Valve continues their quality Developer Blog posts with an insight into the process on developing new tools for the Engineer. Read more for information about the upcoming Engineer update and a couple shout outs at the end!

We're plugging away at the Engineer update. He's an interesting class to work on, because he creates a larger footprint in the game than any other class. This means we have a lot of options to work with, and the resulting set of ideas is truly daunting. Since we've already built and playtested some things that haven't worked out (with no false modesty, I think we've mastered the art of rapidly making things that aren't fun), we thought it might be interesting to give you some of our failed experiments.

The first was a new building internally known as the Repair Node. We gave Engineers the ability to replace any current building (teleporter entrances and exits were considered one building for this) with the Repair Node instead.

While deployed, the Repair Node would draw from a pool of energy to fix damage to nearby buildings. When the node ran out of energy, it would stop repairing and regenerate up to full, creating a window of opportunity for the attackers. When sapped, the Repair Node's repair function was disabled for the duration of the sap.

Schetter posted posted a great article on TGBF I wanted to point out to people: READ HERE

As he points out, MLG is ignorant in their remonstrations that ever single sport has grown underneath one league. As schetter points out every major sport has had its share of league mergers. Even with UFC and MMA, there are a multitude of smaller leagues that help support talent and bring fans into the sport. While MLG is bringing in a lot of players and expanding coverage, the Major League games Halo, Call Of Duty, and Gears of War are not going to result in eSports crossing over.

The use of consoles grants them the ability to setup large events rather easily, but also come with major drawbacks. League administrators have minimal control over game settings. I don't follow MLG so I can't recall the exact match, but I witnessed a Halo CTF game where inches away from scoring the final cap, the X-Box seized up and the whole game was restarted. The about to win team ended up losing in the replay. The PC scene features more complex games due to the superiority of the Mouse and Keyboard control scheme and promotes community involvement. Certainly MLG is the big boy league right now, but that's due to the large numbers of Halo and CoD players, not necessarily better game play or better spectating. CGS failed for many reasons, but it's failure isn't representative of the chances for eSports overall. While competitive gamers might unite under one flag in the future, the first step is to form a strong community around each game. If MLG thinks they can drive every other eSport league out of business through a huge community of Halo and CoD players they are sorely mistaken.

PC FPS eSports can succeed in the states at a large scale. Besides Counter-Strike's poor spectator status (for non-players, in my opinion), CGS's coverage of it was watered down by giving equal coverage to Forza, Fifa, and Dead Or Alive in the same broadcast. A market for eSports coverage exists, but the game and the coverage, have to be right. With expanded coverage comes more willingness from Sponsors to be involved, and inevitably larger cash prizes for the gamers themselves.