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

[QUOTE=Mould;53128103]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] So "good as he can be" means that you only see him on last in 5cp and rarely anywhere else? Valve can do better than that. [QUOTE=Blackavar;52963046]Granting Engineer viability in 6s. Ideas. - Increase Engineer's max health to 150. (change gunslinger) - Create the mini-teleporters and mini-dispenser. (EDIT: Speed Pad) - With a new menu in the loadout screen, allow the Engineer to choose which buildings he wants to be mini (change gunslinger). Team needs to challenge mid and having trouble? Mini-teleporter (speed pad). At last, about to get pushed by the enemy team? Mini-dispenser and normal sentry. Building uber on second and looking out for Snipers trying to take that Medic down? Mini-sentry. The pro/con relationship with all the mini-buildings is trading deployment-time for survivability and power (in other words, a part of the building itself). Therefore, the stock PDA can handle all of these things. - Buff dispenser's (and therefore mini-dispenser's) healing power. In return, make it so that ammo taken takes from the metal reserve meter (sorry mvm players). You'll hate this on pubs but it will make 6s Engineer more viable. - Overall increased building deploy speed. Self-explanatory, needs testing. - Increase movement speed while hauling buildings. Engineer is a strong guy, he's vulnerable enough without a weapon. There are probably other things you could do (not to mention weapon balance), but this is a start.[/QUOTE] EDIT: He could also have a building that is a high-health wall that absorbs damage and prevents the enemy team from getting a certain angle on the Sentry Gun. Would replace Dispenser. - Allow Engineer to control where his Sentry Gun [B]moves[/B]. The thing looks like a little walking robot. The Engineer can command it in his PDA to move slowly from one location to the other (think Brass Beast revved-up slow). The Sentry Gun can still shoot, be healed, be picked up, and be Wrangled while slowly moving from point a to point b. That last point is kind of silly, of course, but it would help fight against the "flowchart" method that is dealing with him. Now, how would doing all of these things make him overpowered in other situations?

[QUOTE=Punchy;53128917]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 fvew 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] time to introduce the fem version of the mercs in tight spandex suits, sue porn makers for sfm shorts of said fem mercs, and artificially create controversy about fem scout's butt being posed right on top of the camera and then claim she was gay all along.

[QUOTE=Mould;53128103]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. 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. 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. 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] Looks like I misinterpreted a big part of your post, sorry about that. I'm happy to defer to more experienced players with respect to what's useful at the moment, but I do think there are ways to improve engi's standing so that he's something more than a part of the 5cp last stalemate meta (which needs to fucking die). Weapons like the jag and gunslinger are what we should be looking to design-wise: weapons to improve engi's offensive abilities without making him broken in a more strictly defensive situation. I do think a mini dispenser could work, as anybody whose bombing needs to put themselves in considerable risk just to kill something that the engi can rebuild in one second for 50 metal. If grouped players are too juicy of a target, it could have increased heal range at the expense of heal rate and dispenser health. That way you're trading building survivability and overall heal rate for a boost to your whole team's offensive abilities. Or for even more mobility, a mobile dispenser backpack could let the engineer constantly heal his team in an aoe around him at the rate of a level 1 dispenser (or maybe a bit lower). Constant support for his team and constant healing to improve his survivability in a fight. None of this would be broken outside of these offensive situations because they'd be a straight downgrade in defensive situations where your team is better off retreating behind a choke to a static, faster-healing dispenser anyway. This combined with a speed pad and the gunslinger (how's the gunslinger "pretty bad"? Genuinely curious, I've always found it to have a very relevant niche of improving engi's survivability and allowing him to very quickly set up a bit of area denial, great for offensive situations) would make the engineer good for team support and area denial in an offensive role without making him broken in any other context. Engi might not ever be a consistent 6s pick until they add some gamemodes to the roster with proper attacking and defending teams, but if they gave him more tools to actually be able to compete in the current 6s gamemodes we'd at least get to see him run more often than he is now, and in a role that's a lot less dull than his current one in comp. I at least think this stuff should be added to the game, because even if they don't pan out and engi just doesn't have the offensive capacity to be a relevant pick in 6s (which is to say, outside of 5cp last stalemates), I think all of these ideas would open up more options at lower levels of play. It's an experiment that can only pay off, either we make the class broadly viable in 6s and give him more options in casual games, or it has no effect on 6s and gives him more options in casual play.

