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khwarezm posted:While I've gone on the record saying I don't agree with most of the anti-sniper sentiment these days some guy on youtube actually did run a server for 3 days with sniper completely banned and got some data on the before and after: "Some dude" is shounic, who does some amazing tf2 bug videos.
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Aug 26, 2023 13:45
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Xakura posted:x2 More like *EXTREMELY LOUD, DISTINCTIVE DEATH SCREAM* -complete nonreaction- *EXTREMELY LOUD, DISTINCTIVE DEATH SCREAM* -complete nonreaction- That, and people who see a spy and instantly forget that they have a gun. He's trying to trickstab you. Back up and shoot him.
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Aug 26, 2023 13:51
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Xakura posted:"Some dude" is shounic, who does some amazing tf2 bug videos.  Haven't payed much attention to who are the currently big TF2ubers over the last few years.
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Aug 26, 2023 14:27
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Is there a tf2 trade thread? also are there recommended maps to pick or not pick for casual play? i know some maps are just poo poo aside from me just blocking all CTF maps.
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Aug 26, 2023 14:32
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Dizz posted:Is there a tf2 trade thread? also are there recommended maps to pick or not pick for casual play? i know some maps are just poo poo aside from me just blocking all CTF maps. I mean, when it comes down to it you just want to play maps you enjoy right? Do you like Payload? Attack/Defend? 5 CP? I'll say that I always find King of the Hill maps great for quick, fluid games that sharpen your skills and tend not to inculcate negative habits that you tend to get in extremely chokey and poorly designed maps like 2fort and Goldrush. The TF2 trade thread is pretty much defunct, I do some trading myself though so you can PM me if you are looking for stuff or advice.
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Aug 26, 2023 14:42
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I just wanted to see if i can trade a Shooter's Stakeout taunt with the deepsea rave effect and paypal to pay the difference to get a game if able. For maps I simply forget which ones are fun and which are poo poo. I dislike dustbowl so i untick that but i barely remember the names of others. E: Upward is fun when there's no snipers making GBS threads it up.
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Aug 26, 2023 16:01
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khwarezm posted:While I've gone on the record saying I don't agree with most of the anti-sniper sentiment these days some guy on youtube actually did run a server for 3 days with sniper completely banned and got some data on the before and after: well i feel more justified in my pre-formed beliefs
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Aug 26, 2023 19:01
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No sniper and no spy means the heavy with the pocket medic will be oppressive, though.
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Aug 26, 2023 19:33
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Xakura posted:"Some dude" is shounic, who does some amazing tf2 bug videos. I do love the statistics all being basically identical and the only anecdotal change is “yeah it’s more fun.” 
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Aug 26, 2023 20:15
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Jack B Nimble posted:No sniper and no spy means the heavy with the pocket medic will be oppressive, though. good
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Aug 26, 2023 20:33
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as noted in the video itself the main result seems to be concentrating players into the chokes even harder than they were before so that the relative volume of explosive spam becomes an even more deciding factor than it is normally on those maps. for a brief period of time you'd probably report it as being more fun if you play one of those classes but I doubt it'd be beneficial over the long term since spamming at a choke really is the lowest possible form of tf2 gameplay
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Aug 26, 2023 21:19
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I mean on something like Upward, I doubt its going to hugely improve my play experience if there's no Snipers around since I'll get roadblocked by engineers, heavies and demomen anyway.
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Aug 26, 2023 21:36
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i honestly believe the game would be worse without any given class was removed. im sure certain maps or chokes or team comps would be less annoying in a given round but broadly i think they're all an important part of the TF2 Pub Ecosystem in terms of making the game fun to play. except demoknights. nothing saps my will to live on uncletopia faster than seeing that none of your team's 3 demos have explosives.
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Aug 26, 2023 22:08
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I've always been a bit confused by demoknight, it's such a drastic change in role and playstyle, I almost wonder if they should have added a tenth class to fill that niche, or added it to a different close-range-focused class like pyro.
