The Team Fortress 2 Unofficial Official Thread

[russellmz00]

Not that the rest of your point doesn’t stand, but most servers I’ve been on, the setup round (on offense) consists of:

(aside from medics, who should be building uber, and soldiers / demos, who should be helping them do so).

no longer necessary, i think an update made ubering quicker for the setup round. in fact, self damaging guys annoy me since i have less chance to overheal other people.

[Squee]

no longer necessary, i think an update made ubering quicker for the setup round. in fact, self damaging guys annoy me since i have less chance to overheal other people.

Yep, they changed it. Medics always gain uber at full speed during warmup now.

[AaronSofaer]

So does anyone play on the IO servers anymore? That seemed to be the way to go, back when I played with my friends.

[The_Condition]

I play on IO a lot. Great servers, if you can find a spot.

[sluggo]

I don’t think the “this pre-match stuff happens in most multiplayer games” statement holds much water, because few games have 60-second warmup times. As Alan noted, that’s something sort of unique to TF2 because it gives the defense time to set up. You don’t see that in CoD or Counter-Strike.

I understand attackers get antsy and hop around or spray stuff or spam “SPY!” over and over, but plenty of people seem capable of waiting without spazzing out (I usually get a drink). And the whole run-up-to-random-person-and-melee-them-for-60-seconds thing just boggles my mind. It’s like watching a dog freak out at a cartoon squirrel. OMG! A person! I must stand here and hit you and hit you and hit you and hit you and hit you and hit you and hit you!. WTF.

I think you could make the ranking stuff work, although it would require locking a few things down. Rankings should be some function of W/L, K/D and PPM, and if you remove the ability to change teams at will (which isn’t uncommon these days) and penalize people for ragequits, you make it harder for people to game the system. You could still allow private matches or /rtd or other mods, you just don’t allow players to gain XP or affect stats on those servers.

[Adree]

The server referred to in my previous example did not have friendly fire enabled. The scout was just beating on teammates because… see, that’s where you lose me. Was he griefing? Just being annoying? Did he actually get some enjoyment out of meleeing teammates and hearing CLANK CLANK CLANK for 70 seconds?

Put it this way: imagine you’re playing baseball, and in between innings a teammate walks up to you and starts poking you for a full minute. You’d probably wonder if the guy was mentally retarded, and there’s a good chance you’d deck the guy if he didn’t stop. And yet I see this all the time in TF2, and that guy is never, ever any good. It’s like a 7 year old dancing around in right field during a little league game.

The problem of people not paying attention to goals is not something every MP game suffers from. Most of the people in a Counter-Strike match are usually working towards their goals, whether it’s planting a bomb or just shooting enemies. The same generally goes for most of the Call of Duty games. But TF2 just has too many distractions, whether it’s sneaking around as a spy or trying to see how many people they can beat with a fish. TF2 gives players more rope to hang themselves with than any other multiplayer game I can think of.

I’ve probably said this elsewhere in this thread, but the way you fix this is extremely simple: Put in some form of XP and a ranking system similar to StarCraft II that groups players of similar skill levels. I don’t care how many ranks you have, whether it’s 3, 5 or 10, but it just shouldn’t be possible for the guy who wants to doublejump for 10 minutes to end up on the same server with experienced players looking for a good game. TF2 is a game that hinges on having balanced teams, and mixing those players together is a surefire recipe to awful games.

(And as a side benefit, if that system requires players to complete finish matches for XP and heavily penalizes players for ragequitting, you go a long way towards fixing the game’s autobalance nonsense, which often result from people bailing 30 seconds before the end of a match.)

It makes me sad, because when the game is clicking, I think it’s the best team MP game ever made. But it’s hard to see this latest F2P move improving things in any way. :(

[sluggo]

I did. I quit the game. :(

[Shadari]

Quitter!

[Squee]

Important TF2 update:

That is all.

[Dan_Lawrence]

TF2 is a deliberately silly game which means it’s rife with people being silly. I mess about at the start of a round, jumping around practising my jumping circle strafing, meleeing, taunting, staring people out, rocket jumping into odd spots… it’s harmless fun. I’m mystified as to why it would upset anyone, and everywhere I’ve played it’s been common practice.

I’m mostly all business when the round starts, but before then? No way. I definitely wouldn’t want Valve to go down the uber competitive route with rankings, XP and all that nonsense. TF2 is a relaxed, comedic game and I hope there is room in the market for it alongside things like League of Legends which go completely the other way.

Just find a reasonable server and some friends to play the game with and it all works out fine.

[Alan_Au]

My method of dealing with the stupidity is to play with people I know, usually on password protected or actively admin’d servers. The Gamers With Jobs servers (aka Stan’s Lounge) are typically saner than most. Importantly, they don’t have any of the crazy mods installed.

