I am not a big fan of Team Fortress 2, the team-based shooter turned free to play Steam game for the Personal Computer. It's just not I am not big on first person shooter deathmatches because they are generally cheap and don't require much strategy. And I so hate one shot kills. The closest in which I played a shooter deathmatch game would be when Gears of War 2 came out - and that was third person and there were cheap deaths galore there as well. I remember being invited to a match by a friend who warned me that one of his buddies in the match was "unkillable" and was a "pro" at the game. Sure, he dominated the first two or three rounds but it only took me that long to learn his pattern and I was able to repeatedly sneak up and melee chainsawed him to death. Soon after that, I was not invited into the matches anymore. Back to TF2 though, the new Mann vs. Machine mode that was just released today really intrigues me the way that the "Horde mode" did in Gears of War 2 - the latter ended up being vastly superior than the player versus player because of the strategic defend your base gameplay setup.
Alright TF2, I am finally sold... Let's play!
Wait, what? I have to wait that long. Exits TF2, opens League of Legends client.
Now Valve hardly ever make a misstep when it comes to their gaming and business strategies but there exists a problem with the way that Mann vs. Machine is handled. Being a truly free to play game means that Valve needs to attract some way for players to spend money and in the case of TF2, that involves cosmetic-only alterations to your in-game characters. The way that this is handled in TF2 divides the community in a negative way. You see, when you play on what is called "Mann Up Mode", you get special items and also get to participate in Tour of Duty, which is just basically a collection of missions. The trick here is that to Mann Up, you have to purchase Tour of Duty Tickets that will cost you 99 cents a pop. Whenever you get a loot drop, that ticket is then exhausted. Yes, this will make Valve tons of cash. Of course, not manning up - or in other words, being a pu$$y, I mean, being a free to play participant - will still get you eventual loot drops but not the special ones that you can only get from the Mann Up Mode unless you are willing to trade or pay for them from the Mann Up Mode players. Many people apparently wanted to Mann Up because of the 30+ minute wait to play on the free servers. Valve needs to rethink this strategy because when the community is split up like this, it's never a good thing. Maybe all of those lousy supposedly FTP massively-multiplayer online role playing games they offered via Steam are starting to infect Valve...
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