Team Fortress 2 Update Topic

Jer9 · Feb 24, 2010

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Engine
Fixed servers with bots reporting incorrect player numbers

Team Fortress 2
Fixed pipebombs not colliding correctly with players
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guess it's fixed^^

Anonymous · Feb 25, 2010

Pim de Pinguin said:

kick the bucket said:

omg now they made demo the worst class to play with :s
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DataStorm said:

shit, I play lots of demo, and its bad nuff vs scouts, but with this I cant hit those anymore I noticed :S
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They didn't nerf stickies, now don't act as if you use the nade all the time
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i did... i mosly used stickie's for the purpose of "TRAPS" like they are designed for not run around and litter the floor and trap them in that way i liked nades ok if u score a direct hit is friggin powerfull but hell now even if the make it twice as powerfull it's still underpowerd... if u see a scout you can just go to the toilet when he enters your screen because you surely have to respawn an other 20 seconds because you hell won't ever hit him :lol:

Anonymous · Mar 12, 2010

TF2 Blog

Dammit dammit dammit dammit!
March 2, 2010 - Brandon Reinhart

We're plugging away at the Engineer update. He's an interesting class to work on, because he creates a larger footprint in the game than any other class. This means we have a lot of options to work with, and the resulting set of ideas is truly daunting. Since we've already built and playtested some things that haven't worked out (with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun), we thought it might be interesting to give you some of our failed experiments.

The first was a new building internally known as the Repair Node. We gave Engineers the ability to replace any current building (teleporter entrances and exits were considered one building for this) with the Repair Node instead.

While deployed, the Repair Node would draw from a pool of energy to fix damage to nearby buildings. When the node ran out of energy, it would stop repairing and regenerate up to full, creating a window of opportunity for the attackers. When sapped, the Repair Node's repair function was disabled for the duration of the sap.

The goal of the Repair Node was to solve a perceived problem in the Engineer's play experience: always having to be tied to your base. The Engineer often has little to do after his base is built and fully upgraded except wait for the inevitable Spy sapper attempt, or for the battlefront to reach the base. The Repair Node was meant to buy the Engineer time if he wanted to range out to gather metal or harass the enemy with his shotgun.

This is usually how we approach our game design: Identify a problem, then discuss the ways it could be solved. Our experience told us that even when the Engineer didn't feel immediate pressure, he still couldn't range out away from his base. If a Spy, Soldier, or Demoman found the base unguarded, it didn't take long to blow up. The further away an Engineer was, the fewer buildings he would be able to save from sapping. We also felt that the Engineer invested a lot of up-front work to establish bases that were very easily destroyed. Thus the repair node was born.

Play-testing the Repair Node showed us one expected, and two (somewhat) unexpected, outcomes. The expected outcome was that bases were far harder to destroy, and turtling became a super effective strategy. Fortunately, this is the kind of problem that can be attacked by turning the correct game design knob, and the Repair Node had a lot of available knobs. We could lower the rate of repair, lower the amount of repair energy, lengthen the vulnerable period, and so forth. We tried several options. One change we made was to add diminishing returns so that two Repair Nodes working together were less than perfectly efficient, and adding a third didn't really help at all.

Despite the design choices we had available, we were never really able to get the Repair Node to feel balanced for the attacking team. TF2 maps tend to be designed with very specific predicted Sentry placement locations and length of Sentry survivability. The Repair Node distorted old favorite maps and made testing new ones more difficult by exaggerating intentional choke points and creating new choke points where they didn't previously exist.

The first unexpected outcome of the Repair Node was the team realizing just how valuable the Dispenser and Teleporter were to so many aspects of game pacing. If the Engineer isn't able to build a Dispenser, his team loses the support power that the Dispenser provides. In most games Dispensers are ubiquitous. You don't really realize what you've lost until you've lost it. Fewer Dispensers had the effect of slowing attacking teams down in a variety of ways: Teams were more fragile, metal was harder to get to the front lines, and team rally points were harder to define.

An Engineer who took a Repair Node instead of a Teleporter put his team in an even less viable position. The pacing of many maps became completely broken without Teleporters in play. Teams weren't able to push as effectively and the lines of battle moved closer to the spawn points. This lack of flexibility meant that attackers weren't able to hold gains and matches took longer to complete.

The second unexpected outcome was downstream from the first. Teams perceived Engineers with Repair Nodes as less "friendly", specifically because they weren't building Dispensers or Teleporters. In retrospect, older data at our disposal should have known this would happen. Prior to TF2's release, the Medic had weaponry that was significantly more powerful, leading to highly skilled players playing Medic as a purely combat class. Aside from the balance issues this created, it also resulted in a Medic that wasn't interested in healing anyone, which didn't typically sit well with his teammates. Their perception was that healing is the Medic's job. Medics who didn't do that weren't perceived to be team players -- an identical reaction to Engineers refusing to build Dispensers and/or Teleporters. Like many design exercises we didn't learn what to do next so much as what NOT to do.

