f13.net

So this is interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzxpbUeN-eg

It gets worse (better). (http://www.teamfortress.com/bloodbrothers)

Oh dear god I do hope that they introduce a third team.

I'm sorry. What in the ever living fuck did I just read?

My favorite line:

"I invented a new form of algebra to pass the time.  We were a late birth, you know."

+1

The explanation for the addition of bots.

Yeah bots seems much more likely than a 3rd side.

Well, of course they're bots. And possibly unlockable skins. But like, ...

"Redmond, I propose a truce. So that we can build a machine to make one of us pregnant."
"Mm. Of course."

That's not even within the realm of sane. It's like almost funny, but too weird to be funny. The whole thing is just over the top in a not good way.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/40386/Macros/monocle_disgust_computer.png)

Maybe an 'idiotic crime against nature'? (that line did make me laugh I must admit)

I am 100% sure that's exactly how the writer wrote that comic. Except he was wearing about 6 hats all stacked neatly on top of eachother with the one on top being a Ghostly Gibus.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.   :oh_i_see:

I am aware of the desired intent of his picture.

It's horde mode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4cfo0f88Ug

TF2 meets L4D, except with robots?  Awesome.

Yeah, that actually looks really awesome, and a much better idea than a "third team".  Can't wait!

Also, that comic was funny, Schild sucks, yadda yadda.

Second comic explaining things a little bit more as well. (http://www.teamfortress.com/fateworsethanchess/)

I dunno, I'm with schild here. Absurd quirky seems to be a shortcut for people trying to be funny who actually aren't. Seems to be in nerd fashion though.

Really, a horde mode? I'm a valve fan boy, but what they've done with the TF franchise is basically criminal at this point.

The third panel of that comic should just be posted in the TSW Investors thread.

(http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k320/thinwhiteduke_2006/JohnCleese-1.jpg)

I didn't say it was exclusive.

Were they actually going for funny?  That was more like a self proclamation of insanity.

Monty Python was actually funny and they took no shortcuts.

Fuck me, I love that episode so much.


(It's Fawlty Towers, not Flying Circus. <3)

In a universe where nine individuals battle palette-swapped clones of each other over gravel with gratuitous cartoon violence and the leading technological development is done by a muscular pastiche of Crocodile Dundee with chest-hair the shape of Australia by a company whose motto is "We sell products and get in fights", showing that a pair of individuals are insane, senile and stupid by the standards of that universe means going to even further extremes of lunacy.

Now if TF2 was one of those tedious "War is hell" cover-shooters with the puerile teenaged obsession over being 'serious'  and 'having a message' then people might have a point. But it's crazy people killing other crazy people in crazy ways on the orders of crazy people, and now fighting robots (that look like they could have marched out of a Warner Bros cartoon) to defend a third crazy person from a fourth.

So... :why_so_serious:

Pray elaborate.

You mean make it relevant?  TF was a funsies mod back in the day and nowadays it stands right next to CS, if not above it.

Just because something is already :uhrr: doesn't mean more :uhrr: is any less :uhrr:.

TF2's odd sense of humor is pretty much entirely within that genre's range. It's the whole Adventure/Real Man stuff that Portal and Venture Brothers uses. If you find those funny, it's the same sense of humor. I'm not really seeing where the derp is coming from.

As for horde mode: Neat. It's pretty much the new standard mode in shooters, so I'm all for seeing it added to one of the longer running shooters.

My point still stands.

I must admit I started a reinstall of TF2 before I left for work this morning.

I really enjoyed PvE in global agenda. This may get some of my friends to play, and I'm sure that was the point of this addition.

They talk about some kind of progress system, is this the same one as in the main game? do they carry over from PvE to PvP?

Lots of questions.

I've said this elsewhere, but the addition of dozens of new weapons has really made the game worse not better.  When TF2 came out it was (aside from crits) a really well balanced, pretty well refined shooter.   The addition of all these weapons has, from a pure shooter standpoint, made it worse in my opinion.  It has certainly become more popular because pubbing is just pure shenanigans at this point, but more popular doesn't mean it is a better game.   It seems like adding a horde mode (PvE content) is basically just a final kick in the pants to people like me.   Yes, I'm in the minority, I realize this.

Naw, I quit playing shortly after weapons got weird also. The first batch of alternatives was fine, but after that. Meh.

Fair enough.  I just take TF2 as a wacky shooter with loosely-based team objectives.

Not that anyone actually did them before the weapons changes.

I thought the second comic was grin-worthy but I'm a huge nerd anyway so fuck off if you didn't like it.

I still like TF2, though I have so many other things to play it's way down the list of priorities. Horde mode won't bring me back, but I can see where it would give folks more reason to buy stuff in the store. Not sure what they mean about the bots dropping cash, but we'll see. I'll probably give it a try then go back to hating Cole Phelps some more.

