ETF2L’s stance on Demoman changes and balance plugins
June 20, 2014
EDIT: Valve have since reverted their changes in the June 23rd 2014 Update: “Reverted the recent stickybomb damage ramp up change. We will continue to evaluate the use of stickybomb air detonations and potential changes to that mechanic.”
All Demoman stickybombs now have damage ramp up. Full damage is reached 2 seconds after firing.
This change has a substantial impact on competitive TF2 and it did not take long for someone to release a server-side mod that restores the old damage values. However, we would like to make it clear that altering gameplay with server-side plugins is against ETF2L rules and this case is no exception.
Normally whenever new unlocks or gameplay features are added to the game, ETF2L tries to preserve the consistency of ongoing league seasons and include or explicitly exclude these updates in the next season. It would seem natural for us to support a plugin that seeks to maintain the same game balance throughout the ongoing season, however we must forbid it for the same reason we exclude all other plugins that affect game balance:
All ETF2L matches must follow the same rules and use the same gameplay settings. Players must know exactly what settings to expect and be able to prepare for them.Any plugin that alters game balance must be used in all matches or none of them, which means allowing a plugin would require us to enforce its usage in all matches, no exceptions.Enforcing a plugin on all match servers is problematic – experience has shown that teams will often struggle with installing/updating it (particularly new players), and requiring all matches to be played on ETF2L servers is not feasible.
Last but not least, any plugin that alters game balance will create a divide between various leagues depending on their treatment of the plugin, and raise another artificial barrier between competitive and public play. We think it is in the best interest of competitive TF2 to avoid dividing the community wherever possible.
New weapons and taunts
As the new weapons were added during Season 18, they may not be used in this competition. The new taunts are all allowed and have been added to the Season 18 whitelist.
Posted by ETF2L Staff in League, Rule Updates
content rss
nice
Go promod.
Go old sticky damage.
Viva la resistance!
RIP ETF2L 2007-2014
Don’t give in to promod. It’s just for whiney demomen who can’t adapt.
Based mods
enjoy s19 everyone im out
At least allow the charge or scotish ressistance then as a reaction to this change.
Everyone QQ but in two weeks no one will talk about it anymore.
^^ true
Good decision, admins.
Don’t any of the new taunts give the advantage of looking around corners, like the High Five does?
I can’t believe people even WANTED promod to be a thing. WTF is people thinking these days?
RIP ETF2L 2007-2014
bye bye everyone
It’s so funny that the people who like the change and bash on “whiny” demos mainly play soldier. I would like to see you play without splash damage on your rockets, maybe then you would understand and not write sh*t like learn 2 aim…
Because pipes dont have splash ? Thats new.
A moment of silence for all Demo Carry Teams.
etf2l is becoming a conga line/rock paper scissors based hat simulator for players that move the crosshair on people and press wasd keys better than others
^
RIP ETF2L 2007-2014
hf i52. gl s19. Valve ruined basic competitive gameplay
Just learn to play with the nerf, why is it so hard
I think it is really unfair to continue this season with this retarded sticky shit. We should be allowed at all costs to use all possible mods to alert all these retarded updates back.
Valve is trying to destroy competetive scene in all possible ways… ETF2L, I beg you, Let us at least enjoy this last season and i52 with normal damage settings before we all quit this game. :///////
RIP ETF2L 2007-2014
cool we have taunts!
RIP ETF2L 2007-2014
#fuckyourfasciststickynerfs #boycottetf2l #boycottvalve #permzillaisascrub
While I understand the decision by etf2l, I absolutely hate these last nerfs, and I don’t think they will do any good to the competitive meta either. I sincerely hope valve reverts these changes.
why should valve change anything? public will be more fun now :^)
Except public has been shit and will still be shit 8)
Thanks for allowing taunts at least <3
now i can taunt with my teammate after wiping players on mid
RIP ETF2L 2007-2014
tell that to the 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of players that play it exclusively
was trying to respond to mentelex but apparently it took so long that 2 people posted in between
fastest poster on the planet
Regarding the issue with plugin installation issues: If ETF2L enforces tftrue_sticky_fulldamage then I volunteer to set up TFTrue on any server that is having trouble. I have too much spare time.
