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Short Circuit: Is it really that bad? We had it for 2 seasons iirc (9 & 10?) and I don’t remember anyone really complaining about it back then, or it being that big of an issue. The Engineer has a lack of utility anyway, the SC gave it something else to use.

Air Strike: Not seen anyone use this in any of the games I watched, but from experience I thought it was only banned because of a glitch? It doesn’t seem too strong as to be effective you need to build up the rocket reserve, which requires frags, which is more difficult with the weaker weapon, so you’re more likely to lose flank fights.

Red-Tape Recorder: Again, thought this was only banned because of a bug/glitch, not sure if that has been fixed. A lot of people are saying it’s an upgrade, but I don’t really have an opinion if I’m honest.

Diamondback: Eh, it has similar stats to the Amby, but the latter actually requires aim to get the 102dmg shots, whereas the DB just needs you to have had a sap or stab without dying. Kinda like the easy option in my opinion, gives boosted damage for doing what a Spy already does. Shouldn’t be allowed imo.

DR & Razorback: I suppose as people are bringing it up – didn’t notice much difference when these weren’t played with in the previous cup. I posted my reasoning in the thread then.

To summarise, the only weapon I think should definitely not be allowed is the Diamondback. Keep DR & RB. The others, I don’t think they really matter that much.

As for Badwater, I don’t think anything is majorly wrong with it. Sure, 3rd point is difficult to push but so is Upward 3rd if you get setup properly. In general in games we see teams push 3rd point and lose most of their time on last – I can say this with actual games in mind as I’ve casted/watched pretty much every Prem game from the past 4/5 seasons. Badwater_pro gimps the 3rd point to the degree where it becomes too easy to push, which kinda defeats the general idea of payload – each point gets progressively more difficult to cap for the attacking team.

Coalplant is fun I guess, but I agree that the spawns are dumb. It seems that 90% of the time the Demo spawns opposite to the Medic :D

Quoted from MoistPenguin

[…]What are your reasons for wanting an open whitelist?

One big reason for me would be to actually increase the incentive for players to want to get into competitive. I totally agree that weapons that are broken (Bazaar Bargain?) or hilariously over powered (Reserve Shooter) shouldn’t be included, but in general new players are put off when they have to deal with a long list of disallowed weapons. I say this from experience, as I had a LOT of people say to me last season they wouldn’t be playing because of the DR ban, or left their teams, etc. Make the league more welcoming.

Quoted from STiNGHAN

Check logs from your seasons and from the cup with the banned razorback and DR. I can notice a difference.

If you’re talking about the Experimental Cup:
http://logs.tf/1639963
http://logs.tf/1640115
Not sure I see a difference, and these were from the knockout stage. Toast still got a lot frags and survived a lot (higher KAD than me once haha) and our Sniper (and the opponents!) survived and got frags without a RB.

If you’re talking about when we played on Monday in UGC…

http://logs.tf/1669445

Well yes, I would expect Toast to be less effective when he is using Cloak & Dagger with the Eternal Reward :’)

Quoted from STiNGHAN

About DR:S-O keep saying their shit while they have godlike scout, the best pyro since s5, the best demo and the best spy in game. Guess what, we don’t have same players. Besides that we all know how this will end, S-O will be shittalking every player like they did before s11.

It seems this is less of a hatred for the DR, and more of a hatred of our team :/ Not sure what we’ve done to upset you, or when & where we shit talked people, we’re just giving our opinion, like every other person here.

Quoted from STiNGHAN

I respect your opinion, I just want to share my opinion with community, but I can’t coz ” you won more and your opinion is better than others”

No one is saying that, just that people with more experience probably have a larger scope of reference when it comes to judging the effect of these changes to Highlander. People like Emilio, Steve, Hildreth etc have been playing the game at the top level for a long time, and can use that experience to their benefit. Everyone’s opinion is warranted :)

Quoted from Hildreth

Problem with basing a whitelist on the concept of “Fun” is it’s opinion driven and enjoyment of the game is so varied and dependent on factors such as:

– Skill Level
– Main Class
– Your personal perception on how the game should be played (Ie – You like to Pocket Heavies and put Demos in support, or you prefer to Pocket Demos and have Heavies in support…etc etc, neither is right or wrong but how you enjoy TF2 will inevitably be affected by your chosen style).

So you can understand from a practical perspective why stating “I think this unlocks are not fun so ban them” isn’t good feedback.

Provide more detail please.

These are all fair points and it gets even more complicated when you try to talk about specific weapons since they all interact with each other. Another point this brings up is are the lower division players being represented fairly? I see a lot of posts by the high prem players here saying things along the lines of how many prem titles they have won but you have to understand that in the lower tiers the meta is very different, the skill level is lower, and coordination is a lot lower this can drastically change the way certain weapons work in a whitelist as you have said.

I gave more detail specifically on the short circuit in an earlier post, in which I mentioned ‘grey areas’ which is where I think the personal perception part of your post comes into it. For example demo ubers being less effective opens up the opportunity for more heavy/scout/pyro/whatever ubers, is this good or bad? That’s up to interpretation.

