are you still playing FF?

[Crazycarl]

You guys can tell the public time and time again that the Engineer is being worked on, but by what fucking standard?

If the class in beta is different from the current release, then from the perspective of an outsider, it's being worked on. I think most people realize that we are part-time volunteers and "working on it" doesn't mean "working on it every day".

I'm sorry if you got bored, but that's why we've brought on another coder. If the public gets bored, I don't know, maybe y'all can find other sites to look at on the internet. Or play the game. Or do any number of things to keep yourselves occupied.

It's not for you to decide what info gets released and what doesn't. You blurting stuff out when you're having a tantrum is not the best way to disseminate information. If we had a PR guy who knew how best to release information in a constructive way and was willing to do the research and writing involved, we could put out a lot more, imo.

[episkopos]

Originally Posted by Crazycarl

It's not for you to decide what info gets released and what doesn't. You blurting stuff out when you're having a tantrum is not the best way to disseminate information. If we had a PR guy who knew how best to release information in a constructive way and was willing to do the research and writing involved, we could put out a lot more, imo.

I'm no professional, but I'd happily volunteer to write some blog posts if needed. I think it would probably be best to recruit maybe 2-3 people though, so as to spread the workload while maintaining semi-regular updates.

[JackBauer]

I have been unable to play FF for a while now, but want to start again soon.

consider this thread reloaded.

how many are still playing?

[Private_Joker]

Red Lobster, checking in



-Joker

[WiFiDi]

i think the sad reality is the devs suffer from being lazy. i hate to say it but the lack of updates are only a small tip of the iceberg.

[FreaK367]

I'm still active, only on public servers though, usually Old Timers. I don't do the whole pickup scene, too many rules and expectations on how you should play a certain class. I prefer to do my own thing because it usually works.

I sometimes find myself wanting to quit because the public community don't always play the gamemode. Like earlier, it was 9 v 9 CTF on DropDown, and I was the only true attacker actively going for the flag. Which wouldn't be too bad if the rest of the team were defending, but we had 0 defense, the enemy team were capping at will with random classes like Pyro. The rest of my team were either Sniping or just going into the enemy base and having firefights with the first line of defense.

It drives me mad, because although I don't consider myself a serious person, when playing CTF I enjoy the competition, and I like it when players choose a certain role, on attack or defense. So we can work as a proper team.

I end up calling the team on it, asking for some more defense usually, and then people get pissy at me for asking for some proper teamwork towards the gamemode objective. And it sometimes makes me ragequit because I cannot play in an environment that has no competition, people are just DMing and focussing all of their energy on killing a single person or something. I seem to be one of the few people who enjoys winning and completing the objectives, and enjoys working together to establish a defensive and offensive force that can challenge the enemy team.

I either ragequit, or just play Sniper, that is my stress relief class, I generally couldn't care less what team wins when I am playing sniper, because I can have fun with it. Usually a lack of teamwork makes me play sniper.

I'm hoping that I have more positive experiences in the future with competition, otherwise I may quit.

[NeonLight]

There's your problem. You're are stuck between pub play and competitive. Though why don't you start your own clan and do non traditional strats (of course within the overall league class rules) when it starts back up. No one is stopping you there. There is a way this game is meant to be played and HWGuy offense is not part of it.

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by WiFiDi

i think the sad reality is the devs suffer from being lazy. i hate to say it but the lack of updates are only a small tip of the iceberg.

I think I'm the only truly lazy one.

But, we've sort of screwed ourselves in terms of patching in that we've made it much more difficult and tedious than it really should be over the past few patches. On a positive note, we really are not far off from being able to test RCs for 2.42 and I have some post-patch things lined up that I think everyone will be able to enjoy.

[BinaryLife]

I have started again recently and am happy to find the time.

I find a lot of new people coming in an playing. I try to help them when they need it th best i can, and the community I'm with seems pretty good as well. However, I've also noticed a large portion people who really over enforce clan style gaming on pub servers. I've always thought a pub server was just a place to screw around and have fun. Not get yelled at by other players for the class you've chose and how you're playing it. If that's how you have fun then who cares if it's not the best strategy for everyone else. You're playing in a non structured, pub game.

