Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: sigtau on June 23, 2011, 08:57:17 pm
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http://kotaku.com/5815052/team-fortress-2-is-now-free-free-forever
That's right. TF2 is now officially free to download and play to everyone, forever.
Valve says you can still use your real-world money to spend on hats, new weapons, etc. but the game itself is free.
Discuss.
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And the pubbies came on and on and I cried MEDIC but there were no medics and there were no dispensers and all around me there were pubbies, shouting, trading, and Gabe Newell's fingers above it all, green and gorged and dripping
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Means there are now players worse than me. Score!
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Now there's no excuse for any of you poor schlubs not playing.
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Means I can now pick it up.
Yay.
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Ugh.
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Means there are now players worse than me. Score!
Same! I might revisit the game and get rid of my infinite noobness.
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By the way this game is not very good any more and has completely abandoned its core design principles ~
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By the way this game is not very good any more and has completely abandoned its core design principles ~
yeahno
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Also, Meet the Medic.
http://www.neoseeker.com/news/16739-team-fortress-2-now-completely-free-to-play-gets-meet-the-medic-video/
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I expect "Free to play" to become "Free to play, but every server not run by Valve automatically boots you." very rapidly. There will likely be server mods that boot anyone with less then 500 backpack slots before the week is out.
Beyond that, meh. All these new items, and not one thing to screw over sticky spammers.
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i feel another "free to play, pay to win" coming on. can't blame them really. these systems make assloads of cash because morons or kids with access to mommy's credit card will shell out hundreds for better weapons in a video game.
...unless all the bought stuff is purely cosmetic, in which case i'll start chewing on my work boots.
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That's ok. Whiners don't need to play. :) Everyone else can have fun.
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I expect "Free to play" to become "Free to play, but every server not run by Valve automatically boots you." very rapidly. There will likely be server mods that boot anyone with less then 500 backpack slots before the week is out.
Beyond that, meh. All these new items, and not one thing to screw over sticky spammers.
Valve doesn't run any servers, so that would be impossible. And any backpack slot thing would be set to 300, since that's the starting value for the "paid" people (you have to purchase expanders to increase it 100 at a time, up to a max of 1000).
As for stickies, cry some moar. :p
i feel another "free to play, pay to win" coming on. can't blame them really. these systems make assloads of cash because morons or kids with access to mommy's credit card will shell out hundreds for better weapons in a video game.
...unless all the bought stuff is purely cosmetic, in which case i'll start chewing on my work boots.
With a few exceptions, you can buy pretty much any droppable item in the Mann Co. Store, along with a few store-exclusive items. However, anything store-exclusive is purely cosmetic. More importantly, the current system of a certain number of random item drops per week, coupled with rare hat drops, won't be changing. From the time the Mann Co. Store was launched, Valve was adamant that any items affecting actual gameplay would be freely-obtainable, and they've restated that today. There really isn't any point to buying weapons from the store anyway, since drops are plentiful and it's easy to craft and/or trade duplicates.
Besides, from the snippets of sales figures I've seen from the store, Valve has probably been making way more money from selling items than from selling the actual game for a long time now, more than enough to support continued development just from that source. This really won't change the status quo in that regard.
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As of today, Valve runs a LOT of servers. Go look in the server browser.
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This probably won't sway most of you, but Valve certainly isn't that stupid--they wouldn't force free players to play just on Valve servers. It would probably curb the interest in this significantly if they did, and I'm sure they don't want to limit market exposure.
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As of today, Valve runs a LOT of servers. Go look in the server browser.
Ah, I see what they're doing there. They must have implemented some sort of auto-generation based on that new quick play matchmaking feature. No, that shouldn't affect anything, since normal servers can apparently qualify for that too if they have certain settings turned on, and I can't see any reason why they'd create a dichotomy there.
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By the way this game is not very good any more and has completely abandoned its core design principles ~
yeahno
Didn't you start playing in, like, the past six months?
TF2 is still a good game, I guess, but it moved away from its original design tenets, and those tenets were very good. That's disappointing to me.
Also Meet the Medic was not great eeeither
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TF2 is still a good game, I guess, but it moved away from its original design tenets, and those tenets were very good. That's disappointing to me.
Also Meet the Medic was not great eeeither
I agree that I appreciated the simple balance the game started with, and that the extra weapons have added more noise than value. Still a great game, though. And Meet the Medic had its moments.
"Kill me"
"Later"
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I think my big complaint is really about, like you said, how noisy the game has become. Depriving the player of the information they need to make moment-to-moment decisions and reactions, or burying this information under layers of complexity, reduces player agency and leads to frustration. I was really happy when I ditched TF2 for more cleanly designed games.
I'm at a loss as to why Valve went down this path, too, until I think about money and then I understand. Which is disappointing.
It's also funny to watch them try to work around the issue of some of their classes being overoptimized - there's no way for them to give new equipment to the demoman or engineer that both follows the original design scheme and doesn't throw the class balance out of whack. They can't touch the engineer's core functions because he's so vital and he shapes the level more than any other class. They can't touch the demoman because he's by far the most powerful pure combat class. So they either don't do anything, in the case of the engineer, or make up an entirely new class in the form of the demoknight.
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Didn't you start playing in, like, the past six months?
TF2 is still a good game, I guess, but it moved away from its original design tenets, and those tenets were very good. That's disappointing to me.
