The Team Fortress 2 Thread

Which is fine but when it comes several days later we need a little context to know WTF you're on about.

You could at least quote for context, rather than randomly throwing out an apparent non-sequitur of the bad webcomic joke caliber.

It was a weekend! And the whole reason for not quoting was to keep it from turning into an extended derail like this. You folks are being cranky.

------

I've only tried MVM 3 times now and haven't yet survived past wave 5. I'm actually surprised by how dependent it is on team size, since the stock game does such a good job of balancing the two sides. I haven't dug into the advanced settings -- are there options that you can set that will change the number or HP of bots if you're playing with less than 6?

Or does that go counter the whole idea of doing the mission & getting an item drop at the end? I've never played raids in WoW and the like -- do they do anything to alter the difficulty if you're playing with fewer than the suggested team size? Or is the team size required to even enter the instance?

No. Make more friends.

:( Nobody wants to be my friend on account of my bad webcomic non-sequiturs.

Are you hitting "any level" when you queue? Because when you do that it picks from all 9 level/difficulty combinations. Sticking to just picking a single normal difficulty one is probably best for starting out as people figure out wtf to do.

The guys who I regularly play this with and I are usually steamrolling this, though we do have a ton of items, and we've played together for years. In general, have a set killzone. Shooting stuff as soon as it drops down sounds like a great idea until you have to go get the money. Know where the reset points are on each map. Typical loadout is something like the following.

Engineer with Pomson 6000, Wrangler, Jag. Increase metal capacity, gun damage. Then dispenser range. bullet/blast resist as necessary. Wrangle long range and be ready to pick up and move sentries/dispenser when a buster gets through. Also pick up and move the gun while the tank is rolling and you can easily keep it ahead of the thing and doing damage. Quick build canteen.

Pyro with Degreaser/Powerjack/Attendant hat (10% increased move speed set). Increase air blast force and bullet/blast resist. Ammo and then damage as necessary. The single most useful class for the mode imo. Be aware of where the reset points for the maps are and use them. It's frequently worth letting a lone basic bot pick up the bomb to reset it and gain time if you're pushed way back. Can continuously airblast juggle everything except super-heavies with medic/dispenser support. This is pretty much required against the giant scouts and indispensible against sentry busters. Air blasting rockets back at giant soldiers works well. Usually uber canteen, crit otherwise.

Soldier with Cowmangler 5000, Buff Banner, Equalizer/Half Zatoichi. Upgrade reload speed/fire speed. Bullet/blast resist depending on the wave. Damage and HP on kill late game as necessary. Jack of all trades. Zap away thanks to infinite ammo and no reflections! buff banner will be up pretty much all the time so dont forget to use it. You can use rocket jumps to grab cash thats far away and about to expire and jump back to the med for quick heals. Also responsible for majority of sniper/spy callouts and killing them. Uber canteen.

Medic with Kritzkrieg and Crusader Crossbow/Blutsauger, Vitasaw. Upgrade charge time speed, bullet/blast resist. Overheal/Charge length after that. Pre-wave use the Kritzkrieg on the demo for crit stickies. Keep the pyro alive! Then the heavy, then demo. Top off and overheal everyone as you get the chance. Kritzkrieg usually goes to demo for stickies of doom on slow/medic waves, heavy for masses of pyros/scouts, pyro or demo for tanks. Uber canteen

Demo with LochnLoad, Scottish Resistance and Eyelander/Half Zatoichi. Upgrade bullet/blast resist, sticky damage. Think about the crit on melee. Don't really know about other stuff, mostly sticky damage related because stickies are amazing!. You are mostly responsible for destroying uber/quickcharge meds with the giant robots and doing big burst damage on tanks with pre-wave crit stickies. Have the team hold fire on the big robot with medics, drop a stack of stickies in their path, then its just cleanup. Eyelander is great for the speed boost. Keep the medic in the loop for Kritzkrieg ubers and/or use a crit canteen for more stickies of doom.

