Join me in TF2 vs FF debates

[GenghisTron]

my chain is stuck on something, im 'fraid i cant get back to the kitchen oh well lol

[Dexter]

I wasn't mocking you Bridget. Several people feel their voice is that of the entire community and squeek's comment is spot on.

Seriously, just because you and a few friends think it's a great idea, it doesn't mean the whole community is pushing the dev team for something. Like I've said, its very split and that is even more unproductive

[squeek.]

This is probably a discussion for the beta forum, but here goes.

Right now, in the beta build, there are countless server and client variables that any beta member can go and test and tweak. They can then use those values to suggest modifications. In fact, in the Guide to the Beta thread, we encourage people to do exactly that. If you have ideas for variables that you'd want implemented so that you can tweak them yourself, then go ahead and ask. They usually aren't very hard to implement and I personally would be happy to do it.

Suggesting something for the devs to "go and do" and expect it to just magically appear fully-formed is the OPPOSITE of what a community-driven mod is about. Suggest something for the devs to do, but also do your part. Obviously, you can't code a server variable into the game without access to the code. But, you can have someone else do it and then you can do the work of finding the perfect value for it. Or finding a range of values you think would work, why they would work, what the pros and cons are, etc.

The skim cap was done that way. Jiggles put in the variables by request, the beta testers tweaked them until we found the right values, and we discussed them ad nauseam on the beta forums and in playtesting. The HW was revamped in 2.1 the same way. It was requested by beta members to remove the charge up mechanic after hours and hours of tweaking variables and noticing that the charge-up was unbalancable. The SG was tweaked in 2.1 the same way.

There is a lot the beta testers could be doing. This:

Originally Posted by Bridget

1. People dissent and point out they don't like it, the development team tells them their opinion doesn't matter because it's a much needed change. 2. People secretly dissent, but have chosen to instead pretend to give a shit about the changes because they know they'll be implemented regardless of the opinion on them. 3. The development team keeps telling people that they're stupid for presuming the changes are final. Fair enough, but why continue wasting your time and resources doing shit no one likes or feels is necessary or top priority?

is just... unfathomable. I'll respond to each point individually, though.

1. Dissent for dissents sake isn't enough. It never has been and never will be enough. "I don't like it" isn't going to change anyone's mind. To expect that to have any effect is mind boggling (ask a member of a debate team). The second part of your sentence is much, much more interesting and much, much more useful, the "because it's a much needed change" part. Is it a much needed change? If not, can you express why it isn't? If not, why not? What would be better? Why would it be better? Why would it be more necessary? That is a conversation that has a purpose.

2. If they know this, then they must be fortune tellers. They know what'll be in the next patch? That should be even more motivation to get things they don't like changed, then...

3. Telling people they are stupid is obviously hyperbole, but we definitely have gone to great lengths to make it clear that the changes in the beta have varying degrees of finality, and that most if not all gameplay changes are not final at this stage (with some things we tested already having been removed). Why do devs continue wasting time on changes you personally don't feel are necessary? See my response to 1., but also because you aren't making the changes. This is a community-driven project. The changes that are made are made by community members, something you seem to forget. The dev team is made up of community volunteers working for free on something they care about. If you care about it as well, get involved as much as possible. Convince a dev member to work with you and make one or more of your ideas a reality. It has happened before, but it will never happen unless a give-and-take relationship is established. The dev members aren't here to serve you. They are here to help you, and you could (or should) be here to help them as well.

About the engineer:

Being on the beta team, you know we are testing SG changes. You know that, and yet you are still complaining about the SG not receiving changes. You know that there are TONS of server variables that control SG values, and yet there is not one thread in the beta forum suggesting new values or variables that need to be implemented so that you can get the values you imagine would be good.

You, along with any other beta tester, have a lot of potential power. Don't blame the devs if you aren't taking advantage of it, when everything in the beta build and beta forum is telling you and allowing you to do it.

Originally Posted by Ricey

But knowning the dev team, i'll be ignored. You the dev team have ignore A LOT of ideas from the beta team and the others. I don't think I have seen one thing added that was suggested by a beta tester, if there has been something please correct me.

