Stuff that Annoys you in TF2: MS Paint Crocket Edition - Games

The Darwin's Danger shield. It's so broken that a sniper can win 99% of sniper vs sniper because you landed the first shot but he never died.

Sniper dueling and the Danger Shield is only a problem if you stay in one place all match to snipe. Just like in real life, a good sniper never stays put - they shoot a few times, then move to a new location, because if you let the enemy know where you are and then stay there, you end up getting killed very quickly thereafter. If you have any significant problem the Danger Shield, you probably need to stop camping on the spawn battlements of 2Fort / Hightower and just find some new places to snipe from instead. If you find yourself frequently fighting "sniper duels", you're doing it wrong - you want to catch the enemy by surprise and kill him without being seen, not play cowboy and have a quickdraw shootout at the O. K. Corral.

In a lot of maps there are only a few really good Sniper locations though (sometimes only one), and not taking down the enemy Sniper often means that they have free reign over a very optimal spot which potentially means they can kill a lot of teammates. You are in effect adhering to the enemy Sniper's wish to not endanger his teammates by just not engaging him. The Danger Shield has the same problem as the Razorback in that sense - it takes away a hard counter for no real reason and just means you're screwed in that particular matchup. Bad design.

No, in a lot of maps there are only a few really [I][B]obvious[/B][/I] Sniper locations. The Danger shield gives you a minor tradeoff, making the Sniper a little stronger at extreme ranges, but much weaker at close ranges. The problem is that people are inflexible, and refuse to adapt their strategies to deal with situations as they arise. There are a ton of other ways to deal with that sniper rather than engaging in a long range sniper duel, which is a suboptimal strategy that you should try to avoid anyway. This is a classic case of people relying way too much on a [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w&t=3m07s"]FOO strategy[/URL], using it exclusively until it becomes a crutch, and then feeling frustrated when a situation arises where it stops working for them. People grumble about Sniper because it's a decently high power option with a relatively low skill threshold. There actually are a lot ways to beat a Sniper, and a lot of tactics, weapons, and class combinations that are actually much more powerful and impactful on any given match, but they take a bit more effort and thought, and thus they're less popular. But if you just take the little bit of time needed to learn a new approach to dealing with the problem, suddenly you have no reason to complain anymore. The Danger Shield is actually pretty easy to beat - it just requires you to be flexible in your thinking and not just rely on the easiest, most obvious option. Just because you have a hammer doesn't mean every problem is a nail. Now maybe part of the blame can go to Valve for game design that doesn't do enough to discourage people relying on suboptimal tactics like sniper dueling. But in a multiplayer shooter like TF2, I'm really not certain what they could do differently to make the learning curve easier for players and help them to move on from using FOO strategies and upgrade to more advanced options instead.

But the Danger Shield is exactly that - it encourages the player to just sit in the same spot forever, because there's absolutely no danger to it. You have a close to automatic win against enemy Snipers, who can't contest you unless they're magnitudes more skilled. I'm not really sure how moving around suddenly solves the problem of having an enemy Sniper in an optimal location, while you're stuck in a worse one. Plus, many maps just don't have that option - there's many situations where there is no real way for a Sniper to do anything except in the one spot that the map design allows them to. Think of places like basically any Dustbowl or Goldrush point, Turbine, Well, or any given point on any map that allows a Sniper to cover all possible routes the enemy can take. Arguably this can be blamed on bad map design (and it is and brings more problems than just Snipers), but it's still a situation you find yourself in quite often in TF2. DDS then allows one Sniper to be almost completely safe. It forces a dumb stalemate, similar to the Vita-Saw, where the other Sniper can be forced to equip the same item. Does it encourage interesting gameplay? No. Does it detract from it? Yes, and it's passive so you don't even need to do anything. It's bad design.

