I’m not saying they are being totally altruistic, although in the past they’ve come pretty close. I think at some point they’ve made plenty of money off a game and they’d like people to experience their art - they’ve put half life 2 on sale for $1 before, given away portal for free, etc. They’ve got no shareholders to answer to and they’re basically just cool people - they’re good to their customers, good to their employees, put out quality products that aren’t cash grabs, etc.
I suspect they think the vast majority of people who intended to buy tf2 by now would’ve done so, so they’re not losing much with f2p. I don’t think they’ll gain a ton either - if someone hasn’t bothered to spend a few bucks on the game by now, they’re unlikely to spend a few bucks on some hats either.
In any case, I don’t see how you get a “wow, I really used to respect valve, but now they’re super greedy and just like every other company out there” from this. Maybe if they made the game “pay to win” by giving super powerful weapons exclusively for cash (which isn’t at all the case). Or they could’ve even got a few thousand more tf2 sales during the summer sale and then dropped f2p on people, but they didn’t do that either.
But valve gets more undeserved hate than any company I’m aware of. People are resentful of dicks like EA and Activision, but they don’t get full of rage they do with Valve - and over the stupidest stuff too. “I paid $50 for this game 2 years ago and now you sell it to other unwashed peasants for $5?!? I HATE THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE WHAT I HAVE WHY HAVE YOU BETRAYED ME VALVE!!!”… I even remember last year during the Christmas sale, when Valve was giving away 100 games for free at random to some people, people were complaining (not in jest) about what a burden it was because they couldn’t think of 100 games they wanted.
It’s as though if you were just a dick through and through like EA and Activision, people sort of hate you but give you a pass, but if you try to be cool and please everyone and generally be a good guy, people get this sense of entitlement, and when you try to do them a favor and it’s not the exact favor they want, or you’re also giving the favor to other people too, people become more enraged at you than if you didn’t do anything for them at all.
People just like to complain. You see this with everything. By god the fucker over there got a better deal than me. Man those Valve guys sure shafted me.
I agree and disagree. You are right that they are usually really cool about the way they handle their titles and updates. I mean, they didn’t owe it to anyone to make vintage hats when the Mann Co. Store opened, or give out free keys on Christmas. I like them a lot.
I just really have a problem with crate keys, and my problem is this: they won’t disclose the odds of getting all the possible items. It’s like selling people lottery tickets where you say they can win $1, $100, or $1,000,000, but you can’t make an informed decision because you don’t know how slim the chances are of getting the higher prizes. I mean, these keys are $2.49 apiece! I’ve seen a lot of forum posts where someone complains about opening 30 crates and not unboxing an unusual. Granted, if they had poked around a little they’d have known they should have just bought the hat outright, but that’s pure profit for Valve. I’m sure if people knew that they were paying $45 for a 16% chance of an unusual hat, fewer would waste their money.
Now, from a business perspective, I think it’s brilliant - it appeals to the gambler in all of us. It’s just not particularly cool of them.
Remember kids, keys are like drugs. Sell them but don’t use them.
Keys are silly, but has nothing to do with the issue at hand - nothing has changed in that regard.
Apparently there were a whole lot of people in the “so interested in tf2 as to get it on day 1, but not willing to shell out $5 for it” category - the game is sitting at 63000 players active at the moment, up from a typical 20-25k at this time of day
Sure it does. I was just making the point that it telegraphs Valve’s intent, which you were arguing against. It’s not that they care so much about poor people, but when they get their first crate drop, that’s $5.00 in Valve’s pocket, and maybe more, from some of those users who wouldn’t have even played the game at all.
Again, I don’t begrudge them for wanting to make more money and I don’t say “greed” in as pejorative a fashion as most people on SPUF, but let’s call a spade a spade.
I suspect a lot of the anti-F2P crowd is just an extension of the anti-hats crowd, who have some legitimate complaints, like how the added weapons and hats don’t have low-poly models so frame rates keep getting worse or that the game is getting visually noisy. By moving the F2P, it’s a very strong signal that the situation isn’t going to get better.
