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[TheRedSnifit]

The unlocks generally trade raw/straight damage for some sort of utility effect. In 6's play they're either banned because the utility effect is so strong in the right hands/situation it breaks the game, or the damage tradeoff gimps them so hard they get ignored.

In pub play when you have 12 enemies to shoot at, you want to opt for the extra damage 9/10 times because otherwise you just can't deal with all your opponents so they're the weaker option in pub as well.

Naturally, but I assumed we were talking about competitive play in here. 12v12 pub play honestly only works if the skill level is low, so you can make anything work in that setting.

But even there, a lot of unlocks are better. Nearly every melee unlock is better, obviously, but you still have things like Machina, Degreaser, and Crit-a-Cola that are better than their stock counterparts.

I haven't played enough Highlander to comment. It always seemed like a silly mode where teams were forced to run things like spy/engy for the sake of inclusiveness/participation when they'd trade that for another scout or soldier in a heartbeat.

You are correct. I originally played it because I thought it was cool that you could main any class and still be competitive, but it's really not that interesting, especially as Heavy. For whatever it's worth, Overwatch gives me serious Highlander vibes.

It doesn't really change the fact that most unlocks are balanced around Highlander, though.

EDIT: I also don't agree with the idea that making Pyro combat revolve around combos is a bad thing. If they made it so the flamethrower itself was useful in higher levels of play without combos, Pyro would be absolutely unstoppable in the lower levels. They recently buffed flame damage and nerfed combos, and all it did was make Pyro more of a hassle in pubs while completely removing any room to play aggressively in competitive. The combos provide actual skill indexing.

 

[Doctor Ironic]

The 2012 "balance" patch is what killed TF2. So many dumb changes made because some people don't know how to deal with a low health Soldier that has an Equalizer or the Tomislav when they should know their not suppose to be in front of a class that spits bullets or the dead ringer which makes a loud sound when it deactivates.

You are fucking insane if you think the Tomislav didn't need a massive fucking nerf.

Between the Tomislav's instant spinup, the GRU's increased speed, and the Sandvich's instant self-heal if you threw it on the ground instead of going through the eating animation, for a period of time the Heavy was a class with literally zero disadvantages in TF2, and Valve just kept buffing him instead. That's the point where I quit.

It's still completely crazy that with the Heavy's still-too-fast spinup and ridiculous DPS, he's actually a significantly better close-quarters fighter than the Pyro, who is supposed to be the best at it.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

It's still completely crazy that with the Heavy's still-too-fast spinup and ridiculous DPS, he's actually a significantly better close-quarters fighter than the Pyro, who is supposed to be the best at it.

Heavy's not really that great. He works in pubs, but jump into a competitive match and the minute you show a hint of aggression you'll just get shredded.

He's still better at close-range than Pyro, but they've more or less reworked Pyro into a completely different class. Don't know what else they could do, really.

 

[Doctor Ironic]

Heavy's pretty underpowered in professional matches.

In pubs he is an absolute vortex of anti-fun.

 

[Teknopathetic]

TF2 should revert the demoman back to how he was in Beta. Unjustified nerfs from day 1.

 

[Acerac]

I like using Kritz Medic, Gunslinger Engie, and Huntsman Sniper.

Thanks Valve for alternate weapons; they made it so bad players like me could do reasonably well.

 

[Firehead]

TF2 should revert the demoman back to how he was in Beta. Unjustified nerfs from day 1.

I still want the dynamite pack from the old trailer. Make everyone like how they were in this trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_c3iQImXZg

 

[Bluth54]

Think they'll ever balance the classes so that competitive no longer needs to impossible a billion rules to make it work? I cant think of another game where the comp scene plays such a different game from what you generally expect from pubs.

Valve is adding competitive matchmaking in the next big update (which is probably coming out this month). They actually recently had the top competitive 6s player visit them to look at the weapon rebalances for this upcoming update.

Ever since the Gun Mettle update last year Valve has been far more serious about properly rebalancing the game for a long time.

 

[theSlacker]

I still want the dynamite pack from the old trailer. Make everyone like how they were in this trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_c3iQImXZg

Wow that takes me back.

