New Team Fortress 2 Gamemode: TF2 Arena

I love this new gamemode, it really enables TF2 to be put into a competetive scene as well as opening up huge possibilities for custom maps both using this gamemode as well as other modes in the new environment. Also, I can NOT wait until the next update when they will indefinitely add new maps in other gamemodes with this environment.

Oh, that and Lumberyard looks better aesthetically than every other map combined. *hi fives valve*
 
I'm sure it will be a good laugh, and it's nice to see new environments but it's not really a very unique mode. We all probably already have about 2 deathmatch games, could they not have thought of something more interesting like protect the VIP or something along those lines. As always I understand they have a lot to do, but fans could have made deathmatch arenas (and already have!)
 
05_lumberyard_2.jpg

screenshotdesktop2bt7.jpg


Hmmm....
 
PriNcE oF SpAcE said:
I'm very curious about what weapon will replace the shotgun, as I can easily see Valve hitting a bit of bump trying to update all the shotties in the game into something interesting.
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I think the shotguns are going to be the most intresting things in all the updates as it seems they are going to be keeping the main and melee weapons very close to home. (which makes sence)
 
New gamemode sounds fun, and Lumberyard will bring a welcome change of scenery. Only problem I have is that the trees look awful, all seems a bit rushed. Im sure this new "Meet the" video will be out today, and whoever it is will be in this new enviroment.
 
This is gonna be great. Early next week though, school will have started
 
FoxFire said:
I really don't know how a glorified deathmatch with a cap point encourages teamplay more then the current maps/objectives.
Can someone explain this?
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In tf2, its easy to go put yourself in extreme danger, get killed, and respawn. Meaning, in other tf2 modes, everyone tries to be rambo, and sometimes succeed. because theres no respawn, people have to be less careless because if they die, its over for them for that round. Teammates have to work together to decide which classes to be, and where those classes go. if you read the description, you'd know they said stuff like "You should have a medic and an engineer to set up dispensers and get healed so you survive longer" or because i imagine these maps will be wide open, you'll probably want a sniper to see if he can pick off other teammates.

if everyone ran out and did there own thing, theyd probably, and that team would loose. You have to be more careful.. Its like sudden-death....

ellimanest said:
New gamemode sounds fun, and Lumberyard will bring a welcome change of scenery. Only problem I have is that the trees look awful, all seems a bit rushed. Im sure this new "Meet the" video will be out today, and whoever it is will be in this new enviroment.
Click to expand...

You know, valve has actually never confirmed this, and i think this will be a rumor.. The update we'll recieve today will most definitly be the shotgun upgrade. They may throw meet the video in the package too, but i doubt it will be on the heavy site because thats for the update of TF2, and the video isn't part of the update to the game...
 
Fiberawptic said:
You know, valve has actually never confirmed this, and i think this will be a rumor..
Click to expand...
Please get your facts right before making things up.
Doug Lombardi said:
Beginning today gamers may find details of "The Heavy" Update being disclosed via http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/. The site will reveal new information and screenshots each day, as well as a special installment to the "Meet the Team" series of video shorts.
Click to expand...

Also, the concerns of CS like gameplay don't worry me whatsoever. The class units in TF2 can never translate to CS like play, with just a random load of weapons to buy. Arena will be clever class strategies where you need everyone alive to attack and defend in all departments, making you look out for your team mates and work as a unit.

The best thing about it, is the fact Arena will make a 4 v 4 game thrive much more successfully. We all know playing Dustbowl with 4 a side isn't much fun, and the server quickly empties. Now for those smaller servers there will be pretty fun games going on, with lots of focus on tactical approaches and less gung-ho. TF2 isn't becoming CSS, it's become L4D if anything.
 
Im quite looking forward to it.

I dont know why so many of you are being negative. Its not like its taking away one gamemode and replacing it with Arena. Valve are giving us a big, free update which will add even more variety to the game.
 
A special installment to the "Meet the Team" series of video shorts.
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Special installment? Maybe this one will be about the new area type or gamemode.
 
Sounds like Sudden Death with twice the sudden and three times the suck. I mean, who actually LIKES sudden death? As an alternative to a draw, it serves a purpose, sure. But as a game mode of its own? If a game shipped with this game mode alone it would plummet into the depths of obscurity within weeks.

Shorter rounds? Wow, what's next? Commercial breaks? Give us some frikken credit, Valve! We should get a new tab for our server browsers because I want to be able to filter between normal TF2 servers, 'Custom' and, now, 'Arena'. Why do people not like Hydro, even though it's a great idea for a map? Because the rounds are mind-numbingly short and the areas very simplified.

People talking about 'Combat' for NS are bang on target.
In Natural Selection, a subsequent version of the mod introduced a new game mode: Combat. Combat was essentially a deathmatch version for an FPS/RTS game. This led to hordes of new players who would stay for the Combat maps but who caused massive problems in the 'Classic' maps. You'd either get half the players leaving the servers because the classic mode was too complex or required too much attention for them, or you'd get them staying on the server and playing a strategy game mode like a deathmatch game with no concept of tactics, teamwork, etc.