Heavy with Natasha/Brass Beast, Sandwich, Gloves of Running Urgently. Upgrade bullet/blast resist. Destroy missles usually by the third wave. Then rotate damage/firing speed upgrades with a point into ammo every now and then. You are the tank and get to sit next to the dispenser and soak damage. With max resists a dispenser and a med you can sit and eat wave fulls of damage while the rest of the team does damage. Monster against massed anything, and huge on maps with massed soldiers/demos once you have missle destruction. Hold your fire against giant robots with meds as your bullet penetration will set of the medics's uber and the demo wont be able to one shot sticky trap them. Usually uber canteen, but crit works decently well.

Honestly, we have serious trouble losing with the above.

Not the Frontier Justice on the engineer? From what I understand blowing up your sentry and resetting it between rounds charges the crits on the FJ up.

Our eng has done that too, but he's so busy rebuilding/repairing that if he's shooting any primary weapon you've got much bigger problems.

But I don't like using the kritzkrieg. :(((((((( I had thought about swapping to that, actually, but I feel so naked without my real uber. Still, being as Ingmar has mostly been playing as a demo, and we sit right next to each other, we'd probably pair off pretty well if I switched. I still don't have anything but the default bonesaw though. ><

Ah, I didn't know the different game types were different difficulty levels. I've only played on the "Decoy" map so far, but honestly can't remember which mission I've picked.

Are the maps arranged by difficulty as well?

I think they all just go easy/medium/hard, from top to bottom. AFAIK the maps are all the same difficulty otherwise but not sure.

I think Decoy is the easiest map, and Mannworks is the hardest, mostly through the relative complexity of the maps. But that's not an official designation.

There's no single "best" loadout or upgrade path; it all comes down to individual playstyle and wave composition. My experience so far is that offense trumps defense.

Diversity in team makeup helps a lot. Also, just fucking votekick that asshole that insists on playing sniper. Sniper is even more useless then normal in MvM.

Wait what? I've played sniper a few rounds in MvM , and the Jarate with level 4 recharge and 35% slowdown is super powerful. You can toss a jar every 8 or so seconds! And the mini-crits are super powerful against the bigger robots.

Add to that exploding headshots that have a upgradable AOE and you can take out large groups of bots.

Some of the easiest matches I've had were when we had either me playing sniper or someone else who knew how to use the class's skills.

But that would mean the sniper has to do more then just hide way in the back all round.

Well yeah.... MvM is made to be up close and personal for all the classes even more so that its limited to 6 players. I spend most of my sniper time, near the engie that is playing, a well aimed Jarate and his sentry can make short work of any bots.

Holy mother of crap. I played the crap out of TF2 when it first came out, uninstalled it, what over a year ago once it went FTP. Re-installed it and you all are talking a foreign language. All these trippy weapons / hats / whatnot you've collected, I am clue-less to all that.

I don't have shit for load-outs. I've had about 50/50 split with pubs, it all comes down to if you can get everyone to hang in there to the end, of course this is on normal. If anyone leaves, it's pretty much SOL. I hate that with this game, it doesn't scale at all.

Alternate MvM soldier load-out: Black box/Righteous Bison/whatever. Black box is purely for self-healing, the main weapon is the Bison because fully upgraded it is ridiculously good against everything from basic scouts right up to the tank.

I've also had some fun playing as a "I win games for the team" Scout - Force of Nature/Mad Milk/Fan O War. Get the 'slow enemies' upgrade for the milk, use fan on giants/sentrybusters and get penetration/+health/more shots for the FoN.

Hey, shut up :( I love my Sniper build with the Machina rifle. Upgraded recharge time and good accuracy and i'm combo-headshotting 3-4 guys at a time.

The TF2 Sam and Max cabal strikes again!

