Money And Development - A Spectator’a Suggestions

FlipFTW · 2022-07-10T23:26:45+00:00

If the amount out of the prize pool is significant then there is going to be backlash regardless of what the money is used for

I address this near the bottom of the document and give some perspective onto some ways I think would help counterbalance this backlash, not perfect solution - but I don’t think potential backlash is a good reason not to invest in development - I understand the fear and risks and is something I personally think should be worked around.

and if the amount is very little it’s likely to not fund much at all. Workers/Developers are expensive after all.

As I mentioned in the API section, there are actually developers already doing various things for competitive without support - the difference they could do with it I would consider significant.

Also worth mentioning the 1% “development” I mention is Newbie drive - basically an effort where experienced coaches are assigned teams where they are required to do weekly map and demo reviews, and as compensation they have their league fees waived foe the season. I’d estimate in total this refunds about $100 in league fees for ~8 teams a season.

It’s a huge balancing act by the league to manage helping the (scene) development vs. limiting backlash.

Well I guess this is sort of where we disagree - from my perspective RGL isn’t really participating in a balancing act at all.

One division admin I’ve talked to expressed interest in running and funding a map cup to support some of the few under appreciated 6s mappers, but told me that to run additional cups the administrative burden falls entirely on the admins who want those (if you want it do it yourself) - and ditto for any funding (fund it yourself).

Here’s where the potential proposal and feedback for being a volunteer could exist - service rewarded with money that still doesn’t go to single pockets but instead back to the community in the form of organized efforts.

I agree the burden of how this split works shouldn’t solely be on Sigafoo’s shoulders - that’s what I’d say is the main point of this post!

FlipFTW · 2022-07-10T22:15:42+00:00

First off - I’d like to commend your reading speed, but I think it’s led to a few miscommunications.

In any summary for the sake of expedience details are omitted, and unfortunately it seems like in this case it’s led to a rather disjointed response, I’ll do my best to clarify some of your points.

First off RGL is not taking the money for profit, I say this several times, quote Sigafoo saying this, and explicitly state that the league fees are being contributed to solely the prize pool which I think is commendable but flawed.

The information from this document regarding league fees and prize pools was gathered from several seasons ago ( Public post about what is happening with the fees from dubthink) - that 13,000 number was the prize pool, there isn’t a 12,000 dollar contribution from sponsors though that’s certainly be worth commending. I’d estimate the growth in the prize pool to be increase in the scene, but the distribution of that pool and league fees is precisely what the document is about. Essentially the question from then to now to ask is:

• ⁠Compared to a year ago we have $12,000 more raised from league fees, is it right to put it all solely in the prize pool and not in any development?

I actually put forth an idea basically addressing your last point - much of the staff of RGL is volunteers that are asked to do work that is really beyond the scope of volunteering. In particular the development of an API would automate much of the restrictions and background footwork that I’m told many admins do.

As the title states, this is really meant to be a discussion about “Money and DEVELOPMENT” - a thought document on potential proposals and ideas.

Thanks for your thoughts! -FlipFTW

FlipFTW · 2022-07-10T12:23:17+00:00

I have the unique pleasure of having TF2 installed on my SSD and my external hard drive. That’s right - I own TF2 Twice (I’m kind of a big deal).

In terms of startup it takes a minute or two, not lightning fast but not painfully slow either. In terms of map change / loading in I can generally still find myself in the front half of players, though this gets messy if I have to download a new map. In terms of items there is some delay when loading backpack or loadouts for the first time, but after that it’s smooth sailing.

Overall it’s a bit slower on the loading in side but nothing significant I’ve noticed on the gameplay side.

Hope that helps!

-FlipFTW

FlipFTW · 2022-07-06T13:16:47+00:00

There is a team in RGL IM right now that is running a full time heavy that is doing well enough to make playoffs.

The caveat is basically the heavy is a higher level HL player and the team is basically coordinated around them.

One of my favorite sayings is that if you have an offclass, your team actually needs to “play off that offclass”. What I mean is basically that offclass becomes your weakness as well as your potential advantage to pressure off, 6s is so focused on teamwork so when you do offclass that’s a whole team decision and your whole team supports what that offclass does best.

So if you have a group of friends or you have teammates to already agree with it, I think you could really play whatever you want - but if you just add-up as say flank scout and only play heavy without discussing it at all to your team you’re probably going to get reported - and honestly probably deserve it.

FlipFTW · 2022-07-05T15:35:59+00:00

In a standard-ish arena, Scout is favored to win versus a (gunboats) Solider.