Now, while this does have some elements of teamwork, because of the small team sizes it seems far more likely that this mode. This sounds like a watered-down mode that will draw in the cretinous droves and reduce the average TF2 player's competency for the 'classic' modes. I can understand the need for a map/gamemode that caters for smaller team sizes, but this is, imo, a bad implementation of that.

The second big, massive problem with Combat is that once it was implemented they couldn't remove it. From then on, every design decision implemented for the classic mode also had to take Combat mode into consideration. This dramatically slowed down the process of balancing the game and sacrificed growth of the original gameplay. Now, unless Valve balances the stats for the classes on a per-game-mode basis, every time they modify a class they are going to have to check it doesn't skew the balance on this new game mode as well. Considering they're going to have to balance classes for, on the one hand, a simple deathmatch mode with small-to-large team sizes and, on the other hand, a more complex, multiple-stage game mode with large team sizes and more classes interplaying at any one time says to me that a similar scenario is lurking round the corner for Valve.

Finally, because Combat mode was so goddamn shallow and the levels a lot smaller, it meant everyone making maps for the mod suddenly shifted to making Combat maps, which were quicker to roll out and much simpler to balance. Anyone who preferred the original game mode was shafted for new content unless they made custom maps themselves. It also meant the general (design) quality of maps was equivalent to the average amount of brainpower capable of a Combat player. Combat maps in NS are plagued by terrible design flaws like 50ft line-of-sight spawn campathons, for example.

---

'Pure' servers are always hard to find, by that I mean trying to find a server with a decent number of players, a decent ping, without Quake sounds, no fast respawns, no birthday hats, no crappy stats clogging up my HUD, a FULL mapcycle and no class restrictions. Valve made it easy to filter out most of that stuff, but now I'll have to do an extra pass on my custom search to manually filter out this new game mode. Spawn times in TF2 are already long enough, I don't want a bloody CS round spawn system to contend with, too. And I don't want to play shorter rounds either, I can already feel my grey matter atrophying when Hydro pops up on the mapcycle.

All in all, I'm surprised at this move. But I'm sure anyone still playing CS will be pleased.
 
Yeah, what happened to the 5 brand new maps? We only get 2 brand new ones and 3 'remade' ones?
Nice misleading choice of words VALVe.

Anyways, yawntastic game mode.
Next.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
Please get your facts right before making things up.


Also, the concerns of CS like gameplay don't worry me whatsoever. The class units in TF2 can never translate to CS like play, with just a random load of weapons to buy. Arena will be clever class strategies where you need everyone alive to attack and defend in all departments, making you look out for your team mates and work as a unit.

The best thing about it, is the fact Arena will make a 4 v 4 game thrive much more successfully. We all know playing Dustbowl with 4 a side isn't much fun, and the server quickly empties. Now for those smaller servers there will be pretty fun games going on, with lots of focus on tactical approaches and less gung-ho. TF2 isn't becoming CSS, it's become L4D if anything.
Click to expand...

Someone already provided the source, and i was wrong.. jeeze... I was merely asking, even if it didn't seem like it, where the info about the new meet the video came from because i couldn't find it... thats all.. Don't i have the right to be inquisitive about things? :(
 
Holy shit, wait, am I reading this right now? The new maps and environment are only for Arena?

Failness.
 
Absinthe said:
Holy shit, wait, am I reading this right now? The new maps and environment are only for Arena?

Failness.
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Sorry if it seems im spamming, but i must reply to this... DUDE, they released a new pl map, sure it isn't a new environment, but new map nonetheless. And they are releasing that community made map, which i've never played before so thats new to me...
 
Absinthe said:
Holy shit, wait, am I reading this right now? The new maps and environment are only for Arena?

Failness.
Click to expand...
One step at a time I should think. After making all those new textures and models for the alpine environments I'm sure they'll make a couple CTF and CP maps from them too, they wouldn't waste it on 1 or 2 Arena maps only.
 
Fiberawptic said:
Sorry if it seems im spamming, but i must reply to this... DUDE, they released a new pl map, sure it isn't a new environment, but new map nonetheless. And they are releasing that community made map, which i've never played before so thats new to me...
Click to expand...

But I like the green. GIVE ME THE GREEN FFS. Besides, Payload is just the illegitimate, bastard spawn of Hunted, and I refuse to recognize it for that reason.

Any way, I don't quite understand the negativity towards the new game mode. It can be avoided and I don't expect it to drastically affect the other modes, if at all. I just don't quite see what the appeal of it will be outside of the competitive scene. But that's me.
 
respawn times are part of the gameplay. Hence the disparity between red and blu respawn times. Also, they act as an encouragement not to die.
 
