Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
Turtle Fort? Sniper Fort. Endless Fort? Pass.
For those of you not in the know, competitive players BAN (not allow) some weapons into their games. They consider them broken. When competitive players decide something is broken, it's broken.
Edit:
I am going to be uploading a video showing that I can disable Pyroland effects, while keeping the weapons. All me.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
In the words of Bisqwit, "...too long, didn't read, lol."
For the reference, here's the original context (do note the little print):
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=286815#286815
Which pirate_sephiroth ripped into his signature, somehow producing the ill impression that the line is a representative line of me.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
hegyak wrote:
For those of you not in the know, competitive players BAN (not allow) some weapons into their games. They consider them broken. When competitive players decide something is broken, it's broken.
For those of you not in the know, competitive players BAN (not allow) some weapons into their games.
Why the hell would they do that?
I remember the Sandman was banned from 6v6 in its early days, because two skilled Scouts would be able to absolutely decimate the enemy team using them. The ban has since been lifted.
I think that nowadays, class-specific sets are banned. That is to say, you can't equip all items from one set at the same time, though I'm not sure what the exact reasons for that are. I'm also talking about highlander here, I'm not sure whether it also applies to 6v6.
To give you a simple answer, it's because of two reasons:
1.Disturbs the balance of the game a lot.
2.Not easily available to everyone.
That's a lot of restrictions.
One argument against this is the fact that it creates sort of a rift in the competitive community: those who focus on training for the very restricted tournaments, and those who practice for the more liberal tournaments. It makes it a bit harder for trends (strategies, counterstrategies, etc) to develop.
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
An argument for banning is this:
The items can (and some do) create an unfair advantage. Pyro X goes faster because that Pyro has the Polycount set. It is like Pay to Win. No one likes that.
The Polycount items were created well before the game became F2P. The game before F2P had an ingame store to buy weapons/hats, but the Polycount set broke balance by giving an unfair advantage to those that paid for the items and used them.
Edit:
Me playing in the early morning, and playing a class I almost never play, and doing good.
Link to video
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
hegyak wrote:
An argument for banning is this:
The items can (and some do) create an unfair advantage. Pyro X goes faster because that Pyro has the Polycount set. It is like Pay to Win. No one likes that.
The Polycount items were created well before the game became F2P. The game before F2P had an ingame store to buy weapons/hats, but the Polycount set broke balance by giving an unfair advantage to those that paid for the items and used them.
Yeah, it's a good argument. You need to have fair and even chances for all players. That's a basic necessity for a serious tournament.
There's one thing I don't really get, though. If you discount the Polycount packs for a minute, surely all of those serious competition players must have all of the weapons? Everybody has a Soda Popper or a Backburner, and surely the best players do. So as long as every player who takes part in the competition has the full set of items, it's still fair.
There's the argument that certain classes are overpowered, but on the other hand, it's not like you can win with an all-Heavy team. And as long as the teams have the same amount of players in them, there's nothing stopping the other team from abusing the system as much as they want to as well. So if, say, two Scouts with the Sandman are virtually unbeatable, there's nothing stopping the other team from also casting two Scouts with the Sandman.
Maybe I'm wrong here (I've never watched or followed the TF2 competitive scene) but it seems to me to be mostly about banning certain tactics rather than banning unfair advantages, when you consider that every serious player has all the weapons at their disposal (minus the Polycount packs because of the cost), and is free to use whatever techniques they want to use. In my experience, few things are really unbeatable/broken because there's always a way around them or some new technique that makes the old one unviable. Kind of like how in the old days, getting a lv3 Sentry up was the easiest way to rake up a lot of kills, but these days you have to be extremely careful with them because people got so good at defeating them.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this because I don't really follow this scene, so I'm probably wrong about some of these things. (I do totally agree with banning Polycount pack advantages because having to pay a lot of money for those items is lame.) I'm mostly talking about the ETF2L here which bans a ton of weapons, not just the Polycount packs.
