What are your thoughts on TF2?

General Discussion
1

My thoughts are that it’s a very cleverly designed game, and pre-release had very careful thought put into what would and wouldn’t be fun; for example, rapid-fire primary weapons were almost entirely avoided because people don’t like to use them nor fight against them (I really wish Overwatch got the memo).

However, that kind of care has not been present post-release, and so problems that were not foreseen pre-release have not been taken care of, and one bad solution to a problem has become a problem on its own.

I don’t play TF2 anymore, for these three reasons:

Firstly, respawn times: They’re insane compared to average FPS games, up to 20 seconds. Considering that TF2 has plenty of instakills that have no counterplay, this is a big problem. The reason why the respawn times are long is to try to spawn a bunch of people at once, so they don’t trickle in and die. Overwatch just goes for flat respawn times, and it turns out players are smart and will skirmish to hold ground while waiting for teammates to arrive.

Secondly, Sniper. This is one of those unforeseen problems: In the 90’s, when TF2 was conceived, instakill hitscan was a mainstay of FPS games. Few people were so good at aiming that it was a problem, and so weapons only effective at close range could be bundled in the same game.
Unfortunately, this ancient design practice means there’s a class that can instakill the entire roster (5/9 with just a bodyshot) with no fancy counterplays: No shields, movement abilities (except ones that harm you), nothing. No fighting back either, he’s got the only long-range weapon in the game, and to get close you have to pass his whole team (very difficult even as Spy).

Thirdly, Spy.
What do you do in TF2? You fight enemies.
What do you do when you fight enemies? You face the enemy and shoot them.
What does Spy do when you’re facing the enemy? Run out from behind a wall and instakill you from behind.
Basically, Spy punishes people for playing the game, and as players have wisened up he’s become less and less effective at blending in but his buffs have made him more and more effective at making people instantly die without warning in the middle of fights. Once again, no counterplay, unless you do a 360 between every shot instantly assessing which players behind you might be a spy.

I like that it’s 12v12 though. I reckon Overwatch matches are too small, the failures of one player make too much of a difference, and the small team sizes force people to use heroes that are independently viable (the big weakness of Mercy and Bastion).

2 Likes
2

Lol wut
I’m assuming by instakills you mean backstabs, fully charged headshots, sticky traps, and crit rockets.

Spy is easily countered by communication, awareness, and the entirety of Pyro. Sniper is countered by another sniper or just ambushing him.

Sticky traps are completely negated by a single airblast or rocket explosion. The only thing I can really agree on that has no counterplay are crockets.

Spy is one of, if not, the worst class in the entire game. He gets shut down so hard when the enemy team is competent that he may as well just not exist. Spychecking is a core mechanic of TF2, that’s his counterplay.

2 Likes
3

Spy and Pyro are better than Sombra and Mei

4

Do you really want Sombra to instagib people?

All I know about TF2 it have broken hitboxes, random crits and updates once in blue moon. Also is a “dead game” for … 11 years I think?

Warning! Satire content! Do not get your panties in a twist.

5

No counterplay doesn’t mean powerful.
Hanzo is a good example of this: Unless you’re holding up a shield (in which case you can’t give chase), you’re likely going to eat a lot of storm arrows or a headshot if you try chase him down, and any time you’re not chasing him down he’ll be a constant danger.
I can’t do anything about Hanzo, unless maybe I ragedswitched to Tracer so he couldn’t hit me, or Orisa so he was totally useless. Do I feel Hanzo is overpowered since I can’t do anything about him? No, I don’t die often to him and he doesn’t have much impact on matches.

I feel exactly the same way about Spy. Less impact on matches than any other class, but the second hardest to play against, the first being Sniper since there are zero weapons that can kill him when he’s hiding behind his team and you aren’t a pro soldier who can reach and bomb him in 2 seconds then get out alive.

6

i just want characters to be fun to play. Every ability and weapon in sombra have some frustrating gimmick. Like all heroes have something annoying, that’s fine. But it’s literally on everything sombra have.

7

Sombra have a lot of delays to take account for and forces special kind of gameplay. Sure they could give her treshold for damage to chancel her abilities but thats it.

8

I’m a Brigette main and I’d happily trade traits people think are annoying about Brigette for more mobility/DPS potential. Those traits appear to be long-range unavoidable attacks and stun, neither of which I’m much of a fan of. I can get into very long fights as Brigette, so a split-second stun on a long cooldown doesn’t do me much good, and a tiny 35 damage per swing on my primary weapon to compensate for how hard it is to dodge means everyone takes forever to kill.
And there’s two heroes I won’t play because I know they frustrate other people, Widow and Symmetra.
Overwatch has too many annoying abilities that are neither fun to use or play against.

9

I have 700 hours of TF2, and I haven’t played it in years. The game itself is fun, the game modes are solid, the maps are interesting, and the variety of playstyles and weapon choices is pretty awesome.

The absolute chaos is what I didn’t like about it. Most of the classes are so squishy that you can get blown up instantly, even without the addition of quickscope headshots, backstabs, and random crits. Victory always feels too dependent on luck with TF2. Somebody got a few good kills at the right time, a random crit dropped a Medic with Uber, or your teammates just happened to be on the point at the same time to take advantage of Uber.

