Shooting stickies at my medic and watching him die

Emergent Gameplay

watching my door

I really like the combination of airstrafing and single shot weapons. Airstrafing to the left to dodge a rocket and then snapping your crosshair back to the right to shoot the soldier is really satisfying. In other games the only thing you need to do with your crosshair is keep it glued on your enemy for the duration of your clip, so aiming in tf2 feels way more expressive to me in comparison scout would be so much less fun to play if he had an SMG because your air movement would get nerfed because you can't really airstafe and track at the same time.

In the competitive format TF2 has a nice balance of team effort and individual execution
Every game has its ratio of it, but 6v6 hits the sweet spot for me

Every game feels like I'm testing myself. At the same time I try to figure out how my team likes to play
Learning how other people play and how to enable them to do so is a great feeling
Every season is an opportunity to find a formula that works for any given roster

airshots are like 95% responsible for me being here for more than 10 years

sniper

levitating a bombing soldier is a good feeling

projectile airshots or sniper mid air head shots (only when high, normal jumping doesn't count)

juking out someone

probably getting hit with a loch n load pipe, or building a sentry gun at last, or getting through a choke that's watched by a sniper

I think it's cool to fly through the air and drop a bunch of explosives on people

directs

gullywash second and snakewater second

Shooting rockets at gullywash choke

when my medic says "we are on ad" and then my team explodes because we in fact were not on ad

Rocket Jumping is the favourite, airblast least favourite.

headshot rocketing people

While this might not be the most specific to tf2, I like how a lot of the skills in competitive tf2 transfer over to real life. Like obviously there’s in game mechanics which im not talking about, but there’s more general skills like vision, awareness, mental and physical discipline, making quick decisions, and communication that are completely applicable to real life. Once I graduated college and started working, I found out that working with a team in a job is identical to working with your team in tf2. It was really refreshing to find out that I could work on myself and improve my “soft skills” while playing a game I love.

spycrab gambling

The friends you make along the way

Also sync bombing and dropping a med is a great feeling unmatched by any other game.

taking a scout solo and hitting every shot

I feel like a lot of shooters depend on you staying hidden on the battlefield for as long as possible a lot, resulting in some "hide-behind-a-box" sorta gameplay. In TF2 the battlefield is usually way more open, you pretty much look your enemy directly into the eye (except sniper), in order to be effective you need to close your distance (except sniper) and you need to hit shots consecutively multiple times to win a fight (except sniper) which makes the game very satisfying and fast-paced.
It also hits a very decent sweet spot between movement, aim, decision making and teamwork with a lot of potential for individual actions.

I'm indirectly answering your question here but our closed knit community, is the best part about tf2 tbh.

The friendships I've gained from tf2 have been greater than any game I've ever played. Pretty crazy to think I haven't played in a comp team since 2017 and since then I've played maybe 2-3 pugs per year....yet I still attend lans on a regular basis.

The fact that I'm still active on these forums despite not playing comp in 7 years...kinda speaks for itself lol

I also speak specifically of the community in reference to gameplay because without it, 6s would not exist.

Nothing in tf2 excites me like a big airshot. I"ll have a the same reaction to it if I hit one, my team mate hits one, or I get hit by one lol