I found the game incredibly enjoyable before they introduced random drops, crafting and micro transactions. What the game had was a sensible level of balance, classes with a limited array of weapons that were fun to use and the only reason to play it was to actually enjoy yourself.
Now I absolutely hate the game; Its not fun. You might think 'what could these extra features do?' and for I while I was convincing myself 'they're awarded as you play and you shouldn't strive for them' but after a good while it becomes clear: It turns the game into a grinding fest. You could go for ages without getting a weapon (unless of course you don't have time to study and play other games because TF2 is your One True Game) and often times this weapon was a duplicate of something you already had. But that isn't what makes it so irritating, its that the player has no input besides just going on a server.
The achievement system was flawed, but it did the basics of getting a player involved: Set prize, set objective, allow player to achieve objective, give player aforementioned prize. It gives an incentive for the player to do a task and rewards the player for doing so, giving meaning to the task and reward. The item drop is rather thoughtless, giving out items when you die on a particular time of day. There is no incentive, no objective, no reward, especially when it isn't even the item you would have wanted.
The worst insult was the crafting, and the rather hilarious suggestion of using scrap, reclaimed and refined metals to form new weapons and hats. You could craft your duplicates into something else, but its such a cheap method to make those objects worth something. The slow item drop combined with the rather unpredictable nature (some item combinations crafted into two different items, so it was another chance based event and often resulted in sandviches and another valuable item being crafted into sandviches). I don't think I need to talk about how to get the top tier metal through use of scrap and reclaimed, but basically it is a massive waste of time.
I'm not going to go into micro transactions, many people apparently like the idea of giving money to their lord and god. Personally, I think this whole mess could've been avoided by simply rewarding the player for contributing to the team. Say score was turned into currency, and hats and weapons could be bought with it. It has the passiveness of crafting with the player input of achievements. Why not make the prices based on the number of items the player has? So start all items dirt cheap and then increase the virtual cost as they gain more items. It raises the difficulty curve quite smoothly and gives players complete choice over the items that they want.
There you go. I'm not trying to sell Team Fortress to you because your opinion of not liking it is completely justified, as is mine. If you don't like this game, don't convince yourself you'll like it if you play it extensively. The game is very dated, not quite so elegant and fluent due to surrounding competition, and all the jokes and memes get old really quickly. Take what you want from this.
Now I absolutely hate the game; Its not fun. You might think 'what could these extra features do?' and for I while I was convincing myself 'they're awarded as you play and you shouldn't strive for them' but after a good while it becomes clear: It turns the game into a grinding fest. You could go for ages without getting a weapon (unless of course you don't have time to study and play other games because TF2 is your One True Game) and often times this weapon was a duplicate of something you already had. But that isn't what makes it so irritating, its that the player has no input besides just going on a server.
The achievement system was flawed, but it did the basics of getting a player involved: Set prize, set objective, allow player to achieve objective, give player aforementioned prize. It gives an incentive for the player to do a task and rewards the player for doing so, giving meaning to the task and reward. The item drop is rather thoughtless, giving out items when you die on a particular time of day. There is no incentive, no objective, no reward, especially when it isn't even the item you would have wanted.
The worst insult was the crafting, and the rather hilarious suggestion of using scrap, reclaimed and refined metals to form new weapons and hats. You could craft your duplicates into something else, but its such a cheap method to make those objects worth something. The slow item drop combined with the rather unpredictable nature (some item combinations crafted into two different items, so it was another chance based event and often resulted in sandviches and another valuable item being crafted into sandviches). I don't think I need to talk about how to get the top tier metal through use of scrap and reclaimed, but basically it is a massive waste of time.
I'm not going to go into micro transactions, many people apparently like the idea of giving money to their lord and god. Personally, I think this whole mess could've been avoided by simply rewarding the player for contributing to the team. Say score was turned into currency, and hats and weapons could be bought with it. It has the passiveness of crafting with the player input of achievements. Why not make the prices based on the number of items the player has? So start all items dirt cheap and then increase the virtual cost as they gain more items. It raises the difficulty curve quite smoothly and gives players complete choice over the items that they want.
There you go. I'm not trying to sell Team Fortress to you because your opinion of not liking it is completely justified, as is mine. If you don't like this game, don't convince yourself you'll like it if you play it extensively. The game is very dated, not quite so elegant and fluent due to surrounding competition, and all the jokes and memes get old really quickly. Take what you want from this.
