TBR said:
Facts for (console) gamers who just don't 'get' TF2:
1/ There is nothing else in any game on any playform that compares to the Spy's many playing styles
2/ No other game has a medic class that has such an impact on gameplay and the outcome of a battle
3/ Nowhere else will you find a better defined and balanced set of extremely different classes, especially after the updates.
Really, if you're saying you've played TF2 and you think the visuals are all that sets it apart, you're either a massive fool or you played it on a console (oh wait).
Ahem, back to talking about the PC gaming race, who are apparently kicking everyone else's arse.
I'd say you missed the main point of innovation for tf2 (Innovative might be the wrong word though, perhaps I should rather stress effort instead).
That is, the depth of the effort that has gone into balancing and tuning the game. I know that sounds rather lame, but if you look through the game in depth, it is very clear that a ridiculous amount of tweaking and polish has gone into the game in order to almost rail-road players into playing the game in a satisfying way, from crits, to finely designed choke points, a huge amount of effort has clearly gone into superbly honing the pacing of the game.
This isn't innovative in the usual sense, however it is rare to find games this well tweaked. In my mind this is where blizzard and valve are most skilled at - Polish.
There are of course a huge amount of other innovative things about their games, but this is what I think really shines through in tf2.
Hardcore_gamer said:
Xzi said:
Item sets that can only be equipped by one class and change the way it functions.
Battlefield 2/2142 already had weapons kits and items that could be configured for each class.
Xzi said:
Unique class abilities such as cloak for spy, fast running for scout, buildings and repairs for engineer, etc. These things do in fact make TF2 unique
No they don't, I could be wrong but I think one of the Star Wars Battlefront tittles had a class that could go invisible. And again, the Battlefield series had already done those other things you mention, overloading your classes with to much shit made them travel slower and engineers could repair structures and vehicles. But even if that weren't the case I think your are missing my point, in order for the game to be unique it would have to be radically different/better then the rest of the games on the market. It isn't enough to just take a tested and a tried formula and then add some new things to do it. The ability to run faster as class X instead of class B or being able to carry 3 items at once instead of 1 does not make a game unique if the core gameplay formula being borrowed is still basically the same.
I think you are dodging, and slightly misunderstanding what he is saying. I too have been playing PC games for a very long time, and no game has done classes like tf2. Similar yes, but the classes are so radically different, and yet so well balanced I haven't seen games at all like it. Battlefront's classes, and battlefields's classes are all quite similar, sure they have their perks and cons, but all of the classes basically can do the same thing as the others. TF2's on the other hand are radically different. And the play styles are totally different. There are other games that do this, however not in the same vein.
What I think a lot of it boils down to is the odd gameplay in that with the exception of the heavy, none of the classes use an automatic weapon outside of situational events where they are not in their forte. Through doing so tf2 has managed to effectively take a lot of the fps genre out of the game, when you think multiplayer fps, you usually think automatic weapons.
