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Team Fortress 2 |OT4| Official Halo Thread of Polearms and High Fashion

E

ExMachina

Unconfirmed Member
Bluth54 said:
Sad to see Froyo lose.
Click to expand...

Honestly it was up in the air how Froyo would perform when only 2/6 players have LAN experience (one of which has been out of the game for 2 years). 3rd is a pretty good showing, I just hope they get the chance to come back for i61.

TheRedSnifit said:
But I think this is the highest viewership I've ever seen for a TF2 tourney. I don't think Dreamhack broke 3k.
Click to expand...

Sadly the viewership for TF2 streams have stagnated for a while... Previous iSeries had higher views and the loss of LAN finals for ESEA have hurt things. Shame because the production values keep improving and the team behind the streams do so much work.

EDIT: Grand finals are live! And stream hit 5k viewers, not bad.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
ExMachina said:
Sadly the viewership for TF2 streams have stagnated for a while... Previous iSeries had higher views and the loss of LAN finals for ESEA have hurt things. Shame because the production values keep improving and the team behind the streams do so much work.

EDIT: Grand finals are live! And stream hit 5k viewers, not bad.
Click to expand...

To be fair, spectatorship for most games is down YOY due to Twitch axing viewbots. ~7k ain't bad for TF2.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
Update:

  • Fixed the Short Circuit causing lag compensation problems on the server
  • Fixed sappers sometimes only being applied to one Engineer teleporter
  • Weapons can no longer be juggled to bypass the weapon's re-fire rate
  • Fixed a server crash related to sending an invalid client command
  • Fixed players being able to teleport out of the spawn room using the Eureka Effect at the beginning of a round
  • Fixed Mann vs. Machine players receiving abandon penalties after playing at least one wave
  • Fixed Refill Ammo canteens not refilling the ammo for all weapons in Mann vs. Machine
  • Fixed mini-sentries not having full health when they are built quickly during the setup time on Mann vs. Machine maps
  • Fixed the scoreboard badge panels not updating properly when teams would change sides on attack/defend maps
  • Fixed Casual and Competitive mode badges incorrectly displaying the level 1 badge when at max level
  • Updated the materials for the Mistaken Movember to fix a transparency problem
  • Updated the model for the Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol to fix a problem with shading
  • Updated the Frontier Justice so the "Revenge crits are lost on death" attribute is displayed as a negative
  • Strange Part: Allies Extinguished can now be applied to Strange Sydney Sleeper rifles
  • Added the Tip of the Hats 2016 community event medals
  • Updated the Salty Dog to hide the Scout's headphones
  • Fixed the Borneo map stamp using the incorrect image in the Mann Co. Store
  • Fixed the game not properly honoring the steam per-game language setting
  • Fixed a bug with the Cow Mangler 5000 reload speed
  • Updated the localization files
Click to expand...

Cow Mangler new meta? And thank god they've finally updated the localization files.
 
B

bananabread

Member
Bluth54 said:
Hopefully Valve starts selling in game items to fund prizepools for tournaments soon. Funding future Insomnias is an obvious choice but I'm not sure if there are any big USA LANs they could fund. If not maybe they could host tournaments at big events like PAX.
Click to expand...

It's a bit frustrating as a fan. They can leave it up to the community to do the work, all they have do to is sell items in game with a % going towards the competitive scene (prize pools, travel assistance, running costs).

To an outsider it seems like Valve is just leaving free money on the table, so I can only assume they don't like the way 6's works because if they sanction that ruleset and make it 'official' they're admitting that the game is pretty fundamentally broken.
 
F

FatCatAttack

Member
If valve thought that it would be silly. Some classes like spies thrive in chaotic environments like full pubs but it's hard to fool people when there's only 6 enemies and they are all in deep voice comms with one another.
 
B

bananabread

Member
FatCatAttack said:
If valve thought that it would be silly. Some classes like spies thrive in chaotic environments like full pubs but it's hard to fool people when there's only 6 enemies and they are all in deep voice comms with one another.
Click to expand...

If anything it's probably less to do with classes not seeing much use and more to do with 90% of the unlocks being blacklisted. Makes 6's in it's current form a poor advertisement for the Mann Co store (outside of cosmetics).

