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Team Fortress 2 |OT4| Official Halo Thread of Polearms and High Fashion
- Thread starter Yeef
- Start date
Yeah Valve could do a better job of QA for updates (especially checking simple stuff like UI chages actually work before shipping an update or making sure MVM works after updating comp matchmaking since changes to that have broken it multiple times in the past), but I imagine that the TF team is the only ones who do QA on updates besides big ones. TF2 is also so big that even if they had a full QA team they wouldn't find everything so it's understandable that they use the community for a lot of QA testing but they certainly could do a better job of testing things that they know could potentially be wrong in an update.
It seems like it's going to be a pretty great one. All signs point to it coming very soon but who knows with Valve.
Mr Slin, a competitive TF2 player posted a great video about his visit to Valve the other day. It's not about the upcoming update, it's more about how the TF2 team thinks about the game and the community. It's a very interesting watch for anyone who's a fan of TF2 (or Valve in general).
TheRedSnifit
Member
ArtistDude88
Member
I had to go and re-watch the Expiration Date short because of that gif. Good times.
Honestly I think this update was supposed to ship long before now and kept getting pushed back. We saw the TF2 team working last Saturday (releasing an update on Saturday which almost never happens) and releasing multiple small updates with changes to the matchmaking while opening up another stress test after they hadn't done one in some time. B4nny has also more or less said that the update has been getting pushed back. One of the members of the TF2 team also posted a tease for the update saying it was neato the week before the Steam sale and if the update was planned to be this far out I don't think he would of teased it that early. As for the blog post about the promos, I image the TF2 team was going to post that before the blog post about the update, we've seen that happen multiple times in the past (I'm guessing they want the update post to be the top one) but when it became clear that they weren't going to be able to ship the update before the sale they just posted the promos blogpost to make sure people were aware of it.
Hopefully next week will be the week!
TheRedSnifit
Member
The ETF2L Premiership Playoffs started yesterday and are continuing through the 10th. Worth watching if you enjoy competitive TF2.
ZekeThePlumber
Member
Sunshine, Metalworks, and Swiftwater are all great maps.
fallengorn
Bitches love smiley faces
Pass Time? Bad Robot? Man, I'm really out of the loop.
torre_avenue
Banned
Day 2 mast image:
What common mechanic do Heavies and Pyros have, for any sort of War update? Unless this is to determine whether or not the Huolong Heater gets buffed or nerfed, I have no idea what the "reward" for winning a 2nd War update could be.
Wendel Clark
Member
W+M1. They have to compete with Overwatch somehow!
They both have shotguns for secondaries.
But yeah B4nny confirmed on Twitter that we're getting Heavy vs Pyro.
According to the author of Swift water he's made some changes to the version that's shipping with the game. He posted this about the changes on reddit:
No... but listing them will be difficult =)
I focused mainly on sniper sightlines, alt route tweaks, and health placement
TheRedSnifit
Member
They're both bulky classes specialized at close-quarters combat.
And since Valve is obviously looking at 6v6, they both fill the same niche of defending last cap.
torre_avenue
Banned
Okay, but in terms of common mechanics, what could it possibly be? In terms of WAR!, the Gunboats made sense because both Demo and Soldier can explosive jump. Pyro and Heavy share no common mechanic between them. I'd be disappointed if the reward for this War was just a unique shotgun instead of something providing an alternate play style. While they do fill the same niche in terms of metagame purpose, what weapon could be a viable replacement for either a minigun or a flamethrower? Or even a replacement for the shotgun?
bananabread
Member
I've thought for a while now that giving the Pyro a flak cannon weapon that functions similarly to Roadhog's alternate fire (or the flak cannon from UT) would be an interesting way to give him some ability to do some chip damage in a stalemate while also allowing him to fight 1v1.
The problem with the Pyro at the moment is you either run shotgun and can't do a whole heap in a stalematey game (talking push maps in pub servers, which is how most players currently experience the game) or you run flaregun to lob things into chokepoints and you're meat for basically any other class in a 1v1.
