why removed infection spreading?

[Saint Thoth]

The only time infections are usefull is when they occur in crucial points of the map.

2fort for example.

Damn nubs… 2Fort is a perfect example of a map with the sweet-spot infection points where infection becomes an absolutely critical strategy. Sniper nests: snipers hang on the sniper nest, and beneath it, both of which are primary exits to the base - and they are the primary danger when crossing the NML bridge. The enemy scouts and medics conc out from the sniper nest, and the heavier classes make their way out the bottom. Infect a sniper on your way in, and you effectively either clog a primary exit to the base, risk infection of everyone exiting (ie. everyone who might get your flag), as well as any enemy snipers, who so oft run into one another while zoomed in, oblivious to their surroundings. I’ve seen freaking hardened clan pro snipers try to hold their position and wind up infecting exiting scouts that otherwise would have easily bypassed defenses and grabbed the flag. …and if said hardened sniper decided to dive into traffic to suicide? Guess what, that puts him out for several seconds longer than the standard shot to the head, and those seconds are crucial to getting your team across NML. Infecting snipers, as a result, is a key tactic on any 2fort scrim. Take away the infection spreading - and it’s not even as effective as simply shooting them, they’ve no reason to move, or even kill themselves, and the team has no reason to take the time to work around them.

Again, on Dustbowl, Cornfield, and Push, I’ve seen entire defenses and even offensive waves destroyed with one well placed infection. On Push it was a pretty regular occurrence, in FF 1.0, for both sides to wind up stalemated until one pulled the medic card. With all the bottlenecks in there, it was very easy to cause a few hunker-downs to infect one another - and they’d try to hold their positions until they were so weak that the rest of your team broke through like they were paper maché. You likely wouldn’t get any frags out of it - but your team would win as a direct result. It got to be so common, that teams would call for it, and for the obvious counter - which got to be real interesting, when it turned into a match between the two medics.

Infection spreading has always been a key strategy, for those with any knowledge on of its use, and a key aspect of battle to be on the watch out, for those aware of the damage it can do. Many a game has been turned around by one determined medic, and an opposing team that lacked the coherency to put up a defense against him, and got what they deserved.

you totally have to post a link to that article!

http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...52004020071020
Also, with video, for the short attention spanned: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...3755544&page=1
For those who believe anything not on Fox News is a liberal lie:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,304016,00.html
(and yes, I’ve spent too much time one too many usernet political debates - although never debated that particular closet..)

[Private_Joker]

Originally Posted by Skanky Butterpuss

havent you realized that the people on this forum will argue about ANYTHING?

I disagree.

-Joker

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by Saint Thoth

Damn nubs… 2Fort is a perfect example of a map with the sweet-spot infection points where infection becomes an absolutely critical strategy. Sniper nests: snipers hang on the sniper nest, and beneath it, both of which are primary exits to the base - and they are the primary danger when crossing the NML bridge. The enemy scouts and medics conc out from the sniper nest, and the heavier classes make their way out the bottom. Infect a sniper on your way in, and you effectively either clog a primary exit to the base, risk infection of everyone exiting (ie. everyone who might get your flag), as well as any enemy snipers, who so oft run into one another while zoomed in, oblivious to their surroundings. I’ve seen freaking hardened clan pro snipers try to hold their position and wind up infecting exiting scouts that otherwise would have easily bypassed defenses and grabbed the flag. …and if said hardened sniper decided to dive into traffic to suicide? Guess what, that puts him out for several seconds longer than the standard shot to the head, and those seconds are crucial to getting your team across NML. Infecting snipers, as a result, is a key tactic on any 2fort scrim. Take away the infection spreading - and it’s not even as effective as simply shooting them, they’ve no reason to move, or even kill themselves, and the team has no reason to take the time to work around them.

Okay then, by your logic in this scenario, do you honestly think the skill vs reward is just? For 1 simple medic all he has to do is conc to the enemy's battlements and place 1 infection on 1 guy from any angle, and run. So if what you say is true that 1 infection could ultimately destroy the enemy's offense, don't you think it should be nerfed? That's far too powerfull of an ability for 1 click of a button. Not to mention the fact he has unlimited uses of this, and he can get back to the enemy's battlements in less than 10 seconds.

