The Team Fortress 2 Unofficial Official Thread

Games
21

Here are my thoughts about balance so far:

Overpowered:
-Spies. Cloak is 100% invisibility, not even a motion blur at close range, and lasts quite awhile. Their electronic sabotage kits do an immense amount of damage and you have to basically stand next to your deployables else you won’t get to them in time to remove the kit, PLUS it doesn’t kick them out of disguise. Their disguise is, to the best of my knowledge, impossible to detect without just shooting everyone on your team.

Underpowered:
-Pyros. They’re just awful. First up, you’re only slightly faster than the solider, but have 75 fewer hitpoints, and no way to increase your mobility via a rocket jump. Second, your flamethrower’s range is maybe three times that of melee. It’s tiny, and pretty much anyone except Heavies can out-backpedal you. The tooltip recommend they’re an “ambush” class, but the Spy is way, way better at that, since his backstab is an insta-kill. Most times as a Pyro you’ll pop out, start to burn someone, they’ll turn around and kill you, and then if you’re lucky, they burn to death. And don’t dare try approaching anything head-on, there’s so much knockback in this game and you’re so pathetically slow that you’ll never get in your puny range.

The flamethrower’s range needs to go up, and the Pyro needs a special power like all the other classes have. Maybe creating an oil slick on the ground that slows down people moving through it and ignites when lit? It’s more of a defensive role for an offense class, but then all the defense classes are amazingly strong offensively too. Would be nice to see one that turns the paradigm.

The sole use of Pyros I can think of is defending the intelligence in CTF, and hoping to ignite a low-HP Scout so he dies from burning as he tries to run. But intelligent turret positioning will do that fine.

Too important, ie, you have them or you lose:
-Engineers. Turrets are VERY powerful, and teleport pads can set up some crazy stuff. Dispensers are stationary, albeit slow, healers, and are good for stationary support classes like the Sniper. Without a turret network, you’re going to get steamrolled.

-Medics. Their healing is amazingly fast and invulnerability is just stupid and lasts forever. If your team isn’t using the Soldier/Medic or Heavy/Medic combo, and the opponent is, you will lose, simple as that. Fortunately they’re absolutely terrible by themselves, and thusly not overpowered.

22

Cloak is 100% invisibility, not even a motion blur at close range

Uh I dont think this is true. I’ve seen spys that are cloaked before.

23

If they take damage, or are just entering or leaving cloak, there’s a shimmer. Otherwise, 100% transparent.

24

I’ve seen non-100% cloaks, and they’re completely ineffective in FPS’s. Besides, the only class that a spy can disguise as and be seen decloaking is the enemy spy, and to be honest, spies disguised as spies stick out like a sore thumb because they do not appear to wear any disguise.

25

Yeah, if the spy isn’t 100% invisible he might as well be 100% visible… whatever that means.

Maybe something like standing still he is invisible, but moving he leaves a blur or something would work better? I don’t know, I finally broke down and pre-ordered this thing, but TF2 isn’t ready to play yet…

26

Medic - Class I loved from TFC now no more plague to spread but man range healing is amazing coupled with the 10 sec ‘god mode’ it’s just an amazing back up class.

Engy - Mmmm turrets propper placement and the kills just roll right in drop a supply depot near by and you never need to move since you heal at the depot too. the transporter seems to still be overlooked by many an engy but is a very powerful device.

Scout - aka the crack class what isn’t there to love about being the fastest thing zipping around the map jumping twice as high and being able to zip right past the soldier / heavy and club the medic. Also I think that they can some how see the spys as I’ve seen stealthed spies more often on my scout then other classes but not really sure yet.

Sniper - long range support auto charging when zoomed for oen shot kill head shots also good for picking out the legs or sides of turrets to take them down without them firing back

Spy - Holy cow this class is over powered for now timing claok with costum changes and a little bit of watching enemy movement and you can cause real chaos. I’ve turned many a stand off into our team rolling over through sappers and cloaking mis direction.