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Aug 26, 2023 22:54
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Sometimes I wonder if there's someone raging at me on my team for not using the sticky launcher when I play demonstration man. Because I basically never do.
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Aug 26, 2023 23:20
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CodfishCartographer posted:I've always been a bit confused by demoknight, it's such a drastic change in role and playstyle, I almost wonder if they should have added a tenth class to fill that niche, or added it to a different close-range-focused class like pyro. my guess is they didn't really know what to do for demoman sidegrades when it came time to create his update and just did something entirely unrelated. then it was massively popular so they leaned into it.
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Aug 26, 2023 23:23
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When some friends and I ran a server we would sometimes do "Medieval Mondays" where we'd turn on medieval mode for regular maps and it was either loved by demoknights or absolutely hated by anyone else
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Aug 26, 2023 23:31
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Gwyneth Palpate posted:Sometimes I wonder if there's someone raging at me on my team for not using the sticky launcher when I play demonstration man. Because I basically never do. gently caress 'em
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Aug 26, 2023 23:55
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CodfishCartographer posted:I've always been a bit confused by demoknight, it's such a drastic change in role and playstyle, I almost wonder if they should have added a tenth class to fill that niche, or added it to a different close-range-focused class like pyro. I think its pretty basic, they simply did not know what to do with Demoman as a core class because he's always been bordering on overpowered in the right hands since day one and there's not really many obvious places to go with him to fill out some potential weak areas with sidegrades with a related downside. I think there's two ways that unlockable weapons are meant to work, especially the initial unlocks from the first run of class specific updates. The first is covering obvious weak areas that a class has by default with an option that does better out of their comfort zone, but has the trade off of being less effective in their area they excel by default. Consider the Pyro's Flare Gun, which I think is one of the best weapons ever added to the game in letting him have a long range attack without unbalancing the whole class that also has a high skill ceiling with its fire combos. There's also the Gunslinger and Huntsman which are clearly intended to draw these respective classes out of their comfort zones and give them new options with them both being able to fight better in a frontline role, though with many, many controversies over the years. For the Demoman this is hard because he kind of just doesn't really have those kinds of weaknesses that can be addressed, he's a beast in both defensive and offensive play and his biggest issue might be having to worry about self damage at close range, but intruding on that is a bad idea that cheapens the identity of the class and can be a nightmare to balance. The other option is to go the other direction and explore the core elements associated with a class or their weapons and heighten them further, with associated downsides and in an organic kind of way, you can see this with the Direct Hit and it being intended to reward Soldiers who have good aim and can consistently land airshots, or the Force-a-Nature which is meant to exaggerate Scout's usual playstyle of trying to get the drop on enemies at very close range with their massive initial burst damage at the cost of their long term stamina in a fight. Its hard to explore Demoman's quirks like this, but they did make a stab with the Scottish Resistance which came out the same update where the basic idea was to highlight him actually being a defensive class as opposed to a uniquely flexible frontline combatant that he had settled into when the update was released. That never really caught on but to be fair they were a bit more creative later on with the Loose Cannon which is a bit weird but interesting exploration of what you can do with good aim with the Grenade Launcher. So I think that Valve, looking at the Demoman, and how he both didn't really have any glaring weaknesses that needed attention or that many areas that can be developed on in his core gameplay without being hard to balance, decided to just kind of give up and went for a third option which was just create a goofy gimmick where balance doesn't really matter all that much and you can run around screaming and making Highlander references.
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Aug 27, 2023 00:09
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Yeah I think the game balance gets out of wack fairly quickly if it’s missing one of the classes. Snipers and Spies are needed to break up groups by targeting their weak points and encouraging mobility, or else the gameplay can calcify around the slower classes.
