I recall being told by one of my friends there is a plugin out for servers that prevents F2P players from getting on a server. I haven’t seen it happen yet.
Sounds like you described every objective based game on the net, Sluggo. I wish there was something like you’re describing, though, something that doesn’t promote superserioushardcorel33texclusion like DOTA and co do, but something that encourages people to PUSH THE FUCKING CART, etc.
Jab
4303
Regarding pushing the cart, I was on a payload map just now where for 1 minute, I was the only one on my team pushing the cart with no enemies nearby.
The random item drop system hates me, haven’t played the game for at least 6 months, first item that drops for me is a fricken uber-saw.
What happened at the start of Sluggo’s game wouldn’t have occurred on any server I play on, as they have friendly fire active during the warmup period. :)
What, really? To be fair even I’d do it if there was friendly fire active :)
Yeah there are quite a few servers with warm-up friendly fire active.
Makes for some good laughs before the start of the round.
I’ve read somewhere some suggestions to improve TF2, and one of those was linking winning / losing to the drop system, so as to give players an incentive to actually push the cart / hold the point / play the game. Could be cool.
If the incentive is a bonus on top of the regular drop, it’ll lead to abuse (in the form of achievement type idle servers.) If it affects the regular drop rate, it’ll discourage new players, so I don’t think that system will work.
That said, if the pre-game silliness bothers you, alt-tab out and surf for a minute or so. As for the players that goof off…well, c’est la vie. It’s better than the terminally afk players I guess.
Friendly-fire during warm-up is a recipe for uber-less medics at the start of the round.
My idea for this was for the drop system to carry on in the background, but you wouldn’t actually receive your new weapons until the next time you won a game.
It would link winning as a team with personal gain in people’s minds, but wouldn’t actually punish you for being bad or unlucky. Plus it would stop the drop announcements interrupting you while you’re playing, instead letting you actually look through them at a moment that’s more appropriate.
sluggo
4311
The server referred to in my previous example did not have friendly fire enabled. The scout was just beating on teammates because… see, that’s where you lose me. Was he griefing? Just being annoying? Did he actually get some enjoyment out of meleeing teammates and hearing CLANK CLANK CLANK for 70 seconds?
Put it this way: imagine you’re playing baseball, and in between innings a teammate walks up to you and starts poking you for a full minute. You’d probably wonder if the guy was mentally retarded, and there’s a good chance you’d deck the guy if he didn’t stop. And yet I see this all the time in TF2, and that guy is never, ever any good. It’s like a 7 year old dancing around in right field during a little league game.
The problem of people not paying attention to goals is not something every MP game suffers from. Most of the people in a Counter-Strike match are usually working towards their goals, whether it’s planting a bomb or just shooting enemies. The same generally goes for most of the Call of Duty games. But TF2 just has too many distractions, whether it’s sneaking around as a spy or trying to see how many people they can beat with a fish. TF2 gives players more rope to hang themselves with than any other multiplayer game I can think of.
I’ve probably said this elsewhere in this thread, but the way you fix this is extremely simple: Put in some form of XP and a ranking system similar to StarCraft II that groups players of similar skill levels. I don’t care how many ranks you have, whether it’s 3, 5 or 10, but it just shouldn’t be possible for the guy who wants to doublejump for 10 minutes to end up on the same server with experienced players looking for a good game. TF2 is a game that hinges on having balanced teams, and mixing those players together is a surefire recipe to awful games.
(And as a side benefit, if that system requires players to complete finish matches for XP and heavily penalizes players for ragequitting, you go a long way towards fixing the game’s autobalance nonsense, which often result from people bailing 30 seconds before the end of a match.)
It makes me sad, because when the game is clicking, I think it’s the best team MP game ever made. But it’s hard to see this latest F2P move improving things in any way. :(
Not that the rest of your point doesn’t stand, but most servers I’ve been on, the setup round (on offense) consists of:
- smack each other ineffectively,
- taunt
- spray tags / be disgusted by the tags other people are spraying.
(aside from medics, who should be building uber, and soldiers / demos, who should be helping them do so). A minute isn’t that long, but it’s long enough that people start to get bored.
Once the game starts though, there’s no excuse for not actually playing the game (unless everybody’s in on it, like voluntary all-melee matches).
Yeah, what else is there to do before the match starts?
Ok, if you’re a Medic you should be charging, but everyone else? Don’t see a problem with hitting people, shooting walls, taunting, whatever.
Squee
4314
I jump around and hit c 3 c 3 c 3 c 3 c 3 c 3 c 3 c 3 c 3 c 3. It makes me feel better.
Me? I practice my rocket jumping. And “<player> is a spy.”
Yeah, if pointless meleeing and “Need a dispenser here!” annoys you…it’s a part of every single server I’ve ever seen. It’s just something to while away the time. Again I’d advocate alt-tabbing and surfing for a minute. Alt-tab is a lot less buggy in TF2 if you use windowed mode without borders (looks the same as non-windowed mode.)
Not sure how well a ranking system would do in TF2, since you’re trying to match ~24 players, not 2-4 (one reason we can never seem to get a good Qt3 game going.) It would be pretty easy for people to rank up artificially. Besides, pub TF2 is not really a serious game; you got the lobby matches for that. I’d pick a mature, friendly server over one with a consistent skill level anytime.
Arena might also be up your alley. I don’t see people goofing off much there (unless it’s en masse, like an engie rush) There’s a bit less teamwork overall, but the constant team rebalancing between rounds usually make for a pretty good game.
Yeah, if pointless meleeing and “Need a dispenser here!” annoys you…it’s a part of every single server I’ve ever seen. It’s just something to while away the time. Again I’d advocate alt-tabbing and surfing for a minute. Alt-tab is a lot less buggy in TF2 if you use windowed mode without borders (looks the same as non-windowed mode.)
Not sure how well a ranking system would do in TF2, since you’re trying to match ~24 players, not 2-4 (one reason we can never seem to get a good Qt3 game going.) It would be pretty easy for people to rank up artificially. Besides, pub TF2 is not really a serious game; you got the lobby matches for that. I’d pick a mature, friendly server over one with a consistent skill level anytime.
Arena might also be up your alley. I don’t see people goofing off much there due to the wait penalty (unless it’s en masse, like an engie rush) There’s a bit less teamwork overall, but the constant team rebalancing between rounds usually make for a pretty good game.
On attack/defend maps, the 1-minute setup period gives the defending team some time to get into position. They very seldom engage in the same stupid warm-up antics. The attacking team is trapped in the spawn area for the entire duration, and it can get boring just standing at the gate.
As for scouts, they’re supposed to be annoying–it’s in their contracts.
RickH
4319
It would be a complete failure unless Valve took away the features available to server admins (which I don’t see happening).
I’ve seen servers where donators can change teams at will (leading to stacking), be immune to side balancing (leading to mismatched sides), gain random and lengthy power ups such as damage immunity or 100% crits via “rtd” systems, or have super-powers compared to non-donators, such as extreme rocket jumping or laying down up to three sentries (which is BS in my opinion and I won’t stay on such a server). I have reached all of these through the server browser and as far as I know, these servers were VAC-protected.
Any of these, or other features I didn’t name, could easily be manipulated to skew an XP/rank system.
Reldan
4320
None of that stuff is going to change the craziness going on pre-match. One possible solution is to play Arena, where getting yourself killed takes you out for the rest of the round (a la CS). Also there is no pre-match warmup.
You generally find a surprising amount of teamplay and lack of asshattery because the mode does not appeal much to lone wolves or idiots (they tend to just die really fast and then sit there for a couple minutes without being able to do anything).