 

[Metal-Geo]

Anyone remember one of the first class updates? The Pyro one? The Backburner was an absolute disaster. No random crits but instead, guaranteed crits when hitting an enemy in the back... Oh, and also, 50 extra hp.

It was from that point on that I became incredibly skeptical, and perhaps even pessimistic, about the future of TF2.

At least the Meet The Team videos were fun.

 

[sammyCYBORG]

Vanilla TF2 might not have been perfect but it was a simple game with a lot of depth.

Then they just added bloat. More weapons. Crafting. Hats.

It clearly made Valve a lot of money but it's one of the worst evolutions of a game ever. They ruined the entire experience.

Overwatch is what TF2 was. I hope Blizzard don't ruin it the same way.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Overwatch is what TF2 was. I hope Blizzard don't ruin it the same way.

I really don't get people who say this. The two complaints most people have about modern TF2 are a ton of different abilities you have to memorize, and cosmetics that clutter up the game. Overwatch has both of those. It's literally modern TF2 with more stuns, no community servers, and less skill indexing.

 

[TheYanger]

I really don't get people who say this. The two complaints most people have about modern TF2 are a ton of different abilities you have to memorize, and cosmetics that clutter up the game. Overwatch has both of those. It's literally modern TF2 with more stuns, no community servers, and less skill indexing.

Overwatch has barely any cosmetics compared to TF2, and as I pointed out previously, TF2 has a small amount of classes with a MASSIVE amount of different weapons that all look similar-ish and in any combination thereof, which makes the learning curve ridiculous. The same way that the original TF2 implementation was all about the silhouette and instant identification, Overwatch has a lot of characters but their silhouettes and designs inform you instantly of what you're looking at, yeah you might need to learn the abilities themselves but it's unmistakable and the balance doesn't go out of whack because the characters can't have a 30 combinations of weapons at any given point. Someone like Genji both has more depth/abilities than the vanilla TF2 scout, and yet infinitely less associated bullshit than a modern TF2 scout with every weapon unlocked.

Again: It is infinitely easier to learn "Oh, Mei is that ice bitch that will snare and freeze me" than "That pyro has a slightly different looking flamethrower that crits me from behind, so I should expect him to try to flank me and stay behind me rather than hit me from the front. Also this one can't airblast so he's vulnerable to my rockets, btu the OTHER pyro with the normal flamethrower I can't shoot my rocket at even though they look the same and..."

TF2 is bloated as fuck and it's not because people can't process a high number of abilities, look at MOBAs, it's because it's a chore and mentally taxing to do so. It's the literal antithesis of what TF2s simplistic design was to begin with.

 

[Meia]

There was a time before they added a lot of different weapons/hats to the game that those class balances were already in effect. I'd even go so far as to say things were fine even after each class had 1-2 alternate weapons in their arsenal. After that things just kind of went to shit.



For me, people talking about "Vanilla" TF2 would be talking about before weapons existed, but balance adjustments were in. In terms of the TF2 spy, let's not forget that the spy lost a lot of the tools in his arsenal when it came to air stabs around that time too.

 

[Spwn]

TF2 started to turn into shit right around 2011. At least that's how I remember it – it was around the time when the Deus Ex: Human Revolution weapons came. The new weapons introduced a situation where you had to be able to assess what the opposing team was doing based on the weapons they were using instead of just checking their classes. The weapon variability was manageable right after the class updates, but when it blew up, it blew up.

And it wouldn't have been so bad if I could test those weapons myself to learn how they behaved, but despite playing a shit ton of hours, I rarely got a new weapon to drop. All I got was duplicates of what I already had. And don't even bring up the hats – me and my friends, who I now play Overwatch with, have a theory that day 1 TF2 players got a lower hat drop rate.

 

[mèx]

TF2 is bloated as fuck and it's not because people can't process a high number of abilities, look at MOBAs, it's because it's a chore and mentally taxing to do so. It's the literal antithesis of what TF2s simplistic design was to begin with.

To become proficient at a MOBA like Dota 2 you have to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on it though. People that play a MOBA usually just play that because it requires a huge amount of time to become good at it. Now let's not fool ourselves and think that MOBAs are easy to get into: they are not.