If Valve wasn't selling gameplay altering unlocks in the game store, I'm sure they'd have no problem whatsoever selling Jasmine/Froyo skins in the store and keeping 75% of the money.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
bananabread said:
To an outsider it seems like Valve is just leaving free money on the table, so I can only assume they don't like the way 6's works because if they sanction that ruleset and make it 'official' they're admitting that the game is pretty fundamentally broken.
Click to expand...

Disparity in class usage is deliberate. Robin Walker specifically refers to the Sixes classes as "generalists" and the rest as "specialists" in an old interview. You're clearly intended to run Soldier/Demo/Scout/Medic the majority of the time.

The only class who's role is actually "broken" is Pyro, in that he's supposed to serve the same role as Scout but exchanges speed and firepower for durability and not needing to aim - in other words, Scout for players who are bad at Scout. In practice, he's just some annoying pubstomping class that's broken out on Badlands from time to time.

bananabread said:
If anything it's probably less to do with classes not seeing much use and more to do with 90% of the unlocks being blacklisted. Makes 6's in it's current form a poor advertisement for the Mann Co store (outside of cosmetics).

If Valve wasn't selling gameplay altering unlocks in the game store, I'm sure they'd have no problem whatsoever selling Jasmine/Froyo skins in the store and keeping 75% of the money.
Click to expand...

It depends on the league, but Sixes whitelists aren't as strict as people believe. ETF2L 6v6's whitelist allows 98 unlocks (not counting reskins) out of ~128, for example. UGC allows 70 unlocks. ESEA allows 67 unlocks. The only leagues that ban more than half the unlocks are "vanilla" leagues that ban all of them.

I also don't think people buy weapons in any meaningful capacity when you they can get them basically for free through trading or drops.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
The above information regarding unlocks is actually outdated as of a couple days ago. All major leagues (ESEA/UGC/ETF2L/etc.) now follow the exact same whitelist. All weapons but the following are allowed:

- Soda Popper
- Sandman
- Atomizer
- BONK! Atomic Punch
- Mad Milk
- Flying Guillotine
- Crit-a-Cola
- Disciplinary Action
- BASE Jumper
- Reserve Shooter
- Buffalo Steak Sandvich
- Dolokoh's Bar
- Fists of Steel
- Gloves of Running Urgently
- Pomson 6000
- Short Circuit
- Wrangler
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
The Wrangler is terrible, please no.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this, although them allowing the Rescue Ranger and Natasha is bizarre to say the least.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
"
Fixed an exploit related to not respawning in the spawn room at the beginning of Casual and Competitive matches
Fixed Pyros griefing teammates by attacking them with the flamethrower
Fixed Medics getting a permanent speed boost after healing a charging Demoman
Fixed Medics getting the Demoman's charging speed when using Mediguns other than The Quick-Fix
"

That's quite the set of bugs.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
TheRedSnifit said:
The Wrangler is terrible, please no.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this, although them allowing the Rescue Ranger and Natasha is bizarre to say the least.
Click to expand...

In the last episode of Back cap they said t that one comp player was told Valve is discussing internally how they're going to support comp TF2, my guess is that unbanning so many items is the comp community meeting Valve half way on restrictions since obviously Valve isn't a big fan of weapon restrictions.

Blizzard said:
"
Fixed an exploit related to not respawning in the spawn room at the beginning of Casual and Competitive matches
Fixed Pyros griefing teammates by attacking them with the flamethrower
Fixed Medics getting a permanent speed boost after healing a charging Demoman
Fixed Medics getting the Demoman's charging speed when using Mediguns other than The Quick-Fix
"

That's quite the set of bugs.
Click to expand...
Apparently the pyro griefing thing was switching to spectator caused flames to damage teammates. They had fixed that years ago, I'm guessing the flame changes in MYM broke it again.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
Bluth54 said:
In the last episode of Back cap they said t that one comp player was told Valve is discussing internally how they're going to support comp TF2, my guess is that unbanning so many items is the comp community meeting Valve half way on restrictions since obviously Valve isn't a big fan of weapon restrictions.
Click to expand...

