2.0 First Impressions

[squeek.]

Yep. How you liking it?

Before you post, make sure to:
check out the Fortress Options menu

[Credge]

Good features are good.

One problem I've noticed, though, are that all players jump around like they have 400 ping every now and then. This doesn't happen with about 10 players in the server, but once it hits 16 or so it happens every now and then. This also happens when everyones ping are, on average, about 60.

Bad:

Soldier looks gay. As in, he looks like he enjoys penis. The pure-blue/red is tacky.

I also miss caltrops.

BHop speed increase is not noticable.

Good things:

SG's look great.

Jump pad is just right.

HW is useful now. Even further, right click=win.

Medic tossable packs are neat.

Pyro will be useful on offense now.

Demo blue pipe time is win.

Demo pipe radius is win.

Scouts take no fall damage.

Unsure:

Soldier rocket radius.

New conc mechanic.

[Mr_headshot]

Oh man, I can't wait to try it out! Not home tonight =/ tomorrow will be win.

[a082]

hwguy now more inutility, hard to kill a scout near you. and AC sound is to tediousness.
medic still hard to infect enemy,and medkit sound still not fixed.

but,FF 2.0 is more fun.

ps: team color for demoman's pipe?

[ViLE]

Originally Posted by a082

ps: team color for demoman's pipe?

no god damnit

Originally Posted by squeek.

Um... You really need to see a competent demo in action. If you want to see some clan matches, come to #ff.pickup and spec some. Make sure to watch ViLE play demoman.

<3

Originally Posted by ensiform

Thats why they were removed or disabled. As they were useless in the current state.

they weren't useless in the least though.

Originally Posted by mixer

i feard that as well, that the beta-players let their personal preferences sneak into the class-balance ... mabe even unconsciously, i think its inevitable somehow. It was the reason that the soldier was the holy-cow in older tf-versions, and it now seems to be here as well, too bad .... About the sniper-whining: anyone remember qwtf? a medicore sniper got 80-100 kills in 30mins, and a really skilled one on a good day did 180. The 1.11-sniper was lightyears away from that, and still he got nerved....

the reason the soldier was the holy-cow is the nature of his weapons, and the nature of the game

When you got kids flying past you at 500 miles an hour a weapon that stops them, is easy to use (shoot teh floor!!!) and is very powerful (2 rockets bye bye scout, 3 rockets see ya medi), is of COURSE going to be perceived as the 'holy-cow'.

The nature of the game is speed and fast-paced decisions, not tracing a dot across the yard at another player.

Just because you, personally, feel sniper is fun, awesome, righteous, amazing, should be the main class, doesn't mean that it should.

As a sniper, you are playing the wrong game bro. It's capture the flag not battlefield chaos (unless you're in a pug, in which case you could very easily get teh wrong idea, and I have a sneaking suspicion your frame of reference is as such).

note: next time I'll just delete the 3 longest posts - 4est

[mixer]

Originally Posted by ViLE

the reason the soldier was the holy-cow is the nature of his weapons, and the nature of the game

no, its rather the DM-history of some dev wanting them to have their kickarse-class

When you got kids flying past you at 500 miles an hour a weapon that stops them, is easy to use (shoot teh floor!!!) and is very powerful (2 rockets bye bye scout, 3 rockets see ya medi), is of COURSE going to be perceived as the 'holy-cow'.

so the soldier got this abilities to stop the fast concers then? well, too bad he uses this megaweapon against all the other classes as well ... here where the unfairness begins. Why not make the offers weaker instead of picking out one class and make it the God to stop them?

The nature of the game is speed and fast-paced decisions, not tracing a dot across the yard at another player.

'speed' and 'fast-paced' sound nice, but you dont need the god-soldier to get it balanced ...

Just because you, personally, feel sniper is fun, awesome, righteous, amazing, should be the main class,

who said i do? its not the case, all i want is a balanced game, what he have now it a "team-soldier + the rest" sort of game

[Phatman]

Just played at AE. Seems to play a lot better now. I didn't have netgraph up, so I can't say for sure, but it seemed that frame rate is up, even using the onboard video of an nforce board (inlaws machine). Had a blast, looks good and all that. Loved that I could finally turn the help center off.