I remember in TFC you could block out classes and put class limits in on the server side. I never see that when I play. I just pick pyro, kill two soldiers, grab a flag and get bitched at for not helping my team. If it were intended to be a clan style play then sure, but ultimately either the server should be locked so that only clan members can play, or classes should be locked. It can be annoying if you've played a while to be told to change classes because then you have to decide whether you want to fight about it, or just deal and play.

Imagine if you're new as well. You just want to play and suddenly people start barking these annoying rules at you about the classes that are fun are the ones that no one plays because that's the rules.

[Majesty]

I've always thought a pub server was just a place to screw around and have fun. Not get yelled at by other players for the class you've chose and how you're playing it.

Gonna happen no matter what. This happened in TF2 many times "ugh we have 4 spys/snipers/insert excuse here". People gonna blame their failures on anything they can, rather than explain and teach

[FreaK367]

Personally, I don't mind what class plays what position, i wouldn't bark at someone for attacking as an Engineer or Pyro or anything, because one time or other I've done it because it gives me an advantage over playing a scout or medic.

On Aardvark for example, I enjoy attacking as Sniper when the enemy team are very defensive, happened earlier on OT, I snuck underground and came out of the rat hole, and managed to take out 2 SG's, a dispenser, 2 Engineers a Demoman and a Soldier. All within about 30 seconds from my first shot (headshots save time). Took out their entire defense, leaving room for the Scouts on my team to get the flag and get out of there. Yet sniper is considered a defensive class and often enough people have barked at me for doing that. Because it's so effective... And playing an offensive engineer against a team that has demomen piping key points, is just as effective, an EMP takes out their best weapon, and uses it against their team.

You need to do what you can to break down the enemy defense, not only that, but I have capped the flag many times as a Sniper and Engineer, because I am able to break them down and get through.


One thing that annoys me though.. is when someone dedicates 100% of their effort into killing a single person, there's many people who will get killed by a sniper, then decide to ONLY kill that sniper every time they respawn. Often going Soldier and grenade/rocket jumping to the sniper just to kill them *cough* MATT *cough*. Or going spy and camping at certain locations to try and kill a single person. Doing hardly anything for their team.

[NeonLight]

Originally Posted by FreaK367

Personally, I don't mind what class plays what position, i wouldn't bark at someone for attacking as an Engineer or Pyro or anything, because one time or other I've done it because it gives me an advantage over playing a scout or medic.

I completely agree with you, and I really only played pickups with minimum pub play. Most players just can't accept it as a norm though. They would prefer speed. There are certain maps where some players use offensive demo or even engy (aka monkey) as the rush distance isn't that far especially with a jump pad.

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by FreaK367

Personally, I don't mind what class plays what position, i wouldn't bark at someone for attacking as an Engineer or Pyro or anything, because one time or other I've done it because it gives me an advantage over playing a scout or medic.

I agree with your position, but I can also understand the reason for pickup players wanting to control what class you play. I've bolded the key word in your post. People that regularly play pickups mostly care about whatever gives the team an advantage over the other team, not an individual over another individual. If playing engi or pyro nets you a few extra kills but slows down the team's rate of captures by 50%, you've not given anyone but yourself an advantage. So, it seems natural that someone that cares about the score more than K:D ratio would want you to play a class that helps increase the team's score.

Also, as NeoN said, O demos and engis do get played in pickups, but it's not solely up to the whim of the individual, but rather it gets played because it gives the team an advantage on a specific map or because it is being played by a specific player (like Drakonal playing spy, for example; he rarely gets told to play another class because he plays spy so well that he is a benefit to the team while using a class that is usually not).

