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

I'm talking about competitive. The lack of sound, killfeed notification, and corpse mean nothing when the dead person in discord or mumble can just shout SPY BEHIND YOU. So being able to make a pick and actually get away before dying is a pretty big deal. You're probably not going to stab multiple people in competitive unless you're fighting potatoes. You kill the Medic and get out.

If you're a Soldier or Demoman, wasting 1 projectile can be enough to lose the fight. Getting up would be instant, while CnD uncloak is slow. No metal draining either, just a delay to re-activate. Ragdolls are a problem though. Doesn't Comp force certain settings? Anyway at this point if you need to turn off ragdolls to get 60fps on a 10 year old game you probably need a better PC. Most games that last this long get graphics updates along the way which forces the lowest end users to upgrade, with the benefit of looking better for newcomers (and in this case maybe even gameplay elements).

You can't balance solely around competitive, is the problem. I can get behind the idea of a knife that allows for faster cloak and de-cloak, especially after a backstab, but just flat out cloaking as soon as you backstab somebody could easily be a bit too much or not even in the right direction. Unfortunately, not all of Spy's problems can be solved by just buffing his weapons, there's a lot more inherent issues with the class, especially concerning the game already being 10+ years old.

TF2 has gotten minor visual downgrades over time (softer lighting for skins, some weapons lost detail when switched to c_models, maps with baked lighting are broken) and also performs worse.

After the cleanup update we just got I really hope they keep that a regular thing and start fixing those too.

One annoying visual issue is how some weapons' muzzleflash will completely detach from the model when moving or looking around, like the pistols and revolvers.

still useless for the other reasons mentioned + would make people more paranoid than they already are, which is a net loss for the spy class I wouldn't use it, especially not as a replacement for any of the watches or the disguise kit. Also, TF2 is optimized like complete garbage. It does not perform as well as a "10 year old game"- people are able to play newer titles like Overwatch, CSGO and Dota, all of which employ much better graphical quality, at higher and more stable performance with modern systems. TF2's CPU-centric engine + its Frankenstein nature has made it unreasonably difficult to run in recent years, when a game of this age should realistically be easily exceeding 200+ FPS at max settings on modern systems across-the-board.

Well if it instantly cloaks you, it means you can't chainstab, making it inferior in pubs. It's a perfectly sensible idea across the board imo.

I really hope they optimize the shit out of DX 98, has some features of DX10, and could have the best perf/gpu utilization.

mastercomfig advises dx 98 as a default, but I'm unsure of how much it actually helps performance

"Great in one player setting but absolutely worthless in another" is not how balancing works, either. That's how we get to situations like pre-nerf Ambassador.

we got ambassador because the old team forgot spy is a stealth class and his gun isn't for offense

Well, that too

Can Geel or someone ask Jill what they're working on now? The matchmaking seems mostly done (except a ready system before you enter a comp match, and estimated time/players searching) and the flamethrower needs some bug fixes and less opaque flames. Hope they're working on war paint workshop tools and performance, as well as the Heavy pack.

seems fair guess their focus is getting matchmaking fully in form, of course the fact that nobody knows that for certain is fucking hilarious.

We've never known for certain what Valve is doing for twenty years as of this year. Would be nice if they took two minutes and made another what are we up to blog post though, at least they're giving reasons for balance changes now.

It's very obvious that they are going to focus on making matchmaking better. Apart from that, there is still that custom gamemode thing floating around.

I saw this infographic over in /tfg/ before and I honestly agree with everything it says, especially the part about the incentives. Say what you want about Overwatch, but it's amazing how much "just one more game" potential you can get with the promise of a free-to-open lootbox every time you go up a level. And the fact you can get that incentive without winning keeps things comparatively de-stressed (whereas "you can only get your reward if you win X games" is just a recipe for disaster). https://i.imgur.com/L4bNX4P.png

The last part is incorrect. TF2 had an advertisement on Adult Swim when they did the Venture Brothers crossover promotion back in ~2012. That being said I mostly agree with everything on that graphic, except the flat 1 of each Class limit. I'd say bump it to 2 for teams of more than 6 players.

universal 1 class limits and universal 2 class limits are both AIDS, just for different reasons 1 class limit is some prolander bullshit, and the only version of prolander that's even remotely tolerable to play is sigafoo's 7v7 variation 2 class limit still leaves room for medic-stacking, as well as overpowered demo/heavy/engie-stacking it also leaves room for not-overpowered-but-annoying sniper/spy stacking 2-1-1 (Offense-Defense-Support) has been proven after years of testing to be the best form of class limits for 6v6. other variations of class limits- including no class limits- have already been tried and proven to fail.

