much easier fix:

have a "pre-game" that's about ~10 seconds long (also, preferably, not the kind of pregame wherein medic gets uber in like ten seconds), wherein spawn doors don't open until they're finished, players can fuck around as they please in the spawn until the round starts, and demos/sollies can prepare as needed right next to the door

lets you have a gap of time to work with, will also slightly buff other classes' rollout speeds, and it means that nobody has to give a shit about where they specifically spawned in the spawn room because honestly that's never a thing ppl should care about

should note that switching to chris' old-ass dx9frames config works fine for me

https://i.imgur.com/1cVRmFe.png

someone found this hiding in one of the updates, likely one of the backgrounds to be used with MM

if you're literally just thinking of this single patch in a bubble wherein we're never getting an update ever again, I guess?

this isn't the final version, and a good way to balance in the long term is to normalize everything a class has (even if its normalized for the worse), and then buff/nerf everything altogether as needed. it's really not a good thing that the "interesting" parts of pyro are all obnoxious and result in min/max stats, that's a sign that you need to start over with him

"we should be allowed to have shit design, because the rest of our design is also shit" doesn't somehow magically transfer to good design, that just means your entire class needs a rework

if b4nny is as powerful as they're making him out to be, we'll get a video from him calming everyone the fuck down and explaining what every change means long-term

tho as a general rule, there needs to be more top players explaining this stuff to ppl. it seems obvious to TFTV, but the average pubber lives in a strange world where spy is the scariest class of all time, while scout is a tad bit underpowered, and there's only a minuscule amount of ppl who actually interact with folks like /r/tf2 well

e: yr freaking out a bit over this, tho. honestly, if valve makes sweeping reverts on the basis of a few loud low-levels, there's a lot bigger issues at hand than /r/tf2 being a bit whiney

https://i.imgur.com/oHoUtzb.png

this is how I know valve is doing good things
(please read the comments for this, r/tf2 genuinely believes b4nny got valve to nerf pyro in a single video god bless their souls)

a shot in the dark: a new player could try to learn tf2 using solely the original, and then be locked out of every other unlock because they all require you to treat them similar to stock

like this didn't matter when it first came out and nobody used anything non-stock anyways, but there's been a whole bunch of other primaries since and valve wants ppl to use them all in the long term

but then that results in less money-havings on valve's end

worst-case scenario, valve creates a template for unlocks that ensures certain parts of it is always obvious when viewed from a distance

plus it doesn't rly matter if valve hates the original, it's the weapon that a whole bunch of comp players use and unless they hate money they don't want half of the competitive soldiers in tf2 using a cheap, unskinned weapon

I'm well aware, but then that's just like how almost all leagues have a rule against picking up weapons, it still means that valve is likely to keep this in MM

they also haven't reverted the uber pickup change, so this is very likely the intent

I dislike the rollout change. not because I don't get its point, mind you (it's the easiest change you can make that technically nerfs demos and soldiers without actually nerfing them. tho even this point is arguable), but because it makes your specific spawn point more centralizing than ever (shoutouts to when granary had a slight advantage on one side due to different spawns), when really they should be changing it so that the spawn points themselves are as meaningless as possible compared to the overall area you spawn in

when modifying current stats valve would have to make QL an objective upgrade for demo mains to want to switch off stock

a majority of the best scenarios to use the QL in 6s are when pushing last. right off the bat, this means you're not using the QL unless you're respawning, because you're not going to go back to a resupply and ignore your chokepoints. even by that point, though, you're still at a disadvantage, because even when you're pushing offensively, a demoman is supposed to cover nearly all of his immediate defense for his team, and you can't do that when you have no way for your sticky traps to last

this is sort of an issue TF2 has with offensive weapons that lower defense in general--by comparison, a defensive weapon like the brass beast has little to no downsides when defending last compared to stock, because you're right next to spawn and you're only sitting in one place until you either die or successfully defend so who gives a shit--but idk how you solve that without fucking with core mechanics in the game

thinking more about pyro changes... they likely want to make pyro a more all-around class for pubbers, since they're clearly pushing 6s as their first gig on matchmaking, and they don't want to tell players of one of the most common pub classes "hey sorry, you're only gonna be used to stack your few good values when defending last, cya"

idk if that's worrying or not. maybe all the bullshit will be gone by then, who knows

likely for newer players to tell them when their teammates respawned, while comp players are obviously used to just hitting tab regularly that's not exactly intuitive