No, I started playing a bit under a year ago. Granted, this was after the original nine class updates had completed, but it was (shortly) before the Mann-Conomy Update, which included the first big multi-class item dump. So basically, I've been actively playing through the majority of the game's item expansions, and what I've seen is that the core gameplay really hasn't changed in any discernible sense. The majority of the weapons added since the very start of TF2 are simple balance trade-offs, with only a select few (the Gunslinger, the Dead Ringer, the Kritzkreig) representing some level of change in the game's basic mechanics. Each class is, for the most part, still fitting into the exact same roles they did when the game was first released (well, maybe not Demoman, but Demoknight is more for lulz than anything else). The real kicker is that most skilled players will tell you that the original default weapons are still the best option in most situations...they usually provide the best all-around options, which is why you still see them used on a daily basis. I really can't see how the game's design has changed in any fundamental fashion.
I think my big complaint is really about, like you said, how noisy the game has become. Depriving the player of the information they need to make moment-to-moment decisions and reactions, or burying this information under layers of complexity, reduces player agency and leads to frustration. I was really happy when I ditched TF2 for more cleanly designed games.
Now this I don't understand at all. What information is the player being deprived of, exactly? Does a new rocket launcher with somewhat-different stats change the basic fact that you should move the hell out of the way of said rockets? As I said, the majority of weapons added to the game represent some degree of stat tweak...their fundamental mechanics are the same, so your decision-making process isn't going to change. There haven't been any convoluted "layers of complexity" thrown into the game to perplex players, and player agency is still the primary driving force. And the lovely thing is, if there is some sort of new weapon that you get killed by, its stats show up right in the killcam, so you can take that into account the next time you run into the player. It's not all that difficult to learn what that crazy new Scout fish or Demoman sword does.
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Didn't you start playing in, like, the past six months?
TF2 is still a good game, I guess, but it moved away from its original design tenets, and those tenets were very good. That's disappointing to me.
No, I started playing a bit under a year ago. Granted, this was after the original nine class updates had completed, but it was (shortly) before the Mann-Conomy Update, which included the first big multi-class item dump. So basically, I've been actively playing through the majority of the game's item expansions, and what I've seen is that the core gameplay really hasn't changed in any discernible sense. The majority of the weapons added since the very start of TF2 are simple balance trade-offs, with only a select few (the Gunslinger, the Dead Ringer, the Kritzkreig) representing some level of change in the game's basic mechanics. Each class is, for the most part, still fitting into the exact same roles they did when the game was first released (well, maybe not Demoman, but Demoknight is more for lulz than anything else). The real kicker is that most skilled players will tell you that the original default weapons are still the best option in most situations...they usually provide the best all-around options, which is why you still see them used on a daily basis. I really can't see how the game's design has changed in any fundamental fashion.
I think my big complaint is really about, like you said, how noisy the game has become. Depriving the player of the information they need to make moment-to-moment decisions and reactions, or burying this information under layers of complexity, reduces player agency and leads to frustration. I was really happy when I ditched TF2 for more cleanly designed games.
Now this I don't understand at all. What information is the player being deprived of, exactly? Does a new rocket launcher with somewhat-different stats change the basic fact that you should move the hell out of the way of said rockets? As I said, the majority of weapons added to the game represent some degree of stat tweak...their fundamental mechanics are the same, so your decision-making process isn't going to change. There haven't been any convoluted "layers of complexity" thrown into the game to perplex players, and player agency is still the primary driving force. And the lovely thing is, if there is some sort of new weapon that you get killed by, its stats show up right in the killcam, so you can take that into account the next time you run into the player. It's not all that difficult to learn what that crazy new Scout fish or Demoman sword does.
i'm more pissed off by the fact that fartwads can now name their weapons and punt text in there. which is very irritating in 99% of the cases.
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*words*
Are we actually going to reach any kind of agreement with this discussion?
the real kicker is that most skilled players will tell you
And please stop wasting time telling me **** I already know. ''Oh, the default items are better!' 'Oh, a window pops up when you're killed by a new item!" I played this game for a long time before you started, and I was pretty active discussing the metagame. My points are informed and drawn from experience.
Or, reading over your sentence, are you trying to imply I was bad at the game? That's not a very classy way to make a point.
ED: Come to think of it, you missed all the bull**** surrounding the Scout update, so you may not actually have seen some of TF2's worst design decisions. hahah the sandman
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I think the main gist of Battutta's problem is (but this situation might be clouded because of what my problem with TF2 is) is that the interface, especially at the start, is just commuted with 'THIS ITEM! THIS PRICE! Buy now!" and that there's a lot of stuff added to the game that doesn't really do anything but still tries to attract your attention (Ooh, this is me! MEE! Watch mee! And instead of 'I am heavy weapons guy, and this is my weapon', the guy now has an entire library of miniguns which is bigger then his russian litirature one). It's rather annoying when you first started playing the game, when everyone just had one gun (or two, when I dropped in).
It's like driving trough a busy street with a lot of shops you never visit, all of them trying to attract your attention with their fancy neon lightning.
EDIT: http://www.gamebanana.com/guis/24128
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*words*
Are we actually going to reach any kind of agreement with this discussion?
We'd have to actually have a discussion in order to do that, which is something you apparently don't want to do.
And please stop wasting time telling me **** I already know. ''Oh, the default items are better!' 'Oh, a window pops up when you're killed by a new item!" I played this game for a long time before you started, and I was pretty active discussing the metagame. My points are informed and drawn from experience.