Your turn, ETF2L.
What they should do is try to create a competitive tf2 scene. They will get more dedicated players to buy shit in their virtual store. Team Fortress 3 please.
If they don’t change it back there better be a promod, who gives a fuck about distancing ourselves from pubs
Yeah a plugin would just be a hassle for everyone to use, even if a lot of people want it, including me. It just wont work and comp would be even more separate from the rest of tf2 than it already is. Leagues would use different configs and it would just be a pain. The update wasn’t the best thing ever, the nerf was ridiculous but people are going to have to adapt to it it’s as simple as that.
Some gaming leagues enforce plugins on all servers, and they have 10x more players than ETF2L. Just saying :)
RIP etf2l, lets create a new league that enforces not retarded stickey dmg
alba@ +1
demo is aids;_;
I main heavy now.
Good decision. Competitive TF2 should still be TF2.
alba +2
alba +3
alba +4
for those who say “valve is trying to destroy competetive scene”
i’m sorry but I don’t think Valve give a f*ck about the competitive TF2’s scene
alba +5
I would gladly donate money to get a new league up and running now +6
ETF2L is wrong.
Installing the plug-ins is as hard as installing the league configs to the server. It’s about moving one file to a folder in the FTP. It’s bizarre that ETF2L considers TFTrue too complicated to install, while still requiring league configs to be used, which are equally hard to install.
The only legitimate concern is that there will be a split between competitive and public. But to be honest, the only reason that I’m playing TF2 is because it is fun. The sticky nerf made this game considerably less enjoyable. So for me there are two options: stop playing this game, or keep playing with the old sticky damage. I don’t care about “widening the gap between public and competitive”. Competitive TF2 is never gonna be huge, at least let us enjoy the game as it was until the competitive scene dies off.
Also, forgot to bring this point up, but it’s possible to see what plug-ins are being used on the status screenshot, and you can just add the tftrue_sticky_fulldamage cvar to the etf2l config, so not even that is an issue.
@ ondkaja
It’s another thing to go wrong, and another thing people will need assistance with no matter how simple it is.
That’s just being selfish – of course on a personal level I am more used to the old sticky damage too. However for the sake of the league and for ETF2L this is the correct decision to make, which will hopefully keep ETF2L going for longer.
Never have we said “TF2 can go huge if we keep bringing new players in!” – It won’t. That isn’t a reason to kill it off with a change as drastic as reverting back to the old sticky damage. As a league we want to keep running for as long as possible, and people will deal with this change eventually anyway. Just like they did with new unlocks, and other things like that.
That last point is irrelevant, I’ll be more specific to TFTrue here;
1. TTFrue is closed source, we can’t see exactly what’s going on in it for ourselves. There is no good reason why it should be closed source and not open source.
2. Since it is closed source, we at ETF2L can’t maintain the plugin or fix it when updates are released. If AnaKin stopped maintaining it that would be the end of it.
Both of these reasons are why we can’t enforce the usage of a plugin that is beyond our control. And the reasons in the newspost are why we won’t enforce the usage of a plugin in our control.
As a final point, I’ve said to several people if Valve had added a command to revert the changes we would have that enabled for the end of Season 18. However after that we would disable it for the future seasons.
rip
Rest in peace my dreams
GAME OVER :'(
alba +6
alba +7
alba +8
alba +9
Valve adds and removes things from the game. You can compare this to life.
It’s important in LIFE to learn to adapt new things and so can you learn something new or do different things . Remember that you’re playing a game. Don’t lose your interest in life for videogame. Lose your interest in a game for life. Videogame’s life is in fact shorter than life’s, but 9 years in development and 7 since release is forever for a gamer, it’s time from baby to growing as an adult. Now is probably one of the best times to quit playing TF2 if you believe you can quit.
