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Team Fortress 2 - The Official Discussion Thread

After reading through your post, im still not really sure what it is?
what exactly is tournament mode, and are there any significant things you didnt talk about because they're common knowledge?
 
After reading through your post, im still not really sure what it is?
what exactly is tournament mode, and are there any significant things you didnt talk about because they're common knowledge?
Tournament mode is a cvar created for competitive play. However, there are some public servers that run it. On the server that I played on, an admin initiated a vote asking, "Should the next map be played with tournament mode on?" 70% of the people on the server voted "Yes" so the server started tournament mode once the map was started.

Tournament mode has nothing to do with creating brackets and eliminating teams. It simply runs the server with functions that were designed for competitive play.

When the server begins a map and tournament mode is active, players can join the server and run around the map shooting each other, but the game does not start until both teams declare that they are "ready." (This is done by hitting F4. Any player can change their team's status to "ready" or "not ready.") Once both teams are "ready" and have chosen a team name (which appears on the scoreboard), the game begins. In tournament mode, team autobalance is off. In tournament mode, if you are dead, you can only spectate your teammates from first-person perspective, so you can only see what your teammates see, meaning that you can't see behind them and warn them about spies and such.

There are also other changes that tournament mode brings to the table depending on map type:

On arena maps, tournament mode disables all restrictions on how many players can play at once, and teams aren't scrambled. Basically, you get to choose what team you play on and you never have to sit out. However, there is still no respawning in arena mode.

On attack/defend maps (examples being pl_goldrush, pl_badwater, cp_dustbowl, and cp_gravelpit) the game is played stopwatch mode. Team 1 defends while team 2 attacks. Team 2 attacks until they either capture all of the enemy control points or run out of time. Then, the teams swap and team 1 attacks while team 2 defends. Now, team 1 has two ways to win: they can either capture the same number of control points that team 1 captured and do it in a shorter amount of time, or they can simply capture more points.

Example: suppose that team FREEMAN and team COMBINE play a round on gravelpit. Team FREEMAN defends first, and team COMBINE attacks first. Team COMBINE is able to capture control points A and B in exactly 4 minutes and 30 seconds, but team FREEMAN is able to defend C until the timer runs out. Then, the teams are switched and team FREEMAN attacks while team COMBINE defends. Since team COMBINE captured two control points in 4 minutes and 30 seconds, FREEMAN can win by capturing two control points in 4 minutes and 29 seconds or faster. If they manage to do this, then the round ends and team FREEMAN wins without having to attack C. However, if team FREEMAN fails to capture A and B in 4 minutes and 29 seconds, they have a second chance to win: they can capture 3 control points, because team combine only captured 2 control points and 3 is a larger number than 2.

If team FREEMAN captures A, B, and C, and team COMBINE only captured A and B, then team FREEMAN wins because they captured more points. If team COMBINE only captured A and B and did it in 4 minutes and 30 seconds, but team FREEMAN was able to capture A and B only 4 minutes, then team FREEMAN also wins because they captured the same number of points but did faster.

Basically, both teams get a chance to attack, and whichever team captured the most control points wins. If both teams captured the same number of control points, then it comes down to which team took the least amount of time.
 
Matty, I was literally just about to post that! XD
Tested it and it works, it's hilarious in pubs where people don't know what's going on. First thing they always say is "can we build a Sentry on the Cart?"
 
Holy crap I need to buy this, but for some reason whenver I go to the cart it says there is an internal error initializing your transaction.

Any ideas on what to do?
 
i love the level 3 sentry on the cart in pubs, because people spend ages trying to destroy it. I also like the level three teleporter on places like goldrush2 when you can build during set up time, get it to level three so i can just drop my exit and have it run at 3 times the speed
 
Ah glad to see there's a TF2 community here at Smogon. Yes you guys should definitely buy this if you haven't done so already.
I've got like 400 hrs into this game (Spy is my most played XD) and still loving it.
 
Holy crap I need to buy this, but for some reason whenver I go to the cart it says there is an internal error initializing your transaction.

Any ideas on what to do?
I take it you already have Steam installed? Try restarting Steam and see if that works. Alternatively, you could ask on the Valve support forums.

I'm thinking of buying a second copy of this game in case I ever need to gift it. I'm pretty sure that if you gift the game to an email address instead of a Steam account, you can leave it unactivated indefinitely.
 
i love the level 3 sentry on the cart in pubs, because people spend ages trying to destroy it. I also like the level three teleporter on places like goldrush2 when you can build during set up time, get it to level three so i can just drop my exit and have it run at 3 times the speed
Even when the Dispencer is still invisible a red Pyro can go up to where it would be and flame it, and sparks will come out as if the Pyro was flaming a real dispencer.
 
I want to start playing this, I recently got access to a steam account with this game included and I want to see what all the hype is about.

is there a tutorial or something? i dont want to start playing this completely blind
 
Although there is no tutorial in the game, its pretty easy to join a game "blind" and pick an easy to play class (Heavy, Soldier, Engineer to an extent) and learn from there.