Pyro - Wicked powerful at close range also high non flamable pyro v pyro your better off using shotgun axe combo then trying to flame em. They also makes spies burn real nice too found they could drop most anything but a heavy with a good stream of flame even if they die the residual will finish the target off if it doesn’t find some water fast.

Demo - it’s the grenade launcher splash damage pipebomb class they can make some places really hard to get past and cap but beyond that I’d rather be a soldier. They can pipbomb jump better then a soldier can rocket jump though and hte primary nades do seem to blow on impact with a target, if their fuse is still going that is.

Heavy - right click to spin up before enter the action is a real life saver especially on maps where you know the action is going to be like around cap points. with a medic this guys become roving death spewing machines till they run outa ammo that is then they are just a big target.

Soldier - excelent skrimisher I don’t find myself rocket jumping as much maybe I just haven’t figured out hte finer points of it for TF2. Excelent for popping out of a corner and launching a rocket at a turret then ducking back to cover to pop out and fire another.

Just my views on the various classes that I’ve played so far in order of time spent as each class.

27

Yes and no. Lets put it this way, you can’t win a game with spies. In an actual stand up fight they’re not worth much. Which means they have to get the element of surprise, cloak up and vanish. And in that vanishing time, they’re not killing. In contrast, put a demoman on the frontlines and he can rack up the kills. And at the end of the day, killing is whats going to let you win games. Everytime I’ve played a map when half or more of the my team was spies I found my team summarily beat.

Pyros, on the otherhand, do seem like they need a boost for something other then screening for spies. Fun class though.

28

You may not be able to singlehandedly win a game with spies, but you can certainly win sudden death with them. :)

If you have a good feel of the other team’s class makeup (what classes are they used to seeing run everywhere?) and can properly time your use of cloaking, you can put yourself in position to decimate the opposing team in seconds. I had a round earlier where I snuck behind the enemy team and backstabbed about 6 guys before anyone had any idea what was going on. If your match is about to go to overtime, switching to spy isn’t a bad deal.

29

This game sounds too fun. I haven’t played TF2 yet, but I always recall a spy’s best friend being bad teamwork. They demand their own specific defensive measures which I’m sure no one’s completely figured out yet, though some appear to be on the case.

30

Upon further study, the key to the pipe bombs appears to be direct hits. Their splash damage is minimal, but a 1-2 direct hits in the face and your opponents explode.

I finally had some luck with the Pyro as well. It was when my team was pinned in our last base. We had several turrets up, and they kept trying to sabotage them. I was able to easily keep the off with regular fire bursts. Still, that’s pretty situational, and I felt incredibly weak even in close quarters with almost any other class.

31

Yeah, I don’t really get the pyro. If you watch the commentary, they say that you are supposed to use the pyro to ambush people by hiding around corners. But ambushes seem kind of contrary to their supposed offensive role. Like somebody else was saying, usually what happens to me is that I set somebody on fire, then immediately die.

32

I had great fun in TFC playing spy. “Yeah, I’m a sniper too… yup… looking out the window… just turn your back… DIE!”

Alternate with “hide in the attic of the base”, and it’s hours of “kill the sniper” fun. Flag captures? Phhhhhbbblllt.

I’m looking forward to TF2 in the Orange Box on the XBox.

Pyro in TFC was just there to annoy people. “Ahhh! Flames! I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING AND AM LAGGED TO HELL!”

33

I was gonna wait for the 360 version but I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on this. I figured I might as well use this damn PC for something and I will have Halo 3 to keep my 360 warm… very warm. Plus I have been waiting for this stupid game for 8 years, I can’t wait any more!

On my X2 4600+ with 2 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia 6800GS (I really need to upgrade that thing) it ran fine - no crashes, fairly good framerate, almost all high settings at 1680x1050. Anyway, my thoughts. It’s amazingly fun. It’s totally Team Fortress and I love the lack of grenades. It plays great. Maybe not the type of godly experience I would’ve expected with 9 years in development but hey, didn’t BC3000AD take about that long?

