Team Fortress 2 Co-op! Mann vs. Machine

[racingfreak92]

It dosent seem to be out just yet, Im thinking maybe in 30 minutes when its noon PST it might drop.

Im in the US. My steam name is racingfreak92, ill be online to play.

[Jake]

It dosent seem to be out just yet, Im thinking maybe in 30 minutes when its noon PST it might drop.

Im in the US. My steam name is racingfreak92, ill be online to play.

The first and second MvM updates have been happening in the evening, Pacific time, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was still a few hours off.

[Security_Tubbs]

I lost pretty much all interest in TF2 with the MannConomy update. And I was initially pretty "meh" about yet another game with yet another "horde mode". But then I remembered it was Valve we were talking about, checked the TF2 site for the MvM update and now I'm totally stoked. Or even super-stoked. Definitely super-soaked.

[CaptainFish]

Day 3!

http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/

http://www.teamfortr...com/mvm/bounty/

http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/faq/

[TychoCelchuuu]

Uh, wow. Pay us a dollar to play the full campaign mode. Once. Then pay us another dollar to play again. That sounds... profitable.

Although I'm a little unclear on what the Tour of Duty is above and beyond a string of maps that you can play for free, other than that you can earn items in that mode. So maybe you only need to pay them if you want to earn items?

[gregbrown]

Although I'm a little unclear on what the Tour of Duty is above and beyond a string of maps that you can play for free, other than that you can earn items in that mode. So maybe you only need to pay them if you want to earn items?

Yep, it looks like the consumables only allow you to earn items, and only cosmetic ones at that.

[Karsaroth]

Yep, that's exactly how it reads. Play it free whenever, or if you want to try for special items, then pay for Mann up mode.

[CaptainFish]

Yeah that part does seem kinda gross. I'd definitely want to see how the ToD missions differ from just playing the free maps.

At the very least it seems that once you pay a dollar and play a mission in a Tour of Duty, you can play that mission as many times as you want in the Mann Up servers.

[Murdoc]

Does anyone know if it's out yet or where some news updates are coming from? Was hoping to play a bit at work before I left.

[gregbrown]

Does anyone know if it's out yet or where some news updates are coming from? Was hoping to play a bit at work before I left.

Not out yet, sadly. Valve's release schedule sucks for those of us in Eastern time.

[I_smell]

Well there are some things that make paying for it less bad, like the fact that you keep the ticket if you don't win, and how many times are you gonna play this premium mode anyway, when there's a set number of items and the free mode's available?

And y'know- it's a free game now, and they just put months of work into a new mode for it, so obviously there's a shop or whatever.

I'm not interested in paying for anything in a free game anyway, (CALL ME OLD FASHIONED!!!) so I'll just be skipping the whole "win these metal gloves to wear" mode.

EDIT- Y'know... I guess you could look at it and say they're exploiting the completionist nature in some people, and profitting off this sad instinctive weakness that a tiny percentage of their audience has, and that's the only reason for any of this cosmetic hat stuff n it's an ethically corrupt way to design a game-- BUT; they were already doing that. So if that's your reason to feel turned off by this then you're a... a dumb.. boy.

[Jake]

Uh, wow. Pay us a dollar to play the full campaign mode. Once. Then pay us another dollar to play again. That sounds... profitable.

Although I'm a little unclear on what the Tour of Duty is above and beyond a string of maps that you can play for free, other than that you can earn items in that mode. So maybe you only need to pay them if you want to earn items?

If I'm reading right, you pay to be tracked and get a drop at the end, not to play.

[Korax]

If I'm reading right, you pay to be tracked and get a drop at the end, not to play.

Yeah, it definitely looks like "pay $1 to get a cosmetic drop, get regular drops otherwise." Great knee-jerking, there, dudes.

[Squid Division]

hm apparently a few people have heard of this game because I'm downloading at 65 kb/s.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Yeah, it definitely looks like "pay $1 to get a cosmetic drop, get regular drops otherwise." Great knee-jerking, there, dudes.

I'm sorry that misinterpreting the line from the FAQ that reads "A Tour of Duty is a collection of Missions that may span multiple maps. Tours of Duty only exist in Mann Up Mode. Mann vs. Machine is shipping with one Tour of Duty. We’ll be releasing more Tours of Duty in the future." to mean that 'a Tour of Dutyis a special linked set of maps maps' rather than 'a Tour of Duty is literally just the same thing you play in the free mode on you get items at the end if you win' is knee-jerking, but it honestly wasn't super clear to me. My bad.

