"Free-to-play" and "microtransactions" are dirty terms to some. That's understandable. Famous Facebook Skinner boxes like Farmville have clouded attitudes toward today's free to play games, and there's an assumption all microtransaction-driven game design is handicapped by the need to create opportunities to charge players. For some games, this is certainly true, but there are excellent free to play games out there that represent good value for money. Below we've assessed some of the most common methods used by free-to-play games to make money from players, and highlighted some of the fairest examples of free-to-play that are worth your time.

A lot of the distrust toward microtransaction-driven games comes down to the way they habitually obfuscate both what exactly you'll be paying for, and how much you'll be paying for it. This starts with the standard practice of exchanging of standard currency for fake fun-bucks equivalents. In Rift, it's "Credits", in The Old Republic, it's "Cartel Coins", in War Thunder, it's "Golden Eagles", to name just a few. The deliberately awkward exchange rates are of course designed to hide the actual value of the items you're buying, but hiding the value of every transaction at this fundamental level appears highly untrustworthy. Nobody wants to feel like they're being duped, and being as straightforward as possible with customers is the way to solve that.

There's a widespread lack of clarity around the payment systems attached to free to play games. The price and payment method of engaging with a game should be quickly apparent, and expressed in a way that lets players know exactly what they're getting for their money. It should not, like Star Wars: The Old Republic, require the careful study of three different screens to unravel the various interlocking currencies, subscription deals, expansion packs and "preferred status" upgrades available.



Crates/card packs and random chance drops
Team Fortress 2
Mass Effect 3 multiplayer
Hearthstone



If you hand someone a closed box full of promised goodies, many will happily pay you for the crowbar to crack it open. The tremendous power of small random packs of goodies has long been known the creators of physical collectible card games and companies that made football stickers a decade ago. For some, including our former reviews editor Rich McCormick, the allure of a closed box full of goodies is too powerful to resist. Whatever the worth of the randomised prizes inside, the offer of a free chest and the option to buy a key will make a small fortune out of these personalities. For those that like to gamble, these crates often offer a small chance of an ultra-rare item.

In Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, a chest will drop into your inventory every so often. Keys can be bought with real money, or traded for, and are very popular - five of the seven TF2 store bestsellers are keys right now. As with card packs, the process of discovery and anticipation that goes into opening a box is as exciting as the item inside. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether that's a valuable reward, and whether £1.50 / $2.50 is a worthwhile price for that rush. The important thing is that players know exactly what they're gambling for when opening a box, and have at least a sense of the odds involved. The Team Fortress 2 wiki exposes estimated percentage odds for each crate, but as any Vegas slot machine designer will tell you, revealing all of the maths maths can ruin the glamour of the gamble, and make no mistake, this is gambling.

Boxes are easily deleted and ignored, but receiving one isn't a good experience. At worst, it's a taunting delivery that pops up in the same space used to message gifts. Receiving a crate for the first time, and then learning that it requires a purchase to unlock, is a betrayal of the expectations that the rest of the drop system encourages. The positive side, in the case of TF2 and Dota 2, is that revenue from crate sales goes back to community item creators.

In CCGs like Hearthstone, Fifa's Ultimate Team and Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode, you can unlock random cards/players/guns from packs earned through in-game money as well as real currency. This accepts payment in the form of a chunk of your spare time, which is a good deal if the game is good. It operated more like a randomised unlock system that you can speed up with money if you wish.

Verdict:

In-game item stores
Buying items
World of Tanks
Tribes: Ascend
League of Legends



There are two main questions to keep in mind when a game is asking you to spend real money for specific items.

1. Can they only be earned by paying up?
2. Are they better than what you have already?

The answer to both, if a game is being as fair as possible, is no. Games like Team Fortress 2 have a selection of alternatives you can unlock for your class. That's alternatives, not straight upgrades. Many combine certain situational benefits at the expense of a well rounded, overall build. The Sniper being given a rifle that shoots piss is not at an obvious advantage, especially when against one that shoots bullets. And, in League of Legends, it's hard to know if the angry polar bear is inherently better than a girl with the shark cannon, but both have their uses when played effectively, and the rotating roster gives you options regardless.

Not that pure upgrades are inherently wrong. In games like World of Tanks, where a natural tier system denotes each country's best metallic beasts, it comes down to matchmaking to keep things fair. Put the paid-up kings against the outgunned newbs and you start edging towards a pay-to-win scenario. Keep everyone grouped around their unlock level, and the only advantage for those that pay is a quicker trip to the top tiers.