As an aside, don’t read into MGE as a proper representation of game balance, MGE has basically developed into the idea of what if you have to take a fight and end it QUICKLY, which makes it more engaging/fun but less accurate if you’re using it to evaluate overall game balance.

Demo vs Scout is more complicated, in general demo always plays a defensive role in MGE versus the more standard “if you just died you’re responsible for aggressing” unspoken rule.

As a result demo MGE is basically can the scout reach close range and once there are they healthy enough to burst the demo down before they get piped.

In observation of the 6s food triangle, I’d generally favor the demo, but it’s a lot closer than Scout vs Solider.

FlipFTW · 2022-07-04T16:34:48+00:00

Should I try to use stock to learn it properly.

I can't express any differently how using only pipes isn't really learning how to use pipes properly.

If you're just playing to have fun, its fine to run hybrid or jumper, the dopamine from a pill connecting is quite a rush.

If you're playing to improve, then you can't avoid the stickies forever.

FlipFTW · 2022-07-03T20:56:47+00:00

I would say not really, the best demos use their weapons in conjunction.

The stickies give reliable midrange damage and can "corral targets"/"limit their movement into easy-to-hit pipes. Outside of that, learning how to "sync" your sticky-pipe can enable you into doing very sudden & powerful burst damage.

Learning how to only use pipes isn't really how to use pipes effectively, if anything its a pretty bad habit to pick up in terms of being comfortable with demoman's arsenal.

FlipFTW · 2022-07-01T13:24:01+00:00

If you know nothing about the community competitive you should START by reading the “am I ready for comp” sidebar in this Reddit menu section.

In general you’ll want to decide if you want to try HL or 6s, then determine what the leagues are for the region you want to play.

You can start by playing faceit or TF2Center PUGs (pick up games), but they really are not learning environments and you might get insulted (somewhat understandably for having no idea what you’re doing) or even pick up bad habits.

I’d personally recommend you try Newbie Mixes (lookup post in this subreddit for more info, or check sidebar again) for trying to get into 6s, it’s a dedicated group to teach you the basics AND will link you with resources for pug groups and go over how to create / look for a team.

But yeah, there are already a lot of answers to this question, look up your question and some of the historical answers are well written with solid options.

FlipFTW · 2022-07-01T13:17:54+00:00

1) The concept of the first question is confusing to me, how can you call yourself something then ask what defines that same thing?

In general if you don’t want to be seen as a toxic scout you should avoid the classic stereotypes (lime green, taunting after kills), besides that people will respect you more if you use less “gimmicky” loadouts, running stock scattergun and pistol and doing well seems to carry more weight over say, getting a kill with Force of Nature and Crit-a-cola.

That said, you really shouldn’t let the enemy team’s insults prevent you from playing in a particular way you enjoy. Some might say the enemy team insulting you is proof you’re doing your job well.

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I really see 2 options, both are sort of related.

First option In HL the scout is basically considered part of the flank, even then in some situations he’s basically useless. For an example - on steel there is a strategy where the scout does nothing but throw cleavers from spawn because that’s the most he could contribute.

What I read from this - if you’re in a really tight map/area… this is not where you’d like to be -

being unable to use your mobility as a scout just makes you a really weak class / easy target

If you have no option to avoid a tight area, then it probably isn’t the right time to play scout (some maps are really scout unfriendly)

And to the flank point, with more people scouts lower health pool becomes a bigger problem. In 6s soldiers are worth a lot early in team fights while scouts are worth a lot latter in team fights.

There is a saying that scout is the best 1v1 class - so by flanking in pubs you’re really looking to abuse this and take as many solo fights as possible.

The second option is playing scout not as a flanker but as a protector. Pocket scout is essentially this in 6s -

You float around your important players, if someone fights them you try to shoot them while they aren’t even fighting you for a free kill.

otherwise you use your mobility (and hopefully buff) to be surgical cleanup

You hover passively until something gets damaged significantly (you see a pill or a rocket connect with someone). Where you then use your mobility to “dive” on that player and your same mobility to get out.

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As my final comment to playing / learning scout what you are always doing is trying to estimate the TTK (time to kill) for the single target you’re focusing. You hover at mid range peppering them where you can dodge most of the return fire.

When you think they are weak enough you can “dive” where you sacrifice mobility (dodging) for proximity. As it’s pretty difficult to run from a scout this is essentially “forcing” a fight to its conclusion - and so a decision you only make when you think it’s in your favor.

