Team Fortress 2

[savvaisnotagirl]

I must say, within the last few months I seem to have been doing the opposite of everyone else: enjoying TF2 more. Really, I still love this game to bits! I hear all this talk of horribly unbalanced weapons, hackers abound, toxic groups of people and all manner of issues. But... I don't think I really suffer from any of it. I find the weapons to be OK at the moment. There are some weapons I think are truly useless, and would love to see rebuilt, but I have never recently been prevented from having an enjoyable experience or winning by a single weapon. Not since the Tough Break Phlog, but that's fine now. If I find someone is using a certain weapon well, I can always just counter it and everything works. About hackers, I see very few. When they are present, it's fun to watch them run about twitching madly, their chat slaved to advertise lmaobox, until they are quickly vote-kicked. And if they somehow stay, I just switch servers, no problem. And the toxic community? I find more that often than not, it is barely an issue worth noting. Someone spams lenny in the chat? I don't care, I hardly even read the chat. Someone says 'get rekt' after they kill me? Why on Earth should that matter to me? I have never gotten into a real argument or negative conversation with anyone in TF2. Just yesterday, someone humorously gave me a 'lap dance' as I was sitting in my Relaxo chair in the vents on turbine. We started talking and now we're friends. This sort of thing happens to me all the time, and I ONLY play valve servers. It can't just be good luck. Now, TF2 does have issues, but none of them are game breaking at all, at least to me. TF2 needs a spring cleaning update that focuses solely bug, UI, animation, and other types of inconsistencies and errors, as well as better optimization. And it does bug me how many cosmetic items break the art style (If I were to make one update, I'd end up putting Halloween restrictions on most cosmetics). But these issues don't prevent me from playing TF2 and having a blast while doing so. I still think this game is amazing, and it will take a lot more than what I've seen so far to dissuade me.

 

This man is my TF2 Spiritual guide now.

 

Also, Valve does care about TF2, they just managed to VAC out most of LMAOBOX cheaters a days ago and are focusing hard on making competitive. If that doesn't show you that valve cares, then only the release of HL3 will get your attention.

[Jeb_CC]

@Scampi: Very agreed! And actually, if some guy kills me and says "Rekt", I usually applaud them cause most of the time it was an amazing kill. XD

[rairii]

The fall of TF2 came when Valve started trying to balance the game around the competitive community, which was already dying for a reason

Valve: Let's buff the only classes already viable in competitive while nerfing everything else, sounds good

And of course the long-awaited competitive update was a complete travesty because now you have to queue up for half an hour to play for about 5 minutes

Valve: Let's just replace valve servers with matchmaking, because matchmaking totally worked when MvM came about

 

It's still TF2, I just wish they'd bring back Valve servers and show the more underpowered classes (pyro/engie/spy) some love

[Psychotic Ninja]

The fall of TF2 came when Valve started trying to balance the game around the competitive community, which was already dying for a reason

Valve: Let's buff the only classes already viable in competitive while nerfing everything else, sounds good

And of course the long-awaited competitive update was a complete travesty because now you have to queue up for half an hour to play for about 5 minutes

Valve: Let's just replace valve servers with matchmaking, because matchmaking totally worked when MvM came about

 

It's still TF2, I just wish they'd bring back Valve servers and show the more underpowered classes (pyro/engie/spy) some love

 

 

qph0qzk6LyA

[rairii]

 

qph0qzk6LyA

 

>classes which received the most buffs to their STOCK kit

>top 3 are classes that are mostly reliant on non-stock weapons

you had one job

[Psychotic Ninja]

 

qph0qzk6LyA

 

>classes which received the most buffs to their STOCK kit

>top 3 are classes that are mostly reliant on non-stock weapons

you had one job

 

And non stock weapons are pure, straight up buffs from the stock? At best they're side grades, with both buffs and nerfs. At worse, they're just reskins.

[rairii]

 

qph0qzk6LyA

 

>classes which received the most buffs to their STOCK kit

>top 3 are classes that are mostly reliant on non-stock weapons

you had one job

 

And non stock weapons are pure, straight up buffs from the stock? At best they're side grades, with both buffs and nerfs. At worse, they're just reskins.

"But the weapons are side-grades!" argument is so overdone at this point.

