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

i'm really interested to see how the pyro fairs in comp mode now. I'm eager to see when they drop their comp matchmaking so we can see how well actually skilled pyros play. I think the ease of how to kill everyone needs to be fixed, but i havent seen too many ideas on how to do that, without removing the pyros effectiveness in dispatching tight hordes of enemies. tho i suppose after burn is for that. At first i didnt like the new flame particles, but i have gotten used to them. I think it's an interesting mechanic that i think help gives pyro uniqueness, which is to help disorient players. airblast is good. its as if the pyro has a way of using splash damage knockback, so i havent seen too much issues with it. I also like the aim mechanic it has too.

Sure, with JI they fixed or lessened a lot of aspects that made Pyro unreliable, inconsitent, wonky, and fucked-up. Ariblast (mostly), crit combos, inconsistent DPS affected by ping and direction, flames on-screen not matching the hitboxes etc. In that regard, the reworked Pyro is a better, healthier basis for truly getting the class right, if the TF2 Team were on the job with making constant post-update tweaks, improvements and changes, and acted on post-JI complaints regarding Pyro's DPS-output-per-effort/aim involved. Problem is, I think it'll take ages for the TF2 Team to try and make any further improvements to the Pyro, and I have a feeling we're stuck with the current state for years to come. And in the current state, the Pyro might be fucked up in less ways than before, but it's so [I][B]royally[/B][/I] fucked-up in a couple of aspects that it almost overshadows its previous flaws and turns it into something that'll plague the game for years unless we get further refinements to the class; i.e. brigades of 3-5 suicidal Pyros per team on each Valve server that are getting more kills and damage than they rightfully should with the amount of effort, skill and brainpower involved. The way that flame damage is calculated right now makes it way too easy to get maximum or near-maximum DPS by just roughly pointing the FT in the direction of your enemy, even if only hitting the target with a small portion of the particles. It also leads to excesses like dealing huge damage to multiple targets at once by flailing wildly, or flame particles lingering long enough after the owning Pyro's death to finish off an opponent that should've been left with dozens of HP. Also, having to face multiple aggresive/suicidal Pyros per team, no matter how nooby the players are, creates this oppresive feeling of having flaming madmen with walls of near-instant-death around every corner. Sure, a good and experienced player needs to be careful, avoid places where Pyros can corner him, and keep out of their range. But in a chaotic pub, with multiple Pyros on the other team and with your own unreliable teammates getting burned by their peers who happen to be playing a much more noob-rewarding class, I can't always avoid comign within close range of a Pyro. And without a Medic or considerable overheal, fights vs Pyros are super binary now, regardless of skill involved. Either you keep out of their range and gun them down unless they're skilled with reflects or actually know how to use flares, or even Timmy the day 1 player that grazes you with about 20% of their flamestream melts you in a second or leaves you with extremely low HP after you kill them, so the afterburn or anyone else on his team can finish you off. Is it outright OP? No. Is it possible to counter them 1v1 or 1v2 with specific classes and loadouts? Definitely, as always, especially if they're the W+M1 suicidal variety. But suicidal mass Pyro tactics in pubs, unless the other team has a bunch of Sentries or Heavies involved, are way more effective on your average Valve server than they should be, especially considering the fact that 80% of the top 3-scoring Pyros that I come across seem pretty inept at anything but holding down W+M1 and running into my teammates. I think I can tell a decent player from a newbie or unskilled one, and for every Pyro doing well that can reflect and whose movement and awareness are signs they're experienced, I see loads of braindead Pyros getting into top 3s that would probably score half or less points on other classes. I'm sorry if it sounds elitist, but the skill/reward ratio for current Pyro on current pubs is all sorts of fucked up. It's bad because it gives new or less experienced players an idea that they've gotten good at the game when it's really just the class being by far the most newbie-rewarding of the bunch. Post-JI, if someone who's new to the game or only plays TF2 sporadically asked me what class to stick to in order to do decently well against most players on pubs, I'd say Pyro by a longshot. And because of that, I fear that the class becomes a go-to choice for anyone giving up on improving with or trying other classes, and we end up with an average of 3-4 per team on most servers even after the event and the campaign are over. I really don't enjoy fighting suicidal madmen around every corner that you either kill outside their range or die/lose nearly all health to as soon as they get within your range, no matter how poor their tracking or movement is.