ETF2L had a pretty generous whitelist, and imo they should have just gone with that. But instead we're going to have Natascha Heavies with a Sandvich on the floor (so the Med never drops) standing next to a RR sentry.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
TheRedSnifit said:
ETF2L had a pretty generous whitelist, and imo they should have just gone with that. But instead we're going to have Natascha Heavies with a Sandvich on the floor (so the Med never drops) standing next to a RR sentry.
Click to expand...
Has this happened in competitive yet? Maybe we should wait to see before panicking. :p Natascha in particular does very little at long range, unless they buffed it again since the nerf like 2 years ago. I hated when they made it hard to kill scouts with it.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Valve put out a fix today that stopped quantum crouching. Not exactly a surprise since they shipped a beta fix for it in CSGO last week but still nice to finally have that bug fixed.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Yukinari said:
I donated 100 bucks so i could get the highest tier badge but i learned that the lower tier badges wont be optional styles for the highest tier.

Its already been explained to me why they did it that way but whatever.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised they aren't just giving away the lower tier badges along with the higher ones if you donate enough.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
Kind of disappointed with the new schedule they used (I'm night shifter, so pretty much everything happened while I was asleep), but what I saw was awesome as always.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
voodooray said:
That jump video that was just shown on TOTH was amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI5Vi2I7ZOw
Click to expand...

KrDoqY.gif
 
T

torre_avenue

Banned
TF2 really shit the bed this time with casual matchmaking.

It used to take me 10 seconds tops to get a match, now its taking me 5 minutes and forced me to play in Washington servers. I've heard it could be much worse, but this is really bad.
 
V

voodooray

Member
torre_avenue said:
TF2 really shit the bed this time with casual matchmaking.

It used to take me 10 seconds tops to get a match, now its taking me 5 minutes and forced me to play in Washington servers. I've heard it could be much worse, but this is really bad.
Click to expand...

If it was just now, it should be better soon:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/547efq/extensive_queuing_problems_after_server/d7zil8h

Today's server maintenance caused some issues with the matchmaker, causing erratic queue times for some players. We're working on sorting things now, hold tight!
Update: This should now be largely resolved, and the queue times have come back down. We're keeping an eye on the system for any additional side effects. Apologies for the wait!
Click to expand...
 
R

Rockk

Member
I'm in massachusetts and it takes me 10-15 seconds to connect to a server. And it always connects me to a server with good ping. I haven't tried it partying with anyone but I can't imagine it harming the queue that much.

I really like the matchmaking system. I mean the days of community servers have been over for a long time.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Competative TF2 player Sigafoo posted a three and a half hour video on his visit to Valve and a 5 hour meeting he had with the TF2 team. It's a long watch but pretty interesting and gives a lot of insight on the TF2 team (and Valve in general).

One of the interesting things is how much the TF2 team follows the TF2 community, he talks about how the team were talking about Reddit posts of that day and how one of the members of the team had watched enough of Sigafoo's team to know who his friend who's a professional pyro main was.

Firebrand said:
How long does casual matchmaking usually take? I tried it just now with a friend for the first time and we gave up after 10 mins.
Click to expand...

I live in Iowa and usually connect to a casual match on the Virginia server within a minute or so with 15 maps selected (mostly payload but some 5CP and some A/D CP).

I'm not sure if your friend is in the same region as you, but I have heard in the past that people who party up but are in different regions sometimes have problems getting matching into a game for some reason, I'm not sure if that's still happening.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Valve just put out a pretty big update for TF2 matchmaking:

