Mann Up in Team Fortress 2 Co-Op

[Karloff]

Mann Up in Team Fortress 2 Co-Op

Now we know what kind of bounty those Team Fortress 2 mercs are fighting for.

canteens that, say, boosted ammo clip sizes or gave you a personal ubercharge, and special new abilities for your favourite character type [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119042-New-Team-Fortress-2-Co-Op-Mode-Unites-Red-and-Blu]. Day three is finally here, and players now know what they have to do to Mann Up and get into the combat zone. They also know what they have to look forward to when they get there.

First, the bennies: a swarm of new awards, including such gems as Metal Massacre (destroy 1,000,000 robots - yikes!) to Ctrl+Assault+Delete (destroy a sentry buster before it reaches its target), and many more. You also get a Tour of Duty badge once you successfully complete at least one mission, which will be updated each time you gain another glorious victory. Enough glorious victories will complete the Tour, which gets you onto the next - more difficult - Tour tier. Blow up enough of the metal menaces and you get items - scraps of new costume by the look of it - that don't affect game play, but do look cool. There's also a rare item drop if you complete all missions in a Tour of Duty, and the chance to get more items by turning in Vouchers, which can be bought or earned in-game.

Next, Mann Up! That's what Valve's calling its new game mode. The player has two options: play on non-Mann Co servers, or on official manly Mann Co servers. Those not wanting to go official still get loot drops as they would in a normal Team Fortress 2 match, and all of the missions are out there so there's no missing out on game play. This mode is also free-to-play. In order to Mann Up you need to have a Tour of Duty ticket, which will cost you a mere $0.99. Once you present your ticket you can get into the official servers, and it's the Mann Up players who get the costume drops, the Tour Badges, the Vouchers and so on.

You'll be doing all this on new maps: Decoy (lure 'em to a fake Mann Co facility and wipe 'em out), Mannworks (defend a Mann Co facility) and Coal Town. Yeah ... I'm not sure what to make of Coal Town. There's probably coal there. Probably. [http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/coaltown/] Those are the maps revealed so far; there may be more in the works.

Good hunting, mercs! Mann vs Machine is now available for free download.

Source: Mann vs Machine [http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/]


Permalink

 

[fix-the-spade]

I am rather unimpressed that they want me to pay £1 a go for the 'proper' mode.

Me and my Proof of Purchase ain't going to be going in there, no sir. On the other hand, the free mode is great fun, still full of glitches and the search system is hilarious (wait time: 49minutes... yeah...), but it's still great fun.

Just make sure to use the server browser and not the matchmaking, unless you brought a good book to read.

 

[Baby Tea]

Was buying the game for 20$ not enough? Why do I need to pay even more?

I don't think you do. The 99 cent price tag is to get on official servers, but only if you have the free-to-play version (I.E. Never ever bought anything for it ever). I'm 99.99% sure this is the case.

EDIT: I'm wrong! Haha, whoops! A little more research on my part would have avoided that, but yeah: You need the 'ticket' to play on the official servers. Tickets are $1. Those who do get unique items and badges, but all of them are strictly cosmetic. So who cares?

 

[Aconite333]

The mode is fun and I don't see the problem with the Tickets since they don't lead to a "proper" mode. You play the same thing except you get fancy hats at the end of it, like everything else in TF2. It's particularly good because the Tickets aren't consumed unless you win, otherwise you keep it. It's a fun alternative to an already fun game. If you bought TF2, even at full price, you're more than getting you're money's worth given all the updates the game keeps getting for free.

But I hope there are some balancing changes and patches coming out. Some of those waves cross from "Difficult" to "Unfair and Unfun". Ever played against a team of mostly Demomen? Remember the Demo-spam? Well, when you get the Giant Demo-Robots you get the same experience except they never need to reload, never run out of ammo, and fire at least twice as fast. God help you if they hold onto the bomb, then they get all crits. Then the Heavy-Medic waves? If you thought Heavy-Medics were unkillable before, they're even less so here AND they can Uber about once every 30 seconds.

 

[nasteypenguin]

I am rather unimpressed that they want me to pay £1 a go for the 'proper' mode.

I played the Mann Up once, the mode is no different to the free version except for the difficulty (which I assume can be adjusted in unofficial servers anyway but I dont know) and the prize at the end. For all intents and purposes, Mann Up just seems to be a cheaper key.

