Team Fortress 2 - The Official Discussion Thread
- Thread starter McLovinn
- Start date
Right now I'm looking for a USA server with nocrits and a rotation of Valve CP maps, ideally one with 24 slots or less. If anyone has any to recommend, I'd appreciate it!
The TeamFortress2Fort servers are pretty good. You might want to check them out.
I'm confused about how I actually managed to do this in about 15 minutes.
I'm confused about how I actually managed to do this in about 15 minutes.
You got backstabbing skills in a melee only server! I guess no fire helps
Okay, I had an idea earlier.
I was thinking off splitting the clan in two; one side, the Community, and the other side, the Clan.
I discussed with Stoo, and he believes that it would be segregating people.
However, I don't think so. Splitting the clan in half would only mean one thing: in matches with other clans, people in the community part would not participate. The Community part would be Public, but when you got good enough, you could be invited by a member of the Clan section.
The only difference is the fact that only Clan members would be able to participate in matches, and Community members would not.
Everything else would be the same; Community members would have access to a clan server (if this goes ahead), and all sorts of other things.
Also, if we invited other gamers to join the community, we could easily expand Smogon. Stoo disagreed, and said that smogon does not need expanding. I, however, think that it doesn't NEED it, but its always up for some.
Please do let me know what you think.
I was thinking off splitting the clan in two; one side, the Community, and the other side, the Clan.
I discussed with Stoo, and he believes that it would be segregating people.
However, I don't think so. Splitting the clan in half would only mean one thing: in matches with other clans, people in the community part would not participate. The Community part would be Public, but when you got good enough, you could be invited by a member of the Clan section.
The only difference is the fact that only Clan members would be able to participate in matches, and Community members would not.
Everything else would be the same; Community members would have access to a clan server (if this goes ahead), and all sorts of other things.
Also, if we invited other gamers to join the community, we could easily expand Smogon. Stoo disagreed, and said that smogon does not need expanding. I, however, think that it doesn't NEED it, but its always up for some.
Please do let me know what you think.
meh, i just dont see the point.
We dont have many people in the smogon group anyway, and the ones who play competitively are few and far between, as well as in conflicting time zones, so i hoestly dont think its worth this much effort.
Also I dont really see what you mean by expanding smogon...it just doesnt need it, especially not random tf2 players :/
ps, you mentioned a smogon server...? that will almost definitely not happen. Nobody wants to pay and maintain an empty server, and we are not an active group by any means
We dont have many people in the smogon group anyway, and the ones who play competitively are few and far between, as well as in conflicting time zones, so i hoestly dont think its worth this much effort.
Also I dont really see what you mean by expanding smogon...it just doesnt need it, especially not random tf2 players :/
ps, you mentioned a smogon server...? that will almost definitely not happen. Nobody wants to pay and maintain an empty server, and we are not an active group by any means
I'm a member of TW, and if I'm not mistaken the group didn't branch out to form a separate group for the competitive-minded players until:
The update also contains some minor fixes such as the removal of an exploit which made it possible to detect disguised spies with a hacked materials file, as well as some revisions to pl_badwater and cp_dustbowl. pl_badwater was especially in need of fixing; there were plenty of times when I would find myself getting stuck in the ceiling as a scout completely accidentally. Also, apparently blu being able to build inside spawn was considered a bug, as it's no longer possible (which ought to be a relief for defensive spies).
- The group had more than 300 members
- The server was empty for fewer than 12 hours a day
- The group chat regularly had at least 20 people at all hours of the day
The update also contains some minor fixes such as the removal of an exploit which made it possible to detect disguised spies with a hacked materials file, as well as some revisions to pl_badwater and cp_dustbowl. pl_badwater was especially in need of fixing; there were plenty of times when I would find myself getting stuck in the ceiling as a scout completely accidentally. Also, apparently blu being able to build inside spawn was considered a bug, as it's no longer possible (which ought to be a relief for defensive spies).
i scrim (or just pub with a few bros) pretty much every day now, so im getting pretty decent at medic
Big update, folks!