So, mostly, I think your gripe is with the competitiveness of pickup games, not the "rules." The "rules" (there are actually very few rules) are a very direct result of the competitiveness itself. Once you start caring about the score of the match alone, you quickly realize what works and what doesn't (although I can't say people are always correct about what works and what doesn't). As to why pickup games are so competitive, I don't have an answer. Just the people that happen to be playing, I guess. Personally, I do not care about winning or losing, but I always at least try to win, because I think trying to win is fun.

[FreaK367]

Whenever I do play an odd offensive class, it does benefit the team, like I said with my offensive sniper, I can ruin an entire defensive force in under a minute on some maps, which lets the scouts on my team get a couple of caps before the SG's are replaced and such. And often when playing Engineer, I use my EMP's to blow up pipes, and I time it so scouts can use the time I've bought them. And, I always have an SG already set up in defense and a Dispenser ready to be used as a weapon if the flag is touched.

I said earlier I like to win, and I'm competitive, so everything I do in matches, I do because it helps us win, I play a generic yard sniper when we have no chance of winning. Any other time than that though I'm doing everything I can to give us victory. And a lot of the time I do play Scout.

I played a pickup and instantly didn't like it, I was the engineer, and I was running around killing everyone in the flag room, using grenades etc... (with my fully upgraded SG helping) nobody could get anywhere near the flag. Yet I was getting moaned at by multiple people, because they expected me to sit behind my SG and do nothing else... just let the SG take care of enemies and keep it alive. Yet when I did that, the enemy team capped more times than when I was actively owning them.

I hated that everyone wanted me to play engineer in a certain way, when I had proven that doing my own thing meant a lot more dead enemies and less flag capping. SG's are easy to beat if you're a good scout, but it was much harder when I was helping alongside my SG.

That is what has made me deny offers of a pickup for the past year or so.

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by FreaK367

I played a pickup and instantly didn't like it, I was the engineer, and I was running around killing everyone in the flag room, using grenades etc... (with my fully upgraded SG helping) nobody could get anywhere near the flag. Yet I was getting moaned at by multiple people, because they expected me to sit behind my SG and do nothing else... just let the SG take care of enemies and keep it alive. Yet when I did that, the enemy team capped more times than when I was actively owning them.

I hated that everyone wanted me to play engineer in a certain way, when I had proven that doing my own thing meant a lot more dead enemies and less flag capping. SG's are easy to beat if you're a good scout, but it was much harder when I was helping alongside my SG.

That is what has made me deny offers of a pickup for the past year or so.

That's odd, because I play engineer as my main class and you basically described how I play.

[FreaK367]

Maybe it was just a bad experience, but it was a Quakenet pickup that zE invited me to I believe, and I had no experience of pickups, so I played how I like to play. And they didn't like it.

But it only takes one bad experience to put someone off something, so the pickup community should probably be more accepting of new people to pickups.

That goes for the public community in general too, although I've found that with the public community, most of the time someone is new others try to help them and give advice as do I. I've been trying to teach everyone I can to do my little tricks on DropDown, concing up from the bottom to get the flag, and dropping down then concing back up after touching the flag, for example. I don't see very many people doing those techniques, mainly me, Panda and a few others. They are really effective though.

I also try to teach newer people how to Snipe efficiently, I don't really take time to aim when sniping, yet I see others taking lots of time picking a shot, which just ends up me killing them, I reflex snipe most of the time, taking less than a second to take a shot, which is a great technique to hit concing scouts and fast moving enemies. I want to create an army of snipers that only need to see half a second of an enemy to turn them into giblets , then I'll create a specialised match, with 8 of my reflex snipers vs 8 Scouts. Mwuahahaha.

But yeah, the public community is fairly decent.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by FreaK367

I'm still active, only on public servers though, usually Old Timers. I don't do the whole pickup scene, too many rules and expectations on how you should play a certain class. I prefer to do my own thing because it usually works.

I sometimes find myself wanting to quit because the public community don't always play the gamemode. Like earlier, it was 9 v 9 CTF on DropDown, and I was the only true attacker actively going for the flag. Which wouldn't be too bad if the rest of the team were defending, but we had 0 defense, the enemy team were capping at will with random classes like Pyro. The rest of my team were either Sniping or just going into the enemy base and having firefights with the first line of defense.

