Team Fortress 2

[EdgarJPublius]

If you can backstab robots, that's what I'll do, I don't care if it's 'suboptimal'.

[Snark]

Depends on what class(es) you like to play.

Send me a friend request (http://steamcommunity.com/id/Zephyr256k/) and I can set you up with the basics for pretty much any class you might be interested in.

Thanks but I have to wait until I'm no longer a "limited user". Edit: My username is JakeStiles in case you can send a request to me.

[EdgarJPublius]

Free user's can still receive items and anyone with a steam account can send friend requests.

For some reason it's actually fairly difficult to find a particular steam profile from the name (at least, it never seems to work for me), so it'd be easier for you to send me a request, or link your profile.

[Snark]

Link: http://steamcommunity.com/id/JakeStiles

Still haven't figured out how to make them let me send a friend request.

[Menacing Spike]

According to beta testers the optimal MVM team would be something like 4 scottish resistance demos, 1 medic, 1 heavy (for deflector enemies).

Wow, that sounds pretty boring.

But then things have changed a lot since the beta (they had all robots look the same, no sentry busters...) so who knows!

[The Scyphozoa]

Free user's can still receive items and anyone with a steam account can send friend requests.

For some reason it's actually fairly difficult to find a particular steam profile from the name (at least, it never seems to work for me), so it'd be easier for you to send me a request, or link your profile.

It's difficult because you have a login name, which is permanent, and a display name, which can be changed at any time.
So even though you'll see my name as "The Scyphozoa" on Steam, to friend request me you'd have to type in "megacornhead" which is my login name (because I made one with TheScyphozoa as the login but it somehow got locked.)

[Derek]

According to beta testers the optimal MVM team would be something like 4 scottish resistance demos, 1 medic, 1 heavy (for deflector enemies).

Source? I can see that being a viable setup, but I would be somewhat dubious that it's the best setup (in particular, an engineer could be very useful, and I'm not totally convinced about scottish resistance over sticky launcher).

[Menacing Spike]

According to beta testers the optimal MVM team would be something like 4 scottish resistance demos, 1 medic, 1 heavy (for deflector enemies).

Source? I can see that being a viable setup, but I would be somewhat dubious that it's the best setup (in particular, an engineer could be very useful, and I'm not totally convinced about scottish resistance over sticky launcher).

First source was on 4chan so obviously not linkable

Second source was a guy I know over the internet

Third source: http://www.reddit.com/r/truetf2/comment ... d_mvm_ama/

Obviously all are really fucking dubious but they correlate.

[Jorpho]

I would have thought they'd throw the Civilian back in before trying something so new-ish.

Are you referring to Hunted mode, where you escort the civilian? They added that years ago.

Well, Payload isn't exactly the same, is it? Then again, I suppose it would make the other mode slightly redundant.

[Derek]

Are you referring to Hunted mode, where you escort the civilian? They added that years ago.

Well, Payload isn't exactly the same, is it? Then again, I suppose it would make the other mode slightly redundant.[/quote]
It's not exactly the same because Hunted was a broken mode. No one wants to play a helpless civilian, and no one wants to escort the dumbass that's playing civilian. Making the payload cart an inanimate, indestructible, object that is pushed down a fixed path fixes all these problems.

Third source: http://www.reddit.com/r/truetf2/comment ... d_mvm_ama/

Obviously all are really fucking dubious but they correlate.

Extine is a solid source. I think it may be a bad sign though that as soon as I saw "yao" I knew who made the post.

[eSOANEM]

Hang on, this means valve's finally learnt to count to 3.

Maybe now we'll finally see episode 3

[The Scyphozoa]

Wait, what 3? I don't see a 3 anywhere.

[eSOANEM]

Wait, what 3? I don't see a 3 anywhere.

But they counted the number of Mann brothers. There used to be two, now they've talked about a third brother (Gray Mann). In order to count him after the other two, valve must have caught up with millennia old western civilisation and discovered the number three.

[The Scyphozoa]

Yeah, but I don't think that counts since they didn't actually COUNT the brothers. Or at least the developers didn't. That's totally separate from the marketing department.

Besides, the "can't count to three" joke shouldn't really apply to anything but titles. Watch: the TF2 classes have THREE weapon slots. See?

[eSOANEM]

True. I had always just assumed the problem was across the whole company.

As for weapon slots, they never talk about the third weapon slot so there's no evidence they've been counted whereas the Mann brothers definitely have been.

[broken_escalator]

Also some classes have 4 slots, if you include the PDA/sapper! HL4 CONFIRMED!!1

Regarding MVM:
I think the most fun I've had playing MVM so far is with pyro. Upgrading my flame damage and with +HP on kill is very satisfying. The scout bots die so quickly that even when the medic wasn't healing me I was able to tank a lot of damage. I would have liked to switch my items from the gas jockey set, and equip a canteen, but my items were locked due to lag.

