A player on a German forum reports word from Valve that Friendly Fire was never meant to be in Team Fortress 2, and the option will be removed shortly. Wait, don't go! We have better evidence than that.
Okay, so the source is not ideal, and the Google translated post ends with "TF2 was thus never meant that one plays it with Friendly Fire and the instruction becomes shortly rausgenommen". But we bet our furry World in Conflict hat that the quote is accurate, and the statement true. Valve have always told us Friendly Fire is intended to be permanently off, and when last we heard the plan was not to even include it as an option.
But it is an option, in the beta - there's a 'cvar' command for toggling it when setting up a dedicated server. Many admins use it, since serious clan games of previous Team Fortress games were usually played with Friendly Fire on. It made the otherwise under-powered Spy class a viable option, since players couldn't afford to shoot their team-mates all the time to check they weren't enemies in disguise.
TF2 doesn't have that problem, though - the Spy is plenty powerful with Friendly Fire off, since he can now cloak completely and doesn't even bleed when taking non-lethal damage from enemies. He's perfectly balanced without Friendly Fire, and wildly overpowered with it. Similarly, the Pyro is hopeless when his extravagant flames can torch his friends as easily as his foes.
In principle we're all for player choice, but in this case the option damn near breaks the game. Leaving it in suggests to players that it's a viable way to play, and leaves many servers running a hideously imbalanced and unfun travesty of the real Team Fortress 2 experience.
The post also quotes a Valve staffer, on finding himself on a Friendly Fire server: "Every time someone starts a server with FF on, an angel cries."
Forcing friendly fire to be off is indicative of bad design; the developers are basically saying 'we can't deal with team killers, we have no satisfactory way of discriminating between dedicated teamkillers and genuine accidental kills'.
BF2 tried to deal with the problem by the victim being able to 'punish' the perpetrator. However, this just turned the whole situation on it's head with victims of genuinly accidental friendly fire having the punish putton constantly glued down. You even got a breed of person that delighted in running onto your grenade, just so they could punish you.
When it comes to characters like the spy, I'm all for having friendly fire on, otherwise, what's the point? The best part about infiltration is when players pause, look at you for a second, decide not to risk fratricide and move on. Spies and infiltators (ETQW) add a great dynamic to the game and reward observant players who value their situational awareness. Nothing beats knowing that you know the spy is a spy - do you shoot him straight away, or make him sweat for a while - run past him and pretend you think he's just a team mate, then batter him into a humiliating death
Personally, I've always preferred having friendly fire off. It saves so much negative feeling in the game, although there's a price to pay when you and your team are immune to grenades and other explosives. With infiltration characters present though, it's got to be an option, otherwise it will be to easy to detect infiltrators. It will also help raise everybody's game by forcing them to develop a much better situational awareness, which can only lead to better teamwork, tactics and imaginative thinking.
There's also the issue of medics. How could the game identify deliberate friendly fire used to help medics fill their Ubercharge bars faster?
Was that you trying a similar scheme on the PCG server last night? Regardless there was some chap playing as a Soldier who was deliberately shooting at his feet before the gates opened on Dustbowl, I didn't actually twig what he was doing at first and just thought his cat was standing on his mouse or something (?). He did enough damage to let me build up to an übercharge before the gates even opened, which was very handy.
It charges up faster if they've sustained damage. If no-one decides to indulge in a spot of masochism I tend to whore my medigun around several different players as that'll charge a bit faster than just healing one player at max health.
Forcing friendly fire to be off is indicative of bad design; the developers are basically saying 'we can't deal with team killers, we have no satisfactory way of discriminating between dedicated teamkillers and genuine accidental kills'.
Considering some of your views on Steam you've expressed in other threads, I'm wondering if you've actually played TF2, or if you're just guessing as to the reasons why FF is forced off?
It's not due to a teamkilling problem, it's more that the game is designed to be played with FF off, and unbalanced with it on. As Tom explained in the blog, having FF on would turn the well-balanced Spy into a killing machine capable of tearing the enemy team apart. A skilled Spy is already capable of causing significant damage, even with the enemy team being able to shoot each other to root him out. At the same time, it makes the Pyro (the most effective counter for spies) horribly underpowered. Instead of being able to wade into a group with your flamethrower roaring, you'd have to carefully check the area for friendlies and fire in short bursts.
I'm sure some will argue that the game could have been balanced to work with friendly fire on or off, and they'd be right, but it seems that it wouldn't be anywhere near is fun to play if it had been designed like that.
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