Yep, he refused because he has narcolepsy and IBS. That's really sad. He could practically save TF2, he's an absolutely incredible, smart and fast coder.

Imo they could hire him and let him work remotely from home so he doesn't have to worry about that stuff. That way he could be able to do what he's been doing for years but now get paid for it, and Valve would actually have a TF2 dev who knew what they were doing. Win-win.

Is he under the impression that there's a strict schedule that anyone will hold him to? We're playing TF2 in 2016, I don't think anyone cares how long it'll take him as long as it's him working on the game. Straight up, I'll help fund his paycheck, I just want someone doing the cleanup who both knows and cares about what he's doing.

I wish they would hire sigsegv, but giving new hires remote access to the source tree might not be valve's internal policy after that 2014 leak

What's going on with Quake? Just wondering because I've never played Quake Live.

theyre making quake champions which has some questionable design choices

Pretty much this. 9 years of play testing and actual player feedback (not just data like % of players playing a certain class which doesn't really tell you anything about whether its under powered or just not fun to play ie: meaningful player feedback is way fucking better but harder to get BUT WE ALREADY HAVE 9 YEARS OF IT SO IT DOESN'T MATTER) and we found that 6s is basically the most fun and balanced gamemode (and we keep highlander around as our little retarded brother because who doesn't love gamemodes create for the sole reason of the "One of each class" gimmick even if it boils down to like 3 or 4 of the classes because completely useless and the rest of the team playing around the sniper DAE 6s stale meta xd) and we've basically got class limits sorted out (although they seem pretty arbitrary and completely understand Valve being hesitant to implement them because a new player won't understand the reasoning behind allowing 2 sniper but only 1 medic even though they're both in the support category but why they didn't implement a blanket 2 class limit as a starting point and work forward from there I'll never know).

Yet Valve still doesn't take any of this feedback into account so its clear they're either completely fucking retarded (and they're working for Valve so I highly doubt this is the case) or they REALLY don't like the current form of 6s, even though we've found it to be the most fun. If the latter is the case, we need to be very wary about further collaboration with Valve if we don't want to see our way of playing the game cannibalised. We should just follow Thorin's advice and keep playing the game, because if we all still want to play it, it'll always be there.

also why the fuck are people discussing new gamemodes like wtf ahahaha are you fucking serious i thought we agreed that was a dumb fuck idea when RW told us to be more like our older brother dota and use a pick ban system for weapons lmao

I don't know if we'll ever grow. I do not say this about the entire community, but there are a lot of assholes in this community who openly reject new players, then go on the forums whining about how sixes is dying. The barrier to entry is already high. People have to learn a lot before they even set foot in a sixes match, only to be shit talked and abused by players who are even the slightest more skilled than them. In mixchamp particularly, a site meant for new/less experienced players is very volatile and toxic towards those who don't know what they're doing (KOTE).

I've spoken to several content creators about advertising competitive TF2/Newbie Mixes, and they've said that they refuse to advertise it and send their followers to just get insulted and harassed for wanting to try something new, and that they'd love to if the community wasn't so toxic. There's no system of punishment for players who behave like this, on teamfortressTV or champGG. The moderators/admins aren't omnipresent, and sometimes just turn a blind eye, or give a slap on the wrist, which allows these players to continue their hostilities.

I'd love to see more experienced teams/players encourage new players and guide them in the right direction, rather than being a salt mine ready to rip them a new asshole just because they haven't discovered/devoted their time to our niche game mode before now. One way to help improve competitive TF2 and grow our community is to not be toxic dickheads to every new player/HL lover that we come across. Just ignore the HL players (they're just mad because they know that their game mode is stale, and not chosen by Valve to be the official competitive game mode) and help the new players. Give them advice in PUG's/lobbies/wherever you encounter them, and point them to the NA Newbie Mixes as well. Our community is too small and in too rough of a shape for us to be toxic degenerates towards every single person who comes in that isn't an instant fragger.

