Team Fortress 2

ctf_well is back in casual rotation?

finally, a reason to play.

>TF 2 update

Truly, 'tis the season. I'm not exactly sure how the flamethrower works though. Is it basically like a Heavy's minigun, with less damage on start-up?

Sketchek ;_;

Not related to the update, but a while ago some of the competitive community made a documentary about TF2's competitive scene over the years, and it's now on YouTube as of two days ago. I haven't watched it all the way through yet, but I don't know if it'd be of interest to anyone here.

edited 29th Mar '18 3:49:01 PM by Lavaeolus

I know this thread isn't as active as it was in the old days, but I thought some might be interested that the annual Hugs.tf two-day charity stream will begin tomorrow, 21 April 16:00 BST (15:00 UTC/GMT). So, if you hadn't heard of it before, Hugs.tf is about raising money for the UK charity 'Special Effect', which essentially tries to improve gaming's accessibility and find ways for those with disabilities to play games.

The stream goes on for a fair while, I think pretty much constantly until 22 April 19:30 BST (18:30 UTC). So if you're interested don't worry too much about seeing it all or arriving right at the start. They've got a full schedule of what they'll be doing when on the site. A lot of it's TF 2-related, of course, some Lego there too. You do get a medal cosmetic item in TF 2 if you donate £10+, though don't feel too obligated to only give tenners or more if you don't have that to spend freely (or simply don't want to).

Random Crits are literally the worst thing since Hitler

Just thought that was worth mentioning once again.

I wouldn't go that far, although I do always feel a bit dirty when it saves my bacon (and kind of mad when it saves theirs)

Other times I'm just laughing my butt off at stationary snipers who can't see a rocket coming from the other end of the map.

I just laugh them off; then again, I mostly played on player-ran servers where everybody knew everybody.

This server's been quiet.

Anyways, I've been thinking about what could help Pyro and Spy's viability in competitive TF 2 (those two seeing to be the only characters who are legitimately bad at comp, rather than just too slow for 5CP)

Pyro's a bit of a tough one because how he was designed conceptually is already covered by the Scout, and buffing Pyro in that direction would be stepping on the Scout's toes. So instead I thought about what Pyro's already good at in 6s and Highlander (the latter mainly chosen because you have to use a class - might as well use it to your best), and he has his own little niche when he does show up. I think the Pyro should go in the direction of a defense class - using his close range flames, afterburn, and airblast to force enemy players away from objective and people. Make Afterburn more useful but just as easy to extinguish, minor buffs to range, airblast timing, health, and movement speed, and I think he'd work.

Spy... well he was really hard. It's so hard to think about what could buff the Spy without completely ruining Casual Mode due to how the class works. But then I realised something. In competitive, Spy has a weapon that almost never gets used. I think the key to buffing Spy is to merely give him options that replace his Sapper, that have a more general usage but are awful against Sentry guns. Like a grappling hook, or a teleport, or a wallhack (probs not that, hahah), just more options.

A grappling hook in the standard gamemodes could be really neat, and give the spy a lot more mobility options. It'd need some major nerfs from the Mannpower version, maybe have it be a charged ability. But while I think it'd be balanced for when engis are around (since not having a sapper would make spy completely unable to take out an attended sentry on his own), if engis aren't around like in 6s it's a straight upgrade. So I think any sapper alternatives would need some sort of weakness, one that isn't reliant on the enemy having engis.

Also, spy getting wallhax seems only fair since he has to deal with spawning wallhax blowing his cover now.

Considering the whole point was to make Spy actually show up in competitive mode sometimes instead of rarely, I think it being basically a straight upgrade when no engis are around is fine.

Rise from your grave!

Since I got a new computer a couple months back I've been playing this game again. Man, how I've missed my hat simulator.

Also, autobalance is dumb right now and needs to be fixed. Delfy made a video recently about what should be done about it.

Autobalance has always been dumb - but it's either this or 3 v. 12 matches, and I'm not particularly enthused with the latter.

About the only thing I agree with regarding this video is that the old autobalance, that autobalanced dead players rather than random people - and no, I can safely say that I've been autobalanced into another team minutes after joining, unable to even go to the top of the scoreboard, so there's some dishonesty in there - is about the best option we could have available.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Dec 10th 2018 at 1:42:59 PM

Whenever there was a risk of autobalance, I did my best to not die. That was years ago. I don't know how the new system works.

It picks a player at random, regardless of whether they're alive or dead at the time. Supposedly top players of the team have priority, but own experience proves that claim to be largely false.

Naturally, the problem stems from the new nature of the game. It's impossible to change teams in any other way but through autobalance, which used not to be the case prior to Meet Your Match. There is also no Spectator Mode where the players not willing to be autobalanced could wait and watch until there was a vacancy.

Meet Your Match was a mistake for casual play.

Should have just left the old system, and use Meet Your Match's matchmaking for competitive.

So I've been entertaining this for fun concept since around 2011, about how weapons that have all the positives and none of the drawbacks would turn out to be. I'll give it a try:

Could be fun in a hellish Mv M map, or in a map where everybody had this.

Edited by Eriorguez on Apr 29th 2019 at 3:37:24 PM

Would be a fun mode similar to those x10 servers.

Wow, way to revive a thread that has been dormant for at least a year!

I've actually been inspired after watching some new SFM flicks to rejoin the fight. I'm glad to have found out that the TF 2 is still going strong despite being over a decade old now.

I'm fairly active if anyone wants to hit me up for some games.

Also, have a GMod.

Yeah, been playing for a bit after stopping around 2015-2016, with my old laptop not being able to handle it anymore.

I still miss the community server I used to play at, but at least had some matches with old mates. As well as some friendly servers that wasted time and bandwidth.

My enthusiasm kinda died a little with the Meet Your Match update.

Casual didn't need matchmaking, it was fine as it was.

My old community servers where dying or the people where getting worse and more toxic so I eventually left. I occasionally will return with friends though.

I turned it on yesterday and had a blast - at least until the game crashed on me. It sometimes does it with no real rhyme or reason, as far as I know.

But man, between the sheer insanity, randomness, and just watching random people die to stupid shit (like every other Spy caught between a shootout or a Scout gunning for me so hard he dies to fall damage of all things and splatters inelegantly in the background) is immensely cathartic. Even if I'm doing poorly, short of absolutely horrible games where the entire team is Gibus Snipers running in circles in spawn it's just plain fun.

I'm having a hard time finding another such online game that can be fun even when you're doing terrible and everyone around you is a Scout God.

Matchmaking is good for casual.

Only problem is the matchmaking sucks as it currently is.