2901

Oh yeah, that’s absolutely right. I’ll never have a go at someone for not dropping the uber on me, because where they deploy it is completely their prerogative. I just usually swear a little under my breath, because they love to tease me so! I find a good strategy is waiting for it to be deployed on whoever, then using them as a distraction to go in and wreak havoc whilst they draw all the SG fire.

2902

Bonk!

2903

Yeah, I hear you on the uber. My toughest call as a medic is deciding WHEN to uber the push to the last point. I KNOW that if you are a heavy/pyro/demo/soldier and I’m healing you with 100% uber, that you are EXPECTING that uber NOW to go charging in.

What you probably DON’T know is that “I” tend to know where the rest of our team is. As a medic, since I’m not actively shooting it’s easier to keep track of most of the team. If they are NOT in position to support our last charge to the point, ubering you solo will do nothing more than kill a single SG before our death. The last point always has 2+ engies who will have that turret back up in seconds after we die on our solo run.

Think Dustbowl’s last point…

SamF7

2904

The need to communicate re: uber popping was perhaps the greatest impetus behind my decision to get a mic. If at least one person in a medic-target pair can voice-chat, there’s not only better coordination between them but also better awareness for the rest of the team.

2905

I’m a GOOD medic, but this is what prevents me from being a GREAT medic…after 9:00PM, that is. I have a mic, but once the wife and kiddies go to sleep, I’m under strict orders that the mic shuts OFF.

A silent medic loses a lot in effectiveness, although I’ve noticed more and more players are getting VERY GOOD at body language. I was 100% uber-ready on a pyro last night, and I swear, he turned around, nodded his head, mumbled “MMHRM MRR MMM Something”, and when I waggled my mouse up and down in acknowledgement, he THEN turned around, rounded the corner, and charged the enemy sentries. Of COURSE he got the uber!! Good communication, even “MMHRM MRR MMM!!”, should always be rewarded.

SamF7

2906

i love doing that. medics don’t get no respect.

2907

Being that Scout is my favorite class and I now have logged enough time to get the Race for the Pennant achievement here is my brief review of the scout unlockables for anyone who might care.

Bonk! Energy Drink
A nice effect but only with very limited usefulness. You can’t pick up anything while under the effect and I only found it to be useful in the following instances.
1: Triggering sticky traps followed up by killing the demoman that laid them.
2: Slipping past sentries
3: Drawing sentry fire while your team takes it out

All these are cicrumstantial situations and of limited use really. The slowdown after the effect wears off doesn’t help either, even if you get by some chokepoint you can still be easily overtaken and killed. I feel that even without the speed slowdown this item still wouldn’t be overpowered seeing as it doesn’t actually kill or cap anything. Not to mention that combined with the single minded sentiment of most players to pursue anything they see until it’s dead, this is like painting a very large bullseye on yourself.

I would say that the pistol is better for more individual players and the Bonk better for team players (provided you have a decent team).

The Sandman
Very nice item. The stun is really useful to counter ubers, heavies, flagrunners and snipers. The amount of utility this thing provides is rather extensive and I’m sure I didn’t found all of it yet. The mechanic with the ball should allow for some advanced mastery of it as well.
The no double jumping is a minor handicap as long as you adjust to the more controlling playstyle the Sandman facillitates (which suits me just fine as I can’t hit anything while double jumping). However, if you get caught without a ball or you miss your boink your chances of getting away are diminished. So expect to die more.

Basically, the Sandman turns the Scout in a more defensive class and more team oriented.

The Force-a-Nature
This gun is a large ammount of unmitigated ASS. And not the good kind. I tried to make this work, I even adjusted my playing style using it and I got the fifty kills from behind with it. But no, I found myself playing Turbine as a skirmisher in the center for 15 minutes when I suddenly realized I only had scored seven points.

The biggest problem isn’t even the reload time, it’s the requirement that you need to be in somebodies face for it to do any damage. More often then not the first shot will hit but the second one will miss because you are so close by any movement is amplified. The knockback(both on them and you) makes things worse by actually bringing targets outside your pointblank range.

Combined with the sandman stun this gun becomes somewhat more useful but having to set up a stun first before you can properly use your primary weapon is just bad. Also rather then double jumping around your target you have to hide instead which usually means increasing range. Another minor plus side to this gun is that you can do a triple jump with it (if you don’t use the Sandman which means negating previous minor plus) and that it allows some serious acrobatics but that’s for far more twitchy players then me.

So what it boils down to that the effective dps with this gun is so low it’s simply not worth it. And now that the scout rush has died down most scouts that I see have switched back to the scattergun.
Frankly, the only real use I got out of this gun is that I carried over the habit of firing, adjust aim, fire again to the scattergun which raised my effectiveness with that weapon.

I think only players who love burst damage instant will ever use this and they usually play (crappy) snipers anyway.