They should at least implement Highlander as an option for comp. 6v6 cuts out the majority of classes and leaves all these massive maps feeling vacant and empty (since they were made with literally twice that number of players in mind). Not to mention how it cuts out core game modes like Payload and how the lack of class limits encourages shit like Scout rushes and pocket Medics. Keep unrestricted 6v6 as an option for those who want to play it, but the lack of class limits on teams that small encourages watered-down gameplay that only represents a scant fraction of what TF2 actually is. If both teams are forced to represent one of each class, then they're both working with that handicap (which is, conversely, a buff to the enemy team). Valve clearly wants TF2 to be an esport; if it's going to have even a SLIVER of a chance of going up against Overwatch, there needs to be incentive to actually play comp. And right now, unless you main Scout, Soldier, Medic, or maybe Demo, you have exactly no reason to ever leave Casual.

I would like to see a blogpost where the TF2 team lays out their vision for comp TF2 since it's clearly not the same as the comp community.

Highlander would be a disaster, and I'm saying this as a Highlander player. Queue times would be disastrous, and there would be plentiful fights over who gets to play what class unless there's a role-queue, which would extend the queues even more. Additionally, Highlander as the primary competitive format would simply be too expensive- the it would cost literally 50% more to transport two Highlander teams than it would two Sixes teams. There's a reason Highlander LANs aren't a thing. Also, Highlander is a very cluttered and slow spectating experience, much moreso than any mainstream competitive game. If you want TF2 as an eSport, Highlander is not it. Additionally, Valve 6s already uses Payload and CTF. Even with 6s class limits in play, this still makes room for more specialists to be put in play. If you're defending on Payload and running the standard 6s composition, you're going to get rolled because you won't have anything capable of effectively halting cart progress- especially not as effectively as Heavy or Engineer. 6s has low class diversity because it solely plays 5CP, but Valve Comp already (somewhat) solves this problem. Main issue with gamemodes like Payload and the such in 6v6 is that these game modes aren't optimized for the low playercount- not just in size, but in the fundamental way these game modes work, Payload especially. You need gamemode-wide reworks for that, not just map or class tweaks. I've covered this extensively, feel free to give the relevant section of this essay a read: THE COMPETITIVE PROBLEM. If Valve wants TF2 to be an eSport, they need to start with the years upon years of work that the pre-existing competitive community has already done for them in hopes of making that happen. Community 6s isn't perfect, but it's the best we have right now, and that's where Valve should be starting.

Something kinda like this custom watch? (These thumbnails are way too big) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKXlVZVVveo

Spy is inherently balanced around the risk factored in with getting close to enemies. Messing with that messes with the spies core design (hello deadringer)

Man I remember when VAC was the Sword of fucking Damocles and now it's just a wizened old man with a stick that catches trespassing kids too slow to exit his yard while others break into his house and steal his coffee table unmolested.

Their goal is clearly to create a ranked play version of normal TF2. It is not meant to be "in-client professional TF2."

Be careful, people here are known at lashing out for the very idea of a ranked TF2 instead of implementing 6s perfectly into the base game.

(sorry im real good at pressing the "reply" button on my own posts) Yea, but how are they doing that? What is their goal? Why 6 players? Why no class limits? Why those maps? Sure the goal is known but we just don't know what that goal contains.

I think it's pretty obvious that their goal is to make a competitive version of the game that, unlike typical 6s, includes everything that Valve created. That's why there is no class restrictions and why they are pushing for every class to be viable, that's why there are no weapon restrictions, that's why every (standard) gamemode is included in the competitive map rotation and that's why no matter how much we moan they will never remove ctf_turbine.