It drives me mad, because although I don't consider myself a serious person, when playing CTF I enjoy the competition, and I like it when players choose a certain role, on attack or defense. So we can work as a proper team.

I end up calling the team on it, asking for some more defense usually, and then people get pissy at me for asking for some proper teamwork towards the gamemode objective. And it sometimes makes me ragequit because I cannot play in an environment that has no competition, people are just DMing and focussing all of their energy on killing a single person or something. I seem to be one of the few people who enjoys winning and completing the objectives, and enjoys working together to establish a defensive and offensive force that can challenge the enemy team.

I either ragequit, or just play Sniper, that is my stress relief class, I generally couldn't care less what team wins when I am playing sniper, because I can have fun with it. Usually a lack of teamwork makes me play sniper.

I'm hoping that I have more positive experiences in the future with competition, otherwise I may quit.

Lol, I have to paraphrase this.

I don't do pickups, too many rules and expectations on how to play a class

I sometimes find myself wanting to quit because on pubs people don't conform to the game play.

I'm competitive I enjoy competition, I ask pubbers to conform to the standard game play, and then people get pissed off at me.

So I either rage quit, or troll with a class that typically doesn't conform to game play.


I'm sorry dude I've read the rest of your posts as well, and honestly I think you''re full of Bullshit. People got mad at you for playing the engy the way you do? Dominating killing everything in the flag room with your sg never going down, roaming around and making advanced kills. I call pure bullshit. Nobody is going to bitch at you if you're owning like you said you were. Squeek has already said he plays similarily. Except for one difference, we KNOW he doesn't suck at what he does, he's considered one of the best engies.

Your reference is a single pickup? You got bitched at for owning? That's soo laughable, I'm going to just spittball here, but I'm going to guess you weren't exactly as great as you thought you were (coming from "owning pubbers"), got dominated in a game, got bitched at for sucking (not for your play style).

I used to play pickups all the time, but have almost completely stopped because of all the drama bullshit, not because I don't enjoy competitive game play.

And you yourself have admitted you mainly only play in OT's, and no offense to them as they are a more casual server, but they do not offer any real competition as like you stated, they do what they want instead of caring about the game play.

Not to mention most of the more advanced skilled players are either banned from OT's or don't play there, focusing more on pickups.

Even though the talos server isn't as active as it used to be, it would still offer far stronger competition for you, I log on once in awhile, but usually everytime I do play it's a pretty intense game, lots of fast paced action you probably haven't even experienced yet.

Pub stomping casual players gives no indication of how good you are, and surely doesn't test your own skills.

In summary, it's not pickups you dislike it's the elitism of the players in it you dislike. But you can't have one without the other, so you're stuck in a casual environment refusing to suck it up and deal with more advanced players. Yes they have rules on how to play classes, but the rules are there because they already know what works and what doesn't, and your deviation from how those classes are played only HURTS the team you're on in a pickup, unlike a pub where "Nobody cares what happens".

So continue to play on the pubs, play the classes you want to play where to play how to play, because it doesn't matter, come to a pickup and be prepared to actually play efficiently, and play to win.

[Drakonal]

Originally Posted by FreaK367

Whenever I do play an odd offensive class, it does benefit the team, like I said with my offensive sniper, I can ruin an entire defensive force in under a minute on some maps, which lets the scouts on my team get a couple of caps before the SG's are replaced and such. And often when playing Engineer, I use my EMP's to blow up pipes, and I time it so scouts can use the time I've bought them. And, I always have an SG already set up in defense and a Dispenser ready to be used as a weapon if the flag is touched.

I said earlier I like to win, and I'm competitive, so everything I do in matches, I do because it helps us win, I play a generic yard sniper when we have no chance of winning. Any other time than that though I'm doing everything I can to give us victory. And a lot of the time I do play Scout.