[chilledsanity]

Being primarily an AvD player, here are my impressions:

Good:
+jump pads are fun
+clear advantages in using scout over medic
+sg tracking seems better
+hwguy a lot better
+pyro jet lift fun

Bad:
-dustbowl still has multiple broken areas for SG's
-jump pads make it stupid easy to cap in areas (cornfield especially)
-all the extra speed gives offense more of an advantage
-engineers don't spawn with enough metal to build an sg in dustbowl
-sg air push seems too weak (saw it not stopping medics/scouts)
-weaker SG's
-medic healing still doesn't seem any easier than 1.11
-throw speed too slow on medpacks (can't keep up with you running)
-1.1s demoman timer makes gate defense weaker on dustbowl
-don't like new soldier look
-don't like the red/blue streams to everything

I think the speed of everything makes it pretty fun, but I also think AvD is turning into a joke for defense now. I saw cornfield being capped by both sides in under 3 minutes constantly. I did see dustbowl hold defense, but it had over half the team as hwguys with about 20 people, so it's hard to say.

[Credge]

On further inspection, I have found that I do not like the jump pad. Too much speed for all classes (HW and soldier especially). The ability to fire while traveling at those speeds as an HW will, seemingly, make most maps insane.

This won't be a problem in league play, but I can see it being a huge problem in pubs.

Defensive classes should remain defensive. Offensive classes should remain offense. Middle ground classes should have the ability to fill in a certain missing element on either offense or defense. Currently, the spy, pyro, and sniper have no real role besides annoyance in pubs.

[Phisionary]

Originally Posted by chilledsanity

-sg air push seems too weak (saw it not stopping medics/scouts)

havent played yet, but this could be important! fundamental defense strategy on some maps, esp. palermo. just thinking aloud here...

-don't like the red/blue streams to everything

sort-of agree. a bit bling-bling silly, not really necessary. Visually confusing (not used to it yet of course).

[Phisionary]

First experiance: bad. Got caught in a looping sound stutter for 2 minutes (same as gfx mode switch). Then hl2 crashed. Then steam crashed.

Connection load times still slow.

it worked after that. framerates are meh. had big packet loss but sometimes connection is shitty.

Skins: brightly colored jumpsuits. funny lookin.

bright flag == sokay. pretty colors.

sg == shiny

soldier: those rockets can really knock people around.

scout: no secondaries- wierd. mancannon- cool. need to learn how to use it right.
very speedy. been too much bloodbath to test speed but even just hopping around felt a bit faster.

medic: awesome! love those medpacks. love predicted healing. will be healing more often...
value of infection seems a bit low now... meh.
first try at concing felt kind of strange, but I got out of crossover pit okay. I'd have to try some aardvark & congestus (my other fav. concing maps) to tell better.

pyro - whats the diff?

demo - pipes are interesting, didnt try long enough.

hwguy - gun is interesting. need to learn another new dynamic... meh.

crossover - bridge in middle? i dunno. not sure i like it. lasers? sokay. was very easy approach to gaurd most of the time... I have one issue in that I think any class should be able to cap and this makes going though the base a necessity for most.... I don't mind much though. air-lift improvements == win

first impressions only

[Tsukasa]

There's an overall fps hit to patch 2.0 when it comes to spiking. Before I had 60fps constant now I can spike to 12 when theres like 9 people on screen all attacking and shotting stuff while i conc over. Perhaps due to the new conc effect?

Need to play it more, I'll post back after a solid 90 hours of gameplay.

[Darkness]

Originally Posted by Credge

Bad:

BHop speed increase is not noticable.

Good things:


Demo blue pipe time is win.

Well see you have to be able to bhop first to notice it and yes it is very noticeable


And no the blue pipe timing is still to short needs to be upped to like 1.7 ish

[Agent_W]

Originally Posted by Credge

Bad:

Soldier looks gay. As in, he looks like he enjoys penis. The pure-blue/red is tacky.

