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Been playing with the Shortstop a lot lately, man this gun is fun and gets a bad rap. It's obviously not as good at prolonged close-up engagements as the base scattergun or soda popper (though its point-blank-range burst dmg is actually comparable to the scatter), but imo the mid-range damage more than makes up for it. I discovered I'm better at tracking targets at mid-range rather than up close, so I wind up performing a lot better with it compared to scatter/SP. If you're able to space out enemies it winds up being a lot safer too, at least if you're bad like I am.
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Sep 13, 2023 15:21
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| # ? May 29, 2024 06:10 |
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the shortstop makes you better at mid range but it hurts your ability to just run up and blast a guy in the face and kill him, which is the fun part of scout i've been using the force of nature lately because it's a great way to train your ability to aim, and also it's really fun despite being in the running for the second worst scattergun
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Sep 13, 2023 15:29
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cock hero flux posted:the shortstop makes you better at mid range but it hurts your ability to just run up and blast a guy in the face and kill him, which is the fun part of scout While true, I'm also Really Bad, so whenever I get that close I usually wind up dying - or dying while trying to get that close. I should probably work on that skill instead of keeping more at a distance, but 
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Sep 13, 2023 16:43
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I think the shortstop has the most baffling stat of any weapon in the game with the push.
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Sep 13, 2023 17:45
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IronicDongz posted:koth is a better version of this tbqh KOTH is too short, you cant build up dumb rivalries
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Sep 13, 2023 18:05
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Baron von Eevl posted:I think the shortstop has the most baffling stat of any weapon in the game with the push. i understand the idea (mid-range scattergun, tool that gets enemies out of close range and into your ideal range) but it's just like, unbelievably weak and short ranged, and you can't do it while you're reloading which is loving weird
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Sep 13, 2023 18:25
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the shortstop having a super slow-mo reload animation is funny
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Sep 13, 2023 18:42
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give it an alt-fire that dumps all 4 shots for a blast that does no damage but has like, force a nature push force on it
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Sep 13, 2023 19:09
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CodfishCartographer posted:Been playing with the Shortstop a lot lately, man this gun is fun and gets a bad rap. It's obviously not as good at prolonged close-up engagements as the base scattergun or soda popper (though its point-blank-range burst dmg is actually comparable to the scatter), but imo the mid-range damage more than makes up for it. I discovered I'm better at tracking targets at mid-range rather than up close, so I wind up performing a lot better with it compared to scatter/SP. If you're able to space out enemies it winds up being a lot safer too, at least if you're bad like I am. the scattergun just has incredible killing power that none of the scout's other options can match base scattergun leaves the squishier classes near death after one point-blank shot, and kills almost every class with two point-blank shots. and with six shots in a clip, that lets you dish out a lot of pain if you're real good at those close-range meatshots
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Sep 13, 2023 19:20
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The Shortstop's been way over-nerfed, I don't know why they went hard on that weapon to such a degree. IMO, they should probably get rid of the ridiculous push mechanic (which does not synergize with the weapon at all) and revert its reload time to closer to what it used to be, its overall damage output is not good so it would improve its role as a mid range weapon of consistent harassment. On an unrelated topic, I don't know about other people but I was thinking about random crits, nobody likes them and they don't really do their intended job at all for the vast majority of weapons, but I was thinking they actually kind of work as intended on melee weapons. In that case melee in almost every circumstance is a less than ideal last resort compared to any ranged option that has to be buffered with some very intense upsides to even be considered at all, but the high chance of a crit can actually make it a lot more tempting to take the risk and hope that the dice rolls in your favour. I kind of wish the default setting is that crits were removed for all ranged attacks but remained for most melee weapons, except for things like the Axtinguisher and Market Gardener of course, I feel like that would probably be the best case scenario.
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Sep 13, 2023 20:07
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Also pistol scout can already abuse mid-range engagements without needing to give up the scattergun. The TTK isn't great unless you get a safe opening to rush in but if you're good at dodging then very few things can seriously threaten you at that range (and outside of other scouts nothing can seriously threaten you at both pistol and scattergun range, except maybe DH virtuosos.)
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Sep 13, 2023 20:09
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Random Crits do their intended job all the time, which is to level the playing field a little bit for new players that are generally getting dumpstered by the veterans. I never benefited from random crits, but my newbie friend always lived for them because it was her chance to get revenge on one rival or another. It can be the difference between a player going 0/15 and 4/12.