Compared to Overwatch, what TF2 got right was the counterplay. Every class has clear weaknesses that other classes can exploit, and every weapon is intended to be a sidegrade of the stock choices. You can mitigate your own weaknesses by losing a strength or gaining a different one.

If Valve actually put money into TF2, started releasing actual new content on a regular basis (not skins, hats, or missions, but actual new weapons and mechanics), made some real and intelligent balance decisions, and made it easier to earn weapons and crates through playing (without spending money), they could compete with Overwatch.

10

Sniper and spy get rekt in competitive 6v6 and don’t contribute much in large team casual games where uber and turrets control pacing. I have to question how much you actually play the game.

Anyway, as for overall thoughts, the game is kept alive by the economy and third party mods and maps. The game speaks volumes about the power of the community in the same way melee does. I wish blizz would take a hint and stop trying to sell owl slots and getting butthurt that they can’t just print money and actually have to invest in making the scene sustainable from the bottom up.

2 Likes
11

But that’s in 6v6.
Sniper gets more powerful the larger the team sizes are, because the larger the team sizes are the more he can rely on someone to deal with a flanker before they reach him.
And in a big game Spy can be certain that there’ll always be a bunch of enemies too distracted because they’re in a huge fight.

If Overwatch had 12v12, Widow would be extremely overpowered, I guarantee it.

12

Respawn times
Wacky weapon balance changes
Random crits
Ctf cap crits
Crits in general, especially dumb on Soldier and Heavy
No valve server browser, they removed it and made casual
Clunky gameplay and movement.
Not much content ever came out from 2013-2016 (when I regularly played it).

13

That game seem so dead to me, I like how loyal that community is even tho its a bit toxic when a bunch of whining kids. TF2 is still a great game, but valve terrible at balancing weapons and updating the game.

14

S’alright, don’t really play it anymore but the lack of R34 for the mercs disappoint me, community’s a bit prude.

1 Like
15

The larger the team size, the less that snipers can kill fast enough to hold their position on the typically claustrophobic maps in the game. And in large games the spy is likely to get killed by random spam and people walking everywhere.

In 12v12 you could run all the dive characters and Widow would have a very bad time.

1 Like
16

But the larger the team size, the more snipers you can have.
And my entire point about larger teams making sniper more powerful was that with big teams, sniper doesn’t have to hold his own position, because the team will more reliably do that for him.

Say that there’s a 6v6 with a scout on one team and a sniper on the other, and that scout hates snipers but can’t easily fight his way past everything else.
For each of the sniper’s five teammates, say there’s a 20% chance they’ll so happen to be in the scout’s path if he goes for the sniper.
Some quick number crunching says that the Scout has a 33% chance of not encountering a single person when going for the Sniper and getting an easy kill.
Let’s double that to a 12v12 scenario, now there’s 2 Scouts and 2 Snipers.
Now the Snipers have 10 teammates protecting them, meaning a single Scout has only an 11% chance of reaching a Sniper without encountering anyone, and while there’s a 20% chance that one of the two Scouts will make it unhindered if they travel separately there’s 2 Snipers to deal with now and it’ll almost certainly be a 1v2.

So, simple maths says that Sniper becomes harder to deal with the larger the team sizes get, because he can focus more on shooting people far away and worry less about anyone ever reaching him.

17

Wow, that’s really wrong.

18

Snipers and spies do not scale well. They do not cover each other well, and the sollies and demos flying across the map can dislodge a sniper much more easily than his team can defend him. You’re assuming a map with a toooon of sightlines and flank routes. That is incredibly rare and not in any regularly played map except maybe hightower. Are you sure that you’ve actually played the game?

2 Likes
19

The soldiers and demos flying across a map are a given regardless of the team size, but the more enemies there are the higher a chance they have of being shot down, and the less close they can get without encountering an enemy (they have to get close to the sniper before jumping unless they have godlike jumping skills).
If it was a 1000v1000 match, you’d be able to do a great job shooting demos and soldiers out the sky, because the sky would be thick with drunk Scotsmen and racist Americans, you could shoot anywhere and you’d hit someone.
Whereas in a 6v6 you have to have amazing aim to shoot someone out the sky because the chance is so brief.

I just reckon you can much more easily focus on a single role as player count increases.
That applies for every class in TF2. In 16v16 CTF, you can spend the entire game just maintaining a sentry near the intel, doing absolutely nothing else, and you’ll be useful.
In a 6v6 you could never get away with that.

20

No, even if you aimbotted you’d get absolutely destroyed by indirect fire, peek shots, and overall higher RoF splash. The maps are not 1000x bigger.

That does not apply to every class. Sentries become more useful as player count increases because you can justify multiple engie nests within reasonable proximity and have all of them repair and spycheck for each other. Meanwhile in smaller games you can’t justify the investment needed to defend the nest. Same with most classes not used in 6v6; you can’t justify their position on the team. However unlike the rest, spy and sniper also do badly in larger games. The only reason they get used in highlander is the ruleset; otherwise you’d want another soldier or demo every single time, for any number of players.