They mentioned being able to upgrade things in horde mode, I figure it might have to do with that.

This look surprisingly interesting! I will be trying this out next week when I return home.

As for the humor, yes it is quite nerdy and over-the-top, but that is what sets it apart and makes it interesting! 

For all the talk about the weapons bloat/power creep I still find I use the regular ones or the ones from the first batch of alternates like 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, I'm in Pyroland.

(Also, unrelated TF2 complaint, random people will NOT stop spamming me with friend invites to try to get their hands on my sweet, sweet bunny ears.)

Oh, it isn't power creep, don't get me wrong.   I use default weapons when I, on occasion, want to play and still crush everyone with them the same as always.  It comes down to refining the experience for me.  There are just way too many weapons all with slightly different abilities and bonuses and you get to the point where there are just way too many things that you can't predict - particularly because some things give passive bonuses which aren't obvious.  For example, last time I played I hit an engineer with a rocket, hit him square on and knew that even if he was full health one more rocket would finish him off, I shot at him, turned away and even heard the hit sound.   I was low on hp, and he killed me with a shotgun blast.  Turned out he had a gunslinger equipped which is +25 hp for him.  In a game of split second decisions, that sort of thing really pisses me off.  I know most people don't play at that level (Yea, I used to play TF2 competitively when it first came out), but for me personally this sort of thing makes the game frustrating to play.

Huh? Bunny ears?

It's the mask that lets you run faster.  You get them by beating the running guy in a race.

:why_so_serious:

Promo hat from pre-ordering one of the Sam & Max seasons. Apparently they're worth like $60-70 or something now because they're rare? I dunno, people are crazy.

Max's Severed Head (http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Max%27s_Severed_Head)

Ah, so you liked playing TF2 as an e-sport. That makes sense then. Have you tried Fortress Forever (http://www.fortress-forever.com/)?

Yea, it was pretty enjoyable, though at the time there weren't any leagues playing it.  Now that you mention it though I should probably reinstall that mod, it would probably be a lot more enjoyable for me for the random TF sessions I'm looking for.

New MvM page is up, explaining how the player classes work a bit, and the round upgrade system.

Demoman got shafted. :oh_i_see:

Because crit stickies need buffing.

When I watched the MvM video and the tank full of robots started rolling up, my first thought was that the demoman should just pop 8 stickies under that thing and blow it into orbit.

Last MvM page is up. And it's.. confusing?

So to play on official servers, you need a ticket for $1. These tickets are consumed when you win? You gain cosmetic items for winning on these ticket based servers.

I'm not fully following why I'd care about these tickets, or why they're used up in such an odd manner, or if I can earn normal TF2 items during gameplay, or what.

http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/faq/

edit: nevermind on the "does this count towards normal loot on free servers", it does. Looks like you buy tickets to eventually get hats.

Holy fuck that's expensive.

Not really.

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Mann_Co_Store_Pricelist

I'm a bit puzzled on when I pay them how much to play on their tracked/ranked servers. If it's like, a dollar or two a month cool. If it's a dollar a MATCH, fuck that. I'm also still not sure what the draw is besides hats (which admittedly means I don't fully get most of TF2's transaction model)

There's a lot more items you can get in TF2 than just hats including multiple weapons for each class.

Because you only have to pay a dollar if you want a cosmetic item? Otherwise just play on the normal servers.

The ticket is consumed upon completion of a Mission (a full map round) on their official server.

Completing an entire Tour (which is some number of Missions) gets you a rare cosmetic item (they say explicitly it's not weapon upgrades or anything like that).

So basically, however many Missions are in a Tour is the cost in dollars of one of these special hats.  From the achievements, it sounds like that number is at least three.

The problem is the items are random so you will end up getting items you already own and there are lots of items you might not care about. Yes you can trade with other players but that's a fucking PITA. If they had an trading house system then it might not be so bad.

It sounds like these items are coming from a special list, so the odds of getting duplicates are pretty low unless you're getting tons and tons of them.

I haven't yet bought anything from the Mann Co store, but I do like achievements and stat tracking; I might get one tour's worth of tickets just to get my one bragging-rights robot hat.

Anyone actually gotten into a game yet? Thing seems borked.
And holy flying fruit bats wtf has happened to TF2 load times?!?

I've been playing. Use the server browser and filter for mvm. What is messing servers up is they are 32 player servers running mvm, which is 6 players. So everyone else has to spectate.

Crazy game mode is crazy. I like it, but it seems like you really need engineers, and snipers are the shitty class.

So. Many. Scoutbots.

Watched a video of somebody playing a Demoman and he does get the standard weapon upgrades that were mentioned for most of the other classes.

From the PA forums:


So $6 per special hat.