[QUOTE=Tinker;50073356]But the Danger Shield is exactly that - it encourages the player to just sit in the same spot forever, because there's absolutely no danger to it. You have a close to automatic win against enemy Snipers, who can't contest you unless they're magnitudes more skilled. I'm not really sure how moving around suddenly solves the problem of having an enemy Sniper in an optimal location, while you're stuck in a worse one. Plus, many maps just don't have that option - there's many situations where there is no real way for a Sniper to do anything except in the one spot that the map design allows them to. Think of places like basically any Dustbowl or Goldrush point, Turbine, Well, or any given point on any map that allows a Sniper to cover all possible routes the enemy can take. Arguably this can be blamed on bad map design (and it is and brings more problems than just Snipers), but it's still a situation you find yourself in quite often in TF2. DDS then allows one Sniper to be almost completely safe. It forces a dumb stalemate, similar to the Vita-Saw, where the other Sniper can be forced to equip the same item.[/QUOTE] Except there's [I][B]lots[/B][/I] of danger in sitting in one spot. You can't possibly cover every avenue of approach as a sniper, and the DDS makes you incredibly vulnerable to being flanked and attacked at close range. You give up your SMG, which is your primary short range defense, meaning if anyone does get close, you're pretty much dead without help. So if a Scout or Pyro manages to close the distance by flanking along alternate routes, or they just manage to bumrush you simply by virtue of the fact that a sniper will typically focus on slower, more valuable targets like Soldiers, Heavies, and Medics first as they're the biggest threats, you can easily end up cornered and defenseless. One way or another, someone will slip through and eat your face. More than that, however, you also make yourself much weaker to explosives. This means a Demoman at mid range or closer can swiftly destroy you, and it means a Soldier at literally any range is absolutely your worst nightmare. The Danger Shield is a [I]sidegrade[/I] - it gives you greater power in one area, with the tradeoff of taking away a lot of power in other areas. If you want to sit back with it and snipe from extreme range and never move, you absolutely can, but you pay a hefty price in vulnerability from close range flankers, mid range grenades, and long range rockets. [QUOTE=Tinker;50073356]Does it encourage interesting gameplay? No. Does it detract from it? Yes, and it's passive so you don't even need to do anything. It's bad design.[/QUOTE] How can you say it doesn't encourage interesting gameplay? It [I]absolutely[/I] does! Adding a DDS sniper to a battle promotes a change of tactics in the enemy team. It incentivizes people switching away from Sniper (because it makes Sniper dueling less effective) and changing to other classes like Soldier, Demoman, Pyro, Scout, or Medic (because those classes all have tools which can counteract the shield). It creates a situation which requires different tools to deal with, instead of just encouraging people to repeat the same simple tactic over and over. And how in the world does the Danger Shield [I]detract[/I] from interesting gameplay? Amateur snipers will camp the battlements and have silly long range sniper duels even without it - they've been doing exactly that since the game first launched. In reality the only gameplay the shield detracts from is sniper duels, which aren't interesting to begin with - and in fact it encourages people to try different options instead, by giving them reasons to switch to different classes entirely to circumvent it. That's [I]adding[/I] to interesting gameplay, not detracting from it. The shield is perfectly fine game design. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and it doesn't add any new problems or make any existing ones worse. Taking it away would simply give people fewer options to work with and more reason to fall back on stale, familiar tactics that don't require them to think or adapt. And if you want that, you can go play the that TF2 mod that rolls back the game version to Vanilla launch status.

Is it a cock move that I went on to Reddit and explained why stocking up on soon - to - be all / multi class items for profit is wrong?

[QUOTE=blueNES;50073500]Is it a cock move that I went on to Reddit and explained why stocking up on soon - to - be all / multi class items for profit is wrong?[/QUOTE] No you're just speaking the truth assuming I understood you correctly

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50073485] How can you say it doesn't encourage interesting gameplay? It [I]absolutely[/I] does! Adding a DDS sniper to a battle promotes a change of tactics in the enemy team. It incentivizes people switching away from Sniper (because it makes Sniper dueling less effective) and changing to other classes like Soldier, Demoman, Pyro, Scout, or Medic (because those classes all have tools which can counteract the shield). It creates a situation which requires different tools to deal with, instead of just encouraging people to repeat the same simple tactic over and over. And how in the world does the Danger Shield [I]detract[/I] from interesting gameplay? Amateur snipers will camp the battlements and have silly long range sniper duels even without it - they've been doing exactly that since the game first launched. In reality the only gameplay the shield detracts from is sniper duels, which aren't interesting to begin with - and in fact it encourages people to try different options instead, by giving them reasons to switch to different classes entirely to circumvent it. That's [I]adding[/I] to interesting gameplay, not detracting from it. The shield is perfectly fine game design. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and it doesn't add any new problems or make any existing ones worse. Taking it away would simply give people fewer options to work with and more reason to fall back on stale, familiar tactics that don't require them to think or adapt. And if you want that, you can go play the that TF2 mod that rolls back the game version to Vanilla launch status.[/QUOTE] That's kind of ridiculous, though. What you're saying is that hey, look, this guy has an item that's a hard counter to you. Better switch class, or equip the same item, because otherwise you can't take him on. How is that not a detraction? All of its negatives are under the assumption that he can be flanked - not only are there quite a few maps where that pretty much isn't possible, but decent Snipers stick with their team anyway and the teams keep a check on their Sniper. At best they're going to get killed by a Spy, which becomes their only real danger (note that equipping the Razorback creates the exact same problem except enemy Snipers become the only counter). Because whatever you say, Sniper duels are ingrained in the class design - Valve explicitly talks about that (on one of the maps where flanking is close to impossible too, Well). You might find them boring, but because of the way the class works the only counter to a Sniper can very often be another Sniper. The DDS imbalances that class matchup so far in one player's favour that apparently, the best way of dealing with it is SWITCHING CLASS or equipping the DDS as well. Come on. I'd be a lot more okay with it if it was some kind of active item, by the way. If it was, say, some sort of drink like Bonk! that allowed you to take less bullet damage for a short while after an animation it would be a lot more palatable because it would allow you to catch enemy Snipers unaware or out of their buff still. As it is, though, it's a brain-dead "slap it on and forget about it" item.

