#50
You can compare people that play on different teams fairly, you just have to take a LOT into consideration and judge their performance based on the context of their team - aka how adequately they perform their role within said team. If you understand how each team plays (how they approach creating and capitalising on advantages etc) and the best methods for that class to help their team do that, you can rate people independently of their teams and even the era in which they played.

So much can change between teams in this game tho, so it's hard to compare players properly like this. I've been doing this for years and most of the time I say 'i could be wrong' because unless I've properly watched STVs and povs of the player and team, there will be a lot of missing context. I think 99% of the time there is a comparison between two players it lacks the context and depth to make it valid analysis (especially considering most players make judgements based on logs or fragvids).

Edit: and none of that is even taking into consideration things like calling and team morale etc so like ye tf2 is complicated

Thank you for properly considering these changes and accounting for all the sources of feedback you had available.

Think of it this way: 'medic would be underpowered without crossbow' where 'crossbow' should be 'its primary weapons' except valve left all the other primaries to be shit

Quickiebombs could be a stupidly powerful weapon in fights, but they should go back to what they were before where they fizzle after a few secs and theres 6 in the clip. ATM it's trying to have best of both worlds and you would need to manipulate the game as a team quite a lot to maintain situations that favour quickies.
If you could control the game that much though, they absolutely could be used full time - they are the best weapon in the game for direct damage over multiple distances - but they are very very unforgiving because there's 4 in the clip and the majority of players are bad enough at stickies let alone the mechanics of the quickies that make them harder to use. It would take more than just amazing DM to take full advantage of this weapon.

I was a huge advocate of old quickies because they required a lot of skill to be used properly but were very rewarding, since the 4 clip and no fizzling it just feels like the sticky launcher for people that don't know what they're doing/a good sidegrade for pushing lasts.

#73
Let's be real, most of the people posting in these crossbow threads and by extension even more of those people that used to watch tf2 don't understand the game well enough to know the difference between fast and slow play.
And we can all joke around and blame this or blame that but if we're strictly talking about the game's exposure there is no question the biggest thing that has affected it has been overwatch..

#70
Yeah the game also used to be more fun when we had a decently sized community and you would see 10k people watching big events.. i wish we could reverse that..

LOL nope knows

Kaptain wins tbh

#64
It's almost like all the 'problems' with crossbow can be fixed with good communication and good decision making.. yet by banning it we are somehow not catering to lower level play :thinking:

Top5 <3
I've played against this team so so many times in more than a few seasons, and I don't think I've consistently enjoyed playing tf2 against any team as much as these guys. They deserve so much merit for sticking together and developing as a team - these qualities are all but lost in tf2. It's sad to see it finally come to an end but it was always gonna happen at some point.

Much love to the players I've known from top5: ombrack namtac medico corbac neo blade blitzo opti kaiizo
And ty for GA, the event wouldn't have been the same without you

Sheepy was a GOD shitposter

Elmo at LAN... It's gg..

#211
Yes the majority of the posts in this thread boil down to that but why would you summarise to those two things from a lot of poorly constructed arguments and a few good ones? Why not just dismiss the bad arguments and try to put thought into forming a rebuttal for the good arguments?
I'm not debating about hypotheticals and I'm not saying the crossbow is balanced - if it hasn't been clear my stance is that the crossbow is overpowered but not overpowered enough to warrant the degree to which people are in favour of banning it. I don't know what is ultimately the best option but it is NOT as clear cut a decision as people are making it out to be.

#215
There is merit to a lot of what your are saying, but because of the amount of depth you need to go into to explain the situational mechanics to understand the knock on effects, you are backing up my fundamental point in all of this which is:
There are many many dynamics in this game that are affected by the crossbow and as such it is not as straightforward as saying 'it takes away a lot more than it adds.'

(Also its hilarious to me that #213 gets downfragged despite making exactly as valid a point as #212, if that doesn't highlight the bias then idk what does.)

I think I've said all I can say because clearly I'm not changing any opinions and I'm just wasting my own time at this point. Gg thread.

#208 also lmao we can ban the crossbow without valve but we can't revert the medic movement speed without valve. Playing soldier without arrows vs scouts that have scout speed medics with them constantly - ROFL do we not realise how ridiculous that sounds and how much of a buff that is to scout? Let's not forget that the biggest scout buff wasn't even an update that affected the scout class, it was the demo nerf.. can we not see a pattern here?

#205
I think theres a lot that it adds that is being overlooked, so it's easy to think of it as taking away more than it gives - see my post #103 - and I am not arguing about the 'fun' it adds to the class, I'm talking strictly about the depth of game dynamics/mechanics on both an individual and team level.

#206
People didn't 'have to' rotate heals - they did it because it was a more optimal way of playing, and that is still the case - the skill is by no means 'gone'. It's just easier to not account for this and think one dimensionally and rely on arrows. Watch 7 play and it is remarkable how well they rotate heals and use it to their advantage. They optimise their play in small regards like that and it makes a massive difference yet other EU teams haven't been good enough to work on the nuanced stuff to contest them. If people understood stuff like rotating heals better we wouldn't be having this one sided a debate over the crossbow, but this is a result of the skill level declining over the years, because more and more people don't understand the complexities of the game dynamics at hand.

Why is everyone so dismissive of actual arguements for keeping the crossbow? Like ok judging by +frags more people are in favour of banning it but does that mean that they are right? Should we not try to discuss and counter each others arguments as well as we can so that we can get somewhere constructively?

I feel like there's been a few posts that actually have valid arguments for the crossbow that no one has invalidated with thoughtful counter arguments besides shit like 'ofc u like cbow ur bad haha'. Maybe people are hesitant to argue for the crossbow because they don't wanna get downfragged? I've not really decided where I stand on the issue but I've been arguing for the crossbow in this thread because I think that side is being underrepresented, and I think we should have a balanced argument so we can raise valid constructive criticism.

I fully expect to just get downfragged because I'm not slandering the weapon - but this is a more complicated topic of discussion and there are many many dynamics in the game that are affected by the crossbow.

In terms of whitelists, i agree that the current whitelist is way too open, but I'm trying to focus on the crossbow here because I don't want people coming to false conclusions because of bandwagoning. Shoutouts to botmode for making very valid points in #147.