Lesson 1: The problem of the Engineer being tied to his base still exists, but the Repair Node was too heavy-handed a solution. If we solve this problem in the future, it will have to be in a way that doesn't distort the existing balance between attackers and defensive choke points.
Lesson 2: The Dispenser and Teleporter are really good. We already knew this, but we didn't know that they were really, really good. Encouraging Engineers to either avoid building them entirely, or to build them in weird ways, broke the game's pacing immediately. New buildings in the Engineer update will probably take the form of upgrades, or entirely new choices alongside the old buildings, instead of replacements.

These may seem like obvious lessons, but knowing for certain why a particular idea doesn't work can often be as valuable as an idea that does. This process highlighted specifically where and why the Engineer is valuable, and how even slightly altering this value can have game-shattering implications.

Ultimately, the Repair Node was cut because it made the game more of a grind. While it definitely made it less stressful to manage a base as an Engineer, it wasn't fun. The Engineer gained a little bit of fun, but nearly everyone else in the match suffered as a result.
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Anonymous · Mar 12, 2010

old news pim

Anonymous · Mar 12, 2010

broodje said:

old news pim
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March 2? Ofcourse that's old. Didn't see it posted here yet and I finally got my RSS feeds up again, so for me it was new

Kippensoep · Mar 18, 2010

For those who haven't seen it yet, there is propably an update coming within the few hours:

http://www.sourceop.com/modules.php?nam ... pic&t=2721

11:11 PM - Drunken F00l: also, it looks like engineer weapons or new hats or something have started dropping tonight?
11:11 PM - Drunken F00l: item indexes 153, 154, 159
11:12 PM - Robin: oh that isn't good
...
...
11:13 PM - Robin: sure explains some behavior I saw before coming home
11:13 PM - Drunken F00l: oh do elaborate
11:13 PM - Robin: oh well, will fix it tomorrow morning
11:13 PM - Robin: nah, nothing interesting, just random debugging
...
11:14 PM - Drunken F00l: good luck calming everyone down tomorrow morning
11:14 PM - Robin: heh, it's stuff that's supposed to be out tomorrow
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And there is plenty of other stuff you can read about it at the steam forums.

Kippensoep · Mar 18, 2010

I guess I was right, new items by community created added:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=3618&p=1

Kippensoep · Mar 18, 2010

Hahaaha I found a candybar, simular to sandvich, gives health, but gives also a bonus of +50 hp for 30 seconds, so a heavy with 350 hp now

http://www.tf2items.com/profiles/76561197994256973

EDIT: just found out: heals realy slow, not even half the amount of a normal sandvich I think and you can't trow it...
EDIT2: damn all servers aren't updated yet, can't find a server to idle for the night

Anonymous · Mar 19, 2010

Someone told me about this too, seems like more crap is added without playtesting

Anonymous · Mar 19, 2010

wooot, first round after update and what happens?

|LZ.war| Broodje has found: Physician's Procedure Mask
|LZ.war| Broodje has found: Physician's Procedure Mask

found 2 masks the first minute... <3 Valve
http://www.tf2items.com/id/broodje

Q-Ball · Mar 19, 2010

Oh man my congratulations
Hope will get something new

LuckyLuke · Mar 19, 2010

I was idling all night but didn't get anything.

Jer9 · Mar 19, 2010

Update said:

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

* Updated the new community-built hats so they can be crafted
* Updated the Camera Beard and Medic Mask so they can be crafted as hats
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Q-Ball · Mar 19, 2010

Just crafted 2 beards and get Hotrog

LuckyLuke · Mar 20, 2010

http://www.tf2items.com/id/robinwalker

Lol 2nd page...

Even more lol @ this one: http://www.tf2items.com/profiles/76561197960287930

Killvion · Mar 20, 2010

yeah saw robins page yesterday... and hooray for the camera beards now being craftable... if only I'd have 1

Anonymous · Mar 20, 2010

i got the candy bar thingy and i don't need it hahaha i never play heavy :lol: why isn't there the trading system the promissed i'm sure there's someone out ther who wanted this

Kippensoep · Mar 20, 2010

I hope trading never comes out, instead I hope they insert a domination system like gastly gibus to get items/hats by dominating someone.

Anonymous · Mar 20, 2010

Kippensoep said:

I hope trading never comes out, instead I hope they insert a domination system like gastly gibus to get items/hats by dominating someone.
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yeah but that way it's far to easy to get them

Morrolan · Mar 20, 2010

Killvion_NL said:

yeah saw robins page yesterday... and hooray for the camera beards now being craftable... if only I'd have 1
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Why would you want such an ugly item as the camera beard?

anyway: Like the new Pyro hat.

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