So, after a week of new maps, new players, new game modes, and new weapons, how do the TF2 stats look? Let’s have a peek.
Not surprisingly, as of today, August 28, the heavy is the most played class, with about 18% of players choosing to spin up his gun and eat his sandviches. With all those heavies lumbering about looking for achievements, it’s no surprise that snipers are bagging a lot of headshots — they’re leading in average points per hour, even above the medic. The heavy’s minigun(s) is(are) naturally shredding players left, right, and center, doing almost 30% of all damage.
In terms of maps, 2Fort is currently getting more play than any other, which can probably be attributed to the free weekend and all the new players gravitating toward it(it usually clocks in at number three). Gold Rush and Dustbowl normally hold the top two slots. The new Payload map, Badwater Basin, is getting some healthy play in the four slot, and sports the most total rounds played over the past seven days. Statistically speaking, this can probably be attributed to it being great.
Arena mode? Hasn’t caught on yet, I guess, as all the arena maps show at the bottom of the list. Lumberyard is the most popular, which is to say it’s currently less popular than ctf_Well, the least popular of the old maps. Arena Ravine, Well, Badlands, and Granary are buried with not even 1000 server hours played in the past week. Badwater, in comparison, has chalked up some 15,000 hours.
No death graphs for the new maps yet, though we can see that defenders win Badwater about 60% of the time, a big balance improvement over Valve’s other Payload map, Gold Rush, where the defenders win more than 80% of the time. I think there’s always going to be a bit of a swing to defense just by the nature of the game: attackers have so many ways to lose the round, defenders only have one. Give defensive engies some time, though, and Badwater may swing further towards Gold Rush’s numbers.
Also, I’m happy to note Steel is getting some decent play, and I see the split is about 60/40 in favor of defenders. I had an epic match on it over the weekend, where the attackers steamrolled the first four points, knocking them over like dominoes, and grabbed about 90% of E before we mounted a frenzied twelve minute long defense and won the round. Great fun.
39 responses so far ↓
1 Jimmay // Aug 28, 2008 at 8:27 am
Steel is fantastic. I didn’t get a chance to play it (although I wanted to you your recommendation) because there were no servers playing it! I’m so glad it’s an official map now.
2 Jimmay // Aug 28, 2008 at 8:27 am
Also, that’s my first first. Sexy.
3 AlphaHawk // Aug 28, 2008 at 8:33 am
Angry at numbers? Me too :/
4 rammingspeed42 // Aug 28, 2008 at 8:34 am
Lumberyard is the best of the arena maps, sure. Valve is gonna have to do some major tweaking if it is to catch on. I mean, they did put work into those maps. They should see some return on them.
5 Ledundead // Aug 28, 2008 at 8:48 am
Did you notice how the Arena rounds were actually longest? I wonder how that happened?
6 Christopher // Aug 28, 2008 at 8:55 am
I don’t know. Also, some arena maps show stalemates. Which seems strange — I thought they only ended when one team wins.
7 darthpugwash // Aug 28, 2008 at 8:57 am
Heavy mania never seemed to catch on like Pyro mania or Medic mania did it? I wonder if people are just getting used to the idea of the updates now.
And those Arena maps really aren’t popular at all, are they? I wasn’t expecting them (especially Lumberyard) to be so low down the list.
8 a westie // Aug 28, 2008 at 9:12 am
I’d play ctf_well if they brought back the center building. It was a cool place to fight, and it really felt like the center of the action. Plus, it actually gave the moats somewhere to go. As it stands now, the moats are really just there for people to put out fires or sneak out if they feel the doors are too obvious.
Arena’s probably going to need some tweaks or updates to catch on. Maybe even just minor ones to remind people that the new maps are there after Heavymania and Badwater Basin interest die down.
As for the Arena rounds taking longer, I would guess that it might be because people are playing longer to figure out how to play, or perhaps the servers are reporting the rounds in an odd way because the game is fairly different from existing modes, like in how new rounds start quickly, people aren’t allowed to pick teams, etc.
9 Ledundead // Aug 28, 2008 at 9:16 am
Yeah, but it says the average round is 400 minutes. on arena _well. That’s ten times longer than 2fort’s average round time. It must be a glitch.
10 J3553 // Aug 28, 2008 at 9:22 am
My first Arena Mode Play.
I walked out of the Spawn, looked around Lumberyard in amazement, and got headshot by a sniper.