2908

Time to resurrect this thread with some videos I’ve enjoyed recently:
TF2 Top Ten Plays 1
TF2 Top Ten Plays 2
TF2 Top Ten Plays 3

2909

the new tf2 update screwed my game up so i can’t join a game.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=844623

what feature/fixes were so important that an update had to be done?

Game Changes
Reworked the character loadout screens to support future features

Added the ability for players to permanently delete items from their inventory using the new Backpack menu. This does not reset achievements. Once an item has been deleted it can never be re-earned

Added the ability for players to reset their player stats using the Reset Stats button on the Stats menu. This does not reset achievements

Added a “player_teleported” game event that is sent when a player is teleported

Updated cp_junction_final to score per-capture instead of per-round. This fixes the map not working correctly with Tournament mode and the stopwatch

Scouts now drop the flag if they’re carrying it when they start phasing

Fixes
Fixed instances where Steam connection problems would cause some unlocked items to be unusable

Fixed the custom crosshair menu not clearing itself when “None” is selected for non-English clients

Fixed warning about not being able to execute skill1.cfg when starting the dedicated server

i say solving the dreaded crosshair menu not clearing itself for non-english clients bug is worth any risk.

2910

I got one-shotted by scouts all night tonight. As a heavy.
I hate to be one of “those people”, but this is a bit of a change.

2911

I havent played a lot TF at all…any good place to read up?

2912

… This thread?

It’s a pretty self-explanatory game, not sure what you’re looking to read up on.

2913

Well, what is a Uber? Class synergy so I don’t get the voice chat spam that makes my ears bleed exc.

2914

That deleting items permanently using the backpack thing is just really weird. What possible reason could you ever have to permanently remove an unlocked item? If you don’t want it, don’t use it.

How come the Scouts were one-shotting you Mike? Did they get some sort of damage buff I didn’t know about?

An uber is an ability the medics can charge up as they heal. It can either provide the medic and their target with a brief period of invulnerability if the medic is using the default medigun, or a brief period of 100% critical (increased damage) shots if they’re using the unlocked medigun. It’s slightly awkward to explain, but exceptionally easy to pick up in practice. Run away from the glowy dudes.

All the classes are synergistic. That’s the nature of the beast.

2915

If you have some time, you could start with RPS’s class guide. It’s not a straight game guide, but it’s a fun read. Some of the things mentioned are obsolete, or have been patched out, but generally its a nice intro to how the characters play and how they feel.

If you’re looking to pick up the game, start as Medic. Medic lets you follow around a more experienced player, so you can learn the maps. Also, everybody loves a medic. Managing Ubers properly can be key to winning games, but nobody will complain if you just follow them and heal them. When a medic dies, its usually his buddy’s fault, not his. Heavy, Pyro, Demo, and Soldier can all be good medic buddies.

Spy, Sniper, and Engineer all require a lot of knowledge to the map and the choke points, so you might want to avoid those until you have more experience. Spy is probably the most difficult class to play well.

But really, as you play, you’ll see the unique complementary abilities of the classes unfold in front of you over time. You’ll find your team in a bad predicament and then suddenly realize that the class you never use is perfect for that situation, and you’ll want to explore them. It really almost is 9 different games in one.

2916

Um, okay, so Kotaku has a brief rundown on the extent of the expanded changes, that may explain the “delete item from backpack” thing. As you may have noticed, the weapons have had “levels” for a while (Pyro flare gun is Level 10 flaregun, shotgun is level 1 shotgun, Natasha is Level 7 Minigun). They appear to be prepping some sort of expanded weapons system, where you’ll be able to acquire (not sure how) rogue-like random generated weapons with different levels. So, you might want to drop some of those out of your backpack forever, since they’ll be of varying quality and you’ll have limited space.

I am… not optimistic about this. The TF2 team has absolutely done a fantastic job thus far, but I fear this is going to be changing the game a little too much. I understand how this could avoid changes to the base gameplay in theory (balancing the ne weapons the way the unlocks have been, with different kinds of tradeoffs), but it looks like this will be so easy to mess up.

Also, there’s a new slot for “head” items, with various hats people can wear. Maybe this will just be for Identification purposes (“all forward engies wear the standard helmet, otherwise they’re spies!”), but this really has the potential to upset what has proved to be a expertly balanced game.

I’m very skeptical. I trust them to not be doing this sort of thing without major consideration, but I’m very skeptical.

2917

I do not get why there is a need to display teleports. Seems like unnecessary text spam to me.

2918

Try this:

TF2 Wiki

2919

New interview with Robin Walker over at Shack News. He discusses uncoupling unlocks from achievements and new hats and item drops.

Link

2920

Man. I trust Valve, but that makes for some depressing reading. All that work they did balancing and making the game deep, yet elegant enough to be accessible seems to be falling by the wayside. I understand refining and changing things, and I actually think the changes so far have generally been positive, but this seems too complicated and too messy.