[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] Because the update didn't do shit for it's 450 day wait. Most of what was added gameplay wise was still trying to fix what they left of MyM, when they shipped it unfinished, and everything else was either the monetization gimmick or the pyro fluff. -Weak, gimmicky pyro weapons/bad flamer tweaks that [I]still[/I] aren't hotfixed. -Zero comp changes, no effort to change some of the larger offenders in balance (the diamondback, random crits, etc.) -No support for community servers, or basic functionality we lost in MyM for no reason like ad hoc joining/team scrambling. That's why this update failed. Because just like meet your match, it was too long of a wait, for too little, unfinished content.

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129258]Because the update didn't do shit for it's 450 day wait. Most of what was added gameplay wise was still trying to fix what they left of MyM, when they shipped it unfinished, and everything else was either the monetization gimmick or the pyro fluff. -Weak, gimmicky pyro weapons/bad flamer tweaks that [I]still[/I] aren't hotfixed. -Zero comp changes, no effort to change some of the larger offenders in balance (the diamondback, random crits, etc.) -No support for community servers, or basic functionality we lost in MyM for no reason like ad hoc joining/team scrambling. That's why this update failed. Because just like meet your match, it was too long of a wait, for too little, unfinished content.[/QUOTE] the update didnt fail in the slightest with the game reaching the highest playercount in 3 years alongside of reception and sales being very positive meet your match is a failed update, jungle inferno was the saving grace which, while it had issues, is as far as a failure as you can get

[QUOTE=Fluury;53129281]the update didnt fail in the slightest with the game reaching the highest playercount in 3 years alongside of reception and sales being very positive meet your match is a failed update, jungle inferno was the saving grace which, while it had issues, is as far as a failure as you can get[/QUOTE] It's statements like this that display the real problem. People being delusional enough in their blind optimism to make utterly insane statements like "the update didn't fail in the slightest", when quoting a painfully clear list of failings that the community needs to hold valve accountable for if we want anything to change. -Player counts are bottoming out -Casual servers are full of cheat bots and 4 broken flail pyros per team making a decent game hard at best. -Still no comp after, what has it been, two and a half years since the lead up to MyM? But no, keep telling me about how everything is fine and we should be applauding valve for shipping broken changes that should have been sent in working versions the first time they tried it in 2016. It's time to wake up, Mann.

At this point we're going to get mostly weird random things and gimmicks along with improvements and content as wacky things and gimmicks are what get devs to come to the team. If it's what the tf team has to do to get more than three devs it's a trade off.

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]-Player counts are bottoming out.[/QUOTE] That was just a massive bot farm getting either shut down by its owner or getting banned by the TF Team themselves. The 20k shown currently has always been the real playercount [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]-Casual servers are full of cheat bots and 4 broken flail pyros per team making a decent game hard at best.[/QUOTE] While Pyro himself is still a problem post JI, I haven't run into any cheat bots in the past month of playing the game (NA Region atleast) [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]-Still no comp after, what has it been, two and a half years since the lead up to MyM?[/QUOTE] Firstly, this is something that everyone is angry over, but it's not necessarily the main reason people are leaving the game. They've been leaving due to a consistent decline of support for the game due to Valve's current structure. Secondly, It's only been 1 & a half years since MyM [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]But no, keep telling me about how everything is fine and we should be applauding valve for shipping broken changes that should have been sent in working versions the first time they tried it in 2016.[/QUOTE] I don't think anyone on this thread at the moment is praising the game in its current state like it's the second coming of christ. This ain't your average r/tf2 discussion thread.