Barrier to entry is NOT the biggest problem right now, it's people not wanting to move up divisions and risk losing. Every season there are 16 open teams moved up, enough to fill the division just with move ups, and yet every season in recent memory there has almost not been enough to keep IM alive. This season Invite almost died, it took a team with a cheater and a team who finished 8th in IM basically getting forced in to save the division and that still only got 8 teams, the first time invite has had 8 teams in like 3 or 4 years.

Open can exist with only 30 teams. It's not ideal at all and super shitty but we're 20 teams over how many we absolutely need. IM is at exactly the lowest number of teams possible for it to work and Invite is technically one team under the minimum needed to work. That's a way bigger problem than getting new players in.

Well that's an issue as well, but a healthy competitive scene always needs new players coming in as well. There's fuck all that the majority of us can do about IM/Invite players not wanting to stick around, that falls to their decision and friends trying to convince them to stay/leave. What do you propose to do to solve this issue of IM/Invite imminent death? Yes recognizing a problem is the first step towards fixing it, but without a healthy growth of the scene, there will be no incentive for the higher up players to stick around when they can go do something much more profitable/more fun to them.

If people don't want to move up, then as long as ESEA allows it, that's their decision and only they can change it. No one wants to be forced to move up, and I can understand that. However this is an issue without a solution, unless it goes the, undesired by many, route of Tri forcing people to move up into the next division.

Yeah but there are new players are coming in, there's not as many but that situation is not nearly as bad. To be honest I don't even know what you mean with people being toxic to new players idk maybe there's a problem in mixchamp with it but in pugchamp there are plenty of players that came in and played a shit ton of pugs and turned that into ending up on good teams (marmaloo, sandblast, pops to name a few) for the most part as long as your attitude isn't shit and you have some clue what you're doing it's fine.

I wouldn't expect you guys to see the same levels of....noob as is seen in mixchamp, but yes mixchamp can get very toxic. It's also the attitude I've personally seen a lot of open shitters carry. When I first got into competitive TF2, I almost quit because of how blatantly rude and abrasive people were. I only continued because I had friends who played, and I was very interested in the game mode. You also won't necessarily feel/see the toxicity as much because you're in the top division of NA TF2, but down in low-mid open you can see ego's that make little b4niel seem like a priest.

Yes there may be new players coming in, but if you actually passed a high school economics class, you'd know that you have to have more coming in than you have going out. IM is on life support and Invite literally shouldn't exist at this moment of time. We have new players come in, but how many of them leave after being shit on by superior gameplay and terrible attitudes? Now add those players that bail onto those who are just tired of TF2/frustrated at the state of the game and quit playing/go to a more successful game. Playerbase has been on a downward trend, and you can't do much to keep those who decide to leave. Which is why you have to make up for them in new talent.

Back to the original thing, yes people are toxic to new players. These idiots don't include everyone, and are a minority of our community. However they make enough noise that they are the ones people see when they look at the comp community. Let's not act like we don't know that we're viewed as toxic, because of the foolish few who choose to act that way. This is an issue that stems from invite players, down to open players who have higher opinions of themselves than they should have. Like a player spamming binds with intent to insult two people on the other team in the Grand Fucking Finals last season. I'm all for having a tough skin and not letting shit get to you, but if this were a league that had attention on it, or a game that was remotely successful, that player would be banned or suspended from play for his actions. I'm just saying we all need to analyze our actions before we make them, and when it comes to new players, remember that at one point we were all that shitter who was just interested in learning about comp TF2.

just pointing out that north america's problems do not necessarily reflect those of every region

I disagree with your line of thought here. Valve has implemented 6v6 in the game right now, so it appears like we're on the same page as far as server size goes (which is also why Sigafoo's decision to try 7v7 is so questionable). As you've pointed out, class limits is the next part of the game to focus on, and while we've implemented class limit 2 on some and 1 on others, Valve is not convinced that that is the best way to do things. This seems reasonable to me, and they also have the power to balance the classes to keep a consistent class limit 2 or class limit 1.

Obviously they are not the former so given that information, they are the latter. And why shouldn't they be upset with our form of 6s? It's a bastardized version of their game with seemingly arbitrary class limits and weapon bans. Obviously the developers aren't happy that we've implemented weapon bans, and they understand that class limits/weapon bans are required since we don't have direct control over the design of the game.

