End of the Line: A slap in the face for the TF2 Community

[gone fishing]

2014 has been a fairly mediocre year for Team Fortress 2, at least in my opinion. We had absolutely nothing, other than some cosmetics, for nearly half a year, then we had some pretty meh weapons (other than the Tide Turner), a great animation, some taunts and cosmetics and...

Yeah.

But then there was Halloween! Because bumper cars that get old fast, restricted cosmetics, and a reskin of an unpopular map (complete with a butchered Merasmus) totally lives up to new spellbooks from the previous year and bosses from a few years ago! Seriously, Halloween 2014 was incredibly underwhelming in my humble opinion. I suppose that's something that Scream Fortress 2014 and End Of The Line have in common...

But I digress. The subject of this review is supposed to be EOTL, so I'll get right into that mess of broken dreams. Ducks. We had an awesome, if fairly predictable, animation about trains and kitten orphanages, and Valve say 'screw it! We'll give them ducks. Because a 3 second clip in a 14 minute long movie involving a few ducks is definitely more important than the giant train of bombs, and more importantly, the kitten orphanage!'

Valve seems to be going through its 'lol so random' phase this year. We had mutant bread (although this did make sense as it was the main focus of Expiration Date), Bumper Cars, and now, Rubber Ducks. TF2 has always been a silly and laid-back game, that laughs in the face of more 'serious' games like Call of Duty, but this isn't intellectual humour, this is laughing at your own trouser trumps.

Let's get into the bread and butter of the update. Starting off, we have the obvious ducks. These wastes of money allow you to collect rubber ducks from your fallen enemies. For £9.19 (unless I'm awful at maths, which is a strong possibility) you can grab a fully upgraded Duck, which allows you to collect more ducks. 'What do you do with ducks?' you may be asking. Well, collecting ducks from the corpses of you foes will build up a Duckstreak (I'm not kidding, look it up) which does...pretty much nothing. But is there anything else? Do you get items? Do you get worthless acheivements, at least? Nope.avi, you get to be featured on a pointless leaderboard that no one cares about. Fun, fun, fun!

Moving on, the cosmetics. If there's one thing Valve knows how to do, it's filling an update with cosmetic items so that it looks more impressive. These cosmetics are nice, but for some reason, the keys required to acquire them now cost 10p more. This isn't a big problem, just an oddity that I thought I'd point out.

There's also a Pyro taunt. So that's cool, because the Heavy, who played a much bigger part in the animation, and has no class-specific taunts, really doesn't need any attention now does he?

The new weapon, the Crossing Guard I believe it's called, is also causing a lot of agitation. McVee promised new weapons, but because Valve decided that one good weapon a year is enough, they cut through McVee's plans and gave us a stock-melee reskin. That's something we'd expect from a sub-par promotional pack! I'm someone who likes his reskins, that's why I spent about £14 on a Professional Iron Curtain, but Valve needs to get out of its head that giving us a crappy stock-melee reskin is going to make us squeal with glee and send pink hearts made of pasta shapes to them.

One of the other major disappointments the TF2 community is ranting about is the exclusion of the excellent cp_snowplow map. Even though it was beta-tested, and didn't seem too unpopular, Valve have decided not to include it because it's 'too complicated'. I remember reading a thread about EOTL, and seeing a user say something along the lines of 'Snowplow is too complicated, but Standin isn't?'. This completely sums up Valve's mentality of late. Nice job random user, have a chip.

Finally, the exclusion of new-stat weapons. I understand that one of the weapons was included in Love & War instead, but not including them because they 'don't live up to Valve's standards'? If Valve's standards are a scattergun that deals a bit more damage from behind, has an incredibly bland appearance, and has the usual downside of 'reduced clip-size', then I don't want new items to neccesarily match their standards!

In conclusion, I don't hate Valve for butchering this update. TF2 is still my favourite game, and Valve is my favourite company, but it's disappointing to see Valve taking the lazy route. This is what I'd expect from a company like Microsoft or EA, not Valve Corperation. I debated for a while on whether to call this update a slap in the face or a kick in the nuts. But this update cannot be classified as the latter, as we still got a damn fine animation. It just goes to show how much better the TF2 Community is at giving us what we want, than the company that made the game. Oh well, maybe Valve will move out of this phase soon and 2015 will be a better year for the world's number one war-based hat simulator (kidding). Have a good Christmas!