DISCLAIMER: Opinions of the current FF soldier look.

You know, Credge, I find this comment funny...because I can just hear Butthead laughing that same ol' constant snicker and tell you that you said 'penis' lol.

I also agree that the full blue/red outlook is tacky. I mean, by different colored bands around his uniform and DISTINCTLY by his beret, it shouldn't be hard to recognize the team color.

Now that I mentioned it, his beret...you know how gay his beret looks? Why, it's not even PUSHED DOWN towards the wearer's right side! That's the true badass way of wearing a beret, rather than the common way your average Joe or Jill would wear it in France.

His face does resemble that Bruce Willis look, which I thought it was cool. And his overall uniform is bad-ass.

But for a soldier who wears a fluffed-up beret and having a full-colored camo uniform of red,blue or other is like you said, Credge: He must really enjoy PENIS!

[Agent_W]

Originally Posted by mrblowtatoes

Where the fuck is the soldier helmut?!?!

I only know that the new skin set of TFC had the soldier with the helmet. The old skin had the beret. Both of them looked cool though.

[Handym]

Helmet was awesome, beret was hideous.

New TFC models FTW

'parently the FF player models are based on the old TFC ones.

[slay2rr]

Yeah i always thought the new tfc models were better, expect for maybe the hwguy.

Hey I have yet to test the jump pad but I really think caltrops shouldnt be removed. Why not keep them? There very handy when running from people in tunnels, such as congestus. There could be a special3 key that is the demos det, and scout jump pad, and whatever else you would add. Just my input

-Killer Instinct

[Firefox11]

Hum, if Pyros and Snipers are THAT bad, why some clan servers, leagues etc. ban their use? Shouldn't it be the team using them loss? Doesn't make much sense.

Remember, even though the Pyro now has higher moblity with the jetpack, and still has frag jumps, his main role is offensive disruption. If you get one or two Defenders on fire, they'll concentrate on killing you, leaving the door open for that Scout to enter the enemy base unscratched. You can get a lv3 burn pretty fast, and at lv3 the enemy will either suicide to try to kill you or go to the resupply, which will make him lose time anyways allowing the "real" offense go in. How do you know where are the enemies? Well, I can't know for sure in pub play, but league play uses strats. And I bet it's not that hard to guess that there will be at least one defender in Shutdown2's ramp, for example.

And this is only in CTF. In AvD the Pyro is much more useful. Hell, I played Pyro in TFC and capturing the flag in Dustbowl, Cornfield, Avanti, etc. was even faster than as Soldier, even with all the Defense set up and without need of secondary nades.

About that "Engineer can OHKO the Pyro", I could use that "You don't know where the enemy is" statement. When he sees you, you've got 4 seconds to put him up to a lv2 burn if you don't want to waste a napalm nade. He will go down even faster if you can sneak in a frag. Now there's a SG unguarded to destroy, etc.

[caesium]

so many noobs...


spy: he already is very effective and useful in both clan and pub play at his specific role. in clanplay this role is currently 2 fold on most maps: 1) making a breakthrough if offy are stuck. 2) as a counter (and hence big deterent) to multiple SG def setups. i agree that he is v unlikely to be a staple member of an offy setup, and if that is what's wanted then yes things need to change. however, i think he's got a v important and well balanced role that works great right now, and offy can use him effectively if they are good enough to adapt themselves to the enemy defence as the situation requires.


pyro and CTF clanplay (i dno that much about other gametypes clanplay): although unlikely to be a staple member of the team, he is certainly not useless. in offy he is fairly quick and able to cause a load of chaos, which can soemtimes be exactly what's needed to make a breakthrough or cap. in defence he is not simply an inferior soldier as some are saying but a completely different class, and although he lacks stopping power he can do a great job of completely disrupting offy's predetermined moves, stripping everyone of h/a for the backline def to deal with, and is pretty much impossible to over-run due to not having to reload and the large damage areas of his weapons (he just luvs multiple nmes at once!). whether or not he'll he used much in leagues is another question, but he's certainly offering some interesting options.

