If you’re one of those strange people who enjoys playing with total strangers (you probably like “sunlight” and “fresh air” as well, you weirdo) then you might have been miffed at the amount of people straight-up bailing on your Mann vs. Machine Team Fortress 2 matches when things go south, they get bored, or just alt-tab out to watch cat gifs.

This is soon to be a thing of the past however, as Valve are introducing new penalties for players who abandon their comrades in the heat of battle. A new letter from the desk of Saxton Hale highlights the problem and points to the updated FAQ on ‘Abandoning’. The criteria for being labelled an ‘abandoner’ is as follows:

• You leave a game while playing a Mann Up game on an official server; and
• You have not played through a single wave to completion or failure; and
• There are 5 or more players currently connected to the server (including you).

Players who repeatedly abandon games will be punished with longer wait times by being placed in a low-priority cheaters pool, and presumably made to wear embarassing water wings.

Source: TF2 Blog

Mann VS. Machine Mode for Team Fortress 2 is set to get a big update, with Valve preparing a patch designed to bring more tours, loot, and improved matchmaking.

Responding to player complaints that the original Tour of Duty (Operation Steel Trap) was too hard, Valve will be deploying two more: Operation Oil Spill (“less hard”) and Operation Gear Grinder (“very hard”).

The new operations will also include their own loot, such as “rusty, blood-covered ‘bot heads” for Operation Oil Spill, and “24-carat diamond ‘bot heads” for Operation Gear Grinder, presumably to enable more effective boasting.

Finally, the matchmaking system — one of the biggest gripes we had with the original — has been updated to allow you to select multiple missions you’d like to play, to increase your chance of, you know, actually playing. Additionally, your group is no longer automatically disbanded once you’ve beaten a mission. Which is nice.

Source: TF2 Blog

Mann vs. Machine mode is the most significant new addition to the game since launch, and most impressively, Valve were able to drop hints at it for years in the background of their movies and websites. But now that its here, it’s proven so popular that even getting into a game is a hair-pulling nightmare. Tim Colwill explains why this new game mode is great fun – if you can get in.

The new Team Fortress 2: Mann vs Machine update is now live! To celebrate, and to account for what we know will be a huge influx of players, games.on.net will be opening up twelve new TF2 servers. In addition, over at TeamFortress.com there is heaps of new info about what exactly is happening with this new game-type-thing.

There’s a bunch of new achievements listed over here, and an FAQ telling us how the Tour of Duty monetary-system will work over here. It is a little bit canny! But whether or not you choose to go for the paid system, we will see you all in game! Saddle up, we got some robots to murder!

Source: teamfortress.com

All the rumours were true! Universally-revered Valve game Team Fortress 2 is adding a new mode of gameplay, wherein you fight ROBOTS! It is, at its bare bones, more like Left 4 Dead or Monday Night Combat than traditional Team Fortress, with six players in co-op mode fighting an innumerable horde of robo-bots.

Today is Day One of the big reveal, so at the moment all we know about are the robots. Seems as though there will be hordes of regular robots with standard-issue weapons, and a handful of special robots that have more specialised functions, such as the ‘Minor League Scout’ who will stun you with his lightning fast baseballs, or the ‘Quick Fix Medic’, who will heal your enemies up quickly, but is unable to uber. There will also be giant robots to rough you up, and sentry killer bots that are essentially walking bombs. The aim will be to stop the robots from planting bombs in Mann Co.’s facilities, naturally.

Check out over here for more details, and keep an eye on it tomorrow for the next stage of the reveal.

Source: Teamfortress.com