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2096
(the following will be exactly what the link says, it's just here for convenience)
---
Hey good job, there, Hardhat
December 10, 2008 - Robin Walker
We've been pretty quiet lately, but thankfully, that's about to end. In the next few days we'll have an update out that has a couple of new features for the Engineer and Spy, and a variety of other smaller fixes.
While that's in testing, we're off working on several things that folks have been emailing us about, so we thought it'd be good to provide some detail:
Woah! Very cool new updates on Engies + Spies. I am also very excited to hear that the Scout will be getting the next update; Any thoughts on what they may introduce? Finally, I also really like to hear that the 360 is getting the PC updates in the near future. I will now be able to play kritz medic with zerowing/HG/TH, and anyone else who plays the Xbox version.
Thoughts? :]
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2096
(the following will be exactly what the link says, it's just here for convenience)
---
Hey good job, there, Hardhat
December 10, 2008 - Robin Walker
We've been pretty quiet lately, but thankfully, that's about to end. In the next few days we'll have an update out that has a couple of new features for the Engineer and Spy, and a variety of other smaller fixes.
- Teleporters will be upgradeable to level 3. As the teleporter is upgraded, the cooldown will decrease.
- Dispensers will be upgradeable to level 3. They will heal faster and generate metal faster as they are upgraded.
- Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.
- We've made a bunch of minor changes by adding particle systems and upgrading the HUD to show things like deaths by critical hits, players that are overhealed, and giving more information to medics when people are calling for them.
While that's in testing, we're off working on several things that folks have been emailing us about, so we thought it'd be good to provide some detail:
- The next class pack will be the Scout. One of the main goals we're focusing on for him has been to provide tools that make him useful in maps like Dustbowl & Goldrush. If you have any ideas for what you think would work well, post them over on the Team Fortress 2 Forum and we'll take a look.
- We are actively working on a massive XBox 360 update, which will include pretty much everything we've shipped on the PC in the last year. We'll provide you with a rough date when we have one.
- We're also working on bringing over a variety of engine improvements from Left 4 Dead into the TF2 engine, but it won't be a wholesale replacement of the engine. This means we'll get some of L4D's performance improvements, like the better multicore support, but not all of them. For example, we can't bring over some improvements without dropping support for DX8, which we're not prepared to do.
Woah! Very cool new updates on Engies + Spies. I am also very excited to hear that the Scout will be getting the next update; Any thoughts on what they may introduce? Finally, I also really like to hear that the 360 is getting the PC updates in the near future. I will now be able to play kritz medic with zerowing/HG/TH, and anyone else who plays the Xbox version.
Thoughts? :]
Whole update from the update page
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2
- The Engineer's teleporters can now be upgraded to level three. It will recharge faster the higher level it is
- The Engineer's dispensers can now be upgraded to level three. It will give out metal and heal faster as it is upgraded
- Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground or from health cabinets
- Some changes to the second part of the first stage of Goldrush to give the attackers more of an advantage
- Any weapons that fire bullets (shotguns, sniper's machine gun, heavy's minigun, etc.) can now break apart the Demoman's stickybombs
- The icon on the HUD for a person calling for Medic will now give more information to the medic (if the target is low on health, on fire, etc.)
- Added an achievement tracker that will allow people to choose specific achievements that they are trying to get
- There is now a custom icon for death messages when the player was killed from a critical hit
- Added a new particle effect for when a player enters the water
- Added smoke to the feet of a rocket jumping soldier
- Players will now have some particles swirling around them so other players can see when they are overhealed
I must say, the Cloak buff is perty awesome. 
I spent like 10 minutes dicking with Teleporter Entrances on stage two Goldrush with all the enemy Engineers trying to kill me and rebuild. Shame the rest of my team was completely horrible, not sure how we made it past first stage with those guys.
I spent like 10 minutes dicking with Teleporter Entrances on stage two Goldrush with all the enemy Engineers trying to kill me and rebuild. Shame the rest of my team was completely horrible, not sure how we made it past first stage with those guys.