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50073266] -snip- [/QUOTE] I really feel like you dont understand why Sniper is extremely overpowered. One of the things that separates Sniper from every other class, is the fact that he can deny anywhere in his sight line. Nothing will get in between a snipers sightline, because that puts you at risk of dying. Bobbing and weaving may make it harder to be headshoted, but that doesn't make it harder to get a bodyshot. Even then, all the ways you have to counter sniper all depend on how good the Sniper is, and what secondary he has. Have to deal with spies? Razorback. Pyros pestering you from a distance? Jarate (Also hard counters spies) Being shot at from a distance from a Heavy or something? Cozy Camper. Other Snipers making it hard for you to top score? Danger Shield. Sniper has a tool to deal with any issue in his way that he has to deal with, the only thing that make that balanced is that he can only have one of those weapons each life. That's not fun to play against, and sure as hell doesn't make for fun gameplay. Sniper is centralizing. You have to be insane to think that Sniper is any sensible way balanced. You don't balance something on the idea that it can't counter everything at once. In a game that is played in close and mid ranges, Sniper sticks out like a sore thumb. 7 out of 9 classes have to get into a Sniper's line of sight to attack him, putting you at risk of death so you can just pressure a Sniper to get behind cover. When Sniper is able to kill 5 out of 9 classes with a single uncharged headshot, one of those being Medic, the most important class in the game, he crosses a line. Sniper isn't a class that can be bobbed and weaved against, he isn't a class that can be easily countered, and he isn't a class that's fun to play against.

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50073485] The shield is perfectly fine game design.[/QUOTE] The Darwin's Danger Shield is a hard-counter to Sniper's only real counter among a good team, being the other Sniper. That is not good game design. There's a reason why it's banned in most if not all competitive Highlander settings. (probably all 6s settings too)

Anyone else wish the Detonator was reworked? I love being able to get to unreachable places by detonator jumping and all. But being dropped from 175 health to 130 because of one single jump is just not worth it. Maybe if they adjusted the damage to self I think more people would use it, because right now it's a shit Scorch Shot.

[QUOTE=blueNES;50073500]Is it a cock move that I went on to Reddit and explained why stocking up on soon - to - be all / multi class items for profit is wrong?[/QUOTE] The only thing that would be wrong is asking for upvotes on this site so that the post will reach the front page on that site. Which is against reddit's rules anyway. [url]https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205192985[/url]

Maybe if you don't use it for flanking. It is amazing but I do agree that the self damage might be a little bit too steep.

[QUOTE=DavidCameron;50073040]The Darwin's Danger shield. It's so broken that a sniper can win 99% of sniper vs sniper because you landed the first shot but he never died.[/QUOTE] i always laugh when razorback snipers complain about DDS, sometimes ill use it to give them a taste of there own cheap passive unlock medicine.

[QUOTE=poptart TF2;50074388]i always laugh when razorback snipers complain about DDS, sometimes ill use it to give them a taste of there own cheap passive unlock medicine.[/QUOTE] The spy however has a gun, which can rapidly take a sniper down if he is in the range a razorback would be relevant. The razorback is mostly for spies to prioritize the sniper less when in a group of people. An enemy sniper can't just switch to his smg or so and start spraying in a sniper duel like that, he has to stick to his rifle.

