and remove any redundancies. This way the focus is on that one particular issue and no one gets overwhelmed by trying to fight a war on all fronts. Once the current state of the game seems acceptable, move onto the Orange Box code, deal with bugs, and begin to add new features into the game which turn Fortress Forever into a unique and exciting game. (v3.0) The ultimate goal of Fortress Forever should be to make this a different game than Team Fortress Classic: Source. But not any time soon, in my opinion.

05-07-2009, 06:33 AM	#109
KubeDawg Nade Whore Server Owner Beta Tester Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Oklahoma Class/Position: Scout/Soldier Gametype: CTF/TDM Affiliations: blunt. Moto Posts Rated Helpful 128 Times	To me, FF will be alive once it's on the OB SDK. Till then, I probably won't be playing much. I still have faith in the current developers and beta testers though. Even if we don't see the OB version soon, it will be out eventually, and that will be a good day for FF. __________________ Moto's Funhouse \| Dallas, TX - 74.91.114.247:27015 ff_plunder - Complete

05-05-2009, 05:03 AM	#103
battery D&A Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Those are promising approaches. That's why you guys are willing to invest time in them. But why put everything in one basket? Doesn't it make sense to brainstorm other marketing ideas while Orange Box is in development?

05-06-2009, 08:43 PM	#105
EvilIguana966 Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	I think that in order to attract new players, FF will have to scale back some of the complexity that allows experienced players to be so powerful. I don't think you have to go as far as TF2, lest you remove the features that differentiate the games, but you do have to attempt to look at this mod through the eyes of a new player. If you are a newbie, and your first experiences are against a skilled grenadier or a scout moving at what seems like light speed, you will be intimidated and quite likely write the whole thing off as insane and counter intuitive. Here are a few of my thoughts on how to alter the game to be more intuitive. Grenades The TF/TFC/FF grenade system makes little sense. Why can these people throw grenades while shooting their other weapons? As it is, grenades seem like a tacked on feature that just makes you click an extra button for a kill rather than anything tactically interesting. Simply making you unable to use your weapons between priming and throwing a grenade (think Crysis style) would give grenades an actual drawback, and force them to be used with more thought rather than just as an extra attack button you use on hard enemies. This change would require re-balancing the various grenade types so that they each have useful roles. Speed Although I don't mind the game speed, I don't think anything was gained by increasing it over what we had in TFC, and for many people it may be uncomfortably fast. Slowing the game physically down a little bit, as well as implementing a respawn timer, would make each life seem a little more consequential and each kill a little more useful. Armor One thing TF2 got right was eliminating armor and just using a single health pool. The TF/TFC/FF system of hidden armor types is unintuitive, while also seriously limiting the ability of the medic to have a useful utility role. FF should dump armor and use health. Medics One thing TF2 got wrong was its medic. I'm not opposed to medics having a utility role, but in TF2 medics are both extremely powerful and extremely easy to play. So they end up being both absolute necessities and dreadfully boring. Every class in this game should be fighting to some degree, so I support medics having a role beyond "stand behind the heavy and hold mouse1". Doesn't mean we shouldn't be making the medi-pack useful, we should just be encouraging the medic to fight when there is trouble and heal between the fighting parts. Duplicate Weapons I don't think many people have a problem with their being a better version of some weapons. The super shotgun and super nailgun exist because some classes deserve better versions of those weapon types. However, it seems a bit odd to give both types to a single class (soldier, HWguy), or to have two similar weapons together (sniper's AR and nailgun). With a bit of work you could adjust things so each class only has one of a given style of weapon. Concing The ability to use blasts to move players is too integral an element to remove, but some of the things that people can do with concs are just too powerful. Conc jumping needs to be toned down and multiple conc acrobatics need to be nerfed significantly. A new player is likely to be highly frustrated when he gets no chance to take a shot at a guy who flies through his base at 95 mph.