There's no skill involved in any of that I stated above. Except that the medic needs to know how to conc, and press his attack button. It's not even a strategy! Well I guess it is a strategy, but one anyone can do and is known to everyone.

Reward vs Skill defeats your arguement here.

Cheers,
Hammock

[Saint Thoth]

If yer going to nerf things on the basis that one-click can turn a game around, you gotta remove MIRV's and detpacks as well.

Unlike MIRV's and detpacks, medics are much easier to counter. Get another medic.

This is a tactical game, it's not all about reward to skill, it's about tactics and counter tactics. Otherwise you should just rip all the classes and grenades out (engineers, pryos, etc, have GOT to go - not to mention the teams and flags), and just hand out shotguns or sniper rifles, and make it DM. Then you have your perfect skill to reward ratio.

[mervaka]

i think if infection spreading were ever to be reimplemented, it could only spread from people directly infected from the medic, and people infected were not allowed to heal themselves unless from a medic (in which case they're cured), so walking over health packs would do nothing. also, spawns would have to be non spread zones.

[Saint Thoth]

The inability to resupply while infected, and inability to infect within the resupply zone (for nubs that can't figure that out) is not a bad idea either. It'd actually add to the medic/countermedic urgency, rather than take away from it (or eliminate it, as we currently have). That'd end the mythical llama problem without removing gameplay aspects.

There was some discussion earlier about the resupply zone entity being bugged in that regard (apparently things that aren't supposed to be happening in resupplies still are - grenades blowing up, and such.) Still, the inability to pick up med-kits alone would be common knowledge right quick, and that alone would make peeps think twice, and would be entirely feasible by reading the player infection status in the medkit code.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by Saint Thoth

If yer going to nerf things on the basis that one-click can turn a game around, you gotta remove MIRV's and detpacks as well.

Unlike MIRV's and detpacks, medics are much easier to counter. Get another medic.

This is a tactical game, it's not all about reward to skill, it's about tactics and counter tactics. Otherwise you should just rip all the classes and grenades out (engineers, pryos, etc, have GOT to go - not to mention the teams and flags), and just hand out shotguns or sniper rifles, and make it DM. Then you have your perfect skill to reward ratio.

I'm sorry unless something's changed in the game, I'm pretty sure a demo man is only going to be able to have 2 mirvs at the most in the enemy's base. And 1 detpack he needs 10 seconds of free time to place in a populated area (if it's going to be any bit effective) which opens many opportunities to counter. I've killed hundreds of demos trying to lay a detpack down. And once the spam of the mirvs dies down after 5 seconds I come out from around my corner and get back into position.

Also the demoman has to be present for any one of these things to happen. He needs to be there to lay the detpack, he needs to be there to throw his two mirvs, he needs to try and make them as effective as possible.

The spread of infection doesn't even require the medic to be present. Infact the medic could die 10 times over and the infection could still be spreading.

How can you possibley compare this to a 1 time use gernade?

Infact I'm pretty sure every class's gernades are quite limited in the enemy's base.

As a medic I normally have 2, unless I get lucky and get a nade pack before I leave my base. Then I'll have 4. Since two gernades on their own can't even take out a level 3 sg I'm not sure why you're trying to compare gernades (a limited tool) to a medpack which has unlimited uses, and is in the hands of a class that can get to the enemy's base within seconds with no loss of life.

Cheers,
Hammock

[Saint Thoth]

*sigh* You don't even know what detpaks are for do you?

It's true they aren't a lot of use in the 2fort example... But do you realize what they do on well? Demoman blows a whole in your sewer, an suddenly enemy traffic in and out of the flag room doubles. Demoman doesn't even have to be alive, and just doubled the chances of his team scoring every run, more than doubled his team‘s chances of winning - and to think, he doesn't even get a frag for it. (Albiet, probably gets some fortress points - because unlike TFC, FF goes out of its way to reward you for tactics - not just skill.) One click *poof* game totally turned around - no need to even aim.

Granted, dragging back to topic, even TFC gave you frags for healing the plague, which wracked up frags quite quickly for the counter medic, while the offensive medic got robbed of all of his.