I played a pickup and instantly didn't like it, I was the engineer, and I was running around killing everyone in the flag room, using grenades etc... (with my fully upgraded SG helping) nobody could get anywhere near the flag. Yet I was getting moaned at by multiple people, because they expected me to sit behind my SG and do nothing else... just let the SG take care of enemies and keep it alive. Yet when I did that, the enemy team capped more times than when I was actively owning them.

I hated that everyone wanted me to play engineer in a certain way, when I had proven that doing my own thing meant a lot more dead enemies and less flag capping. SG's are easy to beat if you're a good scout, but it was much harder when I was helping alongside my SG.

That is what has made me deny offers of a pickup for the past year or so.

Certain pickups you play have certain rules, and rules are different on quaknet then on gamesurge for example: All of the quaknet admins agreed on no snipers or pyros in a pickup no matter what.


I play spy in pickups on offense almost 100% of the time, and even though i play spy well that hasn't stopped certain people at certain times from bitching about it. If we aren't winning for example or if we are all playing like shit i automatically get blamed for losing because i'm playing spy (although not as much these days). Weather your in a pub or in a pickup people are going to bitch about whatever they think is causing them to lose but the nice thing about it is you can tell them to go fuck them selves. Maybe not so much if your trying to play sniper or pyro in a pickup because like i said in quaknet for example that is a automatically known rule that they just don't allow those classes to be played.



But your engineer play for example, your style of playing was correct, and u shoulda told who ever was moaning to go fuck themselves and just play how you want to play. If someone on your team was playing shitty they were going to blame it on you or anyone they could (chef, biohaz) even if you were sitting behind your SG repairing it.



So take my advice, i like to play spy alot and every now and then someone is gonna bitch no matter what. fuck em.



-Drak

[FreaK367]

Hammock seems like a fairly angry fellow.

The only thing I want in public servers is for people to play the gamemode, and to work as a team, it happens occasionally, but a lot of the time people go off and do their own thing which doesn't help the team. I prefer it to help the team.

I don't expect them to play classes in a certain way, I just find it more fun when a team has a defense and an offense that are mutually trying towards the goal of winning. That's all.

And sniper is the only class I can have fun with without thinking about winning. So it's my fall back class.

And the pickup pretty much went that way, I was even told that I was required to be with my SG at all times. And not to go off and kill things. Maybe they don't like change, but when I was off killing things, my team were telling me to go hug my SG, and the enemy scouts and medics were moaning that I wasn't playing Engineer correctly. Because whenever they ran into me, I'd kill them. Maybe they don't like it.

And when good players are playing on OT, it's good competition. OT challenges me more than Talos ever did, they were too busy being racist and banning people for random things. And when they did play, it was fairly basic. OT have active players that have been playing for years like I have. Who are really good. Like Panda, Lopstyler, Gwarsbane, King, Atomic etc... Whenever Talos has people these days, it's full of people who are banned from OT for being too much like Talos members, not able to be in a mature environment.

Most of the time I see a pickup, the playerlist is just a list of pub players with a couple of exceptions, and usually a pickup is advertised in a public server to get players.. so it's not that "elite". You make it sound like only a rare breed of player plays pickups.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by FreaK367

Hammock seems like a fairly angry fellow.

The only thing I want in public servers is for people to play the gamemode, and to work as a team, it happens occasionally, but a lot of the time people go off and do their own thing which doesn't help the team. I prefer it to help the team.

I don't expect them to play classes in a certain way, I just find it more fun when a team has a defense and an offense that are mutually trying towards the goal of winning. That's all.

And sniper is the only class I can have fun with without thinking about winning. So it's my fall back class.

And the pickup pretty much went that way, I was even told that I was required to be with my SG at all times. And not to go off and kill things. Maybe they don't like change, but when I was off killing things, my team were telling me to go hug my SG, and the enemy scouts and medics were moaning that I wasn't playing Engineer correctly. Because whenever they ran into me, I'd kill them. Maybe they don't like it.

