TF2 General Chat & Speculation Station V15 - Buff Pyro plz - Games

the system works haha thanks geel, apprieciate it a bunch this will help me a bunch on collecting a buttload of duels for my badge

Yes. We're forcing withdrawal for all the current dueling mini-games, but it's a difficult process (I think I'm going to just buy them all out). If you get a non-5-use then support would refund you.

ah, cool. thank you, haha i was about to buy a crap load, and it woulda probably been non 5 use ones. haha thanks geel

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132767/4eccadf8-3de6-48ac-8cb1-608e14a3e866/image.png I can genuinely say that one of the least classes i see being picked is demo, next to medics and heavies. In fact I'm pretty sure people will 99% of the time pick spy over demo when sentries are thing.

Alright; I can write novels too. To the map and uncounterable points: you seem to be forgetting that this game features class switching as a primary gameplay mechanic. Just because he isn’t useful in 100% of situations doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve a balance pass. Sniper features no (comparitively reasonable, the battalion’s assumes the soldier is let free to feasts damage and not die, and the vaccinator is a banned abomination of balance) counter-play in situations where he is strong, and is only limited by map design or his team being overrun in situations where his impact is limited. Obviously he is useless in situations like attacking harvest mid, but a vast majority of maps in this game feature large shooting galleries which the objective is within, or it must pass through. Every other game features gameplay elements that rein in either directly or indirectly the effectiveness of duck hunt shooting; mortars, smoke screens flash bangs, helmets, handheld shields, the list is endless. The anti-sniper strategy in tf2 for the 7 other non-spy classes is: “stay out of sniper sightlines and hope he misses or shoots somebody else when within them”. And if the objective is within one, well, too bad, you’re just going to have to lose 150-all of your health while fighting DM combat against somebody else, little other reason than you playing the map. Isn’t that fun and interesting gameplay? If that doesn’t sound mind numbing to you then your idea of balance in an arena shooter is bizarre. Getting killed as a frontline class by a sniper hiding in spawn is tantamount to a random crit death: you know it has the possibility to happen, you’ll almost certainly be up the creek because of it, and it’s something prettt much entirely out of your control while you’re trying to enjoy the video game. And before you say “well just hide/dodge” allow me to link several clips of me obliterating B4nny and the members of froyotech with body shots when I met them in a regular match. Thats completely stupid. My friend and I dominated some of the best players in the history of the game because 7/9 classes they played were helpless against one that empowered even mediocre snipers like us to be able to do so. That’s an affront to balance. And to the aimbotter’s choice point: This is absolutely a fair point. There really isn’t any need to nerf things based around robot skill ceilings- unless you’re talking about sniper. Why? Well let’s put our thinking caps on. As you you approach that theoretically unstoppable skill ceiling with any non-sniper class, you begin to realize that hey- I’m a god with this class, but mistakes and poor decision making will still get me killed. An invite scout will still be spammed out by charging 1v7. A lan champion demo will be killed rather quickly if he doesn’t turn around to even pub spies, and so on and so forth. This is because, to use the class period, even at its highest level still presents risk to the player. That’s how tf2 has been designed from the ground up, and is one of the reasons teamwork still > pretty much everything in combat is the way the game has developed over the years. This is not true about sniper. The reason he is universally picked by cheaters is because his class both presents little to no risk to the user when played properly, and can still utilize his entire class to its highest level, something no other class can do but him. That is what needs to change. Having both of those things be true at the same time breaks this entire notion of classes having exploitable downsides all the way up the skill range. Of course the other classes can harass sniper, but comparitively they’re jokes, without deliberate sacrificial plays even in casual just to remove one or two problem players. Either have him require exposure to counterplay for his full effectiveness to be realized, or create some for the way he is now, so that you can’t reasonably expect to be free of non-sniper interference during your duck hunt.

i completely forgot the cleaver reduces it's charge time on long range hits.

