Cbear, I'm with you (for the most part). A roamer that can get the job done w/ the shotty is much more impressive. However I just find you can't be as creative if you lose a minimum of 20% of your health every time you rocket jump, it just doesn't lend itself to those spontaneous and random plays that roamers with gunboats can make to shake things up and create openings for your team.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but whenever I play shotty roamer, I feel as if I'm relegated to bullying the flank and just getting picks there, which, while it's effective, it's much less fun to play that way.

I think the problem is that most roamers aren't very good at playing shotgun without taking too many heals

This is probably because a lot of the maps in the current map pool have little to no health packs in the flanks.
Probably.

or my eyes are just blind

But if you were to even watch the euro soldiers, the roamers take a lot of heals, even at the highest levels. It seems like that's sort of the way it has to be played, because if you're coming from spawn to your team, you'll most likely show up with like 120 health (even if you pick up health packs). Whereas w/ gunboats you can arrive at full health, and usually faster too.

agreed, which I think has hurt the eu game

a lot of people assume they're just all demo-centric, but it seems like most eu teams nowadays give almost equal heals to all 3 heavy classes, with the exception of epsilon (still demo-centric) and cc (seem to more strictly enforce pocket >> roamer for heals)

notice those two teams were also the best this season

What? They allow FOV plugins?

overdose is included

Yup.

So that means everyone can use whatever FOV they want and also transparent viewmodels if they please.

I guess the Euro's are smart enough to know that FOV is all preference.

Can't you use a certain FOV plugin to effectively see around walls/sharp corners? Wouldn't that be a pretty big advantage?

I don't think it is effective from what I remember, I'll check again later tonight.

And it would be no more advantageous than turning on shadows to legally see where people are through (certain) walls.

I think the difference between those two is shadows only work on certain walls (still probably unfair, and I wouldn't complain if they were disabled for official matches 'n stuff), so you can actively avoid those hiding spots/walls.

With the FOV plugin (from what I remember when seeing some video about it) is that it works with every corner, and with all thin walls. It's a lot more difficult to avoid corners and those walls than it is to avoid the spots that show shadows.

OpenPlugin doesn't let you see around corners. I don't know about other plugins.

ETF2L allows clientside plugins that are harmless/impossible to spot from demos. If someone uses a plugin for wallhack and get's caught, he will be banned for wallhack. If someone uses a plugin to set their fov to 110 and turn their viewmodel transparent, it doesn't really affect the game for anyone else. These thing should be allowed in TF2 already, valve doesn't even have to do much to achieve them.

Plugins that allow this are no longer availible and will result in a ban if caught. The current ones don't allow fov_desired changing without reconnecting to the server.

That's the video I was talking about. So can you turn your fov up that high if you want to? It only keeps you from changing it so you can't have a 'wallhack' setting for your fov and your normal fov?

In theory you could play like that. But you would probably get banned if caught cause it's a wallhack. Also, you would have to play with a fov like that. IIRC the WH glich starts at around 150-160 fov.

That's good to know. I don't have any real problem with being able to put your fov at whatever you want, as long as you can't exploit things like that. I also don't see what the big fuss is with transparent viewmodels.

It's all preference. If someone want's to do it, there really isn't any argument against it. Some russian scouts still use 75 fov cause it makes targets bigger on their screens.

I see where you're coming from. I think I'm on the opposite end of the experience spectrum, as I have literally no competitive league experience, all I've done is watched a lot of streams and casts of both ESEA and ETF2L and that's all I can base my thoughts on. I think you're right that a Shotgun roamer accomplishing something is impressive, but that's the point, isn't it? It's impressive because the Shotgun is inferior, and therefore being able to make plays with an inferior loadout is impressive.

But, like, from a purely spectator's perspective, empowering the roamer with being able to jump much more freely makes watching it more exciting. Roamers are the ones who most often rush in to break up stalemates and let the game start moving again, and with the Gunboats allowing them to jump in and wallboost with like 270 HP, instead of like 200, or or being like Dave_AC and jumping in, landing two rockets, and jumping out, I think it makes a match that much more dynamic.

-opinions of a terrible player with no experience who pretends to understand stuff

Wallhack glitch has been fixed and the plugin only allows up to 130.

waffleb are you sure it's gonna be allowed on s14 and not s15? because i'm hearing more and more rumours about it not being allowed next season ;/

I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be scrimming with unlocks/playing pickups with unlocks if there wasn't a good chance it was going to happen :>

What are the reasons for allowing those 4 and not any others? Is it mainly to preserve most of the metagame or to keep out annoying stuff/nonstandard play (and thus avoid 30 page discussion threads)?

It's to keep it as close to the original game as possible because they feel that it was how the game was balanced, and ultimately, how it was intended to be played.

What have you heard?

-snip-

nvm I didn't bother reading the last three posts of the thread, someone stated it before me.

There are several reasons

Cleaner. Less confusion for new players.
Less trolling of lower teams.
White list approach makes more sense. If it doesn't add anything to the gameplay then why allow it? So people can be fags and troll lower teams with DH and FAN scout?

Everything that is important to the NA metagame is being allow. Everything else is just fluff.

Wouldn't the new players prefer if there were more unlocks, because it would be more similar to a pub?

cnd, degreaser, amby, flare gun. free pyro/spy

I guess i believe people too fast.
Hyyyyped for next season.

http://i.imgur.com/MNcTh.png

the dream becomes a reality