Team Fortress 2 beta

[Laughing Mechanicus]

I've been playing this literally all day and have been having a great time. Anyone else tried it?

I was quite amazed at how user friendly it is. I started playing immediately after it was available but I haven't really seen anyone needing to ask for help or 'what does X do?' or 'Where is Y?'. Everything about the game is designed to be self explanatory, the character models are easy to recognise and differentiate, the weapons are all distinct and have an obvious function and the maps all have plenty of both overt and subtle markers to direct the flow of the game.

The interface seemed intrusive at first but once you are in-game most of it disappears and you are left with a few nice bold elements giving you the vital information; much information is communicated via character or object models themselves. For example when a spy cloaks he holds up his wrist watch which displays how much time he has before he de-cloaks, and the engineers supply dispenser has a large analogue dial on the front to show how empty or full it is.

I've played at least half an hour with every class and they are all fun and feel quite balanced. The sniper has been altered from TFC so that in order to charge a shot he must zoom in, hence he has to choose between a wide field of vision or having a fully charged shot ready. The medic can no longer 'infect' people (thank fuck) and is all round a far more entertaining class to play than in TFC due to being far more focused on support rather than attacking (his primary gun also shoots used syringes rapid-fire, nasty).

Grenades are gone entirely, which is a huge improvement because they were a lame spam tool in TFC. The demoman obviously gets his grenade launcher but he's lost the ability to throw the large dynamite cluster grenade shown in one of the trailers. Each class only has 3 weapons and occasionally a couple of additional tools, for example the spy has a cigarette case which he uses to choose which disguise to put on and the engineer has one tool for selecting which object to build and another to allow him to remotely destroy them.

One neat touch is the taunt animations for each class. These are animated beautifully (presumably by the person responsible for the 'Meet the...' video trailers) and each class gets 3 different taunts depending on which weapon they currently have equipped. For example if the heavy weapons guy has his minigun equipped a and you trigger a taunt he stops, looks lovingly at the gun then hugs it and says 'We make a great team!' or 'Kiss me!'; if he has his shotgun equipped he spins it around like Arnie in The Terminator and if he has his melee weapon equipped (his big meaty fists) he does a little 'quick-draw' animation with his hand.

It has persistent stats tracking and XBox360 style achievements, between the maps it shows you how you're progressing. A neat addition to this system is that when you die the game shows some information such as "You killed 6 people that round, your previous personal best with class X is 9"; pretty much every time you die you get such a message, which can help you figure out what your doing right or wrong in a match.

Another neat feature is the death camera - when you die the camera flash zooms to a freeze frame of your killer along with their name. If the same person kills you multiple times without you killing them in between then they become your 'nemesis' and will be rewarded additional points for killing you, however you can gain more points by getting revenge and killing them. This can be quite helpful if you are trying to crack a particularly hard base defence as you can identify the enemy players that are the most deadly and take special action to dislodge them.

Anyway... I've rambled a ridiculous length of text, probably ought to wait and see if anybody else is actually playing it.

[Meest]

Waiting for my Black Box coupon to come in. My only concern is the Medic's heal that at full gives a few secs of invulnerability. Hate when certain classes are required, and hope a Medic isn't necessary every map.

[MKSheppard]

I wanted the original TF2 and like 5 years ago. Then I would have played it.

Now? Nah.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Waiting for my Black Box coupon to come in. My only concern is the Medic's heal that at full gives a few secs of invulnerability. Hate when certain classes are required, and hope a Medic isn't necessary every map.

They are a valuable class, but they aren't necessary. The invulnerability works like this: the medic has to charge it up by healing people, he can also charge it up by just locking his healer gun onto one character and constantly zapping them but this takes a much longer time (maybe 2-3 minutes) than if he heals multiple people who are damaged. Once the bar is fully charged the medic then locks his healing gun onto somebody (doesn't need to be the person he built up the charge with) and right clicks, and for 10 seconds both are invulnerable.

It's great for breaking defensive deadlocks, but other classes like the demoman can manage this too.

[InnocentBystander]

The game is great. All the classes are fun to play and useful, though I get the feeling the spy is, perhaps, a little too fun. It is very satisfying, for instance, to get the enemy medic to heal you, and just plain fun to think of ways to try and convince the other team you are on their side.

