A Sneak Peek of the Pyro Update
Posted on: March 5th, 2017 by ObeyLook! Actual TF2 news…!
Oh, here’s a couple of tidbits before the actual Sneak Peek:
- Login to the TF2 Newbs’ Forums and let us know what you’re playing lately, or read up {N} Olse’s ongoing XCOM 2 narrative.
- This TF2Newbs Blog surpassed 300,000 lifetime hits earlier this year! Thanks for the scratches!
- If you’re a TF2 noob, read this popular FAQ about all the different TF2 items. This post alone has earned over 28,000 hits.
Valve has been making the rounds in the media, dropping hints on what they’re working on in TF2. You can read Game Revloution’s short piece here, but here are the highlights:
Pyro Rebalance
Valve is currently busy with rebalancing the Pyro. It’s not clear if there are any new weapons, but you can be sure that some existing weapons are being tweaked, and so Valve is testing how such changes could affect they Pyro’s role and the game environment as a whole.
Contract Campaigns Will Return
Feedback that Valve has received demands more player choice in what kind of contracts to complete during these campaigns, so Valve is learned toward a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style of contract selection and completion. So it’ll feel more like a mini-quest? A skill tree? A treasure hunt? Eh, we’ll see. Hopefully this means you won’t be playing anything but stock Sniper because you have a contract that demands headshot kills.
Elo is Coming
The Electric Light Orchestra? No, the Elo rating system.
What?
Valve has been working on an (assumably Valve-made) rating system improvement over the play-to-win Rank system in TF2′s Competitive Mode. Elo is shorthand for saying that your overall win-loss record and/or your recent record of play will define an estimate of your playing skill, but only for the use of ranking you against other players in order to find players of (hopefully) similar skill to play against. Plenty of other gaming communities use it.
You see, TF2 has long been home of the casual, tryhard-but-not-elite gamer that can usually find a server to enjoy the game without being constantly steamrolled by gaming elites. (Well, that has been the goal anyway.) Valve is trying to bridge those elites back into TF2 with a more familiar Competitive Mode, links to following other elite gamers, and ranking systems, while also giving us tryhards tools to be, you know, more competitive. Where before they were trying to cater to two different groups, they’ve realized that we’re one community with members of many different skill levels.
Welcome to the Jungle
As I’ve said previously, Valve has been working for months on jungle-themed terrain models in preparation for a new Valve-made map. Of course, community-designed cosmetics have been requested by Valve for some time now. Don’t forget to jump into the Steam Workshop and have some say in what virtual cosmetics you can buy in the near future.
Gee, wouldn’t a jungle theme fit in great with a Summer Sale?
Steam Greenlight to be Reworked as “Steam Direct”
Later in the same interview, Valve discussed the bottleneck of indie games trying to get published on Steam. Valve intends to greatly simplify the process by passing a simpler validation process, rather than having gamers bother to rank a few of the many games they would like to see supported by Steam. That includes improving the Discovery Queue to target the user with games they would like based on their preferences, browsing, and other gathered data.
Anyway, expect Valve to put up a blogpost announcing changes–it has promised to communicate much more and gather feedback, rather than simply posting the day before a major update. (Again, Valve Time, but we’ll see.) Valve has said officially that there are five coders assigned to TF2, part of a team of sixteen Valve members currently involved.
More sources/reading material:
- Gaben and Valve’s Reddit AMA a month ago
- This 15-minute podcast that glosses over the Reddit AMA responses
[N] Obey
P.S. Don’t be surprised if TF2 updates to the Source 2 engine a couple of years from now. That’s the gaming software that Valve is trying to get their entire staff working with.
P.P.S. Valve is one company, made up of many employees. It’s singular, not plural. The journalistic community has changed their minds and started referring to companies and groups as a plural noun and not the correct, singular noun. Dudes, use the singular noun. If you make me say “Valve are” or “Valve have”, then I’MMA FIGHT YOU. (This postscript has been approved by Saxton Hale.)