the only reason pyro took "skill" before was because he was working with invisible damage boxes a large chunk of the time, nothing's really changed about pyro's skill except that now his flamethrower's hitboxes are actually accurate with it's particles, and I've only ever seen one person since JI that actually uses one of those flail and spin binds that everyone is going crazy about, and even if it would be nice to fix that along with pyro particles remaining after death, there's no way to make pyro's flamethrowers take more skill without completely overhauling his flamethrowers into something that just isn't a flamethrower

[QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53126272]What's with all the shitting on engi?[/QUOTE] I'm not shitting on him. Engi has a time and place in the game, it just happens that it's not on koth maps, they just don't play to any of his good points at all. [QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53126272] Engineer isn't any more of a "low skill ceiling flowchart class" than medic, and medic is the most powerful class in the game. Both have to prioritize healing targets under pressure to keep as many targets alive as possible while determining which is most important to keep alive for the team. With medic it's teammates, with engi it's buildings (though by keeping the dispenser alive engi can also prioritize keeping his team alive). Both have more of a focus on gamesense than mechanical skill and advanced mobility. For medic that means paying attention to uber advantages, knowing when the enemy is pushing and you need to fall back to keep from dropping, knowing when you have the advantage and can uber in, etc. For engineer it means knowing when you can move your buildings up, when the enemy as the advantage and you need to play defensively, knowing the landscape and where you'll have a good chance at holding, and which buildings are needed most by your team. Engineer has depth in creative building placement and more of a focus on mechanical aim, while medic has depth in avoiding death from an entire team that wants to kill you. [/QUOTE] I said that executing a push against an engineer is flowchart, which it is. If a character has objects you always have a severe advantage when said objects aren't in play, so you just destroy the objects and then you take the fight. I didn't say that playing engineer is a flowchart. [QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53126272] Everything you're saying about engineer makes it sound like you barely play engineer. If you're the kind of engi that just plops a sentry down in a sentry spot everybody knows about and expects it to get kills for you, that doesn't mean the class has a low skill ceiling, it means you're at a low skill level with engi. Engineer only plays like a flowchart for people who aren't good at engineer, you need to be in the thick of it, with constantly shifting sentry placement to throw off the enemy, good shotgun aim to soften people up so that the sentry and the rest of your team can finish of high-health targets, and aggressive building placement to keep the pressure up and support your team whenever you see an opening. [/QUOTE] I can 100% guarantee I have more 6s engineer playtime than you, including actual 6s koth success as an engineer, so miss me with that attitude. I try my best to be non-personal and informative when I post so I'd appreciate the same back, thanks. To actually address the point, what you're saying is that engineer is a good enough dm class to actively contest fights on koth maps right? That is just not the case. In a world where snipers and demos are seen 100% you are extremely limited in the things you can actually do. Engis are slow and not very tanky, therefore they have a much smaller area in which an engineer is not considered out of position and are very easy to kill when they are out of position. Usually if you're fighting someone with a shotgun you would probably be considered out of position and you'd quickly be picked. Engis are far better in 1v1 situations which are very hard to take in koth maps. Here's an example, consider product, if you haven't played it, it's just viaduct except it doesn't snow to raise fps, and the side without a cliff has a passage through it. So you know those rocks on either side of the point, that is the borders of the out of position area, because when you walk round either side of that rock you eat a huge amount of spam. Scouts traverse this by going over the rock and missing the spam. Soldiers tend to jump from the passage or cliff and land on the enemies or behind them, bypassing the area. Lower level medics and demos tend to die constantly on viaduct because they mistime going through that area. It's ok for them not to go through there because the scouts can come back for heals and demos can do decent long range damage. What does an engi do to get round this? He is going to end up having to traverse that area every time his team does go aggressive or defensive, given that he wants to actually be in the fight, so he's going to eat a huge amount of heals per the amount of damage he actually does. Not to mention on koth maps walking forward does make you sniper food. [QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53126272] Engi could easily be viable in koth or maybe even 5cp if they just gave him a weapon replacement for his dispenser and teleporter to make them usable in an environment where you need to quickly switch between attack and defense. The gunslinger already does this for his sentry. Give him a teleporter replacement that turns it into a speed pad, so everybody can get a buff to reach the front lines faster. Make the buff go away on taking chip damage (and of course after a reasonable amount of time has passed) so people can't drop it near the front lines and get a huge advantage for scout DM. Give him a mini dispenser that lets him quickly set up a bit of healing for his team at low metal cost. None of this makes engi "not an engineer anymore", offensive engineer with the gunslinger has been in the game for over seven years. All these would do is give him more options for offensive situations. [/QUOTE] The question isn't whether it's possible for him to actually be viable, obviously he can. The question is can you ever have a character with utility that is also a good enough DMer that he's good on KOTH, without that character then being overpowered everywhere else? Though, on 6s dispensers are just an invitation to be bombed and the gunslinger is pretty bad. The speed pad would be cool but it's not really enough to KOTH is pretty unique in that the map design is different. You need to be hyper mobile and do lots of damage otherwise you get ran over. I don't see the design space for a skill indexed mobile damaging object builder. If you'd like some examples of places engis CAN do well, just let me know and I'm happy to tell you the good engi points in 6s. I play the class a lot more than most 6s players do so I think I'm fairly well informed to talk about it. [QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53126272] I don't know what the fuck to do about the frenchman though, he's like the hardest thing in the game to try to balance around competitive. [/QUOTE] I think he's as good as can be. Spy has gamechanging plays and works on every map. He isn't run full time, but these stealth characters are always ran as surprises, I think that's the intended use in the first place. ____ [QUOTE=MarioMaster2008;53128106]ESA Rewind is back for a second season! You can [url=https://matcherino.com/tournaments/9545/description]donate[/url] 25, 50 or 100 USD to receive one of three medals. [t]https://i.imgur.com/MEitpHV.png[/t][/QUOTE] And tune in for the ready up documentary, it's been in the works for ages now, so I hope it's going to be really good :-D

