Roth posted:

I have unfortunately become one of those guys and have started market gardening.

Jippa posted:

Jippa posted:

Straight White Shark posted:

you can doesn't mean should easy doesn't mean worth do right not. easy.

Fojar38 posted:

I'm pretty sure that I'm in the minority of liking random crits because they often lead to really stupid and funny poo poo which I believe is the heart of TF2

edit: Never not taunt when you kill with a random crit. Especially if taunting will get you killed

ArfJason posted:

been watching this dude for a while now and seeing the quality of his videos steadily increase was pretty cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR16ouYiyEk

ArfJason posted:

been watching this dude for a while now and seeing the quality of his videos steadily increase was pretty cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR16ouYiyEk

VideoGames posted:

This game still whips hard. Lady VG and I were watching the 'Meet The' videos last night and it really does make me sad that they had all these ideas for videos and comics and just dropped them. I would give anything for a team to start paying full attention to the game again like with the big updates.

drrockso20 posted:

Watched this one after that and he makes a lot of very good points;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVjapdoT3H8

eonwe posted:

seriously, if I thought this game weren't on life support I'd be playing all the time. TF2 was some of the most fun I've ever had in a game

Paul MaudDib posted:

Valve has actually taken down the bots pretty effectively for now so it’s a good time to play some if you want to relive the glory days.

Obviously nothing that can be done about resurrecting the player base at this point, all these years of the game being taken over by bots has taken its toll.

Ryanbomber posted:

Steam (and consequently SteamCharts) grossly overreports the player count because it's counting bots idling for items and people idling in menus, attempts at more accurate recordkeeping says (using right this second as an example) there's only 20k people playing, despite Valve reporting 90k+ people

20k is still pretty impressive for a 13 year old game that isn't really maintained anymore, but there's no way in hell it's setting new records

e: Also SteamCharts only goes back to mid-2012, I'd imagine the game's peak was well before that

Taciturn Tactician posted:

Have they actually?

ArfJason posted:

Omg this seems like so much fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fFec6vGgmc

Paul MaudDib posted:

Quick fix is way less interesting since they removed the ability to push the cart under uber. It was never great but it did have some niche uses on upward and barnblitz for assisting a push up those larger slopes, then they gave every medigun the ability to travel with scouts now and took away QF pushes and now it’s just a meme gun for jumping. It’s really up there in the annals of bad and unnecessary weapon changes valve has made.

ArfJason posted:

Omg this seems like so much fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fFec6vGgmc

drrockso20 posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANGfzJIK8Xo
This video has some good counter arguments in favor of the Quick Fix in fact being good

Roth posted:

Quick Fix is less useful in casual where the enemy team can have 4 level 3 sentries, I think

Paul MaudDib posted:

also in comp nobody's running sniper, you don't have the near-certainty of a crocket/crickie ruining your push since random crits are disabled, and unlike casual games you actually do have people counting down the seconds to ubercharge and looking to shave ten seconds off to get ahead of the enemy. And generally having 5 class-limited guys in 5cp is a lot different than pushing a cart against 12 players that might be a team full of demos and soldiers and sentries just whaling on you with DPS, the DPS you face in lobby formats is just lower than it is in casual so the heal paradigm works relatively well, you don't need the flat out "nothing can kill me" effect.

it's understandable that it's banned in lobbies based on the way that game works, but it's also quite bad in casual because of the way that game works.

(don't make the mistake of confusing them just because they launch from the same application, casual and lobbies play very differently. And sure "weapons should be balanced around high-level play" is a good principle but that's not the same thing as saying "weapons should be balanced around the lobby format".)

look, in other games there is the concept of a "pubstomping weapon", one that is effective at taking on masses of relatively unskilled players and is very flexible across different engagement types, but which has worse stats in key areas (absolute TTK, etc) that mean that when you are going head to head with a skilled player who is specifically focusing you then you're going to lose. The quick-fix is a pubstomping weapon as far as casual is concerned. It's good for healing a bunch of unskilled players that are taking damage faster than they should be and where you probably aren't facing skilled players who can exploit the (major) disadvantages, but it's bad when you're dealing with players who can deal with it, and that's literally as simple as "stickybombs/headshots/focusing fire until they're dead".

Casuals are generally bad at the game and won't be able to make use of a full overheal anyway because they're going to turn the corner and hang their rear end out and lose it all in two seconds anyway, aren't going to be doing advanced movement, etc. And they may not even be smart enough to do anything useful with a full ubercharge anyway. QF puts out more healing faster at a lower cap, in return for a much weaker uber that can be countered in multiple different ways (apart from knockback), but at least everyone can do something with having more health even if they completely whiff the actual push itself. The problem is that when you're playing with skilled players, your teammates are going into every single fight at a disadvantage because they have reduced overheals, and the uberheal is significantly weaker than stock. One sentry eats up half the uberheal DPS of the quick fix (and a wrangler eats up all of the heal DPS). Add in maybe a heavy or a pyro (oh and that afterburn eats up almost all of your heal DPS) and it's incredibly viable to simply batter down a uberheal. Or a single sniper can end you with a charged headshot, or even an uncharged headshot depending on how much damage you're tanking. Or a demo can lay down a pile of stickies and spike you hard enough to kill you instantly. Or any player who is currently shooting you might get random crits and you're done. There are a lot of random crits in casual. It's just trivial for skilled players to counter a quickfix, you literally just shoot them until they die, you don't have to do anything special apart from focusing them, and your sentries and crits are going to do most of the lifting anyway. Oh no, bullets, my only weakness. (shoot! with the gun! that's what the bullets are for, you twit!)

