TF2 General Chat and Speculation Station V6 - Year of the Guard Dog SURVEY IN OP - Games

I think if there was a way for Spies to maneuver around enemies that didn't make it blatantly obvious they were going for a backstab, it wouldn't be as much of a problem, but at the same time, I think it's an acceptable downside to the class.

Yeah, there are a lot of giveaways that come before noticing a teammate with no cosmetics (which isn't that rare in pubs anyway). I'd say it's much more likely to notice the fact that the class isn't present on your team. Still, a solution would be welcome.

I do the exact opposite of all that when I play spy and I don't even play him much. I almost never use the scout disguise because the movement speed feels too obvious, i use most fitting and realistic disguise depending on the situation and make the enemy think I am one of them, I switch my weapons and move realistically to seem like an actual player and always wait for the right time to get the kill.. ..I uhhh basically just explained how to normally play spy like a normal person.

Missing the "disguises as the wrong class in the wrong place" EG: sniper in front lines or engineer in open areas/too far back. Although I swear the spawn vision already makes spies job hard. I catch spies from just seeing them phase in with spawn vision, and most players always beeline when they think no one can see them. You gotta pretend to be the class you disguised as even when no one is watching, you gotta be dedicated.

This is actually a really good solution and would probably be the easiest to implement. Like this one.

If anything, legless demos are ALWAYS AN ISSUE and always a death sentence to spies. but yeah, good spies will always catch you, no matter what.

You may think a lot of these things mark a bad spy, but in truth the reason you see so many Spies behave this way is that the disguise is too finnicky and unreliable to turn into an actual tactic, especially against skilled players. There are exceptions- glorious, glorious exceptions made possible by great acting- but for the most part, your best option with a disguise is just to use it while you're going for the kill, often bunnyhopping on Scout to make yourself harder to hit and be convincing at a short glance before you stab an enemy. The disguise in this scenario isn't being used as an actual attempt at deception, it's a purely surface-level application to make sure you don't Sentry'd and you have a marginally better chance at getting the kill you're going for. A disguise-centric playstyle on Spy simply doesn't work at a high-level, and while it may work in pubs it's almost completely pointless. It's a wasted effort when you can just decloak inside people and stab them. Disguise-centric playstyles rely on deception and cunning, but there's no deception or cunning when you're playing against people who barely qualify as sentient life.

if only the disguise kit wasn't so buggy and didn't shit out disguises like a demoman without feet holding a brass beast it'd be actually a good deception tool

then again, spies are a extremely situational class. disguisses, bugged an all, will fool people unaware and/or focused on something else, disregard of their skill level.

Why don't we play a gambling game. You trade me keys, and I'll trade you back some random crap item. I can promise you a higher return value than unboxing.

A pure unbugged disguise isn't going to change the fact that you can't fire a weapon at all, which teammates often do just as a handshake "I'm not a spy, you a spy?" check, or the fact that actually getting a stab or whatever is going to require you to behave, at least some of the time, noticeably differently than an actual enemy player.

You sure have some really bad hot takes.

Sure it won't, but a pure unbugged disguise is still the better scenario. Spies should die to their own error and bad positioning, not the game deciding to broadcast to the enemy team that they're obviously a Spy.

backstabs shouldn't even be shown in the killfeed.

Oh my. That might actually require players to communicate and pay attention to their surroundings and teammates...

Agreed. Meant to quote Nonhuman's assertion that disguise would become a good deception tool.

I am not really saying it would trick everyone, it would be just a little less obvious that you are a spy. I still do think that disguises can SOMETIMES trick decent players though, if the right disguise is used at the right time combined with acting convincingly it can, not all of the time of course.

Distraction and suspicion are kind of opposed accumulators and there are definitely times where a well played disguise has tipped the balance to me turning my back and getting killed.

I wish Advanced Weaponizer was still alive so we could actually try stuff like that. I'd be interested to see how the balance of Spy goes in a few basic pub matches if every knife had Silent Killer aspects, removing death screams on backstabs while we're at it.

Speaking of spy disguises (not trying to prove anything, just wanted to share recent video fragment relative to the topic) https://youtu.be/e2yBe2H5Y0g?t=3m35s In case if timecode is broken (it is broken for me) and you don't want to watch the whole video go to 3:35

Yeah, that's what actually spurred me to start thinking more about disguises and make the post I made earlier. Specifically, it made me think of how incredible the disguise kit can actually be when used properly and not broken by some bullshit that's out of the Spy's control. Plays like that should be much more common than they are, but they're super scarce and it's pretty sad.

I think the only reason plays like this happen in high level is because disguise is such an unreliable mechanic that pros expect spies to take advantage of it even less than pubbers

I was playing on Enclosure with commodorekong on blu and I was shooting a blu Spy that was acting suspicious with my shotgun, and in doing so killed a separate actually red Spy, they just went in front of my soldier's shotgun They surely would have died anyway though I think that Spy was just walking toward blus.

proven by the same spy clip right before it. cloaking and jumping at someone's back is far more powerful than fooling someone.

Speaking of disguise kit, most people keep picking Scout as a disguise. Obviously to protect your real head, but that won't do much as there is a big chance that you get killed by someone else than just Sniper. Ya might even load up tr_walkway, spawn the Scout and Spy bot, make em to not move around so they can stand next to eachother and just look where his real head is.

I started playing this game again for the first time in a few years. More or less the same. I just gotta get used to it all, especially the weapon tweaks. Gotta say, contacts aren't fun if you wanna get those new items though.

Welcome back! Even if the game has more wacky hats, its gameplay is arguably the most polished and balanced now.

what happened to blackavar tho

He's mountaindog now.

I looked at all the cosmetics that were released since then. Only one I wanted that was new to me was the Engie's "Roboot" to finish this particular Loadout. Luckily I had some credits on TF2WH all this time. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/303622757080498177/426117648183590935/Roboengie.png There were some others that I nabbed though, albeit not many. I usually keep my loadouts very minimal and uncluttered, unless I'm going for a theme like this, Pirate Demo, or Sam (From Sam & Max) Spy for a select few loadouts. But yeah I am happy with a lot of the weapon rebalancing. Are the Quickiebomb Launcher and Panic Attack good? Those are the weapons I still have yet to get and try out.