http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/The_Essential_Accessories
Yup, we got socks and matching sweatbands. If I didn’t love my octopus treasure hat so damn much, I’d complain and say that TF2 is now a full fledged FPS Doll & Accessory simulator. But, I guess the old tall GI Joes had different clothes which increased their killing ability, so.. Yay for new items!
As some of you may know, today we had an event where I opened 100 crates, with 100 keys, and recorded the results for all to see!!!
The full results can be seen at http://tf2newbs.com/box_results.txt the first column is crate type, then second is the name of the item found. If someone wants this in csv, let me know and I’ll put that up too. Or you can just look at the backback and see all the goods (in the order they were found) http://www.tf2items.com/id/tf2newbs_crate_event the 2 items on page 3 were random drops.
Unfortunately no unusuals were found, but all is not lost. Through fuzzy mathematics it appears I broke about even on the entire endeavour.
Lets break down the items, and the math….
Columns are number found, crate type, item name, estimated value (based on valve store)
11 #1 distinct lack of hue (2.49)
7 #2 duel game (0.99)
7 #1 equalizer (1.99)
6 #2 australium gold (2.49)
6 #1 vita saw (0.49)
5 #5 name tag (4.99)
5 #1 gunslinger (2.45)
4 #3 bushwacka (4.99)
4 #2 l’etranger (2.49)
4 #2 blackbox (2.49)
4 #1 scottish resistance (0.49)
4 #1 old guad (2.49)
3 #2 shortstop (2.49)
3 #1 name tag (4.99)
3 #1 abundence of tinge (2.49)
2 #5 southern hospitality (0.49)
2 #5 powerjack (2.49)
2 #4 whoopee cap (4.99)
2 #4 pain train (1.99)
2 #3 distinct lack of hue (2.49)
2 #1 nappers (2.49)
1 #4 duel game (0.99)
1 #4 battalion backup (4.99)
1 #4 abundence of tinge (2.49)
1 #3 stout shako (4.99)
1 #3 homewrecker (2.99) [cost of buying things to craft it]
1 #3 duel game (0.99)
1 #3 description tag (2.49)
1 #2 stuntman (4.99)
1 #2 puglists (4.99)
1 #2 pain train (1.99)
1 #2 chieftains challenge (4.99)
1 #2 a deep commitment to purple (2.49)
I based prices either on how much it’d cost to craft, pricing of similar items, or just what what it is worth in trade / etc. For example: nappers are nearly worthless to trade, but crafting two of them gets you another hat, which is probably worth at least 4.99 in the steam store.
Summing up the total for all those brings us to MSRP of $244.50 – thats even with me considering the chieftan and the stout shako as $4.99 hats, when they can trade higher than that.
For this event I spent $249.00 (in two chunks, since steam wallets can’t hold that much) to get 100 keys. I begged and pleaded for free crates. So if we ignore the interest I could of been earning on this money if I had invested it instead of spending it on keys in a video game I came out about even. I might be a little off with the values, but if you consider that it brought a bunch of people together, and that a lot of people had a good time I think it was worth it.
So I’m pleased that I broke about even on store value, unfortunately in game value of many of these items is pretty weak compared to the store price.
My results lead me to believe that opening crates isn’t necessarily a bad method of attaining items, as long as the crates are found or were obtained for nearly nothing.
If anyone out there wants to donate a unusual hat to a good cause, let me know on steam http://steamcommunity.com/id/octodhd
Yup, we’re at it again. We’re having the annual pumpkin carving contest, with 3 prizes (listed at bottom of post). The contest is simple, carve a pumpkin with a TF2 theme, take a picture, send it in http://www.tf2newbs.com/contests/2010-Team-Fortress-2-Pumpkin-Carving/Pumpkin_uploads/ and wait to win excellent prizes and the respect of your peers. So pick up a pumpkin on the cheap today or tomorrow, carve/paint/etch it to your hearts content, and submit it. You’re a winner, now prove it.