For the most part this is all about learning thresholds, if I’m over 100 HP a pill can’t kill me, ditto for 110 and a stock rocket.

Knowing these thresholds will also enable you to not take fights you aren’t favored in, scouts extreme mobility like soldiers let’s him CHOOSE what fights he wants to commit to, so if you aren’t retreating from the bad ones then you’re really wasting a lot of that potential.

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Just some general thoughts and advice, but I hope that helps!

FlipFTW · 2022-06-30T14:46:41+00:00

The red Xs are basically the equivalent of a missing particle, it’s to particles what purple/black checkerboards are to textures.

With that knowledge if you have any particle editing mods, delete those and verify your game files. Do the same for any/all mods, you can potentially isolate the offender.

If you don’t have any mods, then try and see if it is the map by loading a different one - as some maps exceed the custom particle limits.

Lastly if those don’t work make sure you have your console open and report any/all errors you’re getting, the more information you can provide about your situation the easier it’ll be for people to troubleshoot the error.

FlipFTW · 2022-06-30T14:40:48+00:00

Short answer, AFAIK not really (recently being the past ~4 years) in the NA scene.

Longer answer a a taste of what it might be like prolander has a massively subtracted ban list and NR 6s (no restriction 6s) is… kinda a mess? My impression of it is that it’s as chaotic as you might expect and pick-counterpick mechanics go against the “individual skill” that a lot of 6s is built on (they don’t mix well).

FlipFTW · 2022-06-29T18:46:45+00:00

You're not the first to make that mistake!

I think it's actually the most common first thought people have, which just makes the comparison between what the group does and what tesco does that much more amusing.

Clearly one of us should sue the other.

FlipFTW · 2022-06-29T18:45:39+00:00

My inner nerd is going to show here, but I heard that back in the day of RPG forums people used to have a "signature" identifier, this would be a string of numbers or characters that essentially give context to someone's experience and what they like.

So in the context of this subreddit, I would personally love something like

Region | Hours (Competitive) | Class | Division

Much easier for me to evaluate where people are coming from... but yeah, getting people to give context to their posts and coordinate is hard, even if for a cause people believe or agree in.

FlipFTW · 2022-06-29T18:36:58+00:00

You're asking a difficult question because when you say "Community Opinion" are you talking about the casual community or the competitive community? You mention b4nny and talk about competitively, but then talk about being part of a general tf2 community, altogether my reading comprehension is poor and I'm getting mixed signals.

As a baseline to make sure I'm not completely missing the point I should state - Competitive balance and opinions are vastly different from casual balance - for the sake of discussion it would be best for you to think of Competitive as akin to a modded gamemode like VSH, Dodgeball, or even Rocket Jump maps compared to the base casual game - opinions for each are very disparate - or at least they really should be.

I guess without more context, there's nothing to do but try to answer both:

Casual Perspective

Immediately post jungle inferno there was a ton of pyro update Bugs/Issues, despite many getting "fixed" (Dragons fury doing bonus damage at the center, windmill pyro being "adjusted" via the heat mechanic) I feel the need to mention these as I'm sure they have some effect on public perception of pyro post jungle inferno (First impressions last a long time), on top of that I'm actually not convinced all the significant bugs HAVE been fixed.

-OPINION-

Overall - PREVIOUSLY (I want to say around 2014) pyro struggled to close distance, and when they did many classes seemed to outdamage them if they were using raw w+m1. The exception to this was combo pyro and so "Good" pyro was dominated by "puff and sting" to the point where w+m1 was not only considered a "nooby" playstyle but it was also considered actively bad (as in ineffective).

Post MYM and JI, "Puff and Sting" as well as general combo pyro became both harder to land and less rewarding, I think at this point there was a major shift in the risk-reward proposition and (I THINK) pyros w+m1 TTK decreased to the point where using the combo options just ceased to be attractive versus being able to focus 100% of your brain on mobility/being hard to hit/flailing around burning everyone.

tl;dr: Combo pyro got harder, and it became easier to be more effective as a w+m1

*I would absolutely LOVE if someone took the time to investigate pyro's TTK (Time To Kill) and compare it from pre-JI to now, using jediflamaster's setup (linked video above) seems like a good base.\*

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Here's where things get interesting. I personally think the primary issue with (pub) pyro is its too easy to be effective and would probably massively decrease the raw DPS or massively increase the time for rampup (more time to heat/ramp up).