I'm comparing it to grenades because you seem to feel the skill to reward ratio must be absolute. Do you know the word "Spam?" - you do realize around 90% of grenade kills are caused by randomly tossed grenades, made by people who never even see their opponent? (Both on the sending and receiving end?) You do realize this can be done virtually limitlessly from any spawn, or, as on dustbowl, any team willing to cycle grenades?

Tactics are part of the game, if you don't understand that, or don't want it to be that way - please go play TF2. I don't need that philosophy infecting this mod too, and there’s no counter medic for that particular disease.

PS. And yes 2 grenades will take out a level 3 sg, with ease. 1 grenade and a few shotgun shell or nailgun darts will take out a level 3 sg, but I won't go into the issues with that here.

[mervaka]

Originally Posted by Saint Thoth

you do realize around 90% of grenade kills are caused by randomly tossed grenades, made by people who never even see their opponent?

depends where you play. in my case, 90% of the grenades i see are carefully timed grenades primed in the middle of a DM fight.

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by mervaka

i think if infection spreading were ever to be reimplemented, it could only spread from people directly infected from the medic, and people infected were not allowed to heal themselves unless from a medic (in which case they're cured), so walking over health packs would do nothing. also, spawns would have to be non spread zones.

Hmmm....the only part of that I'm not sure about supporting is the "spread only from those directly infected by the medic".....but the rest I support fully, and in earnest!

The part I'm not so sure about....I'd at least give a chance and see how it plays out(meaning....let's try it and test it!!).

Hey, I hate as much as anyone else on here, being infected by an assbag running into spawn for health...beit a noob, or a stat-whore. But I'm not wanting to compromise the ability just because one part about it has the potential to annoy me. Hell, like I said before....it's easy enough to counter........ play a medic yourself.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by Saint Thoth

*sigh* You don't even know what detpaks are for do you?

It's true they aren't a lot of use in the 2fort example... But do you realize what they do on well? Demoman blows a whole in your sewer, an suddenly enemy traffic in and out of the flag room doubles. Demoman doesn't even have to be alive, and just doubled the chances of his team scoring every run, more than doubled his team‘s chances of winning - and to think, he doesn't even get a frag for it. (Albiet, probably gets some fortress points - because unlike TFC, FF goes out of its way to reward you for tactics - not just skill.) One click *poof* game totally turned around - no need to even aim.

Granted, dragging back to topic, even TFC gave you frags for healing the plague, which wracked up frags quite quickly for the counter medic, while the offensive medic got robbed of all of his.

I'm comparing it to grenades because you seem to feel the skill to reward ratio must be absolute. Do you know the word "Spam?" - you do realize around 90% of grenade kills are caused by randomly tossed grenades, made by people who never even see their opponent? (Both on the sending and receiving end?) You do realize this can be done virtually limitlessly from any spawn, or, as on dustbowl, any team willing to cycle grenades?

Tactics are part of the game, if you don't understand that, or don't want it to be that way - please go play TF2. I don't need that philosophy infecting this mod too, and there’s no counter medic for that particular disease.

PS. And yes 2 grenades will take out a level 3 sg, with ease. 1 grenade and a few shotgun shell or nailgun darts will take out a level 3 sg, but I won't go into the issues with that here.

The Well was designed for the grate to be blown. That is a very isolated case, with the very thought behind the demo needing to blow that grate. The fact it needs to be blown allows the defense a chance to defend against it. In TFC some times an entire team's defense is outside defending it, and the FD stopping any enemy from getting in. Think of it as a 1 time security button, nothing else. The map designers could have made it wide open permanently and your single case of this detpack use would be nulled.

The demo could do this in TFC for crossover2, and the well.

Nades being spammed are still limited. You either take a death, take a suicide, or wait what is it? 30 seconds to a minute? for a nade pack. Either way the simple act of dispensing all your gernades does not give you an unlimited source of it. Not to mention spam is generally done by the defensive team (I said generally I know O can do it too but it's not as effective since once they spam they have to die and run back to do it again).

That's beside the point anyways, spam is still a product of someone using the limited resources on him. Someone can't spam the enemy's base with a mirv, and then die, but keep having that mirv explode over and over and over again. No they have to run back and throw it again.

