TF2

Quote from Rick_D

Yeah it's their face poser. You say it like it's a bad thing Zacker

You don't think it's a bad thing that a guy who is supposed to be a big bad mofo has facial animations as if he was some cute young girl?

You're wrong there, Rick. Conc jumping was an intentional feature right back to the original Team Fortress for Quake. It's not something that was added towards the end of the game's life as a gimmick like the shields in CS; grenades have always been a core element of Team Fortress, and their behaviour in every single way is very much what the developers intended. It's almost hard to imagine TFC without grenades as they were just as important as your shotgun.

That's what makes their removal so surprising. The only person who I can seriously see thinking the grenade removal is a good thing is someone who hardly ever played Team Fortress, if at all. The grenades were superb with the only exception of a few specific choke points that were slightly abused (but could have been fixed with some map modification) -- simple as that.

Quote from Thrik

That's what makes their removal so surprising. The only person who I can seriously see thinking the grenade removal is a good thing is someone who hardly ever played Team Fortress, if at all. The grenades were superb with the only exception of a few specific choke points that were slightly abused (but could have been fixed with some map modification) -- simple as that.

Yes I agree completely, I think this is without a doubt for people who have never played TF who Valve expects to be too lazy to learn new skills in a shooter, a predictable but unfortunate pattern of Valve dumbing down their games in a futile attempt to help attract new players.

This will backfire, in my opinion. It isn't the simplicity and accessibility of games like TF and CS that made them enormous hits, its the depth and learning curve that seperates amateurs from long time players and gives people a real to keep coming back for more. Valve has completely forgotten this in favor of a rather short sighted rush to console game relevance.

That's just it. I find myself thinking "this is the best game ever made" every single time I touch one of Valve's games. It's not really a problem. The problem is I keep being proven wrong when they release their next one.....

Quote from Furyo

That's just it. I find myself thinking "this is the best game ever made" every single time I touch one of Valve's games. It's not really a problem. The problem is I keep being proven wrong when they release their next one.....

If you thought either CS:S or DOD:S were the best games ever made you apparently missed the originals because there is no way either is an improvement.

I think Valve is rushing to a silver bullet that will give them the kind of dug in base of players on consoles they are used to on the PC and making alot of dumb mistakes on the way, in my opinion.

Different games, perhaps. But if different is the goal is might be best to not release re-hashed versions of the same games removing vital features and implementing in a very poor manner new features.

This is the same road I see them taking with TF2, they recognize that to new players the grenade spam is incredibly intimidating. But rather than understand how important and integral such a feature is to the game and how unique it made the game they saw a neccessity in completely removing them. Now that either says to me they saw a serious need or that they could not make it work plausibly with their new concept. They will compensate by adding some new features I imagine, but if the formula from DOD:S and CS:S is still in mind they will not add anything anywhere near as fun and as classic as conc jumping. This is the kind of issue I take with the altering of old games, if you can improve them then there is really no issue, its only when you re-address old games and fail to introduce meaningful new experiences that people start to get jaded.

There is a reason beyond the hardware gap for CS:S and DOD:S being behind their several year old brothers in number of players and why Valve has yet to reproduce the enormous success of their first few titles. In my opinion, you would have to be crazy to rank any of their new sequels as superior to the originals in any way but with regard to technology.

In a nutshell:

You may not love conc jumping, but it was a second layer of depth to the game. That second layer of depth kept players, by removing that layer and failing to add a replacement you doom yourself to alienating even more people than you would have had you just kept everything the same.

I personally agree: I think the grenade removal will severely harm TF2's long-term appeal.

At the moment a lot of new people are being attracted to it based purely on its graphics. This is no bad thing, and I reckon they look superb too. The only problem is that without grenades, there's a huge level of tactical depth that's suddenly gone.

With conc grenades, you could take shortcuts and surprise the enemy by using an exit they're not expecting you to use (Up the enemy lift in 2fort, anyone?). Using flame grenades you could fill an area with fire. With caltrops you could leave spikes all the floor that slightly hurt but more importantly slow your enemies down to a crawl.

Sure, it was difficult to use all the grenades effectively, but it was mastering them that made the game such a satisfying one to play over a long stretch of time. Partially, at least. Mastering the rocket to do rocket jumps (shown at the end of the older trailer) and various other things that you can't just do as soon as you see someone else do them all added to the long-term appeal.

Boo to the grenade removal. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

The teleporter is anyway already an insult to the TF spirit, so well ..

Eh, the teleporter didn't bother me too much when it was added. It rarely actually affected my game at all as somebody would always destroy it before it could get going.

I think the mistake was that a lot of people tried to use the teleport offensively, and thus is was destroyed within minutes. Clearly it is much more suited to defensive use, allowing you to shortcut from your spawn to the top level of Well for example.

I think if they're still in TF2 (looked like they are) and are embraced from the beginning they could be a decent addition as long as people learn to use them effectively. The majority of people in TFC didn't use them at all or just tacked them onto years of experience and technique, which usually went badly.

I'm with Rick, I thought TFC was balls, but this I'm looking forward to because it seems Valve are taking a good hard look at the gameplay and making it fun.

I found TFC manic and totally inaccesible to new players because the vets were doing all this weird glitchey shit all the time.

It will be a new game, just don't hope for a replica of TFC, if you want that, go play TFC or wait for Fortress Forever?

Quote from Thrik

Clearly it is much more suited to defensive use, allowing you to shortcut from your spawn to the top level of Well for example.

Exactly, and that's why i said this, it was already really hard to be in offense, it's even worse with the teleporter

But i can't remember if players were able to build one directly in a ressuply zone, because if offs can't destroy it, it gets really lame

You kidding ifO? The gameplay looks completely like TFC's in almost every single way as far as pace and technique goes. I reckon you're just sold by the graphics because an observer would have difficulty telling the difference between a TFC video and a TF2 video if the graphics were the same.

Make no mistake, TF2 will be very much like TFC. Everything released thus far backs this up, so if you absolutely hated TFC I doubt you'll like TF2. Not unless you hardly played TFC and/or basically tried it for about five minutes.

It just won't have grenades, lessening the overall depth.

I never played CS at all except for some random lan party, and I did play DoD to no end before beta testing Source and am still playing it today.

I would agree that DoDS didn't live up to many persons expectations, but if I compare this game to the same genres that have been made by other companies, I can't help but think it's still the best WW2 infantry shooter out there. Look at the CoD multiplayer, with no spawn protection, and that's exactly the kinda game that are lacking so much. BF obviously falls outside of this comparison.

Quote from FMPONE

If you thought either CS:S or DOD:S were the best games ever made you apparently missed the originals because there is no way either is an improvement.

I think Valve is rushing to a silver bullet that will give them the kind of dug in base of players on consoles they are used to on the PC and making alot of dumb mistakes on the way, in my opinion.

Quote from Rick_D

and they expanded the depth "lost" there with more intricate character abilities.

What new abilities?

Quote from Thrik

What new abilities?

One that I can think of is that the medic can now make a player invulnerable. He attaches some sort of beam to him with a limited range, and has to follow the player around. As long as the beam is attached, the targeted player won't take damage. Of course, the medic is still very vulnerable.