Better Late than Never?
Instead of covering the launch of the Team Fortress 2 Halloween Event, I decided I’d do a wrap up at the end of it. It seems that this is partly what Valve has been building towards with the addition of the hats and medals.
It all started off last Thursday. Suddenly Valve Teased us with the latest Update. A Halloween themed map and a pair of new Halloweenish hats. The difference was that these Halloween Hats could be earned through achievements. The current hat system involves sitting on “Idle Servers” for approximately 5000 hours, not playing the game, in hopes that you’ll be randomly given a had through the broken drop system.
Ok, technically you still get drops on regular servers but in order to get enough hours in to actually ever get a hat drop you’ll likely have to set up a second computer that does nothing but idles on TF2 24/7 for approximately “forever”.
In order to facilitate these Event Hats, 5 new Halloween Achievements were put into place. None of these were particularly special though they all had to be done on the special map, KOTH_Harvest_Event, or they wouldn’t count (more on the map later).
The real issue present here was, are these achievements, and their related Hats, and even the map itself, time sensitive? The implication of Valve was that they would only be valid from 10/29 through 11/2. So now we have everyone scrambling to get these limited time achievements (I got all 5 to keep my perfect achievement record). Also it was unclear as to who, if anyone, would be able to keep their new hats.
Why if anyone?
The first hat, the Ghastly Gibus, is a beat up old top hat. You can earn one by “Dominating a Player Wearing the Gibus”. How can you dominate someone who doesn’t have the hat to begin with? This presents a bit of a chicken and the egg problem. Fortunately, Valve thought of this. On the first day, they had a give away similar to their Soldier Medal give away. The first 10,319 (10/31/09, Halloween’s Date) people to sign up would get a Gibus dropped into their inventory.
I got one of the free initial hats for both of my TF2 accounts so pbbtbtbt.
The second had is the “Mildly Disturbing Paper Mask”. This hilarious hat is basically a paper lunch sack that goes over the characters head. It features one of several different designs, chosen randomly. It looks hilarious on the Pyro but then, everything looks hilarious on the Pyro.
The Paper Sack Hat has a special feature listed as a Holiday Limitation of Halloween.
This brings us to the point where everyone is unclear of what’s going on after Halloween. It’s suspected that the Gibus is good forever but the Mask is only good for Halloween. No one knew if Valve would let us keep the Mask for use next year. Also there was some speculation that only the initial 10319 people would be allowed to keep their Gibus.
Also it was unclear if KOTH_Harvest_Event would be playable after the holiday. They also released normal KOTH_Harvest at the same time. Finally, with the limited date timeframe, no one knew if the achievements would be achievable after the Holiday was over.
This created of course, quite a crazy fervor for the map, the achievements and the hats. If this was a limited engagement, no one wanted to miss out.
Though I’m not quite ready to get into if this fervor was justified yes (Ok, here’s a secret, my as I write this my home internet is down so I won’t be able to know the answer until I get to work and wrap this article up…)
As for not missing out, Valve also went nuts on this area too. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, they had a limited time, 2 hour, “Fire Sale” on TF2. You could pick the game up each day for around $2.50. A price that was ridiculously low. I bought a second copy for future use at that price. I considered buying a third to give away in a contest here but I wasn’t sure if I could do it and actually get it to work properly (later I learned how I could handle this in the future).
This potentially tells us a few things about TF2. Lots of people question how long Valve can keep providing free updates and content for TF2. This super sale could be a last ditch attempt to met some sort of “end of the month budget” requirement. I’ll argue that the free content keeps new people interested and that the development cost for TF2’s new content is extremely low since they source a lot of the maps from the community and things like Hats and Weapons are basic 3D model tweaks. Basically, sales may be dropping due to market saturation. Only so many people will EVER be interested at any price. On the other hand, maybe there’s nothing sinister going on and they simply are giving the community a good deal.
Back to the update itself however. Let’s look at the map. KOTH_Harvest is apparently a community map. I find it hilarious that of all of the community maps they adopt as official maps, I’ve only ever played or even heard of one of them beforehand. When I’m not playing 24/7 2Fort I play on several servers that rotate between odd maps (mostly the 2Fort2Furious server). That being said, I’ve never played this map.
Possibly for good reason too. This map sucks.
It reminds me of Arean_Lumberyard only smaller and crappier. The small size of this map is part of why it sucks so much. It’s ridiculously easy to spawn camp, for starters. There’s only like 2 routs through the entire map that overlap a few times. It’s wide open so Snipers have an easy time picking people off from anywhere, at the same time, it’s wide open so Snipers can easily be picked off by enemy snipers without even knowing where the enemy Sniper was. The central control point is impossible to properly defend since there isn’t any good place on the entire map to place a sentry gun.
The Event version had some fun and interesting gimmicks but sadly they were hampered by the overall sucking of the maps’ layout. The small cluttered layout basically means you get a big cluster fuck of Solder and Pyros just randomly blasting everywhere. Also Scouts are everywhere on this map. Engineer is useless, spy is almost useless due to all of the random fire noise. Medics and heavies get picked off too easily by the snipers. It’s just messed up and confusing. Also, it may be due to the Halloween decorations everywhere but this map is laggy as hell. I’ve seen many people complain about this map’s lag.
Bottom line, now that I have the achievements, I won’t be playing this map anymore.
NOTE: As of the posting of this the map is still there as is the paper bag and as far as I know since I got them all anyway, the achievements still work.
