Team Fortress 2 really has been in development for going on ten years, or so I was told by Valve's Robin Walker and Charlie Brown during a recent trip to the company's Bellevue, Seattle offices. Production of the long awaited game, for years presumed by many to be vaporware, never completely stopped or restarted, despite the drastic changes it has seen to its gameplay and visual style.

"It's a testament to our internal perspective that we're just not going to ship something until it's ready," Walker said. "As a company, we hate being in a position where we're making guesses."

As is characteristic of Valve's development process, each element of Team Fortress 2 underwent iteration after iteration after iteration. It is a philosophy that always seems to work out for the best in terms of the final product, but can lead to agonizing delays for fans.

Longtime followers will remember Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms, the much more realistically-rendered Team Fortress followup revealed around the turn of the century. It featured a strategy-driven Commander class, numerous highly-hyped graphical technologies, weapons modeled after military hardware, tanks and helicopters, and grim-faced army guys.

So what happened to that, anyway?

"It wasn't fun," admitted Walker, who was part of the original Team Fortress team hired by Valve to develop the sequel in 1998. He went on to clarify that there was never a point at which Valve simply ditched one design and went off full bore in the opposite direction. Rather, as always, it was constant iteration and testing that led to the eventual refinements or removal of various mechanics, until the team ended up with a game that, at its core, is much more reminiscent of the original Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic. Remarkably, as Walker recalls, nearly every developer who worked on Team Fortress Classic remains on the Team Fortress 2 team--only three or so have moved on.

Class warfare

The crux of Valve's design goals for Team Fortress 2 has been to make the classes as unique and complete as possible. This has required some heavy modifications to the original game's balance, but is that enough to satiate those who claim that TF2 is simply a repackaged Team Fortress? Walker's response is that TFC had the right idea, but it didn't quite pull it off to the ideal level; TF2 should remedy that. "In TFC, the classes weren't sufficiently different," he said. "A focus in TF2 has been to push those classes farther and farther apart."

Essentially, players should feel that choosing a class is a significant decision, one with implications throughout gameplay. This has led to changes such as the hotly debated removal of grenades, which in turn led to the de facto nonexistence of the infamous concussion grenade jump trick ("conc jumping"). The developers aren't out to destroy extreme mobility or explosives, however--they're just trying to make them more associated with particular classes. The demoman is now the only class with an indirect fire projectile, and the Scout has a gloriously unrealistic double-jump ability. As if in a 3D platformer, the Scout can even change his direction of momentum on the second jump, making for some impressive mid-air juking abilities as well as the potential for quick vertical shortcuts.

By giving the classes extremely distinct identities, Valve is attempting to create numerous strengths and weaknesses between the classes depending on the combat situation. Walker and Brown frequently referred to the Scout when describing the ins and outs of class balance, as they feel that the Scout was one of the original classes most in need of an overhaul. For example, the Pyro's shotgun and massively powerful flamethrower are short-ranged weapons, but he moves faster than most classes, allowing him to get face to face with his enemies relatively easily. Unlike most classes, however, the Scout outpaces the Pyro, meaning in wide open areas he can dance around the Pyro, control the terms of the fight, and manage to evade the flames if controlled by a skilled player. In a confined space, on the other hand, he is unlikely to be able to avoid the Pyro's damage spread.

The Scout can fairly easily avoid indirect fire from the sticky bomb launcher or grenade launcher of a Demoman--who is better suited to defensive roles or precautionary explosive-laying--or more deliberately fired heavy weapons such as the Soldier's rocket launcher, but that isn't to say he is simply an all-purpose heavy class hunter. The Heavy himself, armed with a massive rapid-fire minigun, makes short work of Scouts as they approach; after all, it is easier to dodge a grenade than a spate of bullets. A similar situation holds for the Sniper, who can take careful aim at a Scout from long range without fear of the Scout being able to return fire.

Of course, if the Scout can come at the slow-moving Heavy from another angle, he might be able to dance around (or over) the oaf while repeatedly beating the big guy with his melee weapon, an aluminum baseball bat. And while that big, lumbering Heavy would make an easy target for a Sniper, the Sniper better make sure to take him out quickly, because, unlike the Scout, the Heavy is capable of responding with a hail of fire. Snipers are rewarded for holding a position and waiting for the ideal shot. When its scope is zoomed in, a sniper rifle continuously charges up in power until fired; when unzoomed, that charge will tick down until zoomed again. The Sniper is still mobile while zoomed, but moves more slowly and is restricted by low peripheral vision due to the visually restrictive scope sight.

The stealthy Spy draws on his original design and expands on it. He is capable of disguising himself in the enemy's liveries, or even activating a cloaking device that renders him invisible, at least until he fires a weapon or is fired upon. Laughing, Walker mentioned that, in testing, Valve has found that some of the most effective Spy players are those who are not necessarily the most experienced Team Fortress or Team Fortress 2 players--experienced non-Spy players will be on the lookout for disguised Spies trying to inconspicuously achieve certain goals, but those who are playing it more by ear frequently fail to even register with those who are looking for the patterns.

Then, there are the Engineer and the Medic--the support classes.

Continue reading for details on Team Fortress 2's support classes and pacing mechanics.