Giving the power of balancing weapons to the "community" as a whole is probably a worse idea than just letting the dev team try time and time again until they find something we're comfortable with. If you've ever read r/tf2, their ideas of balancing weapons are horrible most of the time.

But that doesn't mean that Valve shouldn't listen to people who actually know about the game -where I don't include myself, by the way. I think if they read whatever high-level players have to say about the rebalances before they release the changes, a lot of bad ideas would be reworked instead of weapons never getting whitelisted.

It seems they at least hear from b4nny. Did b4nny know about the speed buff to Medic? We don't know for certain. But it's much easier for them to disregard one singular opinion than lots of opinions from different people. I think the solution comes that way: let them propose their changes and, before they're released, listen to feedback.

Ridiculous. People in this community have probably put more working hours into tf2 over the last 5 years than Valve. Top players have more hours in tf2 than some people in the tf2 team have probably spent working on it.
They claim to read all the feedback and lurk all the forums, so unless they have the minds of brain damaged hamsters, they're well-aware which people know their shit and they're well-aware that almost all these people share certain ideas on balance almost unanimously.

ironic shitposting still is not funny and is still shitposting
i get that ur trying to reinforce Zesty's point but cmonBruh

I agree with you sage.

In games this complexity comes from balance vs design.

The game is designed in a way, works well, then content is added. Some of this content is poorly thought and does not work well with the initial design of the game, so it is balanced with stats adjustments.

The truth is some content simply cannot work correctly in the game, but they can't remove it. Sure with numbers it's possible to patch it so it doesn't break everything, but it's still bad design : ex : short circuit, quick fix, darwin shield, pyro hitreg, natascha, etc..

Another problem is the way valve decides what to do with the game. Nobody knows what they plan to do and nobody understands why they do things the way they do. But some other game developpers have neat systems :

in starcraft 2, before every patch a balance test map is published alongside with the changes they want to make, so players can give feedback BEFORE the actual patch.

in eve online, every year a council of players is elected from every part of the playerbase (miners, PVPers, mission runners, traders, etc) and gets to discuss in detail with the devs about what to do in future updates, what are the interests of the people they represent, and the current state of the game.

I would like valve to use both of these things to avoid all these shitstorms after every balance attempt : publish the changes you want to make early, explain your reasonings, and select a few players from every community (pubs, reddit, steam forums, tftv) to discuss directly with.

we've already been shown a solution with the winger, though. so long as they realize the design's busted, they can basically just use these broken weapons as blank canvases to try out new weapon concepts

like I doubt even the most stubborn heavy main will be sad at the natascha dying a quick death if they get something far more intuitive to the game out of it

valve should remove all unlocks except the very basic ones, such as gunboats, escape plan, kritzkrieg, etc.

What do think was gunna happen when one of the employees is a pyro main? Might as well let nutcases like uncle dane or sigafoo do balance changes. They probably would've come up with the same shit anyways

but even HL pyro mains know pyro is broken and messy

http://frompyrowithlove.com/

Should just make like 95% of weapon unlocks just be reskins and other unlocks be cosmetics so they can startover trying to make an interesting game

that would be a really easy way to kill the game, given that everyone not already into 6s would lose their shit over the change

there wouldn't be so much of an issue with so many weapons if each weapon was fairly basic at its core. instead you get weapons which wildly and fundamentally change a dozen different things about each class, and then you get at minimum three of those on any one class' loadout at any time

Is no one even gonna mention the stock sticky launcher? Has damage rampup and falloff, unless the sticky's been out for 5 seconds, in which case it does base damage regardless of the demo's position. Explosion radius expands over time in the air, unless it lands on a surface, in which case it's instantly full radius. Charging alters speed/range/arc. Absolutely none of this has any indication to any other players as to what state it's in, and even the demo has to pretty much just feel it out. And there's no actual stuff in the game explaining most of this. How is someone supposed to even know about it unless the go searching out old blog posts, update logs, etc.?

Sigafoo is a really chill smart dude. I wouldn't call him a nutcase. And even though Uncle Dane is a bit clueless with regard to matchmaking, he really isn't either.

I think feeling it out is sufficient, and when someone needs finer details, finding an article or asking another player isn't too much of a burden. I can't recall information that is still mostly hiding in an old patch note or blog; players do cite those pages when informing others, but I admit they seldom turn up at the top of search results. It is unfortunate when that is the case, because the info can be made more accessible.

Most of the SBL's properties can be discovered by players with damage numbers enabled (I'll admit this statement seems optimistic, as most people I know believe they are above-average). At minimum, players should know that charged stickies are useful for extra distance. With damage numbers, players should definitely realize that charging does not add damage to stock stickies, and that after some time, stickies deal more damage at a distance. Some might even notice that traps deal less damage when camping close to an entrance. The decrease in damage with reduced radius is small enough that it probably continues unnoticed until a player frequently connects airdets about its edge, but players should discern that stickies deal more damage at the feet (granted, for additional reasons).

Some other mechanics that should flick on light bulbs when revealed include: crit heals, ubercharge rate (at least when paired with another heal beam), disguised spies being immune to most knockback, larger knockback while mid-air/crouching, and of course, melee random-crit chance.

Some things are harder to discover alone, such as disguise smoke, mini-crits being linked to the player or how to airstrafe better. One of the most frustrating experiences for me was testing and learning about the clusterfuck that is the on-hit effects against ubered/bonked/cloaked/disguised/cloaked+disguised players, and the dead ringer. Valve should clean up those interactions so they're easier to learn in normal play.

Although wikis and guides exist, I agree that more details need to be in-game, if Valve wants players to improve a bit faster. Updated tips and item details, and easy access to them in-game would be nice, particularly for new players that do not have many items. Still, the bulk of learning the game should, and already does, come from first-hand experience and the community, as opposed to static documentation.