Or, reading over your sentence, are you trying to imply I was bad at the game? That's not a very classy way to make a point.
ED: Come to think of it, you missed all the bull**** surrounding the Scout update, so you may not actually have seen some of TF2's worst design decisions. hahah the sandman
Y'know, for all your *****ing about some of my posts in here in the past, you've done a fantastic job of ****ting all over my post. I love how I'm supposed to have some psychic intuition of how much you played the game in the past, or how involved you may have been with discussing its overall design, or how much you may know about how it's changed over the years. And no, the thought of how skilled you may or may not be didn't even cross my mind when I wrote that, though I might be tempted to think as much in the future after this.
Seriously, Battuta, don't you think it's about time you let up on the whole holier-than-thou looking-down-my-nose act? It stopped being amusing months ago, and I'm far from the only person around here who's sick of it.
(And people whined about the Sandman, of all things? Cry some moar indeed.)
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(And people whined about the Sandman, of all things? Cry some moar indeed.)
Are you aware of how the Sandman worked when it was first implemented? Or the FaN? Do you know how much they needed to be nerfed to reach the states they're in today?
If not, why do you feel like you can comment on it?
And no, the thought of how skilled you may or may not be didn't even cross my mind when I wrote that, though I might be tempted to think as much in the future after this.
Then why did you out-and-out say I was not a skilled player? It's right there, I quoted it.
Seriously, Battuta, don't you think it's about time you let up on the whole holier-than-thou looking-down-my-nose act? It stopped being amusing months ago, and I'm far from the only person around here who's sick of it.
Please stop trying to make a discussion about a cartoon video game into some kind of personal feud. If you're going to open a discussion by assuming that you know everything about a topic and the other person knows nothing, that's disrespectful, and you're going to get called out on it. That's just how it goes.
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updated to clarify
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Look, Mongoose, take a look at the history of the Sandman - a weapon which is now pretty well balanced.
March 13, 2009 Patch:
* Players who are stunned by a Scout now take 50% less damage
* Increased the minimum distance to stun a player with the Sandman
August 13, 2009 Patch (The Classless Update):
* A Scout will receive 1 point for stunning an enemy and 2 points for a long range stun
* Stunned players now take 75% of all incoming damage instead of 50%
* Übercharged players can no longer be stunned
* Heavies spinning their mini-guns will continue to spin when stunned (whether the left or right mouse button is pressed)
* The minimum distance to stun a target has been reduced
* The negative attribute has changed from "no double jump" to "-30 max health"
December 17, 2009 Patch:
* The Sandman now only stuns on a max range hit (when you hear the cheering)
* All shorter hits now force the enemy into the thirdperson fleeing state (also removed the damage reduction on them)
* Penalty changed from -30 max health to -15 max health.
See that? In its initial state the Sandman:
1) Rendered you totally immobile (you couldn't move, couldn't attack, had no control; you stood in place until the stun expired)
2) Did this even through an ubercharge
3) Could do this at any range
Now the Sandman
1) Does not render you immobile unless you're hit at long range
2) Does not work through an uber
3) No longer removes control from the player
The game was an utter mess when this came out, and it's obvious why: it was bad design. It violated one of the core tenets of the game, one Valve had repeated over and over - that the player should never lose control. It also totally violated the psychology of the ubercharge; players stopped charging when ubered because they were afraid they'd just be Sandmanned. It was beyond dumb.
The days after the Scout update were just godawful. The FaN was also broken to hell and back, and with entire teams of scouts running around paralyzing and FaNning everything in sight, it stopped being fun and started being a chore. This was just one episode; we've had to go through a lot of periods like this, and the frustration just builds up.
The Sandman was eventually fixed. But it's these kind of design decisions which really began to cloud the experience and killed my interest in the game. You started playing well after most of the major changes had been made (and well into the period when Valve had started fixing some of them), and for all I know the game has really recovered since I stopped spending time on it. But as far as I can tell, while TF2 still has its charm, it's lost a lot of what made it truly great.
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Are you aware of how the Sandman worked when it was first implemented? Or the FaN? Do you know how much they needed to be nerfed to reach the states they're in today?
If not, why do you feel like you can comment on it?
I am aware that both were nerfed, and I generally know how (though can't confirm, since the TF2 wiki is getting hammered today), but my point still stands. It certainly wouldn't be the only weapon ever added to the game that Valve had to go back and tweak later...I played for several months before the Natascha was nerfed, and I saw more than my fare share of people whining about that, but even it could be fairly easily handled by the Heavy's natural counters. In the same way, the Sandman's pre-nerf attributes could be avoided by not getting hit by the easily-visible ball.
EDIT: Yes, I agree that aspects of the original design were overpowered, but to remain frustrated at it after Valve listened to complaints from the playerbase, realized their errors, and corrected them seems rather absurd. Considering that the Scout has the lowest amount of health in the game yet by its nature is almost always on the front lines, the whole original point of the Sandman was to help level the playing field...yes, they went too far at first, but they toned things back. And I'm not really sure how "never losing control" could ever have been a core design tenet of the game when there's always been a class that can insantly one-shot you from halfway across a map without you ever getting the chance to do something about it. A Heavy doesn't have any control at all when he's headshot...and in most instances, not much more than that when he's backstabbed.
Then why did you out-and-out say I was not a skilled player? It's right there, I quoted it.
Except I didn't. I wasn't thinking of you at all when I wrote that sentence, nor indeed of myself, but of legitimate pro-level players. Again, would you mind not attempting mind-reading?
