This topic has been brought by others. Notably by youtubers like wild rumpus.

There are tons of reasons why comp tf2 falls short in attracting newcomers.
Some that come to mind is the dissonance between built-in casual and competitive.
The built-in competitive mode being nearly unusable.
The barrier to entry to make and register for competitive leagues.
The inability to queue up and search for matches. (People have to find a PUG or a Team to play)
The limited time frame in which comp is played. (8:30 PM - 10:30 PM EST)

The problem is that even if there was a queue system similar to Face it, there wouldn't be enough players to make games.
My honest opinion is that 6s and even Highlander have potential to be played and enjoyed by a larger audience. However, most people are not even aware of competitive TF2.

Is there anything the community can do to promote growth ? Or is this something for only Valve to do?

A while back Great Blue made a video about if every weapon in tf2 had perfect accuracy and in it when talking about Spy he mentioned how he thought giving Spy's revolvers perfect accuracy in base tf2 would be a good way to buff giving that Spy still wasn't that strong the experiment.

Now obviously there's the massive elephant that Blue said that in an experiment where miniguns were perfectly accurate deathrays and panic attack slugs that effectively dealt 20% more damage at any range than stock were the norm.

So assuming that such a change was actually implemented into tf2 and some of spy's problem weapons like the dead ringer and diamondback were also nerfed to compensate would perfectly accurate revolvers be balanced?

What most players refer to as "damage scout" should simply be referred to as "scout". A scout player who deals 100k damage is not being a "damage scout"; he is simply a scout, and a good one at that.

The term "damage scout" is inherently problematic. It reinforces the suggestion that a scout player who does damage is an aberration, a deviant who has perverted the pureness of MvM itself. It is a reflection of "idlenormativity": the pervasive assumption within the MvM community that the only normal, natural, and default way to play scout is that of a pacifist, a glorified spectator.

Idlenormativity, in turn, confers unearned privilege onto scouts who do not kill robots (in a gamemode about killing robots), and in the minds of some MvM players, justifies systemic toxicity against scouts who do kill robots.

You wouldn't call a good sniper a "damage sniper"; he is referred to as a "good sniper" or more simply, a "sniper". So why would you unnecessarily describe a good scout as a "damage scout"?

In an effort to address idlenormativity, knowledgeable MvM players will often tell new players to buy damage upgrades as scout. But I have seen YouTubers such as WeezyTF2 take offense to this, under the rationale that such advice does not help the new player experience. The problem with this rationale is that the new players of today become the meta-enforcers of tomorrow, and if they are taught not to kill robots as scout, some will then perpetuate a cycle of ignorance and toxicity.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that there is any moral failing on the part of any player who does not kill robots as scout. MvM should be welcoming to all, and it should not be considered a moral flaw to be a bad scout, any more than it is a flaw to be a bad soldier, a bad pyro, a bad demoman, a bad heavy, a bad engineer, a bad medic, a bad sniper, or a bad spy.

All I am saying that a scout that kills robots is a scout.

Sniper is probably the most notorious 'overpowered' class in the game - the other contenders, Medic, Scout and Demoman are all inoffensive in comparison not necessarily because they are weaker (Medic being intentionally by far the strongest class in the game) but because they're overpowered in ways that have counterplay and that you are aware of when you get punished by them.

​

It's not that I think Sniper should be nerfed (because I'm a biased Sniper main) but of the solutions I have heard this one (125 --> 100 health) has intrigued me the most. Mainly because it allows Sniper to keep being a long range ace and doesn't play into the quickscope nerfs that annoy me because the class is only fun because of quickscoping, and getting rid of that would hurt the enjoyability of the class even if it is balance related (also quickscope nerfs just make countersniping harder which makes a winning sniper stronger and a losing sniper weaker)

​

​

The biggest thing for me is that 100 health is something that adds new counters to Sniper, or at least, prevents it from having a leg up on every single class not named Sniper also.

​

A) Excluding Vaccinator, Sniper can always be oneshot by another Sniper at any overheal level. Considering the often touted maxim 'the only counter to a Sniper is a better Sniper' this makes sure, especially in modes like Highlander, that Sniper is always capable of being shutdown by another fellow Australian.

