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

Sulfur poster https://i.redd.it/tztyfnwt1kt01.jpg Funny how well TF2 holds up graphically but how shit you have to make it look for a decent framerate.

I've played Sulfur a few times and I really enjoy it, I would love to see it go official so the game has another Steel type map.

I just use mastercomfig's High Quality Preset (not Max). Has nice optimizations that don't affect graphics while not making the game look dull.

as seen in every single game where a sniper rifle mechanic is present. hell, lets be glad snipers can't headshot you unscoped and need time to reach full damage.. the sole idea of having snipers like the ones in UT99/Halo CE makes me shiver.

Multiple clips reload as well... or the worst offender of all sniper rifles: The Far sight from Perfect Dark lol... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjls6qvohfU Like I'd say with promixity mines, Sniper's are of the single most difficult weapons in most games to balance around in an FPS game. They either end up being Really bad ( Golden eye Sniper Rifle, which feels more like a pistol with a scope ) or extremely powerful. Oddly enough though, I still feel Team Fortress's Sniper is one of the mroe fairer variations of the gun. Even more funny is that I don't recall there being a sniper rifle in shooters before the original Quake mod either, meaning TF might have been one of the first to actually have sniper rifles ( with headshot mechanics ) in a shooter to begin with.

I wouldn't go as far as to say Heavy is useless. He fills two important niches: Being a high DPS raid boss-esque class that can easily win most 1v1s (or at least could before they ruined his damage output for the first second he's spun-up) and can bunker down areas that Engineers don't have enough time to set up in. He's also the only reliable uber class that doesn't deal explosive damage, meaning he's by far the best choice for when a Pyro is screwing up uber pushes. I do think that the idea that Medic is too powerful with the Heavy is something to consider, and I wouldn't be adverse to just a straight healing nerf for specifically the Heavy, if it meant more QOL buffs like getting rid of the shitty spin-up damage nerf for the first second, being able to swap off of the Minigun faster, helping deal with incredibly weak ranged damage, etc

If your good at landing meat shots with the widowmaker, engineer makes a surprisingly good uber target ( and kritz target ) for that matter. Hell, with Kritz you can literally snipe endlessly and still get enough ammo back to replenish anything you use. I find that heavy is fairly good for supporting a group of people too. If you stick with your teammates, you can rely on them a bit more to attack people who are trying to attack you through heavies weakness and vise versa... I find that a group pushing through with a reliable heavy to be fairly difficult at times even in casual matches, which usually ends up with me swapping to sniper to deal with the heavy directly before swapping back.

I wish TF2 had an instagib gamemode. Used to have so much fun with this back in Quake days.

just limit everything but stock sniper and up rifle damage to x1000

Would be better on Soldier, but also give soldier scout speed and ability to rocketjump.

Heavy isn't terribly useless, or for that matter all that weak and in need of a direct buff, he's just boring without being in combat all the time. Some role-changing items, QOL fixes, new toys, etc. Anything, really, except more obsolete downgrades for primary and melee like we've gotten over the years. Sniper on the other hand needs to be reined in. On the low end, the 5-sniper gibus hordes plague pubs with unskilled bodyshots and terrible team composition, And in high levels, snipers carry competitive games, with the threat of unavoidable instant death slowing games down to plodding caution around sightlines. There's something to be said about a class that can kill 8/9 other classes instantly and without any opportunity for counterplay, while hiding in spawn, holding unlockables which help counter his one genuine counter other than himself. You know, in a game supposedly about midrange dm combat. Either the no-retaliation 150 damage from anywhere on the map, unavoidably for free needs to be toned down, or he needs actual elements that the other classes can use against him. Smoke grenades, artillery, drones, tanks, barriers, armor, all other class shooters or hell, even FPS games in recent history that feature sniping have those, except tf2. That's where the problem is.