I completely understand tactics for this game. And I understand infection spreading was a tactic used by mosquitoes nothing more. It was a skillless tactic where you depend completely on someone else's misfortune. At no point can I ever see someone claiming "They're leet" because an infection spread to someone else, without having the server laugh at him.

People who relied on this "tactic" were useless by any means, infections rarely kill people before something or someone else kills them off. It was an annoyance rather than game effecting.

You know my tactics? I coordinate with my fellow offensive runners, to power through one side of the defense. Then I communicate to them where I left the flag. Even if my Offensive line up and I were shutdown 100% of the time, we still would have exhibited more skill than the guy infecting and running in hopes his infections spread (no where near the flag might I add)

Cheers,
Hammock

[Paft]

^

THE END.

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by Hammock

The Well was designed for the grate to be blown. That is a very isolated case, with the very thought behind the demo needing to blow that grate. The fact it needs to be blown allows the defense a chance to defend against it. In TFC some times an entire team's defense is outside defending it, and the FD stopping any enemy from getting in. Think of it as a 1 time security button, nothing else. The map designers could have made it wide open permanently and your single case of this detpack use would be nulled.

The demo could do this in TFC for crossover2, and the well.

Nades being spammed are still limited. You either take a death, take a suicide, or wait what is it? 30 seconds to a minute? for a nade pack. Either way the simple act of dispensing all your gernades does not give you an unlimited source of it. Not to mention spam is generally done by the defensive team (I said generally I know O can do it too but it's not as effective since once they spam they have to die and run back to do it again).

That's beside the point anyways, spam is still a product of someone using the limited resources on him. Someone can't spam the enemy's base with a mirv, and then die, but keep having that mirv explode over and over and over again. No they have to run back and throw it again.

I completely understand tactics for this game. And I understand infection spreading was a tactic used by mosquitoes nothing more. It was a skillless tactic where you depend completely on someone else's misfortune. At no point can I ever see someone claiming "They're leet" because an infection spread to someone else, without having the server laugh at him.

People who relied on this "tactic" were useless by any means, infections rarely kill people before something or someone else kills them off. It was an annoyance rather than game effecting.

You know my tactics? I coordinate with my fellow offensive runners, to power through one side of the defense. Then I communicate to them where I left the flag. Even if my Offensive line up and I were shutdown 100% of the time, we still would have exhibited more skill than the guy infecting and running in hopes his infections spread (no where near the flag might I add)

Cheers,
Hammock

Trying to coordinate O on a pubserver is like trying to teach a pig to sing.....
It won't work, and it annoys the pig.

[Saint Thoth]

You know my tactics? I coordinate with my fellow offensive runners, to power through one side of the defense. Then I communicate to them where I left the flag. Even if my Offensive line up and I were shutdown 100% of the time, we still would have exhibited more skill than the guy infecting and running in hopes his infections spread (no where near the flag might I add)

Well jeeze, if I’m playing TFC, go and drop that flag on the bridge of 2fort, and it winds up being surrounded by the enemy team’s HWG’s, soldiers, and snipers, I sure as hell hope we’d have a medic with enough sense to infect one of those HWG’s and conc him into the soldier before he dies, so we can move in and clean up five seconds later. I sure as hell hope you weren’t the medic on my team, cuz apparently you’d refuse to do it on the basis that “it isn’t skilled enough”. I assume you never want any engineers on your team either. God forbid those no-skill bastards ever build those automated turrets. I suppose dropping a pair of MIRVs on the group would involve considerably less skill and be about as effective.

Your sole argument against infecting is that it doesn’t involve enough skill for you. Tough - huge sections of this game don’t involve any skill at all (medics at least have to choose who to tag for optimal infection spreading, and move in and out of melee range, preferably without dieing - and for good spread - conc him into another key target - much more skill than a lot of the stuff I've mentioned above). Even with everything they stripped out of TF2, they didn’t remove all the skill-free options.

You don’t need TFC, or classes, to report drop flag locations and shove offense down an enemy’s throat, organized or otherwise - any CTF will do for that. TF rises above that with the array of strategies you can use against them aren’t limited to brute force, nor are they limited to a single methodology. You can use the infection tactic, high explosives, or any number of other tactics depending on the class array your team has chosen. Remove enough strategies, and yes, yer back to plain, basic CTF, and once again, you’ve no reason to have a mod.

depends where you play. in my case, 90% of the grenades i see are carefully timed grenades primed in the middle of a DM fight.