The degreaser is objectively stronger than the stock flamethrower because switch speed is essential to an aggressive playstyle

The flare gun is objectively stronger than the shotgun in most situations because it deals 90 damage crits at long-rage (which is pyro's weak spot, dealing damage at long-range)

The powerjack is objectively stronger than the fire axe because the added movement speed, again, aids in an aggressive playstyle

and even if you were to play defensively, the phlog/degreaser, scorch shot, and powerjack/homewrecker are IMMENSELY better than their stock counterparts.

It's the same for engineers, frontier justice/widowmaker/rescue ranger, wrangler, and jag/gunslinger/eureka effect are generally better than their stock counterparts, you'd only run pistol or short circuit over wrangler to avoid accidentally wrangling your sentry

And for spies too, ambassador/l'etranger/diamondback and c&d/dead ringer are GENERALLY better than their stock counterparts

And a common theme with many of these items? They were either recently buffed in to usefulness or nerfed because they were deemed too useful

These classes would be stronger and maybe even more viable in a competitive setting if items were buffed around them instead of the items themselves being nerfed

 

TL;DR don't act like you understand TF2's balance when all you play is 24/7 deathrun/prop hunt/VSH/whatever other meme gamemodes you play

[Psychotic Ninja]

Nothing is stopping you from going back to stock equipment.

Also the gamemodes I focus on doesn't prevent me from doing research. Lastly, I didn't know there was a limit to an argument. Maybe if you think it's overused, maybe there's some weight to said argument. I guess we can ignore arguments we don't like.

[rairii]

Nothing is stopping you from going back to stock equipment.

Also the gamemodes I focus on doesn't prevent me from doing research. Lastly, I didn't know there was a limit to an argument. Maybe if you think it's overused, maybe there's some weight to said argument. I guess we can ignore arguments we don't like.

If I say it's overused that doesn't mean it has weight, it means it's either irrelevant or I'm sick of refuting it

Research is fine and dandy but you can't expect rudimentary understanding of how the base game plays to outweigh 2000 hours of personal experience and observation in both pub and competitive environments

And it's unbelievable to me how you completely missed the point of my calling pyro/engie/spy non-stock-reliant, I specifically said that to make a point of stock equipment not being viable in the first place

[Psychotic Ninja]

Because it's irrelevant to the state of the game

[rairii]

The state of the game is poor BECAUSE those "side-grades" as you like to call them are rapidly turning in to downgrades, the back burner is already a downgrade because it doesn't reward flanking nearly enough to justify it's downside

[rairii]

YHf7e67T54Y

Hell, it's about time

[Selous Templar]

Yeah, when Valve releases updates, they release EVERYTHING they can in the update, because it's likely to be a long time before another update is released.

 

I still wish they did a remaster of Team Fortress Classic though. Fortress Forever just isn't good enough to capture the original feel of the game.

[Im_CIA]

It's hard to imagine enjoying an mmofps that isn't Quak 3

[BTGBullseye]

5 hours ago, Im_IRS said:

It's hard to imagine enjoying an mmofps that isn't Quak 3

I haven't heard of Quak 3 before...

[rairii]

On 1/28/2021 at 5:10 PM, grayling said:

i quit tf2 a while back but i haven't fully stopped interacting with it (mostly not to relapse into actually playing the game again lol) and i can't say i've been impressed by the balance changes valve has introduced, nor the state of the game right now (apparently utterly infested with bots using cheats on official servers)

 

i'd have to say i agree with 2016/2017 annie, going the competitive route hasn't really helped the game in any meaningful way, or at least not in the way valve has approached it - which is to say putting a half-baked competitive mode in the game and then not really helping competitive events in any way aside from blog posts. i think there is some good to come from balancing for comp - the razorback nerf was a good one - until it starts hindering the enjoyment or making weapons super boring, and valve hasn't really buffed/nerfed aspects of certain classes in the right way imo (needlessly buffing the medic and his unlocks, buffing the spy's movement speed while leaving his stealth aspects a bug-ridden mess no one really falls for, still trying to fix the pyro via unlocks instead of just buffing his flames at a base level, stuff like that).

Honestly it's a shame what happened to TF2, in its prime it was probably the greatest multiplayer shooter ever made, and then Valve adopted this really rigid balancing philosophy and just kinda stripped TF2 of everything that made it fun.

