E6850 3.0ghz Conroe on nForce i680 mobo
EVGA 7950 GTKO (*PS. Don’t buy EVGA – plenty fast, but crap backwards compat + Warranty Scandals, BFG/XFX ftw.)
2GB Ram PC6400
1.5 Terra HD space (about 120GB free)
600w Ultra-X Connect PSU

Not a good compare, as this system is overkill for this game, although I’m still not DX10 ready.

Again, I think the min stats for smooth play would be:
Lowest end Conroe
Nvidia 7600+ 256MB
2GB ram (maybe okay with 1GB, just load slow)

In sort, assuming you’re buying parts on the net:
$150-200 graphics card,
$175-200 CPU,
$100-200 Mobo,
$50-$150 memory,
$50-$150 PSU,
$100 HD,
$75-$200 case,
should be good to go.

Double the price, and Raid HD's, if you want to run it under Vista smoothly.
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"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men." - Max Beerbohm
Thothie

I myself have been playing on the GofW server, very fast and rare lag if any at all.

Pros: This game has what TFC 1 was missing. Teamworks. No more Score-Whores, no more spam fests, there is actually teamwork that has to happen. Sure scouts can run around using their bat to try to score whore, but points dont work that way.

The classes were re-done very well. I have no complaints against any of them yet ( this is a beta, nerfs WILL happen , so no complaints yet ). The maps seem very well ported over, the graphics are smooth and well done.
Keep in mind I am no way near in any part a Valve fanboi. I just really think the 9 years it took to release TF2 was worth it. They really outdid themselves with it. Again, its a beta, so the real reaction will come after release. So far, well done Valve.

Cons:

-= The Friggan Respawn Timer -=
I abso-fucking-lutely hate respawn timers. Its pointless to have a 12 - 15 second timer to go back and frag people, only to step out of respawn and get whacked by a spy. Then you wait another 12-15 seconds. Bleh, get rid of it, does not belong in a FPS, especially one as fast paced as TF. *IF* there is to be a timer, tone it down to like 1 - 3 seconds... thats plenty time IMHO.

All in all, I am very satisfied with the quality thus far of TF2.

TF2 Experience #2

- Spawn, go random, get sniper
- Find out can't snipe anything on 2fort due to bridge, as warned
- Get slain 1-shot by random passing scout I never even saw
- (Total play time 32 seconds)
- Wait 15 seconds,
- Spawn again, as sniper again - apparently Random doesn't mean what it used to
- Manually select Heavy (luckily not forced to respawn)
- Get three inches from spawn, knife in back
- 15 seconds dead again
- (Total playtime now 50 seconds, 30 of which have been spent dead)
- Select Demo, figuring pipe the sh*t out of front of spawn to kill camper spy
- Attempt to warn team of spy
- Find out I can't change my name via "name" console command
- Told I can't change my name without using Steam Community
- Steam Community crashes my Steam, which is why I have it disabled. Thus, I shall always be "[Unknown]" while playing this game.
- Spawn with demo, game goes to black. Crash.

So... Experience #2, not much better than #1 (where I was left with the impression TF2=CS). *sigh* I'll try ONE more time today.

edit:
Experience #3:
Play for 10 seconds, get Trillian pop up, TF2 crashes... Okay, maybe ONE more time...
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"Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, but hating, my boy, is an art." - Ogden Nash
Thothie

Thoth -

You can change your name very easily and here is how:

1) load Steam
2) Goto My Games
3) Select TF2, and launch it
4) After it loads, hit the shift Tab combo, and launch community for a moment. You friends thing should come up. ( No pen0r comments here )
5) Sign in to friends
6) Shift Tab combo again, which drops the community, and then use the ~ to drop the console.

Name change should take effect with the name namehere command.

7) Shift Tab, sign out, and then Shift Tab again to close community.

Hopefully it wont crash you for the few moments you need to do this.

Last night when i played i got a 20 SECOND waiting time. Although it seemed the seconds were passing by pretty damn fast.......

yeah apparently steam is using your steam community name now as your in game name. It's easily changable out of game by going to the steam community tab. Took me about a day to figure this out.

I agree with tobias, while i don't mind some rez timer, my average life span is around 2 mins. Waiting 15 seconds every 2 mins is not cool.

I did get to play, and I had some fun with soldier and medic (you CAN rocket jump, btw, but only straight forward - no shooting behind yourself and riding the wave)... I got tired of it at about 20 minutes of it working proper though. Just didn't seem to have much more to offer.

It doesn't deserve the name Team Fortress, really. It's an okay game, but it feels much more like PVK than TFC. Should be called Death by Toon or somethin. ...Toon Fortress maybe... Yeeah... But the ultra-sluggish feel just removes it far too much from the original game to keep the name.

Back to NS.
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"Money couldn’t buy friends, but you get a better class of enemies." - Spike Milligen
Thothie

Well hopefully it will improve in the time to come. What do you think they would need to add/remove for it to be compelling (with the exception of the spawn timer).

