Dammit dammit dammit dammit!
March 2, 2010 - Brandon Reinhart


We're plugging away at the Engineer update. He's an interesting class to work on, because he creates a larger footprint in the game than any other class. This means we have a lot of options to work with, and the resulting set of ideas is truly daunting. Since we've already built and playtested some things that haven't worked out (with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun), we thought it might be interesting to give you some of our failed experiments.

The first was a new building internally known as the Repair Node. We gave Engineers the ability to replace any current building (teleporter entrances and exits were considered one building for this) with the Repair Node instead.

While deployed, the Repair Node would draw from a pool of energy to fix damage to nearby buildings. When the node ran out of energy, it would stop repairing and regenerate up to full, creating a window of opportunity for the attackers. When sapped, the Repair Node's repair function was disabled for the duration of the sap.

The goal of the Repair Node was to solve a perceived problem in the Engineer's play experience: always having to be tied to your base. The Engineer often has little to do after his base is built and fully upgraded except wait for the inevitable Spy sapper attempt, or for the battlefront to reach the base. The Repair Node was meant to buy the Engineer time if he wanted to range out to gather metal or harass the enemy with his shotgun.

This is usually how we approach our game design: Identify a problem, then discuss the ways it could be solved. Our experience told us that even when the Engineer didn't feel immediate pressure, he still couldn't range out away from his base. If a Spy, Soldier, or Demoman found the base unguarded, it didn't take long to blow up. The further away an Engineer was, the fewer buildings he would be able to save from sapping. We also felt that the Engineer invested a lot of up-front work to establish bases that were very easily destroyed. Thus the repair node was born.

Play-testing the Repair Node showed us one expected, and two (somewhat) unexpected, outcomes. The expected outcome was that bases were far harder to destroy, and turtling became a super effective strategy. Fortunately, this is the kind of problem that can be attacked by turning the correct game design knob, and the Repair Node had a lot of available knobs. We could lower the rate of repair, lower the amount of repair energy, lengthen the vulnerable period, and so forth. We tried several options. One change we made was to add diminishing returns so that two Repair Nodes working together were less than perfectly efficient, and adding a third didn't really help at all.

Despite the design choices we had available, we were never really able to get the Repair Node to feel balanced for the attacking team. TF2 maps tend to be designed with very specific predicted Sentry placement locations and length of Sentry survivability. The Repair Node distorted both old favorite maps and made testing new ones more difficult by exaggerating intentional choke points and creating new choke points where they didn't previously exist.

The first unexpected outcome of the Repair Node was the team realizing just how valuable the Dispenser and Teleporter were to so many aspects of game pacing. If the Engineer isn't able to build a Dispenser, his team loses the support power that the Dispenser provides. In most games Dispensers are ubiquitous. You don't really realize what you've lost until you've lost it. Fewer Dispensers had the effect of slowing attacking teams down in a variety of ways: Teams were more fragile, metal was harder to get to the front lines, and team rally points were harder to define.

An Engineer who took a Repair Node instead of a Teleporter put his team in an even less viable position. The pacing of many maps became completely broken without Teleporters in play. Teams weren't able to push as effectively and the lines of battle moved closer to the spawn points. This lack of flexibility meant that attackers weren't able to hold gains and matches took longer to complete.

The second unexpected outcome was downstream from the first. Teams perceived Engineers with Repair Nodes as less "friendly", specifically because they weren't building Dispensers or Teleporters. In retrospect, older data at our disposal should have known this would happen. Prior to TF2's release, the Medic had weaponry that was significantly more powerful, leading to highly skilled players playing Medic as a purely combat class. Aside from the balance issues this created, it also resulted in a Medic that wasn't interested in healing anyone, which didn't typically sit well with his teammates. Their perception was that healing is the Medic's job. Medics who didn't do that weren't perceived to be team players -- an identical reaction to Engineers refusing to build Dispensers and/or Teleporters. Like many design exercises we didn't learn what to do next so much as what NOT to do.

Lesson 1: The problem of the Engineer being tied to his base still exists, but the Repair Node was too heavy-handed a solution. If we solve this problem in the future, it will have to be in a way that doesn't distort the existing balance between attackers and defensive choke points.

Lesson 2: The Dispenser and Teleporter are really good. We already knew this, but we didn't know that they were really, really good. Encouraging Engineers to either avoid build them entirely, or to build them in weird ways, broke the game's pacing immediately. New buildings in the Engineer update will probably take the form of upgrades, or entirely new choices alongside the old buildings, instead of replacements.

These may seem like obvious lessons, but knowing for certain why a particular idea doesn't work can often be as valuable as an idea that does. This process highlighted specifically where and why the Engineer is valuable, and how even slightly altering this value can have game-shattering implications.

