PCGamer Preview of The New TF2 updates

[DigiQ8]

In this month issue, PCGamer pinned down Robin Walker to talk about the upcoming Team Fortress 2 massive update which includes; new modes, tweaks and 36 new achievements. Mr.Walker had a few examples for the upcoming Medic achievements such as:

• Placebo Effect: kill five enemies in a single life while having your uber-charge ready, but undeployed.
• Preventive Medicine: block the enemy from capturing a control point with an uber-charged teammate.
• Triage: deploy an uber-charge on a teammate less than a second before they're hit by a critical explosive.
• Autopsy Report: provide an enemy with a freeze-cam shot of you taunting above their ragdoll.

"We design achievements in much the same way we design TF2 classes", Walker said "Once we understand who the "customer" for an achievement is, it's fairly straightforward to design and test it."[br]
On the new tweaks, Valve got a few tweaks for the Pyro in mind, which requires a significant new addition to the Pyro. And for the Medic they try to give him tools that "increase the difference between a highly skilled Medic and a beginner", and the first step towards that is the unlockable weaponry (such as the Overhealer, an upgrade that permanently doubles a target's health, but disables uber-charging)[br]
That's some of what coming to Team Fortress 2 in the upcoming months, in the mean-time you can read a new interview with Robin Walker on the radical new changes to TF2 on CVG.com.

 

[CyberPitz]

# Triage: deploy an uber-charge on a teammate less than a second before they're hit by a critical explosive.

That's going to be luck, if anything...

# Autopsy Report: provide an enemy with a freeze-cam shot of you taunting above their ragdoll.

Now THAT'S funny.

Wait, I thought the overhealer was scrapped.

 

[Polaris]

Interesting achievements.
It's sad that many players still don't have a clue what ?ber-charge is. (maybe I just play with idiots)

 

[Apos]

Placebo Effect: kill five enemies in a single life while having your uber-charge ready, but undeployed.

This one is sort of annoying: it basically rewards bad gameplay.

They need to get at least Goldrush out the door soon though. They can play with the other stuff until its perfect, but new maps shouldn't wait until fine gameplay tweaks.

 

[UseAbuse]

Wait, I thought the overhealer was scrapped.

look at the bottom of the page

 

[taviow]

Triage: deploy an uber-charge on a teammate less than a second before they're hit by a critical explosive.

I really don't like this one. It's not challenging, it requires luck.

 

[Druckles]

Funny how I could have had most of them already D:

Is that first one actual kills or assists...?

 

[Qonfused]

I really, really want Goldrush.

 

[hool10]

Out of the 2 interviews with Portal and the the TF2 team, I have come up with some theories. Valve is out of touch with a gamer who has a brain, deadlines, and they are very indecisive. They frequently act like they are hiding something. They frequently cut out a lot of their content from their games because they say the average gamer has ADD and can't play a game more than 5 minutes. So that is why their games are short and episodes most of the time, almost like a cheap Pop Cap game, minus the bad quality. Also this is the reason why TF2 has bright neon signs all over the place with arrows directing you to the war. They just get the most stupid people and play test them like that dolt who did the Portal interview. Example of a dolt:

It took me a while to realize I had to do something if I wanted to be alive again, unless I wanted to wait more.

KS: That's actually a Half-Life convention, that you have to click or press a key to come forward. It's something we had too.

That was something I should've known already!

EW: No, again, it's playtesting. We failed you.

KS: It's our fault. (laughs)

No it's not your fault, he is just a retard. 1/2 of that interview was about something other than Portal. Another thing that aggravates me is the way they say they are in touch with the player base. The spy sucks and this is a fact. To add a way to tell the retarded medic that he is healing a spy completely removes an achievement and also nerfs the spy even more. They also don't have a deadline and joke about it, yet even though we laugh, we ALL die a little inside. All the overhealer achievements: gone. I have no clue why but it sounded like everything was peachy then they just got rid of all of their work. Probably to a stupid play tester too. People are demanding cheaper items from the Valve store including cheaper games on Steam as well. That's the other thing I noticed about Valve employees: they are rich. Yes I will pay $4 less for a game rather than pay the full amount for a digital game I had bought. Example:

Yeah. They're the only people who make money on that thing. It was like the plurality -- not the majority -- of their business this year.

EW: Really? I didn't know that.

Oh yeah. There's some graphs and stats out there.