 

I feel like I should clarify though that I don't really hate comp TF2 though, and I don't blame the TF2 comp community for what happened to the game at all. Well, not entirely anyway. Valve did get a lot of their balancing advice from high profile comp players but the fact that the TF2 competitive scene today is largely identical to what it was 10 years ago is kind of a testament to how badly Valve fucked up here. Like, okay, I feel like I should put this in to perspective here:

 

In the 6s meta in 2011, you'd run two scouts and they'd use almost entirely stock because everything else was blacklisted or nonviable. The main exception was the boston basher which usually at least one of the scouts took to help medic build uber, and either of them could offclass to sniper to go for picks. The ONLY THING that fundamentally changed about these positions was that the cozy camper was added and the razorback was blacklisted. Almost completely identical.

Then you had a roamer and a pocket soldier, roamer always taking stock launcher or the original, gunboats, and (iirc) stock melee or the pain train, and the pocket always taking stock or original, stock shotgun, and same choice of melee. Again, the only change between then and now was that the equalizer was split between two weapons which meant that roamers could use the escape plan. Well, that and some roamers got REALLY good at market gardening so you'll see one of those from time to time. Nearly identical.

As for medic and demo, medic is largely the same considering both of the new mediguns that have been added since are banned in competitive 6s and the crusader's crossbow has ALWAYS been meta. Demo probably sees the largest fundamental change in that now he has the iron bomber which is often preferred among demo mains.

 

Meanwhile the balance of pub TF2 is completely different.

The degreaser and axtinguisher, two choices which made the pyro competitive in pubs, have been nerfed quite dramatically. The spy's ambassador got an entirely pointless nerf which nearly the entire community has spoken out against, it hasn't since been reverted. Demoknight is a mere shadow of how amazing it used to be, and caberknight is a complete joke of a loadout to the point of being nearly unplayable. Some nerfs were necessary like splitting the equalizer and removing the DDS's effective headshot immunity, also making the dead ringer less of a no-brainer pick for spy, but in spite of their efforts, comp TF2 is largely the same while pub TF2 has had the life completely sucked out of it, largely with the feedback of the bigger figureheads in the comp TF2 community.

 

On 1/28/2021 at 5:10 PM, grayling said:

however, i have to put some of the blame on the tf2 community. a major reason why i quit the game is because of the community's incessant desire to be as obnoxious as possible, and when i decided to leave it genuinely felt like the entire pubber playerbase was made up of /pol/ regulars. granted, tf2's community has always been a mixed bag (the initial reaction to the cheater's lament i've heard was incredibly bad, the reaction to the game going f2p wherein some server owners literally had plugins in their servers to automatically kick f2pers, and the general immaturity of the playerbase), but it became so awful in about 2016 and has been getting worse ever since. if i worked at valve and looked at what tf2 fans are like, i wouldn't really want to officially do much for the game either

Honestly I could go on for ages about how bad the community is gotten, but I'll just leave it at this: The only trans competitor in the high level TF2 scene was essentially bullied out of it, and TF2 is the only place where, 9 years later, people are still spamming ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

Oh, and racial slurs, can't forget those, more of those than any other online game community still active today, except MAYBE Dota and CSGO.

 

On 1/28/2021 at 5:10 PM, grayling said:

i mained pyro for 2010-2011 and engineer 2011-2017 if anyone would like to dismiss my thoughts outright

Pyro main from 2010 onwards here. It's honestly part of the reason why I'm so bitter about the state of the game. Really feels like the most fun and interesting class in the game just got completely shafted for the most part.

 

But hey, at least I can have a jetpack and slap people now.

[Im_CIA]

1 hour ago, grayling said:

i don't know if anyone is going to see this and i hope this post isn't against the rules but i'm hosting a combat surf server in tf2 for the time being. the server is named "flagman21's Combat Surf". i'm going to refrain from posting an IP unless i get the okay from one of the moderators. the server is NA, so i'm sorry to people in europe but you're gonna have bad ping if you want to check it out

BANNISHED

 

AH-HAHAHAHAH

 

[DreamHollow4219]

Man the TF2 hype has really deteriorated since the bot problem became so bad.

[Toggle]

I like the idea

[Alyxx Thorne]

It seems Valve doesn't really care about TF2 anymore, which is a shame considering it's one of the most highly played multiplayer FPSs of all time.