The problem, again, is that the threshold for "an enemy team good enough to exploit the weakness" is not very high. Any demo who is smart enough to drop a pile instead of detting single shots is going to push your poo poo in. Any sniper capable of landing a headshot is going to push your poo poo in. Any team who just keeps shooting until you're dead while you're already tanking damage from a sentry/etc is going to push your poo poo in. Random crits are going to push your poo poo in. Those are all incredibly low thresholds for an enemy team to clear to ruin your work. It effectively means your uber is very weak since you have to play so cautiously compared to stock, so you become much more reliant on your team to do the push for you, and we already agreed that your team is not good in this situation (otherwise you would be using stock and giving them full overheals/etc to take advantage of).

All of the other stuff like "it negates scorch shot!" or "you're unairblastable during uberheal!" is fringe benefits that doesn't make it worth it.

In the casual format uber or kritz are better, period. If I'm behind on uber or facing a combo that is just stomping me I'd rather try to deploy a kritz and pick their combo than to spread uberheals or go into a matchup against a combo (with random crits) who has a full uber that we can deal no damage against. One good demo supported by a kritz can hard carry a team by wiping the enemy combo/etc and that is a situation that your lovely teammates are much more likely to be able to take advantage of.

In lobbies sure, you don't have to worry about random crits destroying your push, and you aren't facing three sentries or three demos or three soldiers plus nine other players who can just batter you down, and having three players with effectively full health all the time is a good advantage, and it charges faster to boot. The "better healing and faster-but-weaker uber" mechanic is significantly less disadvantaged in the lobby format.

The big draw in casual used to be the ability to uberheal while pushing the cart or capping. So you could buff a heavy who was just sitting his rear end on the cart on those long ramps on barnblitz/upwards/etc and effectively push the cart while (almost) invincible (although obviously snipers/etc could still ruin your day). The unairblastable thing was a fringe benefit on maps like Upward, but not good enough to actively take the gun for in most situations. And you could travel with scouts, which made it fast. Now that it's lost the ability to push the cart it's not worth it on casual and it's still too powerful in the lobby format. The only situations where it's maybe good in casual is meme plays jumping with a soldier/demo.

It is sometimes good as a backup weapon, like if you already have a stock medigun and teammates are still taking damage faster than the primary medic can heal. The thing you then have to worry about is healing economy though - by healing patients, the quick fix is effectively sucking up ubercharge rate and slowing down the stock medic's uber, so if there is not enough healing to go around this can actually be a disadvantage (and there is nothing worse than dying at 99% because some dipshit quickfix kept stealing your patients and splitting charge rate and slowing you down). And I would rather have stock+kritz than stock+quickfix in most situations, if the enemies are out-damaging two medics then having one of them be quickfix isn't going to change anything, your team sucks and you're going to lose.

And like "what if we want to deploy all three at once" lol no you don't, there's basically never a time where you would need to do that, and I'd take stock+stock+kritz or stock+kritz+kritz over stock+kritz+quickfix any day. If you really want to be helpful as the third medic, take the vaccinator. Hell even as second medic. Vaccinator is great in ways the QF just is not, vaccinator really needs to be toned down again (splitting charges across multiple resistances and multiple patients is broken af, it's effectively an ubercharge but more flexible as long as you pick the right resists for the situation, and usually bullet+explosive are the only ones that matter).

Just because a youtuber said it doesn't mean it's true, in this case I think he's theorycrafting to justify a mediocre weapon. IMO QF is almost always bad in casual, unless you're playing against potato tier enemies that anything will work against.

(and that's OK! you are allowed to use loadouts that aren't perfectly optimal! it's a game and you should enjoy yourself and have fun. I played with the crossbow long before it was cool and ironically now that it's buffed I'm far too used to the overdose to change. But on the other hand let's not pretend the QF is some underappreciated gem, it's a mediocre weapon with significantly reduced pushing ability, that is still viable because having a medic at all is such an asset to the team.)

Ditocoaf posted:

This post kept going, and going, but I was looking forward to you addressing what seemed to be the youtuber's core idea I hadn't heard before, which is that you should use the QF uber differently and 'push' with multiple people. I haven't actually played in months so I have no clue if that even makes sense, but don't write that much and not finish the job!

quote:

Those are all incredibly low thresholds for an enemy team to clear to ruin your work. It effectively means your uber is very weak since you have to play so cautiously compared to stock, so you become much more reliant on your team to do the push for you, and we already agreed that your team is not good in this situation (otherwise you would be using stock and giving them full overheals/etc to take advantage of).

Roth posted:

We should cut to the chase and do the thing that will instantly improve casual TF2:

Remove the scorchshot.

Roth posted:

It's only mod sass if you scorchshot me while I'm trying to snipe your medic.