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]It's statements like this that display the real problem. People being delusional enough in their blind optimism to make utterly insane statements like "the update didn't fail in the slightest", when quoting a painfully clear list of failings that the community needs to hold valve accountable for if we want anything to change. -Player counts are bottoming out -Casual servers are full of cheat bots and 4 broken flail pyros per team making a decent game hard at best. -Still no comp after, what has it been, two and a half years since the lead up to MyM? But no, keep telling me about how everything is fine and we should be applauding valve for shipping broken changes that should have been sent in working versions the first time they tried it in 2016. It's time to wake up, Mann.[/QUOTE] People tend not to take you seriously when you present a misleading, one sided argument. For example, "player counts are bottoming out" is a very misleading statement because the recent "drop" in playercounts was just due to bots getting banned. Player counts aren't any lower than they were before jungle inferno. Jungle inferno gave the game a massive boost for a while, and now it's back to normal. Trying to spin this as "look how shit valve is they drove people away from TF2!!!" is borderline outright lying. Other stuff like this: [QUOTE]Weak, gimmicky pyro weapons[/QUOTE] Is also super misleading, because Pyro got two really unique and fun weapons (and heavy got a weapon that, while not particularly interesting, is a nice sidegrade that adds a little variety to his arsenal). Yes, pyro got two weapons that are garbage, but presenting the weapon additions as "Weak, gimmicky pyro weapons" is again, deliberately misleading and lends itself more to jerking off your hate boner than any actual meaningful discussion. The pyro changes also have positive and negatives, with the flamethrower becoming a lot less frustrating to use, and with some good changes to afterburn/airblast, while on the flip side having some serious issues with lowering the skill floor that need to be tweaked. I don't know how you're trying to tie in cheat bots to jungle inferno, that kind of has nothing to do with the update? I don't remember jungle inferno adding in any hack vulnerabilities. [QUOTE] no effort to change some of the larger offenders in balance [/QUOTE] This kind of statement is also extremely misleading, because it conveniently leaves out that there were a lot of really positive balance changes. There's some serious balance issues, but Jungle Inferno made progress in solving a number of those balance issues. Not every weapon in the game has been balanced yet, these things take time. With a larger team they could accomplish things much faster, which points to issues in valve's company structure, but again, looking at the positives and negatives is a lot more productive than screaming into your pillow because there are still issues with the game. [QUOTE]-Still no comp after, what has it been, two and a half years since the lead up to MyM?[/QUOTE] Comp mode being delayed was certainly a disappointment, but we know what their plans are for it and that it's on the way. They've made it clear that they know what the problems with it are, and they're implementing good solutions to those problems (which they've explicitly made clear to us). It sucks that its been delayed further but we know that good changes for it are in the works. tl;dr stop with this hyperbolic bullshit and try to have a real discussion jesus christ

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]It's statements like this that display the real problem. People being delusional enough in their blind optimism to make utterly insane statements like "the update didn't fail in the slightest", when quoting a painfully clear list of failings that the community needs to hold valve accountable for if we want anything to change. -Player counts are bottoming out -Casual servers are full of cheat bots and 4 broken flail pyros per team making a decent game hard at best. -Still no comp after, what has it been, two and a half years since the lead up to MyM? But no, keep telling me about how everything is fine and we should be applauding valve for shipping broken changes that should have been sent in working versions the first time they tried it in 2016. It's time to wake up, Mann.[/QUOTE] The classic "Im correct, wake up sheeple" statement - dont do it, please, it makes you seem incredibly arrogant, goes in the same box as the snarky "Its the truth, accept it" comment people like to shove in on occasion. As far as the rest goes: No one said you should applaud valve and no one said everything is fine. Them not shipping Comp is fairly pathetic and was really upsetting, Pyro still has his issues. Casual from my experience doesnt really have the cheat bot problem anymore and player numbers arent getting any lower than they always had been around these times. Once again however, far, far from a "failed update" in the big, broad image.

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]It's statements like this that display the real problem. People being delusional enough in their blind optimism to make utterly insane statements like "the update didn't fail in the slightest", when quoting a painfully clear list of failings that the community needs to hold valve accountable for if we want anything to change. [/QUOTE] it's almost as if your list of "faillings" was not, in fact, painfully clear, but was rather a list of your personal subjective complaints [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129258] -Weak, gimmicky pyro weapons/bad flamer tweaks that [I]still[/I] aren't hotfixed. [/QUOTE] the Hot Hand is bad and the Gas Passer is mediocre, but the Dragon's Fury and Thermal Thruster are great. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323]-Zero comp changes, no effort to change some of the larger offenders in balance (the diamondback, random crits, etc.)[/QUOTE] so the Dead Ringer, Sandman, Crit-a-Cola, BASE Jumper, Darwin's Danger Shield, Razorback, Vita-Saw, and Rescue Ranger weren't offensive to balance? yes, certain weapons are still in a shitty place and deserve to be changed, but don't go moving the goalposts and claiming that those competitive-focused rebalances we [I]do[/I] get just don't count because you say so. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323] -Player counts are bottoming out[/QUOTE] because a bot farm got shut down and multiple other games have received large updates right around now. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129323] -Casual servers are full of cheat bots and 4 broken flail pyros per team making a decent game hard at best.[/QUOTE] we had a VAC wave just a few weeks ago. I've seen a grand total of maybe three players cheating in casual since JI launched, none of them bots. you're absolutely within your rights to be critical of Valve and the current state the game is in, but don't be a dickhead throwing out hot opinions about how the game is literally unplayable and anyone who disagrees with you is a delusional fanboy gagging on Valve's dick. being an asshole to people who disagree with your opinions doesn't make you right, it just makes you an asshole.

