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Comment by brianwillis | Hacker News Reader

If you care about gaming in any way, you owe it to yourself to give TF2 a try. It's quite complex, with intricate levels and lots of weapons, but it's easy to learn and you don't need to have every concept fully understood before you dive in.

I've also been surprised by the community that surrounds TF2. People are usually pretty nice about answering questions over chat, as opposed to Xbox Live where all communication comes in the form of racial slurs.

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> I've also been surprised by the community that surrounds TF2. People are usually pretty nice about answering questions over chat, as opposed to Xbox Live where all communication comes in the form of racial slurs.

I think this is a byproduct of the demographic differences between console gaming and PC gaming. Console gamers tend to be younger (and thus less mature) than PC gamers because consoles are cheaper (the parents are paying) and more locked down (parents again).

The graphic style also turns away the typical tough-guy attitude that seems to pervade most FPSs.

It depends on the game, play competitive counterstrike and everyone is a dick (source or 1.6)

That makes sense - unlike TF2, you can pirate CS and your computer's specs don't need to be that great to play it. So even children can easily get a copy of CS and a computer to play it with.

I'm hoping that the fact that TF2 is free now isn't enough to cause a large enough demographic shift to ruin the online multiplayer experience.

Could you easily pirate CS? From what I remember when you connected to a server it would authenticate a CD key with Valve, and while I'm sure there were servers that had that disabled it was easy to avoid playing on those. Likewise, there were no doubt pools of stolen CD keys, but that was probably pretty hit or miss for those using them.

It also wasn't too hard to find servers with good a "culture" where there were so many well behaved regulars it didn't really matter.

You can't really pirate cs anymore than you can pirate tf2, css also runs on the same engine as tf2 so any of the kids that can get their hands on source can get their hands on tf2 computerwise.

I think that just like with TF2, it depends broadly on what server and community you happen to be in. I've seen incredibly welcoming communities in both games.

Ehhh... There are a lot of dicks in PC pub servers too..

Try playing Heroes of Newerth.

Also you should give it a decent go before you make up your mind.

I got TF2 for free years ago with a motherboard, and I had never played an online game before. After playing for an hour or so, I decided I didn't like it, and that was that. Then a group of people started playing it at lunch at work, so I figured I would join in and that was the end of my free time...

My name is MetallicCloud, and I'm a TF2 addict.

Damn that peer pressure.

TF2 on 360 actually had a remarkably good community, at least for a year or year and a half until many people moved over to PC as that version started evolving significantly. The nature of the community was especially pronounced since it was released at about the same time as Halo 3, which was the hypocenter of bad behavior on xbox live.

Agree about Xbox live. I cannot play with the general public on there any longer. We've got a pretty nice crew over at http://www.adultgamingenthusiasts.com/. Mostly console gamers and the only rule is 'don't be a dick'.

Another fine group of people to play with: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com

You’ll find your fair share for bad apples in TF2 after a while, especially with how “possessive” server admins of Source-powered games tend to be.

Check the official TF2 forums and you’ll see reports of admins relentlessly banning F2P players or regular players starting landslide votekicks towards them—though this will subside after a while, same thing happened to people who bought the first items in the Mann Co. Store and those that wore the halo lament hat.

I wonder if TF2's whimsical, light-hearted style crossed with semi-complex gameplay (for a multiplayer FPS) led to this.

Even in L4D2 or CS, other Valve games the community is brutal. TF2 seems to be a bunch of people who do it for the "ggs"

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