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Aug 27, 2023 00:14
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There's a reason why when I've discussed rebalancing Sniper in the past it centers around nerfing Quick Scoping and not Sniper as a whole, he just needs to be slowed down
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Aug 27, 2023 00:18
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Instead of headshots critting while scoped, they ramp from 50 to 450 damage during the same time the bodyshot damage ramps from 50 to 150.
Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Aug 27, 2023 |
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Aug 27, 2023 00:22
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drrockso20 posted:There's a reason why when I've discussed rebalancing Sniper in the past it centers around nerfing Quick Scoping and not Sniper as a whole, he just needs to be slowed down Quick scoping is not the problem and will not get rid of the core frustrations that people have fighting sniper, which is the frustrating feeling of being killed instantly from a distance where you couldn't do anything about it.
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Aug 27, 2023 00:24
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Stock Demoman does have an area of weakness: When someone gets into point-blank range he doesn’t have an effective way of dealing with that problem without killing himself in the process, and he’s also slow so he can’t get away easily. Demoknight stuff, by offering mobility and close-range effectiveness at the expense of explosive power, thus fits perfectly into the mold of “makes the class better at the thing they are bad at but worse at the thing they are good at.”
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Aug 27, 2023 00:36
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khwarezm posted:Quick scoping is not the problem and will not get rid of the core frustrations that people have fighting sniper, which is the frustrating feeling of being killed instantly from a distance where you couldn't do anything about it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's really just how the game works. You get into a bad fight against a good player and you die quickly and without being able to do much about it. Walk into a door a demoman has trapped? Dead. Turned your back on a spy? Dead. Let a scout get close when you're playing any class listed after Heavy? Dead. Went outside against a bombing soldier? Dead. Turn a corner into a Level 3 Sentry? Dead. That's just how it is. The way to avoid it is to have the game sense not to get into that situation in the first place. Once you're in it, the only way for you to survive is for your opponent to gently caress up trying to kill you. It's frustrating but pretty much any class in the game will be inflicting it regularly(except medic, but failing to kill someone because they had an extra 100 health or just plain became invincible is frustrating enough, too). As frustrating as it may be, there is no way around it. If you want to look at what TF2 would be like if you removed everything that allows this to happen, it's called Overwatch and from experience I can concretely say it is not an improvement. I'm not sure why Sniper, whose core mechanic has been unchanged for 15 years and was already a toned down version of what snipers are like in other games, has recently been singled out like he's unique in this matter. Maybe it's something to do with the bots infesting casual, or the increasing popularity of maps that favour him. But he's really not an egregious example of this compared to anyone else. That is the game, that's always been the game. The only difference between sniper and the rest is that you don't get the half a second of panicked flailing before the second rocket hits you to make you feel like you had a chance. It's the same situation: you got into a bad fight, and your survival depends on your opponent's incompetence.
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Aug 27, 2023 00:39
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CodfishCartographer posted:I've always been a bit confused by demoknight, it's such a drastic change in role and playstyle, I almost wonder if they should have added a tenth class to fill that niche, or added it to a different close-range-focused class like pyro. i feel like they probably expected people to mix-and-match between normal demoman weapons and demoknight weapons a bit more the individual pieces of the demoknight kit all offer things to fix the demoman's normal weaknesses (kinda slow, highly vulnerable in melee range, has no real fallback when his clip is empty) in exchange for trading off some of his normal strengths it's just that taking even one of them hurts his normal playstyle so much that you might as well take them all and go all-in on the melee playstyle. and then the team started balancing around that and making it even harder to use them separately
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Aug 27, 2023 00:40
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khwarezm posted:Quick scoping is not the problem and will not get rid of the core frustrations that people have fighting sniper, which is the frustrating feeling of being killed instantly from a distance where you couldn't do anything about it. Actually it is the core frustration, since even a slightly above average Sniper can with a decent amount of consistency Quick Scope 3 to 5 people in almost as many seconds and stuff a push or punch a hole in a defense, if he had to wait the full 3.3 seconds to charge up the shot each time it would make him a lot easier to deal with while still allowing him to do his job of taking out high priority targets