05-07-2009, 03:33 AM	#108
zE Pew pew ze beams Join Date: Jan 2008 Gametype: Gathers Affiliations: pew pew Posts Rated Helpful 11 Times	All this posts are kinda tf2ish for me, turn the mode = to tf2 and ill nuke u guys !

05-07-2009, 11:01 AM	#110
chilledsanity D&A Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Gametype: AvD, I/D, waterpolo, hunted Posts Rated Helpful 6 Times	As someone who used to love FF and has basically abandoned it, I thought I'd give some input as to why I quit and rebut a couple points, you can take it as you will. Basically I played TFC/FF for AvD and some of the fun gametypes. I never got into leagues or pickups and CTF pubbing has always felt boring to me. 1.0 I thought was awesome, but had a lot of room for improvement. From 2.0 onward, offense got a lot of bonuses and defense never got anywhere near enough to compensate. This totally skewed gameplay for AvD and it never really recovered. So not only were those kinds of games less frequent, but they became less fun. I ended up loving murderball, but nobody played it. I liked hunted now and then, but it got ridiculously easy as spy and a pain in the ass for bodyguards. I loved waterpolo, but later on everyone would freak out and rock the vote the few times it did come up and usually win. I even saw clan members griefing waterpolo games when they couldn't get their way with rtv. At that point I realized that the people who enjoyed the same gameplay I did left a long time ago and I was feeling like a fool holding out for games I'd enjoy. I was able to get some friends to play those gametypes with me for a while, but the cumulative changes to the mod basically made it too hard for us to defend and too easy to play as offense (on AvD) and no other players seemed to want to play fun maps. Also to people thinking lack of orange box effects, better animations, and models is what caused things to fail, give me a break. This is a MOD, it's goddamned amazing what's been accomplished on the aesthetic level. I love the look of it and people who won't play it because of graphics probably won't have the attention span for the gameplay anyway. I've since switched to Quake Wars and while there are things I miss about FF, it has a lot of parallels and is much more reliable for the kind of gameplay I enjoy. It has varied classes with important roles, it has pretty good action (FF at its best still beats it though), it has a relatively fast pace, it has nothing but AvD gameplay, the medic is way the fuck more intuitive and effective, individuals can still shine and make or break a game, although not to the extent they could in FF. The game also has many things some of you say are the reason FF is failing. It has a HUGE learning curve, much worse than FF's. It has VERY deep gameplay. Between airstrikes, artillery shots, rockets, mines, and grenades, it has plenty of spam (though I always loved the spam in FF). It doesn't have bunny hopping, but you do get a speed advantage by constantly jumping and there are some minor trimping mechanics. Between vehicles and sprinting, the speed can still get pretty fast. Anyway, my point is not everyone jumped ship to TF2, so I wouldn't assume you change FF gamestyle to imitate it. You're not going to win over the masses simply for the fact that FF isn't an official valve release the way TFC and TF2 were. I think what happened as far as the playerbase was that the radical changes introduced in patches alienated the old schoolers, and they broke balance for people like me who liked the more wild end of FF gameplay. The changes in FF feel like they were trying to add features for the hell of it rather than having a need for them and it turned into a one-size-fits-no-one situation. Anyway, sorry for such a long post, I just wanted to give feedback.

05-07-2009, 10:58 PM	#113
Lateralols` You're stumbling a little. Join Date: May 2009 Affiliations: mimic. Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	All of you guys crying about making this game accessible to noobs need to seriously shut the fuck up. Handouts are never the way to go with anything, ever. All it leads to are mediocre players who fucking whine, bitch, and moan whenever the get slaughtered by somebody better. Handouts are stagnation, lack of motive, and eventual collapse. They are a band-aid, nothing more. Team Fortress Classic didn't have a training mode, didn't have little movies to show you what to do. What it had was some of the most intense, fast, and incredibly fun gameplay any online game has ever had, which led to its very extensive life. It is 2009, and there are still leagues for TFC, still players who play in pubs, still players who play pickups daily. The fact some of you are bitching about how high the skill curve is truly the death of the game. Without a core fanbase of competitive players, all games die out. Easy games never last, look at Call of Duty. It is on it's 5th iteration, with more being developed this moment. For fucks sake, look at Team Fortress 2, with updates being announced, always meddling and screwing with the gameplay, because if they don't, the game gets fucking boring. The difficult games to master, the ones that take skill, time, and dedication, will be the ones that last. How do you revive FF? In my honest opinion, not possible. It never had a shot because of the incredibly poor v1.0 that was released at the same exact time as TF2. Idiocy at its finest.