What idea of yours are we ignoring? Point me to the thread where you laid it out, including the reasons for it and why it is necessary, etc. As for examples, the skim cap was suggested by a beta member. The hit crosshair was suggested by a beta member. Some of the current beta changes were suggested by beta members. But, looking through the current beta Brainstorming forums, I'm not exactly sure what necessary beta-suggested changes you think we're ignoring. I think you should check the Brainstorming forums again, and then start making some threads of your own. If you want an example of a successful suggestion thread, here it is.

Also,

Originally Posted by Ricey

Just to name a few things : SGs, Snipers, Pyro's Flamethrower(Which has been a problem forever), Concing(Yes, concing is stupid has it's has soo much push), Piping, and various other things.(Wait, didn't I post something like this in beta a long time ago? yea i did)

Oh, yeah, all those easy fixes. I can't believe we haven't gone and just fixed the sniper problem already. I mean, the community has told us exactly what they want, and we just aren't listening! And those obvious and glaring concing/flamethrower issues that we just haven't fixed yet. 10 minutes of work and FF would be cured of all problems, no one would be mad, and yet we just refuse to do it. Come on, Ricey... Trivializing things to make us into some sort of supervillain isn't helpful to anyone.

Also, the posts in this thread just confirm the point I made in a previous post. Ricey says we are ignoring the community and that the community wants sniper changes, flamethrower changes, concs to be less powerful, etc, while zE says we are ignoring the community and that the community wants TFC:Source. "The community" needs to figure out what "the community" actually wants before it goes around thinking it should be making any and all decisions. We're more than happy to listen to the community, but as of right now, this community guy really seems to suffer from multiple personality disorder.

TL;DR version:

If you think "the community" is being ignored, GET MORE INVOLVED. We encourage it. But, don't be expected to not have to put in some effort, compromise, and express your ideas intelligently.

[Bridget]

1. We're still tweaking the implementations the development team has decided are proper and worthy of testing. 2. Who are you going to test with? The beta team is terribly inactive, though can you blame them? 3. I was unable to partcipate in past tests due to being unable to access the server in any form. I couldn't see the Old Timers servers in the regular game either, and others could freely connect, so I presumed it had something to do with Scuzzy. 4. There's no beta server now.

You guys were making changes to the Engineer. That's right. I have told you why it's still not satisfactory. That's probably because while you were occasionally buffing or nerfing the Sentry Gun on the side, you were also tailoring classes to countering it. How about focusing on one thing before moving to another, especially when 'another' is supposed to be a counter to what you were once working on. How do you get a good reading of whether something in itself is balanced and fair if you're changing everything around it at the same time?

Hey, here are some changes to x mechanic. Tell me how well you can use y mechanic to counter the x mechanic or how well x mechanic does defending itself against y mechanic. Well, okay. Let me get on that. Wait! We changed the x mechanic. Go ahead and give it a look over. How's it look? Well, the x mechanic looks great now. I just wonder how well it's going to work with the y mechanic. Oh! We changed the y mechanic. Take a look at it now. It's nice, isn't it? Yes, it seems nice. I wonder how it'll work with the x mechanic? Oh, the x mechanic? The one that did a, b, and c? We changed that.

[Elmo]

Originally Posted by Bridget

1. We're still tweaking the implementations the development team has decided are proper and worthy of testing.

2. Who are you going to test with? The beta team is terribly inactive, though can you blame them?
3. I was unable to partcipate in past tests due to being unable to access the server in any form. I couldn't see the Old Timers servers in the regular game either, and others could freely connect, so I presumed it had something to do with Scuzzy.
4. There's no beta server now.

1. yes if there's stuff to test then someone decided it's worthy of testing. That's why we're testing them and need feedback... ??
2. Can you blame us?? We tried and tried and it fizzles out every time despite my calls on the forum which many don't reply to. I'm now busy on beta testing times. I cant help that but if we need to find another day because sundays aren't good then so be it. But the betas are saying nothing. How is that our fault? (ignoring the temporary problem with 4)
3. your probably right and scuzzy is now gone!
4. his server went with him and we need to correct that.