Verdict:


Energy bar restrictions
Spiral Knights
Teacher's Story
Farmville



Energy mechanics take various forms, whether action points that expire with every interaction or a continuously dwindling energy meter that stops you from playing when it expires. The crudest variations attempt to encourage the player to buy more energy at the point of expiration, oodling out a few bucks of the sheer frustration of having a game cut short. Subtler time limiting devices are designed to encourage "sessioning," in which players devote five or ten minutes of their time every day to tending to a garden/city. The intent here is to turn the game into a regular life fixture that increases the player’s contact with other the monetisation mechanisms built into the game’s economy.

Energy bar systems straightjacket players in ways that feel entirely arbitrary. You’re not failing to progress because of a lack of skill, but because of the expiration of a made-up, abstract resource. Besides all that, the amount of time you choose to engage with a game should be your choice alone, and a pop-up message that says you’re done unless you buy X or wait 12 hours just feels insulting. Sure, game demos will stop you when you’re having fun and ask you to buy the full game, but players know the rules when they start the download. Energy mechanics, like many microtransactions, are carefully hidden from view until you’ve spent a certain amount of time playing. Very unpleasant.

Verdict: KILL IT WITH FIRE

Cosmetic items
Dota 2
Battlefield Heroes
Guild Wars 2
League of Legends



Offering players ways to stand out is a lucrative business. In the Dota 2 Steam Workshop, item creators compete for audience upvotes and Valve’s approval, and the successful ones have made a small fortune in the process. If you spend a lot of time in a game world with friends, cosmetic items like hats in Team Fortress 2, or new player skins in League of Legends, can set you apart without tipping the game’s systems. At worst, new outfits can corrupt character silhouettes, making battlefields harder to parse at a glance, but this is a minor trade-off for a system that lets developers support themselves and keep games running.

Buying cosmetic items is also a very transparent, obvious transaction. Buy the item for the clearly labelled cost, get the item, it’s yours until the game loses popularity and expires, or the heat death of the universe occurs. There’s no trickery, the integrity of the game is maintained, and everyone gets a nice hat.

Verdict:

Expiration
things you’ve earned that need replenishing with consumables
Fifa Ultimate Card thing (player renewal contracts)
Bullet Run (Weapon degradation)



Expiration systems cause components of the game that you use regularly to wear out and break unless a certain amount of money is spent on repairs. In Fifa’s Ultimate Team mode, players are benched if their contract expires, and you need to apply new contract cards to get them back on the pitch. These are dropped randomly in card packs that can be bought with in-game money or real money. If you pay for contract cards to support a player you bought through a card pack or on the transfer market then you’re essentially paying ongoing rental costs for a virtual product you’ve already bought. Sometimes expiration targets in-game currency, asking you to spend in-game currency on restoring expired items so that you run short, and might feel the need to top up that currency with a purchase.

Being charged money to maintain the status quo earned through play is terrible, and can undermine any sense of achievement you may have enjoyed earning your gear. It’s also -creates a persistent, unpleasant pressure to pay and is an unsatisfactory purchase if you do cave in. You know that you’ll have to pay again to recharge that item/player/gun soon enough. Expiration creates that poisonous sense of being slowly nickel-and-dimed.

Item rental
Battlefield play4free, I think?
Need for Speed World (was/is awful for this)
Quake Live - wasn't the only thing you really had to pay for rented server access?



You could frame the renting of in-game items as a more transparent take on the expiration mechanic. In most cases you’ll understand exactly how long you’re getting an item, which can be tricky to ascertain in energy systems when you’re buying an abstract resource that’ll deplete as you play. The difficulty with rental items is that, in order for them to be desirable enough to purchase for a limited period, they need to be powerful. Need For Speed World let players rent blindingly fast supercars to take into races with ordinary cars, ruining the experience of the majority for the benefit of the paying few.

Even if a rented item isn’t overpowered, the perception among players that it must be is almost as damaging. The same effect applies to any in-game item purchases. If there’s a price tag attached, it’s natural to assume that it’s more powerful in some way, and if a competitive game doesn’t feel balanced it quickly becomes more frustrating than fun. Also, the notion of paying for a virtual item is enough of a barrier for many, the idea of paying for one that’ll disappear in a few days is even more absurd.

