With over 300 hours invested, I’ve lost patience with Team Fortress 2. As a team based, class based shooter, its original focus was that of a competitive but organised multiplayer experience, which required cooperation between you and team mates in order to be successful. The result of its mutations and gradual evolution over many years however, is that Team Fortress 2 is distinctly lacking two key elements: team-work and organisation.
After years in the wilderness of Valve-Time™, Team Fortress 2 was finally released in October 2007 to a fanfare of praise and adoration. Stripped of all unnecessary baggage that a ‘realistic’ product encompasses (al-la Battlefield: Bad Company 2), the game was and still remains (to some degree) a pivotal example of what Quake 3 Arena started: to focus on what players want, without weighing down a users experience through superfluous HUDs containing unnecessary information. In Team Fortress 2’s case, it’s the classes and the team work that make the game.
What’s now apparent though, is that the micro-transactions so devilishly designed by Valve, the crafting of items and the trade of hats has surpassed the importance of the two key elements that made Team Fortress fun in the first place. This shift of focus to secure revenue for a game that (and in Valve’s defense) has given an abundance of updates has undoubtedly begun to detract from a game that was once much more than just a 3D trading experience.
Valve have learnt valuable lessons from Team Fortress 2 and continue to use the game as a platform for the focus of their experiments. The blog and community involvement this attracts opens a direct line of communication between developer and consumer, while the class movies and videos have given valuable lessons in marketing, the use of animation as well as sound and voice acting, which have already begun to spill over into other Valve products (see Portal 2). But where praise is due there is also criticism and Valve have opened Pandora’s box with its use of micro-transactions.
First and foremost Valve and more specifically the team behind Team Fortress 2, deserve the financial support earned from micro-transactions. A ten year development cycle and countless free updates of gargantuan proportions must have come at great expense to a company that prides itself on quality (although Team Fortress 2 Steam sales spiked after each class update), but where the game has begun to falter isn’t through the necessity for these items (inevitably that is a player’s choice) but in the fact that the game has no focus besides these.
Entire banks of servers devoted to crafting and trading are now commonplace and to see 24 player servers filled with motionless individuals chatting and trading, in order to secure a specific weapon or hat was surely not Valve’s intention. When players feel the need to trade for meaningless objects more than playing the game itself, something has surely gone wrong on Valve’s part, irrespective of the revenue this draws.
My greater concern though isn’t the sheer abundance of class weapons, but the lack of focus on team work and cooperation. A game whose sole purpose was to be a fast paced, streamlined experience has become completely contradictory now that such weight has been placed on superficial objects with questionable balance. Inevitably, how can a game that underwent 10 years of development and extensive balancing be balanced, now that new weapons are tested for days, as opposed to months. You only have to visit the Mann-Co. Store to see new weapons uploaded regularly, many of which as a frequent player I’ve never even seen before.
Those price tags are real. I shit you not.
Which brings me back onto quality, something that Team Fortress 2 has begun to lack. Poor animations or the lack of animations entirely on countless weapons is entirely at odds with what Valve are synonymous for. Despite many weapons having fantastic models, to see the hammer of a gun fail to move while firing or bullets remaining in a weapon’s chamber despite unloading the entire barrel is sloppy and not only undermines Valve’s efforts, but serves to remind us that perhaps profit is coming before quality. Inevitably, regardless of how much I may want a weapon, why would I use it if it happens to drop or worse, pay upwards of £6.49, for an item with half finished animations?
As it currently stands, I’m unsure how Valve can even begin to salvage the competitive, team orientated element of Team Fortress 2. The game is bigger and bolder than what it once was and the revenue earned from micro-transactions is staggering (five figure cheques were handed to the first of the Poly Count Pack winners for a single weeks worth of sales) but I can’t help but wonder as to whether this has come at a price. Not one of financial fortunes of course, that much is clear.
The phrase “selling your soul to the devil” springs to mind.
Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
I see multiplayer games as having a shelf-life. Team Fortress 2, while artistically attractive has begun to smell bad, and it isn’t looking too good either.
I’m fond of it, personally – but to the mainstream, it is aging badly.
It’s dying. They’re squeezing it for everything its got before it dies. I don’t like it, but I see the sense in it.