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Sep 13, 2023 20:13
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Kaal posted:Random Crits do their intended job all the time, which is to level the playing field a little bit for new players that are generally getting dumpstered by the veterans. I never benefited from random crits, but my newbie friend always lived for them because it was her chance to get revenge on one rival or another. It can be the difference between a player going 0/15 and 4/12. I never find this convincing because: 1. Everybody gets random crits, so good players can use them to win an encounter extra hard or unstick from a situation they should had died in. 2. The instances of crits rise as you do better, more damage=more crits, so contrary to the idea that they are giving new players a helping hand it actually favours experienced ones who are already doing well and lets them poo poo out even more damage than they would be doing otherwise. 3. Somebody who's not doing too hot at the game is a lot more likely to miss and bungle a crit roll, again a better player gets more value out of them. Its always been a bad solution for a questionable problem when it would better off having a better matchmaking system for newer players to not go up against people who've played the game for 15 years.
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Sep 13, 2023 20:22
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Kaal posted:Random Crits do their intended job all the time, which is to level the playing field a little bit for new players that are generally getting dumpstered by the veterans. I never benefited from random crits, but my newbie friend always lived for them because it was her chance to get revenge on one rival or another. It can be the difference between a player going 0/15 and 4/12. that's not what they do because the chance scales with how well you're doing, so it makes good players stomp even harder. if that was the intention then that mechanic wouldn't exist, and as far as I'm aware the stated intention is to break stalemates. they do this, just not in a way that results in good gameplay
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Sep 13, 2023 20:34
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khwarezm posted:I never find this convincing because: I think you’re misunderstanding how crits are experienced by new players. They get rolled five times in a row, and then get to have a glorious moment of payback. That’s the important part. A veteran being better able to use crits is immaterial, because they already are advantaged in many ways. Veterans like to turn off crits and bullet spread for the same reason - predictability improves their advantage via the things they control. If I can reliably defeat an opponent then there’s no upside to random failure. But when you’re constantly getting worked then an occasional chaos kill can be the only thing between having fun and quitting in frustration.
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Sep 13, 2023 20:40
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The weapons are balanced with criticals, so taking them away makes weapon balance worse. (See all 'no critical' weapons) The way criticals are implemented isn't always the best though. I like the guaranteed second hit critical on certain melee weapons like medic bonesaw. The heavy weapon "crit forever until you miss" is not cool. Critical rockets/grenades suck to get hit by, but they're very visible once you know what they are. A reasonable change would let critical explosives glow, but only hit for critical damage after a certain range is traversed.
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Sep 13, 2023 20:42
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Random Crits do their intended job all the time, which is to prompt me to taunt after firing blind spam and killing 4 people
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Sep 13, 2023 20:46
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Random crits did thier job in the early days of tf2 when everyone was middling to bad at the game. Really, i dont think valve ever thought the game was meant for a Competitive style. Its sort of like Super Smash Bros Melee. that game has lotsa of wacky stuff that Competitive players just leave out. Items, playmodes, battlefields. But the audience has changed and theyve dug a niche for themselves that they enjoy. And its so popular that theyve defined the new audience. Random Crits WERE fair and balanced, we just grew past them
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Sep 13, 2023 20:48
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Kaal posted:I think you’re misunderstanding how crits are experienced by new players. They get rolled five times in a row, and then get to have a glorious moment of payback. That’s the important part. A veteran being better able to use crits is immaterial, because they already are advantaged in many ways. Veterans like to turn off crits and bullet spread for the same reason - predictability improves their advantage via the things they control. If I can reliably defeat an opponent then there’s no upside to random failure. But when you’re constantly getting worked then an occasional chaos kill can be the only thing between having fun and quitting in frustration. The prospect of maybe getting a kill every 5 deaths out of sheer luck (likely against somebody who isn't even the big problem) is cold comfort if you continue to get poo poo on and moreover the system explicitly benefits the player doing the making GBS threads on you. Like as soon as a new player realizes how the system works they can see how hard they are getting hosed over as well if that problem soldier who's already dominating them blasts out a critical rocket, especially in a scenario they might have him on the ropes, and maybe follows it up with the Schadenfreude taunt for good measure. Arae posted:The weapons are balanced with criticals, so taking them away makes weapon balance worse. (See all 'no critical' weapons) Look, there's a reason why 'no random critical hits' became a meme for years when people were talking about Valve's bizarre balance decisions. Remember that they thought this was enough to balance the Blutsauger against the Syringe Gun before they added additional passive healing to all non-Blutsauger medic primaries.