ESA Rewind is back for a second season! You can [url=https://matcherino.com/tournaments/9545/description]donate[/url] 25, 50 or 100 USD to receive one of three medals. [t]https://i.imgur.com/MEitpHV.png[/t]

[QUOTE=rolfum;53128087]the only reason pyro took "skill" before was because he was working with invisible damage boxes a large chunk of the time, nothing's really changed about pyro's skill except that now his flamethrower's hitboxes are actually accurate with it's particles, and I've only ever seen one person since JI that actually uses one of those flail and spin binds that everyone is going crazy about, and even if it would be nice to fix that along with pyro particles remaining after death, there's no way to make pyro's flamethrowers take more skill without completely overhauling his flamethrowers into something that just isn't a flamethrower[/QUOTE] No one is going crazy about flail and spin binds. The problem is that aiming extremely poorly does almost exactly as much damage as aiming totally perfectly. It's such a shame that the Dragon's Fury is so overshadowed by the no-effort dps of flamethrowers, too.

Don't hate me, but 25$ for a medal. Back in a day donation medals were around 5$ :( I blasted quite alot of cash to go to the event, hopefully It's not going to be dissapointing. Also 100$ for a signed mousepad is a joke.

[QUOTE=MarioMaster2008;53128106]ESA Rewind is back for a second season! You can [url=https://matcherino.com/tournaments/9545/description]donate[/url] 25, 50 or 100 USD to receive one of three medals. [t]https://i.imgur.com/MEitpHV.png[/t][/QUOTE] Do they take items?

