All your arguments are so bad Sage, and they are ones made constantly as well.

Setsul responded perfectly. There is no weapon variety for medic anyway, overdose is the next best by miles.

Literally what? If anything this adds depth to the class since you have to choose between looking at your teammate to arrow, or looking at the soldier bombing. Doing both is also very possible allowing for a higher skill to be shown between players. I don't know anyone who is concerned about raising the skill cap of 6s in tf2. If anything, people want to remove things that lower the skill cap.

You can't argue that gameflow would be better or worse without trying no crossbow vs crossbow for an extended period of time (about a month properly scrimming and playing officials without it). The reason for this is because when crossbow wasn't in the game, people were a lot worse than they are now (mostly in terms of DM). The game is also very different in how it's played. Which is why time would be needed for the meta to adjust.

Currently, crossbow does as much speeding up gameplay as it does slowing down, since you get healed faster, you can push faster and don't need to wait out of a fight for healthpacks, enabling more 6v6 instead of 4v4 fights without a flank ever appearing. At the same time, it also means enemy teams can stifle pushes more easily. It's a give and take. Not one way, nor the other. PLEASE stop using any argument that says it only slows down, or only speeds it up. It does both at different times.

As you said, subjective. So until it stops being subjective, and it can be objectively claimed that more people enjoy tf2 without the crossbow than with the crossbow, this argument shouldn't be bothered to be made.

This line is just hilarious to me. The whole argument about why crossbow is bad for the game should be centred around how it is too OP. That is the best and only argument that can really be made. It's also the only argument you chose to ignore.

tl:dr It is unknown if the crossbow improves or harms gameflow or gameplay for the other 5 players on each team (definitely makes medic more interesting, I think that is reasonable to claim). All that is known is that it significantly CHANGES gameflow. Please stop saying it harms it when you have less than zero evidence for that. Less than zero since there is clear evidence that it improves gameflow for at least one player on each team.

i like how your third point (which is barely true) is literally an example for why it should stay. the fact that you sacrifice situational awareness in favor of heals is good weapon design.

Regarding the 'can't push off damage' point, the crossbow probably makes some pushes possible that weren't before too though.

Or at least they allow you to quickly heal up a flank player so you can just go. For example you arrow your roamer in big door before you push through choke instead of him needing beam before he can go in.

no

I'd rather eat my own toenails than play Medic without crossbow, tbh. Without the bow, it takes too long to heal and everyone dies in the time it takes to get a Soldier to 200. More importantly, Medic is literally a dog on a walk with no crossbow. You just click in the general area of a teammate, leave the beam on (don't even need to be looking at the patient!), right click when it's important. No other mechanic. Landing a good crossbow on a teammate or enemy is fun! Beaming is... not fun. (But Medic is also not fun in general)

IF you were going to nerf the Crossbow (and I'm not sure I'd want that), you'd need to do this:
Increase holster + equip time so that when you see a player get arrowed you can jump their med and he can't uber or saw you.
Increase range needed to heal. Implement crit heals for bow. Decrease minimum heals.
The goal should be to create a long range heal solution that is superior or equal to healing with the beam for a few seconds, but can't just Undo the last 15 seconds of damage for a Demoman.

if people take longer to kill it slows down gameplay, thats my point.

I feel like there might be a cognitive bias, because of course you may only realize the times YOU gets arrowed or got saved from a situation by arrows, but not the times the same happened to the enemy during your match, as its impossible to track every single arrow the enemy does. You do something stupid, you get arrowed and saved, dopamine rush, lets do stupid plays again! wow crossbow is great! But you may not realize that time you did 300dmg to a soldier getting healed and a second after he was jumping at your combo at full health again, or other many such cases like that.

We ban the quickfix because the heal rate is higher than stock medic, but crossbow is allowed because ¿¿??
We ban rescue ranger because you can safely repair stuff from the spawndoor, but crossbow is allowed because ¿¿??
And yes, theres thousands of examples that you can pinpoint during matches where crossbow clearly slows the game down

as i said, you can't only look at it from the medic's POV, its a team thing. if you had the quickfix allowed people would be harder to kill and teamfights would be more frustrating and less fun as you'd be forced to focus fire on specific targets. i mean quickfix is completelly out of the question for this reason, for its healing, but somehow crossbow can't be challenged even tho its above stock healing rate, it has practically infinite range, and it has changed the way people play (for worse imo)

ah yes the blazing fast gameplay of having to sit around a medic and wait for your turn on the healbeam, the only thing that i dislike about the crossbow is it makes healthpacks a lot more trivial as a 100+ healthpack on logs.tf gamer.

haha i love this thread great stuff guys

.

huh?
you probably didnt play before arrows, people didnt use to stop fighting and stand behind some shack to get beamed lmao
i mean thats one of the main things why clutchbow breaks gameflow, do you really think people used to break out from fights and ask their medic to beam them for 5 seconds? they just kept fighting or went for a pack
also you could just switch around the argument you make
Ah yes, the blazing fast gameplay of having done 600 spam damage during a midfight for it to mean literally nothing

your first season on etf2l is s19 which was in autumn of 2014 which is a year after the crossbow buff shut the fuck up zoomer

Also we can't ban the crossbow because medic frag videos would be even more shit than they already are. Crossbow airshot kills are fucking juicy

.

just make a one night cup with vanilla + medlocks 2012 style

back then, crit heals mattered a lot more than they do today

@sage I don't know why you bother anymore

You are only seeing your team side, as if the other team kept arrows and you didn't.
The enemy would die more easily, you could call damage and it would actually matter, and saying that an enemy is weak would mean your team picks him off in the next few seconds instead of seeing him back to full health.

