No, vita is banned because it makes it impossible to accurately predict how long it takes for the enemy medic to get uber after spawning. That fucks with the uber-advantage mechanic, one of the best mechanics about 6s, so on the shitlist it goes.

Batteries take chemicals A B and C and convert them to D E and F (sometimes C and F, the solvent, stay the same). In a battery, all 6 chemicals stay in the battery, and A and D (as well as B and E) turn into each each other already in the right shape to work as a battery and convert back the other way.

In a <whatever> economy, you're doing the same, except you only need A B D and E, which are all liquids and gases, then the C and F chemicals are replaced with electrolysis machines and a fuel cells or engine.

It's the same deal, one chemical reaction stores the energy, the other releases it in a useful way. Except the guys in this video have improved the storing energy bit by adding a catalyst to improve the reaction, or something.

The not-quite-nanotech not-quite-graphene based catalyst thing in that video is new (-ish, others have done similar things), but turning CO2 and water into various fuels isn't a new idea, for anyone interested. Really, most good ideas existed by the 70s, to quote a friend. Look up "hydrogen economy" or "methanol economy", basically you're using electricity (or possibly direct sunlight) to make reactions happen to produce fuel for car with engines (or oil for plastics) rather than using that electricity directly to drive motors or turn on light bulbs.

Pulled the 2% figure out my arse btw. However much it actually helps, it's not actual, proper multi-core support. That would involve taking many of the sequential jobs that are involved in processing a game engine tick and running some of them in parallel. Shoving the separate, after-thought audio stuff hardly counts.

@ #8

G-mod and TF2 have, for a long time (like since 2010-ish), had a "technically multi-core support" feature. In g-mod it caused crashes so they disabled it, but now they've re-enabled it (and presumably fixed the crash).

However, this "multi-core support" takes like 2% of the workload (iirc the sound stuff?) and puts it in a second thread, but the bulk of the work is still done on 1 core. Mr Setsul is saying that valve are not, for the foreseeable future, going to bother spreading the rest (or even some) of that workload onto the other cores.

Edit: TL:DR "multicore support" https://imgur.com/gallery/EEdKeXN

I think those are their "real" aliases..... if you looked on etf2l you probably wouldn't find "condom" but would find a "cmd". If a player's real/original steam name is literally "9i86uhnrtgersv" but everyone calls them "dave" in spoken language, then what are you going to do...?

Edit: I'm slow today. The solution is a hud that lets casters over-write the displayed name with something easier for viewers to pick up on.

I've had something to say on the TF2 team at valve and what they're doing, but it's past midnight so I'm struggling to string 2 sentences together right now. The TL;DR of it is that those 7 steps you listed is going to take valve at least another 2 years to get to step #5, where we have something worth playing, and 5 years to get to #7 where we have something that's actually reaching it's full potential.

I think you're crazy. Medic is the least popular but most important class in any and all game modes. If no-one already wants to, then someone one a team has to bitch up and play the dullest class in the game (at least at lower levels). The ubersaw and crossbow, as they are, do not pushish medics for playing, and give the rest of the team no excuse to bitch at the medic for using them (the value of which shouldn't be underestimated).

3 simple fixes would make the needles (which have always been the weakest of the medic's assets) stronger to compete with the crossbow:
- Needles be easier to see, maybe even give them tracers, so you can better see where you're firing.
- Needles are client-side, so your opponent first sees a needle appear a few meters from the gun if there's high ping involved, but you see it fly out from the nozzle as you clicked.
- Higher fire-rate to better saturate the air.

I mean..... I wouldn't necessarily agree that the tomislav is OP. My main concern is that you're attempting to contribute to a game balance discussion when you didn't know what makes something OP when you made this thread.

Yes, exactly. What it lets you do can make it overpowered.

But how the tomislav compares to the stock mini-gun (or any or all of the other minigun unlocks) is irrelevant when discussing specifically whether the tomislav is over-, under-powered or well balanced. And that discussion is separate (though related) to whether and what tweaks need applying to it.

That's where your error is. Something is over-powered because what it lets you do to other players. Your alternatives are irrelevant to the over-/under-poweredness of your chosed weapon.

2 examples to help you understand:

Go back to 2007 TF2, where there are no unlocks. Double the scout's scattergun damage at all ranges. It can now 1-shot many classes at medium range. This weapon is now over-powered, despite the scout literally having no alternatives to compare it to (which your definition needs).

If you added 3 new sniper melees to the game, all 3 of which do less damage per hit and swing slower, with literally no upside (for the sake of argument), and removed all the other unlocks, you would have no real impact on the game, yet by your logic the machete has now become over-powered. You can't both be over-powered and make no change to how the game can be played, that's not how the definitions work.

Dude, stop.

"Better than stock" or even "better than all the alternatives" is different to "over-powered".

Many items in the game need a tweak or a re-work, and only some of them because they are over-powered, but very few of them because they are simply objectively better than the alternatives.

Hooooooooooly shit

That's like, 1/3 of everything wrong with matchmaking. Now all they need is classlimit 1 on defence and support classes, better sorting of players into ranks, and then the game becomes literally playable.

After that, all the issues are the more complicated map and weapon balance. Edit: Oh and the graphics/viewmodel config stuff, but that's again a less stupidly simple issue than the ranks and classlimits.

More screenshots would be nice, even on the tf2maps thread.

Holy shit, I need to learn to move like that.