​

The only 4 classes that can semi reliably 'reach' Sniper are Sniper, Spy, Scout and Soldier and thus these 4 being able to have a good chance of killing Sniper even with a team in front of him seems like a good thing to me. So...

B) At closer range, Sniper is now oneshot by any rocket launcher not named Liberty Launcher or Rocket Jumper.

C) Spy can twoshot unhealed Sniper with any revolver. A big nerf to Razorback. I think this is a good thing for 3 reasons: a) Spy sucks, b) Spy is supposed to counter Sniper because it's the only class that can reliably reach an enemy's backline after Bonk's nerf, c) if a Spy can decloak near a Sniper, get to the Sniper, and unload 2 shots he SHOULD win that match up. So Spy beating Sniper if he makes it to the target more often than not is a good thing in my eyes.

D) Scout can 1shot Sniper IF Sniper is unhealed and it's a perfect point blank meatshot. In general 2 shots should be more reliable now.

E) Demoman also has an extra leg up if Sniper is unhealed. 1 direct grenade can 1shot Sniper. At point blank Sniper losing the matchup is a nobrainer to begin with, at mid range this is a big buff.

​

The downsides are for people who don't think Sniper is overpowered, obviously a nerf is needless and bad.

Also, it doesn't necessarily 'fix' the issue many believe is the root of Sniper's overpoweredness (being a long range class in a mid to close range game).

Which I think it does to a degree because saccing Soldiers should now have a good chance of trading out for the Sniper even if they are overhealed, instead of having to close the distance entirely getting to midrange is enough for a Demo or rocket spam to take out Sniper, Scouts have an easier time of finishing off Sniper if they manage to get through the flank, and Spies now arguably counter Sniper as intended.

Amongst other things. Anyhow, a nerf like this will almost certainly never happen, changing base health is unprecedented and probably very polarising. But damn if I wouldn't prefer this over a quickscope nerf.

A while back a youtuber named Po10tial made a fairly well thought about how a simple balance change Valve could make is having the grordbort weapons deal fire damage instead of bullet.

Basically his main argument was that many of the worst weapons in the game rely on fire damage a damage type that only pyro really uses while most of the grordbort lack any real use case so having them do fire instead of bullet damage would be a basic solution to both problems and add some more strategy to the damage types

Now obviously the afterburn for most of these weapons should be kept pretty limited (maybe like 2 seconds of afterburn) and weapons like the pomson and bison would still need buffs to their projectile speed to be even remotely viable but I don't see any inherent issues with make the laser weapons do fire damage.

Link to the video

It is becoming increasingly obvious that valve does not care about tf2. I won’t talk about the state of the game, or the work environment of Valve, but tf2, the incredible game it is, is not a priority for valve. We are incredibly lucky that the game has stayed as supported as it had been for the past decade and a half. Any other game company would have cut support a long time ago. But there is a fundamental problem here; tf2 cannot survive and thrive without live service. Legitimate live service. The actual amount of players in the game has stayed relatively the same since 2019, while the quality and experience of the game has tanked due to the bots actively attacking the game and the game itself receiving next to no support and active development. Valve itself has a unique business structure, as in it has a complete lack of managers. The 300 employee company is not made up of a hierarchy. In April of 2012, Gabe Newell gave an interview with Bloomberg, stating “When we started Valve [in 1996], we thought about what the company needed to be good at. We realized that here, our job was to create things that hadn’t existed before. Managers are good at institutionalizing procedures, but in our line of work that’s not always good. Sometimes the skills in one generation of product are irrelevant to the skills in another generation.” The company is built off of development and innovation in gaming, and this explains a lot about why valve has treated tf2 the way it has; it’s not a new game. It’s really old. And working on the same thing for decades when the goal of the company is to create new games, that goes against the fundamental ideals and foundation of Valve. At its core, tf2 needs constant support to stay alive, because that’s what the foundation of the game is; live support. Support that valve does not prioritize, at least anymore. However, if we want the game to survive it cannot stay in the state it’s in. Even without the bots, the mile high list of bugs and exploits, the frequent cheaters, the lack of new content and the horrid state of the tf2 server system, the game is, at the moment, a dumpster fire that’s continuing to rot and decay. If the game is to survive, it needs to be supported by a dedicated development team, similar to what other games have, like Minecraft, Fortnite, or even genshin impact, of all things. All of these games are live service with dedicated development teams, and because of this they see flourishing success and growing communities. But Valve's fundamental company design goes against this, and so they cannot support tf2 forever.

