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Valve introduces $100 virtual engagement ring in Team Fortress 2.

I like how they're trying to curb any backlash by announcing it in a jokingly manner because they know that they're seriously trying to sell garbage.

"IT'S TOTALLY USELESS, AND STUUUPID EXPENSIVE. JUST LIKE ANY VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT, LOL.


WE KNOW SOME OF YOU SUCKERS WILL BITE
"
 
OK that's good to hear.



Can you give me the name of it so I can look it up to satisfy my own curiosity? I don't have the time or skill to really get involved in TF2 but I am interested in hearing about it.

The Heavy's spin-up and spin-down time on his minigun, as well as his movement speed while spun up. They buffed it by half a second, while also giving him the items the GRU, (Gloves of Running Urgently, which hurts you -3HP every second while buffing your movement speed to near base speed), and the Sandvich (which can be eaten during a taunt for full health, thrown on the ground and picked up like a health pack to heal yourself or your medic or other teammate for 150HP), and Tomislav (which has a silent spinup and even lesser spin-up time in return for a 20% lower rate of fire).

Together, these (the Tomislav eventually got nerfed, and is currently nerfed in the beta for -50HP) formed the core Heavy loadout, and became the bane of pub servers. A Heavy with a Medic could now sprint to the front line for no health cost, easily engage and disengage from enemies, and heal himself or his Medic on command, thus negating huge parts of the downside to playing Heavy (slow, takes time to spin up, draws fire so difficult to attack without a Medic).

They've done some nerfing though: today they made it so the Heavy can't be healed by throwing their own Sandvich and picking it up; that will just regenerate their Sandvich meter. (A lot of Heavies would throw a Sandvich before fighting, then simply back up onto it once they started getting hurt for an instant 150HP boost).


On a good/skilled server, Heavies of poor or middling can be easily negated. Once the Heavy knows what he's doing, however (or is playing on a casual server filled with unskilled players), it becomes an imbalanced proposition of effort vs. reward: the Heavy puts in little effort, is greatly rewarded, anyone who wants to take out the Heavy has to put in a disproportionate amount of effort to kill him compared to other classes.

It's not game-ruining, but it's an annoyance.
 
Is there a particular piece of equipment you're thinking of in terms of breaking balance or encouraging people to drop money on it to get ahead?

When new weapons first come out, generally Valve forgets to give them crafting recipes (with a few exceptions). So the only ways to get them are A. Random drops, approximately one per hour, no guarantee you'll get anything new or recent, B. Trade with somebody who got one randomly, who will probably want a small mint until the weapon is much more common, C. Craft it via metal and slot tokens and hope it isn't an item slot with 10 different possibilities, like Scout melee, or D. Buy it from the store at an overpriced cost, from which you'll receive it immediately and there are no restrictions on it besides trading. (Which I think they've since relaxed.)

It sounds like a lot of options, but B and D are the only really reliable ones, and with B you're fighting against demand and a limited pool available. A is pure lottery, and C is pretty much a fool's option in most circumstances. You could waste a ton of metal and just repeatedly craft an item from an update two years ago.

Weapons tend to start out OP more often than not too, before Valve starts balancing things, and of course people aren't used to it yet. I didn't get to mess with it, but apparently the Spycicle was amazing for a while.
 
Can you give me the name of it so I can look it up to satisfy my own curiosity? I don't have the time or skill to really get involved in TF2 but I am interested in hearing about it.

Basically the Heavy used to A) Move slower when spun up, and B) Take longer to spin up and spin down.

By reducing these weakness in an attempt to make the Heavy a little more fun to play, Valve reduced a core weakness of the Heavy. Originally the Heavy was very weak to ambushes, if you snuck up on one you would likely win. Now it's much harder.

Another problem was the Sandvich. It's an item which replaces the shotgun. With it, the Heavy can spend 4 seconds eating it to regain his health. Now, the Heavy can also throw it with left click. In which case it functions as a health pack anybody can pick up. The intent was to give it a team helping element by letting the Heavy heal injured team mates. However, the Heavy could himself pick it up. So he could use it to near instantly regain 150 HP. This was pretty unbalanced.

Fortunately, Valve just with this update made it so that if the Heavy picks up his own Sandvich, it just refills the meter that recharges to let him use it again. Now if you want that heal you need to make yourself vulnerable for a few seconds.
 
thus negating huge parts of the downside to playing Heavy (slow, takes time to spin up, draws fire so difficult to attack without a Medic).

Yeah a really helpful GAFfer (who I'm not going to make blush by naming) joined a server with me and gave me tips about always spinning up before rounding a corner so I didn't get caught and have to take a second or two of fire before I shoot. He also played Medic and camped me the whole time so I felt super powerful and survived a lot longer.