Mess said:
respawn times are part of the gameplay. Hence the disparity between red and blu respawn times. Also, they act as an encouragement not to die.
Click to expand...
In round-based spawn systems, like Sudden Death and Counter-Strike, long respawn times actively encourage camping. How many SD round have you seen end with 2 Engies at either end of the map waiting for Godot?
 
But the difference in this case is that rather than multiple objectives spread wide apart, you have one in a single area, I dont think engineer camping in that way will effect this to much.
 
New game mode sounds interesting and I like the Alpine style.

And respawn times are a very, very good thing IMO. It creates a small penalty for death and allows games to end, because otherwise you have people spawning again and again at the final capture point making it almost impossible to finish off the enemy team.
 
I love Valve is all im going to say!!! Update should be available within hours.
 
Crispy said:
In round-based spawn systems, like Sudden Death and Counter-Strike, long respawn times actively encourage camping. How many SD round have you seen end with 2 Engies at either end of the map waiting for Godot?
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that the arena maps will most likely be quite small. And I don't think the counter-strike comparison is in order. There's no 'gain' for a team winning a round. In counter-strike, if you've got one team which wins the first two rounds, they often end up having the powerful weaponry for the rest of the game, while you're scraping your wallet for Kevlar and a silly MP5. The choice of classes within a TF2 team has more impact on the gameplay than any weapon-store in a CS round can do.

Let's just wait and see ...

I do agree, however, that Valve has to stop the silly marketing of announcing reworked versions of existing maps (regardless on how much work went into it) as new. They're not.
 
Absinthe said:
But I like the green. GIVE ME THE GREEN FFS. Besides, Payload is just the illegitimate, bastard spawn of Hunted, and I refuse to recognize it for that reason.
Click to expand...

If you've played TFC (which I'm sure you have), you'll agree that TF2 can be considered the "illegitimate bastard spawn" of TFC. Where are the grenades? Where's the Scout's nailgun and caltrops? Where is the Medic's Infection ability? Why is the art style so cartoony? What happened to CTF being the primary game mode?

But TF2 is good. It works on its own accord. Valve changed up TFC a great deal, alienating hardcore TFC players who aren't willing to make the jump. And they did the exact same thing with Hunted -> Payload. Bastard spawn, sure, but you can't keep looking at the mode thinking "Man, I don't like how the Hunted player was replaced with this bomb, I really wish this mode was The Hunted" because that's just a self-referential cycle of self-disappointment.

If you embrace what separates TF2 from TFC, and then moan about what separates Payload from Hunted, then you're creating a double standard, and if I'm not mistaken that would go against everything you stand for as a logical, rational person.

:p
 
BECAUSE I FELT LIKE IT THAT'S WHY

GET OFF MY BACK YOU'RE NOT MY MOM

dad
 
Stigmata said:
If you've played TFC (which I'm sure you have), you'll agree that TF2 can be considered the "illegitimate bastard spawn" of TFC. Where are the grenades? Where's the Scout's nailgun and caltrops? Where is the Medic's Infection ability? Why is the art style so cartoony? What happened to CTF being the primary game mode?

But TF2 is good. It works on its own accord. Valve changed up TFC a great deal, alienating hardcore TFC players who aren't willing to make the jump. And they did the exact same thing with Hunted -> Payload. Bastard spawn, sure, but you can't keep looking at the mode thinking "Man, I don't like how the Hunted player was replaced with this bomb, I really wish this mode was The Hunted" because that's just a self-referential cycle of self-disappointment.

If you embrace what separates TF2 from TFC, and then moan about what separates Payload from Hunted, then you're creating a double standard, and if I'm not mistaken that would go against everything you stand for as a logical, rational person.

:p
Click to expand...

Why can't it be something as simple as "I like most of the changes, others less so much"? I don't need to embrace or loathe TF2 on the whole.

I don't miss grenades because I found them largely unwieldy, spammy, and because any new player often got his face blown off repeatedly by an enemy who had honed his precision-timed blast attacks for years. I didn't find them fun, and so there was nary a tear when they didn't make the jump to TF2.

But Hunted? Hot damn, that was brilliant through and through. Having an actual VIP was for more interesting and dynamic than some slow-moving cart on train tracks. While of course there could be problems with inexperienced players in the VIP shoes - and that is no doubt one of the primary reasons the mode has not yet crossed over - that doesn't change the fact that I find Payload maps on the whole to be an inferior and less enjoyable experience, regardless of how much more "balanced" or "noob friendly" it may be.

In short, Payload has never allowed me to sneak up on unsuspecting assassins and bludgeon them to death with my umbrella. It has never given me that pure moment of satisfaction that was headshot-gibbing the president. Maybe it's a little too old-school for today's TF or some shit. I don't know. That won't change the fact that Payload, as good as it may be, only instills some acrid piss taste in my mouth when I'm reminded of how much more fun its previous iteration was.
 
I kinda hoped the new map would be the one with the mobile fortress, but this is great too :)
 
Arena kicks arse, just played some 3v3 on Ravine and it was awesome. Only reason I stopped is because TF2 crashed for the first time in ages.
 
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