Hey, Valve, what the hell did you do?

Status
Not open for further replies.
To my TF2?

I just started playing again after a loooooong while. They're charging for hats and items now? What a load of shit. What's with this vintage item shit? People have asked me a billion times to trade crates (to which you need a purchased key to open) for my bazillion vintage items.

Am I sitting on a gold mine here? Can I sell vintage items to morons who are willing to part with real money for digital bullshit?
 
J

Jiarn

Yeah I quit TF2 after the 5th or 6th round of updates to weapons. I liked the hats thing, I was content with each class having at least one variant on their main weapons, but it's just gotten out of hand.

It's turned more into a game of paper/rock/scissors than a skill based FPS. Though skill will always triumph over items, it's still not the same game it was a year ago.
 
They recently had an update where they upped the polygon count on all the items. Vintage means you got the item before the update. Crates are items that can contain weapons or hats. A key costs $2.50. If you don't plan on paying money to open a crate, the crates are useless inventory filler. It's why people are willing to trade them.

The cash store is optional. Any item they sell can be crafted, can drop, or can be gotten through achievements so the only advantage to using the cash shop is saving a lot of time.
 
I couldn't tell you why people value vintage items over others so much. It all works the same, and as far as I can tell vintage stuff is only good for bragging rights that no one gives a shit about. The only thing more worthless would be crates, which have no value unless you plan on spending $2.50 per crate for whatever you may find.

As Allen pointed out, the store is just a shortcut. With the exception of paint, you can get anything as a drop or crafting.

The game is still fun. People who don't like change tend to gripe about how different it is, but if they hadn't added anything the game would probably be dead with almost no one online. The weapons and classes are still balanced well (despite people whining would have you believe). It's still a great game overall.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Paint drops. I've gotten a couple of cans.
Black & White paint are only available from crates (and could be bought from the store for a limited time during a special sale).

Also, some hats have been purchase-only or crate-only, hats with really rare special particle effects only come from crates (I think), and the demoman's haunted Halloween axe doesn't drop (but it's functionally the same as the eyelander, without a taunt). Oh, and the practice versions of the rocket and sticky launchers may be store-only, I'm not sure about those.

It can be a pain to get specific items via random drop, though. I'm still waiting on getting the ingredients necessary to make the two new medic weapons.

You can idle for weapon drops by starting a local practice game against bots, and then spectating that. If you're connected to steam while you spectate, you'll get drops (though you'll have to die or go to the in-game store for them to actually appear in your backpack.) Each week has 11 hours of gameplay that will produce drops (with some roll-over from the previous week) after that time is up you won't get any more drops until the drop cap resets on Wednesday evening (5pm PST).

EDIT: If you think that TF2 has changed, you should see what they've done with the open beta. They're trying an experiement where characters all have double health (900 health for an overhealed heavy.) and buildings take 50% -less damage. It takes a lot longer to kill anything. Spies are super annoying because only backstabs are still instant kill, and they can often run away without dying, even after being detected.
 
I really liked TF2 in the beginning. But when the weapon upgrades starting coming in, I enjoyed it less and less. I don't think I've even played the game since...I think when the Heavy got upgrades. Now, it's a micro-market with hats and bells and whistles? Meh.

Wonder if there's any servers that just play it old school.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I've got three cans of paint myself. Noble Hatter's Violet, Peculiarly Drab Tincture (tan/beige) and Radigan Conagher Brown. I'm not likely to ever use them, so if anyone wants to trade I'll let them go for cheap.

Here's my backpack if anyone wants to look over what I have.
 
I never actually started playing.. I bought the orange box ages ago for HL2 and Portal when it was on sale, but I never tried TF2.. I dunno, I just never liked the idea of starting to play a skill based game like that without a clue what i'm doing.
 
I really liked TF2 in the beginning. But when the weapon upgrades starting coming in, I enjoyed it less and less. I don't think I've even played the game since...I think when the Heavy got upgrades. Now, it's a micro-market with hats and bells and whistles? Meh.

Wonder if there's any servers that just play it old school.
TFC is still available on Steam.
 
Their are still some ultra Vanilla servers out there with the new weapons and costume bits disabled. You just need to look for them. Personally, I still like what it is.
 
Really I don't mind hats and new weapons... what I mind is people holding a bazaar in the middle of play.
Especially when there are numerous trading servers designed for exactly that sort of thing. I used to tell people spamming chat with trade offers to STFU, but it's gotten so common I don't bother now.
 
And now we have special weapons (which are really just re-skins) for buying RIFT, an MMO of all things. I loves me some TF2, but I'm getting tired of all the stupid "buy ______ now and get a pointless weapon" deals. Somehow I feel like it makes the game lose its identity. I know that's weird since so many people point to many other things (hats, particle effects, trading, etc.) with the same complaint, but this is the first time I've actually felt this way.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Neither of these new weapons will see much use. A Scout weapon that only does extra damage to burning players? I don't see a lot of burning players when I'm a Scout. A Pyro melee that sets players on fire but does less damage? The Pyro already has a weapon for setting players on fire at close range, three of them, in fact. You set them on fire with that, and then melee them with the axetinguisher.
 
Heh, no worries.

I just get a bit tired of people going "More items? Game sucks."
I've had trouble truly narrowing down why I dislike these newest additions, but the closest I've come is "More promotional re-skins? Game sucks." I'm fine with more items, so long as they are actually substantial additions to the game. This trend of promotional items with the exact same stats as another already in the game is just lame.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I've had trouble truly narrowing down why I dislike these newest additions, but the closest I've come is "More promotional re-skins? Game sucks." I'm fine with more items, so long as they are actually substantial additions to the game. This trend of promotional items with the exact same stats as another already in the game is just lame.
The new Pyro axe and Scout mace aren't just reskins. Their stats are different from other weapons.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top