Team Fortress 2 is now Free to Play; Über Update is Live

It Bugs me that most of the new weapons really aren't that unique. Most are simple variations of damage, ammo capacity, and reload rate, and a few minor buffs and debuffs. There are no real weapons that REALLY change how you play with the exception of the Mediguns, and the spy watches, and the two types of turret. And any really unique weapons soon a have three or four variations that dilute the uniqueness of the weapon.

Someone explain this to me...
 
Wow, guess their micro-transaction model is working out.
 
Krynn72 said:
Good god, the game has changed so much since I last played it. You listing that stuff just made me go "what?"

I mean, I knew about things dropping, and have some vague notion of that the store is, but backpack spaces? Theres a ****ing inventory now? I have a feeling I'd just be lost if I tried to play again, since the last time I played was before any of the changes to the game, like, any of them.
Click to expand...

Except you could ignore every aspect of what's been added (items, inventory, and crafting) and you'd be left with a handful of new maps and enemy weapons which are barely different from the originals.
 
What you've missed Ace:
  • April 29, 2008 - First set of unlockable weapons and first payload map.
  • August 19, 2008 - First arena map.
  • May 21, 2009 - First payload race map, first hats, introduction of the random drop system.
  • August 13, 2009 - First king of the hill map.
  • October 29, 2009 - First limited-time event (halloween event) not including birthday mode.
  • December 17, 2009 - Introduction of crafting.
  • March 18, 2010 - First community-made items added to the game.
  • June 10, 2010 - Mac version added, main menu redesigned (for the first time), training and offline practice modes introduced.
  • September 30, 2010 - In-game shop introduced.
  • March 23, 2011 - Japan charity added.
  • April 14, 2011 - Coaching and an in-built voting system added to the game.
  • May 5, 2011 - Replay saving and editing system added to the game.
  • June 6, 2011 - First Saxxy Awards.
 
Holy crap that's a lot of players. No wonder my college gaming societies server has people in it for the first time in months.
 
Shakermaker said:
Peaking at almost 100k now. Madness.
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Yeah I think the 3,513,975 (peak) steam users online today was either extremely close to the record, or it beat the record for most users online at once. There was a post on it in the General Steam Discussion section of the steam forums.
 
That's odd, it lists the peak as 97,917 but it said 99,004 earlier.
 
All my usual haunts are packed, it's a bit insane. Unfortunately the dilution of good tactics and ability has rendered many servers a bit broken. It's strange really, it feels a bit hollow at the moment...being able to kill people without much effort or trickery. Even all the 50/50s seem in my favour. I haven't played a great deal of TF2 recently but I must have near 1000 hours of practice to lean up, ain't lost the edge baby. (Well perhaps I have but I'll only know when the skill levels balance out again)
 
So are there actually better weapons in TF2 now that you can only obtain with money? (By better I mean changed stats)
 
ríomhaire said:
That's odd, it lists the peak as 97,917 but it said 99,004 earlier.
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I was speaking of steam users, not TF2 players.

What it shows on their website: Concurrent Steam Users: 2,195,242 (current) 3,514,026 (peak).
 
ZT said:
So are there actually better weapons in TF2 now that you can only obtain with money? (By better I mean changed stats)
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Nope. Paying for them is just the fastest option.
 
So this flood of noobs is driving me insane. I didn't play much before and I'm by no means the best, but you can easily see the handful of veterans relative to all the new people. Usually a good spy will have like five times the kills of the next highest person on the team because no one can figure out the concept of spies being their team mates... Engineers with level one sentries and no teleporters running around... Prolly the saddest thing is to see all the pyros just infinitely flaming nothing many yards from a potential target. Oh and the snipers... so many... so bad...