Verdict:

One-off account upgrades
Star Wars: The Old Republic - inventory slots, the ability to resurrect, basically everything
TF2 - free players have account/drop restrictions until they spend money - for any item - in game.



The one-off upgrade offers a limited feature-set to new players that expands when you pay a one-off sum. In Team Fortress 2, buying an item, any item, at any cost, will upgrade a free account to a “premium” one. Free players have a backpack limit of 50 slots, doesn’t have access to rare and cosmetic items, and have access to limited selection of crafting blueprints. Buying anything from the Mann-Co store expands the backpack to 300 items and removes trading and crafting limits. Star Wars: The Old Republic’s free to play transition added more severe limits, constraining free players to handful of space missions and dungeons per week, forbidding new players from sprinting until level 10. Those limits could be lifted with any purchase of more than $5 on the in-game store.

The cost of transitioning to a less limited set-up is often minor, the intention being to familiarise players with the game’s shop and, in some cases, get players to enter card details. Team Fortress 2 is entirely playable with its free-to-play limits in place, but The Old Republic’s draconian restrictions leverage player frustration to incite a purchase. Not good. The expanding number of payment options that surround free-to-play games make them a daunting prospect for some. Just try deciphering this table for The Old Republic - http://www.swtor.com/free/features - The most important questionXXX

Account Buffs
Tribes: Ascend
Guild Wars 2
World of Tanks



Buffs give a temporary percentage increase in the amount of gold, XP, or other desirables that the player can earn through regular play. It's another example of microtransactions allowing players to pay to reduce the time spent between rewards. Unlike energy, though, buffs are a bonus applied to someone who pays, not a penalty against someone who doesn't. That's a key difference in their philosophy that, for the most part, stops them being exploitative.

For them to work, it requires a careful balancing of item prices and levelling progress. There's a strange psychology here. If a game is enjoyable, then a lengthy spell between rewards shouldn't be a problem. But if progression and upgrades are built into the DNA of a game, having to wait too long for them can feel frustrating. It's a question of fairness. A community has an innate sense of whether they're being artificially held back. If a game is perceived as a grind, then it's sacrificing a player's potential enjoyment by making the buff a requirement, rather than a bonus.

It's not just currency that can be boosted. In the case of Card Hunter, your account subscription provides you with an extra piece of loot for every quest you complete. It's an upgrade that neatly sidesteps the balance problem. It doesn't feel like a significant loss compared to the 2-4 rewards you get in regular play, but a guaranteed rarity makes for a nice bonus for those who do subscribe.

Verdict:

Mini-DLC
Shogun 2 blood pack
Saints Row 4 GATV pack
Paradox portraits etc.
There are loads of these



Blurring the line between microtransaction and full-fat DLC are these purchasable packs of extras and bonuses. Rather than a free-to-play focus, you'll generally find these attached to AAA releases. We're talking the added profile portraits of Crusader Kings II, the silenced sniper of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the Air Propulsion Gun of Just Cause 2, and the squirting blood of Shogun 2 (to name just a fraction of a percent).

As a practice, these mini-DLC packs are the most variable in quality of all the microtransaction methods. There's nothing inherently wrong with providing fans with a fun extra to flesh out a world they're enjoying, but too often they're created with little attention to balance or value. The worst, inevitably, were once pre-order bonuses leveraged as an incentive to tempt early buyers. As well as the aforementioned sniper rifle, DX:HR's Tactical Enhancement Pack added 10,000 credits at the start of the game - effectively destroying many of the game's early purchasing choices.

For non-narrative led, systems-driven games, mini-DLC seems to fare better. Crusader Kings 2's profiles and music packs focus on aesthetic improvements in a game about strategic depth, while Civ 5's extra civilisations expand user specialisation, without changing the core of the game. But that doesn't mean that other types of games can't utilise mini-DLC in a way that adds something enjoyable for the user, that doesn't make the original game feel lacking without.

Verdict:

Free-to-play games that get it right

Dota 2 - You can buy cosmetic items like character armour and alternative announcer packs, none of which alter the balance of the game. Dota 2 can be played to a highly competitive level without any need to pay. The items Dota players buy are expressions of fandom

Team Fortress 2

Card Hunter - Card Hunter's premium items feel like a sugary bonus on top of a heap of good loot you'd earn through play anyway, and you always have the welcome choice of being able to pay a flat $20 fee to unlock all of the quests and content, making it a traditional pay-to-play game.