After 100 hours of Dota 2 I still don't have the knowledge about the abilities of most heroes, I really have no clue. Does that make Dota 2 a bloated game? Personally I don't think so, it makes it a pretty complex game that takes time to learn and become proficient at. Just like TF2: it takes time to be able to recognize the weapon models and sounds. To me, who played hundreds (thousands) of hours, the difference between these rocket launchers is clear as day, I can recognize them in a split second (even when I don't see the actual enemy, since the sounds they make are extremely different). Surely it's not as easy as discerning a Heavy from a Pyro, Genji from Hanzo, Lina from Lich, because that doesn't require any experiece with the game whatsoever.

I believe that anyone can start to play TF2 right now. It will be difficult at first, since the game complexity grew a lot in the past years, but people who actually want to learn about how the game works because they find its core fun will have a great payoff in the end!

 

[Omnii-chan]

I haven't truly enjoyed the game play balance of TF2 since the Meet the Pyro update, that's when it started to go down hill and there were too many different weapons making things confusing and unbalanced.

 

[Klyka]

I stopped playing TF2 the moment I joined a server and a Demoman ran around with some kind of lightningspeed charge move wielding a giant two haneded sword and instantly killing basically anyone.

 

[Freeman]

I could enjoy the game back in the day, ever since they started to include too many things it lost its elegant design and became just a big mess.

TF2 is a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of modern game design.

I stopped playing TF2 the moment I joined a server and a Demoman ran around with some kind of lightningspeed charge move wielding a giant two haneded sword and instantly killing basically anyone.

Exact same experience here.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Overwatch has barely any cosmetics compared to TF2, and as I pointed out previously, TF2 has a small amount of classes with a MASSIVE amount of different weapons that all look similar-ish and in any combination thereof, which makes the learning curve ridiculous. The same way that the original TF2 implementation was all about the silhouette and instant identification, Overwatch has a lot of characters but their silhouettes and designs inform you instantly of what you're looking at, yeah you might need to learn the abilities themselves but it's unmistakable and the balance doesn't go out of whack because the characters can't have a 30 combinations of weapons at any given point. Someone like Genji both has more depth/abilities than the vanilla TF2 scout, and yet infinitely less associated bullshit than a modern TF2 scout with every weapon unlocked.

Again: It is infinitely easier to learn "Oh, Mei is that ice bitch that will snare and freeze me" than "That pyro has a slightly different looking flamethrower that crits me from behind, so I should expect him to try to flank me and stay behind me rather than hit me from the front. Also this one can't airblast so he's vulnerable to my rockets, btu the OTHER pyro with the normal flamethrower I can't shoot my rocket at even though they look the same and..."

TF2 is bloated as fuck and it's not because people can't process a high number of abilities, look at MOBAs, it's because it's a chore and mentally taxing to do so. It's the literal antithesis of what TF2s simplistic design was to begin with.

I mean, MOBAs do have gigantic learning curves and require hundreds of hours of experience to figure out even the basics of what characters can do. That comparison isn't exactly helping your case.

You can still look at a TF2 character and have a pretty solid idea of what their abilities are, even if you aren't familiar with the specific weapons.. Regardless of whether he's carrying a Backburner or standard Flamethrower, a Pyro is a class with above-average health and speed who can fuck you up at close range. A Scout is a class that moves extremely fast and has an extremely powerful close-range weapon regardless of his loadout. A Heavy is slow, has massive health, and carries a close-range weapon with extremely high DPS that has to be spooled up before firing. The only real exception is Demoknight, but he has a gigantic shield right on the front of his model, so it's pretty easy to tell the difference. Whereas in Overwatch, even characters with similar capabilities have completely different appearances and silhouettes. It took me much longer to figure out what each character in Overwatch is capable of than it took me to figure out what each class in TF2 is capable of.

Of course Overwatch has less cosmetics, it's been out for a month. But already, there are some that completely screw with character silhouttes.

This Soldier 76 skin looks more like McCree without a hat than S76.

Apparently, you're supposed to look at these silhouttes and know they're the same character.

I've played 1600 hours of TF2, and the only cosmetics that have thrown me off are that stupid banana hat (seriously, why) and some Halloween items that are restricted to goofy event maps. DotA2 has had some bad silhouette-destroyers creeping in lately, but it's still better than OW is already, and you can't switch characters in-game. Overwatch, which is incredibly silhouette dependent (far more so than ether DotA or TF2), managed to set a bad example for future content months before it had even been released.

