TF2 is probably the last video game I'll ever put significant time into. For being a multiplayer, non-story driven game, it is still one of the best games I've ever played.
I am a little miffed that they never upgraded the console versions and I've never really played it on PC. But I'm glad they're still able to get life out of the game, considering they've been upgrading it (the PC/Mac versions) well past its shelf life. It's an inspiring example for other developers with games that aren't commercially viable yet still have a well-knit community.
I tried this game a while ago and i am surprised how versatile and fun an ego shooter can be.
The thing is, all these big ideas (Spy, Engineer) who are implemented are balanced and working. This is just possible because it is not a dead line driven development.
Most of the game industry is still working with hype and big releases, but the most successful ones are incrementally developed. World of Warcraft and Minecraft for example. Community feedback, frequently new content and constant balancing/bug fixing creates the best games.
TF2 showed this is not just possible for MMORPG's, the best genre games are yet to come.
I thought the same thing and never thought I would find another game that could replace it. Then Hi-Rez came out of nowhere and redid the one other shooter that could pull me away. Tribes. I haven't touched TF2 since I got into the beta.
Tribes is also free to play and I'm curious to see how things evolve compared to TF2. Currently there aren't any things such as 'hats'. In fact, you spend your experience to just unlock the basic classes. I doubt that strategy would have worked well with TF2 since a lot of their balancing comes from the various classes.
TF2 was a masterstroke for Valve in PR. I paid $40 for TF2 and I felt like the value that it gave over the past 5 years has more than exceeded what I paid for it. It has generated a huge amount of goodwill towards Valve and Steam that will help anchor them in the PC gaming industry for years to come. It will be interesting to see where they're taking Steam and the PC platform in the near future, especially given all the talk about a possible console.
I thought the way they used the "Meet the Team" teasers was really clever:
"Each content update started with a teaser trailer that hinted at several possible new items or features, and Valve developers would monitor the community reaction in the forums to determine which aspects caught the players' attention."
I had seen these, and had always thought Valve already planned out what was going to be included. Like magicians, they set themselves up for victory - no matter what the player ends up wanting.
One of the most interesting things about the TF2 story is that they opened up custom item creation to the community, and allowed players to actually profit from designing and uploading objects to the store. I remember reading a quote from Gabe Newell mentioning that some of the top player sellers were making over $30,000 / month from their creations.
edit: If in game, player driven markets are the sort of thing that interests you: keep an eye out for Diablo 3's real money auction house.
Honestly, the conversion was probably the lowest risk move Valve could have made(short of a new IP) for Free-to-play conversion.
When Valve moved the game to F2P, the game was out for almost 4 years. By that point, basically everyone that was ever going to buy the game had purchased it. Plus, Valve already had the loot chase built into the game(random drops were added in 2009, IIRC). And while it's popularity wasn't waning, it was still usually the third place game on Steam's total users list behind CS:Source and CS 1.3.
So they basically had full market saturation for their product, and probably weren't seeing much new revenue even when they did major content updates. By making the game free, they opened the door to a LOT more people, and allowed them to get a lot more revenue from both new and long time players. I've spent probably somewhere around $40 in hats and weapons since the conversion.
The truly brilliant thing that Valve did was make the transition absolutely seamless for the veteran players. Outside of a few new buttons on the main menu and a very unobtrusive news section that advertised changes, the overall experience didn't change at all for them.
Not that it's massively important, but since it's fairly important in my company I feel the need to correct you: CS 1.6 since 2003! 1.3 is commonly considered the best version, though.
I feel like everything that's happened to TF2 is just a sneak peek into what will happen once Valve ships Defense of the Ancients 2.
The question is, how will they balance a hardcore gaming community which hates paying to get better (stats-wise) items vs monetizing F2P? Will they charge only for cosmetic items, or will they drive away their core Dota fanbase?
I've suspected this for a while as well. I think many of the features we've seen released in tf2 has grown directly out of the development of DOTA2. Valve has practically admitted as much in the past by saying tf2 is a place where they experiment.
Let's consider:
* Replay system
* Training system
* Coaching System
* Microtransactions
* Trading interface
* Community Submissions + submission royalties
Who knows what else? At this point, I think tf2's success is going to influence DOTA2, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if DOTA2 is released free to play.
I probably won't ever play DOTA2, but I'm thankful for all the improvements to tf2 over the last few years. I'm just hoping for some mainly bug fix patches to be released soon as this point.
TF2 is a glimpse into that - you can pay for weapons that are different, but not strictly better.
The Degreaser flamethrower in TF2, for example, is a non-stock item that lets you switch weapons faster, but also reduces the burn duration of enemies you set on fire.
Hell, you don't even need to be trying to monetize to screw this up. See: Modern Warfare multiplayer and its propensity for handing strictly better weapons to veteran players, resulting in even more lopsidedness in matches.
I used to be semi-addicted to TF2, until it became free to play.
The massive increase in poorly balanced weapons and items and the flood of newbie players who were not that interested in the 'team' aspect of 'team fortress' really killed the fun for me.
There was a similar effect with major releases before it became free to play. I particularly remember the engineer update - for about a week that's the only class 1/2 the team would want to play, so good luck being Blue (attacking) on a pipeline map (for example).
I'll try it again one day soon so see if things have settled down, but I think that the commercial success came at the cost of game quality.
I wish they'd do something to encourage the 'team' aspect. Too many people just rack up their own personal score or work on individual achievements. They could slightly increase drops for being on the winning team or open up some new team-based achievements like the Foundry ones.
Sometimes it depends on the servers. I'm pretty good at FPS's and found that weapons aren't really unbalanced and using the default weapon set you can do pretty well (I've mainly played only soldier). A recommended look at servers would be the reddit ones
Personally I liked TF2 when it first came out (before achievement based upgrades came out) and felt that the updates and new weapons and especially after hats and such came out were all too much. My problem is probably that I was a hardcore counter-strike player and TF2 really turned into a pub oriented game.
It is still fun to play a week every few months if you can find a decent server to play in.
I put a bunch of time in recently in getting decent at pyro and the main thing that pisses me off about the game as it is now is that there are a number of hard counters designed into the game system that are hard to overcome. For example, my game plan going against heavies, engineers, scouts and to some degree soldiers is "gee, I hope he's an idiot" which works sometimes but doesn't make me thrilled.
Probably this is the habits I learned on mediocre pubbie servers coming back to bite me, and I need to learn to be less aggressive all the time, but it still rankles.
As someone who plays Pyro a lot, there are two things to realize: playing (good) Pyro is hard, and pick your fights. Being a melee class, you have to know which battles you can win, and which you can't. So the "hope he's an idiot" approach may work, just judge your opponents before committing to the fight. Know how and when to use your airblast, secondary, and melee.
Yes, it can be rather annoying to play, but in the long run, it gets better. In organized matches, the Pyro is a rather critical part of the team. Both the Engineer and the Medic depend on him/her for their protection. If you get any satisfaction from helping your team, that makes it worth it.
I am a little miffed that they never upgraded the console versions and I've never really played it on PC. But I'm glad they're still able to get life out of the game, considering they've been upgrading it (the PC/Mac versions) well past its shelf life. It's an inspiring example for other developers with games that aren't commercially viable yet still have a well-knit community.