Focused News

Steam Update Released for Team Fortress 2:

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Added "Custom" tab to the server browser

• Servers can now specify metatags describing the custom rules they've adopted
• Players can use tag filtering to find servers running the custom rules they want to play
• Added options for servers who want to become custom games: Disable critical hits
• (tf_weapon_criticals), eliminate respawn times (mp_disable_respawn_times), and raise maxplayers above 24

Initial release of Tournament mode (mp_tournament)

• UI for handling team naming, ready mode, and win results
• Disables team player limits, autobalancing, and intermission

Class balancing

• Reduced Soldier's maximum rocket reserve ammo from 36 to 16
• Reduced Demoman's maximum sticky bomb reserve ammo from 30 to 16
• Reduced Demoman's maximum grenade launcher reserve ammo from 40 to 24

General

• Added protection against voice command spamming. Dramatic reduction in teleporters needed
• Fixed mp_timelimit ending the map during the middle of a round on maps like Dustbowl and GravelPit
• Fixed "lastdisguise" command not remembering if you were disguised as your own team
• Added "Toggle Disguise Team" binding in Options->Keyboard to toggle the disguise team for the Spy's PDA
• Changed PDA menus to accept keys bound to "slot1", "slot2", etc., and "slot10" cancels
• Fixed Spectator targetID not using team colors
• Changed team autobalance code to not balance the teams when the active round timer shows less than 60 seconds
• Fixed "-maxplayers" on the command line not correctly setting the maxplayers value for the server
• Fixed Badlands never having Sudden Death triggered
• Fixed Engineer being able to detonate buildings that are being sapped
• Changed Engineer buildings to detonate when a player disconnects instead of blinking out
• Fixed potential client crash for players being healed by a Medic or dispenser
• Made several improvements to server-side stat reporting (not related to individual player stats)

CitizenSnips

Thats quite an ammo drop for Soldier's and Demo's..

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Kuja

I can see the necessity of the Demoman change, but Soldiers were one of the few classes able to take out a level 3 sentry without using an Uber.

Santa

Ill have to play it more, but I think I like the demoman and soldier changes.

For soldier, ya still have plenty of rockets to take down a sentry w/ a engy on it. Kill the engy, then the sentry, and youll still have more than enough rockets left. Youll also have to pick your shots better rather than just shoot away randomly.

For demoman, itll reduce all the spam. Same as the soldier, youll have to be more careful about when ya shoot instead of just shooting randomly.

Engineer's dispensers will probably have to be built in smarter locations, and people will have to allow demomen and soldiers to pick up ammo first.

Snail

im all for it. And this is coming from a demo lover. Being able to just spam away with nades, i could just hope for a lucky crit and take out a few people. Now i have to be a little more patient and frugal and play a little smarter which is good. Hopefully this will reduce the chaos a tad.

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Tarheel

I like it so far - it definitely didn't seem so spamtastic tonight, with rockets and grenades everywhere.

Like Santa said, this forces people to be more selective in when they shoot. You still have enough ammo to kill stuff, but you don't have enough to mindlessly spam for 4 minutes. I know I found myself quite low on ammo as demo a number of times so had to adjust.

And this will force the engys to build forward dispensers, and not just plop one down behind their turret - which I'm guilty of most of the time myself. Since the enemy won't have as much ammo, your turret and dispenser have somewhat greater odds of staying alive, so it balances out some.

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luuser

I know I for one will definitely be building forward dispensers now.

bleckuhffinity

So does this mean we can up our player count and get 12 v 12 again?

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-F- bleak

Nemesis

The reason we aren't at 12 v 12 is due to the reserved slots system and the plug in that allows us to up it either doesn't work, or isn't allowed by our server provider.

Or something like that.

I agree in that I wish we could be 12 v 12 again but if we want reserved slots, I think we're at the best we can be, for now.

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It's all in the Reflexes.

Zoopy

Bleak is referring to the patch notes where it says they introduced server variables for larger than 24 players. I would up it to 26 (or how ever many needed to get 24 players with slot reservation) only if it doesn't effect how the server is listed in the browser.