They'll pick it up eventually I guess. It's tough going collecting all this new shit but I'm making a little progress. Someone gifted me that high damage low movement speed Heavy gun and that's pretty cool. I figure I have enough random copies to craft something useful by now too.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
All my usual haunts are packed, it's a bit insane. Unfortunately the dilution of good tactics and ability has rendered many servers a bit broken. It's strange really, it feels a bit hollow at the moment...being able to kill people without much effort or trickery. Even all the 50/50s seem in my favour. I haven't played a great deal of TF2 recently but I must have near 1000 hours of practice to lean up, ain't lost the edge baby. (Well perhaps I have but I'll only know when the skill levels balance out again)
Click to expand...
Was playing and I checked the scoreboard. My score: 51, highest on enemy team: 7. Was like
:cheese: :) :| :(

LibDem said:
I was speaking of steam users, not TF2 players.
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...obviously

StarBob said:
So this flood of noobs is driving me insane. I didn't play much before and I'm by no means the best, but you can easily see the handful of veterans relative to all the new people. Usually a good spy will have like five times the kills of the next highest person on the team because no one can figure out the concept of spies being their team mates... Engineers with level one sentries and no teleporters running around... Prolly the saddest thing is to see all the pyros just infinitely flaming nothing many yards from a potential target. Oh and the snipers... so many... so bad...
Click to expand...
Yeah was Spying myself and at one point I forgot I was just disguised and not invisible because I was trying to jump on an Enginner's head while he was upgrading his sentry and he totally ignored me. I'm sure in about a week or two there'll be a noticable improvement.
 
ZT said:
So are there actually better weapons in TF2 now that you can only obtain with money? (By better I mean changed stats)
Click to expand...
No this is a common mistake people make. All non-standard weapons are not better, they are alternatives (with bonuses and downsides) and they are all obtainable via crafting. The list is quite long now so you need to craft a lot...but not all the weapons are useful. You find your favourite load-outs. I wouldn't recommend turning 'gotta catch em all' if you don't want to spend some money, it would be silly.

Oh and the free accounts can't trade / craft everything...so I guess those guys can't get all the weapons? But if they buy one item in the store (cheapest is probably £1.99?) then they can.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
No this is a common mistake people make. All non-standard weapons are not better, they are alternatives
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In fairness most classes have at least one melee that's just an upgrade (literally in the Medic's case), but melee was fairly useless in the release gameplay anyway so it's almost impossible to make a sidegrade to melee that isn't also useless.

Hectic Glenn said:
I wouldn't recommend turning 'gotta catch em all' if you don't want to spend some money, it would be silly.
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I had every weapon before the RIFT promo :(

Hectic Glenn said:
Oh and the free accounts can't trade / craft everything...so I guess those guys can't get all the weapons? But if they buy one item in the store (cheapest is probably £1.99?) then they can.
Click to expand...
I think free accounts can craft all the weapons, they just can't craft or find hats. That said they only have fifty spaces so they can't actually have all of the weapons at once, but some are fairly useless anyway. Fifty is enough to have a few alternatives open for every class and the defaults are the best all-round weapons in most cases (other than the sandvich and melees) with unlocks forcing specializations so they'll always have those.

The thing is though if they do buy anything in the store (cheapest thing iis 49c) they become premium, same as people who bought the game before it went free so then they can find and craft hats to their heart's content.
 
I think the players who owned the game prior to the update should get more than a single hat. Why not give them a badge that actually changes their game stats: 5% movement increase, 2% more damage, a unique untradeable weapons that all classes can use. Or why not just give us a damn crate key?

Also, those who bought the game retail should not be the same as those who bought one item in the store. We are more like supper special accounts.

But really its no big deal. I mena, I'm happy with the bragging rights that come with my minecraft Alpha account even though there is no difference between it and a Beta account.
 
lord_raken said:
I think the players who owned the game prior to the update should get more than a single hat. Why not give them a badge that actually changes their game stats: 5% movement increase, 2% more damage, a unique untradeable weapons that all classes can use. Or why not just give us a damn crate key?

Also, those who bought the game retail should not be the same as those who bought one item in the store. We are more like supper special accounts.

But really its no big deal. I mena, I'm happy with the bragging rights that come with my minecraft Alpha account even though there is no difference between it and a Beta account.
Click to expand...

Changing stats is kind of lame but a crate key would blow my mind. How much are those things by the way?
 
lord_raken said:
I think the players who owned the game prior to the update should get more than a single hat. Why not give them a badge that actually changes their game stats: 5% movement increase, 2% more damage, a unique untradeable weapons that all classes can use.
Click to expand...

You are terrible.
 
Getting the new guys to complete their objective is a pain. I have to rally them up and lead the charge most of the time with my Proof of Purchase. No one pushes the cart. No one captures or defends the control points. No one is brave enough to mount an excursion into the opposing team's base to retrieve the intelligence. No, it's always me that gets stuck with the job. In Barnblitz, a snowy map, I found myself the only one to be pushing the cart or making an attempt to. Nine out of the thirteen players on my team were either Snipers or Engineers. Please tell me how Engineers or Snipers advance the cart if they're sitting back building ineffective Sentries or camping for an enemy that will never arrive. It boggles me.