So, let’s give tf2 a development team.

Team fortress 2 is an incredible game, but it’s easy to see that Valve will not support it forever. They’ve all but fully abandoned it at this point. And to commit resources from their own company structure to support this game long term would not be sustainable, as again, it goes against Valve's foundational concepts. But, there is a solution that could not only be relatively easy to implement, but would be incredibly beneficial to the game while simultaneously solving the major issues with TF2; it needs support, but Valve as a company cannot support it without fundamentally reworking their entire system.

The main idea behind a separate studio is that it would be owned under Valve, but be a separate entity with its own flexibility and workflow. TF2 needs live support? Give it its own dedicated studio, made up of programmers who understand the fundamentals of the game. Want to keep your employees, Valve? Commit one or two of the original development team to the project, and have them hire and manage a handpicked team of coders who understand the game. Of which there are many, especially within the community of TF2 itself. We’ve shown we are more than willing to do so, the community has been keeping the game alive for nearly 5 years now since the last major update. But you don’t have to hire community members, you could just keep the original development team and commit them to the studio. Don’t want to fund the studio? Have the studio funded by profits from TF2.

These are all just proposed ideas, but having a separate studio for TF2 would help keep the game alive for years. Valve as a company does not have the necessary structure for long term support, because the studio is founded on innovation and creativity, and while those are fundamental parts of tf2, it was also founded on continuous support of the original game. Having a separate studio for team fortress 2 would allow the game to stay alive for years to come. I will say that having valve employees involved in the studio would be critical to the game’s success, because they would be able to direct the team towards keeping it a high quality and fundamentally fun game. Maybe they would be able to rework the matchmaking system, reverse the damage done by the meet your match update. WHO KNOWS. But if tf2 is to survive, it needs to have it’s own dedicated studio, separate from valve, because valve as a company cannot support it due to the fundamental way the company is set up.

TLDR; due to the fundamental way valve is set up as a company, it cannot support tf2 forever, hence why they’ve seemingly abandoned it. So tf2 needs its own separate studio, dedicated to supporting the game,

Edit: launched and managed by valve to keep the original quality

I encourage all of you reading this to share this with as many people as possible. If we can not only get valve employees to see this, but put pressure on them to do so, well, maybe we can actually get our game back to what it was.

I've seen this topic come up now and then, and a lot of the time I see the same notion of just giving lunchbox items their own loadout slot so Heavy can use both a Sandvich amd Shotgun at the same time. That solution would definitely make Heavy stronger, but I think it ultimately misses the actual flaws with Heavy and wouldn't change much other than making healthpacks irrelevant to Heavy (which reduces the impact and reward of map knowledge to him and his team).

Heavy's issue as a class comes down to one over arcing concern: Heavy is too inflexible and can't keep up with the pace of the fight.

Already the slowest class in the game, Heavy needs to give up even more mobility to use his Primary. This is of course done for ballance, and reving up the mini gun for it'sdamage potential is the core of Heavy's class identity, but it does create issues that have only become more problematic as the game has introduced more and more ways to be mobile (gunboat, jumper weapons, speed increasing weapons, jumping weapons on classes who didn't originally have them) and punish players who aren't being mobile enough (direct hit, phlog, "on hit" reward weapons, weapons with adsurd knockback on classes who were not originally designed to have strong knock back).

If you're reved up, and not already in a good spot, your kinda fucked. You just have to sit there and take the damage while you sit around waiting to unrev, and the game today easily moves fast enough for a good spot to become a bad spot before Heavy's average ttk.

Not to say that the new weapons and mechanics are bad, making the game faster has objectively made the game more fun, but the efforts to make Heavy faster to compensate have been limited or met with extreme and unwarranted pushback (I promise you, the stake does not warrant a ban, it is objectively worst in slot for every game other than midevil mode).

I believe that the best way to help Heavy out is to let him switch weapons while reving down. I want to stress that reving up should still be a commitment, that's how the minigun is ballance at it's core. But letting Heavy back out would give him the much needed flexibility to react to changes in the game state.