Guild Wars 2 - You'll have to buy the game to play Guild Wars 2, but there's no subscription fee, and many of the XP boosts, dyes and other store goodies are given as levelling gifts as you play.

Tribes Ascend in its early days

League of Legends - LoL's rotating selection of playable characters gives free players a wide slice of the game


Rift: we linked to Star Wars: The Old Republic's payment option screens above. Here's Rift's.

Quicker than you can say "boo" - assuming you elongate it out by a few hours - Valve followed up yesterday's TF2 comic with Scream Fortress, their fifth annual Halloween event. This time around it's the Payload Race map Hightower that's been spookified, turning it into the corpse-pushing Helltower. Also: there are skeletons, and the mercs have magic spellbooks now.

"Everybody gets a spellbook gifted to them automatically, which you can equip in your Action Slot in order to pick up and cast spells," explains the TF2 blog. "The team that wins the race will be granted a buff for the final climactic battle, where you will fight for the ultimate Halloween reward: Your own lives. And a reward."

Naturally, there are a bunch of items and achievements that can also be awarded, found and bought. Scream Fortress is live now, and will run the 11th November.

I like Team Fortress 2 but, at this point, I think I like Team Fortress 2 comics more. Luckily, one usually coincides with the other, meaning that everyone wins. At least, everyone except those traumatised veterans, huddled in their corner, muttering about how everything was better when this was just a patch of dust, and before fancy headwear meant that everybody looked fabulous. The next update will, inevitably, be the annual Halloween event. In preparation for that, here's a comic about some ghosts.

The TF2 blog isn't giving any hints as to what the update might contain, but - if I were to guess - I'd say a spooky 'Event' version of an existing map, and possibly some form of boss NPC. You know, like Valve have done every year. Personally, I'd quite like to see a return to the more subtle, ghostly presence of the very first Harvest event map, who's haunting I always preferred to the killable boss battles. It probably won't be that, though, what with the comic mentioning a portal to hell.

There's no timetable for the update's release. It's likely to be soon, though, because Halloween is only two days away.

Rounding out its set of living room-centric announcements this week, Steam Controller has been revealed by Valve, a 16-button, haptic-driven gamepad that Valve says is hackable, includes a touch screen, will feature sharable configurations, and has the ambitious goal of “supporting all games in the Steam catalog.” No price was announced for the controller, and it doesn't appear to feature motion control.
In place of analog sticks, Steam Controller features two circular, clickable trackpads. Valve claims that PC gamers “will appreciate that the Steam Controller’s resolution approaches that of a desktop mouse,” and goes as far to promise that the controller makes games that aren't traditionally suited to playing from the couch--RTSes, 4X games, simulations, and others--controller-friendly.

To compensate for the trackpads’ nature as less-tangible input devices than conventional analog sticks, Steam Controller includes “dual linear resonant actuators” that produce vibration. Valve adds that the controller can serve as a speaker. What seems to distinguish the Steam Controller’s square touch screen from other touch screens is click functionality. “Actions are not invoked by a simple touch, they instead require a click. This allows a player to touch the screen, browse available actions, and only then commit to the one they want,” Valve states in the announcement.

Although Valve was vague on how it plans to implement this policy, it emphasized the openness of the device. "We plan to make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering. We can’t wait to see what you come up with," Valve says.



We'll await details on price, materials, and an opportunity to try Steam Controller ourselves soon. Snuck into the very end of the announcement is a mention of Steam Machines and SteamOS, the prototype of which Valve says it will share "detailed specs" of next week.

In the meantime, you can become eligible to beta test Steam Controller by following the same steps outlined for the Steam Machines beta.

By announcing SteamOS yesterday, Valve declared that PC gaming is more than desktop gaming, that Windows is not our master, and that—finally—cats can own Steam accounts. The free, Linux-based, cat-friendly operating system is designed for gaming on living room PCs, because PC gaming according to Valve isn't about WASD and DirectX—it's about openness and collaboration.

We're free to choose our hardware, our software, our mods, and soon more than ever, how we play, where we play, and whether or not Microsoft gets a cut. If SteamOS takes off, PC gaming will undergo one of its most dramatic changes ever—possibly one more significant than the introduction of the free-to-play model and crowdfunding. That's thrilling, but also scary as hell, so we've worked through our fears with a list of SteamOS pros and cons, followed by deep breaths in anticipation of tomorrow's announcement.

