Dear FF,

[Bridget]

Dear Fortress Forever Community,

Please stop bitching that the only thing public players can do is 'deathmatch'. When you create an entire game that requires a giant skill requirement just to play on a basic competitive level, then you completely alienate new players. When a beginner is unable to bunnyhop across the yard fast enough to avoid the inevitable sniper fire, then what else can he do beside play in-base deathmatch-defense? When a beginner is unable to air-strafe and control a concussion jump, then how will he ever be able to bypass the defenders to get to the flag? What are objectives if you can't reach them? What is organized play if you have to have immediate skill to experience it?

This is the reason Fortress Forever sucks for the beginner. There's no compensation, no integration, nothing remains except deathmatching when the beginner realizes he lacks the minimum skill requirements to play the game on the same level as everyone else. When you can't bunnyhop, you get outrun. When you can't air-shot, people just fly past you. When you can't keep your sentry gun up, you're unable to contribute to a defensive objective. So on, and so on, and fucking so on. Deathmatching, as expected, gets old. Fortress Forever, therefore, gets old.

So, give me a break. Fortress Forever doesn't fail because 'it's a mod, man.' Garry's mod was a mod. Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, too, were mods. They gathered enough support to go on to be retail games, because there was at-least some level of beginner integration. These games had learning curves, but they were fun to travel across. Garry's mod is extremely overwhelming when you first start experimenting, but the learning process is fun and amusing. It's encouraging. What's there to Fortress Forever? Congratulations, you've learned how to prime grenades, now there's only a dozen other mechanics that give everyone else an advantage over you that are not not fun to learn and/or are counter-intuitive to learn (eg bunny-hop, strafe-jump, conc-aim, etc).

Just a friendly reminder from, as you would call me: "Fortress Forever's #1 Troll"