Solo Dolo: Hello
ZekeDMS: Yp
Solo Dolo: sorry to bother you, I wanted to know if you are trading some of your team fortress 2 items?
ZekeDMS: Maybe, I'm open to anything I've got a duplicate of basically.
ZekeDMS: Not sure there's a lot of that, though.
Solo Dolo: Well, I'm only interested in 2 thing, your lugermorph and big kill
ZekeDMS: Let me guess - someone on a trade server told you I was selling them?
Solo Dolo: no, why,
Solo Dolo: *?
ZekeDMS: Apparently someone was telling people that. Heard something about a backpack website people were looking at too, but only from one person.
ZekeDMS: But like my profile says, those aren't for sale. Sorry.
Solo Dolo: oh sorry, didn't read your profile
ZekeDMS: That's why i figured it was someone on a trade server. figure if you saw me through a group you'd see the profile!
ZekeDMS: How'd you spot my profile? I'm not sure where some of the other folks are coming from, but it'd be nice to know so I can fix that. :P
Solo Dolo: I can't tell you
ZekeDMS: You can't tell me?
Solo Dolo: and there's no way to fix that
Solo Dolo: to be honest, the best way to not get added everytime is to trade your items
ZekeDMS: To be fair, if you message me without reading the profile, it would be nice if you'd at least let me know where you were coming from so I could remedy it.
ZekeDMS: Why should I trade away my favorite items when it's other people not reading my profile that says they're not for sale?
Solo Dolo: then, don't complain about being added, and I'm not saying "trade it to me", I'm just explaining that you should trade it away if you don't want to be bothered and added
ZekeDMS: Not wanting to be bothered is why I put the message up on my profile. Not my fault people don't read it when they hear about my backpack from the TF2 Sam and Max cabal.
ZekeDMS: Kinda rude to blame the victim when I'm actually trying to be nice about it, don't you think?
Solo Dolo: I'm not blmaing you, but you don't understand
Solo Dolo: ...
ZekeDMS: You sort of are. You're saying it's my fault for not trading away the items.
Solo Dolo: yeah, you don't understand
Solo Dolo: well, have a good one
Solo Dolo: cya
Solo Dolo is now Offline.

Don't be a dick, Solo Dolo.

It appears there is a TF2 idiot's omerta. He's only a couple of steps away from 'nice steam account you got there, sure be a shame if something happened to it'.

There's an oddly common amount of shitheads in the Mannconomy, enough to make me think "Hey, why don't they let people hide individual backpack items to avoid this shit?"

I'm dubious that the mysterious trade server guy ever existed, really, probably just people from the same site trying to pretend it doesn't exist. Why they feel the need to be SUPER SEKRIT about a TF2 item list, of course, is something none of us know.

Scout versus Witch!

That's great! Reminds me of the hall fight in Old Boy.

Did I spy a Travelocity gnome in that film? I think I did!

Hm? Nobody mentioned the new comic that went up? For shame!

You did!

I thought it was both funny and quite gorgeous, with the interactive part (er, clicking to make the new panels come up) done in such a way as to enhance the medium. You now have my opinion. You may keep it, if you treat it well.

Oh dear. Today we've got a Gibe Everything repeat offender (a backpack scanner that only looks for expected easy targets, which you have to pay to access to and which is run by a known scammer named GladosDan) . His profile is only visible to friends, and it's specifically a trade only profile with no links to his real one. Hell, nothing suspicious about hiding your identity twice over, right?

He still wants my Sam and Max gear set, which is $100+ on a very bad day. Last time he offered me a copy of Nuclear Dawn and got belligerent when I didn't bite. Let's see how he does today.

He said he'd block me last time too. He didn't. He'll be back in a month or two to try again because he can't seem to actually get a sale, which is odd as he's such a people person!

I love TF2. But since I have pretty much no friends I just go on random servers. But apparently that's looked down upon. You can't win, eh?

It's all who you play with. I had an absolute blast playing with Baldr and the Portal of Evil group.

Screw that, find a server you like and play on it. To hell with the people who look down on you joining random servers, and at a point you'll find one or two that run in a way you like and add them to the faves list and keep going back.

I only ever use the "find me a server" button. TF2 became much improved for me when that actually started working.

But it looks like they're breaking it again, as the "Quickplay" beta is definitely not quick.

I also had fun, when you weren't setting me on fire. The PoE group has evolved into the F+ group, but they almost never play Team Fortress anymore.

Bees!

You know what I like? When I can waste an hour of a scammer's time.

My profile DOES say I'll waste your time and post the conversation on the internet. He has nobody to blame but himself.