Given this information though, I think that we would actually want their game to "cannibalize" ours (to use your term) because we want a developer supported game. Can you explain to me why you wouldn't want our version of the game to die in favor of theirs? If they make improvements to the format, I think that we should accept their game.

Did you read my post at all? Or are you too busy bending over and spreading those cheeks?
If you want a 6v6, class-based, dev supported fps analogue, it exists. Don't ruin a good thing just because, it's happened to enough good things already.

Sorry but gonna have to use part of my own post here:

Just as Spyromancer said "Don't ruin a good thing just because, it's happened to enough good things already."
We've already tried their game, we didn't like it as much, why do you think competitive TF2 even started aside from competition? Why do you think many of us are here? No more shitty pubs, no more fucking 12v12 lagfest of lazers and crazy ass shit, no more mass heavies or engineer nests. Organized, stable, and well-skilled games is what competitive TF2 is all about.

As a way to answer what you actually asked, I think you, a very sensible person, already knows why we wouldn't want our version of the game to die in favor theirs. We literally just hate BULLSHIT lol. Our game has class limits that helps lower the bullshit levels and weapon restrictions that lowers it even further. Then we have combined those things with a player limit that is decently reasonable(or the most reasonable this game has ever seen) and have produced thousands of much more fun matches. That's just one of the explanations, there are tons of explanations I'm sure many can also give you.

P.S. I can actually RUN our version/format of the game, 12v12 pubs and the current compMM is actually hard to run.

Team Fortress 2 is already losing players (we already lost more players than we gained during summer) and practically nobody plays matchmaking.

If Valve won't fix most of matchmaking problems in next update (Scream Fortress/Pyro update) I will lose hope that MM will eventually work in TF2. Maybe they should even allow F2P to play matchmaking, it would certainly increase a number of players playing matchmaking.

Valve can't wait now, because if they will wait for another year or two TF2 will die.

I really want to see Team Fortress 3 based around 6v6 competitive with working matchmaking on release, better optimization and graphics, but it's not gonna happen, because Valve doesn't make games anymore, they make money now (and VR, but that is only expensive gadget right now).

http://puu.sh/rJBct.jpg

I usually like giving people the benefit of the doubt, but TF2 makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year. I could go on for literally hours about the plethora of issues and major fuck ups that have hurt this game for a decade, but they've been discussed to death already.

Normally I would say, "Oh they're human, they make mistakes," but when they make gobs and gobs of cash from this game, it's just not justifiable.

CSGO is similar as well. It takes a special kind of retard to add an $800 pistol that outclasses the $5000 sniper in every single way. And people always defend valve by saying it got fixed, but forget that it should never have happened in the first place.

This is valve's business model now, have a game that makes a shitload of cash, then do the absolute minimum of upkeep. The only reason Dota gets better treatment is because they have IceFrog, who's made his life about improving dota.

And don't forget that these issues with TF2 have been going on for almost a decade now. The jarate is fundamentally broken and will never work in a competitive envrionment. Also, why did they add a jar of urine into this 1960's industrial era, spy vs. spy themed game? WHY A JAR OF URINE? JUST WHY

source?

I don't know where you heard of this but I'd like a source. I know they make tons of money but hundreds of millions seems like a bit more of an exaggeration.

I wouldn't say that IceFrog is the only reason, there's more than just IceFrog, Dota 2 has always had potential, it has eSports written all over it, and it's what attracts multiple players from different regions(NA, EU, Russia, Peru, etc.), and there's much more. It's the game that will always provide them great results and profit that they know for sure they will get if they continue to work on and improve it.

You saw what a shitfest The Global Whitelist™ was and you think abandoning our version of 6s for Valve's shitty no-customisation-allowed, no class limits, poorly optimised, payload-is-a-gamemode-that'll-work-in-6s-guys-we-promise version of 6s won't entirely nuke the scene and end a decade of hard work?