On Pipeline, the same thing happened. I stood on the cart to try to motivate my team, but the only one who stepped up to the plate was a lone Medic. His eyes shifted quickly from left to right, and I knew he was scared of what was behind the gate, but I convinced him to stay with me. The gate opened, and the rest of my team stood back, their cowardly antics eventually costing us the round.

Surprisingly, though, we made a comeback in the last round. If you aren't acquainted with Pipeline, the third round is composed of two railroads going up a hill. Sounds simple, right? Nope. It's a race to the top, and if you've already lost the previous match, the enemy team gets a headstart. Plus, if you get it halfway up the hill and die, the cart goes all the way back down, giving the enemy team more time. For some reason, my teammates had sobered up and were actually pushing the cart with me. I had a Scout, a Demoman, and a Medic all helping me get it up the hill. And we actually made it before the enemy team did. I shouted, yelled, screamed, and cried at our success.

But these moments are rare. It's always me that gets stuck with winning the match for my team. There's no coordination or teamwork at all.
 
Shem said:
There's no coordination or teamwork at all.
Click to expand...

Of course there isn't. Loads of players don't have a clue of what they are doing because they are new at the game. You shouldn't expect all those noobies to instantly become TF2 veterans. The maps, gameplay and modes - they all have to learn that. It is easy to forget what it was like to play Team Fortress 2 for the first time, but you have to try and imagine. Tell Medics not to double heal. Explain why Scouts shouldn't use teleports. Make sure that Heavies take out the Engineers before they start shooting at sentries. All that basic stuff has to be rammed in again. Things will get better, it just takes time.
 
Shakermaker said:
Of course there isn't. Loads of players don't have a clue of what they are doing because they are new at the game. You shouldn't expect all those noobies to instantly become TF2 veterans. The maps, gameplay and modes - they all have to learn that. It is easy to forget what it was like to play Team Fortress 2 for the first time, but you have to try and imagine. Tell Medics not to double heal. Explain why Scouts shouldn't use teleports. Make sure that Heavies take out the Engineers before they start shooting at sentries. All that basic stuff has to be rammed in again. Things will get better, it just takes time.
Click to expand...

No. Valve started a never-ending wave of people who just come and go to "try it out once because it's free" by going F2P. I think it already was difficult to find a server with many experienced/'serious' players before the update, now it's even worse.
 
Shakermaker said:
Of course there isn't. Loads of players don't have a clue of what they are doing because they are new at the game. You shouldn't expect all those noobies to instantly become TF2 veterans. The maps, gameplay and modes - they all have to learn that. It is easy to forget what it was like to play Team Fortress 2 for the first time, but you have to try and imagine. Tell Medics not to double heal. Explain why Scouts shouldn't use teleports. Make sure that Heavies take out the Engineers before they start shooting at sentries. All that basic stuff has to be rammed in again. Things will get better, it just takes time.
Click to expand...

You're right. I remember when I was fumbling over the controls and dying quite often because of it. It's not easy to learn a map in a day, much less a gamemode. You've got to understand where all the points of entry are into the opposing team's base, or the most suitable flanking positions while defending a control point or a cart. Yeah, the game must be a bit confusing for some of the new guys, and I probably went too hard on them for their lack of experience. I expected too much of them too early on. Even I am still trying to perfect the maps I've been playing on for years.
 
Another solution btw is to coach other players through the option in the menu. There is a great reward for that, as I just discovered:

p7cFa.jpg


EDIT Oh wait it isn't.

Fyi, when f2p players upgrade their accounts to premium by buying something from the mann co store, they are able to gift those speks to someone on their friends list who "referred" them. Check your friends list and see who you have to thank for the speks.
Click to expand...



Dinnesch said:
No. Valve started a never-ending wave of people who just come and go to "try it out once because it's free" by going F2P. I think it already was difficult to find a server with many experienced/'serious' players before the update, now it's even worse.
Click to expand...

Zeurkous.
 
I've owned TF2 since the orange box came out, yet I've never played it, heh.

I might try it out later today.
 
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