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Team Fortress 2 To Focus More On Competitive Play

team-fortress-2

Give the Heavy more playability already!

When the Sniper and Spy update came out, they brought along an update that was generally unfavoured by a large amount of people, simply because it takes too long for someone to have a chance on getting a single drop. A good majority of the complains came from the competitive community, where they say that it takes too long for anyone to get a drop.

With that in mind, Valve had finally remembered something: the competitive community.

Recently in an interview with Shacknews, Robin Walker, a developer for TF2 has said that they are currently gearing up towards a more serious competitive TF2. Starting out with an closed beta exclusively made for some of the top few players in TF2, Valve hopes to achieve something nice and balanced for the Team Fortress 2 competitive community.

Valve has also admitted that the so-called lack of competitive play support is due to the lack of proxies on the high end competitive play. The game testers, both internal and external as well as the TF2 team themselves are generally on the casual level of playing, thus a good majority of the decisions made while balancing the game were centered around the casual community. This, however, is set to be changed, as Valve has introduced a closed beta in hopes to balancing out the game for competitive games.

In addition to that, Valve has also said that actively testing and modifying maps so that it’ll be fun and balanced for both the casual and competitive community. Not only maps, Valve is working closely with the competitive closed beta players in thinking of several other possibilities such as modifications of side-grade weapons so that they can be of a real use in competitive games.

The Sandman, a Scout’s side-grade weapon that stuns enemies when they are hit, is banned from competitive play simply because of it’s imbalance.

Valve has assured, however, this would not change their attitude towards casual gamers. They will still listen to both communities (casual and competitive) as they had for the past 2 years of TF2. They also said that the more data they have, the more effective they can be in striving for the a design that would fit both communities nicely.

You know, the competitive community is Singapore is still rather small… but I’ve seen several replays of competitive plays in other countries, and they are extremely wicked. God knows what would happen if the Sandman is unbanned from competitive plays…

Via: Shacknews.

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Post Information

Written by: Netto and posted at: August 5, 2009, 6:30 PM.
This post is filed under: Gaming.

This post has 1,903 views since it's posted.

3 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1.     Netto on August 6th, 2009 at 11:23 AM

    Now that you said that, maybe I should join in a few PUG matches here and there… xD

    But then, I love pubs simply because they are much more fun to mess around… you can do lame stuff like ubering a Scout with no one shouting at you and everyone can simply laugh it away!

    But still, yeah, I agree with what you’ve said.

    [ Reply to comment ]

  2.     dKiWi on August 6th, 2009 at 11:19 AM

    In the last paragraph in the post above, I meant “pugs as compared to pubs”. Sorry for the mistake.

    [ Reply to comment ]

  3.     dKiWi on August 6th, 2009 at 11:17 AM

    Lol no comments as expected. I won’t be speaking about being clanned, but here are a few advantages and disadvantages of pugs as compared to pubs.

    Advantages:

    - No massive stacking. 2 team leaders pick their members, and everyone knows the skill level of everybody else.
    - More organised play as compared to pubs so you get a better idea as to why you are losing. People also cannot blame a loss on a lack of medic, too many snipers or lack of engineers. Everyone generally sticks to their assigned classes.

    Disadvantages:

    - Since everyone knows everybody else, if you’re new you stick out like a sore thumb. Team leaders may be afraid to pick you as a result.
    - Since pugs follow a 6v6 format, the loss of one team member is very significant and thus you can’t just anyhow die like in a pub.

    The first disadvantage is counteracted by of course, playing more pugs and getting recognised. Specs who have not played the previous round are entitled to play the next round. Thus you can actually make some noise and play every alternate game in pugs. Its not as if they won’t pick you at all.

    I highly recommend pugs over pubs because I find that about 50% of pubs are frustrating, needless of whether you are winning or losing because there is very little control over whether you lose or win. Most pubs end up being stackfests because a lot of the pub players are in there for a quick fix of gaming gratification instead of trying to improve and recognise their mistakes. Pugs are different because both teams are likely to have a fighting chance against one another, and improving your skill level increases the likelihood of being picked.

    Of course if you’re like me and have played in WCG before, we competitive players thing that pugs are only a little better than pubs, as the level of coordination in pugs is much smaller compared to real scrims between clans. But still, the playing field is much more even in pugs as compared to pugs, so you should regard it as a step forward rather than backwards in entering the world of pugs instead of playing pubs forever.

    [ Reply to comment ]

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