[Goth Girl Stomp]

I liked Love & War a great deal, I was pleased. Other than that, the updates were quite lackluster. This was very underwhelming, probably due to all the hype by the community.

[gone fishing]

Yeah, I just realised that I was a bit harsh on Love & War. It was a pretty great update, I probably just felt bitter because of the inevitable comparisons to previous updates, such as the Uber Update. Let's hope that 2015 has another update that is just as good as, if not better than, Love & War. And let's also hope that we won't have to wait about 6 and a half sodding months for it as well!

[amv942]

They seriously gave pyro a new taunt instead of heavy? Is this true? Heavy being the star of that video doing a feat I wasn't even expecting any character in team fortress 2 to even be able to do; the heavy that didn't have his own class-exclusion taunt? Also, is that all ducks do...?

[Poopenfartenfuhrer Shaky]

Well if they'd readded sv_pure 0 to their servers I wouldn't care about ducks. But meh.. money right?

[91340226750316541]

Amby says that this game sucks because it has lasted for 7 years and is still receiving updates. I blame the independent community contributers for not giving me the sustenance I can only achieve through well-made SFM videos and cheetos as opposed to the community who have overhyped it to complete ♥♥♥♥ in hopes for 17 new weapons.

[ʙᴜɴ.ᴇ]

Valve are as bad as EA if not worse.

[Soonfald]

I don't think McVee promised new weapons. I believe he said he hoped that there would be new weapons.
EOTL was a community update and valve made that pretty clear. People expected too much. Most of the time only cosmetics get added in community updates.

[RMJ]

As a whole i find the update really disappoint. But i have the greatest respect for this guy and his movie, it almost rivals Valve in quality and humor not to mention much longer, and he did it all alone.

Im just really let done that Valve didn offer this guy some help and or Voice actors. i mean they throw how many millions away on Dota 2 and CS GO prices in tournaments.

It seems like they are starting to become a cash machine, I mean in my eyes it looks like they dont give a crap about TF2 anymore, its just on life support.

If this actually got some proper support and match making then TF2 could live forever. But no no lets not implement match making. TF2 is almost purely a hat simulator.

[sombrez2]

Originally posted by Vin Danger:

Originally posted by Soonfald ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ:

I don't think McVee promised new weapons. I believe he said he hoped that there would be new weapons.
EOTL was a community update and valve made that pretty clear. People expected too much. Most of the time only cosmetics get added in community updates.

https://i.imgur.com/Ylgoqao.png

gg
btw a petition for valve to add cp_snowplow is done
so lets hope they add it back!

[gone fishing]

Originally posted by Keetee McCutee:

Valve are as bad as EA if not worse.

In what way? Valve doesn't constantly release 'new' versions of games with about 2 new features (or with features taken away in the case of The Sims 4) for £40+.

[gone fishing]

Originally posted by chase0005:

Originally posted by Vin Danger:

https://i.imgur.com/Ylgoqao.png

gg
btw a petition for valve to add cp_snowplow is done
so lets hope they add it back!

I just hope there's still going to be SOMETHING for Smissmass 2014, and that this isn't it.

[Lamedonyx]

Originally posted by Intraventian:

A community gets pissed at an update made by the community.

Update made by the community and ruined y Valve. Seriously, why would they need to remove the map ?

[Flip Z. Fox]

What the crap is wrong with the BASE jumper?

[gone fishing]

Originally posted by Kernal Kumshot:

They seriously gave pyro a new taunt instead of heavy? Is this true? Heavy being the star of that video doing a feat I wasn't even expecting any character in team fortress 2 to even be able to do; the heavy that didn't have his own class-exclusion taunt? Also, is that all ducks do...?

The fact that Hoovy has no class-specific taunts really annoys me, as he is possibly my favourite class.

[☭ Vladimir Lenin ☭]

I hope Valve's intention was to make every update that came before this one look godlike instead of launching a good one.