It is extremely poor form to consider a viewpoint not a "real discussion" and not worth entertaining simply because you disagree with it. None of these responses to this provide anything but paltry rationalization for these problems, or are equally opinion-based (like about the pyro weapons), so don't tell me are any more wrong than all these personal, subjective anecdotes are. Tell me how easily valve can improve pyro? How we can get their attention on balance issues in a way that makes these things go away? These things make better refutations than "its not as bad as you think, shut up". The point of the matter is, the goal of this, or any update is to make the game better- which did happen here- yet what was improved was hardly justified by the associated bugs, and the longest wait for an update in TF2 history, as well as the blatant oversights in the pyro changes which to any rational TF2 player should have been seen on day 1 of development. What valve has shown us is far from pleasant. Stop trying deny it away as "not a real discussion" and "hyperbolic nonsense". Nobody is saying we didn't see improvements or that this update was a 100% failure. It simply turned into a constructive one in its aftermath. We simply need to hold valve (as opposed to just the understaffed tf team) accountable for their lack of effort.

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129420]It is extremely poor form to consider a viewpoint not a "real discussion" and worth entertaining simply because you disagree with it. None of your responses to this provide anything but paltry rationalization for these problems, or are equally opinion-based (like about the pyro weapons), so don't tell me are any more wrong than yours are, unless you wish to bring facts to the table.[/QUOTE] dude, are you seriously not picking up on the irony of what you're saying right now you: "You guys are declaring my opinions invalid and not worth debating just because you disagree" also you: "Your opinions are invalid and not worth debating because you disagreed with me" also also you: "You need to back up your subjective opinions with objective facts, even though I didn't and you actually did, but I'm going to ignore that anyways" I repeat, you're within your rights to be critical of Valve and the state the game is in. nobody is gonna try to stop you from thinking that. what people [I]are[/I] shitting on you for is being needlessly antagonistic about that difference in opinion, and moving the goalposts every time someone presents a counterargument EDIT: oh, hey, I notice you edited the post I'm quoting. great job completely rewriting half of your statement to try to pretend that you didn't just spend your last three posts talking about how the update was an abject failure that introduced nothing of value

I felt the need to add that part, because sometimes people tend to forget completely about the point of an arguement, and instead get swept up in multi-post crusading against people's opinions that they've demonized to the point of being destroyed at all costs, without realizing that, yes, there is an overall end goal. Which in this case is holding valve's feet to the fire. [QUOTE=TWKUK;53129462]dude, are you seriously not picking up on the irony of what you're saying right now you: "You guys are declaring my opinions invalid and not worth debating just because you disagree" also you: "Your opinions are invalid and not worth debating because you disagreed with me" also also you: "You need to back up your subjective opinions with objective facts, even though I didn't and you actually did, but I'm going to ignore that anyways"[/QUOTE] You seem to be misinterpreting my statements to make them easier to attack. Nowhere did I say that the opinions of the people arguing with me were invalid, instead that they were based on how they view the state of the game right now, something largely driven by opinions and anecdotal experience. That doesn't make them invalid by nature. It doesn't work like that. I might think they're rationalizations, sure, but they're not any more wrong that what I've mentioned which is what I [I]literally said.[/I]