Please stop trying to make a discussion about a cartoon video game into some kind of personal feud. If you're going to open a discussion by assuming that you know everything about a topic and the other person knows nothing, that's disrespectful, and you're going to get called out on it. That's just how it goes.
I never assumed that I knew everything about the game (far from it), and I'm rather curious as to how I was supposed to presume your own knowledge of the game when all you posted in here was a single one-liner about it. This isn't some personal feud...it's the fact that you're reading insinuations into my comments that I never remotely intended in the first place, and that I think most reasonable people wouldn't pick up from them. How am I supposed to react when your first response to my post is to insult me to my face?
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I am aware that both were nerfed, and I generally know how (though can't confirm, since the TF2 wiki is getting hammered today), but my point still stands. It certainly wouldn't be the only weapon ever added to the game that Valve had to go back and tweak later
The issue is that Valve started implementing content which violated the core design principles it used to build the game. 'Don't remove player control' is one example. 'Allow snap recognition of all classes (and their capabilities)' is another one that feels like it's really degraded.
It's no coincidence that most of the genuinely screwy items have been those that violated these design tenets - the initial Sandman and the superbroken-era Natasha are good examples. There are other items which do alter the gameplay which I think are excellent, like the Sandvich, but which ended up being broken because of related changes - the Heavy no longer has any real reason to use the shotgun due to spinup time changes.
TF2 was built to be an intuitive, transparent, high-agency team game which didn't require extraordinary amounts of poopsocking. While I don't think it's a bad game, I don't think it meets any of those standards any longer, and other games I play do.
On the other hand it is still quite frequently hilarious.
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You know, I remember when they introduced the backburner.
Damn, that was one overpowered weapon. And it changed the way most people played the game.
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Yeah, that's when it started going downhill.
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You know, I remember when they introduced the backburner.
Damn, that was one overpowered weapon. And it changed the way most people played the game.
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Yeah, that's when it started going downhill.
Airblast bro, airblast is king of proro
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Not when the BB first came out. It had so much bonus HP that you could solo a heavy on open-ground.
And then came the 'weapon-unlock' servers. :banghead:
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I don't know, I like a lot of the earlyish addon weapons, when the focus was on cleaning up portions of the class gameplay that just weren't fun. Granted, the bonus HP on the backburner was a terrible idea, but the pyro was clearly in need of some help.
I think my pleasure curdled about the time they moved from big-idea 'patch a hole' items like the Sandvich to this sea of finely differentiated gadgetry. It's hard to know exactly what capabilities an opponent has any more, and therefore harder to plan actions on the second-by-second level. I can't pin down exactly when I started feeling this way - it started with the Scout, but might have really gone bad around the Classless Update or the WAR update? I can't remember.
ED: probably around the neighborhood of WAR and First Contribution
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You know, I remember when they introduced the backburner.
Damn, that was one overpowered weapon. And it changed the way most people played the game.
You mean the weapon that (until very recently) didn't have any airblast, which is one of the Pyro's most useful attributes? Most people considered it a terrible weapon precisely because of that fact, since you were pretty much limited to playing ambush or being a W+M1 idiot while using it. Even now that it has an airblast, the ammo cost for it is so high that it's essentially an emergency-use feature. In most hands, the Degreaser + Axtinguisher combination is much more powerful.
The issue is that Valve started implementing content which violated the core design principles it used to build the game. 'Don't remove player control' is one example. 'Allow snap recognition of all classes (and their capabilities)' is another one that feels like it's really degraded.
As I said in the edit I slipped in above, I don't really see how never removing player control could ever be truly construed as a core tenet when there's always been at least one class, and sometimes two, that essentially do so as their fundamental mechanic. Again, I agree that Valve went too far with that particular decision, but I also think that they had a good reason for doing so, considering the Scout's shortcomings. I've switched away from the Sandman myself on occasion, but I always keep coming back to it, because it's something that helps me actually survive encounters with much more powerful classes.
As far as snap recognition goes, I've always taken that to mean the ability to tell classes apart at a glance based on their easily-identifiable silhouettes, and that hasn't really changed at all. I do understand where someone like Joshua is coming from regarding identifying weapons and their uses, but on the moment-by-moment level, the majority of weapons use the same fundamental mechanics as the stock weapons, so your reactions to them don't change all that much.
It's no coincidence that most of the genuinely screwy items have been those that violated these design tenets - the initial Sandman and the superbroken-era Natasha are good examples. There are other items which do alter the gameplay which I think are excellent, like the Sandvich, but which ended up being broken because of related changes - the Heavy no longer has any real reason to use the shotgun due to spinup time changes.
The best Heavy player I know (the guy's just about pro-level) uses the Shotgun exclusively, I'd assume because of the ridiculous amount of mobility he's able to pull off with it. I swear, the guy's harder to hit than most Scouts. Even with reduced spin-up time, an actively-firing Heavy is a very cumbersome class in terms of movement, so having a weapon that allows you to be more mobile is still advantageous. Plus, even in public servers, good Heavies usually wind up picking up a pocket Medic, so there's not as much incentive to carry around your own health pack.
TF2 was built to be an intuitive, transparent, high-agency team game which didn't require extraordinary amounts of poopsocking. While I don't think it's a bad game, I don't think it meets any of those standards any longer, and other games I play do.
On the other hand it is still quite frequently hilarious.