Fun fun, yes, the cloak modification is very fun... I get to run around invisible a little longer :D
Also no more Demomen blocking my path with stickies because you can shoot them now :D
I just noticed... Team Fortress 2 is $9.99 on Steam? o.0? I could have sworn it was $19.99... so... uh... if you don't have Team Fortress 2 now's the time to get it... :p
Also no more Demomen blocking my path with stickies because you can shoot them now :D
I just noticed... Team Fortress 2 is $9.99 on Steam? o.0? I could have sworn it was $19.99... so... uh... if you don't have Team Fortress 2 now's the time to get it... :p
Team Fortress 2 is on sale this weekend for 50% off, I assume that the price will go back up to $20 on Monday.
Is it just me, or does the spy's cloak meter drain faster? Not that I'm complaining; the ability to refill it while cloaked outweighs any potential loss in this area.
I thought that the engineer upgrade would lead to massive turtling making it impossible for blu to win on dustbowl, but surprisingly this was not the case. Realistically, the the engineer will barely have enough time to get a level 3 sentry and level 1 dispenser up, often I found that engineers that wasted their time building teleporters or upgrading their dispensers quickly got steamrolled over. It is probably not worth upgrading either the dispenser or the teleporter unless you already have a level 3 sentry. The teleporter reduces the wait from 10 seconds to about 2 seconds which, though nice, is not really consequential unless you are the attacking team. The level 3 dispenser does provide metal 50% faster (chunks of 60 instead of 40), but given that it takes 400 metal to get it there, it's not worth it just for the metal; the main benefit is that it heals quickly (almost as fast as a medic). When trying to take dustbowl 2-1 and 2-2, the defending team did have more time to upgrade their sentries and dispensers (a level 3 dispenser heals almost as fast as a medic, making it a great combo for the heavy), but the fact that the attacking team could build forward bases easily balanced that out. The attacking team gets teleporters that recharge in just about two seconds so they can keep sending folks back to the front line, and keep in mind that a level 3 dispenser is actually more effective than a medic for a forward base because it can heal more than one person.
I play medic a lot, and the HUD update makes this a lot easier; I hate running halfway across the map to follow a HUD icon only to discover that a heavy thought that 300 HP wasn't enough. The main benefit is that I now don't have to waste time chasing down people who already have full health and can devote time to healing the people who aren't just looking for a buff.
The buff particles make playing scout a lot easier because you can tell at a glance approximately how many shots you'll need to take down a person. Spies kind of got shafted due to a related bug, though. Remember when the teleporter particles would follow you even after you cloaked or disguised? The same thing happens with overheal particles, which can give away your disguise or cloak. Hopefully Valve will fix this soon.
The fact that engineers are significantly more important is balanced by the fact that spies have a significantly easier time heckling them; if a spy plays his cards correctly he can make his way all the way behind enemy lines and stay cloaked until the moment he's ready to pull of that stab-sap.
Demos got nerfed pretty heavily but I still think that they're quite powerful. They can still lay sticky traps, they just need to keep them better hidden. Their ability to use mid-air stickies as ghetto rockets hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, been compromised at all.
The crit HUD icon probably won't make much of a difference strategically in most servers, probably just a confirmation of, "oh, of course it was a crit scattergun shot." However, it's a huge clue in nocrit because you can quickly see, "ooh, looks like they have a kritz'd demo."
The new goldrush looks great, the blu team actually gets the right side as an assault point rather than a "hey here's a window for scouts to come through and flank your medics." Before the update, goldrush was probably the most imbalanced map in the entire game, according to the stats page (see win percentage and death map if you don't know what I mean: red won 80% of the time and almost all of the deaths on goldrush were on the first stage at the choke point leading from 1-1 to 1-2.)
Regarding the new teleporters: entrances and exits are linked and work as a single system. You can upgrade the teleporter system by whacking either the entrance OR the exit. If one of the teleporters is destroyed, the other one reverts back to level 1.
One unlisted change I found is that sometimes the shotgun will produce MASSIVE knockback, but this seems to happen randomly. Also, there are times when an explosive will kill but not gib, meaning that you get some pretty crazy flying ragdolls.