[QUOTE=ASIC;53125957]Tell your friend not to do eat stuff like that.[/QUOTE] it improved his gamesense tenfold

[QUOTE=ASIC;53128317]Do they take items?[/QUOTE] In the past Geel has taken items and converted them for cash for some events like these but there doesn't seem to be any indication he's doing it for this.

I saw tf2 took a big player dip, what happend?

[QUOTE=Firetornado;53128582]I saw tf2 took a big player dip, what happend?[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.teamfortress.com/jungleinferno/[/url]

[QUOTE=Firetornado;53128582]I saw tf2 took a big player dip, what happend?[/QUOTE] Apparently a huge metal bot farm was shut off and these player numbers are what the non-bot concurrent player numbers have always been.

well that's depressing

[QUOTE=rolfum;53128630]well that's depressing[/QUOTE] This is happens when you don't support your game on a regular basis.

[QUOTE=rolfum;53128630]well that's depressing[/QUOTE] Is it really tough? Without the bots you can obviously see that there's not that many players. I've been really skeptical about the "50k players in-game now" statistic all the time, because It really never seemed like there's that many players in game.

It isnt purely because of bots; Several games got massive updates recently, and some just DLCs (Civ etc.) The TF Team having dealt with the issue of farming bots opens up the possibility of finally working a bit around the metal issue, too. Then there is the thing of only releasing a single Major Update a year. Jungle Inferno almost got the game's numbers up to 100k. Extract the amount of bots TF2 had to seemingly deal with (20k?) and you've got 80k players. That's your true potential playernumber for TF2. Also people making 30k players appear as if its nothing... don't really know what to say. Just reminds me of the "TF2 is ded" argument that would mean that almost 87% of all played games are "dead" games.

TF2 is more focused on making profit than being balanced right now as its in a state where so many things are bad that they need more mannpower to fix it properly but due to valve practices nobody wants to work on tf2 so its left in the dust until someone from 10 years ago returns to finish a feature from 2007 that they left unfinished.

[QUOTE=Big Snake Bos;53128679]TF2 is more focused on making profit than being balanced right now as its in a state where so many things are bad that they need more mannpower to fix it properly but due to valve practices nobody wants to work on tf2 so its left in the dust until someone from 10 years ago returns to finish a feature from 2007 that they left unfinished.[/QUOTE] I wouldn't even say its focused on profit. If that would be the case, we'd see way more Cases instead of a single one every bloody 4 months.

And they can't really shut down TF2 or announce a sequel as it would put their other game's economies into question.

I really dont want to think that the only reason that tf2 is even remotely remembered by tf2 is because of the implification that it would have on valve's other more well known and profitable games.

Too little too late?

[QUOTE=Firetornado;53128719]Too little too late?[/QUOTE] We went over this: There is no "too late" for games to excel and several games have proven that. (Warframe - that one Ubisoft title)

[QUOTE=Firetornado;53128719]Too little too late?[/QUOTE] Why would it be too late?

[QUOTE=rolfum;53128630]well that's depressing[/QUOTE] There is good here though. I understand that it's difficult to see the "true" ranking of TF2. It sucks to see that so many players weren't even real. However, the only things that have changed have changed for the better. Clearly, Valve has taken measures that prevent these idlebot farms from functioning. These farms were a huge problem for the game and now that they're gone (and hopefully forever), Valve can ideally take further action.

[QUOTE=Fluury;53128743]We went over this: There is no "too late" for games to excel and several games have proven that. (Warframe - that one Ubisoft title)[/QUOTE] But jungle inferno was supposed to "revitalize" and yet the playercount dropped pretty quickly after. Maybe warframe is just a different beast, I dont think it has the same amount of competition as tf2 does. The market already has class based shooters.