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129420]It is extremely poor form to consider a viewpoint not a "real discussion" and worth entertaining simply because you disagree with it.[/QUOTE] Well, if people don't think that what you're saying doesn't belong in a 'real conversation', then it's up to you to defend your viewpoints with reasonable opinions or backed with facts, like some of the people have done thus far. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129420]None of your responses to this provide anything but paltry rationalization for these problems, or are equally opinion-based (like about the pyro weapons), so don't tell me are any more wrong than yours are, unless you wish to bring facts to the table.[/QUOTE] So are you saying that all of the weapons being garbage is a fact, or do you not realise that most of your "reasons" for the update being a failure are also "opinions"? "Weak, gimmicky pyro weapons" is an opinion, from which some other users have disagreed with you, and even though arguably all four of them are situational, they have their uses in which they're not weak, with the Dragon's Fury being the most viable full-time. "No effort to change some of the larger offenders in balance" is also arguably untrue because long-standing banned weapons in competitive like the GRU and Bonk! have been changed and unbanned(!) in competitive leagues as well. Not everything can be changed in one update - all will be changed in due time. Despite these, you're right in some other aspects, so I'm not sure why would to want people to 100% agree with you in everything. That's what an argument is all about, to convince people that you're right and reach a conclusion. Sentiationalist talk will get treated like such and has no purpose in an actual discussion. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129420]Tell me how valve can improve pyro? How we can get their attention on balance issues? These things make better refutations than "its not as bad as you think, shut up".[/QUOTE] Actually nobody really told you to shut up, nobody (except a moderator if you break the rules) can really shut you up because this is a public forum in which you can express your opinions. Lots of other players have expressed their own ways to improve Pyro, like by fixing the remaining bugs it has, for example, and Valve listens to public forums such as /r/tf2, this very Facepunch thread, teamfortress.tv, so forth and so on. Simply talking and discussing about the update will make them understand what was good and what was bad about it, and we can even email the TF2 Team in case the community's thoughts are not heard. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129420]The fact of the matter is, the goal of this, or any update really is to make the game better- which did happen here- yet what was improved was hardly justified by the longest wait for an update in TF2 history, as well as the blatant oversights in the pyro changes which to any rational TF2 player should have been seen on day 1 of development.[/QUOTE] Yes, the wait was very long, but it sets a precent for better balance changes that can be done in the future. Pyro is just a few tweaks away to become almost perfect balance-wise and when those tweaks are done in the next update, alongside more competitive-related changes for the possibly-upcoming Competitive Update, TF2 will become way, way more balanced than it was years ago. Although I do prefer weekly updates myself, what the TF2 Team is ultimately doing is still good for the community and the game's longetivity. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129420]Reality is often not pleasant.[/QUOTE] Same could be said to you, considering you don't like how people are reacting to your posts. [QUOTE=Kaiga;53129420]Stop trying deny it away as "not a real discussion" and "hyperbolic nonsense" so you can retain emotional investment in the game.[/QUOTE] Then defend your viewpoints, feed us food for thought, provide rational points to discuss with. It's up to you if you want to provide meaningful discussion about the game.

[QUOTE=JugadorXEI;53129506]long-standing banned weapons in competitive like the GRU and Bonk! have been changed and unbanned(!)[/QUOTE] Well.... [url]http://whitelist.tf/competitive_6v6[/url] For bonk, anyway, they discovered that the weapon is still problematic because it still requires you to chase the Scout, even if they're vulnerable afterwards.

[QUOTE=Blackavar;53129566]Well.... [url]http://whitelist.tf/competitive_6v6[/url] For bonk, anyway, they discovered that the weapon is still problematic because it still requires you to chase the Scout, even if they're vulnerable afterwards.[/QUOTE] It was still a good step in the right direction and a good chunk of the balance changes were. Hopefully'll they fix the slow mechanics being easy to get around to and maybe still rework it so the more you shoot at the Scout, the less invulnerability time, for example.