 

[Klyka]

Overwatch's characters have such distinctive movement animations and attack animations, no matter the skin you know what you are facing.
It's not just about a still picture of a silhouette.

You are never, ever going to mistake a Soldier 76 wearing his stuntman skin for a McCree.
They look so entirely different from any distance, it's impossible.

 

[Teknopathetic]

Overwatch threw the baby out with the bath water and made the individual character gameplay too simplistic.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Overwatch's characters have such distintive movement animations and attack animations, no matter the skin you know what you are facing.
It's not just about a still picture of a silhouette.

I can't count the amount of times I or somebody on my team confused that godawful Spirit of 76 skin with a McCree. I suspect that most people who claim otherwise just aren't cognizant of how often they get it wrong.

When the competitive scene further develops, they will 100% ban half these skins, assuming they don't just disable them completely. Even the proto-competitive scene from the beta was pretty definitive about some of them. That should really be the beginning and end of the debate.

 

[Won]

I have already mistaken a Mariachi Reaper for a McRee. Laugh at me. Ridicule me. I have no problem admitting it.

 

[Klyka]

The fuck you guys...

 

[Waldo Lydecker]

I would buy a PS4 version at a high price. I still consider it my favorite online shooter. Then again, I haven't played Overwatch.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

The fuck you guys...

Skins don't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes it's dark and you can only see part of the hero. Say you're flanking on Dorado, and you see a cowboy hat-shaped silhouette. You can't see what gun that hero is holding, you can't see the shape of their lower body, and you have a split second to decide what to call out to your team as they approach the cart. Is it Mariachi Reaper or McCree?

Simple things like that can easily change the tide in a game. They aren't a problem when you're engaging someone from medium distance 1v1 on a brightly-lit map, they're a problem when it's dark and/or they're partly obscured and you're trying to make a split-second identification based on their outline. If you see the red outline of a cape, you shouldn't have to hit TAB to tell if it's a White Hat McCree or a Spirit of 76. You approach them completely differently, and making the wrong call can cost you the game.

 

[Klyka]

Mariachi Reaper has a Sombrero that is two times if not larger than McCree's cowboy hat.

But ok, if you say people have problems with it,then I guess they do.

 

[Bluth54]

To become proficient at a MOBA like Dota 2 you have to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on it though. People that play a MOBA usually just play that because it requires a huge amount of time to become good at it. Now let's not fool ourselves and think that MOBAs are easy to get into: they are not.

After 100 hours of Dota 2 I still don't have the knowledge about the abilities of most heroes, I really have no clue. Does that make Dota 2 a bloated game? Personally I don't think so, it makes it a pretty complex game that takes time to learn and become proficient at. Just like TF2: it takes time to be able to recognize the weapon models and sounds. To me, who played hundreds (thousands) of hours, the difference between these rocket launchers is clear as day, I can recognize them in a split second (even when I don't see the actual enemy, since the sounds they make are extremely different). Surely it's not as easy as discerning a Heavy from a Pyro, Genji from Hanzo, Lina from Lich, because that doesn't require any experiece with the game whatsoever.

I believe that anyone can start to play TF2 right now. It will be difficult at first, since the game complexity grew a lot in the past years, but people who actually want to learn about how the game works because they find its core fun will have a great payoff in the end!

Yeah I do agree with you, TF2 probably isn't as complex as a MOBA like DOTA2 but it is a lot more complex then most first person shooters and does take more time and effort to learn. I do think Valve should make better tutorials (and one for each class as well as an advanced tutorial for more advanced techniques) to help new players learn TF2 better.

 

[nekkid]

OP you got me excited thinking there might be a way of playing the original design of TF2:

:-(

 

[SoundPulse]

After you play TF2 for a long while, you start recognizing classes by how they move rather than what they look like.

One of the best things Valve ever did for the game was get rid of the set bonuses. It was a silly idea and pretty unintuitive to have them. Now all they need to do is get rid of the Targe's damage resistances or move it to something more visible. Preferably the former, because I'm not a fan of them.