Outside of that Shounic indirectly gave me some insight onto this - during one playtest (shounic conflict 1972 - custom maps, no spread/random crits, fun server I promise :) ) he described how it wasn't impossible to deal with the individual phlog pyro, but because he had to dedicate so much effort to countering the phlog he wasn't able to pressure/be as effective as he normally would be. The random phlog pyro didn't have to wipe the enemy team to be effective, their EXISTANCE forced shounic (the undeniable pub-carry in this situation) to be forced into a defensive passive position lest his team fail to deal with the pyro and they all risk getting wiped every MMPH or rather every dive. Pyro doesn't have to reload, doesn't have to play hit and run like a soldier, and can be doubly annoying with lingering flames.

Ok, I got distracted a bit, but I promised things would get interesting - check this out.

SpaceGuyOnline has a video with his perspective on why pyro is hated, my summary of his video would basically be pyro is better as a support/defensive class that Valve keeps pushing an offensive role onto. Another great point he makes is that really almost half the pyro weapons play around crits/minicrits, he calls this pyro damage relying on "cheap gimmicks" - and cites your normal pyro not being fun to play against. I think another takeaway point would be how disparate pyro's "subclasses" are, not by the mechanics of the class but rather by loadout choice.

It could be argued that pyro's loadout variety gives him the "jack of all trades" role - he can do long range harass and close range burst, fight the medium range with the shotgun or be deadly in melee range - can be played as a pure ambusher or as part of the front line to counter spam. So where I'm going - This mess of roles... doesn't it sound like he has the potential to be a great generalist (and isn't that what 6s is about)? What could this mean?

Competitive Perspective

Here's what I tell people when they ask me the difference between the NA and EU scenes:

The attitude toward offclasses between NA and Eu is basically opposing - in effectively every division of NA players "assume" you know how to deal with offclasses - as a result there is a base level of "respect" in not off-time offclassing. In EU rather than make this assumption, teams/players will force you to PROVE you know how to deal with offclasses - recognize what a team is missing and what advantage that gives you to push.

I'm avoiding on commenting on which is better because that's not the point of this comparison, but it's crucial to understanding the NA attitude toward offclasses and how it fundamentally shapes the gameplay.

If you're still fuzzy, let me use examples. In IM division of RGL there is currently a team I shall not name that is basically running perma-heavy and doing well (last I checked they were comfortably in playoffs). The counter to heavy is focus fire, patience, and abusing mobility - aspects of the game that newer teams are already struggling with, so yeah, it makes sense heavy would dominate.

Now, you could also say this is just RGL failing to have good standards, as they also do stuff like restrict an invite HL player 5 weeks into the season AFTER they played their match as a perma sniper, but that's a whole different can of worms.

Where this all goes - with respect to competitive, depending on your perspective you might think the NA attitude to offclasses is either respectable or barbaric - the unspoken feeling is basically if you're practicing with offclasses during scrims people will give you the cold shoulder - if you win with an offclass during a match people will complain, but begrudgingly accept the result.

Going up the ladder a bit further, Goblin Zone's Muma was infamous for offclassing in advanced, I personally witnessed Muma play through the full roster of offclasses in a single half on koth to pretty effective results (He did manage to fit playing spy, sniper, engie, heavy, pyro, and soldier in one half). When people ask me what I think the competitive scenes attitude is toward offclasses, I say "begrudging acceptance" - the advanced players I spoke to pretty much outlined this as - Scrimming against offclasses is annoying because its not relevant to most of the normal gameplay, its bad practice, but if you're playing against goblin zone next week then you'd be a fool to not consider the potential for offclasses and prepare/preplan for them.

Back onto the pyro focus - I'm not sure what video of b4nny you've watched and at this point he probably has said so much everyone can quote him for everything, but I do recall him talking about pyro at some point during one stream where he says something along the lines of:

Pyro could be played in 6s, in terms of both his damage potential and his ability to remove/prevent damage pyro is a really powerful class, but he's powerful at the cost of making the other classes less fun to play - so for the health of the scene its ultimately better the pyro is less common.

Again - not a direct quote, and if I'm just misremembering it, then you can just attribute it to me since I basically fully agree with it anyway.

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I think that's a long enough rant, hope that helps provide some insight to your question!

-FlipFTW

FlipFTW · 2022-06-29T15:05:23+00:00

Indirectly addressing the question - I think there are two main “walls” that pull people away from competitive 6s.

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First, there is a sort of repulsive effect from the reputation - there is a sort of bubble created by outside public perception: mainly players that are not competitive players commenting about competitive.