 

[Stomperchomper]

Main problem is that right now there's only enough free servers for a little under 7,000 people to play, and 13,000 people just waiting on games

 

[Quiet Stranger]

I read some of the article and then got really depressed because my graphics card burnt out and I don't have the income to buy another one

 

[Notsomuch]

Heavy looks like the Iron Giant.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

gonna have a go at this should be fun.

 

[Ruedyn]

What robot is that on Heavytrons left?

Looks fun, but my gaming PC is fucked, so no chance of me playing for awhile.

 

[Euphbug]

I have played a few rounds of this mode and I am loving it. It is crazy fun trying to figure out how to win with different classes, and the power ups for each class are great. Gonna be even better when the number of people trying it calms down and it gets easier to use the matchmaker.

 

[meepop]

What robot is that on Heavytrons left?

Looks fun, but my gaming PC is fucked, so no chance of me playing for awhile.

It's Medic bot

To all of you self-entitled jerks saying "Oh, I paid for this game." Yes you did. So did I. And I feel like I got my money's worth with my 1200 hours of gameplay. And I got the game back in 2010. You have no reason to feel ripped off. No one ever told you to buy the game. You did buy it. And then it went Free-2-Play. That's your fault. Did you know it was going to happen? No. But it did. Now suck it up and go kill robots.

"Oh, but I can't! The wait times are too damn long!" Do you have friends? I have friends. Steam friends. Not people I know very well, but friends I have on my friends list. If you have these so-called "friends", and they play TF2, then they'll probably be on there. So join their game, and you'll probably end up joining the game in spectate mode. If your friends don't play TF2... Get new friends. Or wait.

Also, what's with people complaining about "Mann Up Mode"? You pay $0.99 for a hat. Which can cost upwards of $20 in the store. Is this worse than the keys? I played on an unofficial server and noticed no difference from that of a Valve server, which I'm assuming are what's being used for MvM. If you have that big of a problem with it, then don't complain. It's a free update to a free game that's nearly 5 years old and still going strong. If you're willing to complain about it, maybe you're willing to go out and find another game like it.

 

[The Lunatic]

Rather unimpressed by the ticket system.

Seems an insult that Valve are valuing these matches at $6 per go.

(The matches require everyone to have a ticket, so, that's $6 for the whole group)


For what? An hour or so of gameplay and the chance at some extra items.

If you pay for this, you're kinda dumb, but, it's also very dumb to keep loyal players who bought the game or have spent large amounts of money locked out of it.

 

[Myndnix]

This actually did renew my interest in TF2...until I tried playing it and discovered that even if you make a party with friends, empty slots in the party are filled by strangers.
That completely killed my interest, and now I no longer care.

 

[Sandjube]

This actually did renew my interest in TF2...until I tried playing it and discovered that even if you make a party with friends, empty slots in the party are filled by strangers.
That completely killed my interest, and now I no longer care.

I know that feel. I pretty much only ever want to play co-op games with my friends and them only.

But can you not make a password or something? I haven't tried this yet and the supposed wait times and the ticket system have my interest waning. I don't particularly want to have to make a lan with some friends to play it.

 

[Myndnix]

This actually did renew my interest in TF2...until I tried playing it and discovered that even if you make a party with friends, empty slots in the party are filled by strangers.
That completely killed my interest, and now I no longer care.

I know that feel. I pretty much only ever want to play co-op games with my friends and them only.

But can you not make a password or something? I haven't tried this yet and the supposed wait times and the ticket system have my interest waning. I don't particularly want to have to make a lan with some friends to play it.

Not that I know of, no. A friend did inform me that private parties are intended to be in the game but haven't been implemented yet.

 

[vallorn]

This actually did renew my interest in TF2...until I tried playing it and discovered that even if you make a party with friends, empty slots in the party are filled by strangers.
That completely killed my interest, and now I no longer care.

try using a password protected server that oyou or one of your friends sets up.

however its highly advised to play with a 5-6 man team as the difficulty doesnt scale with the number of players meaning the less guys you have the harder it gets.

3 people is practically impossible for this reason.

 

[Myndnix]

This actually did renew my interest in TF2...until I tried playing it and discovered that even if you make a party with friends, empty slots in the party are filled by strangers.
That completely killed my interest, and now I no longer care.

try using a password protected server that oyou or one of your friends sets up.

however its highly advised to play with a 5-6 man team as the difficulty doesnt scale with the number of players meaning the less guys you have the harder it gets.

3 people is practically impossible for this reason.

I do have a friend who has a private server, but he refuses to make it password protected.
And...I'm not going to get my own server to play a game I don't really care about playing anymore, I'm afraid.
I do, however, thank you for the suggestion.