http://www.teamfortress.tv/41039/monthly-threads-application-thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsC8io4w1sY

This is actually pretty interesting, instead of having xbow severely nerfed (crit heals maybe, refer to past 10 threads), we could buff needles and make them viable again. We didn't stop using them because the they got nerfed, they just became obsolete. Medics gave up their option to somewhat reliably protect themselves to switch to an overpowered weapon and keep their teammates healthy. Simply a good damage buff could make a medic with good DM be able to escape some sketchy situations. One of the few things Overwatch did well was giving supports a chance to fend for themselves rather than be a sitting duck. It leads to pretty entertaining gameplay and solves our problem of medic primary choices. But yeah, why doesn't the xbow but crit heal...

no dont do it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFw8vMnnNAU

If you bomb a single player and can't kill them you just lost a 1v1.
If you have to bomb to do damage and only manage to hit a single player but not kill them and die for it you're doing it wrong.
If you actually hit multiple rockets on multiple players and do like 400 damage, yet their medic can heal them all up before your team shows up you either solo bombed randomly and your team was in no position to follow up or your team is just way too slow.

-> Don't bomb randomly.
-> Don't expect followup on a one man sack play.
-> Call your bombs early in teamfights. Yell at your team if they dick around instead of following up on your damage.

Alternative strat: Use market gardener and one shot everyone. Arrows can't save them.

#64
It's almost like all the 'problems' with crossbow can be fixed with good communication and good decision making.. yet by banning it we are somehow not catering to lower level play :thinking:

#MakeNeedlesGreatAgain

After reading through 3 pages I must say that 90% of the view points are just excuses for poor individual play and poor team coordination. The roamer examples in particular are complete dogshit reasons for dislike of the crossbow.
It's almost like the complaining solders are playing the same style of roamer as you did before the crossbow changed the meta. Adapt or sit the fuck down.

To the posters bitching about the Medic hitting arrows mid-fight. How is that different than a soldier hitting an air-shot or a demo nailing a long range pipe? There is no difference, they made a great shot and should be rewarded for such, get the fuck over it.

Anything that enhances the skill cieling of the game/class is to be encouraged. Using arrows in team fights effectively means you need to draw on several important skills such as: Aiming, Prediction and communication between teammates. Each of them makes Medic more challenging to play effectively and raises the bar for all other medics.

The only single thing about the crossbow that I dislike is "Arrow Building".
If the arrows did not build UBER, I think a lot of the complaining about this item would fall off.
I would even be in favor of buffing the arrows healing power if they removed the UBER building component.
I dislike Arrow Building because it doesn't add any skill to the class and is basically just the competitive community finding a way to exploit the side effect of an item.

Hitting arrows during team fights = skill
Hitting arrows during stalemates = crutch

That said, I can live with arrow building and believe the crossbow is not a broken weapon. What is broken are players still having not learned to play their classes properly and want to blame items for their own shortcomings.
Someone should make a thread about that instead.

I was gonna say something but apparently, I am too dumb to post with quotes.
Great feedback btw!

Solution 1: Shoot whoever the medic isn't healing.
Solution 2: Bomb the medic instead of a scout.

People saying things like "It is the way it is" or "git gud" are missing my point.

The point is that:
1.This game use to be more fun when things werent like this.
2.Reverse it

I really don't like to think so but maybe the demo nerf is the root of the problem :)

where the fuck were all of you guys in the anti crossbow circlejerk thread hmm

#70
Yeah the game also used to be more fun when we had a decently sized community and you would see 10k people watching big events.. i wish we could reverse that..

LOL nope knows

Maybe noone wacthes or plays this game anymore because it has become so slow...who knows!

yes so he can try again. Its not like he's invincible he still has to get out in time and any good scout combo should be able to clean him up. What you described literally helps break stale mates.

Hi guys ive noticed that over the years buffs to the crusader's crossbow are correlated with an increase in wealth inequality in the United kingdom, i think by banning the crusaders crossbow today we can reduce the number of british gamers living below the poverty line.

#73
Let's be real, most of the people posting in these crossbow threads and by extension even more of those people that used to watch tf2 don't understand the game well enough to know the difference between fast and slow play.
And we can all joke around and blame this or blame that but if we're strictly talking about the game's exposure there is no question the biggest thing that has affected it has been overwatch..

I wrote a bunch of words about OW actually increasing TF2's exposure and then realized I might be preaching to the choir. Now I don't wanna erase it. So, uh... if you did actually mean that OW has reduced TF2's exposure, please read, I guess.

Not to mention that Valve's decision to push TF2 MM coincided very oddly with OW. If you feel like extrapolating from there, you could argue that every player who learned about comp TF2 from Valve was actually exposed by OW.

don't turn this into an overwatch thread please it's already bad enough

I think the decline of TF2 has had very little to do with how the community has handled itself recently. TF2 peaked right before the csgo skins update and before the first international, after that there's been a slow decline because TF2 isn't it the only game in existence. Overwatch has introduced a true competitor to tf2, something that didn't exist before. Through all this tf2's playerbase has declined a bit and it's competitive community has also declined a bit, especially since it's been painfully obvious that to many people that the game isn't going to suddenly blow up.