In addition to the pumpkin carving contest we are also offering a new contest for people better at the written word. Write a piece of fanfic involving the TF2 universe, send it in (contest@tf2newbs.com) and cross your fingers. We havn’t advertised this contest very well, so theres probably a good chance that there won’t be a lot of competition, which is good for you, since it’ll be easier to win.. :)
The prizes for both contests are the same:
1st – $25 worth of games from steam
2nd – $15 worth of games from steam
3rd – $10 worth of games from steam
All entries are due by midnight pacific November 2nd. Judging will happen on the 3rd. Please be sure to at least include your email address in the filename, feel free to make it a text file zipped with the pictures. If you have any additional questions about submitting please contact octo (octodhd’s steam community page)
This week valve has been giving out ‘Golden Wrenches’ willy wonka style to lucky tf2 crafters. They have been allowing us normal folk follow along on The Engineer Wrenchlog. Early this morning (2 or 3 am eastern) Drunken F00l managed to find himself a golden wrench. Good for him. He’s done a lot with his backpack viewer (http://tf2items.com) and previously brought us the idler client thing whcih caused quite the fuss a few months back. The steam powered forum people seem to think there is some sort of grand conspiracy going on since he’s a known guy, so they’ve been calling for his wrench to be removed. A short while ago their cries for ‘justice’ were answered and his golden wrench was stripped from him, and it appears he was vac banned :(
I don’t have a god in this fight, but I thought drunken contributed far more than he took away from the greater community. I’m sure the whine from the forum people hurt everyones ears up at valve, but I think a VAC ban might be a bit much. If you feel one way or the other feel free to post below, I’m also going to link to the ‘unban fool’ community group.
I posted this on our TF2 Community Steam Group:
Now usually I’m not into petitions, but a recent policy change by Valve impacts our community. So I have decided to pass this along to everyone so they know whats happened, and can maybe help change this policy.
Valve in their recent updates made entities that are ‘parented’ to a player invisible. You may be wondering how this effects you. If you’ve ever been on the Newbs servers (which I assume you have been since you’re in this group) you know that we have ‘extra’ hats that you can wear while on the servers. Some of these are just fun items to see someone have. Examples of these are our traffic cone, the pale rider, and devil horns hats. The way these work is we parent the entity (which has the model we want to show) to the player entitity, then as you run around people see you ‘wearing’ a hat or a cape or whatever we decide to attach to you. With this recent change this no longer will work – the item will be invisible.
All we want is the ability to parent items to the player – I frankly don’t care if they let us use the ‘real’ hats or not, but I would like to be able to put cones on peoples heads or put funny hats on people when its their birthday.
Please be civil if you decide to leave a comment after signing, I don’t know if Valve will even give a crap about this petition or not, but I do know if its full of idiotic comments it will mean even less to them.
https://secure.voogru.com/petition/
…
That said, lets look at some possible reasons why they may have made a change like this. I can think of three different possible reasons why Valve suddenly took away our ability to parent an item to a player (well technically you can still do it, its just invisible).
1) Support costs – Everytime someone lodges a complaint with tech support, or emails Robin or any of the other developers complaining about idlers or server ops, or how unfair people having caps is it costs valuable time, and this spent time has a price associated with it. If the current staff can not at least read all of the emails sent each day then they need to add more staff (or decrease services). This is even worse if the people that are programming or creating content are getting bogged down by emails. Maybe servers using TF2 Equipment Manager were generating a lot of hate mail and they decided to try to decrease the butthurt email.
2) Punishment / Justice – Just as people who idled were punished for gaming the system, people who installed a hats plugin were gaming the system. So smack them in the head and level the playing field.
3) Money grab – If you control the supply of hats, the hats have value. And as with all things with a value, you can charge people money for them – and the more exclusive they are (or appear) the more you (typically) can charge.
So is the Free Ride of TF2 content coming to an end? I would not be surprised if the crackdown on idling (which was more of a limiting of how many items you can find per week) was in preperation for ‘for purchase’ hats or weapons. I really hope I’m wrong and this is actually about #2, justice is cool – hell overzealous developer would be fine by me too :) I don’t want anyone to think I’m against Valve making money, I want them to make money, I spend more money than I like to think about each month just because I like TF2 a lot. Heck I buy games I don’t even plan on playing just so that I can test things or add support for them in HLstatsX:CE. Just please don’t ruin my almost ready to be released birthday celebration plugin because you’re afraid you might not make money off of selling me hats.
As I’ve told a lot of the people I’ve talked with on this subject, I don’t care if valve wants to keep the ‘official’ hats to themselves, thats fine by me – but let me put a traffic cone or bunny ears on or any of the other bajillion hats that the community has made.
-octo
PS. oh yeah, heres a thread about the selling hats idea – Steampowered.com – sell hats once again, I’m down for them selling hats, hell I might buy them all if they do – but please don’t limit our ability to do cool things. Oh also, thanks for the after the fact exception for prophunt – but really, would TF2 prophunt ever have happened if there was this restriction? Nope.