[Lynus]

Originally Posted by Bridget

The art direction was taken for simplification. It's the selling point of Team Fortress 2. The maps are well lit, you can tell the environment from the dynamic entities, you can tell teams apart as well as their respective classes. There is a humorous aspect to it, of course. Robin Walker said they modeled the art style around those funny gaming experiences people would always have, such as the people who send tanks flying with explosives or making dominoes in Garry's Mod. The funny thing is the people who are quick to judge TF2 on its graphics are the same people who criticize others for judging Fortress Forever's dated graphics.

There are no real goofy voices in Team Fortress 2. The voices all have some sincerity in them even when they're delivering otherwise humorous lines. This is yet another selling point of the game. Each character has a unique personality that makes it even more appealing to certain play-styles and players. Every time I play Team Fortress 2 and come back to Fortress Forever, the game just feels empty. There's nothing that makes it entertaining or fun.

You can't dress your character up. There are only hats. They were added for novelty sake. It's just something to spice up the art direction. Most of the unlocks are for different weapons. Nonetheless, it's funny that so many people criticize Team Fortress 2 for trivial shit that has nothing to do with the game-play. The only criticisms of its game-play are the luck-based mechanics (critical hits) which do rage the fuck out of me even if the probability of them happening are tied to how well you're doing. The second is that it's too slow. I don't think so. It's perfectly paced. You can take your time and enjoy the game. It's not as demanding and exhausting as Fortress Forever. This doesn't make it less exciting. Get a good game going where both teams are working together and the amount of chaos on screen makes up for the speed.

Coming from someone who doesn't ever play FF competitively and has no real idea of how fun it can be aside from the romper room of OT and Talos

[Rutabeggar]

Originally Posted by CHURCHMOUTH

rutabeggar cant hang therefore he disses

and tf2 is a kids game because it doesnt require any type of skilled movement all you need is a couple of pointer fingers to play. the children who play tf2 clearly lack the motor skill functions needed to play good adulty-like games ie FF

and how are the ff models not good iggy? they are just more realistic therefor arent as flashy and noticeable

I can't hang so I diss? That's the best you can come up with? Clearly you didn't play with me before I was reduced to using a laptop that can barely run Roller Coaster Tycoon. This is the kind of retarded horse shit I'm talking about. I post nothing but truths about the direction this mod and its cronies from the all powerful competitive community rides in here on their shiny horse of pwn named 'Holier than Thou' and tries to lay down a verbal smack down because I criticized the oh so coveted pick-up community of FF (which from what I understand, is non-existent...) that I no longer participate in because the tremendous assholes and d-bags that roam its halls, but I digress.

[Bridget]

Originally Posted by Lynus

Coming from someone who doesn't ever play FF competitively and has no real idea of how fun it can be aside from the romper room of OT and Talos

I've played competitively before.

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by squeek

Suggest something for the devs to do, but also do your part. Obviously, you can't code a server variable into the game without access to the code. But, you can have someone else do it and then you can do the work of finding the perfect value for it.

I'm not in the beta now, but I remember what the proposal process used to be like. An idea seems to have to fall within the acceptable parameters first to even be considered. I tried to propose a changing cone system for the hwguy, where primary fire was more accurate and secondary fire SPRAYED the ammo and listed the reasons for having this. There wasn't even a willingness to test this out and instead we have the one-size-fits-no-one dual cone system.

You've said before that if I were to join the beta team now and for argument's sake, I won EVERY AvD or I/D game when I was on offensive or else led to round being over very quickly, this was no guarantee anything would get changed gameplay-wise as far as balance changes. To me this sends a clear message that no amount of empirical evidence for a balance problem will be considered, unless it's a direction that the dev team is already mentally predispositioned to be going anyway. In this scenario, no amount of participation matters.

Originally Posted by squeek

The SG was tweaked in 2.1 the same way.

I think this right here says how far detached the dev team is. To cripple the sg so heavily from TFC values without giving anything in return to balance and to think that will work well makes us all question what you're doing (unless they mainly play O classes). TFC was almost perfect for pub AvD play. FF has become abyssmal.

