We talked to Robin a few days before the release of CTF_Well, the first new map for Team Fortress 2 since the game launched. It's the first of many changes he and his team will be making to their game over the coming year, including a new game mode, two new maps and a steady stream of game-changing new weapons.
Project Manager Erik Johnson and Marketing VP Doug Lombardi joined in to give some more background on the Valve philosophies behind some of their surprising decisions.
Did you guys think TF2 needed more Capture-the-Flag?
Robin Walker: The way we came up with the maps initially with TF2, we looked at what maps were being played on Team Fortress Classic. We ranked them in order, we knew we had time to do six of them - and out of the top six, the only CTF map was 2fort.
We fundamentally believe capture points make more sense in the TF2 style of attack-defence. The CTF guys, to a large extent, just wanna fight. CTF is a game-mode where you can safely pretty much ignore the objective of the game and it's not going to get in your way too much. Whereas control points affect your game too much - if you ignore the control points, you'll find yourself...
Erik Johnson: Alone.
Walker: Alone, spawning way back. It just touches your game in such a strong way.
How did the new game mode used in [the forthcoming map] Goldrush come about?
Walker: Goldrush grew out of thinking about Hunted (Team Fortress 1's game mode in which one team must defend a player-controlled VIP from the other - Ed), wanting to bring forward the value you get out of a Hunted game but at the same time solve some of the problems that caused Hunted to not really work in the public space.
Things like the whole game hinging on the skill of one player, the griefability capabilities of that one player. The Hunted's highs were extremely high and its lows were extremely low, and we really wanted to figure out: is there a gameplay mode that'll get us some of those positives and none of those negatives?
Goldrush grew out of that, and the main difference is that we've replaced the VIP character with, er, a cart. This doesn't preclude us from doing the original Hunted style - obviously some of the pros of Hunted didn't come through, we did lose a little bit. We'll just see what people think.
We also have some other ideas for future maps using this kind of system that have some other pros, too, so we'll keep exploring that as well. We want to do one where instead of a cart you have a large moving platform to defend, so Engineers can build their Sentries on it.
Are these new unlockable items you're adding to TF2 superior to the existing ones?
Walker: Yep, they are permanent, game-modifying items. [Robin taps away on the demo PC, remote-desktopping into his own machine, trying to bring up the new 'Loadout' screen.]
Johnson: Players won't have to do this.
Doug Lombardi: We've got that usual Valve level of polish and accessibility.
Johnson: Yeah, there's gonna be a readme. [laughs].
And a tutorial to take you through your first time.
Johnson: "Bring down the console..."
"Then type this..."
Walker: So The Overhealer [the first Medic unlock] will double people's base health when the Medic heals them, and that bonus isn't going to decay, it's going to stay. But he loses 75% of his ubercharge rate, and one of the most likely things we're going to do before we ship is, he loses all his Ubercharge rate.
This is a really good example of our philosophy for the kinds of items we're going to produce. That is, sticking with the idea of Team Fortress 2 being fundamentally built around trade-offs. We want as much as possible to create new sub-classes, where there's different kinds of Medics.
Johnson: Yeah, we can't end up with Soldiers running at Scout speed firing crits all the time. There's not going to be an item that does that. Except for when Valve play.
You can tell what team someone is on from miles away, what class they are from quite far, and what weapon they're holding when you're up close. Will these items only be visible when you're close?
Walker: They'll all have custom models, and you'll be able to see right off the bat, that guy's running around with that. We're probably going to affect the weapon and all the effects as well, so you'll be able to tell from the medigun beam that this guy's got a different kind of medigun.
The first version's just going to have two unique items and they're going to be tied to the medigun only. But eventually everyone's going to get items that match their style.
Can you make a Spy knife that backstabs from the front?