[QUOTE=Blackavar;53129065]So "good as he can be" means that you only see him on last in 5cp and rarely anywhere else? Valve can do better than that.[/QUOTE] What do you mean? Spy is fine on everything except the very first mid and he's good on koth too. I don't know how you could possibly get that idea. [QUOTE=Blackavar;53129065] He could also have a building that is a high-health wall that absorbs damage and prevents the enemy team from getting a certain angle on the Sentry Gun. Would replace Dispenser. Allow Engineer to control where his Sentry Gun moves. The Engineer can command it in his PDA to move slowly from one location to the other. The Sentry Gun can still shoot, be healed, be picked up, and be Wrangled while slowly moving from point a to point b. Now, how would doing all of these things make him overpowered in other situations? [/QUOTE] I'm not sure you realise this but in the context of 6s an engineer with a wrangler is already hugely broken. So if you're then adding orisa shield what you're essentially doing is playing with the thing that makes the wrangler broken (which is the increased sentry survivability) on the board again, and the idea of playing with both frankly horrifies me. Just to be entirely clear, having the engineer be able to defend against the flowchart is far less healthy than having a flowchart in the first place. _____ [QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53129128]Looks like I misinterpreted a big part of your post, sorry about that. I'm happy to defer to more experienced players with respect to what's useful at the moment, but I do think there are ways to improve engi's standing so that he's something more than a part of the 5cp last stalemate meta (which needs to fucking die). Weapons like the jag and gunslinger are what we should be looking to design-wise: weapons to improve engi's offensive abilities without making him broken in a more strictly defensive situation. I do think a mini dispenser could work, as anybody whose bombing needs to put themselves in considerable risk just to kill something that the engi can rebuild in one second for 50 metal. If grouped players are too juicy of a target, it could have increased heal range at the expense of heal rate and dispenser health. That way you're trading building survivability and overall heal rate for a boost to your whole team's offensive abilities. Or for even more mobility, a mobile dispenser backpack could let the engineer constantly heal his team in an aoe around him at the rate of a level 1 dispenser (or maybe a bit lower). Constant support for his team and constant healing to improve his survivability in a fight. None of this would be broken outside of these offensive situations because they'd be a straight downgrade in defensive situations where your team is better off retreating behind a choke to a static, faster-healing dispenser anyway. This combined with a speed pad and the gunslinger (how's the gunslinger "pretty bad"? Genuinely curious, I've always found it to have a very relevant niche of improving engi's survivability and allowing him to very quickly set up a bit of area denial, great for offensive situations) would make the engineer good for team support and area denial in an offensive role without making him broken in any other context. [/QUOTE] Well usually if you see someone healing on a dispenser you just spam the dispenser and it does about as much damage as it heals. It also telegraphs that you require healing which makes actually going to the dispenser a bad idea, and also medics can just crossbow you which is faster and does more. I would love to see a mini dispenser backpack that you could build on others. This still wouldn't make him good on koth but it would be good on 5cp for sure because you could play it with your flank on like gully and exert large amounts of pressure. It would be interesting for sure. Now the gunslinger just kind of isn't good because it's very rare for the set up time to actually be relevant in 5cp. If you're trying to take space, the sentry still just dies immediately and doesn't help much, and if you're just defending it's like well you'd just rather have a level 1 because at least you can upgrade that. Gunslinger doesn't do enough damage and the sentry itself is not really more survivable in any significant way. It used to be kind of good when the sentry built at full hp and had that dumb regen, just because it would eat so much focus. [QUOTE=Mort Stroodle;53129128] Engi might not ever be a consistent 6s pick until they add some gamemodes to the roster with proper attacking and defending teams, but if they gave him more tools to actually be able to compete in the current 6s gamemodes we'd at least get to see him run more often than he is now, and in a role that's a lot less dull than his current one in comp. I at least think this stuff should be added to the game, because even if they don't pan out and engi just doesn't have the offensive capacity to be a relevant pick in 6s (which is to say, outside of 5cp last stalemates), I think all of these ideas would open up more options at lower levels of play. It's an experiment that can only pay off, either we make the class broadly viable in 6s and give him more options in casual games, or it has no effect on 6s and gives him more options in casual play.[/QUOTE] The dream would be to have AD be in the pool, but unfortunately we have a [URL="https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1586131&p=52983299&viewfull=1#post52983299"]severe map shortage which I wrote about once before.[/URL] I support adding more offensive engineer tools and I think he can become valid on a fair few 5cp maps like gully. Maybe never process though. But I don't believe he will ever be good on KOTH either way, nor do I really think that would be a problem if we had koth ad and 5cp maps. no payload though because it blows [QUOTE=Blackavar;53129566]Well.... [url]http://whitelist.tf/competitive_6v6[/url] For bonk, anyway, they discovered that the weapon is still problematic because it still requires you to chase the Scout, even if they're vulnerable afterwards.[/QUOTE] Also because the downside doesn't work. It hasn't worked since 2009, when it was removed for not working, and now it has been reintroduced and still doesn't work.

