The airblast on the shortstop though.

I agree, and was going to post something like this earlier today. I've seen pubber communities call it Cow-Mangler Syndrome; adding large amounts of small and convoluted changes instead of making small amounts of large changes that address the actual issues at hand. You pointed out two of the bad changes from the MYM update, but an example of a good change is the Spy movespeed buff.

thank you

x

i noticed this same thing and noticed the same trend with cosmetics lately have been getting longer descriptions too that literally arent funny or witty in the slightest like the old ones

https://i.gyazo.com/abbe14a7c00ae871cb2188847e9eaaa6.png

like who needs this, who needs a full paragraph of text over a fucking blow up unicorn

its a tf2 meme!!!

A lot of those old descriptions, especially for a lot of vintage hats, were community made for some contest way back when, so it's sorta understandable that some of the creativity may have been lost along the way.

Would much rather have some clever little jab than half a novel's worth of text in the description.

the hat descriptions and names used to be clever and kind of funny but now they don't really seem to be.
this could be because i don't really pay attention to that stuff as much though

I think the change of the heavy guns was good though because it was to prevent heavies to just be sitting with a medic at 450 and never dying because he had the 20% resist at all times, at least now he only has it when he is low and probably going to die quick anyway but i do think the pyro thing is weird, and so is the short stop airblast thing as well.

the thing though is that they should have just changed it to 15%, rather than 20% when below 150 or whatever, that's just overly complicated.

i was thinking this earlier though, theyre trying to balance stuff by adding mechanics to the game, which is not working close to as well as just changing numbers. why give the shortstop a pushback, that doesnt address how it was underpowered. why make pyro make people heal slower, and not just make it do more damage. why make the cozy camper give flinch resist while fully charged rather than just you take less damage or something. all these really abstract updates to items and classes that arent just "damage boost", "slower reload" etc are pretty saddening, its making the game less user friendly.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/w2nHsnaGHuw/maxresdefault.jpg

i loved this one

I feel like I'm doing fucking calculus while reading the quickiebomb launcher description.

people are into hearthstone and that game has some pretty wonky card mechanics and there's quite a large number of cards. Granted its a card game not a fps, but its a similar concept. FPS games probably benefit more from being simple, but a majority of tf2 weapons are silly and gimmicky anyways just like a majority of hearthstone cards are gimmicky and not used in professional play.

4 years late, fam.

https://i.imgur.com/ZjTl0aU.png

well in hearthstone you have a turn to read and see whats going on...
in a tf2 match you could see literally a dozen of different weapons at once

So much gimmicky and super-situational stuff added just in this update -

• Huo-Long Heater
  Added -10% damage
  Added +25% increased damage vs. burning players - why do you rely on pyros for minigun damage?? i don't think most people would come close enough to get hit by the fire ring when fighting a heavy
  Reduced ammo drain to -4/sec (from -6)
  Reduced pulse damage from Ring of Fire to 12 (from 15) due to increased damage vs. burning
  
• Enforcer
  Attacks pierce resist and absorb effects from all sources - so vaccinator has no effect vs it? why?
  
• All Flamethrowers
  Added: Direct damage reduces Medi Gun healing and resist shield effects by 25% - this is just really obscure and uncalled for imo
  Medics hear a "healing interrupted" sound when this is happening to their heal target
  
• Widowmaker
  Damage increased +10% when attacking the same target as your sentry - this one is just incredible. unless it's a buffed heavy, when your sentry targets someone they're probably either dead or surfed away by jumping by the time you even react??? also, 10%?? that's fucking minuscule! what's the point?
  
• Sun on a Stick
  Take 25% less damage from fire while deployed - the whole "deploy weapon for passive effects" is starting to get stupid, just make it have passive afterburn resistance because you'd never realistically take out your melee while actively fighting a pyro
  
• The Righteous Bison
  Fixed a bug causing players to be hit by the same projectile multiple times, causing the damage dealt to vary wildly -wasn't this a feature? it was supposed to punish retreating players? i mean, pomson 6000 did the same thing, they changed it ages ago but left the bison as it were, now turns out it's a bug?

Overall, I really think Valve is overdoing the whole resistances/on-hit effects thing. Just tweak things that matter, jeez.