Walker: [Laughs] This... has been talked about. [All laugh] I think it's going to be called the Knife of Jordan. Anyone looking at this is going to say "Well are you going to do this? Are you going to do that?" And the answer to all of them is "Probably." We've been shipping [updates] two or three times a week consistently since we shipped [TF2]. We aim to maintain that progress, but instead of it just being about bug-fixes it's about more content.
Is the idea to have more options? To have something new, rather than something better?
Walker: I think some of them are going to be better. What we want is to have an item that's best for Tom, and an item that's best for Erik. And to some extent, because all items are about specialisation, there's value to remaining generic.
Johnson: But fundamentally, a player who has items is going to be better than a player that has no items. There's going to be value in that.
Won't this make it more daunting to find yourself on a less experienced team against a more experienced one?
Walker: Yeah, we have a bunch of plans for stuff like better match-making and so on to deal with these issues. Our first ship is to ship the smallest possible thing. These exact questions are the reason we're not shipping, like, a hundred or anything.
We're using the tools we've got, in Steam, so that we don't go off for three years and design it all up, then come back and pray we got it right. We built Steam so we didn't have to take that kind of risk.
How do you communicate to the team that "I'm the guy with the Overhealer"? Right now the classes are very clear-cut.
Walker: What we're planning to do - apart from the Medic stuff because that's tied to achievements that are quite hard to get - is start with stuff that perhaps doesn't modify the game quite as much as the Overhealer. We understand those problems, and we have interface designs to help with those, but a lot of that is going to depend on finding out how important these things are.
Johnson: I think that is one of the key questions, though: how we make sure it all meshes together.
What's the Overhealer like to play with?
Johnson: As a Medic this really changes the way you're going to utilise yourself. Usually you're spending a lot of your time focusing on a single player, where this is more: I'm gonna affect everyone on the team all the time, and no one gets ubered. In some ways you're a more social medic.
A stay-at-home Medic.
Johnson: Yeah, with a MySpace page.
You should make a medigun that tells you when you're healing a Spy.
Walker: That's a good idea, actually.
Johnson: Yeah, that's a good one.
As a Spy I'd hate it, but you should do it anyway.
Walker: That's a good example of when "What kind of penalty are you willing to adopt for that kind of bonus?" becomes a really interesting question.
Will we ever have to make a decision about whether we want to unlock a better medigun or a better syringe gun?
Walker: I think at some point we want that kind of stuff. So part of the decisions you make each day is "What do I want to try and get for myself tonight?"
Johnson: Even with a small number of items, your playing time is going to be the limiting factor, you're just not going to be able to get them all. One of the new Medic achievements is to heal ten million points - that's like three months of pretty intense healing.
Walker: There's one guy in the world who's got that right now.
What's the time frame for all this?
Walker: We're hoping to have this live in two to three weeks. (This interview was conducted mid-February - Ed)
Johnson: It's pretty possible that everything's going to happen at once, items and maps.
That seems ambitious.
Walker: Well we just shipped five titles on three platforms. This is only an update. [All laugh] We always hit our dates. [All laugh even harder].
Johnson: Especially when we say "Two weeks". That's the magic number.
Walker: Yeah, if it's more than two weeks, don't believe us. That's why I said two-to-three weeks: that means maybe two weeks, maybe never. [As Robin loads up one of the new maps, I comment that the visitor account we're using has pretty poor stats - Most kills: 2]
We never did do the thing I always wanted to do: make each press person make their own profile and save their stats.
That would be embarrassing.
Walker: Oh you would have crushed everyone, easily.
Really?
Walker: Oh come on, you were here like five times as much as anyone else. [Laughs] Just by sheer volume you'd win.
There you have it, readers. PC Gamer reviews are five times more thorough than any other.
Update: since we conducted this interview, Valve have mentioned in an e-mail to a fan that the Overhealer unlockable wasn't working out as they'd hoped, and they're no longer planning to include it. As far as we know, though, the initial release will still be two unlockable alternative mediguns.
