Team Play First - First on Team Fortress

If memory serves me correctly, Team Play First was a movement created during the waning years of Team Fortress Classic, and then carried over to (and popularized by) the Battlefield Series. TPF was exactly what it sounded like; an organization dedicated to gamers who felt that team success was more enjoyable than individual success. In Battlefield (and I suppose when the majority of the first waves of TFC gamers left for greener pastures), the emphasis on cooperation public servers is basically nil. Back in the hey day of Team Fortress and Weapons Factory, things were quite the opposite, and I think a large part of it was due to the difference between TF CTF (Team Fortress: Capture the Flag), and Conquest Mode.

If I haven't covered it before, Weapons Factory was Team Fortress for Quake 2. Team Fortress originated with Quake 1. It was being designed for Quake 2, when Valve signed up the Team Fortress Developers, with the intent to eventually make TF for Half-life (TFC). In their absence, other developers made a basically identical version for Quake 2. Weapons Factory was this game, and was comparable to TFC. I believe if it weren't for Valve's unparalleled dedication to their fan mods, Team Fortress Classic would never have taken back its fanbase from Weapons Factory.

Getting back to the original topic, Throughout my long history with Weapons Factory, any player with more than a few weeks of experience would immediately be compelled to cooperate with the team leaders, to ensure team success. It was simply an unwritten law. You could play whatever class you wanted, but you could tell what the team needed simply by observing the score, and the flag status messages. Experienced player's would immediately type "I'm on O" or "I'm on D", depending on whether they felt the team needed more offense or defense. Whether their assessment was correct wasn't always certain. But this simple communication meant that everyone knew what the majority of their team was doing, and they could base their decisions on this. And this was in the days before Teamspeak and Ventrillo. Everyone just typed quickly and briefly, that's all.

I deeply enjoyed my years of BattleField and Desert Combat experience. But despite the great features added to Battlefield emphasizing troop commands, enemy spotting, and calling for support, I'd have to say that all of the Battlefield titles (on your average public server) pale in comparison to the nature of spontaneous cooperation and teamplay that Team Fortress fosters. Maybe it's because of the larger map area, or the nature of conquest, or the tremendous advantage of vehicles, or the addition of individual awards and medals. But other than in clan scrimmages and matches, evidence of a fully unified and coordinated team is extremely rare. I had high hopes that Team Fortress 2 would bring a return of this style of play, independently of any player base that formed due to being fed up of solitary-styled play in a team game. It is, after all, named "Team Fortress 2" But since Valve seems to be embracing conquest ticks over flag caps for TF2, that hope is hanging by a tenuous thread.