One should think people in this league are teenagers or twenty-somethings and should easily adapt to changes. Apparently not, drama is preferred.
whitelist all the non-broken unlocks as soon as the season ends, before the nations cup or whatever comes next. i like the idea of sticky jumper roaming demo but there’s tons of options
You don’t understand Selek. More than half of this community are full of easily offended manchilds.
It would be a retarded decision to allow a “promod” for TF2. Kudos to permzilla for making a right decision.
>But muh COD4 and Quake use promod ;(
Both are dead games with little competitive community. TF2 is WAY far from dead, this reason alone is why promod wouldn’t fit for tf2. “Oh ye lets have a fov of 120 in competitive games that’s a sound decision” or “>muh demonstration man is nurfd pls allow promod” are all silly arguements, stop trying to make a separate tf2. It won’t happen you nerds.
Funny thing is, I can see UGC allowing this sort of shit and people who are all for promod will migrate to a league that they once called a shit league.
Also valve never even gave a shit about comp tf2. If they did give a shit about us, we wouldn’t get 5 new weapons that are USELESS in comp, nerfs out of nowhere (horrible ones too) and NO weapon balancing (gunslinger got a FUCKING BUFF for christ sake). A HUUUUUUUUGE majority of tf2 is filled with pubbers making autistic “le shpeecarb xd” memes, YES THOSE ARE THE PEOPLE THEY CARE ABOUT BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONES GIVING M0NEY TO VALVE. Fhe feedback from SPUF forums are filled with shit sting players making “le f2p being le bad lol xd” memes and having cringy opinions like: “pyro should be removed from the game” or “[insert class here] takes no skill” threads where everyone insults each other and pubbers are talking like they are tf2 experts. Valve is going to get their idea either by:
1) autistic SPUFers
2) STAR_ (simply because with one word he can change the entire opinion of the pub community for something. A good example is mini-sentries)
With tf2 updates depending solely on autists, do you really think this game will grow competitively? Apparently some people thought so, but it is impossible.
mfw people actually thought for once that tf2 will have a BIG competitive community: https://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1386/17/1386174257278.jpg
UGC is also not using any plugins to revert the change.
Competitive tf2 is saved 8)
oh look a new update
…and nothing about the sticky, minigun and axtinguisher’s nerf
welp
“All ETF2L matches must follow the same rules and use the same gameplay settings. Players must know exactly what settings to expect and be able to prepare for them.”
How is the enormous decrease in immediate sticky damage not a change in gameplay settings? I also doubt if (prem) teams had enough time to alter their playstyle when they had official matches the same day it came out. All results to come are not a reflection of a team’s previous strengths, it’s five players with a one-eyed depressed black guy in the background.
‘Medic took 23’
Valve changed the sticky launcher because it was to overused. It is exactly like the equalizer as it was to over used and they wanted to promote the use of other weapons. Plus it isn’t fun to be destroyed by a demo that all he is doing is throwing stickies out onto the battle field and detonating them. All you demomen that are crying over this should have been on the other side of the launcher for the last couple years. Then you would have been begging for this nerd.
^
Does not play TF2 competitively
http://logs.tf/search_player?s=STEAM_0%3A1%3A52697708
Yeah Quake and CoD are dead so what? Isn’t TF2 going to die one day? It is, isn’t it? So why should ETF2L make it faster? There is a decline in new teams joining per season, ppl are quitting.
Maybe those who want to play with the old settings will split from the others and I will too if there is a chance.
Fuck this is so sad. The fact that valve somehow managed to screw up so hard that I am seriously considering quitting the game I loved dearly just a few days ago, is just incredible. Fuck everything.
