Clefairy

So apparently Snowplow is "too complex for new players", gets cut from its own update, alright. I don't agree, but it's your game so fine. Then two weeks later, gets pushed to beta?All of my wat, Valve.

I'm torn about the new short circuit. On one hand, demospam has been king for a long long while, and deserved to be taken down a peg. On the other, this is .

Oh yeah, this thread. It turns out that the Halloween comic was a one-shot; number two is available here. I expected shenanigans, and was not disappointed. Spy in particular busts out some hilarious new equipment. Also, for your daily deep magic, apparently TF2 supports audio sprays now.

Was it really that bad? In other news, while Lil Guardian Pyro is obviously the big favourite for the Best Overall Saxxy this year, I'd say is an easy pick for Best Action. Kind of sad that replays have been put by the wayside, but they do look out of place next to full SFM shorts. Progress marches on I guess.

Two months later, here is comic #2. At this rate, the next one will be Christmas related, and we won't find out what happened with Scout and Spy until February. Maaaaan.

/rename @all, basically. Later on, Bark was changing them to map names. That was even better.

And now, a public service announcement: KARAOKE NIGHT, SATURDAY GET HYPE This concludes your public service announcement. Have a nice day.

I'm basically in complete agreement with that list. The raised platform in Mainline was broken in the previous version, as a single sentry could get complete coverage of all 3 routes coming into mid. That's no longer the case. You can still plop a sentry down in front of the building that obscures the second point, and again have it cover all 3 entryways, but 2 of those have doors and the third is an uneven dirt path where I'm pretty sure you can edge the gun, even if it's optimally positioned. Annoying, but not unassailable. My only serious issue with the map is pickups. There are 2 medium health/ammo pairs and 1 small pair on the way to mid, then a medium pair on either side of mid itself. There was one additional medium ammo by itself by 2nd. For a map as large and spacious as Mainline is, that doesn't feel like much to go around. It's not a dealbreaker, but I don't feel it does the map any favors either.

Touché. Also, sorry about the surprise decapitation on Goldrush.

I don't feel anything one way or the other. I like a little Arena, but I'm as likely to spec or quit if it comes up as play it out. I'm simply stating, this is the way things are. If Lyrai can convince Bahamut to take arena off the server, I'm fine with that. If things stay as they are, I'm also fine with that. The matter, at present, is merely democratic. Off the top of my head, among the regular crowd, I count 6 people who like/love arena, 2 who dislike/despise it, 3 who tolerate it, and everyone else doesn't seem to care enough to voice an opinion.

No, I'm saying that it's a valid playstyle that some amount of players enjoy, which is why they specifically seek out arena maps. People who hate Arena as much as Lyrai are a vocal minority, at least among OCR regulars, and to make a meaningful difference on the 'should Arena get played here' issue, she needs to get more people on her side. The extremely aggressive manner in which she makes her point about it makes this unlikely. Also, presh came on last night. Shit was awesome.