Matchmaking

Players can now form rematches at the end of a Casual match
At the end of a Casual match, players will have 30 seconds to opt-in to a rematch
If at least 6 players from BLU and 6 players from RED have chosen to rematch, then a rematch will begin
A rematch will use the same teams, map and server
Players can now re-queue into Casual Matchmaking during the end of a match
Players who decline a rematch or simply don't vote in the rematch voting period will automatically be re-queued
Updated the way XP is earned in Casual matches
Players will now be awarded more XP based on their team's performance at the end of a match
XP is no longer lost for leaving a Casual match early
A breakdown of XP sources is now shown when your XP bar fills up
Casual matches now more strongly prefer to distribute players to teams based on experience, in order to better avoid creating one-sided matches
Casual matches are now more likely to start with fewer than 24 players in lower population game-modes or regions, wherein the wait time for a full match would become excessive
The current minimum allowable match size in such situations is twelve players
The matchmaker will still attempt to place late-joiners into these matches as they become available
Competitive matches no longer terminate when any player abandons the match
Bots will now fill in for players who have abandoned, or temporarily disconnected from, Competitive matches
Matches that finish at an advantage or disadvantage (e.g. 6v5 or 5v6, not counting any bots) will now result in smaller or larger skill rating adjustments for advantaged wins or disadvantaged losses, respectively
Competitive matches that lose more than one player per team will keep the current behavior of ending the match
Players who abandon Competitive matches still receive a large skill rating penalty and Competitive matchmaking cooldown, regardless of whether a bot was allowed to take their place
Greatly improved the reliability of client ping estimates when placing users into matchmaking servers
The game client now periodically checks in with the matchmaking server network to estimate ping to each region, and feeds the information back to the matchmaking system
This should greatly reduce cases of players being placed in regions to which they have poor ping, even when said regions are geographically nearby
The scoreboard now shows the connection status for missing and connecting players

General

Added tournament medals for ozfortress Season 16 and Season 17
Fixed an exploit related to the Eureka Effect and carrying buildings
Fixed Live Streams menu not displaying the list of streams
Fixed the flamethrower not drawing the Halloween Spell: Spectral Flame effect during Halloween and Full Moon events
Updated the localization files
Click to expand...
 
V

voodooray

Member
I'm hoping its an anomaly, but I've had some very unbalanced Casual games that I have not seen since the launch of MyM (eg: 7v12 casual matches).

Before, people would always flow into the round as people dropped out, keeping it even. But for some reason, I've now had entire rounds remain this way. I haven't noticed much difference in the XP points earned yet either.
 
B

bananabread

Member
All of those matchmaking changes sound pretty good on paper, but I don't think many in the competitive community are going to touch comp matchmaking until Valve lets us use our graphical configs instead of enforcing dx9 with all the bells and whistles.
 
T

torre_avenue

Banned
TheRedSnifit said:
New blog post.

Dunno how they plane to ship the update when everyone's dead after reading that spooky blog post, though.
Click to expand...

Hooray, another lackluster Halloween update OTW! Remember the days of Skull Island, instead of TF2Kart? Remember the funny Redmond and Blutarch lines instead of "BONUS DUCKS!!!!!!"? Those were good days.

I'm excited for Merasmissions, less excited for the shit I have to pay for, but that's Valve for ya. It's good to see they still have some decent writers on their team, though.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
torre_avenue said:
Hooray, another lackluster Halloween update OTW! Remember the days of Skull Island, instead of TF2Kart? Remember the funny Redmond and Blutarch lines instead of "BONUS DUCKS!!!!!!"? Those were good days.

I'm excited for Merasmissions, less excited for the shit I have to pay for, but that's Valve for ya. It's good to see they still have some decent writers on their team, though.
Click to expand...

Eh, I thought last year's event was pretty good. Nothing will top Helltower, though.
 
T

torre_avenue

Banned
Bluth54, I think we were just in a match together. I was the soldier that top-scored on Upward on defense, username [self-titled]. I saw your avatar, and immediately recognized it. Small world.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Achievement unlocked: Appear in the Youtube video of a popular TF2 Youtuber and get killed by him. At least I mildly inconvenienced him by making him jump somewhere he doesn't want to go.

torre_avenue said:
Bluth54, I think we were just in a match together. I was the soldier that top-scored on Upward on defense, username [self-titled]. I saw your avatar, and immediately recognized it. Small world.
Click to expand...

