Team Fotress 2 is Free!

[subcons]

Saw this this morning when I got to work. Pretty sweet. I loved it when I had Orange Box, but the 360 version lacked all that great content from the PC version with all the custom stuff and updates they've done over time. Downloading it now via Steam. This shit is 10GB now? Jesus.

Ordered a wireless reciever for my 360 controller as well. Looking forwarding to firing this up from my laptop and hooking it up to my television.

 

[Ghost-Dog]

It's probably free because nearly everyone surely owns a copy by now. It's been $5 on Steam more times than I can count.

Still, I think this is a good thing if it gets more people turned on to Valve's games.

 

[RBjakeSpecial]

It's been the only FPS that my brother and I have consistently played over the last two years.

The last Halloween even was amazing.

 

[Moon Jump]

I switched over from the 360 version once I got a PC that could run the game and I never looked back. Still one of the best. It's cool they made it free. I think it's also due to the fact their raking in so much money selling hats and other costume pieces on the online store. So that way you hook them in for free and they end up spending money on hats. Now that City of Heroes is going Free to Play next month a lot of my gaming time is going to be eaten up by that again.

 

[Ghost-Dog]

I just logged in and played a bit, until the power went off. I was doing pretty well as Engineer. I still had my unlocks (Mini Sentry and Frontier Justice combo ftw).

Fun game, I'll try to play more.

 

[subcons]

I was running fairly old hardware for years but recently got a new MacBook Pro that can run this pretty nicely. I never really bothered to get TF2 because I had other stuff to play, but making it free just piqued my interest in it. I'm not really interested in all the microtransaction stuff to be honest. It's nice that Valve can see a profit from that stuff though. Just seems a bit ridiculous to me.

I was just screwing with the tutorials with mouse and keyboard (sloooow day at work here). I'm so rusty with M&K... 360 controller has ruined me. I realize I'll probably get completely owned online using a controller, but I'm not super competetive any ways.

 

[Gigaton Chode]

Free is a bit higher than I'm willing to go. Maybe if they pay me $10, I'll check it out.

 

[Eric]

The free version is missing all of the cosmetic items that have turned the game into the #1 hat warfare simulator but you still get access to all the different weapons (as you unlock and craft them) but you can buy your way into a "premium" account with more backpack space and the ability to trade with just a $5 microtransaction ($5 is the minimum purchase you can make, even though some items are as low as $0.99)

Now it's just a question of whether or not an influx of free players will result in more cheating since all you need to do is create a new free account to bypass any bans.

 

[subcons]

Now it's just a question of whether or not an influx of free players will result in more cheating since all you need to do is create a new free account to bypass any bans.

Valve has accounted for this as mentioned towards the bottom of the FAQ page (link):

Q. Won’t going Free to Play mean more griefers and cheaters?
We’re increasing our focus on making sure that hostile players can’t ruin your fun. Specifically, we’ll be keeping a close eye on players exploiting the ability to make infinite free accounts to bypass bans. We’ve built systems that’ll allow us to measure and track what these players are doing, and respond quickly.

I'd imagine they're sort of doing this to test out these systems as I've seen them mentioned in recent articles about Valve.

 

[Lagduf]

Will download this weekend.

I enjoyed the game on the 360 but the Orange Box version was so gimped I just gave up.

 

[Eric]

I would give you guys some weapons to play around with but the new damn recipes cost so much to craft I'll be spending the next 2 months trying to gather enough materials to make them all.

You'll still be picking up 5-10 a week yourselves so it won't be so bad for long.

 

[Lagduf]

Downloaded and played through the training.

I'm sure I'm a terrible player.

How do I get items - Just by playing?

 

[Moon Jump]

Downloaded and played through the training.

I'm sure I'm a terrible player.

How do I get items - Just by playing?

I'm WAY out of the loop when it comes to getting items in the game. Most of the stuff I have is considered "Vintage" weapons, of what I know there's four ways to get items.

Random Drops. While you play people will randomly get items. Just go into your trunk and equip them.
Crafting. You take the items you get and you can craft them to make new ones. (I have no idea how to make anything so FAQs are your friends)
Buy them straight out in the shop.
Complete Achievements. Each character has a ton of achievements to get. I think it's still up to three per character class.

I really have to boot the game up again. It's going to be hell trying to get into the 2fort2furious (Team Roomba) server with the influx of free to play players now. But they have a lot of great maps on a constant rotation.

 

[subcons]

I've been reading the wiki here and there over the past couple days. Tons of helpful info on there. It looks like it's been getting slammed since this went FtP though, so sometimes it's slow or won't load pages unfortunately.