I guess. How many people buy keys? 2% of the player base? 3%? And these are the people who are interested enough in the game to actually buy it. I can’t see a lot of people who come in because it’s not worth $5 to them to buy going on to buy keys. I just don’t see this as being a factor - it’s not as if you can gain a competitive advantage this way, it’s just a hunt for cosmetics. If valve made a diamond-studded hat and sold it for $1500 in real money, it wouldn’t particularly bother me either.
That’s an interesting question. Perhaps I am simply hoping that more people than just me get super-jealous and spend much more money than they ever intended to. :smack:
Ok, I just downloaded this, but (a)I’ve never played it before and (b)I am not all that good (which is why I don’t play reflex games online often).
What to do next?
ETA: If I’m home by 8 on Saturday, I hope you won’t mind a complete, totally TF2 newbie. Be kind. Only gank me about 2 dozen times in the first 5 minutes.
Have you gone through the training? There’s also a single-player game mode with bots, it’s a decent way to practice without people bothering you, or you can actually have a real-live person coach you.
You’ll want to find the SDMB server and add it to your favorites list. The easiest way to do that is to add me as a friend on steam: Go to friends->add friend then type in SenorBeef. I’ll send you a direct invite to the game.
Or you can enable the console under keyboard options->advanced and then hit ` and type “connect 207.210.239.59:27015” - once you’re on you should be able to hit escape and add the server your favorites. Or maybe it asks you when you leave. I forget.
Or you can just look at the server browser, sort by name, make sure that it’s not filtered out (make sure hide full/empty are unchecked), then find “SDMB Dallas Stock Maps” and right click it and pick add to your favorites.
We’ll be playing tonight in about an hour if you want to hop on.
Like much of the SDMB server population, I’m also quite happy to help people out if they have questions. And like ReticulatingSplines said, there’s also a coaching system now, I guess to help newbies learn from more experienced players. I’m not sure exactly how it works (although I signed up to be a coach.
Re: crates - I just don’t bother with keys. Or crafting. Hell, I’ll sit there and give away buckets of shit I’ve collected just because I can’t be arsed crafting.
I collect hats, and my heavy loves Sasha and his Sandvich, so I have no need for anything else.
D_Odds: I’m not an online FPSer as I mentioned upthread, my hand-eye coordination isn’t great and I’m a bit noobtastic. A couple of things that I found helped:
Instant Respawn servers. When you’re sat looking at the splash screen and other players’ views, I found it frustrating. Instant respawn means I die and less than 2 seconds later I’ve reloaded and I’m on my way back out again. Fun!
The Heavy. Sure, I don’t move fast but I’m a goddamn damage sponge, medics like to hide behind me and I’ve got one word for you… “Spray-n-Pray”
I played a lot of maps on rotation, until I found one I loved. Then I played the shit out of that map, and I’m regularly in the top half of the leaderboard because I know where I am, where I’m going, and how to discern what behaviour the other team might display. I’m not saying you should stick to one map whatsoever, but I did find the rotation servers ended up with me getting confused sometimes, because I’d get used to one map them whoop - we’d be elsewhere!
The cartoonish nature of TF2 makes me not mind being pwned quite so much. I’ve run into very few players who are actual jerks, mostly people are pretty cool
Hey, I just picked up the Orange Box on Father’s Day for myself. Nice timing, huh? (I mean about the hat, not a bitch about paying for TF2)
I skipped downloading TF2 at the time because I was more interested in trying Portal and HL2 but I guess I should give it a whirl. Like other, I’m not a twitch FPS type player so starting among Dopers might be more pleasant than throwing myself directly to the wolves.
If you give us a model of the notebook we could tell you for sure. It’s certainly possible to build a laptop that could play it for less than $1000, but most people don’t typically buy the laptops that would.
Anyway, we’ve got a scheduled SDMB match at 8pm eastern tomorrow. Our saturday games usually have 12-16 people, it has been a few weeks since we filled the game up with just SDMBers - so let’s try that tomorrow. If you’re new to the game, or one of the people who only occasionally plays with us, make today the day you join us. We can show the newbies around the game, and play some of the bigger maps we haven’t played much.