I would respectfully disagree, as I think it still fits most of that to at least some extent. The explosion of weapon options is a valid concern, and I think it's one that Valve would probably like to do more to solve, though there are at least some mitigating factors that they have been able to implement. (Giving the player access to all weapons in offline practice might be a good idea.) But while it may have shifted away from some of those tenets somewhat, I think that what it represents in terms of a developer's long-term commitment to actively expanding and experimenting with a product more than makes up for it. It's certainly the most engaging multiplayer experience I've ever found anywhere myself.
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You mean the weapon that (until very recently) didn't have any airblast, which is one of the Pyro's most useful attributes? Most people considered it a terrible weapon precisely because of that fact, since you were pretty much limited to playing ambush or being a W+M1 idiot while using it. Even now that it has an airblast, the ammo cost for it is so high that it's essentially an emergency-use feature. In most hands, the Degreaser + Axtinguisher combination is much more powerful.
He's talking about the Backburner when it was introduced. The Degreaser didn't exist and the Backburner gave you extra HP.
As I said in the edit I slipped in above, I don't really see how never removing player control could ever be truly construed as a core tenet when there's always been at least one class, and sometimes two, that essentially do so as their fundamental mechanic.
No they don't. Not a single thing about the sniper or spy removes any form of player control. (That said the sniper is a terrible class and Valve's efforts to fix this have been pretty cool).
As far as snap recognition goes, I've always taken that to mean the ability to tell classes apart at a glance based on their easily-identifiable silhouettes, and that hasn't really changed at all.
That signal no longer couples with the gameplay information it was meant to in the original design. I'm just not fond of the increased entropy of the information going into the moment-by-moment decision loop.
As a gamer I want agency. I don't like Team Fortress 2 steadily robbing me of it.
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All these very serious words said I am probably going to play the game some more just so I can use the riding crop :V:
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See? Sadism conquers all!
(the real joy of that thing is that everyone whacks their teammates already, but now it actually does something productive)
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It was quite fun today, actually. Played as an heavy for half an hour and I broke some kill records.
Oh, Batutta. A few posts you said that Demo was the most powerfull combat class. I don't really see how that is, but that might just be because the Demoman is the only class I really can't get a hang off.
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Man I want that new Heavy minigun. The sound effect for it is fantastic.
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Figures this would happen a few weeks after I buy it :lol:
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is it just me or are the ****ing servers failing to update properly?
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The entire back-end has been getting hammered, so yeah, things have been a bit iffy over the past day.
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It was quite fun today, actually. Played as an heavy for half an hour and I broke some kill records.
Oh, Batutta. A few posts you said that Demo was the most powerfull combat class. I don't really see how that is, but that might just be because the Demoman is the only class I really can't get a hang off.
Demoman has a steep learning curve, but yeah, he's pretty deadly.
One of the things I loved about playing TF2 was that as I played, some classes that I just didn't "get" would gradually click. One by one, I learned to love them all.
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Damn... I wasted my $20 on the game before it's free.
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Damn... I wasted my $20 on the game before it's free.
You get a hat :P
(You also got to play it much earlier and much longer)
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Yeah, if you bought it a few days before it went free, I can see being a bit upset, but I've seen a few people ask, "So why did I pay money for this a few years ago?" Um...so you could play it for the past few years?
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I've also seen people say TF2 lost meaning when it became free. My immediate thought was 'No? From what I heard, it lost meaning when it became more about hats and less about Team Fortress.'
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i was about to DL it, then i saw, it requires Steam to be installed. I pass on that one.
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I've also seen people say TF2 lost meaning when it became free. My immediate thought was 'No? From what I heard, it lost meaning when it became more about hats and less about Team Fortress.'
It's actually not really about the hats...
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Free hat simulator.
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i was about to DL it, then i saw, it requires Steam to be installed. I pass on that one.
OH GOD DRM ON A FREE GAME :nervous:
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Hmmm....
Since TF2 has now been released for free, and TF2 is a source engine game, does this mean it's possible to download the free version of TF2 and run the Eternal Silence (http://www.eternal-silence.net) mod off of it? After all, it says on the instructions page you need a copy of a source engine game to run the mod.
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i was about to DL it, then i saw, it requires Steam to be installed. I pass on that one.
hmmm
steam saved pc gaming
angelus hates steam
angelus hates pc gaming!?
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Hmmm....
Since TF2 has now been released for free, and TF2 is a source engine game, does this mean it's possible to download the free version of TF2 and run the Eternal Silence (http://www.eternal-silence.net) mod off of it? After all, it says on the instructions page you need a copy of a source engine game to run the mod.
Why don't you try it and let us know? :)
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HL2.EXE HAS STOPPED WORKING
GAAAAAAAABE
actually I have decided that Mongoose will be the physical avatar of Team Fortress 2
MONGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE
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i was about to DL it, then i saw, it requires Steam to be installed. I pass on that one.
hmmm
steam saved pc gaming
angelus hates steam
angelus hates pc gaming!?
Uhm, no.
Steam did *not* save PC gaming.
I *do* hate Steam.
I *do not* hate PC Gaming.
One *should not* need Steam to play games, it's needless like the hated mother-in-law.
If i want to have sex, i don't invite the mother-in-law over to be present during the act, nor should it be obligation for her to be present.
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Meh, whatever. Go ahead and keep missing out if you've got that kind of piss-poor attitude toward something you've never tried.