Ah yes let's do something that would buff the scout class again. What could possibly go wrong?

when has there been a person or team who said "wow we fucking lost this match because of their medic's arrows!!"

game still plays fine lol. everyone is still able to take rounds and win matches. just outplay your opponents, push efficiently and focus fire

sometimes it's just the map that makes crossbow better like process choke for example. i disliked that map in a match setting since like 2016

More aiming in the healing role, or more place your crosshair at your teammate is absolutely 100% better lol

This is an issue though
Crossbow is too impactful, the heal amount and the heal range is far too rewarding.

I also believe it has a negative impact on the game's balance but I highly doubt it will ever be rebalanced.
Sadly the variety in gameplay the crossbow offers, to an already stale as hell medic class especially, outweighs the effect it has on the game flow.

It's been discussed to death already tbh

Stop trying to make medic less fun, we already have like no medic mains left

MAKE THE OVERDOSE SPEED BOOST PASSIVE INSTEAD OF ACTIVE VALVE U FUCKERS AAAAAAAAAAAAA

if there was a cup like that it would be better with modern rulesets and map, to actually test it out with no other variables involved

the base classes and stock weapons have been changed so much that a "retro" cup would be nothing like old TF2 anyway. medigun speed and all.

i just realized i sounded quite pretentious in my post sorry
i played since 2 years earlier than that and crossbow wasnt 100% meta at all even in 2013 since it didnt receive all the buffs that it has today. before the "Build uber" thing it was still preferable to use medigun in most situations and it would actually feel special to use the crossbow

i mean crossbow was really good from the get-go, its obvious that something like quick-fix gets banned for its 140% healing rate but crossbow somehow doesn't. i could easily see an alternative timeline where crossbow is the weapon thats banned and all medics use quickfix. "well its not balanced but it makes medic more fun! airstrafing with your soldier takes skill, why would you want to make medic less fun??"

thats not the point at all tho
i just want the matches to be less fucking gay and awkward
just do a test in any 6s match and convince both medics to go needles. midfights resolve way more organically, theres no one standing still like a retard or breaking away from the fight for no reason. its just better gameplay in general imo.

i just dont like the passive reload

but sage if there was a medkit in badlands house, i'm going to break away from the mid fight to grab the medkit kinda the same concept?
medic is essentially shooting medkits

the game is still drawn to uber and uber advantages to make any ground
crossbow was super dogshit when it could build uber off arrow hits that was annoying luckily it got reverted

Not to say this thread is shit, but dude...

There's two types of weapons in tf2, "Different playstyles" and "fix a problem."
"Fix a problem" is for as the name implies, fixes a damn problem.
"Different playstyles" allows for a different way to play for the class(es)/team to work with.

For Christ sake, the bow is made to have a different playstyle. it allows for more heals at a varying range vs. just dealing damage with slow, annoying, and hard to see needles.

Just delete this thread like everyone else or let a mod lock this shit.

just buff the syringe guns so they aren't boring pieces of poopoo

ur mad lol

a small counter-argument to the "arrows take skill" argument:
Arrows lower the skill ceiling of all classes except medic
without arrows you get actually punished for dumb bombs or eating a random pipe or eating spam in general

you can either:
A) Actually dodge and play normally, therefore making it pretty much 100% luck that your med hits arrows on you from medium-long range
B) Simplify your own movement because it doesnt actually matter that you take a 40dmg rocket to the face when you get guaranteed arrows from the clutchbow
Basically the only situations where crossbow takes skill is when you are up in the air jumpin and airstrafing and shit and he hits that epic bow that saves your life. The rest of the time its 50-50 prediction and luck... or just people simplifying their movement to straight lines to get arrowed wich is even more gay AND IM NOT CALLING OUT ANYONE because of course i do this too, because the crossbow is just too good not to use it. It would be dumb to actually want to get punished when theres a "Get out of Jail free" card that is the crossbow and you can just be more retarded than usual and get out of a bad situation for free with arrows

just because you dont like my opinion doesnt mean it should be censored and deleted !!

its pointless to talk about rebalancing because thats not in our hands, its valve's thing. Unless leagues decide to use a weapon stat mod, the only way to balance items is to outright ban the OP ones.

fair point but its different... without crossbow people usually just commit more to fights and bait less, and of course people wouldnt run for medkits as often as they ask for arrows in a match with crossbow
i think the lack of crossbow would encourage to not eat spam so much in lower level play too and therefore waste the less of the medic's time, besides making crit heals more important again instead of just something relevant for overheals.

galaxy brain ideas

double xbow enemy dmg half xbow friendly healing

arrows now heal relative to ur max hp while still factoring distance (similar to healthpacks and also would make heavies fuckin infuriating but it nerfs scouts so that cool)

the 3rd time u miss the equalizing soldier on his rollout u attend a mandatory rollout healing demo review with rocket king before ur allowed to play medic again

you are welcome.

on a serious note as somebody whos played a lot of medic before and after xbow became standard as much as i dont like instahealing people out of position it still creates a much more interesting teamfight than just havin 3 people useless waiting for their turn on the medics teat

Just revert all of TF2 to 2012 tbh

And also just disable airblast or remove pyro from 6s