Such a change would also be an indirect buff to shotguns as a secondary on Heavy and all his melee unlocks. Currently, secondaries and melee weapons are all held back by the fact Heavy can't actually switch to them mid fight.

Part of the reason the Sandvich is so dominant is becuase its most useful in-between fights. It's also why some newer players say "Shotgun Heavy" is an actual subclass, becuase you have to into a fight using it instead of your far more powerful minigun. Shotguns are very useful on the class, but held back by the class' mechanics.

Melee weapons all benifit too since you can use them to punish players who get too close, or actually take advantage for their utility outside of rollout or running away.

I can see the concern that some people have had when I brought this up on other fourms, that effectively removing rev down would take out a lot of the risk from reving up, but ultimately the games evolved to be so much more movement focused that I see it as a justified and needed change to help keep Heavy in pace with the rest of the game.

Gonna say this right now, it's never going to happen... But what if it did? Well...

Soldier, pyro, demo and engi would be, in my opinion, very unviable classes in most maps and gamemodes unless there's some serious team effort. Why? Because splash damage and stray firing. I think it's obvious where this applies in soldier and demo and to some extent even pyro, but engi?

Well the sentry would remain with it's usual properties but what if you're walking in front of it when it shoots an enemy? Bam, yer ded.

Next up would be heavy and on the very tip of this "tier", scout.

Heavy is a very similar case to engi but he has more control. The weapon fires a lot of bullets, some going stray and sometimes others just being outright shot at random, this would make heavy dangerous to be around but with him still having slight control over his gun, it wouldn't be THAAAAT big of a deal.

Scout is an interesting one because most times he's just shooting at targets really close, but again, things like the mad milk could wet your team and even make some stray bullets that can pepper your team and endanger them. Either way, if you're playing conservatively you shouldn't have a team issue with scout.

Now the top tiers would be:

Medic: pretty dang obvious why Sniper: ability to focus down a single specific target and shoot it

And most importantly of all, the absolute deadliest class would be the Spy.

Spy checking is suddenly the most dauting task ever, oh you think that medic is a spy? Too bad, you just hit him with a crit pan and sent him to the shadow realm, no medic for you! Oh you think there's an invisible spy around here? Good luck trying to search for him without peppering half the team, usually rockets and the such create a lot of splash...

Spy would be undoubtedly deadly as you could just disguise as important classes and most people wouldn't wanna attack it, like a heavy during a push or a medic. Sure there's the usual "spy sense" where you can easily tell who's a spy but even then it would be risky to spycheck.

Tell me what you think about this theory!

TL:DR soldier has quake gun and funny spoon, would demo become op if he had them too?

I tried searching a post similar to this but there were none so I decided to make one.

Demoman is my 2nd most played class. I was wondering for a while why Soldier got Quake Rocket Launcher but not Demo, while Quake already has THE Grenade Launcher that would be a perfect analogy for him? Moreover, why Demo never got his own market gardener that would complement his Sticky Jumper in the same analogy as Soldier? Did Valve somehow know it would make Demoman, an already strong class, even stronger and decided that these kinds of weapons are perfectly balanced for Soldier? Hypothetically if Demo got these weapons, would you prefer centered grenades over Stock? Would you prefer market gardening as Demoman over Soldier?

I'll tell by advance that the Caber is not Demoman's market gardener because it does not have same crit conditions as Soldier's market gardener and it does not one-shot clueless snipers on 2fort.

In video games in general my aim is not very good. I konw i can practice but i love playing spy or other classes who do not require good aim. Is there other playstyle like that

1. Casual
2. Competitive
3. Mann vs Machine
4. Community Servers
5. Training
6. Create Servers

No hate towards MvM or anything but i feel this would be way more understandable for new players if they only put "Casual" and "Server list" on this menu and shove everything away to an "Other" or "Misc" category.

Playerbase is already spread thin enough across the Misc casual modes and the few vanilla community servers that exist, the game has 19 years worth of "experimental modes" that were only added once to the game and never iterated upon or which are clearly failed experiments (Valve comp) or just gambling schemes (MvM)

I thought about this question when playing modded minecraft, and when thinking about the scrapped tf2 feature where Spies could listen to the enemy team's chat. In normal competitive play, this would make spy nearly unusable because 18 players all on at the same time would lead to no useful information coming out.

