I played for Pyro for a few hours. He’s quite useful inside a building, close quarters combat (but not so that you don’t have room to maneuver). Unfortunately on most maps there’s a lot of open space, in some places you don’t even have an option to go to close quarters. In that case he’s quite useless since it’s hard to close the gap and people just run backwards shooting you. Also it seems impossible to kill the Heavy with Pyro, every time I tried I ended up dying badly, even after getting a few seconds head start on the burning.
As for sniper, he seems like the second worst class right now. Maybe I just need super fast fingers, but everyone is running around way too fast for me to effectively snipe at medium-short ranges like with the scout in CS:S. Also, I don’t really like how you can’t walk when you aren’t scoped.
I think the majority’s experience have been that Pyros suck and people don’t play them.
Pyro as a class is spread too thin and poorly defined. Demos have better area control. Spies are better ambushers. Soldiers are better pushers. Scouts are better at close range.
I just don’t see the “point” of playing a Pyro when any of the roles it can fill are better filled by other classes. For every rare moment that the Pyro does well, there are entire games where they contribute nothing.
Many players in the servers I’ve been on feel the same way. When it’s a camp-fest map like 2fort and everyone’s waiting for the next Ubercharge push, inevitably we get to talking about the game and, unsurprisingly, no one thinks Pyro is any good.
I mean, I really don’t think we’re missing some subtle nuance that makes Pyros a good class. The devs themselves have said that it’s intended to “hide around corners” and blast people in the face with fire. Even if you do this, chances are the person will whip the mouse around and blast you twice with their weapon (any will do) and you’re dead.
Confusing? Soldiers are crap against mass charges. You’ll kill 2-3 people if you’re lucky, then you run out of rockets and are forced to go through reloading while the enemy rushes up and takes ground. That’s why they are listed as Offense instead of Defense.
If My 97 era skills are still applicable you would stand outside of the exit points of the bases, tag them with fire , and lets them get all way walking across the map to be chewed up later.
Hide from snipers, set some guys on fire outside of the base, and annoy the hell out of the scouts shooting past being all quick and junk. … not so ninja… when you’re on FIRE!
I haven’t played TF or TFC in a long time but healing with the medics seems way easier and quicker now so the idea of knocking people down a bit and leaving them to be finished off later doesn’t really apply.
Man, this game is fun. I love the attention to detail, and the fact that it’s clearly designed to usher newbies into things as gently as possible without compromising gameplay for experts. The clear signage pointing the way around the maps, for example–there’s still value to learning the exact map layout, of course, but this way you don’t end up sitting there wondering exactly where the next cap point. Such a change from the Quake Wars demo!
I also like the way different classes cater to different skills. Have good aim? Scout or sniper. Not so good aim? Soldier or heavy. Can’t hit a barn at five paces? Spy, engineer, or medic.
This was worth my $45. Ep2 and Portal will just be gravy. :>
Also, I really need to get a mike working, since the advantage of having voice comms is clearly ridiculously overpowering. Does Steam have some place to configure volume levels/cutoffs? I went hunting through the options, and found something likely, but I couldn’t figure out how to play back a test to confirm that I have things configured properly.
Also, is there a qt3 group? My steam id is ‘damien’, if anyone wants to throw an invite my way.
I was detected a few times yesterday when bumping into someone cloaked in narrow spaces.
So if something invisible bumps into you you better shoot it…
I think classes are really situational depending on what map and what condition (defense / offense).
I consider enemy Pyros really hard foes sometimes. They are very fast and hard to pick up for a sniper for example if they keep moving.
Heavy and medic on the contrary are sniper heaven. Oddly most medics simply walk in a straight line behind the heavy probably thinking they might be invincible. Easy to pick up and put a bullet through their head. Once the medic is down the heavy is as good as dead. :)
Demonman is tough if you play a soldier.
Those goddamn bouncing grenades own you so hard it’s not funny.
Right now I think the classes are balanced good enough with the general exception that you can’t use them all in all situations but have to adjust based on the game situation.
Oh and the Demonman is considered “defense” by Valve (you see him in this group when you choose your class).
I am loving TF2. The attention to detail is exquisite.
One complaint, though: do the maps seem ridiculously small to anyone else? Even by Quake 1 era standards, these maps are medium size at best. There’s no room for large battles, just one chokepoint after another. Hell, most Counter-Strike maps have larger combat areas. Even the “outdoor” areas feel like you’re indoors, with the invisible walls and fences.
I’m not sure how the sniper can work with such constrained maps.
I’ll also concur that Pyro seems completely useless. He’s not even fun to play, and yet all the other classes are.
The maps are defiantly enclosed compared to say battlefield or quake wars but compared to stuff like cs and the older quake games I didn’t find them particularly tight. I like that everything is a bit tighter as I get really frustrated with games where half the server seems to be playing as snipers and picking people off from miles away and the lack of vehicles means everything has to be closed in a lot.
The sniper still seem quite decent when used in the right situation. I’ve had quite a bit of fun sniping from the middle building on the train map.
The maps are TINY in comparison to the QWTF equivalents. The ramp room in 2forts is about a 3rd of the size.
I got irritated with the game in record time last night but in fairness I’ve yet to play a game with any proper teamwork. I’m disappointed so far but I can understand why people who didn’t really play TF back in the day are getting into it.
Sounds negative but hopefully I’ll get some proper play in over the next few days.
Pyros are pretty difficult to use effectively. That’s not to say they aren’t good in the right hands, but they just seem to lack a specific function that makes them useful other than “try to cause mayhem.” You can solo kill some classes, but pyro seems to work best if you work with the other heavy hitters. Set everybody on fire and let your teammates mop up. If I could change something, I’d make it so that burning targets receive less benefit from the medic’s heal ray. Either that or bump up the flamethrower damage a pinch.
Overall, though, the game’s excellent and exactly the sort of sequel I was hoping for. Even if they release it as-is, I’d be happy.
tf2 is multiplayer heaven. love the crazy character designs (especially pyro). smallish maps are no problem for me, never been too fond of the battlefield style MP games.
my favourite classes right now are spy, sniper and soldier. scout is fun too but I die too much when playing it. only class that needs change imho is pyro, glad to see I am not the only one on this. some excellent suggestions here what to change. Though one of the best moments I had was when invulnerable, I charged as a pyro - the panic that ensued in the opposing team was hilarious.
no technical glitches to report. this alone is imho worth 45$. only “negative” aspect of orange box is that they included peggle extreme. needless to say, many hours have been lost playing peggle deluxe :D
That would be an excellent change. I might even go as far as make it impossible to heal burning players at all. That would give the Pyro a unique function.
“2Forts” is the most obvious of course (covering the bridge). My record was set on another one though but as I suck with names I don’t remember the map name.
It’s where red has to hold at least 1 point and that one is straight after the spawn area. The map looks industrial and there is basically one choke point where the enemies have to come through.
I also found some nice spots on other maps so don’t worry too much or well maybe DO worry if you aren’t a sniper… ;)