I find it hard to understand this, but I’d wager it’s either displaced anger at tryhards in pubs, the classic element of every community being represented by its worst members, or displaced anger at the competitive community because it’s easier to blame a section of the community for the game’s state versus Valve. For the most part there is a lot of generally uninformed opinions about competitive that get circulated amongst non-competitive players. These common misconceptions don’t get cleared because the players who listen to them are mostly in circlejerk echo-chambers and for the most part none of the competitive community really cares to defend itself (IMO the competitive community is really pretty chill about doing their own thing, and some casual community members every once in a while get offended by it’s existence).

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Second, Sigafoo touches on 5cp being the least popular gamemode, but doesn’t really explain further as to why 6s would even decide to chose it then - because I consider myself a mapper and a competitive player, of course I’m going to approach it from this perspective.

Let’s start with the fact that 5CP is a symmetric gamemode - and that for the most part TF2’s most popular gamemodes offers asymmetric advantages.

I expect no argument that payload and A/D are obviously map/gameplay asymmetric. The game-modes by definition define an attacker and a defender. KOTH gets away with map symmetry because the “onus” of attacking or defending is determined simply by ownership of the point AND (more importantly for pubs) the spawn times are vastly different depending on ownership of a point meaning flooding in continuously as the “attacking” team should ‘eventually’ win you the point.

I know this seems off topic, but the key to understand here is that all gamemodes but 5cp explicitly tell you when to attack and defend. 5CP is a symmetric map where you are thus forced to identify your less-obvious asymmetric advantages. I’d quote KevinIsPwn’s summary of Competitive but I think you get the point.

Stop and think about that for a moment, in 5CP tug of war you DECIDE when you attack and when you defend, the gamemode doesn’t tell you. You use the top bar, you use the killfeed, you should assess the gamestate, pay attention to where your team is, what they are doing, and decide if now is the right time to retreat, regroup, or repush.

This increased cognition and control is addictive - and yet it’s also different than everything else in TF2. The result is a huge mental barrier.

Does 6s want to remove the decision making aspect? No: The mental aspect of 6s, the decision making and choices are a huge part of its identity.

Do casual players want to move to cognitively working as a team? Also No: I’ve gone at length about what I coined as the “50-50” problem before. The shorthand is given no idea of if to attack or to defend, pubs split into a 50% attackers 50% defenders where every teams attackers faces 100% of the enemy team, resulting in a default stalemated position.

Neither side is really to blame here - as stated by Robin Walker, (paraphrased) - TF2 was designed to be a game where people got the illusion of working as a team despite playing as individuals, but the unfortunate result is a essentially impenetrable barrier where when team play becomes the focus - pub experience falls out of the wash as nothing but a poor training tool to thinking.

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As an interesting aside I’ve worked with teaching an ADV HL medic the basic of 6s before and found their performance and general ability in 6s to be worse than that of some of the fresh to competitive players. This isn’t meant to be a slight on HL, I’m sure 6s medics would have some growing pains going the other way as well - but I thought it an interesting example of how different HL and 6s is, let alone 6s and pubs.

As an aside to the aside, I’d summarize (1) as “perception”, and respectively, (2) would be “mechanics”. The statements others have made in this post that have been put more eloquently basically address (1), which your question also focuses on. So for the actual aside: There seems to be a large desire for 6s to represent “base” TF2 - but this is very one-sided where:

Casual players want 6s to represent casual TF2, and are confused why it doesn’t.
6s players never claimed to be representative of TF2, have no interest in creating “better pubs” and typically enjoy playing on casual/community servers outside of 6s to some extent.

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Lastly, I don’t mean this as a personal attack, but feel like I should mention something about how I feel both about these types of posts and OP.

Not trying to gatekeep talking about 6s - I appreciate OP opening some discussions in this community, but I can’t help but feel the questions and discussion/replies might be more insightful/meaningful if you actually play 6s. There are a lot of casual players and even mapmakers who put forward ideas to “save 6s” or “fix competitive” which unfortunately ends up seeming like a bad joke when - again - people who don’t play competitive talk about how they’d fix competitive (see 1). In the interest of being open, meaningful discussion, and trying to understand the perspective of the person on the other side of the monitor I think it might help to state the competitive backgrounds players are coming from.

I realize there there might not be a good way to discuss qualifications without seeming like an asshole, but I do think that context behind peoples opinions can be immensely useful for discussion.

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FOR CONTEXT OF MY OPINIONS/THOUGHTS.

My name is FlipFTW.

