contracts are nice, nerfs are good, new weapons mostly useless/buggy. honestly feels like they've spent most time on new skin system. 6/10 update since there were no interesting changes to any underpowered unlocks. seems like an update that should have come out on christmas tbh.

EDIT: oh yea no mm changes lol

couldve been better, they're now showing signs of listening to the community

still waiting for an LG
also what is this

I wish they made changes to MM such as having placement matches for rankings

i just hope the MM changes are soon and not Soon™

it's only worth the wait if you weren't waiting.

The pocket pistol buff is pretty big.

That's interesting cause it's a direct upgrade to stock

Don’t know if it’s just me but only being able to do one contract at a time is annoying because the bonus objectives can be such a grind to complete and I don’t like being forced to play some of the terrible new maps like Lazarus over and over again, especially with the 10 min queue time I had over the weekend. Also contracts only competing after round ends sucks for the same reason, when I complete the dumb bonus objective I’d very much like to leave the server and not have to wait 8 minutes defending Merc Park last against clueless people trickling in.

All in all this update is a major letdown for me, I was mainly looking forward to MM changes that would give us placement matches and some stronger measures against cheaters. I’ve rarely encountered so many obvious aimbotters as I did in my few comp MM matches. I guess if you enjoy playing Pyro (blergh) this update could be considered ok. Certainly not worth the +400 days waiting for it.

i think the majority of people who say they're pleased with it are just tired of being disappointed by valve.

the skins and contracts are nice, a much better system than the one we had before hand, but i was never into that at all so it doesn't really effect me. still a good idea by them though i guess, but the pyro shit is terrible. none of the new weapons apart from the dragons fury are even worth talking about, i guess you guys can use the gas passer in comp, but its impact is still not that significant.

i dont even really need to talk about the jetpack cause we all know its useless. it should be apart of the base pyro and have more diverse movement options in the air though, but it was a good idea, its just the way it was executed wasn't good. pyros just get shot out the sky and rushed when they use it, like everyone predicted.

the dragons fury while not overpowered at all is just stupid as fuck.to dodge it, you just hold s, which is just boring. when you're dodging a soldier or another scout or a demo, its interesting because theres different ways to fight it. the range being its downside is such a stupid way to balance it, for the pyro and the person fighting the pyro. if you're out of range you're just never getting hit and the pyros just helplessly spamming the thing, but if you are, your health goes from 125 to 20 in a sec because it does way to much damage way too quickly for the skill required to use it. every single wep that does that much damage in the game is much harder to pull off. so when a pyro just comes behind you, before you could just turn around and deal with it, but now that it kills even faster you just insta die. people who say the fact you gotta hit it 2x means that its skillful, i don't get that. doing the flare degresser thing took more skill than using this thing for sure, and thats not even as strong. why did they buff afterburn damage? that makes no sense either. you just die while the kid is just spawned simply because there's no health pack around and then you die as it spawns. there's nothing casual or good about it, its just plain stupid.

pyro is just as stupid as it always was. i think its even more stupid now for the same reasons that we all thought it was. its just that the flames are visually fixed (jediflamaster rejoice) and then everything else is just mad dumb.

the pistol is stupid. no one asked for that. why did they think that was a good idea? how many threads have we made where we asked for an accurate tracking gun, but they make these things? the amby didnt need a nerf at all and their reasoning for it is stupid as fuck because if i died to one at range i was more impressed than anything. i'd play spy when people got annoyed with me for playing scout just to use it, because it was hard, satisfying and no one got annoyed that i was killing them, but now that i can't just hit them from all ranges i just won't play the class. the bison is good it should never have been really changed in the past as im sure we can all agree on.

the most significant thing i think to take away from the balance changes is how many times we see the same weapons over and over again. its clear they don't even understand what they're doing, you guys give them the advice cause you actually play the game and understand its mechanics, and they just ignore it. it doesn't make any sense..

it's nice, but not 460 days nice.

they also didn't actually fix pyro as a class, only made it slightly better.

searching for the answers that lie within this tome of knowledge

https://i.imgur.com/LJJwXP3.jpg

yea, they even stress on the extra stress tests they have done but the first few days the system was still very unstable,
and I don't expect that many bugs after working on it for more than a year. It feels like they brainstormed the ideas of the update for 430 days and work on them for the remaining 30 days

What I think about the update so far:

-Decent contract system although sometimes completing the bonus objectives is a pain for my lazy ass. xD
- Weapon changes were alright for the most part. I do feel for the spy mains and their Amby's though, ouch.

-Pyro weapons controversially in my opinion are not bad. I think the new weapons were needed and they work pretty well in casual(I know some of these weapons might not be used in comp). I feel like some players are taking a narrow viewpoint and not looking at how these weapons function in a casual setting as well just gameplay-wise. I think it adds new interesting ways to play pyro and weapons like the jetpack for example can be very if you use properly and don't just jump straight into the enemy team with it.(It's good to flank people with)

- like most of the maps except I am not a fan of Banana Bay just because of how flank orientated that map is and the main path to the final cap point is on train tracks where you get rekt by a train with no chill. xD

I also wish Valve would make at least 1 South African server because it sucks having to play overseas all the time with 200 ping constant. :(

I hadn't played for quite a few months before the update (or realistically for well over a year if you don't count reinstalling for like 2 days). It's been just about big and interesting enough to get me playing again for now, but also jank and head-scratchingly executed enough to already have me a little frustrated again.

I'll spoiler my long-ass thoughts on individual changes so they don't take up too much space in the thread for people who quite justifiably don't care about the opinions of a dude who hasn't played 6s since 2015.

