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March 18, 2010 - TF2 Team
In the past we've shipped features that came from community suggestions. Now we've taken it one step further: we're shipping game content that was directly built by the community.
Today's TF2 update includes a bunch of new items and weapons, all of which were made by members of the TF2 community and uploaded to the Contribute! site. The overall quality of submissions we're receiving is fantastic, by the way, so there'll be plenty of new additions to follow. The submitters of these items will find nifty unique versions sitting in their backpacks, so they can show everyone their work.
This is really exciting for us here at Valve. Starting from our core belief that entertainment products should be services, we've tried to increase the set of ways our community can impact our games, and the ways in which we can reward you for it. From the implementation of features requested by players and mapmakers, to unique community items given to valuable community contributors, to the purchasing and shipping of popular maps, to the ARG-style product announcement of Portal 2, we've tried to include our players in the ongoing challenge of improving our games and their communities.
This update represents the next step in that process. The line between developers and players is getting very blurry, and we think that's a great thing.
March 9, 2010 - TF2 Team
Yesterday, we announced that Steam and all our Source engine games will be coming to the Mac. Sound too good to be true? Well, guess what: It is true! There are no catches! Sometimes life actually works like that. The bad news is that we've just truth bombed your hard-earned lie detector back to the stone age, and you'll probably lose all your money to the next international lottery scam that sneaks through your spam filter. Still, Steam on the Mac!
Since we're getting a lot of email asking the same basic questions, we figured we'd just answer them here:
Q: I own TF2 on the PC. Do I have to buy it again on the Mac?
A: No. If you own TF2 on the PC, you own TF2 on the Mac (and vice versa). You don't have to buy the game twice. In addition, the Steam Cloud will automatically propagate your configuration settings and custom sprays to your Mac for you.
Q: Is it just some crappy emulated version of TF2?
A: No! Also: How dare you! Mac users aren't getting a crappy emulated version of the game. TF2 will run natively on OSX, like an actual big boy game for adults.
Q: Hmm, that all sounds pretty good. But I'll bet I can't play with my friends who own Macs if I'm on my PC.
A: Mac and PC users will all play together, on the same servers. We're not creating two separate universes. We're all going to be one big, happy family with guns locked in a bloody, never-ending struggle for cap points.
March 2, 2010 - Brandon Reinhart
We're plugging away at the Engineer update. He's an interesting class to work on, because he creates a larger footprint in the game than any other class. This means we have a lot of options to work with, and the resulting set of ideas is truly daunting. Since we've already built and playtested some things that haven't worked out (with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun), we thought it might be interesting to give you some of our failed experiments.
The first was a new building internally known as the Repair Node. We gave Engineers the ability to replace any current building (teleporter entrances and exits were considered one building for this) with the Repair Node instead.
While deployed, the Repair Node would draw from a pool of energy to fix damage to nearby buildings. When the node ran out of energy, it would stop repairing and regenerate up to full, creating a window of opportunity for the attackers. When sapped, the Repair Node's repair function was disabled for the duration of the sap.
The goal of the Repair Node was to solve a perceived problem in the Engineer's play experience: always having to be tied to your base. The Engineer often has little to do after his base is built and fully upgraded except wait for the inevitable Spy sapper attempt, or for the battlefront to reach the base. The Repair Node was meant to buy the Engineer time if he wanted to range out to gather metal or harass the enemy with his shotgun.
This is usually how we approach our game design: Identify a problem, then discuss the ways it could be solved. Our experience told us that even when the Engineer didn't feel immediate pressure, he still couldn't range out away from his base. If a Spy, Soldier, or Demoman found the base unguarded, it didn't take long to blow up. The further away an Engineer was, the fewer buildings he would be able to save from sapping. We also felt that the Engineer invested a lot of up-front work to establish bases that were very easily destroyed. Thus the repair node was born.