05-08-2009, 03:50 AM	#115
MonoXideAtWork Pub Allstar! Beta Tester Join Date: Aug 2008 Class/Position: under en kvinna Gametype: Capture the Flag Affiliations: Eternal Order, Must be h4x, Mono's happy funtime. Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	IMO, the key involves in giving the lazy players something to do. They'll never ask "how did you do that?" if they aren't attracted to the game.

05-08-2009, 05:27 PM	#119
Grenboy Join Date: May 2009 Gametype: Capture the Flag Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Brand new to FF and have played the last few days some and my input is pretty simple on the game. I played the original quake tf and some tfc and quit tfc around when the bunny hop erra started. Now i will admit i am bias cause i suck at bunny hopping but i still just find the skill not needed and find myself torn between actually trying to learn it for this game or forget about it. Yet, one thing i would like to see change is the speed at which gernades are thrown. Everyone moves so fast that the gernades litterally kinda float away from you and stopping someone with one is not possible at all. Besides that it is fun. Trying to get into it, i can't stand tf2

05-08-2009, 10:42 PM	#120
Bosley Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: 69.12.108.79:27015 Affiliations: EastCoastTF2.com Posts Rated Helpful 0 Times	Also a new player, so my perspective will probably be a little bit different than the people that have been around for a while. I don't want to make this a real long post so I'll just make a list of some of my observations after playing for a few months. -A lot of people have said FF was doomed since v1.0. I don't see this being true. One of the reasons I didn't start playing back then was because I didn't know the mod even existed. 'Word of mouth' is an extremely limited way of raising awareness, especially when so many people were looking forward to TF2. I can almost guarantee most TF2 players, even the ones that were disappointed, have never heard of FF. -Constantly comparing FF to TF2's success seems unnecessary. I'm obviously guilty of this myself, but even if you wanted to compete with Valve, how could you? -I would support a separate weapon slot for grenades. It would be a little weird at first but it does seem a little counter-intuitive that you can fire a mini-gun and throw grenades at the same time. I know a lot of people like this as a throwback to the TFC days, but this could be one step that is taken to differentiate FF from other TF games. -A lot has been said about bhopping and I don't really care to continue the flaming, I'll just say that I agree with the notion that it must change. Even if it just gets slowed down. Once again, to differentiate FF as distinctive. -I see the belief that a small group of highly competitive players is what makes a game successful as blatantly wrong. Competition players are always in the minority, and a lot of them start out pubbing then decide they want more of a challenge. This is how it worked for me anyway. Without a solid base of pubbers competition gets stagnant as those who start out looking for tournaments right off the bat gradually quit, take breaks, etc. No new players = no new competition. -Recognize that most players, regardless of the game, don't care to compete. The majority play for fun, to relax after work, etc. -Minor tweaks like improvements to sg tracking or eliminating redundancy will always be necessary. No single tweak will be enough to bring in masses of players they way I see it. -FF does not need to be dumbed down or more 'noob friendly.' At least not in any extreme sense. Intuitive gameplay, even if challenging, will be necessary though. Training videos or whatever might help, or I don't see how they could hurt. How many people actually quit a game just because it has a training level? What does that say about such a players motivation to actually learn the nuances of a game? Also, how is it a hand-out? -This last one is a little crazy and I'm sure it will be absolutely hated, but I'll just throw it out there. What about a new class? I have no ideas on what that might be, but it might be cool so mix things up a bit. So yep, just some general observations I've had based on what I've read on the forums and my experience in-game.

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