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Author Topic: The TF2 Thread  (Read 248020 times)

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Kayin

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3220 on: April 25, 2010, 12:04:12 AM »

Now forgive me for being curt, Frocto darling, but thats pretty much very wrong logic. Obviously Valve wants players to play more, but I don't think the current system actually does that (outside of stats inflated by idling). What Valve is doing is hampering the ability for players to explore content. I don't think I met anyone who legitimately enjoys the unlock system or weapon unlock system. You lock players out of content that they might have fun with! With every patch you're going to get people grinding for achievements and other people who just say 'fuck it, I'm not going to get the items anyways so why bother".

The logic behind random drops has some basis in fact but it is poorly executed. Irregular rewards is a very effective 'hook' for people, but Valve misses it on a number of fronts.

A) It's non-interactive. A slot machine is an action. You pull a lever. You get a satisfying clunk. Things spin. You see all the things you could win. You get...... nothing. Or maybe you get something, and other times you get more then something. You maybe JACKPOT. Random drops miss this completely. Just randomly you get told "YOU GOT A PIECE OF JUNK!" ... hooray? Maybe you wanted it, maybe you didn't. You didn't get the whole build up or excitement or anticipation related to irregular rewards. You just got a prompt.

This is actually why idling is so popular. coming back, knowing you're about to get a ton of stuff, then shuffling through it for the possibility of gold is the type of reward mechanism that people enjoy. It's like random facebook games where you get to play a game of chance every day. Same mechanic. Reliable, player induced and, sadly, exciting. The Idlers get more excitement then the legit players.

B) The rewards are too limited for prolonged enjoyment. Most players have every weapon they want at this point. The system then shows you an item you don't even care about. It's just going to be junked for scrap. The system might as well just hand out scrap, though the act of combining is something I guess. But really, the reward system runs out of steam FAST.

C) Your rewards are almost impossibly far off for casual players. Okay you got the items you want, so now you want a hat. 80 items later.  Thats not a goal most people think they can work toward and even then, the chances of them getting what they want are very limited (or take over 100 items).

D) It causes players to feel cheated and excluded. MMORPGs have two types of rewards for this very reason. Reliable (XP) and Random(drops). Reliable rewards keeps the player interested and lets him feel like he's progressing. Random drops are just an extra, almost scandelous extra to excite them. TF lacks that. Theres nothing you can feel you're 'working toward' outside of achievements and those mostly rely on luck too. If you give a player all the content up front, he's encouraged to explore all of it, instead of potentially giving up before all of it becomes available to him.

The system is basically totally garbage. Clearly they intended to do more with it until resources were removed from the team. It's half baked. Ideas like item levels and crafting and a backpack of equipment (even though theres no technical reason to need one) all hint at a larger system they backed away from at some point. The system doesn't even reward you for PLAYING necessarily.  It's really just a failure and the only reason it exists HAS to be because somewhere down the line, Valve aborted an even larger potential change to the game (true RPGness?).

Man, Stush basically gave the tl:dr version of my post. Being able to play with toys is fun. Let people play with toys. If you want to also use psychological tricks to encourage people to do boring things but play more, at least limit it to cosmetics and even then, make a system that would be more successful at it rather then just being a joke.
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Frocto

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3221 on: April 25, 2010, 12:26:42 AM »

You're kind of an optimist, Kayin.

I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if it's a pool of water or a pool of dogshit, people are still going to want to swim in it.
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Niku

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3222 on: April 25, 2010, 06:05:33 AM »

The best part about the drop change besides Valve taking away the ocd mild amusement Kayin mentions about being able to tab over to TF2 every day and convert stuff to scrap / hats is that they didn't change crafting at the same time.  So with 7-10 items every week, it now takes over two months to get the chance to make a completely random hat.
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Doom

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3223 on: April 26, 2010, 11:57:34 AM »

The best part about the drop change besides Valve taking away the ocd mild amusement Kayin mentions about being able to tab over to TF2 every day and convert stuff to scrap / hats is that they didn't change crafting at the same time.  So with 7-10 items every week, it now takes over two months to get the chance to make a completely random hat.

Quote from: Doom, Hat Thread
Made the Demoman's Hustler Hat

Only took me a year of semi-dedicated play to get enough items to craft it from scratch.