Also, the scout seemed suprisingly useful, since he allegedly doubled our cash income. The player wasn't very good at making picks though, and also never used milk. The spy and sniper I played with really sucked, but I have my reservations about the usefulness of those classes anyway.

[A duck]

Does anyone else find the new matchmaking thing to be terrible? The old one seemed alot quicker. Also, the Mann vs Machine mode is a lot of fun, aside from the suicide bomber bot.

[Cromulen7]

The matchmaking system for MvM is absolutely horrendous!
I don't like, but I can wait 12 minutes for a round. I guess everyone is trying to play and there just aren't enough servers (because there are apparently 4000 people in the queue).
But when I patently wait, don't give me error crap like "Failed to connect after 4 attempts", "Bad challenge"(wtf does that even mean?), "The server is runnging an older version" (well couln't you have checked for that?)

I got into 2 games. we failed horribly. the tank is hard. 2 tanks? I don't think so.
Seriously, any tips for tanks?

anyways, if anyone wants to hit me up, play a game. maybe the matchmaking won't suck so much for parties...
http://steamcommunity.com/id/cromulen7/

[eSOANEM]

I had a mini-lan party with a few friends on Thursday to celebrate our exam results. Being tf2 players, we decided to try mvm.

First of all, we tried the matchmaker, but after 5 minutes waiting, we decided it was taking too long and just locally hosted a server (we only had 4 at that point so we had planned to join a public server to get a full party).

Once we were playing locally, it was awesome. We got to the 4th/5th wave IIRC with 4 of us and, later, with 6 beat the whole lot. It was great fun, personally, I really enjoyed brass beast heavy with health on kill, extra ammo and rate of fire, but my friends found pyros really strong.

[A duck]

Don't bother with the matchmaking, just use the find a server option and select a server with about 4 or 5 people. Then you should get in fairly easily.

[The Scyphozoa]

So, if I have three friends to play with, can the four of us find an empty server and play on our own? If we all ready up will it start, or will we have to wait for two more people to join?

[eSOANEM]

Don't know about joining empty servers, but you can run a server on your machine by clicking the + next to servers. From there, I think you can choose it to be mvm (although I don't know how, I've not done it) and can do the game with any number of players. You can also password the server to stop random extra people joining if you want.

[Derek]

You don't need six people to start, you just need everyone on the server to ready up. For super hard mode: Try to play solo.

[The Scyphozoa]

Don't know about joining empty servers, but you can run a server on your machine by clicking the + next to servers. From there, I think you can choose it to be mvm (although I don't know how, I've not done it) and can do the game with any number of players. You can also password the server to stop random extra people joining if you want.

I know about that, but the enemy AI takes quite a bit of processing power. I don't know of my friends' computers can handle it. I think MINE can, but I don't think my internet connection is good enough to host a server.

Anyway, there's another piece of info I should share, to clear up confusion:

At first, it appears you have to buy a Tour of Duty Ticket I order to play the "advanced" missions. You don't, actually. You only need to join a free server and then call a vote to change mission. The only thing the ticket gets you is item drops.

[EmptySet]

The matchmaking system for MvM is absolutely horrendous!

Yup. The manual server browser works better, though.

I got into 2 games. we failed horribly. the tank is hard. 2 tanks? I don't think so.
Seriously, any tips for tanks?

They're not too hard as long as you don't have other stuff distracting you, because they can't fight back. Just as long as you have enough classes with good sustained damage output, anyways. If they're giving you problems try getting Kritz canteens and upgrades that increase your DPS (damage, reload speed, fire rate for most classes). You'll probably also want some ammo capacity since running out of bullets is a real problem. If you have a Kritz Medic they should Kritz any demos before the wave so they can place crit stickies in the tank's path, then Kritz the player with the highest DPS as soon as the tank comes out.

As a side note, if you're Engie you should almost certainly use the Wrangler (because it increases your sentry's fire rate) and upgrade your melee speed (so you can reload your sentry faster and get back to wrangling it). Also remember that Kritz canteens boost your sentries' fire rate.

[The Scyphozoa]

So, obviously you get a canteen for free after completing your first MvM game. But you can also craft one for 4 scrap.

Is there really a point to having multiple canteens? Just so that you don't waste money when you want to switch the canteen buff?

[eSOANEM]

You don't need six people to start, you just need everyone on the server to ready up. For super hard mode: Try to play solo.

The countdown to start begins as soon as one player says they're ready. Really easy way to annoy your team-mates that.

Don't know about joining empty servers, but you can run a server on your machine by clicking the + next to servers. From there, I think you can choose it to be mvm (although I don't know how, I've not done it) and can do the game with any number of players. You can also password the server to stop random extra people joining if you want.