It's one thing to test new changes, but you seem to lack a common sense on some issues. If you had told someone playing TFC 10 years ago that you were going to increase the speeds of all players, add jump pads, jumping for the pyro, reduce the push on the sg to less than a nailgun, and give basically nothing to defense, they would have thought you were smoking crack. It should be self-evident that this is unbalancing. The fact this somehow worked in an insular testing environment doesn't matter.

I can understand why you don't like announcing what you're doing. Back in pre-2.0 I remember you discussing the jump pads and new speeds and my big concern was that this would ruin AvD balance. I remember your response of saying it was impossible to predict that without trying it first. For some things, I totally agree. If you change the rocket speed or a pipebomb radius, that's a small change where it's unlikely to be able to tell what the effect is. For big changes that are incredibly one-sided, it's not; yet it took you guys over a year and a half to even RECOGNIZE this. This was also my same experience with trying to report bugs in dustbowl in the past, there was this wave of denial of something even being a problem.

Originally Posted by squeek

I can't believe we haven't gone and just fixed the sniper problem already. I mean, the community has told us exactly what they want

You're not going to please everyone. That's a given. Also some issues are very controversial and there has to be compromise. But you guys seem to have no sense of bearing on many issues. I remember an old complaint thread about the sg where 10 people claimed how horrible it was, go into detail explaining why, then one person (who later confessed to ONLY playing scout) says the sg is still too powerful (one sentence, no explanation). Then a dev pipes in, saying something like "some people hate it, some people like it. Sounds like it's perfectly balanced to me." If that's the conclusion devs draw from a situation like that, how the hell can we change anything.

[squeek.]

The SG is being tweaked, the jump pad is being tweaked, and I wasn't on the dev team pre-2.0.

I remember an old complaint thread about the sg where 10 people claimed how horrible it was, go into detail explaining why, then one person (who later confessed to ONLY playing scout) says the sg is still too powerful (one sentence, no explanation). Then a dev pipes in, saying something like "some people hate it, some people like it. Sounds like it's perfectly balanced to me." If that's the conclusion devs draw from a situation like that, how the hell can we change anything.

Mind pointing me to this thread? All I could find was this, this, and this.

[chilledsanity]

I think it became one of the massive merged threads, it would take me a while to hunt it up. My other points still stand.

[Crazycarl]

There's no secret method to what gets implemented. Here's the process: There's an idea. Maybe it came from the community, or from a dev, whatever. If I am a dev who likes the idea, and I have the ability/time/motivation to make that change, I'll do it. Maybe there will be some discussion first or maybe I'll just go do it.

It's important to remember that different devs do different jobs. For example, I don't code. I don't even have access to the game code, but I can edit maps, models, textures, and just about anything else. If I want something done that requires coding, I have to beg for it.

Once a change is made, we can test it and decide to keep it or revert it. Again, it's really up to the person with the ability to take the initiative. Unfortunately, there have been MANY tasks that have fallen through the cracks this way. Features that we all like, but not enough to motivate someone to implement them. Sometimes we just forget. So if you type up your proposal in a discussion thread and it gets ignored, that might actually be what happened. All bugs and feature requests should be put in the bug/feature tracker. That won't guarantee that we will get around to it, but it's organized enough that it won't get forgotten completely.

Giving your opinion about balance is fairly useless. We can only implement specific changes, like tweaking variables, and adding or removing features. I know how frustrating it is to type up a grand scheme for fixing the game, and having it dismissed immediately. We have certain design goals in place that we want to follow (not that we agree on all of them). If we can see how a game change fits those goals, it has a better chance of success.

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

Giving your opinion about balance is fairly useless. We can only implement specific changes, like tweaking variables, and adding or removing features. I know how frustrating it is to type up a grand scheme for fixing the game, and having it dismissed immediately.

I totally understand if the devs only have so much time and can't implement a bunch of changes at once. But see from my experience so far, what you're telling me is a Catch 22. Check out this thread I made a little while ago. Look at Aftershock's response. He's basically mocking me for me trying to focus on ONE CHANGE that I think will substantially help balance and I'm having defend this proposal tooth and nail (for about the 50th time really). And here YOU are saying that we can ONLY focus on specific changes and not balance as a whole!