A VAST IMPROVEMENT!

:endit:
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Mongrel

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3224 on: April 26, 2010, 12:07:43 PM »

I just have to keep stopping myself from thinking the thought "Imagine if they'd spent all the time they wasted on this crap on creating meaningful gameplay content instead...".

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Smiler

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3225 on: April 26, 2010, 12:19:33 PM »

I dunno, adding hats is pretty damn easy compared to thinking up and programming new items for the engineer. Plus it counts as new content!
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Mongrel

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3226 on: April 26, 2010, 12:23:03 PM »

A fair point, but the engie update is an extreme example. I was thinking more like new maps, class tweaks, or other small changes which aren't as much of a manpower sink but still provide relevant benefits.
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Kayin

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3227 on: April 26, 2010, 12:26:23 PM »

Maps are a lot of work. What gets me though isn't that effort is wasted on hats --- hats ARE pretty basic so it's okay. No, it's the fucking effort wasted on systems to try and validate this terrible unlock system. THAT is wasted effort.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3228 on: April 26, 2010, 12:39:12 PM »

I really feel like the simplest solution would have been to just release two hats originally per class and then link aquisition of them to those big ass class achievements. You know, like have one hat for getting 100,000 points on a class and then the other hat for getting 1 million damage or something like that (dependant on class, medics might have 1 million healing for that last one, etc).

Achievement servers aside, this is the system I would most appreciate. People would have hats for the classes they play the shit out of and/or are good at and I think that's really appropriate for hats.

It would mean that I would have probably earned a demoman hat at least before I stopped playing instead of getting no hats ever due to my terrible luck which is what ended up happening.

I can't believe that there is no way to break achievement servers. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Why can't they just make it so that only official maps contribute towards achievements? Would that really be so bad? I mean, people could still make a work arounds if they really worked at it, but would it really matter? Who cares if a bunch of hackers have all the hats?

OH NO, NOT HATS!
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SCD

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3229 on: April 26, 2010, 12:41:47 PM »

Quote
Throughout history, men have worn hats as a way of showing how much better they are than other men. “I buy hats,” a behatted man seems to say. “I am better than you.”

In wartime, hats were a useful way of conferring rank, and ensuring that casualties were confined to the lower classes (hence the famous command of “Don't fire till you see the tops of their heads” at the Battle of Bunker Hill by William Prescott, a general renowned for only shooting enemy combatants who were poor). During peacetime, hats have been instrumental for men to let the non-hatted know just who is wearing the hat around here.

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Doom

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3230 on: April 26, 2010, 12:43:53 PM »

Maybe this game has always been a deviously planned front for a study of human psychology.
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Mongrel

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3231 on: April 26, 2010, 01:15:32 PM »

I'm sure there are more than enough cases of "Grab something beautiful, then take a big greasy shit on it and see how people react." in the annals of psychology as it is.
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Doom

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3232 on: April 26, 2010, 01:42:55 PM »

I was more referring to the importance people place upon hats.

You're a frowny face douche if you think the game is somehow unplayable these days.
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Mongrel

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3233 on: April 26, 2010, 04:01:48 PM »

If I thought the game was unplayable, I wouldn't play it.
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Royal☭

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3234 on: April 26, 2010, 04:03:20 PM »

I think it's more an experiment to see how long Valve can keep players pointlessly bitching.

Mongrel

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3235 on: April 26, 2010, 04:06:16 PM »

I thought that experiment was called "The Internet"?
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Bongo Bill

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3236 on: April 26, 2010, 04:51:21 PM »

The Internet began as a military project to create a bitchfest that could survive a nuclear attack.
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Bleck

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3237 on: April 26, 2010, 06:02:20 PM »

wait wait there are hats in this game
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Bongo Bill

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3238 on: April 26, 2010, 06:10:58 PM »

Oh, sure. The Scout, Sniper, and Demoman are wearing hats. Soldiers and Engineers have helmets. I don't know if the Pyro's gas mask or Spy's balaclava technically count, though.
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Niku

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Re: The TF2 Thread
« Reply #3239 on: April 26, 2010, 09:55:24 PM »

mmmmm baklava
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