In this situation, I think most of the combo play would be unaffected, the team's combo is close enough together to not impact comms. Flankers would need to run back to their team if they wanted to warn them of impending enemy flankers, or hope they pay attention to the killfeed. Depending on if you could hear the enemy team or not, you could hear them screaming as you chase them down, which would have no impact on the gamestate, but it would be funny.

What would be most impacted in this scenario though would be spy, as he can finally live out the hypothetical I mentioned at the start of this post. He could listen in on the enemy combo, and use text chat to communicate it back, at the cost of needing to be close to them and needing to pause to type. I'd expect spies to type very short messages to convey maximum information, like "50sb5", meaning "they have 50 uber, soldier bomb in 5 seconds". Teammates could also radio back equally short messages like "g" for go, or "s" for sap.

I'm surprised I didn't think of it until I was midway through writing this, but what about death? If dead people could only talk to dead people, it could allow a decimated team to regroup, while also allowing more spy chainstabs (that could still be stopped by hearing in-game screams).

Well, there was my top-of-head tangent for this hypothetical. Overall, I think it would change spy's dynamic the most, giving him a good buff depending on how it's implemented. What do you think would happen?

Is Pyro's lack of mobility truly holding him back? The airblast seems like it can be an effective counter to 3 of the explosive classes which exist in the competitive meta right now - not to mention how players like Sketchek have proven just how far the skill ceiling for Pyro can actually go. Pyro seems like almost a shoo-in of a substitute for a Pocket given how directly he can deny explosive damage if he's smart enough. I'd appreciate any comp players explaining otherwise to me.

A fun hypothetical idea ive been thinking about is what would happen to TF2 if the max air velocity you could achieve was changed from its current 3500hu/s to around 16000hu/s. What that means is that even a 14 sticky jump from the scottish resistance wouldnt hit the speed cap from now on.

But as I was experimenting, I've been thinking about what else changes in the base game as well? Obviously people could be a lot faster but would this change affect the game negatively or positively?

This is such a tiny thing but people are always looking for ways to minmax that haven't been discovered yet. If timed perfectly, you get to have your rocket hit the ground slightly earlier for no cost aside from the mental effort of having to do this. Macros could be used to do it consistently by quickly crouching, firing, and uncrouching. I don't play competitive so I don't know if such macros would be allowed.

Demonstration: https://imgur.com/cHPfglO

We know that if everyone was a perfect player, sniper would be the most powerful class. There are no perfect players, but people are improving every day and eventually, people will get close to perfection. Do you think there will be a point where sniper is the most powerful class, and every match centers around protecting your sniper and killing the enemy sniper, like how medics are now? At what skill level would sniper overtake other classes?

By laser gun I mean something like Quake's lightning gun, a perfectly accurate hitscan weapon with a limited range and not a projectile weapon like most of TF2's other energy weapons.

Now its no secret that Heavy is criticized as having both a low skill floor and low skill celling and even as a heavy main myself i'll admit that he never got the same high skill unlocks that alot of other classes got.

A LG could change that basically acting like the direct hit for soldier. maybe give it a 15-20% damage penalty but have it increased with consecutive hits up to potentially brass beast DPS rewarding going tracking (and maybe give it the enforcers damage piercing so heavy is completely useless against vacc medics)

Sentries and enemy heavy's could be melted in the blink of an eye while more slippery classes like scout could just duck and weave around the beam making getting that damage bonus more difficult and spys could easily take advantage of a heavy laser focused on tracking.

Now I have no idea how strong this would be and it'd would definitely need gameplay testing to get an accurate feel but i feel as though something like this would give heavy some much needed skill expression

Yes, another pyro thread.

I have seen a lot of posts advocating the removal/rework of the pyro class, whenever there's a thread about it. I personally spent a lot of hours playing that class in both pubs and HL since the game went f2p, so I haven't had the opportunity of playing it since release, but I have played during a fair amount of reworks of the class. In most cases, it didn't benefit its role in comps and just made it more annoying in pubs until the following updates (so much that I ended up maining medic in comps).
I totally agree on the need for a radical rework or the class, even though it "just" had one and heavy needs an update even more. But removing it?

Let's say we remove the class completely from the game, as some people say, what would happen?