 

[Eric]

Downloaded and played through the training.

I'm sure I'm a terrible player.

How do I get items - Just by playing?

Make me your coach so I can get a free hat.

It's all about the hats.

To answer your question: you can get 3 items per class by completing a certain number of achievements. I wouldn't worry too much and just play normally, you'll get achievements eventually.
Also, each week you will receive somewhere between 5-10 items just for playing. The items dropped based on a timer and at a certain point (something high like 7-8 hours I think) you'll just stop getting items for that week until the count resets on Wednesday. A message will pop up after a death to let you know something new has dropped into your backpack. You can then go into the backpack from the main menu (or M should be the class loadout shortcut) and equip it.
Crafting comes into play once you get some duplicate items to spare. All the recipes are in the game, though, to look at.

Add me on Steam and I can maybe help you out with some stuff. I'm not the best by any means but at least I could possibly teach you some of the fundamentals.

 

[Lagduf]

Make me your coach so I can get a free hat.

It's all about the hats.

To answer your question: you can get 3 items per class by completing a certain number of achievements. I wouldn't worry too much and just play normally, you'll get achievements eventually.
Also, each week you will receive somewhere between 5-10 items just for playing. The items dropped based on a timer and at a certain point (something high like 7-8 hours I think) you'll just stop getting items for that week until the count resets on Wednesday. A message will pop up after a death to let you know something new has dropped into your backpack. You can then go into the backpack from the main menu (or M should be the class loadout shortcut) and equip it.
Crafting comes into play once you get some duplicate items to spare. All the recipes are in the game, though, to look at.

Add me on Steam and I can maybe help you out with some stuff. I'm not the best by any means but at least I could possibly teach you some of the fundamentals.

Thanks, adding you.

 

[Lagduf]

Some more questions:

What's everyone's favorite class and why?

Do you guys find you generally stick to a single class or do you change it up as needed?

If I were to spend money on TF2 (buy an item, etc) what would being a paid/premium player do for me?

 

[Lagduf]

Also it's kind of lame that if you don't have a paid for Steam game that you can't use the steam voice chat client while in a game. I have several steam games but some of my friends only have TF2 and Alien Swarm. My friends are cheapskates.

 

[Reality Check]

Some more questions:

What's everyone's favorite class and why?

Do you guys find you generally stick to a single class or do you change it up as needed?

If I were to spend money on TF2 (buy an item, etc) what would being a paid/premium player do for me?

I like to play as Pyro and Medic. Pyro's are ambush specialists and you don't need to aim to effectively use the flamethrower. I play Medic because I like to use support classes.

I change it up depending on the team. Since most teams I end up on never has a medic in the beginning I start off as one.

 

[Phoenix Down]

Just started playing this again after hearing the news. Seems like there's a lot of people online with this now.

I also realized that I now suck at the game as I haven't used a keyboard + mouse in a while.

 

[Moon Jump]

I pretty much stick to Heavy, Medic, Engy (If I know the map) and Pyro. I can't Snipe worth shit, it's a lot harder to be a Spy and I'm not good with explosive splash damage with the Soldier and Demoman. If I'm playing on a new map I'll usually play as a Medic and follow the number one ranked player on the team so I know where to go. Then when I usually know what I'm doing I'll play Heavy.

 

[subcons]

I like to play as Pyro and Medic.

Due to the fact I'm planning on playing this with a controller, these are the two classes I'm eyeballing as my main because they dont require twitch aiming as much. No way I'll be able to play with a soldier, scout, or demo against people using M+KB.

 

[Lagduf]

I adjusted to KB + Mouse pretty quick.

 

[Ghost-Dog]

Controllers are a weakness in PC FPS, you should really try to adapt to a Mouse and Keyboard if you can. You could probably have some success with classes that require less finesse as far as aiming goes. Engineer, Medic and Demoman would probably be okay, as you don't really need a lot of pinpoint aiming. You could also probably do Soldier a bit as well.

I normally stick to Pyro, Engineer and Heavy, with the occasional Medic when needed. Lately though, with some of the unlocks I've been trying Demoman, Sniper and Scout some more, and having a lot of fun. Spy is the only class I pretty much never play, which is odd because I used to roll as one all the time in Team Fortress Classic.

 

[Lagduf]

Sooo...is there any way to make sure that if I want to play with a couple of my friends that we'll be on the same team? Seems like after every round the teams get auto-adjusted. I guess that's depends on the server though. I just want to play with my friends and not against them.