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Sep 13, 2023 20:52
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The thing I find a bit funny is that competitive players insist on enforcing fixed spread patterns for shotguns...but not pistols? Or the minigun? Like both of those are incredibly luck-based at range, but for whatever reason the community has decided it's okay for those to be luck-based but not shotguns/scatterguns.
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Sep 13, 2023 21:31
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The Blutsauger always had reduced passive healing as well. The difference was between 3 per second flat and 1 per second flat. "No random crits" as the sole downside was some other weapon. I think a melee weapon?
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Sep 13, 2023 21:34
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Random crits are good for everything except full auto rapid fire weapons (flamethrower, miniguns, pistols, smg). I'll allow them for needleguns because if you manage to get a needlegun kill, good for you.
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Sep 13, 2023 21:37
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CodfishCartographer posted:The thing I find a bit funny is that competitive players insist on enforcing fixed spread patterns for shotguns...but not pistols? Or the minigun? Like both of those are incredibly luck-based at range, but for whatever reason the community has decided it's okay for those to be luck-based but not shotguns/scatterguns. The difference is the number of boolet fired with one shot. Shotguns fire multiple bullets per shot. If I fire a shotgun at longer ranges, the spread, both with fixed spread and random spread, will also naturally reduce the damage the gun does. With random spread on, however, sometimes at short distances all of the bullets will inexplicably clump to one side, usually the one where there's no enemy hitbox. A pistol or a minigun, however, only shoots one boolet at a time. With no spread, they become semi-automatic sniper rifles that can't headshot. With spread, they still mostly do the same damage at close range, but are inaccurate enough to not be sniper rifles at medium/long range.
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Sep 13, 2023 21:38
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CodfishCartographer posted:The thing I find a bit funny is that competitive players insist on enforcing fixed spread patterns for shotguns...but not pistols? Or the minigun? Like both of those are incredibly luck-based at range, but for whatever reason the community has decided it's okay for those to be luck-based but not shotguns/scatterguns. Shotgun pellet spread decays its damage output at range in fixed spread when fewer pellets land in the space where a player's hurtbox is, without a random chance for most of the pellets to fire down the center of the crosshairs. Pellet density is a big reason why landing close range meatshots does so much damage. Removing bullet spread from rapid fire guns would not by any measure be an equal and fair application of this mechanic.
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Sep 13, 2023 21:41
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Removing spread from pistols would make the engineer the funniest class in the game
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Sep 13, 2023 21:43
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Dabir posted:The Blutsauger always had reduced passive healing as well. The difference was between 3 per second flat and 1 per second flat. "No random crits" as the sole downside was some other weapon. I think a melee weapon? This isn't true, Medic's self heal rate was buffed in 2009, it was only then that the Blutsauger got a real downside since that weapon suppressed Medic's heal rate to something closer to its original values. Prior to that, for about a year and a half, it had the same self heal rate as the stock syringe gun and because no random crits was such a meaningless downside it was nearly universally perceived to be a straight upgrade.
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Sep 13, 2023 21:49
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A distinction to be made between spread and random spread. A minigun can have a spread to throw bullets consistently in a pattern that’s relatively even and patterned to be hard to abuse, but is consistent and won’t have a buncha bullets randomly come out left leaning as you are tracking an enemy running to the right.
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Sep 13, 2023 22:46
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give heavy a minigun without bullet spread, he deserves it imo
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Sep 13, 2023 23:32
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Abroham Lincoln posted:give heavy a minigun without bullet spread, he deserves it imo Remember when they promised to do another Heavy update after the Jungle Inferno update with the similar aim to give heavy more engaging and skill dependent gameplay and deal with the various problems that have saddled the class since launch? ....yeah. E; Jeez, I wrote the Pyromania update there initially, instead of the Jungle Inferno update. I think it speaks to Pyro's fundamentally ill defined role in the game at launch that he's had three separate updates in his name to try and sort out his various issues. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Sep 13, 2023 |
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Sep 13, 2023 23:37
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX7jb7QAJ8g
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Sep 14, 2023 00:36
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CodfishCartographer posted:The thing I find a bit funny is that competitive players insist on enforcing fixed spread patterns for shotguns...but not pistols? Or the minigun? Like both of those are incredibly luck-based at range, but for whatever reason the community has decided it's okay for those to be luck-based but not shotguns/scatterguns. i'm pretty sure this is just because there's a server setting that puts fixed spreads on shotguns so it's as easy as typing tf_use_fixed_weaponspreads 1, while there isn't one for other weapons and therefore it'd be a huge pain in the rear end
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Sep 14, 2023 03:05
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I'm not sure if they're talking about no spread at all versus a fixed spread pattern, but having to spend time learning fixed bullet spread patterns is incredibly boring, anyways.
