14 DAY TRIAL // Valve is one of the biggest companies involved in gaming, particularly in the segment dedicated to the PC platform. Seeing as how its games were the basis for many multiplayer titles, like Counter Strike, the competitive side of gaming also preoccupied the game developer.
One of its most successful titles and the one that managed to steal the crown from Counter Strike as the most popular online FPS is Team Fortress 2. The title has seen a lot of updates and patches added in recent months, all bringing in some pretty big changes for every player, whether he was a more casual or a hardcore one.
That is why, according to TF2 developer Robin Walker, a close beta test is currently underway, where large European and American TF2 clans are invited in order to further tweak the balancing issues that are encountered throughout the game after the release of the patches.
“The TF2 Beta is something we've just started running,” Walker said. “It's aimed at filling a hole in TF2's iterative development model. To iterate effectively, we need to be able to measure the impact of our changes. Up until now we've been successful at measuring that impact on the non-competitive TF2 community, because we have good internal proxies for it – the TF2 team itself, plus other internal and external playtesters. Our proxies for the high end competitive play aren't as good, and that's led to us making some design decisions that have hurt it.”
But don't think that this move towards the more hardcore players will affect the way the game is played by users who aren't as adept or as dedicated to it. “This doesn't reflect any change of our attitude towards non-competitive TF2 play, it's just going to give us more data,” Walker added. “We'll continue to talk and listen to the non-competitive TF2 players, as we have done in the two years since we shipped. The more data we have, the more effective we'll be as we continue striving for design choices that work for all TF2 players.”
Overall, this is certainly a great thing for players who complained about the new item drop system and about the fact that TF2 was becoming more and more open to new players. Hopefully we will see some new balancing issues solved as a result of this joint effort between Valve and the professional gamer community.