Ultimately, the Repair Node was cut because it made the game more of a grind. While it definitely made it less stressful to manage a base as an Engineer, it wasn't fun. The Engineer gained a little bit of fun, but nearly everyone else in the match suffered as a result.

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In other news, our minds were blown this week when we saw Andrew Kepple's amazing Spy & Pyro cartoon. We've decided this is final proof that TF2 fans are smarter, more creative, and much better looking than fans of all other video games. On the competitive side, we've been addicted to watching CommunityFortress's eXtv series of commentated competitive TF2 matches. If you haven't watched any, take a look at some great European and North American matches. If you haven't watched much competitive play, eXtv's commentary does a great job of helping you understand the tactics being employed.
[Submitted by Lijitsu]

I changed some settings for the server to curb some of the more annoying things people have voiced. Post in the forums if I missed anything!

List of changes:

First Blood Rewards

Rewards are now selected at random
Mid-screen timer disabled.

Crits increased to 20 seconds.
First blood sounds are disabled.
Fire Ammo reduced to 30 seconds.
You now only receive 200 health instead of 600.
Invisibility reduced to 20 seconds.
Sentries reduced to 100 seconds.
Vampire reduced to 20 seconds.

Roll The Dice

Buffed Health reduced to 700 hp bonus.

updated Map Cycle

ctf_mach4
ctf_hallofdeath
ctf_2fort
ctf_mercy_b2
cp_secret_base
cp_dustbowl
cp_gravelpit
cp_badlands
pl_badwater
pl_goldrush
pl_deadwood
koth_denile_b3
koth_moonshine_rc
balloon_race_v2b
gas_kaboom_beta3

The previous 4 updates were small, here are the changes they made:

February 23, 2010 - Team Fortress 2 Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Engine


Fixed servers being inappropriately delisted from the master server


Team Fortress 2

Updated CTF_Doublecross

Improved clipping to prevent players from getting to unintended places

Updated CTF_2Fort

Fixed Blue players being able to block the Blue spawn room doors to lock in teammates

Moved the Blue team Sniper wall down to match the Red team Sniper wall

Updated Russian localization strings

Fixed the Pyro not being able to deflect enemy flares

Fixed pipebombs not being removed if they explode in a func_nogrenades zone




February 12, 2010 - Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source


Fixed a case of client-side hitching caused by writing a file to the hard drive too frequently




February 8, 2010 - Team Fortress 2 Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2


Fixed Polish Team Fortress 2 fonts not being displayed correctly in the Main Menu




February 4, 2010 - Team Fortress 2 Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2


Fixed a client crash during the localization of item names

Fixed a client crash caused by selecting Random in the class menu and then clicking on "Edit Loadout"

[Submitted by Lijitsu]

It had to happen.

SCAP Facebook Group

Join today!

Cheaters, Winners and Busybodies
January 28, 2010 - The Administrator


Firstly, as should come as no surprise to anyone, it is my sad duty to reprimand the various con artists and charlatans in our community who insist on making a mockery of the hard work of others by cheating to win. The following is a list of the top twenty kill counts of the recent Demo/Soldier competition:





Now, I have no actual proof that these men cheated. Lucky for me, then, that I am still in possession of basic common bloody sense. The top Soldier, for example, would have had to kill a Demoman every 2.5 seconds for a week straight, somehow circumventing respawn timers or the need to actually traverse across a map, without once pausing to sleep or go to the bathroom. In other words, he is either cheating, or he is a hallucinating sleep-deprived psychotic with severe constipation and unerringly good aim. In either event, I am confident he is ashamed of himself.

In less disheartening news, the goldbricking simpletons calling themselves the TF2 team around here have apparently paused long enough from picking chiggers out of one another's hair to select a number of Propaganda Contest runners-up from the 11,000-odd entries we received late last year, the results of which will be posted here soon. I must grudgingly admit an astonishing amount of talent on display. I hasten to add, however, that I find it astonishing only because, in observing how you comport yourselves in-game, on the forums, and presumably in your day-to-day lives, one would be forgiven for assuming you bereft of the cognitive skills needed to operate a mailbox. At any rate, congratulations: You are all excellent artists. Perhaps you could draw a picture of me giving a damn, so I'd know what that looked like.

Lastly, I would like to remind those of you writing in with questions concerning a supposed past relationship between myself and one Mister Saxton Hale: A lady never tells, and a gentleman never asks. More pertinently, an Administrator never forgets. Or forgives. Or relents. The Nosy Parkers among you would do well to remember that the next time you decide to paw through my confidential affairs like junkyard dogs.

You have found this instructive,

The Administrator
[Submitted by Lijitsu]