.. Personally, I still miss the old late-nineties/early-2000s design involving destructable environments and vehicles.. Bad Company 2 finally gives me something of a fix in that regard.
.. Does anyone want to play BC2? =)
Lewis, that article summed up what I think a lot of people are feeling about TF2. While I know it still has a very large audience, I also think that audience has shifted to a different demographic: those of us who used to play for a silly, zany, team-based and ultimately balanced throwdown have drifted away while a different type of player (the type that spends hours trading for hats) has drifted in.
Any time a game introduces microtransactions I get a little shiver. While I don’t mind the model in general (though given your screenshot up there I’m not sure I’d say “micro” is the right word), it can inherently unbalance a game. Claims that you “can” play without ever using microtransactions may be true in the strictest sense of the word. You can also “live” without ever buying or wearing shoes, but it makes life a lot harder.
Where Jakkar suggests that Valve is simply squeezing it for blood at this point, I’m more inclined to agree with your point, Lewis, that Valve is using TF2 as a sort of open laboratory. It’s free to play (beyond the original purchase price), and since people do play it Valve has an opportunity to use willing guinea pigs for everything from engine tweaks to revenue model experiments.
That doesn’t really bother me, either. The company’s perfectionism is legendary; having a place to try things and determine in a real world setting whether they work or not is invaluable. The only drawback is, as you say, some players may lose interest when it stops being the game they wanted it to be.
I’m on board with Lewis here in that the items which have been flooded into the game by the micro-transaction business model have really sullied the experience. I’ve certainly played a lot less since Hatgate.
TF2’s second greatest strength (its greatest was always the near-perfect class balancing) has forever been the ease of recognizing each character model, allowing rapid-fire communication between eyes-and-brain to tell the fingers what situation to prepare for or react to. Instant pattern recognition: “OK- keep your distance from the pyro, continue circling around the heavy, focus gunfire on the medic- CHECK.” Your brain would process that in 0.3 seconds.
All this hat-wearing nonsense has gone and fucked that up.
An open laboratory testing what, though? Microtransactions are tried and tested – they work, if you make the product addictive. The gameplay has worked since the nineties.
I don’t see anything new in TF2 – the greatest achievement of the game was finally nailing fully functional voice-comm out of the box without complications or bugs, allowing those few among the British populace capable (apparently) of speech to fill my servers with “SPAAH! SPAAH! SHOOT THE BUGGER YOU WAZZOCK INNIT!”.
.. Which turns a rather bland but beautiful game into something truly entertaining.
But even the new toys – well, they’re not half as creative or interesting as the toys from Painkiller, or Unreal Tournament (Original/2004).
Testing everything. Valve makes changes to its engine, to balance, to a zillion factors that make up games, and they do it largely in TF2. 98% of them players don’t notice. Others are gallumphingly noticeable. But one must appreciate the value, to a perfectionist game company, of having such a test bed.
But I don’t play any more, because hats are dumb and all the class changes confuse me.
Jakkar, I have to say I disagree with TF2 looking badly, the game is still stunning and some of the latest maps are incredible.
I do however believe TF2 to be one big experiment. No company has done micro transactions on this scale and so efficiently combined with the steam wallet. Nor has anyone implemented such extensive trade and craft within a FPS while still receiving fan submitted items.
Mm. I played quite avidly. I have, to my shame, between 250 and 300 hours logged in tf2. I’m convinced (though ever in two minds, I suspect I may be in denial) that at least 50-100 of them were my sister, in the days before she had her own computer. She’s the TF2 player of this house – as good a sniper as a brother could hope to train from the age of 9.
.. I digress.
Having played so much, I know the game intimately – I understand those updates, I know the function of every weapon and tool(bar some more recent community updates..). Understanding them isn’t enough to make them fun. The game is a chaotic deathmatch ruled by the luck of who you run into and what weapon they’re holding. Class has become irrelevant.
It is a mess, I am wholly in agreement with you – but as the game is also becoming somewhat elderly now, it is all the more spoiled by the class of player who remains – hat-hunting, e1337ist lunatics, more concerned with perfectly executed rocket air-shots, linking their own youtube ‘skill videos’ and using the cheapest tricks they can discover to optimise their kill/death ratio, regardless of the team objective.
All multiplayer games have a shelf life – and before they die, they rot.