The Pros
 
It's free. If you have a living room PC, or plan to build one, you can ditch Windows for free. That feels really good to say, but the adoption rate hinges on SteamOS launching with native support for everything we want in a media and gaming center. Streaming games from a secondary PC is neat, but we'd rather run them natively on the machine we paid to put in our living room. It also needs native Netflix and Hulu apps, and all the other media services offered by the consoles.

Valve says it's got this covered, announcing that it's "working with many of the media services you know and love," and that "hundreds of great games are already running natively on SteamOS," with native "AAA titles" to be announced in the coming weeks.

It encourages competition in the console market. May the best Steam Box win! Windows isn't designed for TVs, so neither are many PCs. Now Valve is giving away a platform for games, movies, and music, challenging hardware manufacturers to make systems that are powerful, quiet, and inexpensive. It used to be Microsoft vs. Sony vs. Nintendo fighting for the top of the living room ecosystem's food chain—soon it may be Microsoft vs. Sony vs. Nintendo vs. Everyone.

It should run some games better. One of the few advantages consoles have over PCs (whether or not they always make the best of it) is an OS specifically designed for gaming. Meanwhile, we have Windows, which is clearly not designed to be an ideal gaming platform. With SteamOS, however, Valve claims it has "achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing," and is now working on "audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level."

Last year, Valve posted a performance test of Left 4 Dead 2 running on Windows 7 and on Ubuntu, and the Linux build came out ahead, saying that the test "speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL." This isn't close to being an objective experiment—and we'll look forward to making our own evaluations—but it is encouraging.

It means more Linux games, and more couch-friendly PC games. SteamOS is as much about ditching Windows as it is putting PC gaming in the living room, so it affects even those firmly planted in their desk chairs. If SteamOS achieves the install base it needs for developers big and small embrace Linux, the Microsoft shackles may be broken forever.

The Cons
 
Steam Boxes may struggle to compete in price. A PC designed to run SteamOS skips over the Windows fee, but unlike a console, the manufacturer can't rely on game licensing fees to recoup costs—that money goes to Valve. Sony and Microsoft, however, can price their consoles competitively with that revenue in mind, which gives them the advantage. Valve itself could price hardware this way, but that would undercut third-party hardware manufacturers and could turn out to be anti-competitive. Unless, of course, Valve makes the unlikely move to subsidize the cost of these systems.

It could increase development costs. Major game developers aren't going to ditch Windows, the platform with the world's largest install base. If SteamOS becomes a competitive gaming platform, competitive developers will have yet another version to make, soaking up more resources.

The pessimistic angle is that this can only result in either lower quality games or more expensive games. The optimistic angle is that SteamOS will be embraced and prioritized by developers with the same enthusiasm as the consoles.

It could further fragment games and smother certain genres. If SteamOS eclipses the popularity of desktop gaming, developers will have less incentive to develop desktop games. Just as developers rushed into mobile and Facebook development, we could see a flood of controller-based Steam games that push niche and classic-style PC games into the slums.

It's a scary thought, but when we un-jerk our knees and really consider this scenario, it's a very minor concern. Crowdfunding has proven without a doubt that there's still a huge appetite for old fashioned mouse and keyboard PC games. The positive—and more likely—angle is that we'll see just greater diversity in the Steam library.

It gives Valve even more power over PC gaming. Valve isn't PC gaming. We know that, and millions of League of Legends players, World of Tanks enthusiasts, GOG.com users, modders, and more know that. But Steam is the most popular digital distribution service, and soon, it will be a platform. SteamOS may be free, but it's only as open as Valve allows. We don't know yet if we can use SteamOS to play non-Steam games, or if Valve will make exclusivity deals. We've asked, and Valve's answer will be a huge indicator of its intentions.

If you've got a passionate thought about SteamOS, we'd love to include it in our next issue of PC Gamer. We're always listening at letters@pcgamer.com.

Following up on its enigmatic announcement-of-an-announcement last week, Valve has unveiled SteamOS, a free stand-alone operating system “for living room machines.”

The OS “combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen,” according to the announcement. In-house streaming to a TV, similar to what’s used in Nvidia’s Shield, is a feature of the OS.

Valve also emphasizes SteamOS’s openness. Users can “can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want,” and hardware manufacturers are free to “iterate in the living room at a much faster pace,” setting it apart from console-style closed systems.