[Jake]

I'm sorry that misinterpreting the line from the FAQ that reads "A Tour of Duty is a collection of Missions that may span multiple maps. Tours of Duty only exist in Mann Up Mode. Mann vs. Machine is shipping with one Tour of Duty. We’ll be releasing more Tours of Duty in the future." to mean that 'a Tour of Dutyis a special linked set of maps maps' rather than 'a Tour of Duty is literally just the same thing you play in the free mode on you get items at the end if you win' is knee-jerking, but it honestly wasn't super clear to me. My bad.

I'm still uncertain on it myself. My read was that there were chains of existing maps which resulted in a drop as a "tour of duty," whereas otherwise it was similar to normal TF2 -- the map would come up which means that gametype is active and you're playing it until the objective is over, then you switch to whatever's next on the server. I'm waiting to actually play to see what's up, though.

[Twig]

I just read through it and yeah it definitely sounds like there's no content locked behind a paywall here. It's just, the ticket unlocks the Tour of Duty, which you can then complete at your leisure map by map. Whether or not you need a ticket for each map in the tour, is what I'm still confused about.

[CaptainFish]

You need a ticket per 'mission' which is a map.

[illeria]

Ive been trying to get on a server but the queue is way too long. Kind of disappointed but ill try again tomorrow.

[racingfreak92]

I will agree that the FAQ is unclear, but Valves downright douchy monitization of TF2 is nothing new. $12 hats? New weapons constantly with all sorts of random effects? Items that are ONE USE that cost $3?

Its one of the most immoral and least consumer-friendly F2P games Ive ever seen. It may be mostly cosmetic items, but in my eyes that only makes it worse.

The servers are getting pounded, patch took me over an hour to download.

[Twig]

Is it really douchey? I don't get it. They never lock actual gameplay behind a paywall. Who cares if a hat costs "too much"? It's purely cosmetic, AND you don't actually have to pay for it if you can trade for it. Your logic is weird.

God forbid a developer wants to make money.

[TheLastBaron]

Sooooooo broken!

Don't know if it's just me, or if Valve did 0 testing and this is really as buggy as it seems. Played two different games of this on two different maps and each time this is what happened. If the bomb got to our base and went off we would lose the round and restart only the area would stay exploded/ a gaping hole, and wolking near the hole would make you die automatically, with the same going for all the robots as well. Then if a bomb got to the area and went off, it would say that we failed the round, and then a couple seconds later say round complete. Rinse/repeat, and you win the game. On the last wave of the last round it even popped up the blue "You Lose" screen and then 10 seconds later it changed to us winning. So yeah, this appears to be broken.

[racingfreak92]

Is it really douchey? I don't get it. They never lock actual gameplay behind a paywall. Who cares if a hat costs "too much"? It's purely cosmetic, AND you don't actually have to pay for it if you can trade for it. Your logic is weird.

God forbid a developer wants to make money.

Its exploiting people who are invested in the game. Valve makes a lot, its not like they are fighting to survive. I think if the hats were $1-2 each they would still make plenty of money.

[CaptainFish]

Okay. After failing to get on a server normally (not enough community ones up initially, with like 78 minute waiting times) I heard my friends got in. I actually got a smaller group together, bought tickets and traded them to two of them, failed to trade to the third because stuff was way too buggy, so he had to get his own. Then we hopped in Mann Up mode (every player needs a ticket for it), which has shorter queues but is also maybe a super hard version of the regular mode. So... the choice seems to be queue for like 20 minutes for a single game, or queue for 5 and not be able to beat it.

Hopefully it'll become a bit more reliable once more servers go up and what not.

The actual game was pretty fun, but the bots are actually way more competent than i would've expected. Engineer, demo and soldier seem really fun because they have automated attacks or splash damage. The game also tends to send really tough high hp targets while you're still dealing with scouts who push the bomb to the target really fast. Of course this was the hard (?) mode so it's not a fair assessment of the difficulty. On the plus side, the music from the trailer totally plays when the robots arrive, and even though it can be tough, it's satisfying to kill them.

One thing I am bummed out about is that the bots are the blue team, and you play the red team, so the image of both sides coming together to fight a common foe doesn't really play out in-game (unless I'm missing something). Anyhoo, will play more to try and get a feel for it.

[Starman Deluxe]

Played a couple hours of this last night. Surviving seven or eight waves of killer robots is pretty difficult, especially when everyone's not using voice or there's no friendly medic. Seems like a great mode to play with friends who may or may not have ever played TF2 before.