Very possible, I use the same avatar on Steam. I've never seen anyone else with it since it was a screencap from Doctor Who that I made myself. My Steam username is CommodoreKong.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
http://www.esportsarena.com/events/2017/January/Rewind.html

ESA said:
REWIND // SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, JANUARY 21 - 22
It’s time to turn back the clocks a bit and bring back some of the most competitive PC and Console shooters of the last decade. These games may be older, but they’re as competitive as ever with some of the most passionate communities in Esports. Come out and experience everything Team Fortress 2, Halo:CE, and Shadowrun has to offer. If you aren’t familiar with every game, now is the time to get involved and learn from some of the best players in the world.
Preliminary Tournament Info: Full Schedule and format of each tournament will be announced as we finalize details.
Click to expand...
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Looks like the new Scream Fortress was supposed to ship tonight but Eric Smith just sent an email that they found and issue and it's getting delayed until tomorrow.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Scream Fotress shipped a few hours ago

Scream Fortress VIII has arrived!

Featuring 3 new community maps: Brimstone, Pit of Death, and Maple Ridge Event

Added the Creepy Crawly Case
Contains 22 new community-created items that make-up the Creepy Crawly Collection
Has a chance to give one of 3 community-created Halloween-restricted items as a bonus item
Has a chance to give a taunt Unusualifier as a bonus item

Added a taunt Unusualifier
A new tool that will Unusualify the specified taunt with the Unusual effect listed in the tool's description
Can be found as a random bonus item when opening a Creepy Crawly Case

Added two new taunts to the Mann Co. Store
Taunt: The Victory Lap
Taunt: Second Rate Sorcery (community-created)

Added 8 new community-created Unusual effects
4 new effects for Unusual hats
4 new effects for Unusual taunts

Continue last year's event by collecting the souls of dead players for your Soul Gargoyle by killing enemies, doing map objectives, or collecting the Soul Gargoyles that spawn in the maps

Join Halloween matches by selecting the "Halloween" category in Casual

Scream Fortress VIII runs through November 9th, 2016

During Scream Fortress VIII

All players who launch the game will receive a Soul Gargoyle if they don't already have one from last year's event
Grants access to Merasmissions and Halloween item transmutations
Tracks Merasmissions completed and souls collected

Added 3 new Merasmissions for the featured maps
Completing a Merasmission will give players a classic Halloween item and the chance for a Creepy Crawly Case

The chance to receive an Unusual item from a case opening has been increased during the event

All cases and Mann Co. Supply Crates will grant Halloween 2016 Unusual effects instead of their normal Unusual effects

Matchmaking

The Competitive maps list has been updated
Added pl_badwater and ctf_turbine
Disabled cp_granary and cp_badlands
Maps will continue to enter and exit this list over time

Added "Load Saved Settings" and "Save Current Settings" buttons to the Casual mode Map Selection menu
Search criteria is now manually saved to give players more control over the default settings when the game is launched

XP earned in Casual matches has been adjusted to reward players more for their personal contribution to the match
XP per point has returned to 6.5 XP per point
XP earned for match completion and objective completion now scales based on your score relative to total amount of points scored by everyone in the match

Increased the matchmaker's priority of matches with imbalanced teams
This should reduce the occurrence of extended imbalanced matches when multiple players leave

General

Added the AsiaFortress Cup Season 10 tournament medals

Added LBTF2 6v6 Season 13 tournament medals

Improved several aspects of texture handling for OS X and Linux clients
This should reduce the rate of "Out of memory" errors for players on high texture settings, especially on level change
Players still encountering this error can reduce texture quality to medium or lower to greatly improve stability pending further improvements

Fixed a missing material issue on cp_sunshine

Fixed players not taking damage when exploding as a bombhead without stunning Merasmus

Fixed Mann vs. Machine zombies not using the correct skin in Ghost Town outside of the Halloween event

Fixed a bug with the vote-kick timer in Mann vs. Machine mode

Fixed taunts not restoring the proper weapon when the taunts are finished

Fixed the Pomson 6000 playing the shotgun reload sound

Updated the sounds made when the Scout shoves someone while using the Shortstop

Updated some Merasmus audio files that weren't playing properly

Updated the localization files
Click to expand...

It feels a little lazy from Valve honestly, they didn't even bother to make an update page for it and Brimstone is just an updated version of Hellstone from last year but they shipped it as a new map instead of an update for some reason.

I might have to buy the bumper cart taunt though I really want that.

Edit: Sorry I was wrong about Brimstone, it's a different map by the same author has Hellstone, it's based on 5Curve.
 
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