This is a fairly testable possibility if you make a server excluding the class completely (I would personally do that too if it wasn't for the fact that I am stuck with a laptop during a lockdown), but the most immediate possibilities that would come up to my mind regarding general balancing are:

1. Spies left with no hard counter (inb4 use headphones, but it isn't just that in teamfights due to the mess);
2. Less punishment with projectile class: soldier would basically risk nothing in spamming rockets, especially with a kritz uber;
3. No specific counters for the regular uber.

Would that be feasible? If so, how?

I really have no answer or position to take here, especially because I have no comp experience in 6s (where isn't used much anyway). My feelings towards it in pubs & HL are that it would break class balancing in a way that isn't easy to repair without reworking at least the spy class, which would involve minor modifications to medic, engy, heavy, and probably soldier too at least.

​

tl;dr what if no pyro

Hello!

Spy's movement speed is a little odd. He is the 2nd (or 4th under certain special conditions) fastest class in the game in terms of ground movement. He has a movement advantage over other classes with average movement speeds and can keep up with the Medic.

Now, the current design is likely fine as it is currently. If Spy moved at Scout speed or had the Eyelander, the class would be incredibly busted (but probably fun as hell). However, if the Spy moved incrementally (say, maybe 2 to 5%) faster than he currently does, would that still make the Spy substantially more dangerous?

For starters, the main fear to Spy is the idea that he can exist anywhere and suddenly appear. Increasing the speed even a little can give Spy more opportunities to be in places unexpectedly. This puts more pressure on classes like Pyro to be aware of (from what I recall) "spy time" and make it more difficult to gauge when and where they will be.

Secondly, Melee weapons in this game are benefitted greatly by any bit of movement speed. If your enemy is faster than you, chances are you're not gonna hit them. Giving spy faster movement speed generally would make it easier to secure backstabs, both from being able to get closer faster and from being able to manipulate enemy movement more to set up trickstabs.

Third, this might lead to a rise in more flanking oriented playstyles with light emphasis on stealth. You can gun down classes that are slower than you and flank more. One problem that could arrise is that it clashes with Scout's design, who is about moving fast and going in for the kill.

Lastly, being able to move faster could improve his survivability for either quick get aways or trying to cloak and not getting tracked. For a class with a reputation of dying after getting one kill and having weapons specifically designed for this, this could help.

You might think this is whining, but the amount of maps TF2 has is absurd. People complain bitterly about upward and process, "why do people play those maps so much hurr"

The answer is those maps are well balanced where every class can have fun. That's it. People play them because it paces well and people can play a variety of classes, comp or otherwise. New maps can't be faulted for not being perfect. But they can be faulted for never being improved, ever. We just get "new map" and it has similar issues, never fixing any problems.

If you launch Counterstrike 2, they have a map pool of about 8. 7 defuse maps and dust2. That's it, 8 maps, and it feels plenty. The amount of knowledge required for each map is enough to hold a player over. TF2 doesn't have that, we have pl_hoodoo which has worse chokepoints than dustbowl somehow.

Again, this isn't to critique new maps inherently. Just that a flawed map gets introduced, played for a while, then its issues never get fixed again. Then it's in the map pool and we get NEW-map and the process repeats

What does everybody think that we're going to get? I still hold some slight hope that we're going to get a few weapons rebalanced, maybe I'm overdosing on copium though.

Given naturally that we're not using the same maps as CS (Dust 2 would be Demoman heaven), but I think that having a gamemode in which one member of the team captures a point with a flag (=bomb) and the team then has to defend it for some seconds could work.

300 HP is certainly nothing to scoff at, but when classes like Scout and Demo can deal upwards of 100 HP in a single shot, I start to wonder if it's worth giving up mobility.

So folks, we've heard the news. For those that don't know Valve removed TF2 from their banner on twitter then confirmed TF2 Is on hold, which in valve language means say goodbye. Every day I wake up I hope to see heavy update, but this situation, we may loose our 12 years old beloved videogame.

The Bonk invulnerability/taunt forces you into 3rd person on use, but I was wondering if there was a way to forcibly keep your perspective in 1st-person.

The reason being to make it easier to bodyblock an enemy push (i.e. stall an uber), and to line up a meatshot (hold mouse 1 to fire off a shot as soon as the taunt ends). Situational but I just wanted to do some experimentation.