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Doesn’t matter what you allow for unlocks, it’s HL there will always be obnoxious unlocks we don’t like.

Try to ban stuff with no trade off, let you think about it…in theory – Short Circuit, what do you trade? A Pistol, ability for Wrangler? So ability to deny projectiles vs stronger Sentry gun vs stronger hitscan capability? Is it a fair tradeoff?

Beggars Bazooka should stay cos you trade off other effective main weapons for short bursts of rockets, which can be situationally effective.

Also Medi Gun pickups, I think you shouldn’t try to change the game Valve are making. The meta right now revolves heavily on ubers in a lot of areas, particularly pushing PL, your medic drops to a sniper as you push say Upward 2nd or 3rd, it can cost you least 1 minute, maybe more. If we allow weapon pickups, it gives you the chance to make uber dropping less detrimental to the game, thus speeding it up. Forget all the “they made a mistake but were not punished cos they had medi-gun pickup” arguments.
With this new mechanic we can adapt the meta game, so if we do get medi-gun drops we can have the team choose to play more aggressively to prevent the pickup or control an area, or trade-off the time they will buy from the drop. It will change how the game will be played, so you won’t have to deal with “Medic dropping, can’t do shit” gameplay. We have people being able to react to the potential for Medi-Gun pickups, so people think more about how this affects the game they can react to it much better.

Also it’s just dumb to ban mechanics added to the game by Valve in an era we’re depending on them to add a Matchmaking feature to develop the competitive scene. Get used to it.

agreed with hildreth

I really dislike banning weapon pickups. I think it’s an interesting mechanic, but besides my opinion on it, unless it completely destroys the game we should roll with it to see how it works out rather than disjointing our community from the main game further

I don’t dislike the weapon pickup system as a whole but it’s been proven many times in recent games that medigun pickups (keeping uber %) are bad for the game. They more often than not discourage plays on the medic which are one of the most exciting points of comp tf2.

As for Hildreth’s point I don’t think Valve will listen to feedback gathered from independent comp leagues at this point. They most likely will simply introduce matchmaking and wait for feedback from there. So I don’t think there’s any point in ruining a season of etf2l hoping that it will somehow convince valve to make the changes they need to do.

You realise it does not matter what we think of Valve or how they have developed the mechanics of a weapon? We can feedback it to Valve but banning it because we don’t like how it “changes” the game we’re used to? Stupid imo, let’s get used to playing their game and stop redeveloping and attempting to balance the game ourselves.

Give it 3 seasons of being allowed, people will get used to playing with it. I have been around a long time when people still argued about using Gunboats and Black Box, no matter what we thought about the weapons then (I was against the black box), it stayed in the game and it’s part of the meta, in 3 seasons we will think the same about the Medi Gun pickups, even in their current format.

Besides think of the future, think 2 years from now when new to comp players are used to playing Valve servers with the mechanic added to the game and then come to competitive TF2 and see it’s been disallowed because “A few years ago when it was added, some people in competitive TF2 didn’t like it so it got banned”. If we’re doing this logic can we ban Pyros?

Honestly, think ahead for once. If we learned anything from history, nothing in this discussion matters regarding unlocks.

And to add: Unlock arguments, forget popular opinion – the decisions should be simple: “Does the weapon have a good enough trade-off? In 98% of cases, I think it does.

Quoted from Selek

I get your point, Hildreth. Still, I disagree.

It would all be fine and dandy if Valve would actually balance around our current competitive formats. While I am all for “allow everything if it doesn’t make things bad”, there are limits. Getting a Medic drop is big in most cases and really difficult if the enemy team is competent. Nullifying the drops by simply picking up the healgun again hugely nerfs pick classes (and suicide plays).

No it isn’t difficult because it happens in every competitive game.
It doesn’t nerf the classes, their actual ability is not being affected, merely the risk vs reward factor of targeting a Medic drop. It’s still a momentum halter, it’s still a key kill to stop a push or help you break a push, but it also will give the options for Snipers/Spies to make different target selection choices based on the impact they will have on the game. And besides, getting the drop allows teams the option of taking the ground to contest the dropped gun and pick it up….

This is called – “A change in meta” – It will not break the game, merely change it in a way that will favour good players who adapt well.

Also we’re not asking for Valve to balance the game here, we have a gamemode that exists and truly tests the balance of all the classes and where they are situationally useful, and we have theories on how they should be played constantly evolving thanks partly to the use of new unlocks valve makes. We should stop trying to balance the game cos let’s face it, in the grand scheme of things we know fuck all about balancing the game, leave it to the Professionals.

I honestly don’t think Medigun pickups are a deliberate part of the game Valve are designing. I think they just didn’t consider comp at all when they added the mechanic. Pickups are disabled in MVM.

Regarding the Loose Cannon, the main problem I have with it is how hard it is to know how to react to seeing the projectile, either as a pyro, or as a medic.

For example, if I’m a fully charged medic and I see a cannonball coming towards me, I could be about to take anywhere from 0 to 141 + fall damage. Should I pop my uber or not?

Another example: I’m a pyro, and I see the cannonball. Has the demo primed it correctly to double donk the medic behind me, or is it about to explode too early? If I reflect it, and it’s just about to explode, I’m going to take 100 damage. If I ignore it, and it kills my medic, then I’ve screwed up.

While I don’t think the Loose Cannon is necessarily OP, I think it brings an element of randomness to the game.

if pyro/medic mains are refusing to get used to playing againts it (and beggars) they should not have considered playing highlander, this is a place where you get insta killed a lot (eg. snipers,spies).

Snipers: oops, I walked into a sight line.
Spies: oops, I should have checked my back.

Loose Cannon: huh. It was a double donk this time.

What exactly are we supposed to be getting used to? It’s hard to adjust to such a variable mechanic. I don’t particularly like the Beggar’s, but at least I know how much damage it’ll do to me.

Quoted from HartzFartz

[…]

Get used to mind sightlines
Get used to check your back when attacking
Get used to not stand in LC spamlines

Actually, for the first two, that was kind of the point I was making.

For the last one: ok, fine, so we treat every cannonball as if it’s a double donk, which leads to more passive play from medics, and earlier ubers to avoid getting donked through chokes, and so on and so on. I don’t see why this is a good thing though. All we’re doing is increasing the number of picks needed for a successful push, which slows the game down.