Teamwork.tf once had a "Instagib" tab in the Quickplay page, but it always had 0 server in it so they removed it.

overheal works as a pseudo-armor that protects any class from dying to quickscopes, sans perhaps kunai spy none of these games feature tf2's high mobility classes, which are very effective at killing snipers, even in high-level play also, sniper being amazing in highlander ≠ sniper being amazing in 6s, invite level snipers are nowhere near as influential in their games as plat hl snipers are in theirs, because sniper's counters are actually in play in a meaningful way outside of highlander harkening back to the "tf2 is an arena shooter" argument, arena shooters like quake have long featured mechanics like the rail gun- infinite-range high burst damage limited only by the player's ability to aim. these aren't overpowered in quake due to the mobility that players of quake enjoy, and sniper rifles have significantly higher aim requirements and slower firing speed than the rail guns ever did. additionally, sniper has been a part of team fortress since before team fortress 2 even launched. he was one of the very first classes. this argument that sniper in his current form doesn't belong (even though he's actually quite reigned in in comparison to his counterparts in other games) just doesn't vibe with me, when he's been a part of team fortress for as long as team fortress has existed.

Heavy is arguably the easiest to counter, so long as you've got a bit of situational awareness. I've gotten 6+ killstreaks while being pocketed (this is without Uber, mind) because no one thought to Wrangle their sentry or place a sticky trap or just shoot me in my massive head. He's supremely weak at close range (unless he's already revved, and even then he's only what we'd call a "problem" if he has a Medic) and can't do much from a distance beyond maybe poking the occasional Sentry nest before getting headshotted into oblivion. So he's fantastic in a pubstomp situation, where no one's thinking strategically in regards to the massive, slow-moving death machine creeping down the choke. But the second you have a Sniper who knows how to prioritize his targets instead of 1v1-ing the Sniper on the other team (or a Demo who knows how to control his space, or a Spy who understands melee hitboxes, or a Soldier with decent enough aim, or an Engie who is brave enough to play an active role in defending his nest, or...), the Heavy becomes way less useful as anything beyond a cart pusher.

The only thing that sits weird for me with sniper is that unless you are a class with advanced mobility there isn't much you can do about him once you know he's there other than surrendering that sightline to him. This is a big reason why sniper is a better assassin than spy: you can't beat him with paranoia. Suppressive fire from non mobile classes doesn't give them a real route to approach through since you're dealing piddly damage and he just has to wait for you to reload and poke your head out again to stop you in your tracks. Overheal is huge for vs sniper matchup but that's a 2v1

The reason the Sandvich and Tomislav are the go-to unlocks for Heavy is because they grant him extra agency and mobility; I'd argue that, aside from Medic and MAYBE Engineer, the Heavy is the class which relies most heavily on his team to do his job. You can't be a "lone wolf" Heavy. A single Heavy marching along is NOT a problem; a Heavy with Uber, leading a team-wide push down the choke is the DEFINITION of a problem.

So Heavy and Pyro are fine because potatoes with zero game sense or skill have difficulty exploiting their weaknesses? Why would you agree that the game should be balanced around bottom-tier levels of play?

That's not what I was saying, and not what Mould was saying either. Heavy and Pyro have weaknesses that are exposed and exploited at high level play in a way that simply doesn't happen in pubs/low-level play. Buffing them so they're better in low-level play (which, no offense, is what the majority of you here are playing: pubs) makes them overpowered in high-level play at the detriment of game pacing. Should Pyro and Heavy be better? Absolutely. Should they be better in a way that shifts the game's balance to a slower, less aim-intensive affair? Absolutely not. Heavy deserves to have some of his undue nerfs (Love and War most especially) reverted, but he should not be fulltime viable in 5CP, especially not via means like the pre-nerf GRU. Heavy is already incredibly good at taking down flankers, which is why he's such a popular run on 5CP last: mowing down Scouts and Soldiers who have to engage you to win is Heavy's comfort zone, imo. Heavy with mobility is Heavy without his greatest weakness and Heavy with hugely buffed damage is Heavy able to skullfuck anything that isn't another Heavy or a Sniper. Neither of these are good things. Pyro deserves to be in a better place, but after a full year of Valve trying to fix him all they've really managed to do is break flame particles and then nerf them to shit. I'm genuinely beginning to wonder if there's any hope for the class to be anything more than pubstomp potential.