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How do you know he hasn't tried it? I don't. You like Steam and use it, fine. If someone else doesn't that's also fine and doesn't somehow invalidate your opinion - there's no need to have a go.
Personally I gave in to the more practical aspects of Steam. Sometimes it gives you games for free. Sometimes you'll get to buy them cheaper or as part of a cost efficient pack. But Steam is far from perfect, and in some ways it's downright annoying - I do get where Angelus is coming from.
As for Steam saving PC gaming.. you know it's really, really easy to save something that's in no danger at all :P
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i was about to DL it, then i saw, it requires Steam to be installed. I pass on that one.
hmmm
steam saved pc gaming
angelus hates steam
angelus hates pc gaming!?
Because of the fact that Steam is required to install games that I buy out of a box that has no multiplayer (No not TF), I have all the reason to hate it.
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i was about to DL it, then i saw, it requires Steam to be installed. I pass on that one.
hmmm
steam saved pc gaming
angelus hates steam
angelus hates pc gaming!?
Uhm, no.
Steam did *not* save PC gaming.
Ouch, wrong at step 1
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Yeah, that makes sense. Because you have to download something that's free, doesn't change anything about that game, and that you never have to really bother with again if you don't want, you hate it.
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How exactly did Steam save PC Gaming?
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How exactly did Steam save PC Gaming?
It's not my job to do your reading for you. Go find out.
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Because of the fact that Steam is required to install games that I buy out of a box that has no multiplayer (No not TF), I have all the reason to hate it.
You can't exactly get mad at Steam for that, Steam didn't make the game like that
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How exactly did Steam save PC Gaming?
It's not my job to do your reading for you. Go find out.
So i googled this question: Did Steam saved PC Gaming?
Judging from comments of players, and some of them are Steam users, it didn't.
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You might want to try something of authority. Just sayin'.
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How exactly did Steam save PC Gaming?
It's not my job to do your reading for you. Go find out.
So i googled this question: Did Steam saved PC Gaming?
Judging from comments of players, and some of them are Steam users, it didn't.
Might want to actually read the decisions made by the people who sell games (try Bohemia Software, makers of ARMA, for a start)
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How exactly did Steam save PC Gaming?
It's not my job to do your reading for you. Go find out.
So i googled this question: Did Steam saved PC Gaming?
Judging from comments of players, and some of them are Steam users, it didn't.
Might want to actually read the decisions made by the people who sell games (try Bohemia Software, makers of ARMA, for a start)
Oh, you mean Steam helped some indie games to get more sales/ publicity. Granted, it did.
That does *not* mean it saved PC Gaming.
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How exactly did Steam save PC Gaming?
It's not my job to do your reading for you. Go find out.
So i googled this question: Did Steam saved PC Gaming?
Judging from comments of players, and some of them are Steam users, it didn't.
Might want to actually read the decisions made by the people who sell games (try Bohemia Software, makers of ARMA, for a start)
Oh, you mean Steam helped some indie games to get more sales/ publicity. Granted, it did.
That does *not* mean it saved PC Gaming.
Replace 'indie games' with 'PC games' and you'll be on the right track
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Uhm, no. Saving a couple indie games does not equal saving PC Gaming.
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HL2.EXE HAS STOPPED WORKING
GAAAAAAAABE
actually I have decided that Mongoose will be the physical avatar of Team Fortress 2
MONGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE
I am completely fine with this.
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Because of the fact that Steam is required to install games that I buy out of a box that has no multiplayer (No not TF), I have all the reason to hate it.
You can't exactly get mad at Steam for that, Steam didn't make the game like that
There's still zero reason why it should be done as such. Single player-only games out-of-box should not be forced to be installed and played via an Internet connection.
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Because of the fact that Steam is required to install games that I buy out of a box that has no multiplayer (No not TF), I have all the reason to hate it.
You can't exactly get mad at Steam for that, Steam didn't make the game like that
There's still zero reason why it should be done as such. Single player-only games out-of-box should not be forced to be installed and played via an Internet connection.
Exactly.
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And here I thought everyone had heard of offline-mode.
One time internet start up isn't that hard. You're posting here, after all, so you obviously have internet. I fail to see the problem with this.
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And here I thought everyone had heard of offline-mode.
One time internet start up isn't that hard. You're posting here, after all, so you obviously have internet. I fail to see the problem with this.
That's not the point. A offline application, like a singleplayer game, should not require you to be online.
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It doesn't apply now since it hasn't done it, but remembering several years back when Offline Mode refused to work on Steam at any time, it would become an issue.
Plus there's the fact that a slow Internet connection = slow install time when transferring from the disk itself could / would be much faster, not everyone has the luxury of running high speeds at a constant rate.
And having the disk simply becomes irrelevant anyway once it's added to the [Insert host here] library, there's no point for games to even be shelved anymore with items inside the box except maybe game manuals, they're there for the sake of advertising to people who aren't at their home buying the game from Steam itself.
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Anyone mad at Steam's online mode is dumb. What you should be afraid of are things like OnLive and Gakkai.
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Anyone mad at Steam's online mode is dumb. What you should be afraid of are things like OnLive and Gakkai.
You shouldn't start insulting people, because they don't agree with you.
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we've been telling him that for a LONG time.
the reason i hate steam, other than the aforementioned forced install for physical media games, is it's basically ad spam. they hope that by forcing me to install it, i'll go to the steam store and buy stuff since it's right there.
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we've been telling him that for a LONG time.