I haven't played that item set yet because I guess you need to get so many achievements to unlock them or something but I have seen the Sandvich thing.

Thanks for the info.
 
Hahahah people still pull the "but Capcom/Activision did this with colors and you got angry" shit.

Do note that those colors are just reskins, and do note that in TF2 you can all get a lot of the items via crafting.
 
Would you engage with a $2.50 ring or a $100 dollar ring? It kinda makes sense in that regard.

That said, it's still a pretty stupid idea to begin with.
if the rings are same in quality, then obviously i'd buy the $2.50 one. why is this even a question? it's pretty safe to assume that the dev costs that went into this ring are similar to the dev costs of $0.99 dlc that many other games have.
 
Just wanted to mention I was playing TF2 for about 45 minutes tonight and would say I got a message about the ring every 1-2 minutes.

I wish I had something that could print money like this.
 
If Valve can push out shitty cosmetic items for TF2, they could at least open it up to the Community and let them make shitty cosmetic items for TF2. At least let the community make a bit of cash from it!
 
If Valve can push out shitty cosmetic items for TF2, they could at least open it up to the Community and let them make shitty cosmetic items for TF2. At least let the community make a bit of cash from it!

But... but... that's what they've been doing for years.
 
Can't say I like the idea of this. Reminds me of the EVE Online $85 eye monocle issue.

At least in the sense that CCP were ripped apart by the community for the idea of putting such an expensive cosmetic item in the game IIRC. I don't think the plans for that actually went through though.

Valve seems to get a relatively free pass on this though, no doubt due to the good will they have built up with the PC community.
 
I think the majority of free to play MMORPGs have something like this (engagement/wedding items) in place for role-playing purposes. It's just not a very obvious thing to add to TF2 because of the lack of female characters, as well as the lack of role-playing opportunities.

(They should add female characters for purchase - that'll sell like hotcakes)
 
Company makes money because people with extra money want to buy something that doesn't effect gameplay? Cool, good for Valve.

I'll bitch when they start making money off things that put me at an unfair advantage if I do not have them. I was fine with the Christmas stuff being exclusive. It wasn't a big deal waiting a week to be able to start finding the items.
 
I doubt the ring, a $100 time limited item will actually make more money overall than a $5 item always on the store, and I think Valve knows it. Doesn't seem like moneygrubbing, just a fun event for people who want it.
 
This has been totally worth it to see all the stupid messages people come up with. There have been a few really funny ones in a sea of crap ones.
 
They seriously needed to be cheaper :/

E5CE0419F23D560CAC9E34160E5592D4410C2E54
 
That guy is probably very rich now. Well, maybe not, but I'm sure he's getting a good chunk of money out of this.

Svdl is probably way richer. I can only imagine how much cash he's gotten. He just got another item of his approved and released today.
 
People always buy lots of stupid shit in F2P games. I don't get it either.

They still won't make a clip on what Blizzard will make by selling their WoW mounts though, and that's a game where you buy the box, pay a fee and they take six months to add baby patches with little to no art assets added during a live expansion.
 
This is Valve, so its okay!

Been said a billion times in this thread, and you will get the same response from the majority of people.

"So what?"

If this is bothering you, I'd hate to know how mad you were when the Manconomy came out.
 
This is weird materialist mentality without the actual material.
 
Been said a billion times in this thread, and you will get the same response from the majority of people.

"So what?"

If this is bothering you, I'd hate to know how mad you were when the Manconomy came out.

OH I'm not mad, why would I be mad?
 
Not as bad as the $1000 I'm a rich douche app on the App store but this is still pretty gross.

If you're happy to give Valve a pass on this because of all the good they do, that's fine. just have the balls to admit that's what you're doing and don't okay it off like EA or Activision could get away with it. Just be honest.
 
I'm happy to give Valve a "pass" on this because it's Downloadable Crap, not Downloadable Content. Charging for vanity items and continuing to provide actual content - maps, mini-campaigns, and whatever else other publishers would gladly charge for - for free doesn't rustle my feathers at all, and I imagine this is the case for others, too.

Plus, on a far less eloquent level, I simply don't care because I don't play TF2. :p
 
It's Valve so it's ok.

Pretty much. If this was any other company people would be going ape shit.

I think this is only ridiculous because people will buy it.

If it was Activision this thread would be 5 pages already. Funny how Valve gets a free pass for everything.

Just like horse armor

Good to see the Valve Defense Force is already out in full swing.

If it were anyone but Valve the outrage would be of epic proportions.

EDIT: Don't really care about this personally. Just thought it was amusing.

Imagine if Activision tried to pull this off...

The outcry.

Pretty lame by Valve.

Full of fail.

Go find the first time Blizzard offered pets for WOW for sale. IIRC there was outcry and shitting on Activision.

This is Valve, so its okay!

This thread delivered many chuckles.
 
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