Finally, some debate in this thread. *cracks knuckles* TF2 has been out since 2007. I've been playing it pretty steadily since then, and have a solid understanding of almost every mechanic. I'm not clear on when you started, but you log more time week-over-week than most of us, period. If you go into a server, any server, get killed and don't immediately understand why through sheer experience, something's wrong. Here's where your argument falls apart. Some people find failure fun. Dark Souls recently came out on Steam and has pushed several million copies in that time. DS is significantly harder and more punishing than TF2. Am I saying there's necessarily a large overlap of players between those games? Of course not. But there is clearly a group of players out there who want to be pushed to do better through the game mechanics. You could argue that overall performance stats do this already in vanilla TF2, and that's true to an extent. But regular play lacks that moment-to-moment tension. If you die, so what? You know where that taunt-happy little schmuck is, so count the seconds till you can go murder him back. Big deal. It's telling that the reason you don't like Arena is the reason I do; if you die, the game shoves that back in your face and makes you sit out, to reflect on what you could have done to survive. What if I don't like Counter-Strike's aesthetic? What if I don't have the twitch aim to succeed in that environment? I should go get stuffed? Here's the other place where your argument falls apart. Nobody is forcing you to play. If arena gets voted in, and you'd rather not participate, either alt-tab and watch youtube or something for ten minutes, or go find another server. The majority picked something you don't like; that's how pure democracy works. You may not like it, but unless you can persuade people to your side of things, it isn't changing. I should note that coming out swinging with "IF YOU LIKE ARENA YOU'RE WRONG AND SHOULD UNINSTALL" is unlikely to win you much favor with the people who enjoy it. That's great! I also feel that way. People don't give non-standard maps enough of a chance. I, personally, love that feeling of exploring a new custom, only to have a heavy drop down out of nowhere and horribly murder me. Or to be capping an unfamilar point at half health only to see a sniper's hat appear in some forgotten little corner, and be forced to abandon the cap to go find health. These are fresh, novel experiences. In contrast, I have played enough goldbowlwaterward to last a fucking lifetime. I know every nook and cranny on those maps, and it is extraordinarily rare for something new and surprising to happen while playing them. Yet the rest of the server doesn't feel that way. So every night we play the same maps, with occasional swaps here and there to create the illusion of variety. It's been this way since the beginning. I don't see it changing now. That's entirely on GM. He has a reputation for doing stuff like that on a whim; see sentry-jumping for a less meta example. From what I understand, he had intended to get everything back to normal, but apparently it didn't stick. You have a problem with it, ping him on steam directly. Which is why I'm telling you now. Bahamut wants this server to accomodate the entire community. That community has consistently expressed a conservative bent in their map choices, and there are certain popular members who enjoy arena. Taking away their fun so you won't be inconvenienced by it is unlikely to happen.

Upon thinking about it for a few days, a lot of what I was talking about is anecdotal. We could use some hard data; back in the HLStatsX era, when Powerlord was the primary admin, we had a page for collating exactly this type of stuff. I remember being sad to see it go. As for Degroot, it is fairly recent, yes. Sporknight and One-Hit have started playing a lot again, and it is a pet map of theirs. If one or both of them are around you can essentially guarantee it will appear in the vote list until it gets played or they leave. I have no problem with that really, we've all got an agenda of some kind here. But like I said, this is a community that contains people like FROGG and GM, all the way down to John Q. Valveserver. Most regulars fall somewhere in the middle, but the massive difference in the skill of those outliers does cause problems. Serious question: why is this such a big deal for you? So other people like things within the game that you don't. Are you so starved for good servers that when this one doesn't cater to your preferences 100%, you feel the need to say shit like this?

Similar to the democratic election process, voting is opt-in. Most of the time I see about half of the people on the server bothered to vote; sometimes more, sometimes less, but it seems that a lot of people don't care. There's also the issue that it pops up during combat, which is unavoidable obviously. But a lot of times people will just hit whatever to get rid of the window; that's the reason the map in the F1 slot usually wins, on average. The votes are split enough that the accidentals push it over the top. A mapcycle standardises the user experience from day-to-day; you could argue that's not actually desireable, but when the same(mostly stock) maps get voted in night after night, it seems evident that the community at large prefers to stick with what they know. It also removes the feeling of having to vote under pressure, negates accidental votes, and relocates the discussion of maps to the forum, maybe the Steam group if we want to do it that way. That last bit has two additional effects; it increases traffic to OCR, if only marginally, and it weeds out the people who don't care enough to join the discussion.

The point of the mapcycle would be to eliminate rtv and nominate, as I understand it. Baha feels they're being abused. A good example is Egypt. The only time it gets played is when !! nominates it to troll the server, and it happens to show up in the F1 slot. He has admitted that's the only reason he does it in the past. A more controversial example is Degroot. Some people who play here really, really like it. Others really, really don't. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but will tolerate it when it comes up. The issue is that it gets played every. Single. Night. When you bring in that kind of polarizing experience on a regular basis, you drive people away. And maps that were just played are ineligible for nomination, but the refresh time is just too low in practice. It's only 5 or 6 maps later I think.