i taught sidd42 to play TF (and to spam!) so i know what you mean lol, shok NOE!1 SURVIVE SPAMCOWE. and while i'm on the subject, spam is most definitely a skill (spam isn't rly the right word imo, but to a noob much of FF might look like spam when it's really not lol). you're right tho, vile, shok sucks bigtime! who are you btw? dno if i ever pld u, but then i forget lots so mb i have.


sniper and CTF clanplay (i dno that much about other gametypes clanplay): this isn't an easy one to explain to ppl, i mean i wanted to be a clanning def sniper for the first 6 months or so that i pld TFC lol... anyway, let me use aardvark as an example (a map many ppl would say is one of the best for a sniper). imagine we're playing 8v8, 4d v 4o on each team, you decide to use a sniper on def, and the nme is using 4 concing offy. i know this wouldn't actually happen, but for the purposes of this example imagine that our sniper does pretty well and kills one of the nme offy over and over every time he sticks his head out of the spawn (it takes about 4 seconds for a decent scout to spawn and get to conc platform, so it's possible). in a 30 minute match our sniper would therefore get 450 kills, and so some might think he's doing a pretty damn good job for his team. the problem is that all the sniper has actually done is completely remove himself and one nme offy from the game, which means that effectively the sniper's team now has 3d v 3o. reducing the numbers like this almost always greatly favours the offy (anyone who has pld a lot of 2v2s or 3v3s will know how many more caps you tend to get) because def simply don't have enough ppl to hold and make use of the good def positions, and big gaps appear between the layers of the defence that give the offy the space and time to pause and regroup before attacking the backline defence on their own terms. basically it's all v bad news for the defence. add to this the fact that in reality a sniper probably won't do quite this well, and you can see why using a sniper in CTF clanplay is certainly not ftw D: ofc in practice it's much more complex than this regarding who the sniper kills and where, but this example hopefully gets the basic point across.

the only valid use of a sniper on def in CTF clanplay is if there is a specific nme offy that you need to take out each run, and you are therefore happy to sacrifice one of your defenders in order to do this (e.g. your def is being taken apart by one particular offy such as a spy, a heavier class, one rly good player, or there's a location that when an offy gets there they pose a big threat [e.g. highflag in tfc], etc). snipers on offy in CTF clanplay can ofc occassionally be useful for making a breakthrough too (such as removing an SG), but i don't think anyone is denying that.


snipers on public servers: they don't annoy me at all, but i can see why ppl who aren't good enough to evade them might get a bit pissed sometimes. i think it's a bit sad that some snipers really do think they pwn, when in fact they are just making their team loose big time, and more importantly they are missing out on the stuff that makes FF so cool. nm, their loss. don't get me wrong, i like to do a bit of sniping now and then too, but when i do i'm fully aware i'm not doing too much to help my team win.


jiggles: if a mapper puts a respawn close to a def position, it's because he's trying to encourage the offy to pass that defender rather than just dm him. if they want to attack via that way, this greatly encourages the faster non-dm classes on offy (if you want your team to actually win rather than just think you pwn cos you take down the frontline def 100 times but never cap lol), and creates the awesome fast gameplay some of FF's maps have. offy also usually have choices of which way they take the flag, or even just how they attack as a team, that will change the proximity of the def to resups/respawns, which massively changes the effectiveness of them using a dm offy. ofc it's up to mappers to use this well to make a map that plays as they want it to, but my point is that the careful and balanced placement of resups/respawns close to certain def positions (and flag routes) is an essential tool for creating the fast non-dm orientated offy gameplay that some ppl (me) love!


summary: FF pwns and will continue to get btr fast. imo sniper could use a big rethink to make him more of a valid choice for clanplay (but this is not breaking news, and ppl have been thinking about this for a while so i'm sure something sweet will come up in due course). if development and tweaking continues at this rate, FF will be v awesome v soon.