Got this at my recommended on yt, haven't seen star or jerma in a long time. I really gotta rewatch their videos, they're all so damn good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_OfuZa3xcE

makes me pretty upset that tf2 will never have quite another jerma/star tbh uncle dennis is easily at the top of the food chain atm

Star wasn't awful but my god Jerma stole the show in every video he was in with him. the Jerma vs. Star series, the video where they were in an orange server reflecting homing crit rockets at people, even the diaper teleporter mvm video, fucking amazing.

idk the symphony of the content was that star_ often acted as the straight man (which also does some wacky shit sometimes) in contrast to jerma being a fucking idiot if you remove either of 'em they obviously are enjoyable in their own right however the combination of both of them underlined their respective strengths and thus made the videos so much more enjoyable and funi

He even took the time to record himself on a greenscreen and had his fans create a greenscreen movie night where he lost his shit at the entries. Jerma is fucking great.

Who woulda thought he would become as big as he is now For being the short guy he is

he's not short. he's portable.

compact* xD

he is a piece of confetti because he is a short streamer

I know, let's make the sniper rifle only zoom in for a split second but also give it massive aim assist so that the only way you can snipe is quickscoping like those bloody children who play Call of Duty. Lord knows how many times I've used the explanation "oh I didn't realize that snipers in the military also spun around in circles firing randomly hoping that their built-in aim assist would target someone's head for them" when I'm doing what these stupid children refer to as "hardscoping".

Right, and there are specific classes designed to hard counter sniper. Spy is an excellent choice, even with stock weaponry. The stock revolver is perhaps one of the least used and underrated weapons as the damage it deals is absolutely nuts granted you have the ability to keep your crosshair on the target. Scout is excellent at flanking and getting through sightlines granted its timed well. Rocket, Sticky sniping and Flare spam are underappreciated when it comes to counter snipers as well. Sniper also counters himself very well, unlike say... Scout versus Scout or Pyro versus Pyro. Sniper features no counter-play in situations where he is strong This just isn't true and if we're to go by this claim, then several other classes fit this same exact description yet receive no outcry. The Sniper Rifle fires a single, perfectly accurate bullet. This makes it ineffective in crowded or close quarters. The Sniper Rifle has the ability to zoom in to charge a shot, indicated by the Sniper holding the weapon to his eye. When scoped, he moves very slowly and has a limited field of vision. He will be scoped often, making him susceptible to ambushes. Even with the limited visibility, some players can still headshot targets who are only a few feet from their faces. Charging at him from the front is ill-advised. (Landing a point blank scope shot is the equivalent to a spy trick stabbing you. Its an act of punishing you for giving up the advantage that you clearly have over them.) Check if there is a Sniper or his weapon's laser dot before entering an area to avoid walking into a charged shot. He can only cover one route at a time, so take a different route or move once he drops his guard. If you must approach a Sniper while in the open, fire at him to make him flinch or take cover. (every weapon has a consistently accurate bullet, making shotguns capable of forcing snipers to flinch at extreme ranges) I myself find Scope Hop a frustrating deterrence that prevents me from landing a lot of my shots and all it takes is a single bullet from any range to do it. The Sniper Rifle is also perhaps one of the easiest weapons to hear in the game, its distinct sound lets you pinpoint almost exactly where it was fired from if you don't happen to see the dot or his tall and lanky silhouette. This asserts that no one on your 12 man team is capable of thinking they should address the enemy before the capture point. In every Competitive match ever capturing the points comes AFTER the fights. Not during. Any class is capable of laying waste to a team that limits their positioning to capture a point. Its why I like to play Roamer in 6s. If I know the enemy is on a capture point, and I have a jump to fly me over them I'm certainly going to take advantage of knowing where they are for my bombs. The game quite literally tells me someone is standing there. Limited thinking won't win you the round. You have guns to shoot the other players, and you have zones to stand in to capture. While its true that capturing all of the points will win you the round, you need to evenly balance your efforts to kill the enemy to make space in order to secure control points. And so what if you dominated b4nny, nursey, corsa, clockwork, shade... etc Did that domination win you the round? Did it win you the match? Probably not, and I'd argue that while you may have killed them several times while standing somewhere safe, all you really did was give them space to push your team out of the objectives. I had a pretty interesting experience in a 4s match back in early 2016. I was playing with bo4r. Can you guess what class he was playing? He had 51 kills. The next highest kill count in the match was 33. So why is it that, with a sniper as good as bo4r, my team lost? Its simple. Sniper isn't as overpowered or untouchable as you think it is. And the icing on top was the full time "no range class" Pyro the other team had; TMP (a good player I might add). I fail to understand how the above scenarios don't stand true for sniper.