And now the minutes of tonight's games. First, there's been a fair amount of resistance to the amount of arena being played in general; I suggested the time be moved down to 10 minutes, since they do drag on rather painfully at 15. Baha seemed to agree, so we'll probably see that implemented soon. Also, Baha expressed some weariness tonight about the profileration of certain maps lately - Harvest and the various custom badwaters were named, but I would group saw and trainsawlaser in with them as a category. One or two of these here and there isn't bad, it even helps to break up the flow of things when we're on a long string of, say, payloads. But when we're playing them every night, the joke gets a little bit stale. I realize this is a diverse community, with a wide range of skill levels and reasons for playing. Finding a perfect solution for everyone is probably impossible, but with some discussion we can work towards improving the user experience overall. The suggestion he threw out was to get rid of nominations and revert to a regular mapcycle, updating it periodically to keep things fresh. Personally, if there's room for custom maps in there sometimes, in particular stuff we've never played before, I'd support that. With that I'll open the floor. How do you feel about the balance of maps being played? Should there be more stock, more customs, more goof-off types? Is it fine like it is?

I noticed that as well. I think the overall server pool is shrinking; over the past year, a lot of my non-OCR haunts have dried up and disappeared. The playerbase isn't really going down though, so we're probably in for generally more crazies over time. Bans for the Ban God, I suppose.

Robin Walker was the go-to guy for a long time, but he's working on Dota now so I don't know. Though I saw you on tonight, so I suppose it's moot. Did you figure out what was wrong, or did it just start working automagically?

They did push out a source engine update on Thursday. Have you e-mailed Valve?

Cards are a monetization thing Valve is trying out. Generally, you get half of a set's worth for logging hours in the game. Being free-to-play, you also get an additional TF2 card for every $9 you spend in the Mann Co store. Yeesh. Anyway, collecting a full set allows you to craft a badge, collect some digital knick-knacks and get exp to level up your steam profile. That's about it really.

Hell, how about some new weapons period. It's been 6 months since we got anything that wasn't a hat, a crate or a promo. I know we're kind of a legacy app at this point, but come on Valve. With any luck we'll get some extra time and attention once Dota releases this summer. Just letting all those gorgeous weapon models languish in Workshop hell is a crime. EDIT: You know what, this thread needs more discussion. Everyone post your craziest weapon ideas! I imagine it shooting black paint blobs ala Portal 2, with a similar sound effect. Normal flamer range, obv.

It's not bothering anybody for a couple of reasons: -it has no bearing on the games themselves, cards are just a secondary reward for logging time in the games -prices are low on most items, reflecting their minimal value to most people -people are accustomed to plugging money into Steam by now, so it's not a big deal. In comparison, the Diablo series to date was a one-and-done affair in terms of cash. You could go on the black market to get rares and whatever, but that was completely outside of what was originally intended by the developers If you're looking to collect stuff without spending money, well, good luck with that. If you have a good sized list of friends who don't want anything to do with the whole thing, you might make out alright. But this is, ultimately, another angle for Valve and their economist dude to see how they can target your wallet.

So much this. Games are getting obscenely expensive to produce because the greater industry is still locked into a 'graphical arms race' mode of thinking. If you're a mega-studio with a reliable franchise, you can go that route and do well, but everyone else feels the pressure to keep up. That pressure is causing the mid-sized journeyman studios to implode, leaving us with basically two game archetypes: mega blockbuster (Call of Duty) and lo-fi indie project (Braid). In this article, the lead on COD: Ghosts talks about the new engine they've made, and all the extra time and effort required to get the game to that visual level. He throws out an estimate of 50% more time to make a model of something. That type of work is already the biggest drain on game budgets right now, by a huge margin at that, and seeing the next generation head even further down that road is worrying.

That reminds me, the guy who created PvZ was let go from the company. Sucks. This article talks briefly about monetization via in-game boosts, which bothers me as potentially affecting the difficulty. Games should not be balanced around how much money you can hurl into the publisher's gullet. When the original PvZ got huge, it seemed like Popcap was set to bridge the gap between casual and hardcore players. Seeing them gobbled up and turned into another EA slave studio has been really sad.

The goal of a corporation is to maximize profit margins, generally through selling products or providing services. That's all this is really about. Disney has, presumably, looked at the numbers and decided there are more 'cool teens' (or at least ones that want to be seen that way) than 'smart teens', and designed their product/marketing accordingly. Microsoft isn't much different. They saw what happened with the Wii, what's been happening with Netflix et al, and decided they could make more money going after the "Everybody" market. As long as there are games on the system and most of them aren't terrible, they know the "Gamer" market will buy in. Here's an interesting article on the whole mess. I didn't see it posted previously, but I haven't read the entire thread so it may have been. Those lifetime numbers are pretty dire.