Looks to me like a ticket is consumed each time you successfully complete a mission, and a Tour of Duty is composed of multiple missions. So if a Tour is made up of 5 missions (pulling this number out of my butt), you’ll end up paying $4.95 for the privilege of earning five cosmetic items (one for completing each mission) and one rare cosmetic item (for completing the entire Tour).
FYI, the U.S. update servers are currently getting slammed, so those in the States may want to switch your download region to another part of the world. For Valve purposes, I currently reside in Luxembourg.
well they will need a new tour of duty ticket for sure, then perhaps more tour of duty tickets to finish parts of the previous tour they didn’t success fully complete.
BUT remember, every successful tour of duty upgrades your tour of duty badge too! :p
I’ll probably toss in $5 this weekend to see what the fuss is about and never try the paid mode again after that.
If i buy a tour of duty it does not have to be completed in the same day?
From my reading it seems you can replay a mission, even if it was completed. Then a tour of duty could go far long as you never complete all the missions (at least tthat is what I think the faq is saying).
I will try one just to see how it is. I am on vacation so why not.
Ahhhghh. Waited in line for about 45 minutes, with the estimated wait toggling between 1 minute and massively confused (?), then got disconnected immediately when I finally got in. Jump back in - estimated wait time: 45 minutes. Ahhghh.
You still can’t buy power in this mode right?!!? I mean you upgrade your dudes weapons just by playing them still or was that changed when it went f2p?
Probably more and more servers will slowly convert to this mode, but a lot of the initial servers can be password. Just now the ui tells me there are a queu of 8000 for 80 servers. Probably tomorrow will be 200 or 1200 servers. This will take hours to stabilise, if not days, i suspect.
If anyone really want to test it, heres some ways to skip the queue system:
Search for servers in the server browser with mvm in the name, that have few players and tags, connect directly.
or
Create a local server, configure it following the guide (some commands in console). If everything is right, as soon your server is ready it will be instantly filled by immigrants from the queue that will try to steal ur jobs.
Buying ticksts and tryiing to play in the mann-up servers seems marginally better than the common queue, but not for much.
I ended up getting into a game last night. Fun, if a bit mindless. The matchmaking system didn’t work for me at all – I had better luck just scanning the server list for an opening.
Jab and I played a bit last night and I must say I’m pretty underwhelmed. The matchmaking is awful. We both bought tickets to see if it was better in the Mann Up queue. It wasn’t. They had 1400 empty servers and our wait time was 20 minutes. When we finally did get into a game, one guy didn’t connect and we got stomped for a straight hour on wave 1. WHEEEEEE!
Played some last night; it’s fun, but there are still bugs to iron out. For example, there were some problems with the bots simply not spawning.
The game seems balanced for 6 people, and it’s pretty much unplayable with fewer than that.
The game adds some nice features (showing ammo counts for teammates) but also has some unclear rules (upgrades are lost when switching classes/loadouts).
Would be nice if the game would just auto balance depending on the number of players you have. You know, like every other horde mode that’s out there. :P