[QUOTE=Cavalierguy;50074882]The spy however has a gun, which can rapidly take a sniper down if he is in the range a razorback would be relevant. The razorback is mostly for spies to prioritize the sniper less when in a group of people. An enemy sniper can't just switch to his smg or so and start spraying in a sniper duel like that, he has to stick to his rifle.[/QUOTE] and a sniper has the ability to charge his gun doesnt he.

The explosive downside on the danger shield doesn't do much. Straight from the wiki: [QUOTE]Like the Razorback, Darwin's Danger Shield is worn on the Sniper's back. Instead of protecting the wearer from backstabs, it grants a passive bonus of an [U]additional 25 maximum health[/U], encouraging users to venture further into combat but depriving them of a secondary weapon. Equipping Darwin's Danger Shield also grants the wearer 15% resistance from bullet damage, enough resistance for the wearer at full health to survive a fully charged bodyshot or uncharged Headshot from any Sniper Rifle. As a trade-off, the wearer receives [U]20% extra damage from explosive[/U] sources such as rockets, grenades, stickybombs, and Sentry Gun rockets. [B][I]However, the extra health counteracts this downside, giving the Sniper 126 effective health against explosives.[/I][/B][/QUOTE]

Had a sniper and sentry behind our last spawn on frontier (we were red) shooting us from embedded in the rock out of the map. Not had that before. Their team played dumb and didn't kick.

[QUOTE=poptart TF2;50076351]and a sniper has the ability to charge his gun doesnt he.[/QUOTE] That would require the sniper to either take the time to charge the shot while the other sniper is not paying attention, or to charge behind cover and pop out into what is likely the sightline of the other sniper and putting himself at a disadvantage. The razorback has a single purpouse which is to discourage spies, and that is its only use. It is also a one time use if it actually breaks. The DDS not only protects against a class the sniper is weak against (arguably his biggest counter), it also grants him 25 extra hp against anything not explosive, as well as not breaking upon getting headshot. It is miles ahead of the razorback in terms of general protection, while both unlocks require passing up the same smg. Back when the Croc-o-Style was a thing it was excuseable because it required the sleeper to work, which needed the full charge to one shot you back. Now its downside has changed to the explosive vunerability, which is nothing compared to reducing the snipers overall effectiveness by removing the ability to headshot. And the sniper without the DDS is now the one that needs the full charge to kill, as well as it has to be a headshot.

that bad feel when your unusual spends more time floating in the corner of the map than on top of your head also, the one beautiful emoticon I want [t]http://i.imgur.com/lzzchhF.png[/t]

When people IMMEDIATELY abandon a tf2 comp match. Literally has happened 6 times in a row.

It's because of a bug with parties - if you're still on the scoreboard or a previous game and your party joins a new game, you get an auto-abandon as the player still in the previous one, which then becomes an abandon in the new game. It's not the player's fault, it's Valve's sloppy system.

when a cheater is carrying a team in MM but they're not good enough to win, so the other 11 people on the server are forced to stalemate for 15 minutes and play the "who's gonna bite the bullet and abandon so we can leave" game

[QUOTE=chandlerj333;50076640]The explosive downside on the danger shield doesn't do much. Straight from the wiki:[/QUOTE] It's really not that simple, and the notion of "effective health" here doesn't apply, because you can't actually combine the increased max HP and the increased vulnerability to explosives into a single value. Part of the problem is that the notion of "effective health" is based off a player whose health is [I]full[/I]. If you're wounded, the "effective" bonus you're receiving at any given moment from having a larger HP maximum is smaller. Meanwhile, explosive vulnerability is constant at all values of health. Let's use a couple examples. A sniper at full health gets hit by a rocket for the standard value of 90 damage. If his HP is 125, he drops to 35. Meanwhile, if his HP is 150 and he has 20% vulnerability, he drops to 42. In this case, the DDS sniper comes out ahead by 7 HP. But you have to realize, he started out [I]25 HP[/I] ahead! He had to pay an extra 18 HP in damage to end up with a net bonus of only 7 HP over stock. And he has to pay that price [I]every time[/I] he gets hit by a standard damage rocket. If you get hit by two or more rockets without dying (such as while being healed by a medic, or grabbing a healthpack between getting hit by rockets, your "effective bonus" starts becoming an effective penalty that gets larger with every bit of explosive damage you take. Because of your 25 HP bonus, you spend 18 to get back only 7 with each hit. Now, let's look at a [I]wounded[/I] sniper hit by the same rocket. If his current HP is 95, he take 90 damage, drops to 5 HP, and barely survives. Meanwhile, a DDS sniper at the same current health value of 95 takes 98 damage and dies instantly. Obviously the stock sniper came out ahead here. The problem is that extra maximum health only matters when you're close to that maximum. Yeah, a fully healed sniper with the shield has a flat extra 25 HP, but you aren't always going to be fully healed. The DDS gives you more HP overall at spawn, but it also means you take bigger chunks of damage when you do get hit, meaning you have [I]less[/I] HP overall over the course of a single life. And since the difference between life and death can literally be 1 HP, anytime you're not at full health, you are much more at risk of suffering instant death and having to respawn, rather than barely surviving and only having to retreat to find a medic, dispenser, or healthpack.