On a completely unrelated note, I just spent several hours playing tournament mode on one of the servers where I regularly play (weeabootique). Everything unrelated was left intact, so we still played with random crits and alltalk (we usually have someone playing music), so the only gameplay changes came from changed map mechanics. I've got to say that it's incredibly awesome. The only real "drawback" was that you couldn't spectate third-person when dead. However, this was a small price to pay for the ability to play arena mode without having to sit out: not only were we able to fill both teams, but we were able to choose teams without having to worry about autobalance (most team imbalance issues corrected themselves at the end of each round when people decided that they didn't want an absurdly large advantage). Another major benefit of tournament mode was that it introduced stopwatch mode to attack/defend maps. For those who don't know, stopwatch mode basically sets up the map so that both teams have a chance to attack and the team that captures the most points wins. If the number of points captured is equal then the tie is broken by time. So if the first team attacks and captures four points on dustbowl in 10 minutes, the second team can win either by capturing four points in under 10 minutes or capturing five points. It provides people a real incentive to accomplish the map objective: the initial defenders want to ensure that they have plenty of time on the clock when it's their turn to attack, and the initial attackers want to ensure that they have breathing room so that they don't get stuck having to make their last stand on a hard to defend point. The attacking team does technically have an advantage due to overtime and the fact that any tie goes to the attackers, but there were plenty of people who actually wanted to start on the defending team (myself included) because when you attack you have the benefit of a clock ticking in your face reminding you of how much time you have to achieve your objective. We played rounds like this on dustbowl, goldrush, and gravelpit, and I've got to say that it was by far the most fun on gravelpit simply due to the way that the map works: if both teams manage to hold B, then the team that captures A first wins, meaning that if you simply decided to give up A to defend B you're going to lose. Stopwatch also had the benefit of making dustbowl and goldrush shorter: if the initial defenders were able to hold the opposing team on the first or second stage, the third stage would not have to be played when they attacked (unless they captured 2-2 slower than the other team did). Aside from actual gameplay, tournament mode also has a prep period before maps that allows players to rename their team to something ridiculous and run around on the map until they change their status to "ready" (usually we waited until each team had at least eight people to start).
If you haven't had the chance yet, I really recommend that you try to find a chance to play on a server running on tournament mode. It really makes arena mode and attack/defend maps a lot more fun!
Is it just me, or does the spy's cloak meter drain faster? Not that I'm complaining; the ability to refill it while cloaked outweighs any potential loss in this area.
I thought that the engineer upgrade would lead to massive turtling making it impossible for blu to win on dustbowl, but surprisingly this was not the case. Realistically, the the engineer will barely have enough time to get a level 3 sentry and level 1 dispenser up, often I found that engineers that wasted their time building teleporters or upgrading their dispensers quickly got steamrolled over. It is probably not worth upgrading either the dispenser or the teleporter unless you already have a level 3 sentry. The teleporter reduces the wait from 10 seconds to about 2 seconds which, though nice, is not really consequential unless you are the attacking team. The level 3 dispenser does provide metal 50% faster (chunks of 60 instead of 40), but given that it takes 400 metal to get it there, it's not worth it just for the metal; the main benefit is that it heals quickly (almost as fast as a medic). When trying to take dustbowl 2-1 and 2-2, the defending team did have more time to upgrade their sentries and dispensers (a level 3 dispenser heals almost as fast as a medic, making it a great combo for the heavy), but the fact that the attacking team could build forward bases easily balanced that out. The attacking team gets teleporters that recharge in just about two seconds so they can keep sending folks back to the front line, and keep in mind that a level 3 dispenser is actually more effective than a medic for a forward base because it can heal more than one person.
I play medic a lot, and the HUD update makes this a lot easier; I hate running halfway across the map to follow a HUD icon only to discover that a heavy thought that 300 HP wasn't enough. The main benefit is that I now don't have to waste time chasing down people who already have full health and can devote time to healing the people who aren't just looking for a buff.