YOU ARE DUMB 2
Seriously though, crying about the only thing keeping PC gaming alive just doesn't...strike me as very wise. If you lose Steam you know where PC gaming is going next, right? It's called OnLive and it means the death of modding and all we hold dear. All this whining about Steam just seems so short-sighted when the alternative is so terrible.
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I played a bunch of this game today, it was okay. (demoknight in the house) Not the worst thing ever.
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That's not the point. A offline application, like a singleplayer game, should not require you to be online.
It doesn't require you to be online all the time, just once and then you can turn on offline mode for the rest of your pitiful existence if you so please. This whole argument just seems to be a silly 'it's singleplayer so out of principle it should not use the internet while being used' even though your internet would most likely be on while you're playing the game anyway...
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Yeah, I can almost see arguing the point out of principle, and there have been some always-on implementations of the concept that can get really obnoxious, but the fact of the matter is that you're pretty much always going to have an active Internet connection anyway. I just don't see it being any sort of inconvenience.
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I played this game a bit last night for the first time ever.
I can see why people like it so much, it's very much a team based game: fast paced and tactical all at the same time. All the classes have their own unique way to fight, and if you play your class right you really help your team out.
The spy is cool, probably one of the most unique ways to play I have seen in an FPS. I kept trying desperately to get behind the enemy team and bust out the knife on some medics, engineers and snipers. I've gotten lucky with the pyro a few times as well, good fun indeed.
Only hard time I had was finding a good server, but I imagine I would have better luck if I knew the game modes better and played with the filters more.
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I played this game a bit last night for the first time ever.
I can see why people like it so much, it's very much a team based game: fast paced and tactical all at the same time. All the classes have their own unique way to fight, and if you play your class right you really help your team out.
The spy is cool, probably one of the most unique ways to play I have seen in an FPS. I kept trying desperately to get behind the enemy team and bust out the knife on some medics, engineers and snipers. I've gotten lucky with the pyro a few times as well, good fun indeed.
Only hard time I had was finding a good server, but I imagine I would have better luck if I knew the game modes better and played with the filters more.
Play with people you like, that's what makes TF2 enjoyable. Playing on a certain server or group really makes the difference and make OP changes or items negligent when you've grown accustomed to fellow play styles.
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Yeah, I think the real key to having fun with this game over the long-term is finding a few good servers and playing with some of the same people over an extended period of time. I lucked into finding a quality n00b server when I first started playing, and more recently I've become a regular on the OverClocked ReMix servers, which have a great crowd of regulars.
(also holy crap Battman, you've been in-game just about every time I've checked my friends list today)
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THIS GAME IS RUINED let's play some more of it
fake edit: you must be checking your friends lists on even numbered minutes because on odd numbered ones i'm crashing
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Damn, that's bad luck. I get the rare hl2.exe crash myself, but never that frequently.
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Gonna play some more of this terrible game now, **** you Mongoose I'm supposed to be finishing Deus Ex
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Gonna play some more of this terrible game now, **** you Mongoose I'm supposed to be finishing Deus Ex
Considering both choices are pretty terrible I can kinda see how you can have trouble deciding which to play
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Gonna play some more of this terrible game now, **** you Mongoose I'm supposed to be finishing Deus Ex
Considering both choices are pretty terrible I can kinda see how you can have trouble deciding which to play
Oh you're good baby, you're real good
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Gonna play some more of this terrible game now, **** you Mongoose I'm supposed to be finishing Deus Ex
Considering both choices are pretty terrible I can kinda see how you can have trouble deciding which to play
Oh you're good baby, you're real good
that's what he ... she said
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Gonna play some more of this terrible game now, **** you Mongoose I'm supposed to be finishing Deus Ex
I win!
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Considering both choices are pretty terrible I can kinda see how you can have trouble deciding which to play
You are a part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Take him away!
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YOU ARE DUMB 2
Some people never know when to stop pushing. Enjoy your two week monkeying.
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Yeah that was pretty clearly a self-deprecating joke, and Klaustrophobia and I have been corresponding cordially, but carry on (it is important that we remain absolutely humorless, or we might fail to achieve our monthly drama quota)
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We don't have a Monthly Drama Quota, unless you mean the number 0 which we've so far managed to always fail to hit.
And any that does happen, should probably stay in GenDisc anyway.
I -have- been trying to tell you that you need to stop pushing things.
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Yeah that was pretty clearly a self-deprecating joke, and Klaustrophobia and I have been corresponding cordially, but carry on (it is important that we remain absolutely humorless, or we might fail to achieve our monthly drama quota)
you've got to work on your internet delivery. i got the sarcasm this time, but to be honest a lot of the time it really does just look like you're being an ass for the hell of it.
(i still don't think steam saved PC gaming either :P)
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We don't have a Monthly Drama Quota, unless you mean the number 0 which we've so far managed to always fail to hit.
And any that does happen, should probably stay in GenDisc anyway.
I -have- been trying to tell you that you need to stop pushing things.
If you want to execute it to maximum effect you should make sure there are some seriously juicy topics discussed in GD while he's conscripted in the Royal Flying Monkey Corps. Sorry batts, I love you like an internet forum acquaintance I've never met in person but the image of you sitting on the edge of your seat in impotent frustrated rage while GD ascends to the edge of heaven and the depths of disaster gives me a special feeling in the cockles of my heart, maybe below the cockles.
maybe even in the colon... I don't know
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we've been telling him that for a LONG time.