The winner of the war may not even get a weapon. The Gun Boats were a prize for Solider vs Demo but there was no prize weapon for Spy vs Sniper.
torre_avenue
Banned
In which case Heavy vs. Pyro makes more sense. The only reason I was even assuming a prize in the first place was because of the giant WAR. Heavy and Pyro have long been overdue for their alternate playstyles e.g. Battle Medic, Huntsman Sniper, Gunslinger Engie, so I'm excited to see what interesting new way we can play these two classes.
Apparently B4nny confirmed on a stream last night that Pyro and Heavy are getting new weapons as part of the update today (though that was a pretty safe guess). Also the Casual mode will replace the current quick play system though of course you'll still be able to access community servers for an experience similar to what you get in Valve pubs now.
Snacks the sober sea lion
Member
What are they doing? Are Valve servers just going to be gone outside of matchmaking?
They already killed most communities years ago with the game-finding system, there really isn't a great selection of non custom-mode community servers right now.
They already killed most communities years ago with the game-finding system, there really isn't a great selection of non custom-mode community servers right now.
Daria Morgendorffer
Member
Kinda expected the day 2 page to be available by now, didn't day 1 came out before tgis time yesterday?
ZekeThePlumber
Member
Dreams-Visions
Member
*waves*
ZekeThePlumber
Member
The new taunts are nice and all but they're being real cockteases about the actual update.
I'm torn between Heavy and Pyro. Pyro doesn't need new weapons, just rebalances. And Heavies just suck. Eh, who am I kidding? It'll probably just be a multiclass secondary anyway. I doubt valve would go through the trouble of conceptualizing and creating new weapons to not use them.
I'm torn between Heavy and Pyro. Pyro doesn't need new weapons, just rebalances. And Heavies just suck. Eh, who am I kidding? It'll probably just be a multiclass secondary anyway. I doubt valve would go through the trouble of conceptualizing and creating new weapons to not use them.
Dreams-Visions
Member
everything looks outstanding.
givit
I'm not torn. Fuck Pyro. Heavy all day.
The difference between the Soldier/Demo War update and this one is that the War! for the Soldier/Demo update ran for the days leading up to the update, which means they already had the prize designed and ready to go. This is different - this is competing for a future update. The TF2 team is obviously small and spread thin, so my guess is they only have resources to work on one class for the next major update and this is a "vote" to see which one they do.
ZekeThePlumber
Member
I just reread the blog post and the vote is for which will get a class update FIRST, which sucks as both need them. It's implied both will get one though.
I honestly hate the whole "tf2 team is small" argument. It's been nearly a year since the last major tf2 update and when your company's whole mantra is "games as a service," not committing resources to maintaining that service puts Valve at fault regardless of how big or small this team is.
I agree, and it's yet another way Valve's "no hierarchy, everyone does whatever" structure (or lack thereof) is hurting their output.
ZekeThePlumber
Member
The most impressive part of this update is that we're on day 2 and nothing in the game has actually updated.
? there was a big balance update at the beginning of this year, what do you mean "nearly a year since the last major tf2 update"
and you realize tf2 has by far the smallest playerbase out of all their games right (well besides l4d2 probably, but they gave up on that game ages ago)
combine that with the smallest team (not sure about that, but i've heard it before from multiple sources), why would it get as much attention as dota 2?
people are so quick to blame game devs for not being active enough but you don't know how much work they put into things behind the curtain, i can assure you it ain't easy in the slightest
and you realize tf2 has by far the smallest playerbase out of all their games right (well besides l4d2 probably, but they gave up on that game ages ago)
combine that with the smallest team (not sure about that, but i've heard it before from multiple sources), why would it get as much attention as dota 2?
people are so quick to blame game devs for not being active enough but you don't know how much work they put into things behind the curtain, i can assure you it ain't easy in the slightest