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Sep 14, 2023 07:07
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Arae posted:The weapons are balanced with criticals, so taking them away makes weapon balance worse. (See all 'no critical' weapons) And then sometimes you have weapons that would already be best in slot, and they're still allowed random crits, like the ubersaw. cock hero flux posted:i'm pretty sure this is just because there's a server setting that puts fixed spreads on shotguns so it's as easy as typing tf_use_fixed_weaponspreads 1, while there isn't one for other weapons and therefore it'd be a huge pain in the rear end If you make a shotgun have fixed spread, it still has intuitive spread that behaves in an intuitive way. A pistol shooting 1 bullet at a time with fixed spread would either have no spread, or require you to learn a counterstrike-esque recoil pattern. LazyMaybe fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Sep 14, 2023 |
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Sep 14, 2023 08:08
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Most weapons nowadays that disable random crits do that because they have a guaranteed way to get crits or mini-crits. It's probably more of a game feel design to disable crits there probably because those weapons critting in situations they can't normally would have felt even worse. Also it probably would have made learning the situations for using those weapons properly harder since the messaging could get mixed up on whether that crit was earned or not.
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Sep 14, 2023 10:04
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The only class I do not enjoy fighting is the heavy and that is for silly reasons caused by the way the game was advertised; i.e. they always seem to have a pocket medic and I am not good enough at fighting them. And the only random crits that bother me are minigun crits. I think they are worse than sniper hits because I can try to duck and weave and such from a headshot, but the minigun spray is all over the place and because they have meds and are doing so well they seem to get it a lot more than is fun, I would make it so that no minigun could ever crit unless being kritzed deliberately and I think I would be quite OK with that.
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Sep 14, 2023 10:30
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Remember when the Backburner gave +50 max HP in exchange for removing a mechanic that was literally added in the same update so all Pyro players were used to playing without it anyway
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Sep 14, 2023 14:34
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Blind Duke posted:A distinction to be made between spread and random spread. A minigun can have a spread to throw bullets consistently in a pattern that’s relatively even and patterned to be hard to abuse, but is consistent and won’t have a buncha bullets randomly come out left leaning as you are tracking an enemy running to the right. Yeah this is what I meant, random spread. I do think it'd be possible to add non-random spread to miniguns/pistols in a way described here, but also yeah it's a good point that it's way easier to just change a server setting than to develop an entirely new mod for it or something. Just a bit funny to me that I see some servers going so far as to entirely rebalance weapons but like, nobody seems to even try to address this obvious bit of randomness that can easily determine if someone lives or dies. Pistols can be surprisingly strong when all your bullets hit, but sometimes even at relatively close ranges your bullets just decide to fly off into the atmosphere even when you're dead on target.
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Sep 14, 2023 14:41
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Dabir posted:Remember when the Backburner gave +50 max HP in exchange for removing a mechanic that was literally added in the same update so all Pyro players were used to playing without it anyway It is the best pyro mechanic, I love it so much. I always feel lost without airblast. My team need to be helped all the time, so I always roll with airblast and maul to put out the team and get rid of sappers. I like to help 
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Sep 14, 2023 14:49
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Still say the 3rd degree needs ubercharge drain That would make it very viable
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Sep 14, 2023 14:55
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I hate that my brain worms are so tickled by kill tracking that I'm tempted to buy a bunch of 2-3$ stranges for weapons I -occasionally- use just cause it almost feels bad using those weapons over ones that can track kills. I even sold off a bunch of stuff from my steam inventory that I wasn't using and could afford them with wallet alone, but that's still money that could be spent on a real game. 
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Sep 14, 2023 14:59
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