Instead of covering the launch of the Team Fortress 2 Halloween Event, I decided I’d do a wrap up at the end of it. It seems that this is partly what Valve has been building towards with the addition of the hats and medals.
It all started off last Thursday. Suddenly Valve Teased us with the latest Update. A Halloween themed map and a pair of new Halloweenish hats. The difference was that these Halloween Hats could be earned through achievements. The current hat system involves sitting on “Idle Servers” for approximately 5000 hours, not playing the game, in hopes that you’ll be randomly given a had through the broken drop system.
Ok, technically you still get drops on regular servers but in order to get enough hours in to actually ever get a hat drop you’ll likely have to set up a second computer that does nothing but idles on TF2 24/7 for approximately “forever”.
In order to facilitate these Event Hats, 5 new Halloween Achievements were put into place. None of these were particularly special though they all had to be done on the special map, KOTH_Harvest_Event, or they wouldn’t count (more on the map later).
The real issue present here was, are these achievements, and their related Hats, and even the map itself, time sensitive? The implication of Valve was that they would only be valid from 10/29 through 11/2. So now we have everyone scrambling to get these limited time achievements (I got all 5 to keep my perfect achievement record). Also it was unclear as to who, if anyone, would be able to keep their new hats.
Why if anyone?
The first hat, the Ghastly Gibus, is a beat up old top hat. You can earn one by “Dominating a Player Wearing the Gibus”. How can you dominate someone who doesn’t have the hat to begin with? This presents a bit of a chicken and the egg problem. Fortunately, Valve thought of this. On the first day, they had a give away similar to their Soldier Medal give away. The first 10,319 (10/31/09, Halloween’s Date) people to sign up would get a Gibus dropped into their inventory.
I got one of the free initial hats for both of my TF2 accounts so pbbtbtbt.
The second had is the “Mildly Disturbing Paper Mask”. This hilarious hat is basically a paper lunch sack that goes over the characters head. It features one of several different designs, chosen randomly. It looks hilarious on the Pyro but then, everything looks hilarious on the Pyro.The Paper Sack Hat has a special feature listed as a Holiday Limitation of Halloween.
This brings us to the point where everyone is unclear of what’s going on after Halloween. It’s suspected that the Gibus is good forever but the Mask is only good for Halloween. No one knew if Valve would let us keep the Mask for use next year. Also there was some speculation that only the initial 10319 people would be allowed to keep their Gibus.
Also it was unclear if KOTH_Harvest_Event would be playable after the holiday. They also released normal KOTH_Harvest at the same time. Finally, with the limited date timeframe, no one knew if the achievements would be achievable after the Holiday was over.
This created of course, quite a crazy fervor for the map, the achievements and the hats. If this was a limited engagement, no one wanted to miss out.
Though I’m not quite ready to get into if this fervor was justified yes (Ok, here’s a secret, my as I write this my home internet is down so I won’t be able to know the answer until I get to work and wrap this article up…)
As for not missing out, Valve also went nuts on this area too. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, they had a limited time, 2 hour, “Fire Sale” on TF2. You could pick the game up each day for around $2.50. A price that was ridiculously low. I bought a second copy for future use at that price. I considered buying a third to give away in a contest here but I wasn’t sure if I could do it and actually get it to work properly (later I learned how I could handle this in the future).
This potentially tells us a few things about TF2. Lots of people question how long Valve can keep providing free updates and content for TF2. This super sale could be a last ditch attempt to met some sort of “end of the month budget” requirement. I’ll argue that the free content keeps new people interested and that the development cost for TF2’s new content is extremely low since they source a lot of the maps from the community and things like Hats and Weapons are basic 3D model tweaks. Basically, sales may be dropping due to market saturation. Only so many people will EVER be interested at any price. On the other hand, maybe there’s nothing sinister going on and they simply are giving the community a good deal.
Back to the update itself however. Let’s look at the map. KOTH_Harvest is apparently a community map. I find it hilarious that of all of the community maps they adopt as official maps, I’ve only ever played or even heard of one of them beforehand. When I’m not playing 24/7 2Fort I play on several servers that rotate between odd maps (mostly the 2Fort2Furious server). That being said, I’ve never played this map.
Possibly for good reason too. This map sucks.
It reminds me of Arean_Lumberyard only smaller and crappier. The small size of this map is part of why it sucks so much. It’s ridiculously easy to spawn camp, for starters. There’s only like 2 routs through the entire map that overlap a few times. It’s wide open so Snipers have an easy time picking people off from anywhere, at the same time, it’s wide open so Snipers can easily be picked off by enemy snipers without even knowing where the enemy Sniper was. The central control point is impossible to properly defend since there isn’t any good place on the entire map to place a sentry gun.
The Event version had some fun and interesting gimmicks but sadly they were hampered by the overall sucking of the maps’ layout. The small cluttered layout basically means you get a big cluster fuck of Solder and Pyros just randomly blasting everywhere. Also Scouts are everywhere on this map. Engineer is useless, spy is almost useless due to all of the random fire noise. Medics and heavies get picked off too easily by the snipers. It’s just messed up and confusing. Also, it may be due to the Halloween decorations everywhere but this map is laggy as hell. I’ve seen many people complain about this map’s lag.
Bottom line, now that I have the achievements, I won’t be playing this map anymore.
NOTE: As of the posting of this the map is still there as is the paper bag and as far as I know since I got them all anyway, the achievements still work.
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