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Team Fortress 2 - The Official Discussion Thread
- Thread starter McLovinn
- Start date
I primarily play Scout, but I can always go Demoman or Roaming Soldier if need be. I'm fairly good around the board with the classes, but Scout is what I would feel most comfortable playing. I would say I could do Medic, but the concept of directing the team on pushes makes me nervous.
You could probably pass as a scout even though you're in the UK. Another community team I know of has a medic from the UK. while it doesn't have such aim needs, we could try it out.
CommunityFortress recently added a blog section to their site. The inaugural blog post is authored by yours truly. Commentary and criticism are welcome. Anyone who'd like to talk to me on Steam is welcome to do so.
Excellent read, Kiku. Your suggestions for the classes were nicely thought out, and I especially liked the fix to the Pyro and the Demo tweak. I already sort of expect Valve to implement something like that for the Engineer come update-time, but it doesn't hurt to keep mentioning it.
I don't have any criticisms with your article! Next time I'm actually playing on TF2, I may join you (provided you arent in a selective server).
I don't have any criticisms with your article! Next time I'm actually playing on TF2, I may join you (provided you arent in a selective server).
Have you guys seen this yet?
http://fakkelbrigade.eu/category/team-fortress-2-beta
http://fakkelbrigade.eu/category/team-fortress-2-beta
It looks pretty legit - you can even find the TF2 Beta in Robin Walker's My Games list (and yes, he does have every steam game ever >.> ) with 2.7 hours in the past 2 weeks. If it is, its obviously excellent news for competitive TF2!
I'm really excited to see Valve turning to the competitive community to help with playtesting. Although they are probably considering some changes to existing mechanics, I think there's a good chance that Valve will also call upon their new beta testers to try out the new unlockable weapons for the remaining classes while they're still in development. Hopefully, their competitive playtesters will identify any bad ideas and nip them in the bud. If Valve had turned to competitive players to playtest previous updates, we wouldn't have weapons like the Sandman. It's for this reason that I think it's excellent news not just for competitive TF2, but for TF2 in general.
This is good news. I dunno if everyone remembers the first few days the Sandman came out for competitive play but my clearest recollection was balls spammed across Badlands 3 gap. -_-
Its nice though they are picking pros for the project. Especially now that they have the demoman and soldier (two of assault classes in 6v6 play) left to build unlocks for.
Its nice though they are picking pros for the project. Especially now that they have the demoman and soldier (two of assault classes in 6v6 play) left to build unlocks for.
So if people are interested in a server, I need to know soon, as Gameservers (even though they are crap) has a sale going on that lets me get a 16 man server for 12 dollars a month or a 24 man for 19, and if you guys want it in Chicago, Dallas, or Jersey.
Also if we are actually putting a team together, because if we are i'll get a vent server as well.
Also if we are actually putting a team together, because if we are i'll get a vent server as well.
I think a Smogon server is definitely a good idea, and I would certainly play that. Personally, I have no preference for the size; it's ultimately your call, and I doubt anyone would mind if it were the smaller yet cheaper server. Jersey is closest to me, so that gets my vote. If not, Chicago is my second vote.
TBH, we can just see how the server goes before a comp team. We have Stoo, Matty, possibly Kuiper, yourself, and myself as potential players, but we should just get a server up and see how that fills out before you go through the trouble of getting a vent server and whatnot! If we fall short of actual smogoners, having an active server can help fill it out a team.
So yes to the server. Preferably Jersey or Chicago, while no preference to size.
I'd just like to through myself out here and say that I would love to play with you guys on a smogon based server or any server for that manner. I've only been playing for 2 weeks, but I'm falling in love with this game pretty fast.
(also, Jersey would be my prefurence of sever location, followed by Dallas and chicago, but I'm in a weird location so it's a decesion best made by other people).
(also, Jersey would be my prefurence of sever location, followed by Dallas and chicago, but I'm in a weird location so it's a decesion best made by other people).
If we're talking server location, I'd advise against Jersey due to the high ping that west coast players would get. Dallas or Chicago would both be good locations, I'm a little bit more partial to Chicago due to my geography.
You might want to consider running Mumble over Ventrilo. Besides the fact that it's reported to have better latency, Mumble is free, so you don't need to pay to run it on your own server. (Anyone have a machine to run it on?)
In terms of server size, I'd prefer something smaller. The only issue you could run into is that most randoms who use the server browser usually look for 24-slot servers, so the server might get less traffic. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing; if most of the people playing are interested in the competitive format, then 16 slots is good for that. Having a 16-slot server probably means that we'll have to do a little bit of work to make sure people know it exists so that it's not empty whenever people want to play. I think the best thing would be to make sure everyone is in the Steam group and make announcements when people are likely to be on.
On a vaguely related note, does anyone know of a server mod that automatically changes the map once a certain player threshold has been met? I was thinking it might be cool to have a server that defaults to bball when there are 6 or fewer players but starts a normal map rotation once more people join.
You might want to consider running Mumble over Ventrilo. Besides the fact that it's reported to have better latency, Mumble is free, so you don't need to pay to run it on your own server. (Anyone have a machine to run it on?)