I'm not sure why the ETF2L bans so many weapons. In fact, I remember most weapons were just fine in the Highlander seasons a few months ago.
For the record, most competetive TF2 is played 6v6, and usually consists of 2 scouts, 2 soldiers, 1 medic and 1 demo. More than one medic or demoman at the same time is prohibited, as are more than two of the same class for any other class. It's very restrictive to begin with, and banning weapons isn't a long way off from there.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
scrimpeh wrote:
I'm not sure why the ETF2L bans so many weapons. In fact, I remember most weapons were just fine in the Highlander seasons a few months ago.
For the record, most competetive TF2 is played 6v6, and usually consists of 2 scouts, 2 soldiers, 1 medic and 1 demo. More than one medic or demoman at the same time is prohibited, as are more than two of the same class for any other class. It's very restrictive to begin with, and banning weapons isn't a long way off from there.
One of them even bans the Bombinomicon. Why? It doesn't do anything that would upset competitive balance.
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
Dada,
the thing is, those hats, can (rarely) drop and can also be made (crafted). But, their introduction was before crafting (if I remember correctly) and everyone was NOT pleased with Valve over the item set bonus. Valve replied, "We sold it, so it's not fair to nerf it."
The ETF2L list seems to be mostly stock (or re-skinned) items. What strikes me as odd, is the Medic items. Why allow some of them when EVERY other class has restrictions all over? I guess Battle Medic = desperate medic.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
hegyak wrote:
Dada,
the thing is, those hats, can (rarely) drop and can also be made (crafted). But, their introduction was before crafting (if I remember correctly) and everyone was NOT pleased with Valve over the item set bonus. Valve replied, "We sold it, so it's not fair to nerf it."
Yeah, I'm not talking about those, I think it's a good thing they're banned because it's lame to expect people to buy all those items.
Everything I wrote just now was in reference to banning weapons, which to me seems more about banning specific tactics rather than any real unfair advantage. Maybe you could do some specific bans, like the Fists of Steel for the Heavy which as I recall has some complaints about it, but I personally don't see much of a point in restricting virtually everything.
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
The community is a sensitive bunch. I miss TFC. Grenades for ALL. Hallucination grenades FTW!
The Gunslinger is an odd one to get a ban. It can be powerful, but also a failure.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
The community is a sensitive bunch. I miss TFC. Grenades for ALL. Hallucination grenades FTW!
The Gunslinger is an odd one to get a ban. It can be powerful, but also a failure.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Unfortunately I never played TFC, although I did play a ton of Quake. Whoever wasn't a part of that groundbreaking community (and I say that with a completely straight face, it really was groundbreaking in a number of aspects) really did miss out.
I alway liked teamplay based games. For instance, there Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory(used to play at a couple of hundred of hours), that I alway loved by id Software and based on the quake3 engine. You get 5 classes to play (Medic, Soldier, Engineer, Field Ops, Cover Ops) on a maps with some objectives. The game is now 100% free, available on all platform and even open-source.
I guess one raeson why there less player now is because like any other game it take some time to get skilled but there also the fact that probably must people know how to use script so they can easily crush the new player. While on TF2, must players doesn't even know what is a script and how easily they can set up the script to get a bit better.
I'm beginning to take a liking to Special Delivery because it holds a lot of potential for interesting maps and level design. I'm hoping we'll see more of them soon, either custom or official.
Doomsday itself is quite a nice map to rocket jump, as I demonstrate here.
I've recently been playing Arena as if there's no other game mode. It's allowed me to get better at Spy, Solider, and especially medic.
Also, in a long trade quest, I basically traded a nametag for a team painted G. Killer Exclusive.
I have a new medic set up, too
S. Medigun/Pan
Primary doesn't matter at all since I've become quite good with the pan, but I refuse to use the blutsauger. If I ever join a highlander team or something then I'll probably decide what to use.
