Team Fortress 2 Competitive Beta Thoughts ~ Select, Start, Blog

It's rather astounding that after 9 years Valve has still dedicated time updating and adding more content to their shooter game Team Fortress 2 (TF2 for short). The game has grown insanely popular over the years due to it's rather fun and silly style of shooter combat, humourous characters and with the game being a Free to Play experience as of 2011. Recently Valve has decided to implement more elements in TF2 with that of another shooter series called Counter Strike. Now Counter Strike in terms of gameplay is practically nothing like TF2. CS is more of a "realistic" shooter where as TF2 is a lot more cartoonish and silly in design (any game that let's you use a Fish or jar of urine as a weapon cannot be seen as a serious realistic game). However what Valve is planning to do is add in a Competitive mode for TF2 with leaderboards, a ranking system and much more focus on team co-ordination and strategy compared to the more casual style of play. The casual play isn't going anywhere, the competitive mode is just acting as an alternative mode of play. I was luckily given a beta invite a little while ago so going to share some thoughts so far. I'll split this into a positive and negative post to explain a bit more

The famous 9 TF2 classes

The basic setup for TF2 is players on the Red team and Blu team can choose between 9 different classes that all specify in different roles. Scouts are fast little glass canons and focus on getting to the battle and to the objectives as fast as possible, Heavie's help to hold down objectives and act like a walking tank to take a lot of damage, Medic's focus on healing team mates and keeping them alive and so on. There are a multitude of different game modes with different objectives players can take part in but for the most part I will be focussing on the one currently used in the Competitive Beta which is Control Points. There are 5 Control points on any map for this game mode, 2 for Red, 2 for Blu and 1 is neutral in the centre. Teams must try their best to capture the neutral point in order to allow themselves access to one of the opposing teams coloured points and proceed to try and capture all of the Control Points by standing on them for a period of time. Teams can also revert already Captured Points back to their own teams colour in order to push back until one team has successfully capture the final point near the enemy teams base. Right now the Competitive Beta only includes this mode and limits teams to a 6v6 scenario with only 12 players in total playing. As a result, players must successfully choose the correct classes from the total of 9 in combination with their limited team size and overall team co-ordination and skills to win rounds.

Teamwork can be fun:

As odd as it may sound, actually working together as part of a team can be very enjoyable and a true test of skills. When players are actively making an effort to support one another and plan the best course of action to attack or defend points it can be really satisfying to outplay the enemy team. It's all the more satisfying to win when both teams tried their absolute best.

Competitive Meta:

Due to the limit in players in 6v6, which classes people play is far more important. The standard competitive line up consists of 2 Scouts, 2 Soldiers, 1 Demoman and 1 Medic. This creates a solid balance of players who can aggressively capture and heavily defend points using heir mobility to zip from point to point. All the while keeping their health topped up from the Medic healing them, hopefully building up the famous invincible Ubercharge to push through to the last point. With less classes involved in most matches it allows for players to focus and hone their skills more specifically for playing as and combating those 4 classes.

New Modes:

While not out yet officially, Valve do intend to implement more competitive formats into TF2. In addition to the 6v6 format they will also include a 9v9 format known as "Highlander". To quote the famous movie it takes it's name from "There can be only one"...of each class. This mode requires players to all take up a role as one of the 9 mercenary classes in the game each meaning all classes are being used in this match and no two of the same class are on a single team. This puts way more emphasis on players actually doing the job of a particular class properly in order to succeed as they can't switch to another class already being used to make up for the lack of defends, fire power or healing of a single class making the desire for players who are particularly skilled at a certain class to be on each team. It's a nice idea having people essentially do the equivalent of Job interviews for each class, looking to bring the best player of a particular class onto their team for the best results.

I'll continue this little discussion on another post tomorrow to go over some of the downsides to this mode as it stands just now.