i can sort of understand disliking sniper's ranged gameplay in tf2 but applying that logic to arena shooters overall doesn't work look at instagib and railgun in quake, for instance, neither of which required as much accuracy or had as many downsides as sniper

a good sniper would naturally turn into a good amby spy then.

Alright, I think you're slightly missing the idea here about what i want done to sniper, so I'll try to clarify: Claim: Other classes counter sniper, spy hard and he counters himself very well. Response: This game is built around player vs player engagements. Valve themselves have stated that (See: move those weapons up blog post): One of our goals as we continue to work on Team Fortress is to support a wide variety of play styles. In order to achieve that, it's been vitally important that the weapons in the game are fun not just to use, but to play against. We want players on both the winning add losing sides of an engagement to feel like their skill is being rewarded. There IS no play against sniper on the battlefield for a vast majority of the enemies he fights. Snipers by design are meant to take out high value, distracted, or otherwise opportune enemies from a safe distance, efficient warfare that slows down play and creates openings for his teammates. Compare that to literally every other popular game featuring snipers, and you see that there in fact is quite a lot you can do against sniping that doesn't involve an otherwise cripplingly overspecialized or poor class pick for the metagame (spy) or suicidal charges deep into enemy lines just to eliminate one enemy for entirely more effort than he took to engage you (bombing, flanking scouts, etc.) Like i said before, if the other classes had more anti-sniper tools, then the class could be completely left alone and i'd be fine with that, as his impact (and the impact of cheating too, handily) would be reduced via there very pure combat skill, or through their strategic choices in selecting loadouts that again, the word of god has said is crucial to this game's design. Stand at the end of a sniper sightline as a non-spy or sniper class and show me how you can use "skill or strategic loadout choice" to avoid getting bodyshot easily by poor snipers, or instantly killed by skilled ones. You can't. There's just crouch jumping, ducking, erratic movement, and hiding. This is hardly interesting play, vs say, use of smoke screens, ranged strikes, resistances, armor- all choices that may hinder sniper, but will create oppertunities for his teammates to capitalize on their downsides. Claim: Address the enemy before capturing the objective, and sniper won't be so much of a problem. Response: You're a high ranking competitive player who understands the value of capture security, and as such also should probably realize that sniper has to be killed in almost a completely different way than the rest of his team because of how much power projection he has and the few tools to negate it everyone else has. This is a problem. The razorback HL ban and subsequent nerf was proof of this. Leagues knew that pocketed sniper standing near a sentry was practically unassailable except in a sniper duel, and his one non-self counter of spy was too weak of a class to reliably do the job. Why wasn't your reasoning used there? Just flank, bomb, pressure, take advantage of maps do all those other things to create openings like you said? No, gameplay with cowering from sniper until a pick is extremely droll and unfun to experience. There has to be some counterplay. Valve themselves agreed, which is why they subsequently nerfed the thing even though pocketed snipers were mainly a problem in high levels- they realized that they should balance around the theoretical skill ceiling, and acted as such. It was a nerf to sniper's dominance, not the razorback itself, hence the otherwise small tweak from the top. Clearly, a team that is able to counter (multiple? or a very good one in organized play) snipers without counter-classing demonstrates an advantage over the enemy in teamplay, being able to breach holds and invade land enough to kill a class at the far back of it, and this problem no longer becomes a sniper weakness, but more of a lack of coordination on his team's part. Claim: Killing players like b4nny doesn't make sniper overpowered or untouchable, did it even win us the round? Response: It actually did a few times because the froyotech stream buddies carried the defense, and then later offense. I think you and i are diametrically opposed on class interactions in TF2. I believe that no matter what your class or situation, you should be able to leverage it's abilities through player skill at least somewhat against any enemy you can face. Obviously what i said before about being punished for taking audacious risks even when very skilled holds true, but come on man, they just died. Those players basically dropped dead for free because i sat in spawn with a class that could entirely negate every strategy or skilled loadout choice they made (see: the valve-made statement above). That is patently ridiculous. A better player should not have to switch from 7/9 classes to 1 or 2/9 classes just to possibly counter one of them, because the seven have little recourse for dealing with him beyond risky or suicidal plays. That risk imbalance is unfair to balance. More risk = more reward in everything else in this game's midrange combat metagame except sniper, who is special in that regard, and should be balanced as such to not impede it unreasonably. This is an answer to the stands true for sniper point too. Claim: Emotionally charged reasoning is being used and cheapens what is ostensibly an opinion. Response: Claiming that your reasoning seems bizarre wasn't intended to be a personal or emotional attack. If you felt that way, this wasn't the point, and is now distracting from your claim of invalidity. I had intended you to form some dichotomy between the comparison i made to refute it, but you haven't done that yet. I mean it is sort of my opinion on dying that way, but would you not feel cheated somehow if killed by a random bodyshot while in the middle of DM with another class? Your choices to prevent said death are to attempt a risky bomb into covered spawn areas, deep in enemy defenses, attempt to bypass many teammates to attempt to flank, or switch the class you're playing entirely to engage the sniper v sniper headclicking minigame within TF2, while the rest of the match goes on around you. I find that a bit odd. Why can't you deploy countermeasures? Why can't you give up some close range DPS in exchange for long range consistency as anyone but sniper himself? Surely that would be the way to go, leaving sniper as a class untouched and adding things that could be used to interact with the rest of the game too (i.e. not the razorback, utterly useless outside that one class interaction). As I've said before: add more counterplay, or add more exposure to risk to utilize sniper's power, not nerf him into the ground. Surely that is not an unreasonable request?