Yes well, all the mobility in the world doesn't get you through spammy choke points and sentries unscathed, nor into enemy spawns which snipers play from. That's a ridiculously unequal amount of effort required there between you and the sniper. If you can somehow evenly contest a sniper of equal skill (like you're supposed to with everyone else) with anything other than himself or spy, that means he doesn't have a team, or is massively out of position, not that his class is balanced. As for 6s, it is meant to be tf2 at it's fastest and most skilled, so naturally yes, a situational pick in a game mode that does not resemble the game 80% of the users play, or even one close to it like highlander, is not going to be an overwhelming issue because he's not run, not because his class is balanced. You know what else has been in the game from the start? Winbombing. Random damage spread. Airblastless pyro. Random crits. All axed (hopefully the last one, too) in the name of balance and better gameplay. And there's something to be said about him, with only a bolt action rifle having such a disproportionate impact for the amount of counterplay he lacks.

All classes should ideally be fulltime viable within the limits of their unique abilities, even if it means massive changes to classes and mechanics.

A map without multiple routes to an objective is a badly-designed map. What maps in competitive play come to mind where there are simply no angles you can get on the Sniper? Also, what games are you playing where Snipers are playing from their spawns? Outside of some 5CP last points, these don't provide anything resembling good sightlines for the Sniper to utilize. I have literally never had a problem contesting Snipers as non-Sniper classes that aren't Heavy or Engineer. (who aren't meant to be able to do so, anyways). Scout, Soldier and Demo can all close the distance rapidly, Spy can close the distance without being detected, Pyro has flares, and hell even Medic has a crossbow that can be used to exploit Snipers in bad positioning. (Of course, Medic isn't a combat class and is arguably meant to be countered by Sniper and other pick classes.) I have played with some of the best Snipers in the game and I have not once felt like I had no control whatsoever over our engagement. If Sniper was the unstoppable god you seem to think he is, he would absolutely be a full-time run in 6s. Being a little late to mid doesn't matter if you can instantly skullfuck the enemy combo the moment you arrive. Stop pretending that Sniper is aimbot- he's not, even the best Snipers in the game are countered by non-Snipers. Aimbot exceeds maximum potential- humans have a hard limit to hand-eye coordination, situational awareness and reaction time that aimbots simply do not have. Also, 6s is way closer to pub TF2 than Highlander is. 6s lets you stack multiple classes or switch between them- Highlander forces all classes to be run simultaneously, under the pretense that they are equal when they are clearly not. Sniper and Demo dominate Highlander specifically because their most effective counters (Soldier, Scout) are marginalized by hard limits and the selection of linear, chokey maps. This problem is not reflected in 6s or casual TF2. Finally, my last bit about Sniper being a part of Team Fortress longer than Team Fortress 2 has been a thing wasn't an Appeal To Tradition. Rather, I was pointing out the flaw in the argument that Sniper is somehow counter to the design of class-based shooters or even arena shooters, when both of these genres were built around high-skill, long-distance weapons being in play. You want TF2 to be more like an arena shooter? Then Sniper is fine. Hell, Sniper should be buffed under that logic. You want TF2 to be more in line with class shooters, which emphasize harder counters? Then Sniper is fine, since he fits that design and helps counter classes like Heavy or Engineer (bullet sponge and low-aim, respectively) that would be absolutely intolerable under arena shooter doctrine. I don't view Sniper as a blight to balance. My singular issue with the Sniper class as a whole is that he marginalizes Spy, which is not the fault of Sniper but the fault of the TF Team for continually kicking Spy in the fucking nuts and refusing to buff him in such a manner that he is playable against players of equal skill at a high-level. Sniper certainly has a few weapons that probably shouldn't exist- Razorback is still kind of stupid, Jarate needs a radius nerf- but his balance in the larger scheme of things is fine for any player who doesn't insist on running full-time Heavy and walking predictably in sightlines.

If you think Heavy and Pyro are underpowered, you're delusional beyond belief.

https://i.imgur.com/GEKjyMk.png

If I was to play this game with alcohol, I'd be in coma now.

Yeah, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking; of course Pyro is up there with Scout and Soldier. It was so obvious, I don't know how I missed it.

"You're wrong and stupid but I'm not gonna explain why."

Learn to play the game then.

Or maybe you could take two minutes to expound upon your position without making curt jabs.

"Learn to play" is only an argument if you yourself have completely mastered play, and know what you're talking about.