Storming the Fortress

Now more than a year after its release, Team Fortress 2, Valve's stylish class-settled first gear-individual shot, still draws dozens of servers full of skilled players at any given moment. From day one, information technology's provided players with an highly satisfying multiplayer experience. Only while the burden gameplay is as impregnable A ever, it's non what has kept the TF2 community healthy well then daylight 400. For that, you can give thanks Valve's ongoing improvements, additions and adjustments to the game.

New downloadable maps and gameplay modes in the months undermentioned a game's initial launch have get along trite, but the slew of classify-peculiar unlockable achievements and special weapon upgrades that Valve is slowly rolling out for each of the 9 playable classes in TF2 have hugely boosted the deed's replayability. Unlocking these class upgrades requires you to scud up a routine of challenging achievements. Fortunately, the task is extremely habit-forming and the rewards extremely satisfying.

TF2 has existed in some organize or another for around Ashcan School long time, according to Valve's Robin Walker. One of the creators of the original Team Fortress mod, Walker says the version of the sequel that hit store shelves along with The Orange Box took about a year and a half to build, but it benefited from many gameplay experiments Valve tinkered with during the lengthy development cycle. While the unfit transformed substantially from one iteration to the next, the squad's drive to improve the gameplay supported player feedback continues to usher in many additional and exciting changes.

Class struggle
"We always planned to continue evolving TF2 after shipping, but it wasn't projected that we'd focus on class updates," says Walker. Shortly later on launch, his team immediately set about the chore of releasing frequent, little updates to the game via Valve's Steam service. These updates successful subtle improvements to gameplay and performance but didn't garner much care or draw many refreshing players to the game. Eventually, the team up switched tactics, focusing instead on emotional larger chunks of high-profile content featuring tangible changes to each of the game's character classes, to boot to insignificant bug-fixes and balance tweaks.

The first of three major updates rolled out in 2008 focused on the Medic class, giving players 36 new achievements to unlock three new items. IT besides introduced a new map and Payload, a new game mode. The next substantial update focused on the Pyro form, adding more achievements and unlockable weapons to the pile. It also added a thin air blaster to the default flamethrower and two new player-created maps. A massive third update provided the Impenetrable class with extra achievements, boxing gloves, a newfound minigun, a health-restoring snack, a unaccustomed arena way and more unnecessary maps.

The team promptly observed hinging updates on each of the nine quality classes got the response from players they were looking for. "The updates we've released throw had a sizeable impact on some the ongoing player numbers and the sales of the cartesian product," says Walker. Non only has each update drawn in umpteen new players, but a substantial number of them stay later the initial spike in interest.

"The reply [to TF2] has been nifty, some in terms of customers' direct feedback to us and in terms of sales of the game," says Walker. "Early, I think there was about touch on by customers As to what the scope of our on-going work was to follow, but at this point I think they understand what we're doing and why we're doing it."

Feedback is the key, as it's the players themselves that have been unitary of the John Roy Major driving forces behind the continuous improvements implemented in the game.

The Push from Players
Walker and his team have got base many players enjoy participating in the ongoing development of the game. They expend a lot of time putting unneurotic ideas, discussing them in forums and sending them to the developers straight. This feedback has had a massive impact happening Valve's on-going work. "Pretty much every day someone on the TF2 team brings up something from a player that we spend several meter discussing," atomic number 2 notes.

"There are many volumed-scale course corrections that have been intemperately influenced by player feedback," says Walker. "Players have involuntary our entire approach to designing achievements, the way we tie unlockables to those achievements and the designing of those parvenu weapons themselves. The choices we made inside the Medical officer and Heavy updates were very much the result of the slipway that players have used that combination of classes inside the game. The addition of the payload game mode came from players requesting an old Team Fort Classic map named Hunted, and describing what they did and didn't similar in that map. None of this is really that unexpected, though, because our internal expectation is that we are to be involuntary aside the players themselves."

The team interacts with players in the TF2 community A frequently as possible past playing on a regular basis on open servers, participating in tournaments, reading forums and blog posts and responding to emails. More recently, it called upon the community to brainstorm ontogenesis ideas for the Toilsome grade update. The response was identical positive, and it's something the team is likely to explore again in the future.

Coming Down the Pike
At first, each of the three class updates launched in two-month intervals, but things slowed down later the summer when some of the TF2 developing team members were tapped to finish u the competitive multiplayer component of Valve's zombie-centric gun Left-of-center 4 Dead. They applied lessons learned from the current maturation of TF2 to Left 4 Dead and have even brought back some ideas from the latter to potentially implement in TF2.

With Left field 4 Suddenly now launched, the team is once more turning its attention to prox TF2 updates. The Scout is the next class slated for the special treatment, and Walker expects the update will be available early this year. Additionally, the team is juggling a number of side projects at the moment, including last bringing a year's Worth of the downloadable content and upgrades to the Xbox 360 version of the game. A new Payload map is in the whole works, more community maps are en route and the team will soon unveil a rattling distinct unweathered game musical mode.

As work continues, Valve is also slowly chipping off at a laundry list of problems that pop up all over time between the character classes. Among other big issues on the agenda, Walker says the Spy's disguise has closely reached the end of its lifetime. Over time, average players have become much amend at detecting and dispatching disguised Spies, making the power bad useless for well-nig the sneakiest of players. In addition, Walker feels the Engineer's sentry guns take become "too binary." They're highly lethal to about players and wholly incompetent against others. Sentry guns are also easily dispatched past ball-hawking players, leaving Engineers with little recourse. Keeping a delicate balance is important, as is adjusting problems that bob up from the way players utilize the different abilities of each division in the secret plan.

Though at that place are unruffled hexa more classes to upgrade, the release of an eventual new class isn't out of the question. Rumors of a possible 10th class titillated in an Easter egg saved in the first mission of Left 4 Non-living set players abuzz. Walker says they haven't made any decisions about adding new classes hitherto, but that doesn't poor they're non considering them. "We've got several novel class designs floating just about, some of which we like much, simply far-right today we're focusing on the broadening of our existing classes through the addition of the unlockables," he says. In the meantime, the weapon selections offered through the upgrades have created subclasses that let players specialize in sealed maneuver, much as using the Pyro's Backburner flamethrower to ambush opponents.

"We've got some ideas as to where we'd alike to go, merely like-minded always, we'll be trying to stick changeable and religious music to customer feedback. We're aiming to keep shipping class updates, trying out new game modes and evolving the way we can add players into the ongoing design of the crippled," Alice Walker says. "We're hush up very worked up about TF2, and in finicky, the safer test bed for innovation that it represents. We take to essa outgoing some riskier, and hopefully more fun, design choices in the near future, with a persuasion to learning from our players as to what full treatmen and what doesn't."

This pose has been very utile, says Walker, and Valve plans to continue it for the foreseeable future. The informality of releasing updates through Steam factors heavily into its appeal. It creates a crucial means for quickly measuring the strength of design choices. "We can make a change, receive feedback on it immediately from actual customers so improve IT," he says. "We can innovate in that mold without fear of acquiring too far off the tracks, because the measurement process (i.e. real player feedback) will steer us away from the butt on."

Despite his most combined efforts, Nathan Meunier has yet to live shot, burned, bludgeoned and blown high in a single life.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/storming-the-fortress/

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