Sorry to seem confrontational, but "The way they find, identify, and solve problems is very impressive." creates questions. finding, identifying, and solving problems is in no way a individual skill or secret to success/formula for balancing/fixing gameplay/ui. It's a goal that requires resources, like time and money, and if TF2 team sees the monetary advantages in paying people to "find, identify, and solve problems" they will do so for the sole interest in lining their pockets, this is business. No one would have had the lunch with you, if it weren't to increase your pockets, and theirs.

As it stands you're a man with a vested interest in the success and hype of this next update and you did nothing but tell us you had lunch and that you wont tell us anything else.

Not that I agree, but this is the exact type of awful communication that people in the community are harping over.

If you and b4nny go to HQ to discuss issues, and you and him don't act as ambassadors for our gameplay options, you're only there for self interests.

I don't necessarily want a response, and quite frankly I don't think this post warrants one. I think you should read, and feel disgusted to even make such a lousy post that quite frankly reads: (tl:dr) "yeah so me and b4nny make our money from TF2, and I hope you can grip onto these words long enough to stick around, buy a competitive 'operation' pass when it comes out, and support this amazing game and all of it's skins and hats"

Show us you care, and how about we start with the illogical decision that stands about viewmodels and how we will have to have them enabled in MM. How about you talk about one damn bad Idea that they had, because we all know they have one or two, instead of feeding us the, "it was great time, many sandwich but my lips are sealed, oh and the way they approach issues is totally cool"

You could have put your entire post in under 144 characters.

"I went to valve and had lunch! We talked about their brainstorming and problem solving process! Very inspirational!"

And hell you got another 25 characters to make a nice long 8=======================D

EDIT: Full confrontation.

EDIT 2: Downfrags are cool, as long as they dont censor content. I'm perplexed by the psychology that is behind perturbed virgins that disagree with what I say then subsequently use a Downfrag to show it rather than typing out a well worded response and how I'm incorrect.

We certainly talked about some of the things you bring up but because I can't speak on them (my job is not to be a liaison) I won't speak on how they view those things.

My post's intent was solely to say that valve know what they're doing. If I wanted to share privileged information I would have.

Yeah he was criticising u for not wanting to do so

Well I for one am happy to know that you have spoken about these things with Valve, and i'm more happy to know that the same company that is driving the CS and DotA names into the dirt with sticker capsules, operation packs, battle passes, and tree cutting challenges, is the one who can't directly tell the TF2 community anything without you giving us crumbs of the sandwich you had. All my confidence is now behind the TF2 team, I now think that they are going to be able to swindle millions of people into thinking they are playing "competitive" when in reality they are participating in glorified pubs for rank, hats, emotes, and MAYBE, they'll let us change the color of our text ingame!

Maybe I'm venting a little, but these are issues nevertheless. BUT

All in all, without sarcasm, I am actually now hyped for this update more than ever because in your effort to respond to my post, you exposed that you might have actually had meaningful conversation with the TF2 team.

This shows that you care. <3

But then again you could be telling me what I want to hear. :)

You can say "we want info, not teasers or guarantees that it'll be good" without having to be a dick.

I think we can all agree that it really feels like valve is on their own island, rarely communicating and even when they do (like now) usually with a "but don't tell anyone." Which is disappointing, obviously, for a few reasons and is probably something to sort out more properly in the near future. But it is nice to get some more assurance that valve's tf2 team is competent and dedicated, and that's all geel's trying to say and all you can take his post as.

It's not assurance, and that's my point, there is no fucking assurance if he can't provide factual evidence that the game is changing for the better, it's just fodder meant to sway opinion. Like I said in my post, he provided us with a status update of his life, not an information update regarding TF2.

You're never going to get information on future updates from valve. You can't promise those sorts of things in their position.

Lol of course you can, Valve can promise whatever they like. They have repeatedly promised things to be released within days that became years and it hasn't ruined them so far.
Valve make 2 million dollars a day and there is absolutely nothing any of us could do to change that even if they gave us detailed logs of literally everything the tf2 department is doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

EDIT: In case you dont follow, I was responding to him on how you weren't assuring anything. I'm not asking for concrete information like you propose above.

that's new.
is this something that is recent or have they been doing really good with tf2, but invisible?

Everything you are posting is stupid

In a community so full of people brainlessly declaring the game is dead, it's nice to get different tidbits and perspectives from multiple people who have spoken to or met with Valve. Yes, we'd all prefer concrete, thorough, details. You're not winning coolness points by bitching about downfrags. We're all impatient with this update. Just stop.

redditor identified

TF2 always has an update drought beginning around spring starting and ending around june-july

this happens every year, and every year people still wonder if the game is dead during the drought

I don't want to be the guy to ask about lolhl, but I haven't seen anyone else ask about it (inb4 downfrags). Do valve care about the mode? (yes I know there's a 9v9 option in matchmaking)

I know its a vague question, but if I get an answer I'm expecting it to be vague.

