fun, give it a shot

very fun

https://clips.twitch.tv/LovelyCrowdedBorkMikeHogu

there's no such thing as a bad gamemode where u can do this

I'm dumb and got the ball stolen from me because I was not paying any attention. Then someone on my team fed you a wicked surf. We got owned.

very very very fun gamemode

i enjoy this far more than regular 6v6 nowadays. seriously there's no better way to stimulate growth of game mechanics like jumping and surfing out there than playing a few games of this.

the potential for creativeness is limitless. you can pull off amazing stuff and there's always an amazing, surprising way to counter anything, provided your mechanics and reaction speed are sufficient and on par.

super high skill cap, unlimited enjoyment.

this looks fun as fuck

It is truely an Incredible game mode when there are set rules, class limits and a map that gives a competitive environment. I’ve found myself playing this game mode as much as possible (pugs every Saturday at 10 pm) and attempting to do new things and advance the strategy. The skill cap for this game mode is extremely high when you take into account that the ball will follow you.

Cool plays I’ve made on passtime (official frag video coming soon!):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BrvtivQNpDw
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9JNTGuQDNXk
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zpcEA9I7AHk

I'll probably post a few times in here depending on the activity. I've taken a deep jump into the rules of passtime and all the elements. Ex: that water tower element Jaguar mentions, it can be removed through HUD editing.

I love passtime and recommend taking 5 minutes to play one pug and get yourself hooked. If you have questions about any created rules or game physics I can probably answer them.

its like bball but way better

This map really shows how much potential the passtime gamemode has. Very different from Valve's passtime, 1000x better imo.

played an early version of this months ago and it was tons of fun lots of skill involved

I'll love this game mode.

Hey maybe it has been asked already but what's the reasoning on crossbow only?

What about other mediguns (besides vacc who is bad for this mode for obvious reasons)?

i have been converted to the church of passtime medics. Medic is THE strongest class in the gamemode. thus it has the most restrictions.

medics ubers themselves are barely a factor in passtime. an ubered player cannot hold the ball, catch the ball or receive passes. ubers are almost completely irrelevant on both defense and offense.
ubers build really fast, but meds die super often. kritzkrieg especially builds in no time at all, you always have opportunities to ubersaw left and right, and you barely have any time or good openings to use an uber, while kritz can cancel an entire defense instantly. And that's not something we want.
we want our gamemode to be focused on rewarding good mechanics, jumps etc. relying on kritz or uber to fuck a defending team defeats that whole purpose. that's just playing 4s on a koth map.
quick fix... is just no. the strongest throw arm in the gamemode can now instantly heal anyone and fly across the map.

as for needles, they have the same effect as any hitscan weapon : ball goes neutral as soon as it's hit, making it unable to score regardless of the throw or the thrower. sure, they're harder to hit, but there's enough of them. overdose gives medic a very much unneeded speed boost, blutsauger gives decent healing to an already strong class in passtime. crossbow is also generally more fun to play with.

From your class/weapon bans and the map shape I would have thought that it'd be extremely difficult to make kritz effective by getting multiple picks as anyone can jump anywhere and there are no chokepoints. But I didn't play.

When you say ubers build in no time, do you mean that the build speed is altered?

Medic has the strongest throw? that's not what is said on jaguar's nerds video

That needles thing is a real bummer, but yeah you can't alter the game behavior sadly. I think having plasma like projectiles is always nice.

Why don't you ban the loose cannon following the same argument then? Like stickies it's really easy to make an explosion det in the air and hit the ball.

One last question : I understand you want this gamemode to reward mechanics, would you say it's only that or is there team decisions to make like in 6s?

ubers build faster because players are always hurt (always building) you're using your ubersaw often. build speed is not altered. you're focusing a lot on the ball and you never notice how quickly ubers build up. you end up dropping a lot.

i do believe jag's video is outdated. that was made in an early version, with weird classes and stuff.
we use medic, soldier and demo. out of those three, medic throws the farthest, then demo, then soldier.

loose cannon offers a new realm of possibilities for demomen to jump and use in conjunction with their shield. it's also pretty good on defense. it can indeed make the ball go neutral. as laxson pointed out on our tournament discord, we're still on the fence about allowing it, but i believe it's here to stay. it's not overpowered, but it's certainly good. kind of like market gardener versus escape plan for soldier, both options are great on this map.

the gamemode greatly rewards both mechanics and team coordination: From the simplest levels of one player grabbing the ball and passing to another player doing a bomb for the goal... to the most complex of 3 soldiers receiving a medic pass and passing back and forth until they have a good window to score. both styles work. solo styles can also offer value : most new players in our weekly pugs start out by playing 6s roamer and picking off lonely players distracted by the ballplay and get insane value by killing off important defenders or flex players, but playing together with your team is usually more effective and much more fun. stats like kills and damage are irrelevant! :D
you can have one soldier bomb for the goal and have the rest of your team fight to try and distract the defenders. or fake bomb and pass to your medic. the teamwork possibilities are endless and I can't even begin to write them all down. we discover new stuff every week.

