Clarification about "comp players still playing" and why I am so bitter about TF2

[grazr]

Well judging by that thread it hasn't been updated since way before the most recent compulsary update. If it doesn't work for all those server hosts complaining for a plugin update in the thread, i doubt it'll work for us.

 

[Sel]

Oh well, the first one suggest is can work with just SM, and was just updated a few days ago, but guess not, was worth a shot.

 

[Ravidge]

Oh well, the first one suggest is can work with just SM, and was just updated a few days ago, but guess not, was worth a shot.

Tried it, and the one you linked next. both alone and in conjunction.
All the options say stuff are blocked, and so does the ingame menu, but nothing is actually happening. So nope, it doesn't work.

 

[Sel]

Alright well I'll keep an eye on them and let you know when/if they get fixed I guess.

 

[Mariner]

He's killed by weapons that he didn't even know existed, doesn't understand how they work and cannot counter them with stock/original unlocks.

This, I think, is the smoking gun that illustrates how poorly Valve's actually maintained the mechanics of balance. If you lose connection to the loadout server, TF2 turns into an entirely different game, and it's because of the mission creep and general unbalancing of the unlocks both within classes and across teams. It's especially apparenty when only a few people on one side lose their loadouts, because even if the majority of their opponents are using vanilla primaries, the secondary and support weapons allow them to fine tune and adjust their tactics far more effectively. Those with loadouts always win.

Hell, this is the entire reason the DemoKnight exsists. From the get go, the Demoman was the result of removing the grenade mechanics from the game, and stuffing them into a single class. On paper, that sounds great...if the Soldier didn't exist.

This is a brief except from the article I've been working of for a while now. It's an in-depth autopsy of why the Demo and Demoknight are evidence of the fundamental breakdown in balancing that's been present since launch day, and why every problem Trotim mentions stems directly from it, from the store to the promotions to the influx of shitty (and amazing) hats.

 

[Trotim]

Didn't see any other fitting thread:

http://etf2l.org/forum/general/topic-15905/page-1/

That plugin should make it pretty easy to go from all unlocks/hats/miscs to only blut/kritz/ubersaw, no hats, no miscs. It's also evidently regularly updated and recent - setting this should then not be any harder than setting nextmap or the time limit, as far as I can tell. All the other comp-specific stuff you can just leave off (like bunnyhopping, what).

 

[grazr]

Do people want this on the server? Generally you guys want pure settings, including crits and damage spread. I guess for testing purposes it's useful to have all the weapons even if some are gay because that's the environment your map will be released in; it'd be more useful to block specific problematic unlocks. But other than the medic loadout whitelist i can't see how it does that.

 

[Sel]

Just have vanilla+medlock test events for people who want a proper testing environment, and normal tests for people who don't really care about balance anyway :]

 

[Doctor Paprika]

I honestly think the people who play on the TF2M servers can generally be counted on to not use the gimmicky bullshit weapons (the recent surge of Pomson Engies and Phlogistinator Pyros notwithstanding).

Everyone's basically covered the range of opinions about TF2's decline, but as someone who played it a lot for the first 8 or 9 months and then didn't play it again for two years, I can say that, for all the unnecessary clutter, I still find it just as fun as I did in '07. I quickly found some reliable servers with good players, so I rarely run across just a bunch of spammy F2P noobs with garbage weapons being cheap. What's kept the game so enjoyable for so long is a solid community that Valve, despite their money-grubbing in the past year and a half, still cares about and encourages.

As for unlocks, the fixation on the Medic original unlocks as the only ones worth whitelisting is a bit stupid. The Blutsauger, for instance, isn't unbalanced, but I think it encourages sloppy, selfish play more than, say, Jarate or the Gunslinger. This catch-all hatred of new weapons strikes me as a bit odd in general because every major update so far has had at least one weapon that changed the game for the better.

 

[LeSwordfish]

Suggestion: Implement a blacklist of worst offenders for testing- the grordbot stuff, maybe- and allow it to be set to a whitelist for casual ply.

 

[Harribo]

I don't think enough people care about it to the extent of some as you seem to think, even the OP weapons are still manageable, adapt. If we do have it installed I think it should be turned on a single map basis by vote.

 

[Trotim]

Suggestion: Implement a blacklist of worst offenders for testing- the grordbot stuff, maybe- and allow it to be set to a whitelist for casual ply.