When I have more time, I'll write a novel. But basically everything I've said up until now x2, plus a whole lot of new stuff.
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"The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify." - The Zensufi Master
Thothie

My biggest gripe about TF2 is still that there is far more down time than up time. Between the Sudden Death rounds (which even happen on 2fort apparently), warm up time (again, even on 2fort), match restart time, and of course, the respawn time. You’re lucky to see more up time than down time on any given map. My second biggest complaint is that the whole game is so sluggish. 2fort puts me to sleep - I just can’t play it. I really can’t play this game for more than 20 minutes.

I don’t have time to write all the “What’s wrong with TF2” book today, but I’ll get started I suppose.

Chapter I: Classes
- This is sh*t that stands a chance of being fixed in the beta at least.

Pyro = Useless
Flame thrower has like a 2 foot range, only thing he's good for is finding spies, which is iffy, and useless on FF servers. He's nothing to make up for it, not even very fast.

Scout = GOD
If you have a good ping, there's no reason to play anything else. You have more undodgeable punch in one hit than anything. 2 hits will take a soldier, 3 will frag a heavy – and that’s assuming they’re fresh. Nothing can hit you, you can cap faster than anyone, and SG's can easily be bypassed (or, if you prefer, angled, then shot point blank). On top of this you have twice the health of your readout (bug? tested with stationary scouts – they take more shots than engineers) Really? Why play anything else? Indeed, I rarely see less than 3 of these for every other class.

Engineer = Screwed
Frailer than a kitten, and without the claws. You've no way to detect spies, save for the occasional "Hey wait, aren't I the only engie on this team?" - even if you do detect them, you've no way of stopping them with that pathetic confetti shooter of yours. Scouts can bypass your SG’s, or even just shoot them down with that mega-blaster of theirs. Soldiers take em out with ease and ya can’t repair em, cuz yer so weak the splash will kill you from the other side of the map. You can’t upgrade damaged guns, not even with a paint scratch, so as long as there’s battle going on around it, you’ll never get your SG up a level. Pistol is about as accurate as your confetti shooter (railgun is vastly superior to that crap), so you’re absolutely worthless in battle. Only way yer getting a teleport up is via ninja, or with 10 teammates to cover your papier-mâché butt.
* I doubt they’ll be fixing this, as doing so will harm their efforts to pigeon hole the roles.

Demo = Fear meh balls
Those little koochie balls you shoot seem to be exactly that. Stuck four on a medic, detted – who promptly turned around and killed me and then two of my teammates, one of which hit him with a rocket. Everytime I see one of these I just ignore it. Never had one do more than 20pts damage to me.

Spy = Invisible God
It’s not a knife, it’s a bloody katana – you can decapitate people with this thing from all sorts of odd angles and distances. You can run full speed while totally invisible. Your disguise is flawless, even if you get hit, and if FF is on, doubly so, as no one will dare question your presence anywhere (not that you couldn’t just be invisible in said questionable location). You can instantly kill multiple sentries with no regard for incoming fire without ever dropping your disguise.

Sniper = Why bother?
Useless crap. Only way you get a kill is with a headshot, and there are very few good sniping spots on any maps.

Medics…
Most of the medic's flaws come from stupidity that may get better over time. Stupid medics, healing their uber target and ignoring all other players who might save them. Refusing to switch weapons to defend themselves. Stupid uber targets ignoring said medic’s location. Yadda yadda. Much rather have the old medic, but meh.

Soldiers & Heavy’s I’ve no major issues with… That rocket hits plenty hard, and is great for juicing large groups of folks – also pretty much the only thing that might kill a Scout, provided you can shoot him point blank, 4 times. Heavy’s do seem a bit frail, but more so just boring to play. They don’t even have the mobility of the old HWGuy, and of course, no grenades. Gun could use a little more punch too, as certainly the Heavy movie is false advertising.

i've just been keeping with tfc & ff, i have no desire whatsoever to play Toy Story.

So where does jiggs come down on this?

From what he's already posted, he's not happy, but he's not nearly as unhappy as I am. Only reason I'm even trying to learn the game is I figure he'll probably host a server, eventually.

PS. People - use the Bug Report feature - it has a "Suggestions" entry on the pull down. One thing I think we're ALL agreed on is: Respawn Timers Suck Ass. Please use the Bug Report suggestion feature to burn this into their CS loving brains (and if you hate the Sudden Death crap, make a seperate report for that too.)

I've already reported that and all of the above on there. I see no other official place to bitch, so feel free.

Bloody CS'ers remaking TFC for their kids... Grr...
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"You just had a near-life experience!" - Tyler D
Thothie

I'd be willing to report it as well. I have not experienced this sudden death you speak of. But I am totally willing to nix the spawn timer, or make it like a server side option to adjust the timer.

I'm fairly certain we aren't going to see any game play or class changes. I think they've set their minds that this is how they want them, and now they're just trying to fix crash bugs from here on out.

Talked with some server ops. The respawn delay cannot be set. The Sudden Death thing, however can (which might explain why, on some servers I've been on, it happens every time, regardless of score difference.)

Oh yeah, and I'm still stuck with "[Unknown]", but I notice there are less and less of us.
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"Anyone who isn't really confused, really doesn't understand the situation." - Edward R. Murrow
Thothie