 

[Kathian]

I think it's going to age badly and quickly now overwatch is out and does things a million times better.

 

[BeesEight]

TF2 is old. Honestly, I think it's mor ea matter of nostalgia and people wanting to play something new. I love that the predominant complaint about TF2 is that it's bloated but most people checked out when the updates were hats and not new weapons that they wanted.

For me, I think there are simply some core design issues that were never really addressed with the game. I'd like Valve to start over and apply what they've learned so we don't have such a disparity between certain classes that can never truly be fixed.

Also, the demo knight is awful.

I have already mistaken a Mariachi Reaper for a McRee. Laugh at me. Ridicule me. I have no problem admitting it.

I've done the exact same thing after fifty hours of playing Overwatch. In the shadow corridor on Nepal. The skins are absolutely shit in the game and one hundred percent worse than hats for "ruining silhouette." It's only going to get worse over time as more skins and heroes are added.

But people don't care now because it's new and fun. But there's now defence of them.

 

[Dr. Benton Quest]

I could enjoy the game back in the day, ever since they started to include too many things it lost its elegant design and became just a big mess.

TF2 is a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of modern game design.



Exact same experience here.

There's are 62,000 people in game as I type this. Yeah, what a travesty.

ITT: People who don't play TF2 acting like they know about TF2.

This is the best post so far as it's criticism from knowledge:

I've been playing TF2 since beta, both competitively and in pubs. Here are my thoughts on the matter. Be warned, there are a lot of them (this is about 3.7k hours worth of thought in one go): *snip*

 

[mcz117chief]

OP you got me excited thinking there might be a way of playing the original design of TF2:

:-(

That looked extremely awesome, I am so bummed out we never got it

 

[Heavy's Sandvich]

I quit when demoknight was a thing.

Pyro is still AIDS

 

[Peter Ian Staker]

I thought TF2 was always kind of silly even before the updates. I never thought of it as a competitive shooter. Just a fun shooter with average skill-ceiling.
Seeing this thread makes me want to load TF2 again and play some lazytown or balloon race.

TF2's balance wasnt really a problem because it wasnt a competetive game. You could go on mean backstab streaks as spy from launch on yiur average server.

That's because Pyros where shit up until they got their first set of weapons, so few people where spy-checking.

 

[quickwhips]

I've only played quake team fortress because I hated valve classic team fortress so I figured they couldn't get it right.

 

[Mman235]

Truly vanilla TF2 is so damn old that when I think vanilla TF2, I think of it after all 9 classes had received their respective updates. One alternate weapon per slot was manageable, hats were few and far in between, and the game was in a mostly solid state balance-wise. I would say most people would agree with that as "vanilla," unless people are legitimately clamoring for launch day vanilla TF2.

I don't think "Vanilla TF2" was the height of the game. But it was far better than it is now. To me the very best point of TF2 was just as the first round of class updates ended. You had like 2 weapons per slot per class and it was easy to track everything.

These. Very few mean "vanilla TF2" literally, but when all the weapons and cosmetics were at a managable amount, and, at their worst, were balanced out by a bunch of other good improvements and additions (like Payload and various sensible balance tweaks). Then it just became a clusterfuck.

 

[TheSeks]

And the concept that 2007 TF2 was better balanced than 2016 TF2 is objectively incorrect, sorry.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I would rather play 2007 TF2 over 2016 TF2 with it's thousands of "SO WACKY! XD!" items any day.

 

[TheYanger]

I mean, MOBAs do have gigantic learning curves and require hundreds of hours of experience to figure out even the basics of what characters can do. That comparison isn't exactly helping your case.

You can still look at a TF2 character and have a pretty solid idea of what their abilities are, even if you aren't familiar with the specific weapons.. Regardless of whether he's carrying a Backburner or standard Flamethrower, a Pyro is a class with above-average health and speed who can fuck you up at close range. A Scout is a class that moves extremely fast and has an extremely powerful close-range weapon regardless of his loadout. A Heavy is slow, has massive health, and carries a close-range weapon with extremely high DPS that has to be spooled up before firing. The only real exception is Demoknight, but he has a gigantic shield right on the front of his model, so it's pretty easy to tell the difference. Whereas in Overwatch, even characters with similar capabilities have completely different appearances and silhouettes. It took me much longer to figure out what each character in Overwatch is capable of than it took me to figure out what each class in TF2 is capable of.