They just dont have a clear direction! They are changing the game a lot with odd out-of-nowhere balance changes.
But for what purpose? I don't think Valve even knows.
It's like what we call in Spanish a headless chicken. It can run in circles for a while but won't actually get anywhere.

I think this update is good in general because it will introduce a lot of people to competitive, but it's just extremelly hard to guess what their reasoning was for some of the balance changes.

maybe valve should actually get a big amount of input from comp players
"its valve's game let them balance it the way they want"
its aids

Valve is literally getting input from at least b4nny (see the Reserve Shooter thread). The problem is that either they think they know better than him or they straight up don't want to hear it.

For us, it's pretty obvious they're wrong in lots of aspects, but not for them, which is why things like these happen.

Why not give every class three interesting and simple unlocks in every weapon slot and keep it that way until all of them are balanced? I mean, would a medigun with "+50% charge duration, cannot switch heal target during über" not be more interesting and easier to balance and understand for new players than the vaccinator and quick-fix? For pyro not even that would be enough, because it's so buggy and conceptually flawed within a game with strong arena shooter elements. It's not even difficult to make it work, but they just don't seem to understand what the engine and classes have done over the years to shape the playstyle of this game.

I blame icefrog for this, he was in charge of the balancing

Maybe the new matchmaking data will let valve make smarter changes

there are about 20 people working on tf2 at valve and they're all retarded?

I fail to see how the data is going to allow them to make changes that they weren't able to make before. I can see that, in their minds, a weapon that is used a lot is a broken weapon. But apart from that, how is that data going to tell them how to change that weapon? We can see that their intents of balancing weapons are misguided at best. They need to know why leagues ban weapons, not which weapons they ban.

Let me give you an example from this last update: the Natascha. It's a weapon that is never going to be allowed in 6s the way it is now. It started with a broken concept of slowing down players that the team came up with. Instead of admitting that the idea was wrong and try to completely rework it, they keep adding and removing percentages, strength of the slow-down, ammo, etc. The fact is the weapon is banned because of the slowing effect and no amount of data is ever going to tell them that it's completely horrible to play against it -even more if, like it's happening right now, there are better alternatives.

The most they can get from data is numbers and digits, but that's not what balancing in this game is always about. They need to listen to the people that have played the game forever, listen to their reasoning and fix the problems with the game thinking about what these players have told them.

Does anyone at Valve even like 6v6? I've seen some employees in HL showmatches, but never in actual 6s.

Eitherway, back on topic, this thread is more about the overly detailed weapon stats than actual weapon balance

Look at Natascha when it was introduced:

http://i.imgur.com/x1A8fD6.png

simple, straight forward stats. it was the gun that slows people down, thats it, and thats totally fine.

compare it to the current version on the right

now its the weapon that: slows people down, but is also slower to spinup, and gives you 20% damage resistance if its spun up BUT only if you are below 50% health

god, that was hard to read.

they are making future balance changes harder, and the weapons in general more complicated to understand and remember for everyone

I really hope in the future Valve does simpler changes instead of adding dozens of new variables to a dozen other weapons.

considering they just decided to support 6s and not hl at all i'd say ya they 'like' it

what can we expect from these guys though. they have never impressed us once

what would REALLY, ACTUALLY get them to listen to the people that care the most?? i'm sure that many many of us would volunteer to fix this game an its myriad ways of being 10-year-old pile of garbage

I can understand valve not looking to the community for balance changes. They probably get barely legible essays emailed to them by 12 year old pyro mains about balance constantly, so a lot of the time it's going to be difficult to know who to trust on balance changes.

To: gaben@gmail.com

Subject: WHY THE FUCK IS PYRO SO BAD!?!?!?!?!?! kappa

Message: HELLO. MY NAME IS ADAM BUT MY STEAM NAME IS xXfuck-you69Xx #teampyro. I HAVE A QUSTION ABOUT THE CHANGES TO PYRO? WHY DO THEY SUCK? LIKE MORE THAN YOUR MOM? WHY CAN OTHER PEOPLE KILL ME WHEN I CANT KILL THEM. ITS BECAUSE THEYRE ALL CHEATING. YOU NEED TO BUFF PYRO AND BAN EVERYONE ELSE. GABEN PLZ.

.ALSO WERE DID THEY GET THOSE WEPS LIKE THE SHIELD FOR DEMOPAN. MY FAV YOUTUBER KING RAJA HAS ONE BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU GET ONE.

THNX