But that's the thing, we've been looking for plugins like this for.. forever and none of them work properly without mp_tournament 1 because Valve is very adamant on not allowing server owners to actually restrict these in pub environments (for money reasons). So the few plugins that can do it are actually a lot of work and always have a tendency to break whenever Valve goes ahead to, well, break them on purpose again.

In theory I agree though.

Do people want this on the server? Generally you guys want pure settings, including crits and damage spread. I guess for testing purposes it's useful to have all the weapons even if some are gay because that's the environment your map will be released in; it'd be more useful to block specific problematic unlocks. But other than the medic loadout whitelist i can't see how it does that.

First(ly?), it would still make sense to have one or two tests with restricted weapons to get a more consistent result maybe and to rule out gimmicky unlocks breaking things. No reason not to do one or two gamedays of your map like this, of the like fifty you'll have.

Secondly, the environment your map is designed for does not have to be vanilla, especially when you're focusing on competitive TF2 a bit more which tends to restrict a lot of weapons.

But again I agree but haven't found a simple plugin that actually allows for pub weapon restrictions.

I honestly think the people who play on the TF2M servers can generally be counted on to not use the gimmicky bullshit weapons (the recent surge of Pomson Engies and Phlogistinator Pyros notwithstanding).

Everyone's basically covered the range of opinions about TF2's decline, but as someone who played it a lot for the first 8 or 9 months and then didn't play it again for two years, I can say that, for all the unnecessary clutter, I still find it just as fun as I did in '07. I quickly found some reliable servers with good players, so I rarely run across just a bunch of spammy F2P noobs with garbage weapons being cheap. What's kept the game so enjoyable for so long is a solid community that Valve, despite their money-grubbing in the past year and a half, still cares about and encourages.

As for unlocks, the fixation on the Medic original unlocks as the only ones worth whitelisting is a bit stupid. The Blutsauger, for instance, isn't unbalanced, but I think it encourages sloppy, selfish play more than, say, Jarate or the Gunslinger. This catch-all hatred of new weapons strikes me as a bit odd in general because every major update so far has had at least one weapon that changed the game for the better.

The first paragraph is not true at all judging from what I saw in the 20 minutes or so I checked the US server during the gameday. The problem is that many gimmicky bullshit weapons are actually upgrades (Tomislav, Atomizer, Overdose...) so you will see them used a lot.

The solid community... maybe TF2M has a solid community but the game's community in general has gone to hell as well. Even then again of the 20 minutes of gameday I could see that half the time people were talking about trading random crap instead which isn't really a sign of them focusing on playing the game, you know? Especially when they're supposed to be learning and testing a new map. Pretty much everyone wore hats and those weapons with kill counters too so it's not like you're avoiding the money-grubbing either. Anyway...

The decision to only allow the Medic unlocks comes from the European competitive scene and is pretty much unanimous. It keeps things consistent and while there are some acceptable unlocks they tend to not be used in comp anyway so they're not added to the whitelist. The Blutsauger is only there so it's easy to say "Medic achievement unlocks" or whatever, it isn't actually used either. Just a clarity thing.

However I do agree. It's a competitive plugin so their restrictions were bound to be more strict but it's simply the best plugin I found. (It's not bound to work either, I can't test it so maybe it has some vital flaw as well)

I'm still a purveyor of the weapon whitelist for the game in general but can see how it would be good to do it the other way around on TF2M. Personally this is how I see it, keep in mind I don't know the newer weapons at all:

Problematic weapons to blacklist:
Atomizer, maybe Boston Basher (both affect jumps in a major way, the former is a huge upgrade)
Cow Mangler 5000 (affects sentry spots, circumvents ammo placement)
Rocket Jumper, Sticky Jumper (just for trolling anyway)
Tomislav (still makes Heavy too powerful)
Holiday Punch (trolling)
Pomson 6000 (affects ubers, spies, circumvents ammo placement)
Wrangler (breaks sentry spots hard)
Enforcer (still makes Battle Spy too powerful)
Spycicle?

The idea being that even just one of these can make a map's gameplay problematic when it's actually the weapon's fault.

If we do have it installed I think it should be turned on a single map basis by vote.

That's the idea, you don't need to turn it on 24/7 or anything.

EDIT: Actually why a vote? I would have thought it would just be the map author's decision.

 

[Harribo]

Valve is very adamant on not allowing server owners to actually restrict these in pub environments (for money reasons).

lolwut?