Same here. I seem to remember a thread on the Steam forums where one of the devs emailed someone (vague I know ) and said that it was dropped because they couldn't balance it properly.
I am only glad they are making new stuff. Release it already! Have been waiting for too long. The game is getting pretty "old" when you have been playing for soon 300 hours in total, new stuff makes it really exciting.
10 million points of healing? That has got to be a joke
And I really hope that it never happens, that you can't have old items anymore ever again once you unlock the new ones.
i dont know why i bother buying pc gamer, they put all of their reviews and stories on here. there is absolutely no point. its a flaming rip-off anyway, Ł6!! its not even worth it, everything on the dvd is free off the internet and the magazine seems to be getting thinner every month...
I also think the reason to why CTF_Well didn't work out (well, for me at least) is that it seemed to encourage more fighting as mentioned above. However, the map is too large for that, and it is very hard to find someone to team up with. At the same time it is more desolate and free, allowing spies more fun probably. But it really doesn't appeal to me
FFS guys... Where are the grenades????? Particularly the spy ones!! They were imaginative. I still feel like I've lost a limb in TF2 without them!!!! Medic plague was great too!
i dont know why i bother buying pc gamer, they put all of their reviews and stories on here. there is absolutely no point. its a flaming rip-off anyway, Ł6!! its not even worth it, everything on the dvd is free off the internet and the magazine seems to be getting thinner every month...
I also think the reason to why CTF_Well didn't work out (well, for me at least) is that it seemed to encourage more fighting as mentioned above. However, the map is too large for that, and it is very hard to find someone to team up with. At the same time it is more desolate and free, allowing spies more fun probably. But it really doesn't appeal to me
True that man! too big for proper fighting. The real classic maps are the defence and the attcking ones. Dustbowl and Gravlpit! but I must say badlands is a real gem, the best CTF map.
FFS guys... Where are the grenades????? Particularly the spy ones!! They were imaginative. I still feel like I've lost a limb in TF2 without them!!!! Medic plague was great too!
grenades would absolutely wreck TF2 if every class had em.
if your gonna have grenades it should just be 1 or 2 classes, for an alternative unlockable, like a demoman weapon or a pyro smoke grenade.
oh and thats a real shame about overhealer. i really liked the idea of working with the whole team rather than one guy for ages. hopefully what they choose to include will attempt to do this in some other viable way!
i dont know why i bother buying pc gamer, they put all of their reviews and stories on here. there is absolutely no point. its a flaming rip-off anyway, Ł6!! its not even worth it, everything on the dvd is free off the internet and the magazine seems to be getting thinner every month...
i see what u mean kinda, but the computer hurts my eyes late at night and i'd much rather sit down and read some good new material each month.
does anyone else think the heavy should get a super rocket launcher?
i think valve could do a good job giving it a humorous animated look, being so big that only the heavy could physically carry it. i'm thinking huge Worms-style bazookas!
it would make him even slower and its ammo would be limited, but it would be very strong and fun to use.
I think they want to avoid any overlap between the classes, so no-one but the Soldier is likely to get a rocket launcher.
Also, the unlocks are modified versions of the existing weapons for that class, rather than complete replacements.
ooohh.. i didnt know that.
so its going to be a mini gun that fires something else or in a different way?
they could make the the barrel bigger/faster rotating but reduce damage of each bullet or make it more accurate.
i'd like to see something a bit more radical though
(like a minigun that fires rockets!!!!! (but, er, balanced))
edit: or actually i think he could be given a really big one that he has to deploy on the ground and sit with to use (you know like the heavy weapons teams in the Imperial Guard in DoW). that could be a great addition to a defending team
I think they should create a new gun for scout. A machine gun exactly as powerful as heavy weapon guy's but which doesn't need to spin and which doesn't slow you down. One which can fire bullest instantly. And it should be only available for players named Fishermang and who are from Norway and have that particular Steam ID, which I have.
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) and said that it was dropped because they couldn't balance it properly.
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