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Aug 27, 2023 00:48
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cock hero flux posted:Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's really just how the game works. You get into a bad fight against a good player and you die quickly and without being able to do much about it. Walk into a door a demoman has trapped? Dead. Turned your back on a spy? Dead. Let a scout get close when you're playing any class listed after Heavy? Dead. Went outside against a bombing soldier? Dead. Turn a corner into a Level 3 Sentry? Dead. That's just how it is. The way to avoid it is to have the game sense not to get into that situation in the first place. Once you're in it, the only way for you to survive is for your opponent to gently caress up trying to kill you. It's frustrating but pretty much any class in the game will be inflicting it regularly(except medic, but failing to kill someone because they had an extra 100 health or just plain became invincible is frustrating enough, too). As frustrating as it may be, there is no way around it. If you want to look at what TF2 would be like if you removed everything that allows this to happen, it's called Overwatch and from experience I can concretely say it is not an improvement. I actually agree with you, especially about how it feels he's become a whipping boy recently, I just think that nerfing quickscoping, which is usually a highly skilled tactic so it will be penalizing good players more than anyone else, won't help very much with people's general frustrations with Sniper which are fundamentally core elements of the class. At that rate I think its a problem people have with the game as a whole that Sniper exists within it. Ariong posted:Stock Demoman does have an area of weakness: When someone gets into point-blank range he doesn’t have an effective way of dealing with that problem without killing himself in the process, and he’s also slow so he can’t get away easily. Demoknight stuff, by offering mobility and close-range effectiveness at the expense of explosive power, thus fits perfectly into the mold of “makes the class better at the thing they are bad at but worse at the thing they are good at.” I did mention the self damage issue, but I just don't think it matters all that much compared to something like the Sniper getting a lot more wobbly as he gets closer to danger or the Engineer being tied to Sentry nest that takes a lot of time to set up? Like very few engagements are actually at point blank range, melee weapons as a whole aren't really that relevant which is why they tend to be used for the most extreme gimmicks in the game and why the default weapons are almost all strictly worse than most of the unlocks except for the Spy's knife and the Engie's wrench (with the latter having functionality totally unrelated to melee combat). Close range is technically a weakness for stock Demoman but he can still control his enemies movement at close range with stickies or simply hit them directly with pipes, its not really a glaring weakness IMO and the extra range from the swords doesn't make enough difference for it to really be a significant consideration. Almost invariably people will pair the Eyelander or Persian Persuader with a shield to get the best use out of them at which point you basically aren't playing a class even vaguely similar to Demoman at all, especially if you've gone all in and equipped the booties too. drrockso20 posted:Actually it is the core frustration, since even a slightly above average Sniper can with a decent amount of consistency Quick Scope 3 to 5 people in almost as many seconds and stuff a push or punch a hole in a defense, if he had to wait the full 3.3 seconds to charge up the shot each time it would make him a lot easier to deal with while still allowing him to do his job of taking out high priority targets If this was a really significant problem I think that Sniper's overpowered nature would have a much bigger impact on the game, but as that video I posted yesterday suggests, him not even existing doesn't actually change that much. How many times do you actually see a mediocre Sniper kill 3 people in like 15 seconds? I think Quickscopes have just become a fixation when people have bigger issues with the class and getting rid of it won't fix that frustration, but it will make sniper more sluggish, less rewarding and have a lower skill ceiling for people who like to play the class. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Aug 27, 2023 |
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Aug 27, 2023 00:55