I still think the "well i played with a very strong sniper in 4s and even though he killed a lot, we still lost!" is ridiculous and at best just an attempt to dismiss the complaints. No shit you lost a game with Sniper in 4s. All it took was a single Demo or Solder divebomb to solve that problem. 4s is completely detached from regular 12v2 pub gameplay and HL 9v9.

MISSION ENDS IN 60 SECONDS

https://youtu.be/rp4cH7mb4X4 Posting this because someone finally captured the differences and made an amusing, well-edited video out of it

Ok, hot take: one of the best things they could do to make sniper more engaging to play as and against is add a delay to being able to get critical head-shots. Like, literally a second or less; just so that you can't do 150 the instant you scope in. I think that small change would show immediate improvements across the board. (Of course there's a very real chance that I'm wrong about this and making that change would make sniper next to useless, but hey, that didn't stop them from doing that to heavy.)

Ignore this quote @garry This is already in the game

huntsman needs it too, tbh.

Was looking through my inventory on a whim and I found a fossil https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/216462/85f7bcc0-1bdc-4efc-9111-991bfd3ee6a1/image.png This crate will be 10 years old in September, oh god

Wow, that crate is older than most of the people who play the game!

Make headshots mini-crits until charge is full? Would that be an okay change? It'd nerf Sniper's deeps but still allow him to realistically kill any class, there's still the satisfaction of landing a headshot, but it doesn't mean insttant death, and I think mini-crits as a whole is a very underutilized mechanic that's more much balanceable and tolerable compared to its older, more annoying and random brother.

hard scopes are more problematic than quick scopes.