Play-testing the Repair Node showed us one expected, and two (somewhat) unexpected, outcomes. The expected outcome was that bases were far harder to destroy, and turtling became a super effective strategy. Fortunately, this is the kind of problem that can be attacked by turning the correct game design knob, and the Repair Node had a lot of available knobs. We could lower the rate of repair, lower the amount of repair energy, lengthen the vulnerable period, and so forth. We tried several options. One change we made was to add diminishing returns so that two Repair Nodes working together were less than perfectly efficient, and adding a third didn't really help at all.
Despite the design choices we had available, we were never really able to get the Repair Node to feel balanced for the attacking team. TF2 maps tend to be designed with very specific predicted Sentry placement locations and length of Sentry survivability. The Repair Node distorted old favorite maps and made testing new ones more difficult by exaggerating intentional choke points and creating new choke points where they didn't previously exist.
The first unexpected outcome of the Repair Node was the team realizing just how valuable the Dispenser and Teleporter were to so many aspects of game pacing. If the Engineer isn't able to build a Dispenser, his team loses the support power that the Dispenser provides. In most games Dispensers are ubiquitous. You don't really realize what you've lost until you've lost it. Fewer Dispensers had the effect of slowing attacking teams down in a variety of ways: Teams were more fragile, metal was harder to get to the front lines, and team rally points were harder to define.
An Engineer who took a Repair Node instead of a Teleporter put his team in an even less viable position. The pacing of many maps became completely broken without Teleporters in play. Teams weren't able to push as effectively and the lines of battle moved closer to the spawn points. This lack of flexibility meant that attackers weren't able to hold gains and matches took longer to complete.
The second unexpected outcome was downstream from the first. Teams perceived Engineers with Repair Nodes as less "friendly", specifically because they weren't building Dispensers or Teleporters. In retrospect, older data at our disposal should have known this would happen. Prior to TF2's release, the Medic had weaponry that was significantly more powerful, leading to highly skilled players playing Medic as a purely combat class. Aside from the balance issues this created, it also resulted in a Medic that wasn't interested in healing anyone, which didn't typically sit well with his teammates. Their perception was that healing is the Medic's job. Medics who didn't do that weren't perceived to be team players -- an identical reaction to Engineers refusing to build Dispensers and/or Teleporters. Like many design exercises we didn't learn what to do next so much as what NOT to do.
- Lesson 1: The problem of the Engineer being tied to his base still exists, but the Repair Node was too heavy-handed a solution. If we solve this problem in the future, it will have to be in a way that doesn't distort the existing balance between attackers and defensive choke points.
- Lesson 2: The Dispenser and Teleporter are really good. We already knew this, but we didn't know that they were really, really good. Encouraging Engineers to either avoid building them entirely, or to build them in weird ways, broke the game's pacing immediately. New buildings in the Engineer update will probably take the form of upgrades, or entirely new choices alongside the old buildings, instead of replacements.
These may seem like obvious lessons, but knowing for certain why a particular idea doesn't work can often be as valuable as an idea that does. This process highlighted specifically where and why the Engineer is valuable, and how even slightly altering this value can have game-shattering implications.
Ultimately, the Repair Node was cut because it made the game more of a grind. While it definitely made it less stressful to manage a base as an Engineer, it wasn't fun. The Engineer gained a little bit of fun, but nearly everyone else in the match suffered as a result.
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In other news, our minds were blown this week when we saw Andrew Kepple's amazing Spy & Pyro cartoon. We've decided this is final proof that TF2 fans are smarter, more creative, and much better looking than fans of all other video games. On the competitive side, we've been addicted to watching CommunityFortress's eXtv series of commentated competitive TF2 matches. If you haven't watched any, take a look at some great European and North American matches. If you haven't watched much competitive play, eXtv's commentary does a great job of helping you understand the tactics being employed.