Agree with all on the pyro. He’s a total gimp. I hope Valve is checking out the kill/play rates and sees what a turd he is now. He needs either more health, or his flamethrower needs to go out a little bit longer, or he needs some sort of fire grenade or something like that to give him a medium/long range option.

34

Wow. I have an X2 4400+, 2GB RAM, 7800GTX, and it’s nowhere near as smooth as I’d like it to be (and most settings are on Medium or the middle option, save for Textures which are on High).

Maybe my Creative soundcard is fucking things up?

Also, I wanted to note that splash damage is pathetic in this game, outside of the Demo’s sticky bombs. Maybe that was more the intended role of a Pyro – no setup required AOE? And yes, as someone mentioned earlier on, the way to get (a ton of) kills with the Demo’s pipe bombs is to try to get direct hits. The pipe bombs explode on contact and will kill low HP targets in one hit, everything else but Heavy in 2, and Heavies in 3-4.

35

I think your suggestion for the medium/long range option for the pyro is the best Jfletch. Having a shotgun as a back up to the flamethrower is total ass. He’s only really viable in close quarters, and even then it’s not that big of an advantage. He needs molotov cocktails or something similar to close the gap. or maybe a sprint button, something.

I just got done playing an assault style map where the pyro was completely unused by either side (every other class was played). Also, half my team were engineers when we were the offense side. I wanted to yell, but anger turned to giggles when the defense got bored and peeked into the turret forest.

36

Forward building with Engineers is stupid good. If you can find a lonely ammo spawn deep in enemy territory, you can have a max-level turret, a dispenser, and a teleport exit up in maybe 2 minutes.

A good place to do this is in the little sewer platform under the enemy base in 2fort. Or, for a riskier option, hide a teleport exit behind the crates/barrels right outside the base’s sewer stairs in the enemy base, and have the Soldiers in your team rocket-jump up to the second level, totally bypassing that death trap double ramp room. Added fun if you can work a turret in somewhere.

37

i dunno, when i first started playing, i thought the pyro was very underpowered, but the more i play it, i realize it has some great strengths…but, it is very situational. As mentioned, its great for rooting out spys, so if we’re dealing with a lot of spy spawns, ill find myself moving to this role to clear them out…additionally, they’re good for point defense, particularly when paired with an engy…

38

I agree the pyro feels a little gimped right now, but I’d be worried about pumping him up too much. I can think of a lot of situations where teams get clustered together and giving the pyro a little more range could quickly make him a beast.

On 2Fort, I’ll second the rocket-jump-up-to-the-balcony strat. I spent an entire match doing that and lost track of how many kills I got by enemies randomly walking out to the balcony, not expecting anyone to be there. If you can keep that area clear of snipers, the bridge area becomes less of a bottleneck and helps your team put more pressure on the enemy base.

You know, I totally forgot – when we originally previewed 2Fort months ago, the central bridge wasn’t covered. I like the fact that it’s protected now, so you at least have some protection from snipers.

39

Is anyone else thinking its a bit premature to be calling classes gimped when the game is so fresh that most servers are filled with maniacs running around like untrained kids in a new toybox? Also, isn’t it possible that previous TF experience is hard to shake off and playing the game in the old ways plays a part in the dynamic?

I just find it hilarious that, a few days into playing a game with so many variables that contribute to success, with many potential nuances to the maps undiscovered and unexplored, people are just writing off the Pyro.

I had one of those dudes just wipe out my team on a server when he popped out of some water unexpectedly as my guys were battling his friends across the way. We were all dead before we realized he’d appeared in our midsts.

Why TRY to juice some use out of the class? Why try to be creative about it? Better to post negative comments on a hot topic thread and bask in the glow of mutual agreement and self-assurance.

–edited for missing ? marks in the attitude-rich conclusion

40

That roof is good for scouts running from one balcony to the other, too.