Having decent mechanics is essential however beyond those basic skills teamwork becomes even more important than hitting every shot.

example: In the meta that has formed through tons of playtests there will be a defender soldier. If you are trying to score solo, as you throw the ball he will pencil jump up and block your goal. Pencil jumping in front of the goal is a lot more reliable than hitting your head so you don't surf his rocket or airshotting you out of the sky. However if you bait his jump by diving in with the ball, then right as he jumps pass it to your friend who came in a second later, then your friend can score. Another way to do it was to pass to your friend and then jump the defender before your ball carrier and take a 1v1. Even if you died you could hold up the defender or kill him or make him too weak to jump. As long as you have basic mechanics you will be able to hold up this defender for 1-2 seconds which should be plenty of time for your scorer to get in if you time it correctly. this basic example is further complicated when there are offensive or defensive adds, for example, 2 attackers vs 3 defenders or 3 attackers vs 2 defenders.etc.

It is to the point where main calling can be important when executing plays. Sometimes you need to make decisions like in 6's where you need to play differently. Sometimes it's better to stop being offensive and play full defense. Sometimes you notice a player or positional or health add and you get aggressive then. This game mode was developed solely by people who play 6's, so we formed the game mode with a very fast-paced advantage based coordination based mindset. We limited or banned classes/weapons that slowed the game down or were unfun to play against. We took feedback from players during playtests and changed the map or the whitelist. This is why we are confident that this is the best pass time and that people who think of passtime as a failure could play this and enjoy pass time in a more refined and competitive state.

Yeah, that video has some out of date information. I put notes in the description of the video but people understandably don't see that stuff and it's not ideal. In the future we hope to make an updated video that is more focused but I'm not sure when that will be able to be done. What sherwood and slice said is good stuff. I don't know if I'd say that medic is THE BEST but he can definitely be insane and way better than one might initially imagine. Besides knocking the ball out of the air (unlikely) I simply don't want to enable the medic playstyle of running around and peppering people with a plasmagun basically. Maybe that's because I fancy myself pretty good with needles but it would just be annoying, even if not particularly effective, and would distract one from doing much more useful stuff as medic.

here's a paste of the video description:

Updates/Corrections: ( 3:19 ) How strong a class can throw is somewhat arbitrary now and not based on how big and strong the character is. Weakest to strongest is scout, then pyro, then soldier, then demo heavy and engineer, and then medic sniper and spy. The classes also have a somewhat unique 'arc' to the throw which complicates things and makes them feel a bit unique.

- Ammo packs and weapons on the ground will get in the ball's way and affects its trajectory.

- The ball does inherit at least some of your momentum which is why it will go farther/higher if you move forward/jump while throwing it. This is also why moving backwards (fadeaway shots) are harder.

- Throw power does NOT charge up like a huntsman's power charges up. It's always the same, by class.

- There ARE a bunch ways to set up solo rocket jumping shots for yourself by swooping the ball up off the ground at the right moment and distance!

- While you are invulnerable after a steal or intercept enemies cannot melee you to steal the ball but you still take knockback so you can surf to your advantage.

Bereth's quick notes: https://pastebin.com/ZzETp1sB

Thank you for your answers guys! Is it possible to host lobbies on this map, or does it rely on rules that can't be enforced by a config or whitelist?

Well there are some files that you'd want to use to keep it from devolving into a complete runaway trainwreck (which lobbies sort of already are by default.) The main thing the config does is set the class limits. The whitelist obviously is important to prevent airstrike/dh/parachute and every other awful thing you can think of which instantly mucks up the game, and probably most importantly is easye's sourcemod plugin which prevents use of certain stock items that would quickly ruin the game (shotgun, sticky bombs) as well as prevents respawn bug abuse. Without it people who class switch would have instant respawn instead of having to wait the 5 seconds (built-in minimum in default TF2).

I feel like you could run pugs out of a mumble/discord without any of these files if moderators are there to run the show and enforce standards but in a public setting it would just instantly get out of hand.

One thing to note in terms of medic is that holding the jack means all damage you take will be a minicrit, which can in some ways hinder you but in most cases hitting a surf on medic means going very far and many times scoring a goal, especially if it was the defending soldier's rocket that you surfed. This coupled with standard medic heals, good crossbow plays, and being able to melee and steal the jack makes medic invaluable and not only a staple healer but a staple offensive class.