.. However, I see your point, to some degree, about the testing. It unsettles me, however – for I feel that the Source engine is a pile of utter crap and the fundaments of the half-life movements and physics system are primitive. I was hoping Valve would finally abandon that godawful thing and come up with some new technology for the future of Half-Life.
Or dare I voice the hope; a NEW GAME o.o
Curses! Lewis B, the cad, has written a reply while I am engaged in my own! Now I have to write another reply, and swiftly lest he think he is being ignored! D:
Oh, the trials of propriety on the internets..
*ponders* As moderately attractive, low-poly sculptures in a cartoony style, some of the recent maps are fairly nice. They remain sculptures packed with prefabricated static models, an absolute absence of interactivity, and very few physics objects, even for the sake of a lively and reactive arena. It is fairly pretty to look at in stills, but in motion the animations are very much children of Half-Life – the legs wiggle, the mantank iceskates atop his wiggling legs, periodically ‘bouncing’ with a wiggle of the legs or squatting frantically while wiggling, once again, his little legs.
Everything about it whispers darkly to me of a generation grown old and wrinkly, and smelling a bit odd. I demand progress. I insist upon physics involved in animation, upon reactive ragdolls. I want bulletholes to at least be normal-mapped into some semblance of depth, if I can’t have actual destructable scenery.
I doubt any of you have managed to truly forget that infamous series of developer videos Valve released prior to Half-Life 2, depicting dynamically breakable wood and experimental AI. Isn’t it time to come through on some of those offers, as they creep closer to a decade in age?
I just expect something more from them. They’re behind the times in every respect except marketing, advertising and distribution – as I’ve always said, Valve have grown to become excellent businessmen – but I don’t consider them accomplished game developers*.
/rambleambleamble
* Portal and Left 4 Dead are the products of hirelings – not truly originating in the House Valve Built – were they really Valvular, I’d be less cruel.
Great article brother and I agree with a lot of the sentiments here. I too feel like TF2 has become a testing ground; a cauldron to throw all sorts of things into. The only problem is that, like xtal says, it’s sullied the experience. It’s a lot muddier and nowhere near as quick to get into with all this extra stuff. I found it a messy and chaotic clusterfuck last time I loaded it up (it’s since been uninstalled). I didn’t mind the new weapons and equipment but when hats and accessories started trickling in I just knew the dam was about to burst.
Jakkar, you are bordering on blasphemy, sir. Not accomplished? Give me the name of a shooty game that does not owe some large debt to Half-Life. Limiting myself from dabbling in too much hyperbole, I’ll simply say I think they created the most widely influential video game yet known.
You said Valve are excellent businessfolk, and I believe it is that quality which holds my faith that they are not finished creating; waiting for the right time, the right move. Left 4 Dead is for fun, Team Fortress 2 a kept promise, and
Portal was an experiment– one which some might forget dwells within the Half-Life universe– but I strongly believe Half-Life needs an ending, and they just can’t pen it at this point in time. Colour me surprised if they move in yet another direction creatively before that happens.
To call Valve unaccomplished is like calling Brian Wilson unaccomplished in 1968 because he struggled so greatly to follow-up Pet Sounds*.
*I am in no way likening Valve to The Beach Boys. I’m just sayin’!
I won’t hear a bad word against the Source engine despite being able to see the thing buckle under the weight of the numerous additions since it debuted. Only recently during the Hard Rain campaign of L4D2 did myself and Armand comment on just how goddamn impressive it still looks, even after six or so years. In that space of time I’ve seen few characters match the fidelity and precision of Valve’s finest as well. With regards to TF2, it’s got this lovely Acme/Looney Toons look about it that I don’t think will ever age.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the site I tired of HL2 relatively quickly (more specifically the repetitive Combine encounters and the infuriatingly dumb AI sidekicks) but I can’t deny how compelling the game is as a whole because even though I was fed up of the actual gun-play side of things the environments, the characters and the mysterious story kept me playing till the end.
I agree, the Source engine does still deliver. Sure, it’s showing its age compared to the DX10/11 stuff floating around, but to its credit, nearly any remotely modern computer can run it fine and it looks quite nice.
As for Half Life, I love it and always have. I still play through HL2 and the episodes once a year or so. It is, as xtal said, a profoundly influential game.