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drrockso20 posted:Actually it is the core frustration, since even a slightly above average Sniper can with a decent amount of consistency Quick Scope 3 to 5 people in almost as many seconds and stuff a push or punch a hole in a defense, if he had to wait the full 3.3 seconds to charge up the shot each time it would make him a lot easier to deal with while still allowing him to do his job of taking out high priority targets This is a major exaggeration, really. Quick-scoping certainly isn't weak, but it can only kill light classes without buffs. If your push is reliant mainly on scouts and engineers and you don't have a medic going around slapping extra health on them I'm not sure it's much of a push. And if an enemy sniper is able to sit there with impunity and blast you while you try to defend, your defence isn't that solid to begin with. Sniper isn't underpowered by any means but the ability to delete scouts is hardly unique. I feel, again, like this has a lot to do with the maps people have decided are good. Upward in particular I hear get held up as one of the best maps and it is literally a sniper's paradise, full of sightlines that are so absolutely giant and open that things start to look foggy because you're fighting at the maximum draw distance. As for how easy it actually is: a mediocre sniper is not going to be removing a head every second, even in the most ideal circumstances. A very good sniper can absolutely shred a team by himself but you can say the same about soldiers and demomen, too. You give a good demoman 3 to 5 seconds of free reign against your push and you'll see it reduced to a fine paste with even greater efficiency. And on the topic of soldier: a not that great sniper can be thrown off extremely easily by just spamming at them, which you as a soldier can freely do since they can't actually kill you without charging up a shot. While a mediocre sniper can be a big problem on a long sightline, they don't deal well with trying to shoot in between dodging a constant stream of rockets. If you're not able to survive long enough to do this it's probably because they have the rest of their team effectively protecting them, which would indicate that maybe it's not the sniper that's the real issue with how things are going.
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Aug 27, 2023 01:13
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Soldier and demoman should have been a single class.
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Aug 27, 2023 02:21
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If a Sniper is quickscope sniping your entire team in three seconds, join a server that kicks cheaters because they’re giving themselves crits.
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Aug 27, 2023 02:33
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Man sniper and spy are fun to play when you get the itch so id be sad if they went away
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Aug 27, 2023 02:37
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Honestly I think limiting your offensive options by going hybrid demo is one of the funnest ways to actually play the class and offers some really fun benefits with the eyelander on grenade demo as an example.
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Aug 27, 2023 03:49
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Few things are as terrifying as a stickybomb demo that's got a fully charged eyelander.
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Aug 27, 2023 03:54
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i miss the old trick where you could use quick loadout menu to keep the eyelander heads while switching to stickies and grenades
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Aug 27, 2023 03:57
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ChaseSP posted:Honestly I think limiting your offensive options by going hybrid demo is one of the funnest ways to actually play the class and offers some really fun benefits with the eyelander on grenade demo as an example. Hybrid knight is how I usually play him. Grenade launcher, tide turner, and claidwelsh mor sword. Hit people with pills, and when you see something coming that can kill you, press right mouse button to immediately negate your positioning mistake. The sword choice is because it's better for trimping and has a less bad downside overall.
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Aug 27, 2023 03:57
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exploiting the quantum crouch was so fun too lol
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Aug 27, 2023 03:58
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Just call it the claymore, it's the claymore.
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Aug 27, 2023 04:16
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these days when i want to play demo i go loose cannon, targe and katana because the loose cannon is very fun but i'm bad at it so sometimes i start getting owned and then pull out the sword to try and hail mary my opponent with a charge to get my health back when i don't want to play demo but am forced to due to an overpopulation of engineers that require culling i just use the iron bomber and the quickiebomb because that's the most effective way of pub-stomping, at least for me. Losing 4 stickies is a big deal but the quickie is an incredible scout remover and you can long-bomb snipers with charged stickies as well ArfJason posted:i miss the old trick where you could use quick loadout menu to keep the eyelander heads while switching to stickies and grenades it turns out that if you give stock loadout demoman 210 hp and scout speed you can just go ahead and remove the rest of the classes from the game. getting it legitimately is painful but once you've managed to get heads off of, realistically, 4 spies then you are an unstoppable machine
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Aug 27, 2023 04:23
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verbal enema posted:gently caress 'em save that for the third game.
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Aug 27, 2023 04:30
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