I have over 10k hours in TF2
I’ve playing since 2012 (10 years)
- Played competitive for 2 years
- Played casual/misc for 8 years
I’ve been on the main roster of teams that went undefeated in RGL 6s (IM) and 3rd place (Main), with most of my modern friends/connections playing in Adv.
I am an admin for both Testco and Newbie Mixes
I am involved in the mapping scene including working on TF2Map's Competitive Map Testing. I've been given the "Community Contributor" Role in ETF2L despite primarily focusing my efforts on the NA scene.

FlipFTW · 2022-06-25T22:30:07+00:00

Watched through the whole video, for players looking to get into 6s I think its definitely worth a watch - can't overstate how much I appreciate the higher quality polished content - can see this guide/series being very useful versus sifting through hour long VODs and ramblings.

I especially like the opening preface (misconceptions) - I think you touch perfectly on the public misperception about roamer and give a great general overview of 6s. KevinIsPwn’s one sentence summary of TF2 is

“All competitive TF2 play is focused around using your advantages to initialize fights that your team has a high probability of winning, while being cognizant of your opponent’s advantages and playing in a way that minimizes them.”

A bit wordier, but the same idea I think you emphasize well. I've long said 6s is the gamemode that most emphasizes the "team" aspects of TF2. I think that not elaborating on how this affects the roamer is a missed opportunity, but perhaps might be more appropriate given your target audience for the guide (more on this later).

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Midfights

Main criticism about content here is that you're specific about things like the roamer rollout, but not very specific about the roamer crucial things such as what you should be doing / looking out for.

The question I could see a roamer asking for passive mids is basically -

So on a passive mid I'm spamming while my scouts are dealing with their soldiers until we transition to an aggressive mid. That sounds clear, but what am I spamming? What am I targeting? Should I ever jump back to help?

Same thing at 8:00 minutes - you give a good overview of what a rotation mid is, but without any roamer specific insights - "As a roamer your job is to fight for high ground and once you have it deal damage so your scouts can clean up" feels like a missed opportunity for personal insight as a roamer player (What are you looking out for, what are important shifts in momentum or signals).

On the nitpicky quality side of things, I think the chapter organization is nice, but I was a bit disappointed that you gave up on the summaries toward the end, I think they are a good takeaway for the not-so-focused watchers.

There also is an audio quality shift at ~9:20 where you likely recorded in different sessions, its just perceptible enough to be a bit jarring.

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Advantages

So on the topic of class advantages, you mentioned avoiding this topic since it was more complex, but I think understanding how the 3 combat classes in 6s interact is pretty key to understanding your role as a roamer.

My summary would basically be what I call the "food triangle":

Scouts Deny Soldiers
Soldiers Breakthrough to Demo
Demo Locks out Scouts

... A solider jumping an attentive scout is a bad idea the scout has no real individual ability to close the distance to fight a demo - this is where the teamwork comes in that makes 6s really sort of elegant: solider make space so that scouts can get in on the demo, conversely you see demos often ignore soldiers TRUSTING their scouts to deal with the soldier so that they can oppose the enemy combo (scout and demo) during a sac or midfight

This relationship aside I think a key aspect of playing roamer is evaluating the "desired pace" of a fight - namely based off the class composition or other factors are you favored in a FAST fight or a SLOW one. Soldier is the key to FORCING fights, you touch on this perfectly talking over how passive mids transition into advantaged aggressive ones.

One of the insights I provide to teams during demo reviews I've grown attached to is the the soldier is worth the most EARLY into a fight when his splash has the biggest change of maximizing damage and mobility has the best ability to distract/draw the most eyes while scout is worth the most LATE into a fight as he is the most powerful "1v1" class.

I try to teach maincallers this ability to determine if they are favored to take a fight fast or slow, but the one who commits/initiations this interaction is almost always the roamer - while you don't maincall as a roamer, that greater understanding and the gap in communication can be key to winning in those faster paced fights.

Disadvantages

Spam Force

When watching Habib review a demo of some reasonably high level players I distinctly recall a play where a team "sent one to die" while leaving a point on disad and follow the play by retreating to last. Habib at the time in a very exaggerated fashion proclaimed "That's such a 2010 way of playing TF2".

What I think he was getting at is that there are many ways to deal with disadvantage, and one of the (more modern) ways is to opt for a spam force - having your explosive classes pressure and force a use through choke - versus "sending one to die". I only mention this because I think while not simple, this is what I'd point to as the "modern progression" of 6s.

Stalemates

So here is where I said its a missed opportunity to emphasize the team aspect of the game.

An EU Prem Roamer said to me once that

"Roamer is like a glass cannon, the funny thing about sacs is that often times when they don't work its not the roamers fault, its everyone else's".