Tf2's decline has nothing to do with the crossbow "slowing down the game" (which it doesn't). I think it's important to remind people that correlation does not mean causation.

I want to also state the only thing close to a valid argument for crossbow being banned was one of Marxist's posts, which in itself was anything but convincing. I think at this point it's really difficult to argue that crossbow makes the game worse, certainly different but this whole "ban crossbow" thing really seems like a matter of opinion. It also seems like the majority of people would prefer the crossbow unbanned, especially for those who have actually played since the crossbow was released.

A lot of these "ban crossbow" posts show fundamental misunderstanding of how the game works and how one play is not always THE play. So if everyone could chill with spamming the forums with these threads that'd be great thanks.

Unless they fundamentally change needles across the board there's no buff they can give them that will be better than having another healing item on a healing class. Nerfing the crossbow would be a much better option than trying to buff the needles since the crossbow has received multiple unneeded buffs (Everything past the passive reload change is super unnecessary imo), but that will likely never happen. At the very least removing the uber aspect of it would at least add some opportunity cost to arrow healing.

Do people really think the game is (sometimes) played slowly just because of crossbow?

at first i was a rebellious ban the crossbow player but I think i'm being persuaded

I once wanted to try in in a pug. I've played with needles during warm up and never felt like doing it again.

what if crossbow didnt heal allies, but kept its damage? this would still give medic a needed offensive buff, but possibly remove some of that stalemate inducing play from the game as theorized in OP's post.

My problem with the Crossbow isn't whether or not it slows the game down or not, it's mainly that the weapon itself in it's current form is far too powerful and forces Medics to use it as a Primary. Not running it is a detriment to your team in the same manner that not running the Vitasaw was a detriment to your team.

When we played in the cup our Medic noted he enjoyed playing without it mainly for the reason that he wasn't stopping every 5 seconds to arrow people and enjoyed it the game more. Some people have different preferences in the game about what is fun and what isn't and threatening to quit if an unlock is banned is not a reason to not ban an unbalanced weapon no matter what class it is. Think of all the Heavy mains we could have had in 6's if we allowed the GRU (God forbid).

Whether or not people prefer a weapon to be more fun isn't the point, nor how it affects the speed of the game, though due to how one-sided our matches were in the Cup it was hard to tell if it had an affect as no other Premiership sides played so there is no evidence currently. The point is the weapon is far too powerful in it's current state, it is the one unlockable weapon I can think of that is not currently banned that just forces you to run it 100% of the time. I think the weapon just needs nerfing a bit, adjust the reload speed may be the best solution, though it'd be even better if Valve gave Medic some better Primary unlockables that aren't just 3 variations of a Syringe Gun and a weapon that is clearly superior to all three.

I'd be interested in knowing how many active (career) Medics have played since or during the old days when crossbow was irrelevant. I'm pretty neutral either way (because I sure miss using needles) but crossbow does provide something exciting to Medic. I don't think I'd have "less" fun if the weapon was banned but hitting long-distance arrows is one of the most rewarding feelings besides getting an Ubersaw swipe for uber. Guess I'm still torn.

I feel like if crossbow was banned everyone would just use the overdose and this would still be a thing. Nobody's using blutsauger I'm assuming, but maybe needles?

Do you mean the crossbow is too powerful, or do you mean that all the other medic primaries suck?

just like gunboats on roamer and escape plan on soldier and stickybombs on demoman... do you want to ban those?

You can think weapons need changes all you want, but valve are never going to get around to it. You have to form a whitelist based on the weapons as they are today.

a weapon being best in slot is a total non-issue.

if something gets banned for being overpowered it should be because it makes a single player too impactful without being any more fun (like with the wrangler) not because its better than other loadout options.

You can run Banners on Soldiers, it's a tactical choice if you want to sacrifice mobility for extra damage or ability to soak up damage.

You can run Pain Train if you want to sacrifice the speed the Escape Plan gives you for extra capping power.

Stock weapons aren't really in the discussion.

The weapon adds good elements to the game but it doesn't give you any other choice but to run it, maybe my Medic likes to use Syringe Gun instead of Crossbow but if he does so we're at a disadvantage not using it and it's less fun for us. And I think the weapon being best in slow is a non-issue, but the alternatives need to offer something otherwise your team is hindered.

@Kav - Fun is a very objective way at looking at it, plenty of people don't enjoy the crossbow and have stated so yet you use it as an argument to keep it in. Your logic isn't adding up to me.

I don't want the weapon to be banned specifically, I think it adds a lot to the game and I'd prefer to see the Medic given an extra mechanic but it's just TOO good is the argument against. If we applied this weapon to the same logic that we apply to the Vitasaw it would be banned, but this weapon gets some sort of special treatment because it's well liked by a core group of people - It needs to be changed somehow. We're banning weapons way less impactful on the game than this like the Vaccinator and the Rescue Ranger.