Of course Overwatch has less cosmetics, it's been out for a month. But already, there are some that completely screw with character silhouttes.

This Soldier 76 skin looks more like McCree without a hat than S76.

Apparently, you're supposed to look at these silhouttes and know they're the same character.

I've played 1600 hours of TF2, and the only cosmetics that have thrown me off are that stupid banana hat (seriously, why) and some Halloween items that are restricted to goofy event maps. DotA2 has had some bad silhouette-destroyers creeping in lately, but it's still better than OW is already, and you can't switch characters in-game. Overwatch, which is incredibly silhouette dependent (far more so than ether DotA or TF2), managed to set a bad example for future content months before it had even been released.

Your post is intentionally bullshit, why? Because those characters don't actually stand like that in the game. They are UNMISTAKABLE in game. Their shape is not compromised in any way. If I could easily grab third person screenshots right now I would, and googling is annoying, but I did post McCree vs Soldier in the other thread when someone used that exact same picture to make the exact same bullshit argument. Suffice to say, either you haven't played the game, or you're intentionally being obtuse, because you know either way if you ahd that trying to represent the characters by the stance they never take is pretty bullshit.

EDIT: Even if you want to compare the 'stance' you posted, I notice you didn't post a McCree one, because it's actually nothing like the soldier one regardless. Your entire argument centers on that soldier skin having a tiny square cape, where McCree has a diamond shaped poncho, and more importantly STILL has a very very different stance. Black this out in your mind, you cannot confuse them. Which one is a cowboy, the one that looks like a disco inferno wearing a little cape, or the one that looks like a fucking cowboy? hmm.

Gee, you've played 1600 hours and you don't find it confusing? I'm shocked. I could tell the vanilla TF2 characters apart in a split second. Now, I could tell the 9 characters apart still, but not the 100 fucking weapons they have that changes what they do, which is what is in disagreement still. It doesn't matter if I can tell a spy and a heavy apart when I can't tell the 200 variations of spy that someone can be apart.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Your post is intentionally bullshit, why? Because those characters don't actually stand like that in the game. They are UNMISTAKABLE in game. Their shape is not compromised in any way. If I could easily grab third person screenshots right now I would, and googling is annoying, but I did post McCree vs Soldier in the other thread when someone used that exact same picture to make the exact same bullshit argument. Suffice to say, either you haven't played the game, or you're intentionally being obtuse, because you know either way if you ahd that trying to represent the characters by the stance they never take is pretty bullshit.

EDIT: Even if you want to compare the 'stance' you posted, I notice you didn't post a McCree one, because it's actually nothing like the soldier one regardless. Your entire argument centers on that soldier skin having a tiny square cape, where McCree has a diamond shaped poncho, and more importantly STILL has a very very different stance. Black this out in your mind, you cannot confuse them. Which one is a cowboy, the one that looks like a disco inferno wearing a little cape, or the one that looks like a fucking cowboy? hmm.

I've confused them. Multiple people in this thread have, by their own admission, confused them. Competitive players have been complaining about them for months and saying they've confused them. Pro leagues are almost certainly going to start banning skins once they develop further.

You can scream about how we're all lying until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the facts.

 

[TheYanger]

I've confused them. Multiple people in this thread have, by their own admission, confused them. Competitive players have been complaining about them for months and saying they've confused them.

You can scream about how we're all lying until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the facts.

I've never heard a competitive player confuse them, those guys play way more than me and I've NEVER confused them. I'm legitimately calling bullshit on what you're claiming. It's not that it's not possible to confuse two things, but it's not possible to confuse that and not also confuse say, a sniper anda spy in TF2. Idon't think that's probable either.

Does not look like

In any universe. And yes, that's an accurate representation of how those characters run around the map. It doesn't matter what skin you use, unless you give Soldier a cowboy hat I don't buy anyone mistaking them, sorry. Silhouettes included, Widow ult/wallhacks is literally just silhouettes accross the map, and you still cannot confuse that shit.

 

[Vargavinter]

I remember when most servers had FF: ON at launch. Chaos.