I know about that, but the enemy AI takes quite a bit of processing power. I don't know of my friends' computers can handle it. I think MINE can, but I don't think my internet connection is good enough to host a server.

This is true. We were having a few problems with the host struggling. If anyone has a second machine (desktop and laptop for instance), using one as host and one to play should help.

[Menacing Spike]

Why do everyone suck so much?

Engineers don't use the wrangler and die to sentry busters, scouts bumrush giant heavies... No one was targetting the quickfix medics in a wave so I had to drop behind the wave holding a lvl 3, build it asap, and destroy them that way, getting killed by reinforcements afterwards. Fuck. I often have to do like 50%-75% of the work.

edit: but with a good team it's pretty damn fun to run scout, milk shit, fanowar big shit, and push shit around with the FaN, all the while rolling in delicious money overheal.

[Derek]

The countdown to start begins as soon as one player says they're ready. Really easy way to annoy your team-mates that.

I have no clue where you got this idea. Everyone has to ready. I've had enough games waiting for that one guy who forgot to ready (and occasionally being that one guy) for me to know.

[The Scyphozoa]

What? I haven't played it yet but from all the videos I've seen, once one person hits F4 the clock starts counting down from 180 seconds, and each subsequent person to hit F4 shaves some time off of it. When the last person is ready, it goes to 10 seconds.

[eSOANEM]

What? I haven't played it yet but from all the videos I've seen, once one person hits F4 the clock starts counting down from 180 seconds, and each subsequent person to hit F4 shaves some time off of it. When the last person is ready, it goes to 10 seconds.

This was definitely the case in the two games I played and the other game the rest of my friends played (there were 7 of us so we rotated one person off).

[Derek]

Maybe my teams just never took three minutes to ready up. We never started without everyone being ready. Regardless, three minutes is far more time than anyone would need.

[The Scyphozoa]

Bathroom breaks.

Also, indecision as to which upgrades to buy.

[eSOANEM]

Bathroom breaks.

Also, indecision as to which upgrades to buy.

These combined with not knowing the map at all can make the 3 mins quite tight.

[Menacing Spike]

Okay scout is definitely my favorite class in this mode

You start out as the little support bitch, a fun role despite the subservience:

"Oh great master, let me draw soldier fire away from you sentry right into my puny overheal. Also here is a fan-o-war mark, so that your resplendent damage my shine ever higher."

"Grand Master of All That Is Minigun, allow me to splash your foes with slowmilk, so that your insignificant injuries may close and as to hasten their slaughter to your skillful hand"

"O mighty team, I shall collect those measly bills laying on the ground so as you shan't have to bother yourself"

"Is this sniper bothering you, Medic Whose Usefulness Is Beyond Compare? Let me take care of it, I implore you"


Then with a fully upgraded soda popper you evolve into:

"OH SHIT I'M KILLING EVERYTHING"

[A duck]

Is the soda popper really that good? I'll have to try it out. My favourite weapon is the beggars bazooka. Upgrade the reload speed and just press the fire button quickly. It just rips through the bots. Especially on 150 scout rounds.

[Menacing Spike]

Is the soda popper really that good? .

Unupgraded it's kinda lame, fully upgraded you outdps brass-beast heavies at point blank range. A popper with full damage and clip in minicrit mode (maybe a third of the time?) deals 240-280 damage 6 times in 2 seconds, then takes maybe a second and a half to reload. This is the best dps I have ever seen in this mode, and on tanks, it shows.

The weaknesses are a constant need to scamper to dispensers (or using ammo canteens), large spread (this allows you to kill large groups quickly but is bad for mid range giants), and it's really awkward to move around tanks trying to get the dive meter to rise.

Perhaps the FaN with a kritz medic would work too but I hate the pushback when diving.

I haven't tried the bazooka, missing the new weapons.

[Derek]

Unupgraded it's kinda lame, fully upgraded you outdps brass-beast heavies at point blank range. A popper with full damage and clip in minicrit mode (maybe a third of the time?) deals 240-280 damage 6 times in 2 seconds, then takes maybe a second and a half to reload. This is the best dps I have ever seen in this mode, and on tanks, it shows.

I'll raise you fully upgraded Hitman's Heatmaker. Build meter up on small bots, deal a fully charged headshot (around 900 damage) every second on giants without ever having to unscope, and the exploding headshots assist or kill the small bots to keep your meter going forever. You just need someone to watch your back, and it doesn't work on tanks.

[The EGE]

Spoiler:

[Ixtellor]

I started playing again as I have limited time to game, and like that its productive even if only for 15 mins.

Two questions:
1) How do demoman charge?
2) Your "best points" by class, what are some good averages.
I had a 24 point engineer game, a 22 point sniper game, and then lots of 18 points games, with my worst being scout as with 5 points.