balance – Page 8 – The Daily SPUF

Why the New Loch and Load is Pure Evil

February 25, 2015 Poptart 0 Comments balance, criticism, demoknight, demoman, loadout, weapon

The Loch ‘n’ Load. SPUF has always had a love-hate relationship with this weapon. It was loved for being able to kill sentries and how it was less spammy than its default brother, but at the same time hated because it could kill light classes with a single shot, while still being somewhat worse than stock in most situations. This weapon was changed in the Demoman update of Smissmas 2014, where the Loch ‘n’ Load was changed and has remained this way ever since. The Loch ‘n’ Load was a weapon which traded half of the stock grenade launcher’s four barrel clip size and rollers in… [Continue Reading]

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The Unbalanced Infinite-Hitscan-Range-Man

January 31, 2015 TheOnlyGuyEver 0 Comments balance, class, criticism, sniper

Walking along Frontier, trying to actually do the objective, and then bam. Sniper headshots you from across the map, and proceeds to taunt, because “Snipin’ gud job m8.” I’m sure everybody who has ever played TF2 has experienced this pain at least once. My opinion has always been that the Australian Camper Van Man has been unbalanced, and some people could argue that he isn’t unbalanced because his weakness is close range, well heads up, the Jaratewacka combo exists. OK, enough talk, let’s get into why he’s unbalanced. 1. Sniper effectively counters everybody Really the only class that moves fast enough on the ground to… [Continue Reading]

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What happens on cp_orange…

January 29, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, maps

cp_orange_x3 might just be my favorite custom map in all of TF2, for entirely the wrong reasons. It was there for me, man. From the beginning. And it’s always been there for me. cp_orange_3’s immortal popularity is no surprise to me; it’s a memory featherwight. You can play it on anything. For two months after graduating college I lived in a 125-square foot apartment with two roommates in San Francisco. I didn’t even have room for a desktop, I could only use my laptop on my bed and steal internet from the hotel next door. The only map I could play… [Continue Reading]

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Grappling Hooks would be balanced in Medieval Mode

January 21, 2015 Medic 0 Comments balance, class, game mode, medieval, melee, strategy, theory

Grappling hooks would be balanced in Medieval Mode. Seriously. Alright, why are we discussing this? Why bother considering balance in a stupid game mode? Why bother discussing Medieval Mode at all? Because 1. it’s fun and 2. it’s currently a very one-sided game mode because the only classes with mobility are Scout and Demoman, and the only classes with range are Medic and Sniper. Of course, Medieval Mode’s one single official map doesn’t help. It has giant walls. Really high walls. The RED team are locked up safe inside until they venture outside, and once they do, there’s no way… [Continue Reading]

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A Different Gamechanger

January 14, 2015 Medic 0 Comments analysis, balance, class, comparison, medic

Dedicated healers in games generally get the short end of the stick. Whether it’s having to rely on the skill of your team mates or your inability to keep up, being a healer is generally a thankless job, hence why many games go with the Combat Medic, someone who can heal but can also look after themselves, capable of surviving in a one on one fight just like anyone else. Turning back to the Team Fortress 2 Medic, he seems a tad out of line. A designer at Riot, the company behind League of Legends, once argued that it’s no… [Continue Reading]

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Randomness you can’t see…

January 12, 2015 Medic 0 Comments balance, crits, mechanics, random, weapon

It’s been a while since we last talked about randomness. Generally this sort of conversation dives to horrible depths, going over the same arguments over and over again until either one side gives in, it starts getting nasty or the thread goes off topic. Either way, the thread dies a horrible death. It keeps on happening. What’s interesting though is that the majority of these arguments are about random critical hits. The other random factors, random bullet spread and random damage spread, often lurk in the shadows, untouched. Why? With random bullet spread, there is rarely an argument for that.… [Continue Reading]

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Soldier is overpowered and we don’t care…

January 11, 2015 Medic 0 Comments analysis, balance, class, criticism, soldier

In any class-based video game, you generally have some form of balance. Agile classes come with a lack of health, while power classes exchange speed for pure power, with other classes scattered between them. So the idea of a mobile, strong ace of all trade class appears to spit in the face of all this. In any other game, people would say that Soldier is overpowered. What few consider is that he may actually be so. If you look at his base stats, Soldier does seem rather mundane. High health, low walking speed, high damage weaponry with average reload times.… [Continue Reading]

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What if TF2 melee behaved mechanically like Left 4 Dead 2 melee?

January 1, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, melee, request, scout

I had a blast recently playing ctf_turbine with Medieval mode enabled, but my internet connection quickly decided that it wasn’t pleased with the current TF2 melee mechanics. So it got me thinking about a different Source game where the melee weapons are among my favorite in the entire game. TF2 melee basically behaves like a hitscan “bullet” that flies a few inches in front of the player and stops (the swords fire this “bullet” a bit further, mimicking a range bonus.) Only if this “bullet” hits an enemy is your melee swing successful. This is where all the notorious hitreg… [Continue Reading]

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The Tide Turner nerf is far too harsh.

December 27, 2014 reima 0 Comments balance, criticism, demoknight, request, update

Under the recent compound backlash that Valve went through after the End of the Line update, I honestly cannot blame them for hastily assembling anything that would resemble new content, regardless of a new mode, unfinished in beta, or even if that new grenade launcher’s model was sitting around in the workshop for at least a year. (Regardless of which, it is still a very pretty launcher.) Among the crowd pleasing game changes, there will be an inevitable trampling of a subset of players who are complained about. I represent the entirety of that subset. Or at least the people… [Continue Reading]

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Flaring Up

December 14, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, pyro, request, shotgun

Poor Pyro can’t seem to catch a break. Ever since his Team Fortress Classic days people have derided him as underpowered, unbalanced, gimmicky, over-reliant on newb opponents…the insults are as varied as the tools Valve has bestowed upon the poor unintelligible merc. Plenty of people have written opinions on why Pyro is underpowered (here’s mine) and even more people have written theories on how to fix that problem. Before I go into that, I want to try and sum up some fundamentals that are often brought up. Firstly, Pyro’s short-range emphasis is seen as one of his major problems since… [Continue Reading]