 

[bananabread]

EDIT: I also don't agree with the idea that making Pyro combat revolve around combos is a bad thing. If they made it so the flamethrower itself was useful in higher levels of play without combos, Pyro would be absolutely unstoppable in the lower levels. They recently buffed flame damage and nerfed combos, and all it did was make Pyro more of a hassle in pubs while completely removing any room to play aggressively in competitive. The combos provide actual skill indexing.

I have to disagree here. Far from providing skill indexing, the combos provide a crutch for players who struggle to hit someone who is moving to dodge their attack and make the flaregun (originally designed to be a long-range harassment weapon for use on chokepointy maps like Goldrush) a potent close range burst damage dealer against light classes. For a while there, coming around the corner and meeting a Pyro was like meeting a Mcree in Overwatch, you get held in place and killed with very little recourse and all the other player has to do is click two buttons while you can't move. For evidence of this, look at the effect allowing air-strafing after being airblasted has had on the game in pubs. Being able to move that tiny amount throws off your average Pyro players aim to the point where you can now often survive that scenario.

The design behind the degreaser originally was to make it easier for a good pyro player to advance and switch between defense/offense in the form of reflecting spam and harassing with a shotgun/flares. It was a good weapon and I liked it's introduction, same as I appreciated the original iteration of the flaregun even if I only used it situationally. It was only after they introduced the reserve shooter and flares automatically critting on burning targets that people realised they no longer needed to use the flamethrower as their primary source of damage, because it was more efficient to push people around.

The issue here is that people complained about Pyro being weak because the class tends to attract people who can't aim the shotgun well enough to be effective with it (see also: Heavy, Engineer). As an example: if more engy players could aim hitscan weapons accurately the Widowmaker (not the Overwatch class, for anyone confused) would be nerfed into the ground but since they can't, no one complains about it.

I remember when the Sandman was introduced and people complained about it for two reasons: It took control of movement away from the player, and it disrupted ubercharges. It got nerfed within a week to remove both of these effects, although it still limits player movement. The airblast (once they buffed the cooldown on it to make it fire slightly faster than the rocket launcher) has the same effect, but remains in the game to it's detriment.

 

[TransTrender]

I can't play the current state of TF2 anymore because it seems like all the best weapons are something that I have to farm or craft, and then there are all the random effects and different behaviors. I find it super confusing and frustrating.

The last time I had fun was about a year after Man vs Machine came out but then it seemed like all the servers/matcmaking broke for a few months and never went back.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I have to disagree here. Far from providing skill indexing, the combos provide a crutch for players who struggle to hit someone who is moving to dodge their attack and make the flaregun (originally designed to be a long-range harassment weapon for use on chokepointy maps like Goldrush) a potent close range burst damage dealer against light classes. For a while there, coming around the corner and meeting a Pyro was like meeting a Mcree in Overwatch, you get held in place and killed with very little recourse and all the other player has to do is click two buttons while you can't move. For evidence of this, look at the effect allowing air-strafing after being airblasted has had on the game in pubs. Being able to move that tiny amount throws off your average Pyro players aim to the point where you can now often survive that scenario.

The design behind the degreaser originally was to make it easier for a good pyro player to advance and switch between defense/offense in the form of reflecting spam and harassing with a shotgun/flares. It was a good weapon and I liked it's introduction, same as I appreciated the original iteration of the flaregun even if I only used it situationally. It was only after they introduced the reserve shooter and flares automatically critting on burning targets that people realised they no longer needed to use the flamethrower as their primary source of damage, because it was more efficient to push people around.

The issue here is that people complained about Pyro being weak because the class tends to attract people who can't aim the shotgun well enough to be effective with it (see also: Heavy, Engineer). As an example: if more engy players could aim hitscan weapons accurately the Widowmaker (not the Overwatch class, for anyone confused) would be nerfed into the ground but since they can't, no one complains about it.

I remember when the Sandman was introduced and people complained about it for two reasons: It took control of movement away from the player, and it disrupted ubercharges. It got nerfed within a week to remove both of these effects, although it still limits player movement. The airblast (once they buffed the cooldown on it to make it fire slightly faster than the rocket launcher) has the same effect, but remains in the game to it's detriment.