That pretty much sums it up.
11 Super Jesus // Aug 28, 2008 at 9:27 am
My thoughts on the maps:
Steel: Love it. The first decent user made map picked up by VALVe. Fuck fastlane and that other one. I love this too much. People say it’s too expansive, like one of my friends. I told him to look up at the bigass signs, and he never got lost again, instead growing fond of the map. I love this.
Badwater: Played it a few times. A good payload map. Funny story: I was a pyro, hiding in the observation bridge to the 3rd point, say a sentry, the window was shot by one Heavy, and another was sneaking in, so I whipped out my axe, cut down the one Heavy coming in, grabby a medic, and uber-rushed the sentry. Only time I could have done that. Overall, I like this more than goldrush. Beautiful map, VALVe.
Arena: I love this. I was lucky to find a 24/7 Arena server. It doesn’t do arena_badlands, but it does do well, granary, ravine, and lumberyard. I like it because it’s quick and is over, unlike the 24/7 2Fort games that have gone on for about 4 months with only 1 cap on each side.
12 Koslov // Aug 28, 2008 at 9:42 am
I like this update but I have noticed a back lash from some of the new people and pubbers in regards to steel.
They of course are the people that bitch about everything, or are just too ignorant to pay attention to a map that doesn’t come easy to them. Every single time I logged into a server with steel running or the server switches over to it, half the people leave the server or just sit there and whine about the map.
Its always the same two complaints as well:
1. this map is too complicated.
2. this map sucks, its not ballanced.
of course they complain to the admin to change the map to an arena map when they get told to shut up.
13 Newt Pulsifer // Aug 28, 2008 at 10:12 am
I wonder if Natascha is included in “minigun”, as well as the Backburner in ‘flamethrower’ :P
14 Mark // Aug 28, 2008 at 10:25 am
I’m gonna have to side with the whiners. Steel’s layout is just bewildering, it has too many hopeless choke points, and, just like with Fastlane (!@$?! Fastlane!) it lacks the Valve polish, cleanliness and visual interest. Plus when are community modders going to realize that paths to control points which run directly past the spawn’s exit door are a bad idea?
15 Jimborb // Aug 28, 2008 at 10:26 am
Meh, i’m not gonna be able to play these maps until valve release them for the 360 *sigh* still, the Meet the sniper video is finally available for download via xbox live now, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too long.
I have to say, 2fort is probably the most played map on the console iterations of TF2 because the other 6 maps aren’t CTF…
16 Niteowl // Aug 28, 2008 at 10:27 am
Dust! dust plz. DUST! omg DUST. Admizn ARUND? DUST!!
17 Major McMuffin // Aug 28, 2008 at 10:40 am
I need to play a lot more cp_steel, now that I know my way around a bit better. I had a fun round a while ago, we capped A and B, then I was the soldier who rocket jumped E, soon everyone was there.
18 Matt // Aug 28, 2008 at 11:03 am
Niteowl reminds me: I would love to see some CS/CS:S maps recreated as Arena maps.
Steel is an amazing map. My favorite modification by Valve (unless I missed an update to the original) is the window being fully open (you’ll notice it has been taken off and put to the side). I always hated crouching there.
19 Alexander // Aug 28, 2008 at 11:31 am
No one’s noticed it yet? Look at the least played class!
That doesn’t look like an engineer to me! Let’s get ready to get some crack-cocaine up in here!
20 Killa-Ewok // Aug 28, 2008 at 11:36 am
Incoming scout pack.
21 Shadow Hog // Aug 28, 2008 at 11:57 am
I’m guessing the arena maps are so friggin’ high per round because everyone playing it quits due to lack of interest, leaving the “round” in action for hours on end before a group of interested fellas hop in for some quick shooting action. Thus, the game thinks that these ridiculously long periods of time count as single “rounds”, despite being hours long.
Which is kind of weird, really. IIRC rounds aren’t counted if nobody’s playing. Hence why it’s just a guess.
22 Shadow Hog // Aug 28, 2008 at 11:57 am
And yes, dust plz
23 Mark // Aug 28, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Dust
24 Big_B // Aug 28, 2008 at 12:52 pm
So that’s why you were so bat happy last night! BOINK!
25 DoctorDisaster // Aug 28, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Chris, you really should get that job. Seeing a story in statistics is a crucial skill in journalism, and you do it very well here.