All-in-all I'd say it's cool, but for how long it's been you'd really think it'd at least be a more polished experience and you could even make the argument that, while the foundation has definitely been laid for Pyro to be a much better class, they may not have even accomplished the main thing they set out to do and really done it. Time will tell on that I suppose. I kinda feel like they hit the bare minimum standard for the update to not be outright disappointing for the time spent on it.

Boggles my mind that Valve don't apply their usual strategy of outsourcing everything possible to the community and bring the TF2 Beta back – sure, it won't get them a lot of feedback, that's been shown in the past, but it'll certainly get them some very important feedback and playtesting from the people who are dedicated enough to the game to care. Quality is much more important than quantity when it comes to that kind of feedback anyway I'd argue. Just have the option there and at the very least a handful of knowledgeable, dedicated people will use it and hey, what do you know, now you don't have to spend quite as much extra time after an update doing retroactive quality control anymore.

Lg would make so much sense. Tf2 is a quake mod, and has a lot of weapons extremely similar to quake but the only similar ones to lg is the rng bs scout pistol and the really weak rarely useful smg. It would fix pyros low skill ceiling and good players would be good and bad players would be bad and it would definately be fun to use.

now that the hype has worn off, i'd say it's pretty ok as a standalone update.

in comparison to MYM it's quite a bit better. i just hope they continue to update the game with fixes etc. and add MM changes

It's sort of made me hate pyro even more. Airblasting rockets is so easy and that dragons fury is bollocks

But lots of contracts,nnew maps and some new weapons mean it's not a bad casual update. People are playing it and having fun. Casual games are pretty much informal comp matches since half of etf2l and UGC are grinding away at contracts. Most competitive pubs I've had in ages

Obviously we didn't get the mm or comp changes we wanted, yet. But it's not a bad update

can i complain about the main menu here?

non-important stuffs like friends, level, featured,... take the whole screen
while all the important buttons got pushed to the edges. "Find a game" got put on the top right corner is the worst

i wonder why "Items" and "Shop" have better treatment, but the other 9 buttons have to make a small line on the right bottom

Jungle Inferno':
https://i.imgur.com/T00vCaz.jpg
Classic:
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/teamfortress/images/c/c4/Main_menu_with_the_Sniper_TF2.png/revision/latest?cb=20130805054530

looks so messy, also kinda funny because i did use TF2 old menu to complain about QC's one is so hard to navigate
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ji7I_DroWEk/maxresdefault.jpg

Contracts are better, pubbing is kinda fun now for a bit at least, some bonuses are aids but it's always gonna be like that. War paint doesn't really make sense and I wish it was ACTUALLY paint that applied to your weapons that exist

Main menu/party changes are cool and I feel people overlook this but they're buggy at (not being able to focus windows, message spamming)

YOU CAN JOIN FRIENDS IN CASUAL, but a lot of the UI for parties doesn't really make sense

Balance changes are cool I guess but they don't really affect comp at all. Few interesting points

• they don't realise that a class is as strong as it's strongest set of unlocks. Sure, they nerfed some BS scout weapons but then did the pocket pistol which is pretty damn good. Scout is now basically stronger since the nerfed unlocks are banned in comp and rarely used in pubs except for tryhard matchmaking
  
• They very much still balance for pubs. See the new unlocks and balance changes
  
• when valve, who made a class shooter with damage surfing, intricate explosive jumping mechanics and air control then make contrived awkward clunky PRESS SPACE TO MOVE IN AN ADVANCED WAY shit like the jetpack which is straight from overwatch I don't have high hopes for finding a good arena shooter that isn't a dead quake clone again
  
• Airblast changes and flame particles are good (mostly) but pyro is still the same trundling ball of stun and denial that he was before. Not really a fundamental update and the new weapons don't really add a role. New weapon with higher DPS for slightly less less range, more mobility KIND OF, weird kind of temporary soft choke denial I guess and some funny but pointless melee
  
• I guess valve has finished optimising for now
  
• TF2 development is VERY slow now for some reason. I know there's stuff they've worked on that isn't in the update but maybe they iterate too much, more understaffed than before or the technology is just a big ball of aids to work with.

.

we're only looking at it in terms of casual. it was clear after the first map of that essentials cup that the new pyro shit doesn't add anything unique to be used in comp. i feel like valve and the reddit community disregard tftv's opinion because they think tftv's just out of touch with anything that isn't 6s, but thats not always true.

unless ur name is muuki, ma3la, grape or jediflamaster if u wanna do that full time pyro shit you can forget about it kiddo...

I don't think you get what I am trying to say funhaver1998. What I was talking about was how I thought these weapons for pyro would add and interesting dynamic to how pyro is played in casual whilst acknowledging that some or most of these new pyro weapons won't wind up in comp any way. If you read my post properly then you will understand the message I am trying to get across and I actually do feel that tf.tv focuses far too much on 6v6 than even HL or other formats these days. But hey maybe they have their reasons which I am not aware of.

Thing is, what can Pyro ever be?

It's always going to be fundamentally not fun to play against by virtue of its main impact being to set you on fire or airblasting you, whilst also obscuring your vision. All of those things are annoying and don't provide any interesting mechanic to try and play against.

I don't think there are any changes that they can do to stop that. Maybe an LG, but presumably that would have to set you on fire and it's essentially a fire minigun

Agreed Stylax.

How is this a step in the right direction for a generalist pyro? Any idiot can buff a class but most people didn't want a generalist pyro before the update and in the end they didn't change his fundamental mechanics in any way

The UI changes are good

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