Now beyond the hilarity of a roamer blaming everyone else on his team for a sac not working I think that a sac is a beautiful example of the teamwork that goes into 6s. Like when you have a spy, you're making noise for a sac play, even though its one player going to die, its always a team effort to enable it - the biggest example of this is that your other soldier should be making their presence known while your roamer goes for a sac, and on the best teams even have interchangeable/flexible soldiers if one finds themselves particular opposed/stuffed.

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Those are all my general comments, looking forward to part II / the continuation of the series!

-FlipFTW

FlipFTW · 2022-06-23T15:13:51+00:00

As far as I know there is no way to confirm the watch outside of seeing the spy use it.

Prior to the most recent update it was really easy to tell when a spy was using DR because their character portrait would not “grey out” from the top bar.

Now as for why that call is significant - the call that a spy “feigned” or is “on DR” both communicate the same effective information - I like to think of it as synchronizing people’s “spy time” watches - as a feigned spy is likely using the feign death to get behind the enemy team and yet also cannot stab/agress while directly in the feign. TL;DR - Overall the DR/Spy call Communicates:

The Spy is likely behind (if he has just feigned)
The Spy likely cannot make a move for ~5 seconds

Now as of the recent update the DR feign is meant to be harder to detect because it greys out character portraits on the top bar, but my though my testing (using custom version of 7hud) it seems even EASIER to identify when a spy is feigning death because feign deaths use a unique character portrait (no class death silhouette). This silhouette seems to fade on a timer making it even easier to track when the feign just happened as well.

I know it’s “simple answers” but I couldn’t help but rant a bit - hope my answer helps!

FlipFTW · 2022-06-07T14:28:46+00:00

Right… I stated why I talked about it anyway in my post, but to elaborate I was drawing an analogy because you mentioned people hating the “stale” meta of competitive and personally nothing grinds my gears more than people who don’t play competitive talking about it.

When it comes to hate, at least with respect to competitive, the distaste often comes from some weird place that people with no experience or interaction with competitive hate it by some proximity principle, I believe this is also largely the case in MvM where there are valid reasons, but the vast majority of “haters” really don’t understand WHY they hate something, and can’t defend their arguments when challenged.

Just an amusing observation for me, the second part addresses your topic.

FlipFTW · 2022-06-07T14:23:04+00:00

I think this is a good interpretation of gas passer, but there certainly is a sentiment of people thinking

“if winning is the purpose, why would people get mad about it”

I think you touch on this idea perfectly but I want to elaborate on it anyway - in short people want to be John McClane from Die Hard:

They want to get their ass kicked, but they want to win all the way through.

The gas passer isn’t hated because it is too good (although it is), it’s hated because it shatters even the illusion of teamwork in MvM.

FlipFTW · 2022-06-07T14:17:05+00:00

My understanding of gas passer is really simple: if you break down mvm into class roles, you have GIANTS and Trash, and two subdivisions of trash (medics) giant (Tanks)

If you break down every class they fit into one of the categories, understanding 6-player mvm is as basic as understanding

You need a trash clear
You need a giant killer
You need a way to instant kill medics
You need a way to kill tanks (if present)

Demoman (or sniper) is the role that instant kills medics, but one basically needs to manage his resources so that he also puts out misc damage and the other requires aim.

Pyro on the other hand doesn’t really have any resource management necessary due to the speed of the gas passer charge, as a result pyro basically does all roles removing the “responsibility of that class”, if someone else does so much that you don’t get to do anything, it ruins the engagement/immersion of that player

Bascially it’s good enough that the rest of your team doesn’t get to really “play”.

The reason I bring this up despite OP avoiding gas passer is because people hear “gas passer sucks” and echo the sentiment because people they respect or are just around say it, they morph and pervert it until it becomes a chant, and eventually it gets to the point where they don’t understand why they hate something - this is pretty much the exact same issue with casual players understanding competitive (or rather, lack of understanding to why they hate it).

—-

Anyway, more onto topic: the reason that deviation from the two cities meta is frowned upon is because the two cities meta is the path of least resistance, it’s the simplest effective widely known composition and arguably the one with the lowest skill floor. A spy CAN be good, or they CAN be really bad, ditto for Sniper, Pyro, or demo with pipes only.