I don't get the whole "WM1" hate with the pyro. So that pyro flamed you a lot, big fuckin deal. If you get mad at a pyro just for flaming then you're missing the point of that class. and besides, pyros usually are pretty easy to beat when they don't airblast you. Blaming them for WM1ing is you trying to hide the fact that you got rekt by a noob and that's no one's fault but your own (or a teammate not helping you, context etc.).

[QUOTE=G. Verloren;50079187]It's really not that simple[/QUOTE] Yes it is. You have effectively 126 HP against explosive damage, that's it. I don't understand what you're trying to say with your explanation, like [QUOTE=G. Verloren;50079187] Now, let's look at a wounded sniper hit by the same rocket. If his current HP is 95, he take 90 damage, drops to 5 HP, and barely survives. Meanwhile, a DDS sniper at the same current health value of 95 takes 98 damage and dies instantly. Obviously the stock sniper came out ahead here.[/QUOTE] Why are you comparing Sniper with DDS and without using the same current HP when DDS begin with more HP? All you're saying is if the sniper with DDS took more damage than the one without, the one with DDS will die in one rocket while the other won't, which is obvious.

One good way to help balance sniper would be to make so you can't 150 damage quickscope. Add like a damage penalty for the first 2 seconds or so when you scope.

First off, I don't understand where you're getting 126 HP from. Let's pretend rockets did 125 HP damage. One rocket kills a Sniper if that's the case. And then if you put on the DDS, that same rocket does 125 x 1.2 = 150 HP, so again, it kills you in one shot. Where are you getting this mythical extra hit point from? From the wiki? Hate to break it to you, but the wiki is often wrong. But hey, who cares? Whether it's 125 or 126 HP, you're still roughly as strong against explosives, right? Wrong. At full health, sure, you're essentially equal compared to stock. But at anything less than full, you're coming out behind. So now let's pretend that same rocket does 120 HP instead. The stock sniper takes 120 damage and drops down to 5 HP remaining. The DDS sniper takes 144 damage and drops down to 6 HP remaining. Now, let's say both snipers get healed for a few seconds by a medic, but not to full - they both receive 120 HP worth of healing, leaving them at 125 and 126 HP respectively. Now, they each get hit by a second rocket. The stock sniper once again takes 120 damage and lives at 5 HP, but the DDS sniper takes 144 damage and this time dies at -18 HP. The problem with the DDS is that it is only efficient for a single life worth of HP. Once you take larger amounts of damage than your spawn max (by healing inbetween), it rapidly becomes highly inefficient. And in reality, most of the time a player is going to take a lot more than their max health in damage over the course of a single life. So if you're a sniper who does nothing but stand around on the 2Fort battlements and have sniper duels all day, then hooray - the DDS gives you an advantage over other snipers, and you probably won't notice the downsides because most of the time you'll be at full health, and when you're not you'll either run to spawn to heal, or die very quickly and have to respawn. Meanwhile, if you're a more mobile sniper, either by choice or simply because you're on a map where you can't just camp outside spawn all day, suddenly the downsides become more important. The further away you are from sources of healing, and the more likely you are to get flanked and engaged at closer ranges, and the more important it is for you to stay alive so you don't spend half the match waiting to respawn and then jog all the way back the front lines, the more the DDS hurts you, because you're going to spend a lot more of your time at partial health, and that makes you much more fragile. So on maps like 2Fort, the DDS is pretty good. But on maps like Upward? Not so much.

You're constantly throwing theorycrafting around to make the default and DDS sniper at the same health somehow, in this case with some mad Medic who heals one Sniper to his full health and the other only to 83% of his health (and Medics are the only ones who could even do this, because healing from healthpaks is percentage based). Your examples make no real practical sense.