A vague component of the announcement is Valve’s claim to have “achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing” in SteamOS. Valve adds that it’s “now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level.” It’s also unclear how many of the 3,000 games on Steam will run natively on SteamOS--Valve says you'll be able to "access the full Steam catalog" through in-home streaming. We're also curious how well the operating system will be suited to desktop PCs or laptops that aren’t used in the living room.

Check back on Wednesday for the second of three announcements expected from Valve this week.

Story by Tyler Wilde and Evan Lahti

I like to think that creators who've had their TF2 Steam Workshop items accepted into the game were alerted to the fact by an ominous rumbling from their monitor. Without warning, the screen gaped open, and a shower of money fired out. Would you like your own money shower? You can have one - assuming you possess the raw talent to create spooky virtual headgear from nothing - because Valve are now accepting Workshop submissions for their annual Team Fortress 2 Halloween event.

Normally at this point, I'd quote a relevant section from the developers' announcement post. As it's TF2, that's not going to work, because said post is full of lines like: "That man was Bruce Willis in the haunted house classic Die Hard, and it should teach you a valuable lesson about showing a little advance respect for Halloween." There are tangents all up in that blog, is what I'm trying to say.

To pick out the relevant details, all submissions must be tagged Halloween 2013 in the Workshop. As with other Halloween items, they'll only be wearable during the event and on full moons. Because of that, creators have more leeway to stretch the game's usual tonal restrictions.

It must be hard for the professional Steam traders. They're forced to work long hours, bartering for and upselling the best cards. They're not even allowed to take the smallest of breaks, lest they miss a chance to secure their future with a shiny foil Dale Earnhardt Jr. It's a stressful lifestyle, with only the promise of vast riches keeping them going. It'll be no small comfort for them to learn that Steam have introduced Trade Offers, a system that lets users send pre-packaged offers for their friends/business partners to accept, reject, or counter-propose.

The system lets you browse a friend's inventory, enter the trading screen, tailor the offer to your liking, and send it off as a proposal. Their are two major benefits to this system, as I see it:


Your friend can be offline while you're making a proposal.
People who don't care about trading cards will tell you to piss off less often when all they have to do is click a button marked "yeah, sure, whatever". Or whatever it's actually marked.


It's not just cards that can be traded. From my limited poking about, most Steam Inventory items can be offered up, including Team Fortress 2 bits. For now, offers are limited to people on your friends list. Valve say that may be extended in the future, although will always respect the privacy options in place for your Inventory.

Finally! For too long, Valve have tied their primary work - funny comics that are posted on the internet - to their hobby project, the computer game and dress-up toy Team Fortress 2. "Can we see the continued adventures of Saxton Hale, manpuncher?" we'd ask, only to be told that no, first we had to wait for a development team to code new maps, weapons, rule tweaks, and approximately 5,000 new hats.

Not any more, though. The multi-media wizards (and occasional game developers) have realised that not everything needs an accompanying piece of headgear, and have released the first part of a six issue TF2 comic saga, sans update.

Well, sort of. A small update has slipped out, in recognition of Team Fortress's 17th birthday. It adds "Rome-vision" sharing, allowing anyone playing an MvM server with an owner of the Hardy Laurel to opt-in to mechanical history. Chemistry sets have also been added. They sound weird, so I'm going to let the TF2 Wiki do the heavy describing.

As for the comic series, it's planned for bi-monthly release. You can read the first part here.

Valve's recent Team Fortress 2 update took a specific shot at a section of the community known as idlers. Idlers play the game to not play it: they join servers and just stand there, hoping to grab an item via the game's item drop system. After years of this, Valve have decided you must click on the item to have it deposited in your backpack, meaning that people who have to be at their PC to benefit*. That's fair enough; Valve really don't want people not playing their game for profit. But I am worried that it'll mean that Idle servers become a thing of the past, because they can be amazing maps to visit and even play on.

An idle map needs only these things: a spawn point for each team, and a room in the middle with a game element. These maps are designed to kill players over and over again. Some say it's to make sure player stats aren't skewed with ultra-long lives, others claim it's to stop servers from kicking players. Beyond that, anything goes. Balance and lines of sight are no concern. Instead the designers fill the space with ingenious traps and strange assault courses designed to make achievement farming easier.

One of my guilty pleasures is to server hop through all non-standard maps and peek into what people have made. I just alphabetise the server browser and pick the maps that don't come with the recognisable TF2 suffixes. The fickle nature of TF2 hosting means these servers aren't always running, but if you're scouring the server browser for an interesting experience, then here are a few to look out for.