Oh yeah Valve get with the times already...

EW: Because I've never bought a used game from GameStop, because they're always four dollars less than the full-priced game. I'd buy one off of eBay or something.

Yeah who needs that extra gas money anyways? Especially if you live in CA! This is my big kicker though:

KS: I think to each their own. Me personally, if I'm buying a game on the PC, I want to download it through a service like Steam. It just makes my life easier. If I'm sitting around one afternoon and I'm like, "Oh, I'd like to play such-and-such game," I can just go and download it real quick, as opposed to, "Oh, I've got to get dressed and go to the store." It's nice.

Oh yeah, when I get bored, I just open up my wallet, take out my credit card, and add more debt to my credit card because we are all rich like that. I don't know anybody who does that. So that last quote just sums up that Valve live in some fantasy land in which there is no deadlines and everybody is rich. Valve also wants to take all the best people in the industry and use them for themselves, almost like a monopoly that started with Steam. I had a long suspicions of this and was confirmed with the 2 interviews. *Wtf is going on with the "Meet The" videos? The scout was shown at GDC so I can only assume it wasn't good enough and scraped it?

 

[Asknoone]

I'm not sure you know what you are talking about, hool. It all sounds fairly alarmist. You're not far off when you say they only get stupid people to playtest their games though - that's 90% of the gaming community right there.

They frequently cut out a lot of their content from their games because they say the average gamer has ADD and can't play a game more than 5 minutes. So that is why their games are short and episodes most of the time.

Quite wrong.

 

[Trevelyan]

hmm, they sound interesting, I can't wait to play as I play medic alot.

I cant wait for goldrush...but bring back the VIP!:bounce:

 

[Epsi]

Of course they scrap something that isn't any good! Would you prefer it if they released something they thought was rubbish? That half the people they sat down to play for the first time couldn't understand?

Not everyone is clued up on crazy FPS conventions, either. One of the reasons people think TF2 is so great is because it's incredibly accessible. You can figure out what's going on easily, and have a lot of fun pretty much straight away. I mean, we play games to have fun, right?

If my experience of playing a game for the first time basically consists of being really, really confused for 15 minutes, and getting killed over and over for no obvious reason, is that fun? Would I be classified as having ADD if I then decided to quit and play something that was actually enjoyable?

That post is just wrong in so many ways it isn't funny.

I mean, for one thing, you don't have to use a credit card on Steam. You could use a debit card, and only spend money you do have. Plenty of people manage to not be rich and have disposable income simultaneously.

And better watch out for the evil Valve bogeymen, snatching up the best and the brightest against their will, forced to toil in the Steam-mines forever, bound to enrich their over-masters! Don't be so ridiculous.

Valve sounds like an amazing place to work. Being surrounded by intelligent, driven people whose only goal is to produce the best possible game, with no corporate interference pressuring to release a sub-standard game to meet an arbitrary deadline? Sounds great to me.

 

[Shamrock]

I was just talking with Stigmata about this, and from what I understand is they still have the, 'hit 15 out of 36 achievements - get an unlock,' mindset going.

Just complete speculation:

If there are 9 classes, 36 achievements each, 2 unlocks, that is 324 achievements to unlock all 18 guns.

If at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the achievements are incredibly hard like the new Medic achievement to hit 10 million healing points, then it would also take incredibly long for the other classes as well.

However, Stig raised a good point saying: Maybe 15 are for one gun, 15 for another, and the last 6 are just the incredibly hard ones that are just for show.

I just think it is going to take a while for the unlocks to be unlocked especially if Valve can't figure out what they want to add in. If they rethink all of their unlocks by the time they estimate another content update, we will just have the regular TF2 for quite a bit longer.


I'm done.

 

[Asuka]

Johnson: Even with a small number of items, your playing time is going to be the limiting factor, you're just not going to be able to get them all. One of the new Medic achievements is to heal ten million points - that's like three months of pretty intense healing.

Walker: There's one guy in the world who's got that right now.

Thats insane! This is getting me hyped to get back into TF2, as a matter of fact im going to play some now.

Where are you guys getting all these achievement details from btw?

oh and its 3 unlock ables now. http://pc.ign.com/articles/861/861991p1.html and details on what you need to get them.

 

[FatboyTim]

This interview might be 'new' online, but...

We talked to Robin a few days before the release of CTF_Well...

CTF_Well was released ~2 months ago, late in January.