Out of curiousity, was this the same process for adding jump pads and pyro jumps? Those were BIG game changers, and I'm very curious what the process was for starting as an idea to becoming a reality for those in particular.

[Crazycarl]

He wasn't mocking you there. He was honestly asking you if every defense should depend on sentries. If one class is always needed for a team to succeed, I'd see that as a problem.

When I say specific changes, I mean actual, concrete numbers or functionality someone can code in. We can make several changes at once or even holistic changes to the whole game, but they have to be defined and decided on first. It's like when someone says the game's graphics should look better. If they don't really specify what they want it to look like and what they don't like, I can't please them.

Originally Posted by chilledsanity

Out of curiousity, was this the same process for adding jump pads and pyro jumps? Those were BIG game changers, and I'm very curious what the process was for starting as an idea to becoming a reality for those in particular.

That was a few months before my time, but if I look at the dev archives...The jump pad was envisioned as a replacement for the teleporter, but it was given to the scout with the idea that an offensive unit would get more use out of it. Since then we have written--internally--pages of design theory to try and pick a direction. We now refer to these principals whenever we propose new changes. The same volunteer system I described above has always been in place, as far as I know.

I can think of one aspect of the jump pad that breaks one of our principals: building one can actually be a detriment to your team--if the enemy can use it to their advantage. We're working to rectify that.

[Lynus]

Lets end this thread by doing a few things.

1. Let chef- into beta so he can help the dev team shape FF into something better with some great ideas, also he would like to slap squeek in the nuts because squeek never talks to him in mirc and I dont know who to tell my ideas to sometimes and they slip away unheard.

2. Clap our hands for Bridget and ricey for hijacking this thread and making it take litterally an hour to read just her/his posts.

3. Ban ricey from the website, forums, and irc for being a complete and utter cocksucker... jewbag... and asswipe... kthx

4. Lock it. Keep it in the beta threads. All I wanted was a little support on anandtech and hard... but they got butthurt within hours and both threads got locked. I really wasn't even being douchey - just trying to be a hardass n not covet when they say FUCK FF, TF2 RULEZ!

gg.

[Ricey]

Originally Posted by Lynus

3. Ban ricey from the website, forums, and irc for being a complete and utter cocksucker... jewbag... and asswipe... kthx
.

Awww, that is sooo sweet. It's okay to be jealous of my sexy jewness, everyone is, including hlstriker. Now, go back to cock juggling, you thunder cunt. Zing.

Back to mapping!

[Lynus]

Originally Posted by Ricey

Awww, that is sooo sweet. It's okay to be jealous of my sexy jewness, everyone is, including hlstriker. Now, go back to cock juggling, you thunder cunt. Zing.

Back to mapping!

lol farting in your soup

[Bridget]

Originally Posted by Lynus

2. Clap our hands for Bridget and ricey for hijacking this thread and making it take litterally an hour to read just her/his posts.

Boo-fucking-hoo. Instead of admitting you read at a third grade level, you act in a hostile manner to distract people from the fact. It's not that Chef lacks reading comprehension, it's just that Bridget and Ricey write really long posts and use too many big words. It makes so much sense. Now I know why most of the pickup crowd decides to criticize me on how long my posts are instead of the actual context. They can't get to the actual context because I don't make enough mentions of cats in hats and fishes of various number and color.

[Icculus]

Originally Posted by Bridget

Boo-fucking-hoo. Instead of admitting you read at a third grade level, you act in a hostile manner to distract people from the fact. It's not that Chef lacks reading comprehension, it's just that Bridget and Ricey write really long posts and use too many big words. It makes so much sense. Now I know why most of the pickup crowd decides to criticize me on how long my posts are instead of the actual context. They can't get to the actual context because I don't make enough mentions of cats in hats and fishes of various number and color.

Dr. Seuss was a genius. Leave him out of this please.

[mervaka]

Originally Posted by Lynus

4. Lock it.

as per request