Popular Hat Simulator Team Fortress 2 Going Competitive

[PatrickJS]

Popular Hat Simulator Team Fortress 2 Going Competitive

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Nearly nine years after its initial release, Valve's Team Fortress 2 is getting a competitive matchmaking mode.

Nine years on, and The Orange Box continues to impress - I even keep a (totally unnecessary) physical copy on my bookshelf. Portal has never stopped making people think, and laugh; Half-Life 2 is still an incredible single-player experience; and Team Fortress 2 remains one of the most regularly played games on the planet.

The latter game's goofy characters, sharp level design, and constant barrage of updates and options has kept the players' interest steady like a Heavy's ammo by the Dispenser. It's a strangely low-pressure first-person shooter, until now. Hold on to your hats, folks: it's time to get serious.

Over nine months ago, preparing to enter the beta [http://www.teamfortress.tv/24792/valve-and-competitive-tf2]. Details are scarce, but they should start flowing in once gamers get their hands on the ladder.

Curiously, this is the second venerable PC game in a month [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/166107-Age-of-Mythology-Gets-Its-First-Expansion-in-Twelve-Years-on-January-28th#&gid=gallery_5527&pid=1] to get a major new addition.

The speculation is that this may be a move in response to Blizzard's own new IP, Overwatch. The two games appear to have a great deal in common [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/14911-Comparison-of-Overwatch-and-Team-Fortress-2-Competitive-FPSes] - they are each class-based team shooter games, in colorful settings with fun characters doing horrible things to one another. Overwatch, though, is hoping to rise in the ranks as an esports staple, like several of Blizzard's other games.

With TF2 in the competition, though, it's hard to say if Blizz's baby will end up on top. Time will tell, and I won't say who I'm rooting for.

It occurs to me now that there may be some readers who are not familiar with TF2. I recently described it to a friend as, "you know how in Hateful 8, there's a haberdashery that doesn't allow hats? It's the opposite of that." I'm sure you Escapists can come up with a better description.

Source: Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/42zxq5/team_fortress_2_competitive_beta_signup_and/]










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[Rack]

Competitive Team Fortress 2? How would that even work? Do you have independant judges on which team has the best, most interesting and coherent hats?

 

[The Great JT]

Competitive Team Fortress 2? How would that even work? Do you have independant judges on which team has the best, most interesting and coherent hats?

They give bonus points for coordination of Cosmetics and a rainbow assortment of Max's Severed Heads.

 

[Geisterkarle]

Well, probably in case of a draw, the teams have to play Yahtzee's Hatfall to determine the winner!

 

[Lightspeaker]

Competitive Team Fortress 2? How would that even work? Do you have independant judges on which team has the best, most interesting and coherent hats?

From what I vaguely recall back in the day comp TF2 was traditionally 6v6 with league-enforced class restrictions. I used to watch a bit but this was many, many moons ago (that is to say I bought it at launch and I've not played the game or watched it in about four years) so I might be remembering details incorrectly. Teams were usually one medic, two soldiers (a "pocket" protecting the medic and a roaming soldier), two scouts and a utility player who would usually play demo but you sometimes very occasionally saw them rotate off for one of the other classes. I seem to remember them being very picky about what weapons you could use as the new ones dropped though given the godawful mess that the game is these days I wouldn't be surprised if they'd outright banned anything except default loadouts.

God knows how Valve will put something like that in though. The whole weapon-drop system is horrendously anti-competitive in nature inherently, but would they go so far as to put similar restrictions in that the leagues used to do?

 

[Airon]

You can check in to the competitive scene via http://teamfortress.tv

There you will find plenty of links to people streaming or posting in those forums, amongst them people participating in the beta of matchmaking.

Matchmaking has been a request of the community for years, and last year players and other community members were invited to talk to the TF2 team about this matter, after the community sent a letter to the TF2 team. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that Blizzards activity would have something to do with it. Personally I hope it's both, giving them all the reasons to give the community around this game what they desire.

Details on how this matchmaking will work are being hashed out right now. They want to get it right, and like the game it will be a work-in-progress.

I'm part of that community, being a fan of the game, an avid audience member of matches, a player(non-competitive) and the sound mixer for the online stream of several TF2 LAN tournaments via Teamfortress.tv and Extelevsion, as well as a (somewhat)monthly show on the Top10 plays of league and tournament play of TF2.

I'm hoping this matchmaking will make the game more fun and look forward to trying it out when it comes out of beta.

 

[The Enquirer]

Competitive Team Fortress 2? How would that even work? Do you have independant judges on which team has the best, most interesting and coherent hats?

From what I vaguely recall back in the day comp TF2 was traditionally 6v6 with league-enforced class restrictions. I used to watch a bit but this was many, many moons ago (that is to say I bought it at launch and I've not played the game or watched it in about four years) so I might be remembering details incorrectly. Teams were usually one medic, two soldiers (a "pocket" protecting the medic and a roaming soldier), two scouts and a utility player who would usually play demo but you sometimes very occasionally saw them rotate off for one of the other classes. I seem to remember them being very picky about what weapons you could use as the new ones dropped though given the godawful mess that the game is these days I wouldn't be surprised if they'd outright banned anything except default loadouts.

God knows how Valve will put something like that in though. The whole weapon-drop system is horrendously anti-competitive in nature inherently, but would they go so far as to put similar restrictions in that the leagues used to do?

This matchmaking could just be a simple ELO system when putting you into matches against similarly skilled players. I certainly hope it's more than that and actually allows you to team up with friends first, but I really don't know. If it doesn't that almost seems like it would defeat the purpose.

 

[Johnson McGee]

Despite my liking for TF2 I just can't seem to get interested at all in Overwatch. I don't know why.

 

[Naldan]

It occurs to me now that there may be some readers who are not familiar with TF2. I recently described it to a friend as, "you know how in Hateful 8, there's a haberdashery that doesn't allow hats? It's the opposite of that." I'm sure you Escapists can come up with a better description.

Like Overwatch, but with hats. Hue Hue.

I really wonder if they can pull this off. Cartoony games of that degree have it hard to get taken seriously.

Maybe both will fly. Like DOTA2 and LOL. And imo, these two are even more similar to each other than TF2 and Overwatch.

 

[ShakerSilver]

That may make up constantly needed to find other servers because most of them had devolved into friendly-fests whenever I play. This is why TF2C is superior.

 

[Link XL1]

while i never really got into hat sim 2, kudos to valve for showing such support to a 10 year old game. if only my favorite shooters could get such love