YOU ARE DUMB 2
Seriously though, crying about the only thing keeping PC gaming alive just doesn't...strike me as very wise. If you lose Steam you know where PC gaming is going next, right? It's called OnLive and it means the death of modding and all we hold dear. All this whining about Steam just seems so short-sighted when the alternative is so terrible.
So you assume that, if we lose steam, some sort of alternative does not crop up? You are completely unuware of all the alternitives to it being available right now, and some of htem perhaps even before steam? How was PC Gaming dying when steam showed up? How did it save us? Was there anything needed to be saving? Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?
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The thing about Steam is, it's arguably the first DRM scheme that actually works. Not in the sense of it being uncrackable, but in the sense of it being acceptable to both consumers and producers. Steam does this by being a steady revenue source for developers, and by delivering added features to customers through Steam sales etc. Now, in principle, services like Impulse and Origin do the same thing, but Steam has the advantage of being nearly ubiquitous. A large percentage of gamers have Steam installed, and use it every day.
Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?
In hindsight, bundling Steam with HL2 and then expanding it into a full-blown games retailer was a pretty good move. That way, Valve was able to leverage the HL2 install base.
Then there are other reasons. Just quoting from the wiki article:
--Steam currently holds an estimated marketshare of 70% on digital distribution sales.
--Games purchased on Steam give producers a higher revenue (70% of the purchase price go to the publisher), thus ensuring that PC gaming remains a profitable income source
This is what saved PC gaming, given that PC games have a rather limited retail shelf life.
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The thing about Steam is, it's arguably the first DRM scheme that actually works. Not in the sense of it being uncrackable, but in the sense of it being acceptable to both consumers and producers. Steam does this by being a steady revenue source for developers, and by delivering added features to customers through Steam sales etc. Now, in principle, services like Impulse and Origin do the same thing, but Steam has the advantage of being nearly ubiquitous. A large percentage of gamers have Steam installed, and use it every day.
Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?
In hindsight, bundling Steam with HL2 and then expanding it into a full-blown games retailer was a pretty good move. That way, Valve was able to leverage the HL2 install base.
Then there are other reasons. Just quoting from the wiki article:
--Steam currently holds an estimated marketshare of 70% on digital distribution sales.
--Games purchased on Steam give producers a higher revenue (70% of the purchase price go to the publisher), thus ensuring that PC gaming remains a profitable income source
This is what saved PC gaming, given that PC games have a rather limited retail shelf life.
And also explains why some of the big publishers (cough, cough, EA) are scared of it. Giving power directly to the producers and stripping the publishers of substantial leverage is a good way of cutting out an intrusive middleman.
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The thing about Steam is, it's arguably the first DRM scheme that actually works. Not in the sense of it being uncrackable, but in the sense of it being acceptable to both consumers and producers. Steam does this by being a steady revenue source for developers, and by delivering added features to customers through Steam sales etc. Now, in principle, services like Impulse and Origin do the same thing, but Steam has the advantage of being nearly ubiquitous. A large percentage of gamers have Steam installed, and use it every day.
Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?
In hindsight, bundling Steam with HL2 and then expanding it into a full-blown games retailer was a pretty good move. That way, Valve was able to leverage the HL2 install base.
Then there are other reasons. Just quoting from the wiki article:
--Steam currently holds an estimated marketshare of 70% on digital distribution sales.
--Games purchased on Steam give producers a higher revenue (70% of the purchase price go to the publisher), thus ensuring that PC gaming remains a profitable income source
This is what saved PC gaming, given that PC games have a rather limited retail shelf life.
Hmm. One can also say that this effect was due to the increased digital distribution. Or not?
(But that's a good point. A lot of awesome games which more or less depended on word to mouth advertising would not have thrived without steam. It should have been around in the FS2 era :P.)
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I think the point being made is that digital distribution has injected a lot of vitality into PC gaming. Most of the other digital distribution platforms only exist because Steam proved the model was successful. At any rate, Steam "made it big" first, so they get the credit.
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Anyone whining about Steam simply needs to install a game that requires the Games For Windows Live client, and they should come to the conclusion that as a digital distribution and copyright protection platform goes, Steam is pretty ****ing awesome.
As for the *****ing about games requiring an Internet connection - piracy screwed that pooch long ago. Face it, any modern mainstream game you buy now from anyone other than the smallest indie studios is going to have SOME FORM of online activation. It's become a fact of life. If you're really so opposed to Steam being online all the time, switch it to offline mode.
As someone who plays TF2 semi-competitively, an integrated, smooth, continuously updated, and non-intrusive client is a godsend (Goodbye MS Zone and GameSpy, you ****ty infiltrators of earlier online matchmaking, you will NOT be missed). And it's gotten to the point where the only physical game disc I've bought in nearly 4 years is Starcraft 2 (because it's not on Steam).
That, and Steam sales are better than any sale pricing anywhere else if you time it right. I picked up 6 or 7 major titles (among them, Mass Effect 2, Fallout 3, BioShock 2, Company of Heroes Gold, and Dead Space) for less than $60 not all that long ago. Good luck doing that in a store.
Thanks, I'll keep Steam.
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Or you could just install Impulse instead and get all the good effects with less of the bad ones.
The x is awful so y must be good cause it's not as bad argument is seriously flawed.
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Or you could just install Impulse instead and get all the good effects with less of the bad ones.
The x is awful so y must be good cause it's not as bad argument is seriously flawed.
So your saying your promotional statement for Impulse is flawed? :D