Secondly, the environment your map is designed for does not have to be vanilla, especially when you're focusing on competitive TF2 a bit more which tends to restrict a lot of weapons.

thought i agree that a whitelist would help for testing for a competitive audience, we aren't that audience, if you want to test your map under those curcumstances there better groups than us for that, our tests fill up with regualrs and random pubbers from our group

Pretty much everyone wore hats and those weapons with kill counters too so it's not like you're avoiding the money-grubbing either.

wearing hats and using strange weapons means your not playing TF2 properly? I think not.

Problematic weapons to blacklist:
Atomizer, maybe Boston Basher (both affect jumps in a major way, the former is a huge upgrade)
Cow Mangler 5000 (affects sentry spots, circumvents ammo placement)
Rocket Jumper, Sticky Jumper (just for trolling anyway)
Tomislav (still makes Heavy too powerful)
Holiday Punch (trolling)
Pomson 6000 (affects ubers, spies, circumvents ammo placement)
Wrangler (breaks sentry spots hard)
Enforcer (still makes Battle Spy too powerful)
Spycicle?

you need to decide if you want these weapons blacklisted so you can test in a comp environment, which a 24man server won't give you anyway, or just want pub play with only your liked weapons in play, which isn't testing anything more throughly as pub play has these weapons whether you like it or not, the problems you've circumvented in the testing will just become apparent when played on any server other than ours.

EDIT: Actually why a vote? I would have thought it would just be the map author's decision.

If the playtesters don't want to test with weapon restrictions and you force it apon them, they will just leave imo. that's why i suggested a vote

 

[Sel]

lolwut?

Do you remember why the custom hat plugins, prophunt (or was it tf2ware, or both?), and countless other plugins were broken around the time of the mannconomy update?

It was because the same bit of code that those plugins used could be used to give players official hats they didn't actually own through other plugins.

This isn't something to laugh about, since what Tro said was bang on, and it should (have) scare(d) the shit out of you about the future of tf2.

 

[Harribo]

he was talking about Valve not allowing server owners to restrict weapons without mp_tournament 1 on. that has nothing to do with not allowing servers to attach models to players i.e give them donater hats from what I can see even if they were in the same patch

 

[Sel]

he was talking about Valve not allowing server owners to restrict weapons without mp_tournament 1 on. that has nothing to do with not allowing servers to attach models to players i.e give them donater hats from what I can see even if they were in the same patch

Except the reverse of my examples is what's going on too. Do you really think Valve wants pubbies to have weapons and hats they may have paid for taken away?

hint: they don't, hence why the unlock blocking plugins seem to keep being broken.

 

[Trotim]

If the playtesters don't want to test with weapon restrictions and you force it apon them, they will just leave imo. that's why i suggested a vote

True, didn't consider that

thought i agree that a whitelist would help for testing for a competitive audience, we aren't that audience, if you want to test your map under those curcumstances there better groups than us for that, our tests fill up with regualrs and random pubbers from our group

you need to decide if you want these weapons blacklisted so you can test in a comp environment, which a 24man server won't give you anyway, or just want pub play with only your liked weapons in play, which isn't testing anything more throughly as pub play has these weapons whether you like it or not, the problems you've circumvented in the testing will just become apparent when played on any server other than ours.

Fair enough. The fact there are still no pubs with a weapon whitelist by the way makes it pretty evident it's hard to restrict this stuff. Well I didn't really expect TF2M to want to add this option anyway, and I guess you're right that regulars are just too used to the shitty unlocks

That said this plugin might be even more fitting than the ETF2L one, but seems to just completely disable all of them too:
http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=140045

 

[Tarry H Sruman]

I don't imagine it would be terribly difficult for Valve to add some sort of checkbox that server hosts can enable that disables all unlocks. Maybe by forcing a disconnect from the item server if there isn't a cleaner solution.

 

[Trotim]

I don't imagine it would be terribly difficult for Valve to add some sort of checkbox that server hosts can enable that disables all unlocks. Maybe by forcing a disconnect from the item server if there isn't a cleaner solution.

It wouldn't be hard but it has been years since people first started asking for the option so it's not going to happen.

To address what harribo brought up - the whole "restricted unlocks" thing could be a separate event so people know exactly what they're getting into?

 

[grazr]

You'll be surprised how much Valve's cooperation with the modding community has dropped since the ingame store went live. The freedom we took for granted was slashed in half, if even as little as that.

Personally my stance on this is a little different from crits and damage spread which actively produce gameplay balance anomolies. Black listing unlocks isn't the kind of environment we need to run, we hope regular members will cooperate and just not use stupid weapons in respect to the map authors. Plus if we restrict weapons we're likely to alienate non-regulars that help to fill up our server during gamedays.