Map: achievement_idle
"The perfect space to hone your Heavy boxing skills."
 


This is the granddaddy of idle servers, and the most basic setup. It consists of three rooms: two spawn rooms facing into a central, uncappable point. The spawn points are kill rooms, with the player's health dropping as soon as they land on the server, and the only place both teams can meet is the centre room, with the smallest loop of a corridor protecting the players from a line-of-sight death. It's basically like sharing a bedroom with a little brother. Everyone is crammed together, giving each other the stink-eye through the spawn room windows. Petty little fights will eventually break out, with each person flipping between multiple classes to attempt to get the upper hand. The perfect space to hone your Heavy boxing skills.

Map: achievement_idle_inferno
"The conveyor belt tips the players into a fiery pit."



On the Red team, it's business as usual: you spawn in a room and you die, or you can have a fun little battle in the central space. But if you only spawn on the Red side you'll miss out on the hat party on the other end of the map. The Blu team spawns on a conveyor belt in a forced conga line beneath a glowing sign that points you to "Free Hats". Never trust a glowing sign. As in life, they always end up in disappointment and murder. The conveyor belt tips the players into a fiery pit before launching their corpses into the air like a diseased cow.

Map: achievement_idle_awesomebox8
"To see the best this map has to offer, you'll have to take a leap of faith."



Awesomebox8 makes a few additions to the stock idle server. Instead of dying in situ, the players are funnelled off onto a conveyor belt. The rooms it drags you through allows other players to kill you, which can help with achievement farming. You can fight anywhere on the map, and there's a boxing ring on top for players to go melee mano-a-mano. To see the best this map has to offer, you'll have to take a leap of faith. Those willing to jump over a certain side will be rewarded with an invisible staircase that takes you to a party in the skybox. As seen above, the engi is the best class to use to get there.

Map: achievement_proud_to_idle
"there's a tennis court for Pyros to practice rocket reflecting."



This is a multipurpose map, designed for dying, achievement mining, and just having fun. The spawn room faces a room with several elevators. Each leads to different area. The achievement area will let you easily fill any gaps in your achievement list, the arena is where you can settle differences with violence, and there's a tennis court for Pyros to practice rocket reflecting. But the memorial hall - filled with portraits of TF2's legendary cast - hides the greatest secret. If you take a running leap at the Spy's portrait, you'll pass through it into a secret Spy room. That's not the only hidden area, either. The looped rope in the Fail room, part of the Memorial Hall, holds its own secrets. But you can find that out for yourself.

Map: achievement_all_v4
"The fighting hides a massive, server-destroying secret."



Achievement maps are the flashier brothers to idle servers. Here you're idling so others might pad their stats by killing you. At first look, achievement_all_v4 has everything you need to grind out achievements: short runs where you can cap points quickly, easy briefcases to capture, even self-building dispensers to sap. You'll join and see an unbalanced fight between teams, where some Blus have given up their existence to Red kill-counts, but the fighting hides a massive, server-destroying secret.

In the corner of each team's spawn area, beside the restock cabinets at the striped walls, is a secret, invisible button. First you need to attack the area around the corner. A pyro is the best choice for this, then you need to hit 'use' on the area. What follows defies belief. A scream fills the server, the ground shakes, then at the back wall of the level a cat rises. The feline fires bees and has laser beams from its eyes. It is unkillable, and everything it fights will die. It's difficult to find: the cat also kills the server, requiring a restart, so not many people are willing to host LAZER DEATH CAT, or if they do they might disable it. The above video shows it looks like when Valve's gimmicked rocket launcher comes up against a kitty death machine.

Map: achievement_turbov14
"There's an entirely new map, filled with games and the Pyro's house."



This map is huge, with separate rooms for different types of achievement farming. It has the feeling of a modern church, built to let attendees worship at the altar of achievements. Both Red and Blu teams spawn in the same area, so it can be tough to figure out the space without getting into impromptu fights, but there are teleports behind the spawn that'll take you away from the madness. The construction of this space is a marvel in itself, but there's a ridiculous added bonus to uncover. Head through the mail hall and the door labelled "achievement boxes". read the instructions on the wall about binding the "use" key, then head around the wall and through the double doors. Don't scream at the Pyro, and run and jump at the Spy portrait. Hit "Use" twice and you'll be through into a secret area. From here it's a few more easy steps to an entirely new map, filled with games and the Pyro's house. There's more, as you'll see in the video above.

*Four items were dropped in the writing of this article