Obviously, you’ve never played Dustbowl… Wait… What mod are you playing - 24/7 mulch? But, yes, suppressive spam is also a perfectly legitimate and skilless tactic that grieves far more players, far more regularly, than team infecting ever has. Long may it reign -- or rain, as the case maybe.

[GhOsT]

I must have been playing on the wrong servers in my 10 years of playing fortress games. I've never seen such a display of coordinated and tactical use of infection spreading that is being portreyed in this thread. That includes pubs and clan matches. Pubs usually resulted in the medic who just ran around the enemy base on 2fort infecting anything he could for 30 minutes without ever seeing the basement. In matches a medic might infect a defender as a last ditch effort if he is about to die. To be honest I can probably count how many times I've been infected in all of the TFC matches I've played without taking off my shoes (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration but not far from the truth)

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by GhOsT

I must have been playing on the wrong servers in my 10 years of playing fortress games. I've never seen such a display of coordinated and tactical use of infection spreading that is being portreyed in this thread. That includes pubs and clan matches. Pubs usually resulted in the medic who just ran around the enemy base on 2fort infecting anything he could for 30 minutes without ever seeing the basement. In matches a medic might infect a defender as a last ditch effort if he is about to die. To be honest I can probably count how many times I've been infected in all of the TFC matches I've played without taking off my shoes (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration but not far from the truth)

Thank you, yeesh, atleast someone else understands lol. This guy keeps using such isolated cases for his arguements. The grate being blown in the well, and dustbowl. Dustbowl is one type of map, it has a completely different set of rules and tactics.

I'm almost positive everyone during this conversation was picturing TFC's 2fort. Where the medic did nothing but conc to the enemy battlements, infect one sniper, run off, run around, try and get another guy, run back upstairs infect another guy.

At no point was he strategically infecting certain guys, he pulls the medpack out and infects anyone he can.

Using dustbowl in this arguement is like saying, it's not fair that only medics and scouts can conc in concmaps, sollies and hw's should be able to conc too.

Cheers,
Hammock

[Iggy]

it's not fair that only medics and scouts can conc in concmaps, sollies and hw's should be able to conc too.

You do know, that HWs are far too heavy to effectively complete a conc-map, right?

[Saint Thoth]

Used to admin 5 separate servers back in the day, and I saw good medics turn games around thousands of times. Only noob medics run around infecting everyone they can – and you don’t see those very often. Good medics nail one or two key guys on their way to the flag. (Not that noob medics aren’t a threat if you don’t bother to do anything about them.)

Jigglypuff, and MyEvilPlans were absolutely feared on TFC servers back in the day. Every player knew when these guys showed up half the team was going to be infected in no time, and these guys never infected more than one or two players in a pass – just infected the ones clogging the right exits. Took part of plenty of scrims in which I saw the same thing, and I’ve seen clans actually switch medics on the basis that the current one didn’t know how to infect proper.

I’ve also seen a few dozen games turned around by proper medics in FF 1.0. It’s not a few isolated cases – it was the only way to turn around Push stalemates in a hurry, and players would request it regularly. Again, saw it all the time in Dustbowl and Cornfield as well – more often defeating an entire offensive wave by infecting a slower moving class at a choke point, and forcing him to stay there for a second or two by dancing with him. Any map with chokepoints or a limited number narrow base exits will do for the strategy, that covers at least half of them.

If anything, not only should infection be brought back – it should be intensified, in ye old TFC it was harder to avoid, as there was no handy green aura around players; you had to look at a player for a second or two to realize they were infected, and in the heat of battle, one didn’t have time for this. FF infection should have a 5’-10’ radius of green aura around players that you have to avoid to provide the area denial that infection was intended to.

As such, the ideas I like so far are:
- Don’t allow players to pick up medpacks while infected (takes care of infected spawn campers)
- Increase infection radius / sprite effect
- Add a cvar option to switch it off

[greenday5494]

increase radius? Hell no.

[Desyphur]

^ agree