As for the ridiculously long arena rounds, remember that a round is defined by playing to five wins in a row (by default); what with the shuffling teams and people leaving and joining, that can take a really, really, REALLY long time. Also yes, I’m pretty sure the games are abandoned frequently, especially when there aren’t any admins around to perform the complex server surgery required to get out of arena mode once it starts.
It makes me feel terrible to say this, because I know a bunch of Valvers put a lot of work into arena mode, but it delights me in a small, evil way to see it fizzle so pitifully. It vindicates my own dislike of the gameplay.
Commenters:
The scout pack is news? Scout’s always been next on the list after heavy.
Niteowl, you were being ironic, weren’t you? You forgot about CS players and complex concepts like irony, didn’t you?
Westie, are you kidding me? The whole reason ctf_well was such a flop was that there was this huge, pointless space in the middle that wasn’t ever used for anything. Taking out the superfluous CP building has actually turned it into a fairly enjoyable map, but everyone remembers the crap original layout and won’t give it another chance.
26 AlphaHawk // Aug 28, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Btw Chris you should mention some of the “Invisible walls” on some maps like badwater, near the spawns. They need to be fixed, very annoying.
27 Soundwave // Aug 28, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Arena’s last because it breaks servers.
28 Smurfy // Aug 28, 2008 at 3:22 pm
The first two Oddworld games (the good ones) are on Steam! YAY!
29 jimborb // Aug 28, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Hooray for poor decision making by Valve!
Meh, sounds to me like valve should have altered some of the class stats for Arena, seems to be trying too hard to emulate CS or COD4’s search and destroy - something the TF2 classes really aren’t meant for ( not with my playstyle at least… ).
30 spuzman00 // Aug 28, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I had to notice that Arena Granary clocked in the most minutes per round of any maps. Either that means its really balanced or, for some strange reason, its been sitting there clocking up enough minutes to pass all the other maps…
Maybe its that no one plays it, so there is no one there to win the map, and it just ends up waiting until its time runs out each time it comes up.
31 Arctem // Aug 28, 2008 at 3:45 pm
The latest update (from the 26th) says, “Fixed a bug that prevented the correct Arena stats from being uploaded,” so that would explain the weird stats.
32 Kazill // Aug 28, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I got really confused by the stats in Arena so hopefully that update will fix something about that.
I thought that maybe people were spending tons of time in it to find exploits and the sort.
33 Mr Brit // Aug 28, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Junkie: Kill 5000 heavies trying to smoke your crack pipe (New secondry weapon offers a brief high, where the scout moves twice as fast, does 150% damage and has 200 health. Followed by a longer downer, where the opposite is true)
34 VelvetFistIronGlove // Aug 28, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Ignore the stats this week for arena maps:
AUGUST 26, 2008, 4:58 PM - Team Fortress 2 - Fixed a bug that prevented the correct Arena stats from being uploaded.
From http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=posts&id=1777&cc=GB
Check them again next time they update the page for the real stats, I guarantee you the maps will be higher in the list and the round times a bit shorter than 500 minutes :D
35 Ledundead // Aug 28, 2008 at 6:49 pm
dustbowl plz.
Anyway, remember when Chris did Demoman and Monday Map Missives? Good times…
Jake Asskicker, professional AWESOME.
36 Ledundead // Aug 28, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Still hilarious: arena_granary is up to around 575 minutes per round.
37 Ledundead // Aug 31, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Beyond belief: arena_lumberyard is up to 1000 minutes per round.
38 DoctorDisaster // Sep 1, 2008 at 11:03 am
Oh, wow: it just passed 2600 minutes. That’s almost two days.
On AVERAGE.
Arena is so broken.
39 MarshallDog // Sep 1, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I played badwater once. Started on defense and stopped them just before the third checkpoint. Then went on the attack and they blanked us. Back on defense and they pushed it through the checkpoints in about two minutes leaving us about fourteen minutes to hold the last point. Talk about an epic hold… I basically went pyro and dove for the cart every time I spawned. Blue was literally inches away from winning when we went into about a minute of overtime. I wound up with twenty defenses and fifty kills. Hawsome. I hate being on the sucky team that gets an asswhoopin every time out… for some reason being on a bad team that just barely holds on at the last second is the sweetest kind of victory.
Steel is the best map in the game right now. Just thought I should add that. I’ve played it so much I feel like I’ve really been there… it’s quite immersing.
Leave a Comment