I never said I wanted concrete info... You're right, there's lots of brainless people here. I'm saying this entire post is pointless. There is no tidbits of information, there is no perspectives, there's one perspective you dumbass, and it's "hype neato bean burrito" That's the extent of these tidbits you enjoy so much.

EDIT: if anyone says this game is dead they are just flat out wrong, but the competitive side is definitely suffering in terms of players, but it is still active and not hard to find competitive format games, but definitely small.

Well if you want to be the super contrarian skeptic, do it up my man. I will choose to take Geel's word for it, because I trust him enough. He's confirming what many in the community forget pretty quickly, which is that Valve knows what they are doing for the most part (despite their slowness and disappointing amount of communication). If it all turns out to be shit, then fine, I can knock on Geel's door and ask for his resignation or whatever, but for now I'm going to just believe him without looking for something to argue about.

can i have my items

Flame is gone

It's not that I don't believe you but when items like the Darwins exist you have to wonder what goes through their minds.

They probably just haven't had the opportunity to iterate on it yet. That may be fixed in the next major update, or maybe not (I do not know if they plan to do anything with the DDS)

valve's only good at changing weapons if there's a good way to redesign/balance it, DDS' core design is so fucked that any balancing attempt will still give a similar result

just toss the whole thing out and give it a new reason to exist, "win all sniper wars" is a bad idea no matter which angle you try it at

downfragged

lft bean dog

I just don't get why everything has to be a secret... TF2 is loosing players to overwatch daily and more mysterious updates that will released in 3 months won't stop anything

They can literally just change it back to +25hp and it would be fine.

It would still be a dumb idea for a weapon but yeah I'd be ok with it.

I'm not sure why k0ngzy is getting so much hate. He might be wording his posts like an ass but he really has a point, and it's not even about Valve's lack of communication. What is this thread really for? It reads
"I visited Valve. I wouldn't tell you anything if I knew anything because I don't want to betray Valve's trust by sharing the privileged secrets bestowed unto me, but there's actually no reason to be mad about that lol because I know literally nothing. I don't know anything about any update or what they are working on or anything about the way they're doing anything in general.
But they're doing things and solving problems in very cool ways, be hyped"

What does this even mean? If If the problems you saw them trying to solve in a cool way were secret privileged information that you're not allowed to share, that pretty much means they're part of an upcoming update. But you haven't seen or heard anything about any update. So why not just share what they were actually doing, or what their "impressive way of solving problems" actually looks like.
Saying that you're not allowed to share your observations of their workflow is dumb, they would've never invited you.
As it stands, the statement "they know what they're doing and they're doing things in impressive ways" is completely vacuous.

Obviously I don't think this is about Geel's corporate interest in generating hype (lol) but that doesn't change the fact that this should be a tweet and not a thread on a platform for sharing and discussing actual tf2 information.

Riot Games and Blizzard don't seem to have much of a problem with doing it though. Both companies make a substantial effort to provide developer updates or give people heads up on changes at times even months (though often weeks) ahead of time and do mostly fine at doing it, and those companies are just as big dog as Valve.

I mean these were the people that were caught off guard that the community was upset that they missed a holiday and didn't bother telling them they were missing the holiday until several days after the holiday was over in DotA, which is probably one of the most easy things to communicate to your players ahead of time. Valve just doesn't even try to communicate really.

Thanks for posting, Geel. Hopefully it hits just after this season's playoffs.

I don't know why this thread is all of a sudden full of kids complaining about valve's policies. Everyone who follows valve games for a few years already knows about these policies and has seen those videos where valve employees explain them.

I have never thought that Valve doesn't know what they're doing. They are a giant in the industry and I don't think many rational people think Valve actually doesn't know what they're doing. My concern has always been, and is still, that what Valve wants for TF2 is very different from what I want for TF2. The fact that they are competent at realizing those mis-aligned goals is not comforting.

It's like saying that Budweiser is a leader in the brewing industry. This is absolutely true, objectively, and few could argue it. They do not, however, make a product that I want to consume. They know what they're doing, but what they're doing isn't really my thing.

I don't think that's quite fair. You are correct, that they can't promise things in their position, but it is a position that they manufactured themselves. The reason Valve cannot make those statements is because they only significantly change TF2 every 6 months or so, which is their own decision. Developers that are working on a game regularly and consistently can very easily say "We are working on implementing X by changing Y and adding a Z. If that doesn't work, we'll change it based on player feedback."