Why is thorin asking about tf2 and trying to get in contact with production people on twitter

i mean it's probably just something stupid thats not important just curious

ded

Who knows, thorin could potentially make something happen. We're all desperate for anything at this point

http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/20/10-online-pc-games-that-made-more-than-100m-in-microtransaction-sales-last-year/

I've been inspired by the guy planning a new TF2 league. The game simply doesn't need more engineering solutions, even from Valve, and that's all it's getting. People who know how to program think that them doing more of it will be the solution. It won't.

Slin said that the people working on TF2 are newbies at Valve getting their feet wet. That's not what the game needs either regardless of their competence. These guys clearly have no authority to make big decisions.

TF2 used to be used for experimentation, for Valve to make brave decisions and many of them have been rewarded. But right now in the casual shooter space Overwatch is crushing them. TF2 player numbers are going down, steam charts shows TF2 at it's lowest ebb ever. For the first time there is actually a legitimate threat to the game's long term future.

Overwatch's popularity is based on the current reality of game promotion - Twitch and esports events. They've inflated their supporting esports scene literally from nothing, completely artificially. There's no grass roots, no long competitive history and pedigree, just the publisher deciding from day 1 that there was a gap in the market for a casual team shooter with respawn mechanics promoted properly.

They were right, all of that pedigree and history is simply being transplanted from other games - there's a reason Thorin is doing background on TF2 now. It's because a large part of the value of the competitive scene and the huge amount of tertiary marketing it generates through people like Thorin is in the players, their personalities, their stories. Valve have lost that asset.

Valve's insistence on TF2 MM having to develop organically before official tournament support is just compounding their problems because it's not going to. They can keep searching for the "golden format" forever, they've trained their player base to fuck around with comedy loadouts and overpowered fun unlocks in Hightower 24/7 servers for nearly 10 years. It's not going to work.

The shiny new toy, the one with huge numbers of streamers, big tournaments, incredible production, that's the game that's doing it right. Blizzard must have looked at TF2 and thought "What the fuck are Valve doing? We can just take a huge slice of the pie". Apparently it was easy.

If Valve are looking for an experiment for TF2, picking up this game and making it relevant again might be something the big players at Valve who can actually make a difference should be interested in, the revenue stream will soon be a memory if the current trend continues.

Either that or TF3. It's sad, I didn't think OW would be the nail in TF2's coffin but I'm starting to realise that Valve are so rich the decay of a revenue stream that size really doesn't seem to concern them.

Yep, with the trends Valve are showing we should worry for TF3 dying before being born.

Its basically gotten to the point where tf2 will die as a game if valve doesnt learn and treat the game better.

Okay, let me pose the R8 situation to you again.
Counter strike is an economy game. Items have prices and certain tactical advantages. Players use money they get from winning and getting kills to purchase items, which then can be used to get more kills/wins.
The best item in counter strike is a $5000 sniper rifle that kills with one shot. It is a strong asset, but if you are not careful, it might fall into the enemy's hands.
Now, when valve adds an $800 pistol, that is better in every conceivable way, don't you think that might pose some issues? Have you really deceived yourself into believing that Valve doesn't push updates because the updates aren't good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd_QeY9uATA

Educate yourself. Here we have valve quite literally admitting that they avoid developing new content in general because it might not be liked, and we have them admitting that they add fugly shit cosmetics because people will buy them anyway. I'll post another video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIikwDbZTCI

Valve talks in depth about their visual design for teamfortress 2, focusing on visual clarity, muted colors, and a reference color palette consisting of blues, reds, browns, and greys. You'll notice that valve throws these concepts out the door when it comes to making a lot of money. People will buy a lime green banana hat, even if it looks bad.

Same thing with the revolver. It temporarily gets people back into CS and gets a lot of attention. The first week is full of people buying keys and selling $300 skins on the community market, only for valve to nerf the gun into uselessness a little later. They haven't added any content worthwhile, but had a week where people would go crazy and buy a lot of virtual goods. When it comes to making money, the actual quality of the product does not matter to valve, nor any established game developer. Making a lot of cash is the only end goal, TF2 and CSGO might suffer and become terrible games, but the profit margins are enormous.

It's time we stop giving them the benefit of the doubt for creating great games almost a decade ago.