Had a lot of fun playing on the older version of this map that is uploaded on serveme.tf

Made a short video of some fun stuff that happened, not very high skill but it's so satisfying to play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNoxE3FWzP8

looks really cool and im glad that even after all this time, people are still coming up with new modes to enjoy tf2

Hey, love the map, there's a couple things that I hope you'd consider:
- We personally prefer playing without a fulltime medic, having more health pickups would be grand, maybe like this:

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/333749109385199627/497438128752295937/HEALTH.png

(huge packs on the towers for my man jimbot's swag shots)
- Trimp ramps should probably have curvy bits at the bottom to help, sometimes you'd charge but be to close and it would just stop you
- The trimp ramps at the middle don't let you trimp unfortunately, angle is too steep
- The airblast things in the corners would probably benefit from either being lower or being on the ground, its quite hard to hit it without focusing for a second or two on it

Also water pools would be sick and also a halloween version with pumpkin bombs and spells
And also maybe ask Mould to detail your map he's sick at it

BTW did I mention this map is sick?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/333749109385199627/497489191610089473/tower.mp4
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/333749109385199627/497489208513003520/2018-10-04_21-16-40.mp4
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/333749109385199627/497489043722862592/2018-10-04_21-17-32.mp4

So the whole health pack thing should be considered greatly...
On one hand, more health packs encourage more elaborate bombs and faster game play, but at the same time hugely devalues the medic position, and I feel may lend itself to be more focused on a dm fight as opposed to team coordination. I feel this way because, if we look at the game in terms of that phases of pushing/defending, it essentially means that you can instantly bomb after defending as opposed to getting arrowed/resub. I think this may reduce team strategy because if you want to transition quickly from defense to offense (so that whoever died on the enemy team's offensive endeavor is has not yet respawned), you may allocate someone to be prepared to have 4 rockets loaded and good health to bomb. If there were more health packs (especially on the ramp as indicated in the img), that role would essentially disappear and defense would become more of a clusterfuck. I'm not really sure what you guys have been seeing in terms of defense in EU, but generally from the PUGs we've been playing in NA, defense can turn into all the soldiers bombing in a big group and its just a huge mess. So I'm not really sure how this will change if you add health packs, but I do think that adding health packs reduces the skill necessary to successfully transition and complete intricate bombs. On top of that, one of the decisions the team has to make is whether they run a med or not, and by adding these health packs, medic loses a lot of a value because the med is not as important during the transition from defense to offense. Not playing with a med should be significantly more difficult because you gain the advantage of having another person who can bomb/frag, and I think adding the health packs drastically decreases this opportunity cost. It still should be tested though to see how significant they actually are, the more health packs may not be so significant.
Also, yeah, if med is eventually banned for some reason, the health should probably be added, but I think you guys may be missing out on the power of having a med... He can be really strong in terms of scoring and acting as the point guard.
On another note, the changes about the trimp ramps should be changed and I think you're right about the airblast things, they shouldn't be a hassle to use.
There was another map (made by Laxson) that we were testing that had water in it and it was a really cool dynamic to bombs, I'm just not sure where they would fit in the context of Jag's map.

as a former surf_ski_2 and surf_10x_reloaded main i would love to see more surf ramps to style on

Big thanks to everyone who's been playing the map/mode. It's blown up a bit recently, mostly thanks to EU players interestingly (thank you Alfie, WAR, Arie) and it's very exciting to see people playing and enjoying it. I'd like to reply to specific feedback and then talk about some larger related points. Panacea's post above actually covered a lot of this but here are my thoughts:

- No the map does not need more healthpacks. Health is a finite resouce that needs to be wisely managed and skillful medic play is a large factor in how well your team can do that. And, all that said, medic is often best played aggressively with only a secondary focus on heals and buffs. Not using a med on your team is an options and gives you certain benefits but at the cost of staying power in fights and second chances from arrows, etc.

- Trimp ramps do not need any curves on the bottom. They work just fine and if it didn't work for you it's probably because you messed something up. The power of trimping is insane and about the only time I've ever seen it utilized to near its full potential is in that hamaham clip (https://youtu.be/pJLLtvLXSc8). They do not need to be made "easier".

- Not every single square centimeter of the map needs to be a ramp that's usable for surfing or trimping or whatever. More about this later.

- The "reset catapults" do not need to be lower. It is not difficult to use them and there's no reason to make it easier than it already is. You actually need to aim your throw a bit which is a good thing.