[QUOTE=JugadorXEI;53129506] -discussion- [/QUOTE] Alright. That's fair. I'll give you that, there are plenty of reasons to be positive about the things that were changed, it just... doesn't quite add up in the end as to how we got to where we're currently at. Pyro being "a few tweaks away" from being a good class is certainly there, but those tweaks are ones that valve hasn't managed to figure out in the rather long amount of time they had to produce an update of which pyro and his mechanics were the centerpiece. After the TF2 beta was ended all those years ago, it gave rise to the suspicion that the testing branch that valve has been confirmed to use for tf2 updates, and the actual game are quite a bit different, and this particular problem seems to be proof of that- immediately the players reacted and saw the problem with the new flames on day 1, which, to many shouldn't have been shipped in that state to begin with. Valve might actually read these and other forums, we know Jill and others do, but it consistently seems like the feedback from them is either not taken into account, or ignored in some cases. Sometimes that's a good idea, as places like the steam discussions have some rather extreme ideas that aren't quite fully informed, and others have ones that are jaded by years of valve-based neglect and unhappy experiences, but a lot of the time, there is community consensus on things that we just haven't seen implemented. An example of this would be the broad dislike of tiered cosmetics that valve has forged ahead on in spite of negative feedback, as well as the proliferation of the "catbot" or "cobybot" epidemics of partied-up cheaters that have become memes in recent history, that valve seems to do nothing about. If you're a game studio, especially one with the resources and wherewithal of Valve, it would be reasonable to believe that the biggest, most commonplace problems should demand the most attention in regards to work priority, right? I think the flamethrower physics, especially since they're the featured theme of the update, fall under that category the most. I already went over how they somehow managed to ship them broken so i'm not going to bemoan that any further, but surely the next logical step would be to hotfix them as quickly as possible, since a vast majority of the update's playerbase both A- needed to play pyro for the contracts and weapons and B- [I]wanted[/I] to play pyro to see what's different, resulting in a need to address one of the bigger issues players-in-game are facing at the moment, no? But instead, it seems like valve's priories as of recent don't match up with (again, not *just* my personal gripes) what the majority of players are dealing with as problems. They've been fixing map elements, sure, but have devoted the last few patches to cosmetics, war paints, and contract-related bugs, as opposed to the core gameplay elements that these things are designed to enhance. "But surely these things take longer, which is why they dont happen as quickly?" Of course they do, balance doesn't happen instantly, but we've seen in the past how valve as a company is [URL="http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2015/12/13366/"]capable of redirecting resources in damage control situations [/URL]that require attention to stop the game from going down the drain, and this is the closest thing to that situation we've had in years, next to the infamous Smissmass Short Circuit buff that left Engineer with the projectile-deleting DPS of the minigun. Naturally, this isn't CSGO, either- we dont have it's Esports money, large playerbase, or development team. Nobody is saying that valve needs to do everything perfectly all the time, or be 100% on top of things always, but just to make a [I]reasonable[/I] effort to make sure the ship is being righted. Even a blog post, saying they understand the flaws added to the game and are working on them would be better than the nothing we've gotten for months after these things became apparent. And that's a big part of the problem here, is when we have no idea if valve even realizes there [I]is[/I] a problem. That's why we need to make it apparent. To bring these issues to the forefront and make sure they realize where and how they screwed up.

Ive never even watched or know what Kingdom Come is and it somehow has 50k players on steam. A lot of competition for peoples valuable time now exist.

[url]http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=37181[/url] [QUOTE][b]Ready Up: Competitive Team Fortress 2 film premiere[/b] February 13, 2018 - TF2 Team "[i]Ready Up: Competitive Team Fortress 2 is a film produced by Marketplace.tf about the competitive Team Fortress 2 esports scene, a scene that has thrived continuously on the community's support. From pro players and viewers, to casters and producers, as well programmers and designers, the film explores a look into the creation of competitive 6v6 over the past 10 years. The film will be premiering on February 18th 8:00PM ET / 5:00PM PT, live at ESA Rewind II before the Invite Grand Finals at Esports Arena in Santa Ana, CA. Additionally, you can tune into ESA's Twitch channel.[/i]"[/QUOTE] This been posted yet? Might be interesting when it gets finished. Maybe some insite about what they're planning with Valve's little competitive bit as well perhaps? Like what they're trying to make happen with it currently? Regardless though, I'm curious to seeing this play out when it's finished... It's always nice to at least get a little incite.