February 2, 2010 - TF2 Team
As the Administrator mentioned last week, we've sorted through the 11,000 submissions to the Propaganda contest and picked some of our favorites from the frankly jaw-dropping number of first-rate entries. Scroll and enjoy!
Continued...
January 28, 2010 - The Administrator
Firstly, as should come as no surprise to anyone, it is my sad duty to reprimand the various con artists and charlatans in our community who insist on making a mockery of the hard work of others by cheating to win. The following is a list of the top twenty kill counts of the recent Demo/Soldier competition:
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January 25, 2010 - TF2 Team
In the latest update, we've finally fixed the Double Crouch Jump bug—a longstanding issue involving Scout not being able to double crouch jump without looking like his legs are made of raw bacon strips held up in a wind tunnel:
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January 13, 2010 - TF2 Team
Today we're unveiling the TF2 Contribution site. This nifty site will allow anyone who's made a custom piece of TF2 content to submit it to us, with a view to it appearing in-game. Many of you have been building fantastic TF2 work for a while now, and we wanted a way for you to get it in front of all TF2 players, and for everyone to see that you were the one that built it.
Continued...
December 21, 2009 - Mike Booth
With the success of the AI systems of Left 4 Dead, we've been continuing to develop these technologies to create new kinds of game experiences. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent "sandbox" for explorations of this sort, and we've been quietly doing so for much of this last year. Some of the results of these explorations are TF "bots" — AI-driven player proxies with simulated humanlike senses, reaction times, and tactics. Although the TFBots are not yet complete, they play a pretty decent game of King of the Hill.
We thought you might enjoy testing your skill against these work-in-progress digital killing machines.
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December 21, 2009 - TF2 Team
We've got one more update to go out to our backend item system. After that, we'll be granting all the missing items that weren't granted properly when you finished achievements.
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December 17, 2009 - TF2 Team
...the Soldier!
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December 17, 2009 - Robin Walker
Victory on the Internet Day has been declared! The war is over! Who won? We don't know! Yet!
Luckily, I, Robin Walker, was up all night building a kill-calculating machine for just such an eventuality. We turned it on, the building filled with smoke, and right now a fireman is yelling at me to leave the building with everyone else. I'll leave when they pry this tiny netbook out of my cold dead hands. Or when an angry fireman fireman-carries me out of the office, which is what is happening right now. Anyway, once all the firemen calm down, we'll announce the War results with today's huge update. To pass the time, go get yourself a fresh mouse and start reloading this page as fast as you possibly can.
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December 17, 2009 - Robin Walker
You heard right As of noon PST today, the Demoman/Soldier WAR! is over. The score is, as of this writing:
Demoman Killed: 6,323,921
Dead Soldiers: 6,298,465
It all comes down to this. I'd give you a motivational speech right now, but the time you wasted reading it would be less time you spent making a difference on the battlefield. Go ahead and break the bad news to your grandfather: YOU are officially now the greatest generation.
Continued...
December 16, 2009 - Robin Walker
Adding in the points awarded to our recent Propaganda Contest winners—60,000 frags added to the Killed Demomen score and 25,000 added to the Killed Soldier score—the war currently stands neck-and-neck at 5,727,928 Killed Soldiers to 5,742,720 Killed Demos. We need to stress to you that we have not gamed these numbers in any way: After a solid week of gut-grinding combat and an astonishing 11,470,648 total kills, the Demomen and Soldiers are separated by a mere 14,792 points.
Continued...
December 16, 2009 - TF2 Team
December 15, 2009 - Robin Walker
Soldiers continue to hold the lead in the war—but like an M&M lodged up their collective noses, the Demoman refuses to melt away quietly. In other M&M-Stuck-Up-Drew-Wolf's-Nose metaphor news, the Soldier's lead remains thin as a candy coating. In fact, judging from our most recent numbers (4923531 Soldiers killed to 5056134 Demomen killed), the Demo actually seems to be closing the gap as the War hurtles to a close.
Continued...
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