Whatever team fortress 2 was supposed to be a couple year ago, I'm glad it wasn't. This game has character and style, and was well worth whatever extra money I may have paid in orange box.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

So can spies still feign death? I loved to do that and then sneak past a team-only door and start wreaking havoc.

[Darwin]

So can spies still feign death? I loved to do that and then sneak past a team-only door and start wreaking havoc.

Nope, but they can:

Cloak to be effectively invisible

Disguise themselves as other classes of either team

Disable engineer turrets with a sabotage device

Kill with a single backstab

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Yep, they lost feign death but the new cloak is particularly nasty because (unlike most video game cloaks) it makes the user totally invisible - you can run right up to people and they will have no clue you are there.

Actually at the moment it seems spies are consistently getting the highest scores on servers I'm on. Probably because many of the naive new players are easy pickings for them.

[Pezzoni]

I finally bit the bullet and purchased the Orange Box - needless to say, I feel like I've been messily violated by Mr Newall

Downloading TF2 now - looking forward to having a play. Are all the maps new / old / a mixture?

[Laughing Mechanicus]

I finally bit the bullet and purchased the Orange Box - needless to say, I feel like I've been messily violated by Mr Newall

Downloading TF2 now - looking forward to having a play. Are all the maps new / old / a mixture?

A mixture. There's only six maps total but some of the new ones reconfigure themselves on the fly so that each team starts in a different sector of the map (from about 6 different starting locations) and also block off certain paths through the maps, so each match is different.

Old maps are 2fort which is a pretty faithful reproduction, and Well which has been modified quite a bit as it's no longer CTF and the central area has been expanded greatly. There's Dustbowl aswell, but I don't remember what the original was like really, so I'm not sure how close to it the new one is.

[InnocentBystander]

Personally, I think Orange Box is a very fair deal for people who already own HL2 and EP1 and an amazing deal for everyone else. I consider EP2, sight unseen, to be worth $20, and portal $10. Before playing TF2 I figured it was (to me) worth about $10; making the total package of Orange worth $40. If you expected Black to be less than $40 (did they release a price for it? I never heard one) you were crazy. So paying $50 (or for the smart consumer, $45!) was a little much, but not terrible. However after playing TF2 I'm pleased to say that its definatly not a $10 title. I think its well worth whatever money ($5 or $10) that I had thought was going towards the older copies of HL2.

I do not feel I overpaid for Orange.

[Darwin]

Personally, I think Orange Box is a very fair deal for people who already own HL2 and EP1 and an amazing deal for everyone else. I consider EP2, sight unseen, to be worth $20, and portal $10. Before playing TF2 I figured it was (to me) worth about $10; making the total package of Orange worth $40. If you expected Black to be less than $40 (did they release a price for it? I never heard one) you were crazy. So paying $50 (or for the smart consumer, $45!) was a little much, but not terrible. However after playing TF2 I'm pleased to say that its definatly not a $10 title. I think its well worth whatever money ($5 or $10) that I had thought was going towards the older copies of HL2.

I do not feel I overpaid for Orange.

Plus you can gift your old HL2 and EP1 to a friend, though not technically worth anything, Valve gets style points for this freebie.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Personally, I think Orange Box is a very fair deal for people who already own HL2 and EP1 and an amazing deal for everyone else. I consider EP2, sight unseen, to be worth $20, and portal $10. Before playing TF2 I figured it was (to me) worth about $10; making the total package of Orange worth $40. If you expected Black to be less than $40 (did they release a price for it? I never heard one) you were crazy. So paying $50 (or for the smart consumer, $45!) was a little much, but not terrible. However after playing TF2 I'm pleased to say that its definatly not a $10 title. I think its well worth whatever money ($5 or $10) that I had thought was going towards the older copies of HL2.

I do not feel I overpaid for Orange.

I have a feeling the majority of the people complaining would have said nothing if the price had been the same, but they didn't include HL2 or Ep1 with it. I mean it works out to about £25, which is what a cheap (i.e. not big name) brand new PC game costs over here except you atleast get three games in it, and maybe five. Granted Ep1 isn't as long as a full game (unless it's Heavenly Sword, ha) but TF2 definately has enough content to be even with most stand alone multiplayer games, Portal's something of a unkown quantity.