In terms of server size, I'd prefer something smaller. The only issue you could run into is that most randoms who use the server browser usually look for 24-slot servers, so the server might get less traffic. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing; if most of the people playing are interested in the competitive format, then 16 slots is good for that. Having a 16-slot server probably means that we'll have to do a little bit of work to make sure people know it exists so that it's not empty whenever people want to play. I think the best thing would be to make sure everyone is in the Steam group and make announcements when people are likely to be on.
On a vaguely related note, does anyone know of a server mod that automatically changes the map once a certain player threshold has been met? I was thinking it might be cool to have a server that defaults to bball when there are 6 or fewer players but starts a normal map rotation once more people join.
If we are gonna play in competitive leagues, theres a good chance we'll need to hit good pings for Euro players (or atleast I would rather have that tbh). If that isn't an option then I'd like it to be in Chicago. BTW, resum, do you want some help paying for the server? I'll pay pal you like 5 bucks if you want. I'd be a shame to see you spend all that money.
EDIT: oh and Kiku is totally right, a small 16-18 person server would be nice. 16 would allow us to have spectators for matches
EDIT2: Sorry I have a request. Would you guys mind posting your Steam Names again so I can add 'em. I'd like to catch a few games with you guys.
EDIT: oh and Kiku is totally right, a small 16-18 person server would be nice. 16 would allow us to have spectators for matches
EDIT2: Sorry I have a request. Would you guys mind posting your Steam Names again so I can add 'em. I'd like to catch a few games with you guys.
Ok I went ahead and ordered a 17 man server (one slot will be for sourceTV/reserved slot if we decide to get those) in chicago. If you want to help pay for it, go here:
http://www.gameservers.com/clanpay/?clanid=c3240f63e1933e221f63097cc0347588
so I don't spend the cash on crack.
http://www.gameservers.com/clanpay/?clanid=c3240f63e1933e221f63097cc0347588
so I don't spend the cash on crack.
While I like what you said in a lot of your post, everything you said about the Pyro really got my goat.
There's nothing wrong with a game or part of a game where the skill ceiling is close to the skill floor. To see any argument where what's wanted is the skill floor to be lowered whe what really needs to happen is the skill ceiling (or benefit for attaining the skill ceiling) needs to be raised to balance the class, just completely boggles my mind.
In addition, classes that are newbie friendly (high skill floor) are pretty much a requirement for the continued life of any game; an argument against that is bad and you should feel bad about yourself for making it.
I threw in 5 dollars of my own making the balance -$5.00. Hope the little contribution helps keep the server up!
As for Server related things. Do we have an idea at this point for what our map rotation will end up looking like? Also, are we considering Alltalk or partial Alltalk (such as at the end of rounds)? The prior is something I feel would be a good idea, ultimately, but if it's something you guys want to avoid perhaps just Alltalk at the end of the rounds could be fine.
One last thing, this is Nocrits/Nodmgspread, right? I'm fine if it's vanilla, too, just want to see where it stands!
I'll check out the server tonight with my brothers when they get back from work. Hopefully we can expect some people on! I'll try and grab MrE and TheMantyke as well.
As for Server related things. Do we have an idea at this point for what our map rotation will end up looking like? Also, are we considering Alltalk or partial Alltalk (such as at the end of rounds)? The prior is something I feel would be a good idea, ultimately, but if it's something you guys want to avoid perhaps just Alltalk at the end of the rounds could be fine.
One last thing, this is Nocrits/Nodmgspread, right? I'm fine if it's vanilla, too, just want to see where it stands!
I'll check out the server tonight with my brothers when they get back from work. Hopefully we can expect some people on! I'll try and grab MrE and TheMantyke as well.
Although Jersey would be better for Euro players, it's still not necessarily good for them since there's a good chance that they'll have triple-digit ping anyway. I'm not sure whether Euros outnumber Pacifics. I know of two west coast Smogoners who play TF2 (DeagleBeagle and Metabou) but I'm not sure if they'd be interested in playing on the server or joining a team to scrim.
Hmm. I'm not sure that the extra slot is needed for STV since it's unlikely that we'd use the server for 8v8 games (a 16-slot server still has four free slots when playing 6v6). I'm also not a huge fan of slot reservation since it breaks the auto-join function that is built into the game. Is there any possibility of getting an even number of slots, or do you need to wait until the end of the month to do that?
It's probably worth mentioning that the medic still exists, and it's probably closer to an ideal "newbie-friendly" class than the pyro tends to lead pushes (requiring a familiarity with the map) whereas the medic tends to follow them (a new player can follow his teammates without having to be familiar with the map).
I was thinking that this would be ideal:
cp_badlands
cp_granary
cp_well
cp_freight
cp_follower
cp_yukon (rc3?)
cp_waste
cp_gravelpit
I also like the idea of disabled damage spread and nocrit. (I used to play on a nocrit server where several of the regulars noted that they discovered the server by looking for servers tagged as "nocrit.")
According to Resum's link: 68.232.172.173:27015
Yeah I figure we'll rarely be full. I'll just have one reserved slot for now in case I need it, downgrading next month. And I uploaded a bunch of maps to put on, but I think I'll make the default vote rotation mostly push CP maps and gpit. I'll see about damage spread and crits after I get home.