TF2 - Now Free!
<div class="IPBDescription">Valve have made TF2 free for everyone</div><a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/freetoplay/" target="_blank">http://www.teamfortress.com/freetoplay/</a>
TF2 is now free on steam! You will start off with the basic weapons, which are enough to enjoy the game (as they are the weapons the game initially shipped with) and you get random weapon drops, or you can craft weapons. You can also buy weapons from an online store, which you get to keep.
Here are some useful links/servers if you are interested in playing the game:
<!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Server/Site Advertisements Removed. -Talesin<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
I'll keep this post updated with more information as I think of it
TF2 is now free on steam! You will start off with the basic weapons, which are enough to enjoy the game (as they are the weapons the game initially shipped with) and you get random weapon drops, or you can craft weapons. You can also buy weapons from an online store, which you get to keep.
Here are some useful links/servers if you are interested in playing the game:
<!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Server/Site Advertisements Removed. -Talesin<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
I'll keep this post updated with more information as I think of it
Comments
Can you still get hats when you play for free ?
Can you still get hats when you play for free ?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<strike>yep</strike>
<!--quoteo(post=1856091:date=Jun 24 2011, 04:46 PM:name=A_Boojum_Snark)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (A_Boojum_Snark @ Jun 24 2011, 04:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1856091"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Actually no. No hats for freeloaders (the poor and irish!) <a href="http://teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php" target="_blank">http://teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php</a> Free does not get "rare" or "cosmetic" items. So I'd assume only the five hats that grant set effects can be obtained.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If it wasn't already made silly and bad enough with whiney 12 year olds...
A valid point has been made, everyone join! <img src="http://members.home.nl/m.borgman/ns-forum/smileys/youreallwrong.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
"cosmetics" it is :/
Aww I am both poor AND Irish. =[
Oh well I'm sure I'll enjoy it more than the download screen its been sitting at for the past 3 hours...
For 7.5 gig I hope its worth it.
I did actually receive a few cosmetic hats through achievements from others games so HA have that you paying saps !
Haven't a clue how item crafting works but I assume items spawn randomly on the maps ? not that I seen any in the few hours I played.
On a negative note the shop items are pretty expensive for what they are =s
/cynic
THE WONDERS OF FREE-TO-PLAY
Random item drops occur randomly whenever you die or disconnect to the menu. It will pop-up in-game and tell you what you've found or prompt you in the menu that you got new items to view. These aren't items that are visible on the map or anything, they just slap it in your face. Most items can be found through random drops but hats are super rare and things like nametags and paint (only works on hats and misc items) are rare-ish while new weapons happen quite often. You can find around 20 drops in one week before it stops (resets on Wednesday), but then you have to either idle a lot or play for many hours.
Unusual hats (shiny/nice/annoying effects around them) and some other stuff can only be found in crates, which you find randomly, often. To open a crate you need a key, keys are sold in the shop for 2,50 IIRC but can also be traded for. Last xmas gave out one free key to everyone.
It's generally a bad deal to buy anything in the shop unless you are really dedicated to looking FABULOUS or have some kind of real money business dealing with items on ebay or something. The new medic set costs 90dollars :O If you find a friendly server someone might give out free gifts which they bought in the store (random item they don't know themselves what it is) which IIRC could contain some better things than in the random drops.
I got lucky and managed to unpack a unusual hat by opening only two crates ^^
On a sidenote, the F2P is pretty horrible when trying to get a balanced game and plenty of people doing stuff everywhere not appropriate. All while writing and talking in foreign language despite the server having rules stating english only. (Don't point of the fallacy of this)
TL;DR Lots of noobs and newbies, talking crap you don't have a clue about.
EDIT: <a href="http://www.teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php" target="_blank">http://www.teamfortress.com/freetoplay/faq.php</a>
To thank you for your years of support, we will be giving players who have purchased TF2 a special Proof of Purchase hat to wear on any character in-game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Daaaaaaaaamn that's reaaaaaally nice of you!
Joking aside, I don't mind TF2 going F2P as I don't really play it anymore. Sometimes I hop in for a few dozen frags and just ignore all that new stuff, because in the end the good ol' vanilla weapons work just fine. For me, TF2 is and will stay a game to just blow stuff up; if you wish to look even more ridiculous when eating one of my grenades in your face, then be my guest!
Team Fortress 1 for life.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FVJ__rBFxk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FVJ__rBFxk</a>
Why would I actually want to play this when I can play fortress forever? FF has no persistent state(you know, a level playing field?), doesn't shove hintboxes, achievements and other poop in your face every 2 seconds. FF has bunnyhopping, trimping, concing, grenades, det packs, medic infect and appropriately fast player movement(you know, <i>fun</i>?)
Why would I actually want to play this when I can play fortress forever? FF has no persistent state(you know, a level playing field?), doesn't shove hintboxes, achievements and other poop in your face every 2 seconds. FF has bunnyhopping, trimping, concing, grenades, det packs, medic infect and appropriately fast player movement(you know, <i>fun</i>?)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I thought the same thing, but upon trying to play I discovered that that mod is already more dead than NS.
Ah I get it now.
I assumed an actual crate spawned on the map and everyone would descend upon it like a pack of hungry hamsters.
The only thing I've found thus far is a tin a soda or something similar.
You are? But... but... this is the evolution of games! Micro transactions! Darwin stuff! I thought you'd be disappointed?!
Hence why TF2 has crits on most servers. It's not hard to have fun if you randomly get to shoot a rocket that makes half an continent explode and all inhabitants on it. I'm not sure TF2 is so far away from FF in the case of veterans annihilating newbies. There are a million different ways to die without really knowing what happened even if you get a screenshot of your killers grinning face. This has put off most of my friends who tried it beyond the initial start, getting lucky kills from crits or not. They die once to a headshot from a sniper, they focus on evading, they then die to a backstab and try to look back more once they figure that out, then die to a backstab again because they find it silly to shoot your teammates to spycheck all the time, then they die to a random crit...and so on. It's just a lot of lessons coming at you all at once and the unlocks doesn't help them adjusting.
EDIT: If anyone wants a few items to get you going, send a friend invite.
FF makes all these things a lot easier than they were in TFC. Mod was fun when it was released. It died soon after that because TF2 was released and TF2 had insane hype and marketing. TF2 server owners often wanted to make it closer to FF by changing respawn timers. This usually lead to totally broken balance but that's another matter. Over time Valve added fast/interesting game modes to TF2 so it stopped being such a crap designed for blind console gamers with Parkinson's disease.
FF didn't require any bunny hopping to get flag on dustbowl as soldier, get a grenade+rocket jump from middle exit area and fly over the building right into the cap point. This was just ###### amazing thing to do. TF2 is a lot less spectacular but demomen can at least 2 stick far away.
You have to give Valve 1 thing though: it promotes teamplay with default settings. If it takes time to respawn and a lot to refill uber meter then you have to cover your medics and you have to use ubers properly. That results in nice pacing, people helping each other and increasing effort required to hold cap points.
Yeah, that's the biggest reason I don't play TF2 anymore. Originally all the classes were really well defined, then we got the class updates which gave the classes slightly different ways to play.
Now we've got sooooooo many items and some really, really screw with how you play that class.
Anyways, in terms of TF2 vs TFC, boohoo wah wah internet rage machines activated.