About the atomiser to quote cj on the diamond back:

Quoted from CeeJaey

Diamondback: Eh, it has similar stats to the Amby, but the latter actually requires aim to get the 102dmg shots, whereas the DB just needs you to have had a sap or stab without dying. Kinda like the easy option in my opinion, gives boosted damage for doing what a Spy already does. Shouldn’t be allowed imo.

Replace diamondback with atomiser, damage boost with survivability, and aim with movement mechanics and you more or less get my opinion on the atomiser.
The atomiser is very easy to use negating a lot of the high skill of actual movement mechanics and gives boosted survivability for just doing what the scout already does (incredibly effectively).

Is a more survivable easier to play scout good or bad for the meta? Is it OP? My opinion is scout is already incredibly strong at the top and the balance between soldiers and scouts on the flank is at a good place without the atomsier.

Spy has always been one of the weakest classes, a shotgun could easily two shot an offguard spy or a single rocket would do enough damage that a spy wouldn’t be able to survive the 2nd rocket with the new DR. Giving the spy the speed of a medic is a great boost for knife spies, since it’s a lot easier to catch up with people. Now it has been pointed out several times that the counter to a DR spy is either, a scout with milk, sniper with jarate or a team with brains. I still haven’t heard any legitimate argument to ban the DR apart from “it’s soooo hard to kill the spy” or “DR is tooooo easy” so what that it can be hard to kill a DR spy? It’s also hard to kill a blackbox soldier with conch, should we ban the conch for that reason as well? It’s also hard to kill a sniper who’s constantly being pocketed and stands right next to the combo, I haven’t heard a single spy main complain about the RB being a problem, yet someone suggested this ban out of nowhere. My best guess is that American spies who hardly use the gun compared to EU spies complained about it and for some reason etf2l copied that decision, even though nobody has ever pointed out specifically that the RB is broken.. You people are so oversensitive because toast keeps bullying you with his ambassador, at least that’s my perspective at this point. And again, if a spy can’t kill an RB sniper, it’s the spies lack of skill, not the other way around.

Quoted from Selek

[…]

Sniper with RB is the only class that is safe from Spy picks while his team is around. There is no real way to kill him while he is being actively overhealed. (two Amby headshots in less than a second are far from repeatably achievable in this situation). Case in point Product rock, picking the Sniper there in a suicide play can be a great opener for your team to get more aggressive.

Sniper is one of the if not THE strongest class in HL, forcing him to turn around more or having his team guard him more is a good idea in my opinion.

I know the opinions differ on this, but it hardly is a one-sided discussion.

I don’t see the problem, you already mentioned 1 option, 2 quick headshots, but you can also just headshot him once and make him paranoid instead. Most snipers will immediately respond and hide for cover, giving your team an advantage to push from. Even a tiny call on the snipers position can give your sniper the better positioning to take him down. If a sniper is truly camping on rock then it requires your team to coordinate better to kill him, this again is why banning the RB will only lower the skill gap since it’s a lot easier for a spy to focus him down, constantly banning items instead of learning how to play around them only lowers the skill gap but according to some “will raise fun” yeah I reckon it will, because you don’t need a brain or team coordination to kill something anymore, basically the lazy way out.

i do like the map called vigil its alright if it goes live and is acctualy done

s c : is feeling a bit more then a toy for an engi
redtabe:i dont think any spy in the offical used a redtabe
Airstrike : didnt feel a change
diamondback: is alright i guess its stabb rewarding since i dont like gunspy :>

If last can be somewhat redesigned I think Vigil would be a cool map to play once finished.

Also, I would like to ask what purpose the whitelist serves. Is it merely to ban weapons that are game-breaking/bugged or is it really about enjoyment? Because if the latter were the case I’m pretty sure a lot of other weapons would be up for question as well.

Would like to hear your argument as to why the Reserve Shooter is simply ‘unfun to play against’ and not borderline broken. I guess it’s worse at doing chip damage since you have a smaller clip size but other than that it looks like a straight upgrade over the Shotgun, atleast on paper.

As far as I know the only thing they changed about Reserve Shooter is that it doesn’t mini crit on regular jumps anymore and the switch speed somewhat, although that doesn’t seem half as relevant considering the overall switch speed of all weapons got buffed as well during the update its last rework got pushed in.

Having two less shots is a significant downside yes, but it’s still manageable and you’re doing around 120 damage if you hit the mini-crit shot perfectly which isn’t that hard to line up considering the first Airblast still locks you in mid-air and gives you the mini-crit as well. This means that in any encounter up close you need less shots to win said 1v1, meaning the two clip size you give up means virtually nothing. 120-ish damage + additional fire damage kills any light class in an instant. It would also make bombing for Soldiers and Demos more difficult since they take mini-crits while performing explosive jumps.

lmao walls of text talking about the reserve shooter being broken by literally listing how unfun it is to play against. If both teams have access to an unlock, the game is balanced fine xD

the other arguments were literally just its broken because its broken and this isnt broken because it isnt broken
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also omg the reserve shooter is stronger in 1v1? :O :O :O
its almost like thats its upside or something :/

Last edited by scrambled, 7 years ago

Quoted from MoistPenguin

[…]

it was allowed in UGC HL until season 14, this was when it was better than it currently is as it used to mini crit anyone who jumped. I think the argument that scrambled has is valid and it shouldnt be dismissed on the fact of fun being subjective as overpowered/broken is subjective as well.

sex me