The buff particles make playing scout a lot easier because you can tell at a glance approximately how many shots you'll need to take down a person. Spies kind of got shafted due to a related bug, though. Remember when the teleporter particles would follow you even after you cloaked or disguised? The same thing happens with overheal particles, which can give away your disguise or cloak. Hopefully Valve will fix this soon.
The fact that engineers are significantly more important is balanced by the fact that spies have a significantly easier time heckling them; if a spy plays his cards correctly he can make his way all the way behind enemy lines and stay cloaked until the moment he's ready to pull of that stab-sap.
Demos got nerfed pretty heavily but I still think that they're quite powerful. They can still lay sticky traps, they just need to keep them better hidden. Their ability to use mid-air stickies as ghetto rockets hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, been compromised at all.
The crit HUD icon probably won't make much of a difference strategically in most servers, probably just a confirmation of, "oh, of course it was a crit scattergun shot." However, it's a huge clue in nocrit because you can quickly see, "ooh, looks like they have a kritz'd demo."
The new goldrush looks great, the blu team actually gets the right side as an assault point rather than a "hey here's a window for scouts to come through and flank your medics." Before the update, goldrush was probably the most imbalanced map in the entire game, according to the stats page (see win percentage and death map if you don't know what I mean: red won 80% of the time and almost all of the deaths on goldrush were on the first stage at the choke point leading from 1-1 to 1-2.)
Regarding the new teleporters: entrances and exits are linked and work as a single system. You can upgrade the teleporter system by whacking either the entrance OR the exit. If one of the teleporters is destroyed, the other one reverts back to level 1.
One unlisted change I found is that sometimes the shotgun will produce MASSIVE knockback, but this seems to happen randomly. Also, there are times when an explosive will kill but not gib, meaning that you get some pretty crazy flying ragdolls.
On a completely unrelated note, I just spent several hours playing tournament mode on one of the servers where I regularly play (weeabootique). Everything unrelated was left intact, so we still played with random crits and alltalk (we usually have someone playing music), so the only gameplay changes came from changed map mechanics. I've got to say that it's incredibly awesome. The only real "drawback" was that you couldn't spectate third-person when dead. However, this was a small price to pay for the ability to play arena mode without having to sit out: not only were we able to fill both teams, but we were able to choose teams without having to worry about autobalance (most team imbalance issues corrected themselves at the end of each round when people decided that they didn't want an absurdly large advantage). Another major benefit of tournament mode was that it introduced stopwatch mode to attack/defend maps. For those who don't know, stopwatch mode basically sets up the map so that both teams have a chance to attack and the team that captures the most points wins. If the number of points captured is equal then the tie is broken by time. So if the first team attacks and captures four points on dustbowl in 10 minutes, the second team can win either by capturing four points in under 10 minutes or capturing five points. It provides people a real incentive to accomplish the map objective: the initial defenders want to ensure that they have plenty of time on the clock when it's their turn to attack, and the initial attackers want to ensure that they have breathing room so that they don't get stuck having to make their last stand on a hard to defend point. The attacking team does technically have an advantage due to overtime and the fact that any tie goes to the attackers, but there were plenty of people who actually wanted to start on the defending team (myself included) because when you attack you have the benefit of a clock ticking in your face reminding you of how much time you have to achieve your objective. We played rounds like this on dustbowl, goldrush, and gravelpit, and I've got to say that it was by far the most fun on gravelpit simply due to the way that the map works: if both teams manage to hold B, then the team that captures A first wins, meaning that if you simply decided to give up A to defend B you're going to lose. Stopwatch also had the benefit of making dustbowl and goldrush shorter: if the initial defenders were able to hold the opposing team on the first or second stage, the third stage would not have to be played when they attacked (unless they captured 2-2 slower than the other team did). Aside from actual gameplay, tournament mode also has a prep period before maps that allows players to rename their team to something ridiculous and run around on the map until they change their status to "ready" (usually we waited until each team had at least eight people to start).
If you haven't had the chance yet, I really recommend that you try to find a chance to play on a server running on tournament mode. It really makes arena mode and attack/defend maps a lot more fun!