[Braedley]

I'll be playing TF2 pretty solid this weekend. Unfortunately, I can't seem to generate a server list, most likely due to resnet restrictions. I can still connect to games by means of a friend, and I've played with a fairly low ping (it hovered around 50 or 60). It's really unfortunate that I really won't be able to play until after I finish April exams, as senior project will be taking up a large chunk of my time.

[InnocentBystander]

I found that you have to stop the search and start it again in order to get servers up (odd I know...)

[Mr Bean]

Anyone checked out the Dev commentary for TF2? Some very interesting things in there, three maps have commentary on them, each map has it's own commentary.

[Pablo Sanchez]

The medic can no longer 'infect' people (thank fuck) and is all round a far more entertaining class to play than in TFC due to being far more focused on support rather than attacking (his primary gun also shoots used syringes rapid-fire, nasty).

This actually makes me kind of sad, because I was a damn good assault medic way back in TFC. Conc-jumping into an enemy base and clearing the snipers' nest with an epidemic, running offense with the super-shotty, taking down turrets with the super-nailgun, and teaming up with heavier classes to keep them running (both by healing them and by running interference with my own firepower). That was fun.

[Vympel]

.. Eh. I think the game's visual style is the suck.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

This actually makes me kind of sad, because I was a damn good assault medic way back in TFC. Conc-jumping into an enemy base and clearing the snipers' nest with an epidemic, running offense with the super-shotty, taking down turrets with the super-nailgun, and teaming up with heavier classes to keep them running (both by healing them and by running interference with my own firepower). That was fun.

Perfect example of why they changed him. Whenever I joined a TFC server in the past few years there were always two types of player - people like me who were playing as any class just for fun and the 'hardcore' players who were owning everybody else all of whom were Medics.

.. Eh. I think the game's visual style is the suck.

Then go back to Gritty Shooter 2: Blood Bullets.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Perfect example of why they changed him. Whenever I joined a TFC server in the past few years there were always two types of player - people like me who were playing as any class just for fun and the 'hardcore' players who were owning everybody else all of whom were Medics.

Well, I haven't played for a few years. When I was playing offense like that as the Medic, I remember that I was one of the only people doing it in any given server. I tended to play whatever class was most needed by the team, but when I had a choice I played Soldier or Medic. I could control the server with either of them. (fond memories of playing rocket ping-pong, bouncing lighter classes into the air and sending a rocket to meet them when they next hit the ground).

I definitely won't make the claim that the TFC medic was a balanced class, though. It was too good at everything.

[Mr Bean]

Playing a Spy is just so much funner in TF2 than it was in TFC. All hail Cloak. Heck sometimes for challenge I don't bother disguise and just use the cloak.

What I've noticed however is that there's a clear rock-paper-sissors for most classes. It's not one for one, some classes do well against 6 out of the 9 classes, but horrible against one (IE heavy weapon's guys against demo-men).

[Braedley]

Let it be known that I hate spies. I usually play engineer, so it's a real pain in the ass when they sabotage my sentry and then stab me in the back when I go to repair them. I've died far to many times that way.

[SylasGaunt]

Thing is they can't slap down an electrosapper or do any stabbing without being decloaked so constant paranoia is a good way to prevent this (i.e. shoot anyone who comes near your sentry).

One round earlier I got quite a few kills playing as a pyro and camping out with my back to a wall near an engy's sentry. If someone approached the sentry even if it was another engy they get the spy check.. that is they get a quick burst from the flamethrower. Poor spy pretty much had to go for the gun first since if he killed either myself or the engy before disabling the thing it would shoot him to hell.

[InnocentBystander]

Let it be known that I hate spies. I usually play engineer, so it's a real pain in the ass when they sabotage my sentry and then stab me in the back when I go to repair them. I've died far to many times that way.

Oh spies can be a real bitch.
Then again, level 3 turrets are amazingly powerful, and if you're humping the turret they are rather hard to take down too (they even make it difficult for invul heavies to press forward). Its amazingly well balanced if you ask me

[Mr Bean]

Thing is they can't slap down an electrosapper or do any stabbing without being decloaked so constant paranoia is a good way to prevent this (i.e. shoot anyone who comes near your sentry).

Oh no, you can slap down any number of Electrosapper's without coming out of disguise, it will decloak you yes. But it's more annoying than hell that a Spy can nuke three engineers hard work in roughly 4 seconds (He did my teleport, all of our turrets and the dispensers in as fast as he could click)
I hate them durn spies for breaking my toys!