[QUOTE=Firetornado;53128889]But jungle inferno was supposed to "revitalize" and yet the playercount dropped pretty quickly after. Maybe warframe is just a different beast, I dont think it has the same amount of competition as tf2 does. The market already has class based shooters.[/QUOTE] ...It revitalized the game for many, but it was never supposed to be "the one that makes TF2 100k+!" That's comp if anything, and thats next.

The thing is, TF2's player count numbers have been artificially inflated by idle bots ...for fucking ever. I agree with Geel in that it's a bitter pill to swallow seeing TF2's rank drop precipitously on Steam, but it's also really good for the game as a whole to have such a large parasite removed from it.

It also just further highlights the fact that pubbing is not a sustainable long term game model anymore and a progression system (namely competitive) is quite vital for keeping new blood interested for more than just a few pubbing sessions. With the previous numbers many would argue the game was highly popular as it was, but now we see that while it is still popular, it is very capable of being pushed out of relevancy without the right attention.

[QUOTE] [TF2 PLAYERS ] Well, Valve, I made it. Despite your delays. [Valve] Ahhh, Team Fortress 2 Players! Welcome! I hope you're prepared for a mamooth Update! [TF2 PLAYERS] Nyahhh [Valve] Egads! My Class is ruined! But what if... I were to remove aiming with the flamethrower and disguise it as rebalancing? Oh ho ho ho ho ho! Delightfully devilish, VALVE. [TF2 PLAYERS] Hmmm [THEME SONG] Valve, with their crazy explanations, The TF2 Community's gonna need their patience. When they hear Valve's lame exaggerations, There'll be trouble in the thread - tonight. [TF2 PLAYERS] VAAAAAAAAAALVE!!! [VALVE] TF2 PLAYERS, we were just, uh, just rebalancing pyro for Competitive. Competitive Update! Care to submit feedback? [TF2 PLAYERS] Why are these pyros flailing , VALVE? [VALVE] Ughhh, ooh, that isn't flailing, it's skill. Skill from the Competitive Update we're having. Mmmm, Competitive... [VALVE] Phew [VALVE] TF2 PLAYERS , I hope you're ready for Jungle Inferno! [TF2 PLAYERS] I thought we were having Competitive Mode. [VALVE] No, no, I said Jungle Inferno. That's what I call a mamooth Update. [TF2 PLAYERS] You call a mamooth Update Jungle Inferno? [VALVE] Yeees. It's a dev dialect. [TF2 PLAYERS] Uh-huh. What Dev Team? [VALVE] Uhhh- Dota 2? [TF2 PLAYERS] Really? Well, I'm from Facepunch and I've never heard anyone use the phrase mamooth Update. [VALVE] Oh, not on Facepunch, no, it's a TF2 PLAYERS expression. [TF2 PLAYERS] I see. You know, this Update is quite similar to the ones we had 2 years ago. [VALVE] Oh ho ho ho nooo TF Team Patended Mamooth Updates. Old company recipe. [TF2 PLAYERS] For Jungle Inferno? [VALVE] Yes [TF2 PLAYERS] Yes. You call them Mamooth Update, despite the fact that they lack Competitive Changes. [VALVE] Y-- You know th-- We didn't thin- Geel-- 'Scuse me for one second... [TF2 PLAYERS] Of course. [VALVE] Well, that was wonderful. Good time was had by all. I'm pooped. [TF2 PLAYERS] Yes, I should be g--- [TF2 PLAYERS] GOOD LORD! What is happening in there? [VALVE] The new Pyro meta... [TF2 PLAYERS] T-- The new Pyro meta? At this time of the game's life? After 450 Days? In this part of the Update? Localized entirely within your Files? [VALVE] Yes. [TF2 PLAYERS] Can you change it? [VALVE] No. [REDDIT] VALVE! The game's numbers are dropping! [VALVE] No, REDDIT, these are just bots. [TF2 PLAYERS] Well, VALVE. You are an odd Company, but I must say - you still support us. [REDDIT] Heeeeelp! HEEEEEEEELP!!! [/QUOTE]