Can they end it? I don’t know. Supposedly we’re owed an Episode Three as well as an actual Half Life 3, but I’ve found myself wondering if it would “work.” Why? Because HL2 is one of the most influential games ever made, and shooters have taken its lessons and run with them. We see fewer and fewer straight run-gun FPS games; Smith and Bleszinski say the future of shooters is RPGs, even id Software is making an RPG-shooter. But would Half Life work with inventory and stuff? Would it be weird?
I want the ending, but in some ways I feel like the window has closed for it to be a Half Life game in the traditional sense. That said, HL2 was wildly different from the original, so maybe I’m nuts. You can’t fault Valve for failing to innovate, that’s for sure.
There’s a reason, m’darlins, that HL2’s mod community was a pale shadow of Half-Life 1’s. In short, having worked on a lot of mods and known a lot of modders, it was because it was fucking infuriating to work with. That’s why the only truly noteworthy mods during its era (.. except Dystopia) moved to Unreal, or in the case of Natural Selection simply made their own engine.
Based upon the expectations set by the spawning ground that gave us Natural Selection, Svencoop, Science and Industry, The Wastes, The Specialists, the Source engine failed quite miserably – and did so still looking like cheese in most incarnations. Left 4 Dead took the lighting in a new direction and TF2 adopted the cartoon look and they both did very well with it – but if you collapse in a corner whimpering like a child because you can hear a tank around the corner, you WILL realise that lampshade looks like an ugly piece of cheese in actual fact.
I’m glad Gregg agrees on the incredible repetition of HL2 . The plot and characters were enough to keep me playing, but -in suffering so-… And only because I have a great love and respect for story, if anything even more than for gameplay. Otherwise I wouldn’t still love reading so much, I imagine =P
Now, Gregg, let’s sum up what you’ve pointed out – you think Source still looks good, the story and characters keep you hooked on Source products. Are any of these aspects products of game design? I see programming, writing, third party animation systems and good voice-acting. I do not contest that in these fields Half-Life 2 and its episodic sequels were grand achievements – along with Left 4 Dead and TF2 (although L4D2’s character are relatively weak)…
I just say that for all that, the one thing Valve can’t do is actually design -gameplay- that is as compelling and fun as some of its peers. They’re weak -game designers-, whatever their strengths, and I’m not sure you can convince me otherwise until they release something new. Left 4 Dead and Portal, once are, are not products of their in-house designers. Hired talent.
xtal – sorry to relegate you to the end m’friend, Gregg caught me up with his later comment.
Half-Life 1.. Struck me as an obvious continuation of previous games. It pioneered scripted, canned sequences of passive NPCs violently animating at each other to deliver dialogue or hazard warnings, humour or atmosphere. It encouraged the development of Medal of Honour: Allied Assault and the waves of slippery CoD that followed. It did not however add anything new that I found particularly new or clever.
Between System Shock and Duke Nukem as predecessors, what the hell did Half Life do but follow Quake’s lead into fully polygonal monsters while drastically scaling back depth, freedom and environmental interaction?
In the meantime, while the controls were nicely crisp and responsive, Unreal popped up at about the same time looking massively better in both graphical quality and artistic design (insofar as such things can be stated, opinion flagged!), with drastically superior combat and movement mechanics, wildly entertaining botmatches and incomparably faster, cleverer enemies.
Hells, we’re talking about Half-Life, the game in which a fundamental engine limitation prevented any enemy in the game except Alien Controllers (the swollen-headed mini-nihilanths) from moving and fighting at the same time – while Unreal had enemies who could perform a triple backflip onto a higher platform while firing rockets at you from launchers built into its arms.
Damn. I feel I should make a.. clarification, at this point. I’ll admit, I’m loving my increased activity here and I’m rather fond of you folks – but I’ve been told many times in the past that my attitude can come across as pushy or authorative, and in this offensive. That I seem to be arguing or shouting, in text. Just in case this is the impression I’m giving, I’d like to note that I’m enjoying this discussion (and the many others in recent days) and am wholly relaxed and well-disposed toward ye all. I hope there’s nothing wrong with a little impassioned oratory? =)
Well. Enough blather. Half-Life. Decent game, really kinda fond of it. Not the best game ever made or anywhere near it. Not innovative except in way that are counter to the very nature of gaming; Half-Life encouraged non-interactive scripted events in gaming, while lagging behind the rest of the field in most other respects, from AI to multiplayer, graphics to physics.