Of course, doing some research reading about classes/maps before hand is a good way to get some basic learning and then cement those basics with a few games. tf2wiki.net is a pretty decent starting point for learning about the game, although the best way to learn is to join a public server and just play some games :)
 
Although there is no tutorial in the game, its pretty easy to join a game "blind" and pick an easy to play class (Heavy, Soldier, Engineer to an extent) and learn from there.
Pyro probably has the lowest skill ceiling and most forgiving learning curve so it might not be a bad place to start. I think that most players usually choose a class based on where their FPS experience comes from; most UT players tend to gravitate to Soldier whereas most CS players choose classes which rely mostly on hitscan weapons (scout and sniper).
 
Or if you can't aim for shit, there's always medic ^________________^
I play medic I'm allowed to say it
Completly blind's fine, expecially when you find a 24 (or, despite the fact that the game deteriorates with every player over 24 IMO, a 32 man server) person server it gets so hectic nobody notices other peoples skill level, and people enter/exit so often score means nothing.
 
All of the Team Fortress 2 classes are extremely easy and simple to use (except for the Sniper and the Spy) and you can get an really good idea of how to use them just by seeing your teammates playing with them. Nearly all the weapons have some kind of spread: Scattergun, Shotgun, Flamethrower, Minigun, Rocket Launcher (blast radius), Medigun (you rarely have use for the Syringe Gun), Grenade Launcher and Sticky Bombs (blast radius), Wrench (just build shit, you don't even have to aim). So if you don't aim that well you still have a nice variety of classes the choose from and the game is very easy to 'get a hang of'. But like Kikuichimonji said, Pyro is really simple provided you stay in close quarters and is a fairly easy class to start out with (then you can get your Pyro achievements faster and upgrade).
 
All of the Team Fortress 2 classes are extremely easy and simple to use (except for the Sniper and the Spy)
I actually think that sniper is probably the simplest class to use. You have a basic sniper rifle, an automatic sidearm, and a melee attack. I'm pretty sure anyone who has ever played an FPS should have experience with all of these. There isn't much of a learning curve associated with hitscan weapons, either. I've played for a long time and I still haven't learned how to charge stickies to get them to arc exactly the way I want and I can honestly say that I could never hit anything with the medic's needlegun before the blutsauger was added, but the sniper was never a puzzle to me: you move your crosshair over an enemy's head and click. In fact, out of all of the hitscan weapons, the sniper rifle is probably the easiest to learn because it has no spread and no damage dropoff, two things which can make wielding a shotgun quite a task. The one thing that takes some getting used to is the sniper rifle's charge meter, but I usually only fire shots in one of two states: less than 50% (no boost) and fully charged (roughly x3 damage).
 
The updates are sweet. I don't feel as bad taking the teleporter any more since it recharges so quickly.

As much as I like to play Demoman, I think the update was for the best.
It encourages smarter placement of sticky-bombs, rather than just camping with them.
 
Well, I agree, the Sniper is quite simple but by all means not easy at all. I find it difficult to pin someone's small head with a poor zoom function. I play sniper in Halo 2 Vista, Crysis, and Half-Life 2 Deathmatch (with magnum, not crossbow) just fine but when it comes to TF2... bleh.

Anyways, Team Fortress 2 is $9.99 again and all Steam games have a reduced price of 10%-75% off until January 2nd. So if you want to try out other games, now is a good time to get them.
 
Ahhhh I need to get this game!!!!!

But sadly I'm poor and can't take advantage of the offer since I have no way of paying online.

Guess I'll have to play Counter Strike for another 3 years...
 
Glad you like it.

I had a question about L4D, and I know most of you guys have it (cba to go to wherever I should).

Do you need IE to play the Single Player?
 
Do you need IE to play the Single Player?
Internet Explorer? To the best of my knowledge, you do not need Internet Explorer to play Left 4 Dead in single player mode, I don't see why Internet Explorer would be a requirement.

By the by, there is a [thread=48013]Left 4 Dead thread[/thread] in Internet Renaissance. I originally placed it there rather than the "Other Competitive Games" subforum because I didn't think that a game as AI-driven as Left 4 Dead would be conducive to competitive play, but a a Google search for 'Left 4 Dead tournament' amazingly yields over six million results.
 
BEEEEES (replaces pyro flames), download available here.

Yukkuri shiteitte ne! HUD icons, (download) Replaces intel cap, crits, spy masks, menu backgrounds. Also available for download are yukkuri intel and rocket replacements, which I don't really recommend. The first time I used them was a round on ctf_convoy, I had kind of forgotten that I'd installed them so when I stepped out of spawn I was slightly startled to see yukkruis flying at me from across the map, although I eventually got used to it. Then I heard the "the enemy has taken our intelligence" alert so I doubled back and headed towards the intel room and SHAT BRICKS as I saw a giant yukkuri racing out of our intel room.

I also have a bunch of replacement sounds that I added myself.
 
Finally, they're going to legitimise the civilian as an actual class!

On a serious note, I pray the new game mode will actually be... competitive. Unlike ctf, if you know what I mean.
If you want a great new pl map you should all be playing pl_great_height. I honestly doubt any american servers will have it in their rotation just yet, but it's taken off on a few aussie servers so give it a bit of time and you might get to see it.
 
I'd actually love to see flags incorporated into capture point maps like they were originally. (Carry the flag to a point to capture it.) avanti is one (custom) map that I believe still uses this mechanic, if you can find any servers running it.
 
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