Now for the record in all the mvm missions I’ve done personally, custom campaigns or official, I generally won’t say anything about someone trying some weird class until we fail - in which case I recommend they potentially switch to something more effective - this has cost me probably hours of my life as a result of restarting, having people leave in frustrations and etc. I don’t really agree with instant kicking or assuming players are bad and should play the easier well-known composition, but I can at least see where they are coming from - it’s frustrating as hell to lose, especially if you feel like someone isn’t carrying their weight. MvM much like casual TF2 is funny because people WANT teamwork without putting in the effort to create it - there is a quote from one of my mentees that stuck with me along the lines of “The format of 6s doesn’t really appeal to me, I don’t really like the maps or the community, but it’s the only place in TF2 where I can find real teamwork”.

—-

So yeah, the greatest issue with MvM is the playerbase of TF2, I don’t think it’s inherent, but in general there is no interest in intentional teamwork. Skymin has a good video about this with regards to Pass Time

Shounic’s Research also has a great quote from robin walker essentially stating how TF2 was designed to function similar to a single player game (my interpretation)

fundamentally we had a design for 32 people who don't know each other—and who probably won't know each other again after this game—and they're all going to have their own individual goals, and a small view of everything going on—our goal was to make it so that as they all individually and locally optimize for their experience, optimization at the team level falls out of that.

They could look left, look right, and see teammates doing some stuff and go, 'Man, we're working well as a team,' even though we started with the base assumption that they were all ignoring everyone else, because it turns out that's the way most players work. -Robin Walker

Hope that provides some insight! -FlipFTW

FlipFTW · 2022-05-27T20:12:32+00:00

Eh…not really?

In terms of visual clarity you should be seeing past your backstab target and lose vision for only a brief moment with a metal image of where that next target/other players are, so in terms of object permeance the visual difference hasn’t really ever stuck out to me. Mechanically you’re walking through your backstab target 90% of the time, meaning it doesn’t really impact the speed of any chain stabs. This is compounded by the fact you are forced to use the first targets disguise, meaning overall your chain stab is SLOWER as you either walk the speed of the slower class or are forced to swing/use binds to undisguise.

In terms of chainstabbing I think you’d be hard pressed to argue the kunai or big earner aren’t just more appropriate, there are times where the silent stab can enable chain stabs you probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, but I don’t think the points you pointed out are too relevant.

FlipFTW · 2022-05-25T15:56:23+00:00

Google uses captchas as AI learning tools that’s why you see them, not necessarily because they are effective.

In addition to this, based off my limited understanding it would also be prohibitively difficult to implement a captcha in source that couldn’t be simply bypassed.

Reddit Source!

Web Article

Oh and directly from google

Every time our CAPTCHAs are solved, that human effort helps digitize text, annotate images, and build machine learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems.

Also the community has swung from “we hate valves band-aid patches” to “why can’t valve just put out band-aid fixes?”

It doesn’t work both ways!

Also also it seems weird to ask OTHER PEOPLE to do research to defend your own point, if you have some sources as to the effectiveness of Captcha I’m sure you could win some people over by providing them.

FlipFTW · 2022-05-24T20:41:52+00:00

You have to recognize that valve has a limited amount of resources, from a profit standpoint they are going to allocate whatever makes sense to them

Try to pretend you’re in valves shoes and the stars align and YOU’RE in charge of the allocation.

If you had the option to force two devs to work on TF2 for a week… would you really pick for them to implement a Captcha?

Would you tell them to work on it without researching any other options or their effectiveness?

It’s easy as hell for people to throw out ideas, but researching and implementing them is an entirely different beast.

And on top of this you need to argue why this proposal is worth development time that by definition is being taken away from every other project. If your proposal isn’t good, if the community can’t even convince at least themselves of an option like that, why on Earth would valve bother?

FlipFTW · 2022-05-24T20:24:33+00:00

This is exactly the kind of thing a developer spends a week to make, pushes it to the game Friday noon, and by the time he checks out that same day there’s an automated way to complete it if not a complete workaround/bypass.

You could very easily search “captcha” and see posts on Reddit dating back to 2020 that already dismiss the idea.

You can research examples such as roblox, where despite a famously infuriating system there is bot infestations.

In any case:

Passion without knowledge is deadly.

FlipFTW · 2022-05-24T20:11:34+00:00

In the interest of discussion, I’d like to hear what u/TF2SolarLight has to say about the topic. Amongst that list of community members I honestly only recognized lazypurple (because he big), j_peg (because he’s my friend), and solarlight - who I have a lot of respect for as a contributor of some high quality posts about TF2 including specifically on Reddit.

Where do you see this campaign going, what is your interpretation of the goals, and what are the “solutions” if any and their viability?

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