If alba is srs about making a new league, I’d gladly sell my body/life/freetime to help make it happen
star said on stream that he likes the new changes so i don’t think anything will change anytime soon
Like if it matters what star says… Yeah I’m all in for a new league
if star says something all the pub commnity will follow his footsteps and agree with him, would probably cause a big difference
I completely agree that long-term a promod is a terrible idea, however I have a genuine question to ETF2L – Do you think that there will be no further tweaking of stickies by Valve? I feel like there is at least a 50% chance they will readdress stickies in the near future, be it in the form of a rebalance, an alternate sticky launcher, or whatever. It may be that we rape the end of the season and the build up to i52 with “alternate” strategies, only to have stickies made useful again somewhere along the road. They will probably never be as strong as they were, but they don’t have to be to revert the drastic changes that 6v6 is going through at the moment. If this proves to be the case then competitive TF2 is in for a turbulent couple of months, which will prove a complete and utter disaster for what is a crucial period on the competitive calendar.
Is it not worth contacting the TF2 team and requesting some transparency in their design intentions so as to allow you to conduct your business in the most efficient way? Perhaps I’m being naive, but if presented in an appropriate manner this seems like a perfectly acceptable request. Were they to confirm that the tweaking of stickies was an on-going process, it would make sense to at least consider using the tftrue cvar on a temporary basis.
Guys wake up beause you are missing the reality here. As Poster stated above, majority counts all the time, and we, the competitive scene doesn’t represent the majority at all. All the changes and the updates will be geared towards public play and similar stuff. The game itself wasn’t built ever with the idea of competitive play, it was just some people’s effort who caught TF2’s staff attention on it. So whining is in vane, unless we are all uniting for a petition maybe :) . I remember when i played tf2 for first time in 2009 as pubber, of course, people who played demoman played straight to the weapon’s names: spamming pipes everywhere and using the sticky launcher only for traps. At least this is how it was on the servers i used to play.
You should request making the damage ramp-up a cvar and deactivate it with the configs.
”The new taunts are all allowed and have been added to the Season 18 whitelist.” RIP competitive, welcome conga!
@ kaidus
Personally I agree with you, I feel like they might make a slight adjustment, but nowhere near back to how it was before.
Yes if they keep making changes competitive TF2 may be in turbulence for the near future, however ETF2L just can’t enforce the usage of something beyond our control. Like I’ve said before if there was an in-game option to revert the change we would enforce that for the remainder of the season, we’ll review it again if it comes out eventually but who knows.
It could be worth doing that, but do you think they have an idea of what they’re doing in the future? It looks to me as their idea was what they have changed as of now , otherwise what would be the point in releasing it? I personally don’t think they have any concrete plans that they can give us for the coming months, they’re probably still reviewing the current change and deciding if they need to make any adjustments.
I will email them about it and see if they reply. Hopefully they will.
Reducing the clip size would have been a little less destructive to the comp scene, or just a simple 10-15% damage nerf instead of making it so that when the sticky finally reaches full damage there’s nobody around it anyway. But as kaidus pointed out, there’s a good chance the matter of stickies isn’t closed yet so put your pitchforks back on standby.
>But muh COD4 and Quake use promod ;(
>Both are dead games with little competitive community. TF2 is WAY far from dead, this reason alone is why promod wouldn’t fit for tf2.
Actually Quake is less dead than TF2, in terms of the competitive scene. But if you are referring to CPMA, you actually have a valid point. Compare CPMA popularity to QL popularity. On the other hand, the small scene that CPMA dóes have, is extremely passionate and dedicated. Nobody is stopping TF2 players from creating their own promode scene, where they can have the most fun (fun defined as they see fit) possible. ETF2L is not the place for that though. If you want a promod, go create your own league. Nobody is stopping you.
I have to agree with Chakabra and Kaidus though. A temporary enforcement of a plugin/mod* to bridge a prospective gap between a highly probably rebalancing, or to AT LEAST finish this season, seems reasonable and also relatively non-destructive in terms of community growth. We need at least relative consistency between an ETF2L season’s matches. Demomen who use stickies more passively and rely more on pipes for aggressive damage now have an advantage they previously didn’t. Demomen who like to make kritz plays are now crippled (rip wg and gdk). This change is ok in itself, but not halfway through a season.
* Anakin, how about releasing a seperate stickydamage plugin, so you can publish the source? This way you can keep the rest of TFTrue closed source, if you feel that that is necessary. If the stickydamage plugin is open source, I can’t see much protest from ETF2L any more. Like ondkaja said, it’s a matter of copypasting files like the config files, and ETF2L can have full control over its content. In season 19 everyone should just man the fuck up and accept the new change, despite how terrible it might be.