And when good players are playing on OT, it's good competition. OT challenges me more than Talos ever did, they were too busy being racist and banning people for random things. And when they did play, it was fairly basic. OT have active players that have been playing for years like I have. Who are really good. Like Panda, Lopstyler, Gwarsbane, King, Atomic etc... Whenever Talos has people these days, it's full of people who are banned from OT for being too much like Talos members, not able to be in a mature environment.

Most of the time I see a pickup, the playerlist is just a list of pub players with a couple of exceptions, and usually a pickup is advertised in a public server to get players.. so it's not that "elite". You make it sound like only a rare breed of player plays pickups.

I'm not angry, I'm just calling it as I see it. Pickups are not advertised in OT as that was the reason I was banned from the server for typing in an IP address, infact they're not advertised in talos either. But the reasoning behind advertising in a pub (euro servers do it), is because pickup players play in the pub while waiting for a pickup to start. It's so they don't have to tab out every 5 minutes just to see if one has started. It's not grabbing the pub players, it's grabbing the pickup players that would be interested in a pickup. So you're wrong about that.

Your comments about talos are completely misinformed, yes they're allowed to speak their mind there but it doesn't mean the majority of them aren't playing the game. Soo many people have been accused of hacking on OT's, myself included, infact everytime I played on that server someone accused me of hacking, and I've never hacked in my life. What's that tell you about the casual OT player's expectation of skill level?

I used to play on both servers, and I honestly wasn't that hurt when I was banned, because the competition just wasn't there for that server, it was okay to pass the time, but seriously I could log in there and just cap like crazy if there weren't atleast 9 people defending a single room.

Infact even though the talos server has died off a bit, I find my time there now far more enjoyable than even a year ago. The rounds have fewer numbers on each side 6v6's and stuff, but it's almost always OvD, and it's quite intense.

I'm not saying everyone on OT's is a bad player, it's just filled with soo much fluff that it dilutes any good player's skill. It's far more weeded out in Talos, and in pickups players are expected to be at a certain level, otherwise what Drak said occurs, you get bitched out.

It's not to say the pickup community doesn't like new recruits, but consider it a long hazing period you have to endure until you're completely accepted.

I know what it's like dude. In TFC I pubbed all the time, thought I was really great, then played my first pickup... lol I still laugh at it, it was a 2v2 2fort match, I don't know the names of the people, but my partner and I was soo dominated that the 2 defending sollies were able to defend their flag from the ceiling in the main lobby. Theu both sat up there, and stopped us from capping a single flag without moving.

Just another case of another person falling prey to the stereotype of a server's public opinion, unable to transcend those views, and see a server's competitive level for what it is. I've played on both, and so has many other people, and trust me when I say OT's is too casual to be that competitive. That's not a bad thing, as the majority of the people on that server want exactly that, casual play. But you can't come here complain about it on that server, completely insult pickup player's practices, and just repeat the propaganda repeated by other's about another more competitive server. Especially since I used to play there religiously up until a few months ago, and I don't think I've seen you more than twice.

But then again you've already stated it only takes 1 attempt at something to form a permanent judement on something (as per your 1 pickup attempt).

This is my opinion and obviously you will dispute it with more biased remarks about communities you have no real knowledge about. Stay on OT's if owning casual players is your thing, bitch about Talos and the pickup community all you want. But don't expect any of us to care, especially after reading your very ignorant comments on this forum.

Oh, and if you honestly think I'm an angry person then you definately have almost never played on talos, as I'm very well known there and that statement would definately be refuted by many.

You teach people to snipe? I teach people to conc, bhop, trimp, ramp slide, and other concepts of game play, some of those regulars showing leaps and bounds in improved game play, which offers everyone else there good competition. I'm not the best at this game, not by a long shot, but when I say I enjoy strong competition I seek it out or help create it, unlike you who sticks to a single server, stuck with what's on there and doesn't really grow much as a player, for to get better you need to play people better than you.

And out of the 5 people you listed as "good competition" 2 out of the 5's strongest class is sniper... 40% sniper that's what you come up with? I prefer 0 snipers.