This shit can get expensive, especially if you try to maximize your earnings. Considering how much it'd end up costing you to play on the official servers combined with how much it'd cost to set up your own dedicated server for this (as you need a full 32-player server that can actually handle MvM, so it's pretty pricy), I can see this not really gaining much ground.

Yep, this pretty much evaporated my cheap ass's interest in this game mode.

I haven't played TF2 since about a month after it was originally released.

Those comics and the trailer piqued my interest and I was all about to reinstall and give it a go and then I read the last few posts. It's pay per game? What? OK, fuck that.  :oh_i_see:

I believe (and I may not be correct) there is a free version of the game (well it's free at the moment) it's just there are no goodies to be won/collected. (big whoop I play TF2 for mindless action fun)

Mind you I managed to log onto a mvm server this morning. Got ourselves setup and as soon as the enemy gate came down we all lagged out so badly that everyone quit.
-1 for initial impression.

Reading comprehension is unfair to some and whatnot.

My beef is less that you're paying $1 for cosmetic items and more that you have to pay $1 to get on Valve dedicated servers, which tend to be rock-solid stable places to go if you want to just shoot some Tuftoo mans of wildly varying skill levels without a bunch of mods and other bullshit installed onto the server.

I think there's something in the water today. 

So, don't play there?  How is this actually affecting you whatsoever?

How can you have a beef with something you haven't paid for and don't want?

  :awesome_for_real:

There are plenty of stable modless non-Valve servers for the basic game mode.  If the new mode is fun, plenty of MvM servers will show up.

Reading comprehension is indeed unfair to some.

Wow, okay. I wasn't intending what I said to be as harsh as you've apparently taken it to be. I don't plan on playing Mann Up because it's untenable to do so over the long run. I was just wishing we had some Valve dedicated servers that weren't Mann Up only.

I think given that they've gone with the whole f2p model, it's reasonable for them to make you either find someone willing to run a server for fun or pay them to host a server for you.  Heck, even if it was a game you had to pay for, I don't think you can expect perpetual server hosting without a subscription model to pay for it.

That said, $1 per mission is clearly more than covering the hosting costs, but it's f2p, they gotta keep the lights on somehow.

Fuck this mode is hard.  At least it is when half your teammates don't know what the fuck they're doing.  You definitely need the "right" classes to stand a chance in hell.  Seems like it's all about engies with wranglers, pyros with airblasts, and medics to stop everyone from dying.

(edit) HAHAHA -- striker, controller/defender, leader.  Same as it ever was.

This mode is fun, had a bast tearing shit up as a heavy.

One of the good things about MvM is some of the, um, not-optimal weapons in the normal game suddenly become actually quite good for robot-killing.

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUluEqXLYr4

I haven't yet tested the griefing potential of the medic's "share my flask buff with my heal target" using the "return to spawn" flask, I imagine it's only a matter of time though. Being able to use it to keep a heavy full of ammo using the ammo flask is pretty swanky though.


I actually really like this.

Group queueing for this is buggy as fuck.

Demoman does nicely for killing the veritable buttload of scouts that come at you.

Had a round last night where I played as Pyro the whole time and mostly kicked ass, but then the last wave came out and it was mostly heavies (with knockback) and snipers.  Couldn't get close enough to anything to kill or airblast it.  And of course when I switched classes, I didn't have any upgrades, so was at a huge disadvantage then.

Be nice if there was some kind of respec option, maybe being able to just pay a few hundred bucks to refund all your previously spent money and allow you to pour it into another class's weapons.

Yeah something like that would be nice. Also... I think it might be tuned a hair too hard for random users. Multiple difficulty levels a la ME3 multiplayer would be nice.

I had fun as a medic, but we never managed to beat the last wave of the map we were on.  :heartbreak:

Yep, I've tried twice to play this with a couple of friends and haven't been able to get a game yet.  The second time when we did get into a game it booted us all straight away with some error message about the server version being out of date.

It would be nice if they allowed some flexibility in refunds, and possibly upped the cash drop rates a little.

Just beat the first advanced mission for Decoy ("Disk Deletion"). Took a lot of tries, strategy adjustment, and luck, and even then we were hanging on by the skin of our teeth at the end. The final wave had the second tank spawn at the same time as packs of giant bots each with 3 uber medics in tow. :ye_gods:

There really needs to be some counter to those uber medics, as it is a small mistake by a single team member can put you in a situation where you can only watch an invulnerable bot march the bomb all the way to the goal.

Yeah they're weird - I blew some clear across the map from the heavy they were ubering and neither they nor the heavy lost the uber. It was WAAAAAY outside the range where a normal player medic would lose the medigun connection with his target.

No, it just turned out we were on SUPER HARD LEVEL ones. The normal ones are really easy.

