Commander

For the unused Civilian Class, see the Civilian.

Commander
Basic Information
Icon:	N/A
Type:	N/A
Health:	N/A
Speed:	N/A

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RIP The Tenth Class — Harvest Event Tombstone

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The Commander class is proposed scrapped non-physical class in Team Fortress 2.

The Commander would overlook the map, providing air support, placing buildings and communicating tactics. Scrapped during the middle of Team Fortress 2's long development cycle, the proposed tenth class has left a legacy of jokes and inspiration for both developers and the community.

Information

Origins

During the development of Team Fortress 2, originally titled Valve's Team Fortress then titled Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms, the team pushed for a more realistic approach when designing the game. Valve worked to create a modern war game with the then state-of-the-art technologies and techniques, which included parametric animation; seamlessly blended animations for smoother, more life-like movement; and Intelligence's multi-resolution mesh technology dynamically reducing the detail of on-screen elements as they become more distant to improve performance (a technique made obsolete by decreasing memory costs, since today's games use a technique known as level of detail, which uses more memory but less processing power).

Included in this modern direction was the design of a military command hierarchy, introducing a Commander class; the class would have a bird's-eye view of the battlefield, reminiscent of Real-Time Strategy games, allowing for new influence in battle. With numerous innovations such as networked voice communication, the Commander would have been able to help coordinate attacks, alert to enemies, placing structures, call for parachute drops over enemy territory, to name a few; however, unlike the remainder of the classes, due to the RTS design, the Commander was a non-physical class, only able to passively influence battle.

Complications and Removal

In a Gravel Pit developer commentary with Robin Walker, he discusses the reason why the development time for Team Fortress 2 took a significant amount of time. Among the reasons were the balancing issues with the Commander class in gameplay.

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In developing TF2 we tried out many many features, a few of which made it into the final product, but most of which were cut. For example, our initial versions of TF2 were focused on trying to build a game around the concept of a commander: a single player who had a real time strategy view of the battlefield. He would be responsible for building structures and providing a unifying strategy for the team. But there was significant design challenges involved. For instance, how do we design the game such that the commander can have fun and at the same time ensure that the players down on the ground can have fun? How do we ensure that the players and the commander value the output of each other? How do we ensure that the game is still fun if you have a terrible commander, or conversely, if you're a great commander with a terrible team? We spent many months working on these and other issues and never really reached a point where we were satisfied. In addition, our game has become overly complex, due to our attempts to add a strategy layer deep enough to warrant the addition of the commander in the first place. In the end, we made the hard decision to remove him from the game and moved on. — Robin Walker

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The Commander class, along with such features as a more realistic approach, were scrapped and steps towards to the cartoonish final design then began.

Legacy

While the Commander Class may have been removed from final release, this doesn't mean that a tenth class may not arrive in the future. In an interview with Escapist Magazine in 2009, Robin Walker said:

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Walker says they haven't made any decisions about adding new classes yet, but that doesn't mean they're not considering them. "We've got several new class designs floating around, some of which we like a lot, but right now we're focusing on the broadening of our existing classes through the addition of the unlockables" — Robin Walker in an interview with Escapist Magazine's Nathan Meunier

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However, in a later interview with TFPortal.de, Walker redact his point on the matter:

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TFPortal.de: In another Interview you mentioned about a 10th Class for Team Fortress 2? Do you think that would be a good idea? We have now 3 Supporter Classes, 3 Offense Classes and 3 Defense Classes. Also the part of 9 Classes which we got in Team Fortress Classic. Robin Walker: We've got some ideas for further classes, but right now we're focusing on new game modes and items that are additive to all classes. A 10th class is something we'd really like to do, it's just an order of magnitude more work than adding a new unlockable. Also, the 9 classes provide a wide spread of gameplay for us, and often we find that new class ideas are more like subclasses of an existing class. In some cases, we're able to design an unlockable that provides a boost to that style of play, essentially creating the subclass in the game." — Robin Walker in an interview with tfportal.de

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Since the release of Team Fortress 2, the Commander/Tenth class, while teased during development, had become a running joke with the developers, beleaguering the community even more.

The Guard Dog, a proposed fake Tenth Class

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TUESDAY, APRIL 6th, 2010 ...Big team meeting today. I came prepared. I've been programming a playable demo version of TF2 with an entirely new tenth class. I had to teach myself programming, modeling, level design, character design and about twenty other skills, but I think the results speak for themselves. Everybody took a crack at playing it. "This is pretty balanced gameplay," admitted Robin. "I like how we haven't found any hats yet," said Brandon Reinhart. "It sets up the suspense better. I'm all, 'When am I going to find a hat already?'" Everyone laughed. "I hope it's soon, I can't wait much longer," said Corey Peters. "Look how stupid this tenth class's bare head looks!" More big laughs. "Actually, there aren't any hats in this demo," I said, chuckling. Deathly silence. Then everybody got up at once and stopped playing. Eric Smith got really mad and threw his keyboard through a wall, then stormed out and went home. Robin asked to speak to me privately. — TF2 Blog's A Week in the Life of the TF2 Team blog entry

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The joke hasn't escaped the fans either. The idea of a new member to enter the fray has inspired the community to search through for clues in each game patch and even design their own idea of a tenth class; The most (in)famous would be the Guard Dog Update, a fan-made update by graphic Designer Diogo Lima. The idea proposed of a dog fitted with a machine to help be a suitable contributing Soldier in battle; this design with its attention to detail, imitated TF2 style and convincing character model took the community by storm and even got the attention of Valve, sending a very (jokingly passive-aggressive) thank you letter from Saxton Hale himself.

Trivia

• In the Harvest Event map, there are tombstones around the map with text on them, one including "RIP The Tenth Class".
• In the Waiting Room scene of the Meet the Medic video, at 3:45, the next ticket to be taken is 11, implying that a tenth individual has taken a ticket but is no where in sight, if we take into account that Heavy has already a ticket; else, that would mean there are two unseen individuals, possibly the second being the Civilian.
• The Valve game Left 4 dead includes another tease of the Tenth class in the first building of the first level of the No Mercy campaign on a cereal box. The box advertises Team Fortress 2 toys, stating "10 to collect", even though there are only 9 released classes.

See also

• Unused content
• Guard Dog Update