- I will not make a halloween version. Pumpkin bombs and spells have no place here. During Halloween time (when tf_holiday is set right) PASS Time goes into halloween mode with a pumpkin-themed Jack and candy health packs and Merasmus replaces the announcer with amazing lines borrowed from Sumerian Bumper Car Soccer like "DISGUSTING GOAL!!!".

- The map is as detailed as it's going to get. Right now it's basic, simple textures. It's like a dev-textured map that isn't dev-textured. I was honestly fine with dev-textures which it had for ages but I know that it's a huge turnoff for many people which is why I finally textured it. I was considering a few themes for it back when it was in alpha but none of them really fit what I wanted. Lots of people suggested green stuff like the ultiduo_baloo type look and sure it's pretty but it just makes no sense. This whole arena makes zero sense as it's just purpose built for this crazy sportball and having it painted with a jungle theme or some typical TF2 theme just doesn't fit. I want to leave it simple and plain how it is.

- Water pools for enabling super water jumps are something I've considered but I it'll have to be for another map. This map has enough going on and does not need more stuff. There's a delicate balance that must be struck between "too plain/boring" and "too full of junk/convaluted". Other interesting features to consider are different tunnels like the ones hamaham suggested. Even if players can't go in there but the ball can that might be worth exploring. Again, though, it would have to be on a different map. What about more surf ramps? No, thanks. Sure you can have frickin' 4 sets of surf ramps. The walls can be a triple-decker surf ramp and then you can have one along the bottom of the wall and one along the inside facing the other way. Imagine all that bullshit at once. Every spot on the map does not have to be a tool for making crazy plays. I already said this and if flows well into my main point that I will try to make regarding my vision for how this should be played.

I want to argue the case that limiting choice is a good thing which keeps the game more focused and even a bit predictable and contained. This is both from the perspective of limiting classes and weapons as well as map design. This helps keep the game focused on skill and outplaying the opponents. This is sort of an argument in the same vein as "vanilla tf2" being more pure. I intended this game mode to have the classes retain the feel of normal, stock TF2 that we tend to see in competitive (obviously shield demo is the exception). This is a training mod of sorts for movement and airshots and surfs and some other things. That is why I don't want to see direct hit, liberty launcher, quick fix, or any number of any other gimmicks. It is not about coming up with cheese plays based on weird weapons but about teamwork and mechanics. You can achieve truly insane things with the basic items! There's no need for anything more! If you do a crazy series of rocket jumps to go for a big dunk then you will probably be low health and will actually die if airshot. That is good! As for the map features... When there's one or two main surf ramps then you know the enemys' offensive efforts will probably utilize that. You know the main piece of high ground in the middle of the map will be useful and therefore contested. You know there's one main health pack and people will be going down there to take it. Knowing these things is a good thing! Now imagine there's 24 different ramps and catapults and jump pads and everything available all at once. Then there's just too much bullshit and you can't reasonably tell what the enemy team will do because there's just so many options. That is not a good thing! Limiting options is a good thing! Some people want health packs and even more ramps everywhere but let's just imagine that to the maximum extreme. What if there's a negative hurt trigger (heals constantly) around the entire map or, even better, the entire map gets hit with a resupply cabinet constantly and health and ammo don't matter. It's just a nonstop jump map that is entirely about playing the ball with no emphasis on kills and health management. Bad! That is not what I want from this mode at all! I know I'm always railing on the Euros for not utilizing a defender, and defense is hugely important and can make all the difference, but at the end of the day this is a very offense oriented game mode (a bit like basketball) so offense simply does not need any buffs.

My map is officially out there in the world and you can play it how you want to. You don't have to utilize our whitelist or the plugin (all it does it prohibit certain stock items and prevent instant respawn bug abuse). Anyone can play the map how they want. Also some people have reached out to me for the source files and I've given it to them because otherwise they'd decompile my map anyway (and that process often has errors and doesn't do a fully good job of replicating all of the parts of the map). So don't decompile it.. just ask. I did tell these people "Please don't just take my map and add healthpacks or a negative hurt trigger or retexture it." I can't stop you from doing this but if you do it then know that you are going against my wishes as well as those of the many people in our NA community that helped craft this mode into what it is today. I had the initial concept and made the map but it was lots of peoples' input and hours upon hours of playtesting that shaped it into what it is now... a mix of intuitive design, some luck, and lots of tweaking of the fine details to make it work well. It's far from perfect but so far the reception has been pretty positive so I'd like to think our efforts were fruitful and are appreciated.

I do not really have a great idea what you are trying to ask for. Do you want the ramps underneath middle to be rotated 90 degrees?