Yeah, pro tip: Do not pick "any map" unless you are prepared to potentially be on wtfhard maps. :P

Been playing quite a bit and honestly the community is going to kill the game.

It's crazy on hard modes because if heaven forbid you fail once you might be a scape goat. Been booted without warning a few times, been yelled at because i'm a class not using a weapon for a map, then blamed for the failure because I re-equipped.

It's worse then WoW heroic LFD.

I still have yet to complete the first mission.  Last few times I tried, each attempt fell apart because one person would leave, nobody new would join, and since the difficulty doesn't scale based on the number of people you have, it quickly becomes impossible and pretty soon everyone else leaves in frustration.

At least I'm not using up my one ticket.   :awesome_for_real:

Played this with my son over the weekend.  Had issues with it:
1.  Cash drops at the feet of the kills.  Melee classes would just scoop everything up.  Is that split evenly with team?  Seemed like I was getting very little.
2.  No time given to even get new equipment unless you die.  By that point the bomb is at the door.  Be nice if there was some time between waves.  Or, is there a way to buy stuff while in the field?

Otherwise, it was pretty fun.  I think we got on a hard map because...it was hard.  We would get to the medic-tank wave and fail every time (4-5 times.)  We didn't have anyone blowing them apart.  I could have switched, but I'd lose my upgrades, etc... We'll do some more games this week sometime.  Great game for mindless coop chaotic fun. 

1. The whole team gets the full amount of cash from a pickup, regardless of who gets it. Scouts even have an expanded pickup radius for that purpose.

2. You're not meant to really buy more gear in the middle of a round or between waves, aside from maybe a couple extra canteens if you're quick about it; it's why your cash totals are reset to what you had at the beginning of the round if you lose, so you can try out new gear options. If you have an Engineer, keep in mind that their teleporters are two-way in MvM, making getting to and from spawn a breeze.

They actually have to buy an upgrade to make them 2 way. Also it means you need to be very careful when you're strafing around, we've had people accidentally teleport a bunch of times which can really screw things up.

The very first mission (Disk Deletion, I think?) is by far the hardest of the ones I've played.  It took me maybe twenty tries to find a decent team to finish that one; since then I've finished two more, each on the first try.

Scout is my new favorite MvM class now that I've seen how to play it correctly.  Once you've got Mad Milk with all the upgrades the team doesn't even need a medic, and all the fast robots get slowed down enough that they're easy to deal with.

There IS time to run back, buy new upgrades, and get back to where you want to be between waves. If people whine you need to hit f4, just ignore them. :P The only class this is probably really annoying for is the demoman, from what I've seen.

And yeah, try a normal map. They're much more forgiving, and the stupid queue isn't actually much longer (if longer at all) when you queue for a specific normal map.

I just ignore the whining, I'll hit F4 when my sticky bombs and I are good and ready.

Or don't queue at all, if you're doing non-Mann Up games. Just go to server browser and put 'mvm' in the search.

Finally got time to play around with this on my Engineer.  Dominating scout bots with the turret is just :awesome_for_real:.  Combined with +building health, faster rate of fire, and faster wrench attacks, I can barricade myself and the turret just doesn't die.

So I finished the full Tour.  Here's the skinny on the loot rewards for Mann Up Mode:

1) You get a random loot drop at the end of each mission.  Seems like it's a standard drop with a small chance of getting a metal hat (http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Mann_Up#Items_Obtainable_Only_In_Mann_Up); I got one metal hat and five normal weapons from my six missions.
2) You get a random Strange Botkiller (http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Botkiller_Weapons) weapon at the end of the tour.  ("Strange" means it has a kill counter on it, "Botkiller" means it has a robot head on it.)

I have to say, I'm impressed by how well they're straddling the "achievement" and "pay for toys" gap -- I've never felt the slightest urge to buy stuff from the in-game store, but I feel completely okay with having paid $6 for my Strange Botkiller Medigun.  I think it's the e-peen factor and the fact that simply paying the $6 isn't enough, you have to have gotten through the stupidhard missions in order to get the cool-looking gun.

It also helps that at no time after finishing a mission have I thought "I paid too much for that".  It's definitely more entertainment than a dollar would get you in an arcade.

How does the matchmaking work, did people stay in for the whole tour? I'm tempted to give it a go, but worried I'll end up with a bunch of mouthbreathers who can't complete anything...

After completing one of the six missions, you get kicked from the server. So unless you manually form a party before each mission, you'll be playing with different people.

That is frequently the case, especially on the long/hard/frustrating missions, but you only get "charged" (i.e. use your ticket) if you actually complete the mission.

I'm playing on community ("boot camp") servers so I can play the "normal" maps.

$1 for the Mann Up tickets is definitely worth it not to have to play with these goddamn mouthbreathers.  Holy FUCK.