[QUOTE=Kaiga;53129606]-snip-[/QUOTE] Thank you for voicing your opinions in a thoughful and mature way. I partially agree that some of the day-one flamethrower bugs are something that should've been caught in testing. Some of them were quickly fixed while the flail'n'panic to deal maximum damage is still around, and I assume this has to do with how complex the new code is to begin with. The new particles are not individual entities anymore but the whole system uses a "flame manager" entity that controls the flamethrower's mechanics, which as a result, fixed flamethrower mojo and various net problems that the flamethrower had and it's now visually more consistent. The reason there's still bugs might be because its more complex than we think it is, or maybe it is fixed and they are waiting until the next update to ship which should be really soon. Source is incredibly finnicky so I'm sure they're testing it a whole lot as well so they don't disappoint the players. Really, the most important flamethrower bugs that I can think on top of my head are singular flames doing damage as long as the player is touching it (instead of doing damage once), and generating almost-invisible flames by tapping the mouse button constantly. Airblast is also a bit janky in some aspects but it doesn't stunlock players anymore, and the airblast detection is a cone instead of a box, rewarding precision which is what I'm sure Valve wanted Pyro players to reward with instead of clueless flailing. About the "catbot"/"disable vac tf" bots, and cheaters in general, they're much less predominant now than they were before, with Nullcore taking a huge hit causing a VAC ban wave and cheaters being matchmaking banned sometimes (which doesn't do much in the long run but it shows that they care). I know that it's still an issue in general but they're still employing methods to stop them and it's a good thing. We don't know what the TF2 Team's priorities are right now, which is why communication between the developers and the community is very important and why blog posts like the one that talked about upcoming balance changes and the reasoning behind them was a huge deal: because Valve wasn't only talking to us, but listening as well, and most of these changes were re-reviewed and changed yet again based on feedback for Jungle Inferno. It would be insane if they stopped listening now considering how helpful this was to the game and the community and aligning their priorities to the community's concerns should be their safest bet. I'm sure they've read the 11th "pyro is broken" thread in /r/tf2 and read their 100th "pyro is broken" email, so it's safe to assume they're working on it. Edit: I can understand your frustration and I also wish they were quicker to release these patches, but all we can do at the moment is wait until they do release them. The TF2 Team is a small one, and the reason I think that they're taking a long time is because they don't want to miss anything and fix everything in one big sweep, considering there's some bugs such as the Bonk slow debuff not working correctly, being able to do a third jump as the Atomizer is being deployed instead of waiting until it deploys to triple-jump, and tweaking the Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol so it doesn't act as a straight upgrade to the Pistol, to name a few. I hope the TF2 Team communicates with us more, because I feel that it will make both the game and community healthier.

[QUOTE=Kitt Stargaze;53129717][url]http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=37181[/url] This been posted yet? Might be interesting when it gets finished. Maybe some insite about what they're planning with Valve's little competitive bit as well perhaps? Like what they're trying to make happen with it currently? Regardless though, I'm curious to seeing this play out when it's finished... It's always nice to at least get a little incite.[/QUOTE] This is not produced by valve.

[QUOTE=geel9;53129742]This is not produced by valve.[/QUOTE] It's more of wishful thinking more then anything. Since we know they are infact working on the competitive bit. They may toss a bone out there along side it...

[QUOTE=Kitt Stargaze;53129754]It's more of wishful thinking more then anything. Since we know they are infact working on the competitive bit. They may toss a bone out there along side it...[/QUOTE] You'll have to watch to find out!

[QUOTE=geel9;53129762]You'll have to watch to find out![/QUOTE] Oh hell yeah I'm going to watch it... lol

I'm watching vnn's stream and he said he asked Jill if we could switch teams and spectate in casual to see if people are cheating, and apparently Jill responded with like, "if they're cheating, you should know anyway" edit: he said the tf team is at like five people now edi3: wow someone in the chat said something sad, "TF2 will survive forever as a vestigial appendage of steam, immortal and neglected"

[QUOTE=Flash_Fire;53128479]it improved his gamesense tenfold[/QUOTE] Still, it's disgusting.

Five people? Nice, looks like we're in good hands.

Dosn't the team increase in size as work on the next update progresses than goes down after the update to restart the cycle? That might be why we only get four pieces of content a year, the late spring cosmetics case, the major update, halloween, and smissmas. edit: all of Valve is working really slow as of late, steam beta is getting less frequent updates, csgo hasn't gotten a case in a while, dota hasn't gotten new content in a while but the biweekly updates may fix that, pretty much everything is slow except the steamvr beta which gets updated like every other day. edit2: fixed extra new line, and I just remembered csgo did get an update changing some map layouts and adding the new shotgun spreads in regular games