[Alex_Hopkinson]

Heh, all the best players (the clan gamers for whom it’s almost a second job) on the server I play on mess around in the warmup too. Messing around in the warmup has absolutely no relation to how well they’ll play the game itself. Once that warmup is over they’re the best team players on the server. On a bad day they might be the only team players on the server, in fact…

[Man_Raised_By_Puffin]

Yep, they changed it. Medics always gain uber at full speed during warmup now.

Quite some time ago in fact:

December 20, 2007

The Medic’s Medigun now charges at an increased rate during Setup time, to remove the need for self-damage grinding

I do enjoy me some pratting about on the odd occasion, blatting people with fish and so forth, but I do tend to keep in mind the objectives. Mostly. So long as the game doesn’t become crushingly one-sided (though even then catastrophic single class rushes are a thing of beauty), a little silliness is just fine and dandy.

[tfernando]

Rankings should be some function of W/L, K/D and PPM, and if you remove the ability to change teams at will (which isn’t uncommon these days) and penalize people for ragequits, you make it harder for people to game the system.

I’m curious since you mentioned it twice, how would you have the server detect a ragequit vs a normal quit?

[BlueJackalope]

Heh, all the best players (the clan gamers for whom it’s almost a second job) on the server I play on mess around in the warmup too. Messing around in the warmup has absolutely no relation to how well they’ll play the game itself. Once that warmup is over they’re the best team players on the server. On a bad day they might be the only team players on the server, in fact…

I’ve never been bothered by anyone messing around during warm up. I suppose someone could put a disgusting spray up, but I’ve yet to see anything really shocking. It is just goofing off.

I did have a defender come and put his face against the gate as the counter neared the end…and left it on there, ignoring my spun up Heavy 3…2…1…DEAD!

I have no idea what he was thinking.

[Matt_Perkins]

Wait, sluggo. You quit TF2 because everyone dicks around in the pre-game/setup time? Or because they do it once the clock starts going…?

[sluggo]

Not once have I complained about the normal shenanigans that go on during warmup. So let’s try this:

(A) hopping around during warmup, spraying stuff, using vocal emotes, etc.

(B) running up to one person, standing still and meleeing them for an entire 60 seconds.

A is normal. Everyone does A. I do A. I hop around, look for the perfect spot to place a spray, practice grenade jumps, try to hop on top of the EXIT sign. It’s not unreasonable that people will try to find ways to busy themselves during a 60 second warmup in a tiny space.

B is PSYCHOTIC. B is possibly high or mentally retarded. Walk up to your refrigerator and poke the door for 60 seconds. That’s what B is doing and somehow getting entertainment out of it. More importantly, that guy NEVER tries to play the game right. He likes small shiny objects and has no idea TF2 even has objectives.

I quit TF2 because it’s overrun with people who have no interest in playing the game. They just like running around and jumping and shooting stuff and oh look at the pretty colors and wait this game has objectives? TF2 can’t support those people – you get 2 or 3 of them on one team and the match is over before it’s begun. To me, (B) is the poster child of that group, who you know is going to be useless even before the match begins.

[sluggo]

I’m curious since you mentioned it twice, how would you have the server detect a ragequit vs a normal quit?

I’m using the two terms somewhat interchangably. I would treat all mid-game quits the same – if you drop mid-match, you get no XP, none of your stats count, and you’re given a loss and penalized further in some way.

[Alan_Au]

I quit TF2 because it’s overrun with people who have no interest in playing the game. They just like running around and jumping and shooting stuff and oh look at the pretty colors and wait this game has objectives? TF2 can’t support those people – you get 2 or 3 of them on one team and the match is over before it’s begun.

Maybe TF2 isn’t your thing, and that’s perfectly fine, but don’t pretend that you stopped playing because of one player’s idiotic behavior–by that reasoning, you would never have played any online multiplayer games at all. Granted, a retail cost or subscription fee serves as a barrier to entry, but based on what I’ve seen in other games, idiots are omnipresent.

On the topic of quitting, I object to treating all mid-game quits equally, because connection problems or hardware instability can cause a player to drop for reasons beyond their control. For example, if my neighbor turns on the microwave, my wireless connection drops.

[sluggo]

Maybe TF2 isn’t your thing, and that’s perfectly fine, but don’t pretend that you stopped playing because of one player’s idiotic behavior–by that reasoning, you would never have played any online multiplayer games at all. Granted, a retail cost or subscription fee serves as a barrier to entry, but based on what I’ve seen in other games, idiots are omnipresent.

I have over 1000 hours played in TF2, so it’s probably not appropriate to say “TF2 isn’t my thing.” :)

My problem is that what was once a brilliant game has gradually deteriorated over the years, mostly because Valve has continued adding distractions – achievements, weapon drops, hats, etc. There’s so much more for players to get sidetracked with now that doesn’t funnel into map goals that things have just progressively gotten worse.

And for me, watching someone melee a teammate for 60 seconds, and having seen that enough to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was going to be useless (and being 100% right), was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. It’s not pretending. It just made me say, this is stupid, why am I even bothering? This game is officially overrun with Ralph Wiggums in a way that it wasn’t before, and I’m done with it.