Fortress Forever is out

[Defrag]

I agree with some of your criticisms (e,g, HW's needs to feel more heavy duty), however, if you play a bit more you'll see that some of your impressions will change.

E.g. Pyro. You say that it takes forever to burn someone to death; this is not the case! The pyro absolutely ruins people now. By ruins, I mean he dominates. We're probably going to tone down the pyro rather than tune up. Burn damage stacks; you have to hit people with all of your weapons while cyling (i.e. hit them with the cannon as you come in, then switch to flamethrower while throwing a napalm gren). If you stack burn damage, the person starts howling like a banshee and then dies very very quickly. The flamethrower in particular is very useful & disorientating now.

The HW's AC has a heat meter to stop HWs standing & spraying everything without thinking. To get the best power, you need to get it up to the top speed and then keep it there without overheating. Personally, I'm not 100% happy with the mechanics of this, but I find it preferable to TFC style HW where it's just point and click with no other thought going into playing other than positioning.

As for melee weapons and stuff like that, that's just .. different. We're not trying to be TF2, so the melee weapons are quite weak. We had toyed with a few ideas in the past (particularly giving the scout a stun stick so he could move blocking enemies out of the way) but in general melee weapons are either utility (wrench), desperation or humilation (crowbar). The scout is best suited for running flags, that's why his weapons are weak and he has concussion grenades. The scout doesn't die with one single shotgun shot, either and I've been killed by plenty of scouts on servers (the nailgun is pretty irritating and a good scout is fast).

We're working on technical issues right now (crashes, bugs etc.) but we will be altering the gameplay & balance in future, so hopefully we can take care of some of the things you find disagreeable.

[Psyshokiller]

I have to agree with both of you partially. When I played it the first few rounds I really didn't like the core gameplay, because I expeted it to be more direct as TFC was. After a few hours I got used to it and forgot the fact that it isn't a perfect copy of TFC and it became more and more fun. The changes started to appear reasonable.

[leileilol]

all this sweet time and the autorifle doesn't animate and 2fort isn't playable

[Defrag]

We'll fix it. Needs must.

[MJ]

great start

now fix the blue screen / comp restarts shenanigans

[leileilol]

also make shotgun closer to screen and do quick shell loading animation, make it funner looking, make cocking faster too (since TFC's shotgun was based off the speed and damage of Quake's shotgun), and the double shooty feels dinky when placed far away wtf.

Also a screen on the sentry's back that says 'seeking' in green light and 'LOCKED' in red light when enemy found

AND MAKE PROJECTILES SHOOT ALL AROUND YOU CLIENT-SIDE ONLY when you're gassed! and bring back sniper's flares and make the railgun into a rifle like it originally was in tf (the railgun pistol always sucked in tfc)

[Bic-B@ll]

i played it for a short time. i suck at this game.

[e-freak]

played it again for some hours now. It's getting better with every minute - just like a good wine

[curman]

I sort of think I'm alone on this but... I hated it. I mean, it just wasn't fun, I think the graphics and models are top notch, it's hands down a great accomplishment for the team.

The gameplay though, just.. I don't know, doesn't seem anything like the real TFC.

[Ginger Lord]

FF != TFC or TFC:S

[Fletch]

FF != TFC or TFC:S

But that's what people wanted. So they're going to feel disappointed when they didn't get it. Not saying it's fair. It's just life.

I played it a bit this week and my overall feeling was "meh-to-positive." Lag was an issue (whether that is from people using shitty servers or the code base itself, who knows). Classes seemed unbalanced. It basically turned into medics, snipers, and soldiers. Some of the maps looked great, while others had some areas that looked rushed. My main criticism in that area is there isn't an overall cohesiveness to them as a set (some are very old-school arenas, others try a more real world approach). Gameplay was fun, but there were some times I felt the game couldn't decide about realism vs. arcade gameplay. Rocket jumping = okay, but then I got fall damage jumping off mid-sized ledges, etc. Of course, it's a first release, so I wasn't expecting a supreme amount of polish in all areas. You get that through watching the community play and then making changes as you need to.Hopefully the FF team will keep iterating with timely updates.

For the negatives, which are glaring, but not show-stoppers, it's still the best HL2 MP mod out there. Good job, FF team.

[Nexus]

the game really kicks ass. haha..

yeah.. love it..

[Sentura]

i also forgot before: what happened to physics?

[leileilol]

but who cares about dumb ass barrels and gravity guns!!

[Defrag]

Physics are in for certain things & also in some maps we have phys props, but we didn't really use them a lot. The server already is very demanding and we didn't want to put any more strain on it.