Team Fortress 2 Update Released

[Pocket]

I've never had much love for comp in general and 6s in particular, but I won't deny that Valve has loaded the game down with a lot of utter bullshit over the years. From items you'd have to either be an idiot or have carefully honed a very specific playstyle to not use (like the GRU), to items that are straight upgrades if random crits are disabled, to items that are of dubious usefulness but extremely annoying to go up against (Gunslinger, Rocket Jumper) to items that are literal straight upgrades in all cases (like the Amputator).

A lot of this, I'm sure, comes from the game no longer being in the hands of its original creators. Who knows who's actually running the show anymore and if even one of them was involved in the game's development. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's also partly because they realized a game this fundamentally complex is impossible to really balance as perfectly as they had thought and so why not throw any sense of order to the wind and embrace the shenanigans? Either way, they've completely lost any sense of what kind of game this was meant to be by this point. If this experiment is making them suddenly realize that, well, that's one good thing to come out of it, even if it turns out to be too late to do anything about it and Competitive Matchmaking gets thrown onto the same pile as Arena, Medieval Mode, and Mannpower: A dead end that they left in the game just in case anyone was interested and occasionally toss in bug fixes for but, ehh, for the most part they're going to try to pretend it never happened.

 

[Yrr]

I found this pretty interesting about comp meta and unlocks/restrictions

 

[DrLambda]

I'm sorry if my post looked passive-aggressive in any way, that wasn't my intention.
I just wanted to voice my opinion that i consider the way of getting results, then changing unlocks according to these results (which is what Valve intends to do if i understood them correctly) better than balancing the game around what the 6s meta is right now, because the 6s meta seems to be more than willing to sacrifice most new content for the sake of consistency.
I'm not blaming them for that, the way they are playing seems to be way more fun than trying to push into a fortified last for 15+ minutes. I'd just rather have a game where more strategies are viable, and like i said before, i consider the new Valve way to be more able to achieve this than by simply listening to 6s players, who played inside their own meta for thousands of hours.

I also have to say that i don't think it's too late to fix the unlocks in a way that makes a whole lot more of them viable in comp while not being utter bullshit balance-wise, i think MOBAs has shown us over the last years that it is possible to balance at least equally, if not more complex metagames around competitive.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

As always, discussion on this topic is fine. If you're going to discuss it however, please make sure that you're open to everyone's opinions, and respectfully explain when you feel someone is incorrect. We don't really care what your opinions are, as long as you stay respectful.

Some of you didn't in this conversation, and have been warned, but some of you have and I thank you for that.

 

[Davekillerish]

Perhaps move the discussion to an actual discussion thread about comp and mm? (like the one we have) rather then an update post xD

 

[Izotope]

To be completely honest, you're going to have to back up your words with facts. Because the contrary has been shown to be true on far too many occasions.

Valve said in a super old TF post (I believe) that they indeed do read all emails, but like to reply with updates/changes instead.

Too lazy to go through the posts, can somebody link the source to the post I'm referring to?

 

[Dr. Orange]

Valve said in a super old TF post (I believe) that they indeed do read all emails, but like to reply with updates/changes instead.

I think Gabe Newell says that in the first commentary node of most Valve games.

 

[Izotope]

Just noticed that they've updated the Competitive Winner/Loser stage.
Better lighting, better texturing, more detail.

 

[LeSwordfish]

Is that not just the same stage, lit differently on a different map?

 

[zahndah]

Is that not just the same stage, lit differently on a different map?

no, i dont think so; the hazard tape changes size.

 

[Yrr]

Is that not just the same stage, lit differently on a different map?

the model includes the background and theres no skybox to generate different lighting per map, I think it has changed.

 

[Izotope]

Is that not just the same stage, lit differently on a different map?

There are also screws now

 

[leprecan]

Since a lot of people talk about competitive players dislike of snow, I figure I'd explain their view. They want every bit of performance they can in order to keep a steady frame rate for gameplay. If people can't play on a map without frame drops or with good frames, they possibly won't be able to play on it. While snow isn't the sole culprit, it is an obvious draw for performance and as such the first thing pointed out. Its sort of the obvious scapegoat for problems with performance. Additionally, if your map isn't optimized and plays slow, all the pretty snow in the world won't help.

 

[Yrr]

Snow textures can easily have particles disabled on a map, comp doesn't like snow cause it fucks up team and edge recognition

 

[Mikroscopic]

How can it be that hard to tell red apart from blue on a white background?

 

[Yrr]

How can it be that hard to tell red apart from blue on a white background?

color blindness exists yo

and against white rly fucks up the recognition for people w/ color blindness

 

[Corvatile]

Then wouldn't it make more sense for Valve to implement a proper colour-blind mode instead?

 

[Yrr]

Even then its near impossible to judge depth on a flat white displacement

 

[EArkham]

At one point I spoke to MonochromaticBunny about map design and colour blindess, and he said snow has never been an issue. However he has a very rare type of colour blindness, so it's possible that his opinion is different from someone with red/green (or the rarer blue/green) colour blindess.

He has a much bigger issue with team coloured versions of the same texture since those are very difficult to tell apart, and suggested that more mappers start paying attention to using wood/brick for RED and metal/concrete for BLU areas instead.

Also, a proper colour blind mode would be ideal. This can be achieved with the existing vmt parameters available. Even just shifting RED player model skins toward purple when it's enabled would help.

 

[Bogdy]

if demoman's main weapon is supposed to be the Grenade Launcher then it needs to be DRASTICALLY buffed, it's a very very weak weapon.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcYpcpqi8l4