The ONE realm in which it truly excelled, and which was a triumph for gaming and an enabler of so many millions, if not billions of man-hours of great entertainment and inspiration, was its incredible moddability and Valve’s support in that realm.
.. And Half-Life 2 really fucked that up, in comparison, while also losing the ‘camp’ charm of the original game and collapsing into a corridor-shooter halfway.
BUT ALL IS FORGIVEN! For Episodes 1 and 2 were much better games, and as I remarked at the time..
.. It looks like Valve have finally grown up and learned how to make a truly special game.
‘We see fewer and fewer straight run-gun FPS games’
I think that’s the reason I found HL2 kind of disappointing: it was (almost) all shooting. Sure, you could bash things and throw shit about but I wanted more than that; I wanted the environment to be more than a physics playground to shoot things in; I wanted notes, logbooks, newspaper clippings, posters and computer terminals fleshing out the lore of HL2’s fascinating world; I wanted there to be gadgets and equipment to use. Put simply, I wanted it to be more Deus Ex or System Shock than say, Quake or Duke Nukem. To be clear, I didn’t go into HL2 expecting either and given HL2’s closed-down linearity I’m not sure RPG elements would have worked so well but I certainly craved something more substantial once I got sucked in.
Edit: gah, started typing this before I saw your reply Jakkar.
I’ve a general, free floating, hatred of pay-by-nibble but I’m willing to roll eyes and sigh for additions which don’t boost power in multiplayer games.
However “recognizing each character model” is an extremely important point. Silhouette was a central design tenant–they’ve said so, more than once–and fuzzing is bad mojo. If someone is dumb enough to pay two bucks for a cosmetic, fine. If that cosmetic makes it more difficult for me to kill the idiot, not fine. Is it an arms race? I need to pay two bucks to restore the silhouettes?
HL2 was hugely innovative and influential but I’ll stick to my guns that as a total it’s not as good as people claim/remember. It’s a six hour game where one hour is–essentially only to show off tech–chucking saw blades at zombies. It is a FUN hour but really doesn’t make sense. I also loved Serious Sam. But…. Huge chunks of HL2 have that old tech demo smell.
While I’ll fight for the above points, cause, ya know, I’m right and stuff, the early race through the apartments and over the rooftops is one of the best sequences in all of gaming. They didn’t dare go to a Kristallnacht but did the small version thereof.
Xtal: Beach Boys reference FTW!
Steerpike: “Smith and Bleszinski say the future of shooters is RPGs”
Could you guys even imagine that 10 years ago. The very concept would have broken our minds! I got into a huge debate elsewhere about just how “rpg” Diablo games are. My conclusion from that is just about every game these days is at least a lite rpg. I’m rambling a bit, but it really amazes me how the genera I was made fun of for playing as a kid now rules them all. Even the damn sports games are rpgs!
Finally, to all the haters, you guys are on crack! HL2 is one of the better games I’ve played hands-down. It doesn’t need ledgers and notes, or any of that stuff, it tells a story through the environment and atmosphere. The level designs are downright brilliant, in that they lead you forward without ever sticking giant arrows around saying”go this way now.”
The companion AI is shit, but really that’s my only beef. The story, characters, gunplay (yes even that) were all lovely and dragged you into their world.
I think some of the things people are complaining about are simply things they WANTED the game to be, and not what it actually is. There are many kinds of FPS games, and not all of them need giant, open worlds, destroyable environments, back-flip jumping or what have you.
You can argue opinions all you want, but the sales and popularity of a game that’s 6 years old and still so relevant as to be discussed regularly on every gaming site speaks for itself.
The game is truly something special, and shame on all you all badmouthing it!!!
😉
Yeah! Shame!
I feel no shame. Only remorse for you, credulous yokels! xP
*so glad to have found a community that doesn’t immediately lynch him for such opinions*
Have a parsnip 🙂
[…] piece (and the massive comment by Meho is an interesting followup), Lewis B's article on Valve's inadvertent destruction of Team Fortress 2, and Gregg B on his habit of spending more time modding games than actually playing […]