I can kinda understand ETF2L´s decision. But if BOTH teams agree to use it in their games just allow them to do it ò.ó
i enjoyed the change…this promod thing is dumb as fuck
Quit being so emo about this. Stickies got nerfed so you need to adjust your playstyle to make up for it. Survival of the fittest, the species who survives the longest isn’t the one who’s smarter or stronger than the other, it is the one who’s more adaptable.
@ Permzilla
so why dont you consider making it facultative, like if both team agree they use the mod, I am not thinking too much on this but I think there wouldnt be any downside in that.
what is wrong with you peoples? why do you hate valve so hard for one bad update in eternity?
@ sergei: because one update is enough to destroy comp or make it way worse
LOL, congo time on officials. I can see 12 ppl just randomly dancing congo during midfight – awesome.
Think it’s pretty well handled by ETF2L to come out straight away and make their decision known and stick to it. They have also explained why they can’t do Promod, even during mid season which is fair enough and the reasons of which I can accept.
Well done ETF2L for being quick to respond and not take a long time like some previous updates and situations (FOV Plugin). This way people know where they stand and those who don’t accept it and move on are gonna struggle.
Please just make an exception and change the whitelist during the season for once so other Demomen secondaries are allowed.
@Team mate
yeah cos that worked so well with the fov plugin LOL
yeah it would just be a matter of your demo is better we won’t allow it/ our demo carries with 500 dpm pls allow sticky damage. it might work in prem where sportmanship is there to at least some extend (+ipz doesnt play this season) but it would just be a clusterfuck of flamewars in lower divs.
yeah well even prem can’t handle these gentleman agreements, remember darn?
good update, sticky spam and close heavy encounter were way too overpowered anyway! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
now just gotta have to nerf fucking wrangler. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
demoman will be the offclasser of the team from this update…No reasons to play it as mainclass
I’ve been playing exactly the same since years. Made me quit in s16. Now we finally have fresh air in the scene, this is a chance guys. And your new leagues, mods etc will die out anyway because TF2 lives of it’s newcomers aswell. No newcomer downloads a mod which reverts the game to a situation years ago, seen from the future.
I wouldn’t like the demo to have more than 4 pipes aswell btw, and the kiddos screamed aswell back then.
Last but not least. What right do the 1% comp players have when there’s 99% pub players. Demo IS overpowered, which is why 6es have a demolimit 1. Pubs can’t play our abstrct way.
wish i was dyslexic so i didnt have to read all this shit
A part of me is worried that you will now not be punished as much for having bad positioning etc, and another part of me thinks demoman could use a nerf either way and somewhat excited to see how the new meta will turn out.
I honestly dont like the changes but as people said we need to figure out how to adept to it. But now that the sticky bomb launcher is not that good of an option anymore i expect more unlocks for the demo which he can work with. For example Sticky Jumper and Scottish Resistance. If you expect demo’s to adept to this change you need to give us more options to do it.
Peace
This is actually sad.
+1 Ilahgu. You need to at least give the Demo some more options now.
allow sticky jumper \o/
everyone is happy
2014 still using stickies as main wep = \o/
going to make a new comment because I dont know how to edit or delete.
I agree with what Lange said in TFThursday 19th June 2014. We maybe should try to use more weapons, the only reason Valve doesnt support comp tf2 is beacuse we limit the weapons avaiable.
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next season etf2l RIP
Forget about any mods, allow secondary Demo unlocks like.
just let the game die
rip
its ogre
I, for one, don’t mind the new update. Teehee.
Reverted the recent stickybomb damage ramp up change. We will continue to evaluate the use of stickybomb air detonations and potential changes to that mechanic.
What a pity, I was just enjoying all the demo rage.
Praise the lord :>
Doesn’t matter, Demoman back to normal :^)
BlackIzBack! no rip in pizza anymore! :D