How else is the Pyro supposed to be useful? In a 6v6 or 8v8 5CP match (which is what the base game is supposed to be balanced around) he's used on Gullywash and Badlands last to shove Ubers around. He's never used outside of that context, and it's generally accepted that running a Pyro to stop their uber makes you completely useless at everything else. No competitive Sixes player runs Shotgun on their Pyro unless they're too lazy to swap it out for the Detonator or Scorch Shot, so it's not a matter of not being able to aim the Shotgun.

Take away the airblast, and he's never used. Increase the cooldown so he can't keep up the the rocket launcher's firing speed, and he'll never be used. You could compensate it by increasing his flame damage enough that it's actually a threat in high-level play, but then the class would literally burn through low-level play because running at a dude while holding M1 doesn't require any mechanical execution. With airblast, there's an actual difference between a UGC Platinum Pyro and a UGC Iron Pyro. If you make him reliant on actual flamethrower difference, you just have a class like Heavy where there's almost no difference between a bad player and a good one.


Sandman was a different ballgame (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). Scouts would run out of spawn and then lob a baseball across the map. If it hit the enemy's Medic or something, suddenly the other team is standing around for ten seconds while you guys get mid for free. I also think there's inherently a difference between an already extremely powerful class that's far better equipped to peak corners than anybody else being able to stun an uber from literally any range, and an extremely weak class being able to stun uber if you don't know he's coming and he's able to get right up to the combo.

I've never heard a competitive player confuse them, those guys play way more than me and I've NEVER confused them. I'm legitimately calling bullshit on what you're claiming. It's not that it's not possible to confuse two things, but it's not possible to confuse that and not also confuse say, a sniper anda spy in TF2. Idon't think that's probable either.

Does not look like


In any universe. And yes, that's an accurate representation of how those characters run around the map. It doesn't matter what skin you use, unless you give Soldier a cowboy hat I don't buy anyone mistaking them, sorry. Silhouettes included, Widow ult/wallhacks is literally just silhouettes accross the map, and you still cannot confuse that shit.

I don't know what to tell you, man. Multiple people in this very thread are having issues, and it isn't hard to find tons of people saying the same thing elsewhere. Just don't be surprised if skins are disabled once actual competitive leagues are formed.

 

[thefil]

I love that this thread has turned into an Overwatch vs TF2 debate. With about 30 hours in the former and 500 in the latter, I like both a lot but would still give the edge to TF2 as I find ults a detriment to OW. Also I get heroes mixed up in Overwatch due to skins all the time; I don't see how that's unbelievable to some people in this thread. I think both games should have options to disable cosmetics on your own client and call it a day.

On the thread topic: my best days in TF2 were with the first round of updates, playing on pubs ranging from Valve servers to some more serious communities, but always 12v12s. I jumped back into the game this past weekend and found it more so diminished by the lack of participation in the objectives than by the multitude of items. But people always fucked around on Hightower, and I guess they always will. I still recognize almost every gun so I guess they stopped expanding that years ago.

 

[commissar]

I think both games should have options to disable cosmetics on your own client and call it a day..

The biggest appeal of cosmetics is how you look to other people. Allowing them to be disabled undermines the whole system. No developer will do that.

 

[RandomExpletive]

I can't play the current state of TF2 anymore because it seems like all the best weapons are something that I have to farm or craft, and then there are all the random effects and different behaviors. I find it super confusing and frustrating.

It sucks that so many people have this misconception. There are sidegrades that I'd say are "required" to get on a level playing field (soldier's gunboats, pyro's degreaser, medic's kritzkrieg are the biggest of these), but thats pretty much it. You gain and lose different things by playing with all these other weapons, but it doesn't destroy the balance of the game (if you're not a new player, because yeah a demoknight is going to ruin any noob soldier's day). Stock weapons STILL win fights, you don't lose much by rolling with stock, besides flashy gimmicky builds (which can be fun and have their own place). Theres a reason people still run the stock rocket launcher, sticky launcher, minigun, wrench, sniper, knife, etc.

The biggest appeal of cosmetics is how you look to other people. Allowing them to be disabled undermines the whole system. No developer will do that.

Thank goodness theres mods for that exact purpose!