Regarding complex weapons, I do fear the possibility of memorizing damage/effective health tables becoming more than trivial for decision-making. There might be a peak where Valve adds the ability to see or even batch ally damage, or make enemy IDs visible for all players, just to recover some quality of life when damage output becomes ridiculously volatile.

Major offender: 2012 to now

http://i.imgur.com/PWm0QI9.png

Dead ringer and quickie bomb are major offenders too

This is also because they made the item descriptions far more detailed recently. They had hidden stats before which is never a good thing.

it kind of makes sense for the dead ringer though, because it's a totally different playstyle that did need some small tweaks, and now the DR is a lot more balanced for it.

i think this trend started with the loose cannon and really took off with the air strike.

Imo it's not a problem. There are larger games with even more complicated stats. For instance, League of Legends.

I tried to get into it but I couldn't be fucked with all the stats and shizzle.

So it's definately possible for a competitive game to be even more complicated than tf2.

EDIT: I think yttrium misunderstood my comment. I'm saying that the more complicated stats are not a problem. I'm NOT saying that tf2 is the most complicated game. Holy shit you're fucking retarded.

The most complicated, modern, competitive game stats-wise that I can think of is Starcraft II. TF2 is almost laughably basic in comparison. For instance, here's just the *movement* stats of one of the most basic units in the game, the Marine.

http://i.imgur.com/HqSou52.png

This doesn't account for art data, stats such as life, energy, or shields, weapon stats or even what weapons it has, or anything like that. Purely movement data.

Using the above example, what's actually displayed ingame?

http://i.imgur.com/uTLKPk3.jpg

Blizzard is the king of hidden stats, not Valve. Not many weapons in TF2 even have hidden stats anymore, unless they're completely different weapons like the Huntsman.

Valve don't know whether they're having a shit or a haircut when it comes to competitive gaming. They lucked out in both of their successful titles - buying the CS mod and the acquisition of IceFrog to steer DotA2. I've only just started playing regularly after a few years break so I say this as objectively as possible and not someone too emotionally invested in the game right now - but it's been incredibly obvious for the longest of times.

If how they've gone about things in CS:GO is anything to go by, I predict the TF2 devs will ignore the opinions and views of the top tier gamers (not really a prediction as they already do this) and use data from MM to push competitive TF2 in whatever direction they like. Also, unless they have sponsored valve events planned for the game I don't see how they expect the competitive community to adopt their vision.. which could hurt more than it helps; unless ETF2L/ESEA enforce whatever they throw up for the sake of the growth of the game.

I think Thorin summed them up best when he said for whatever reason(s) they believe they should be the ones to dictate/set the status-quo for the competitive side of their titles and not the top echelon of the competitive community. It's completely the wrong way to go about things.

after being adamant that hero stacking was balanceable and an important core mechanic (which i totally understand), blizzard eventually recognised that their perfect ideal had to be compromised because no hero limit was to the detriment of the game as a whole, and implemented 1 hero limit in competitive overwatch.

not saying blizzard don't have their own issues, but this impressed me a TON and is a perfect example of something valve would never do. valve is a) overly invested in their sunk costs into failed ventures b) money-hungry and blind to context and c) just plain bad at their job.

a) - the perfect example is obviously the overwatch parallel, refusing to implement class limits despite it being cemented as a much more important concept in tf2 than overwatch. in addition there's no weapon bans, no configs in mm, balance changes that follow their own ideas rather than the general consensus, and a general disconnect between them and the community/meta.

b) - lazy moneygrabbing updates that clutter the game and confuse everyone. despite the "hatconomy" already existing, they decided to basically copypaste in their successful csgo cosmetic tier system along with pick-up-able weapon skins on top of what we already had. needless to say, mixing two cosmetic systems in the same game was bewilderingly stupid. weird incomplete paradigms like hat tiering and statclock vs strange weapons confuse needlessly, and the glowing outline on dropped weapons + the ammo boxes on dead bodies add visual noise to an already cluttered game.

c) when valve take their own direction it's too often flawed or overcomplicated and their decisions aren't anchored in core principles or a respect for simplicity. for example the cow mangler and liberty launcher have been a billion different things when the cm5k could've been
- 5 rockets
- less damage
- a special altfire
and the ll could've been
- faster rockets
- less damage or 3 rockets
it's literally that simple, maybe it's not perfect and the values would be tweaked for balance but even so it's better than the trainwreck they have been under valve's direction.

games are more fun when a complex metagame develops out of a limited paradigm, so all these arbitrary tweaks end up more gimmicky than helpful. i personally even believe stickies should be balanced around being the same no matter where or when they're detonated (this might be less popular). ultimately, complex attributes only cloud the more interesting complexity that arises from the flow of basic 6v6 competitive tf2. make stuff intuitive, make it useful, make it work, and the gameplay - not the stats - will make the game interesting.

/rant

edit: quick note about the starcraft stuff: yeah they're technically complicated stats, but they make sense intuitively, so in terms of how a human processes it it's pretty simple. most of tf2's weapon stats aren't intuitive at all, aside from things like the huntsman (for which stats are hidden, but that's fine - see why?).

valves stubborn reluctance to even think of looking at 9 years of data is just really off putting. its not so much as an issue that its harder to learn its just stupid gimmicky stats added for no discernible reason. resistances are pretty retarded but reducing healing rate is just dumb. its like a really awkward way of increasing damage but only vs targets being healed. simple plus and minus stat weapons are more fun to play with unless they have well thought out mechanics.the more resists and "status" effects this game has the more of a moba it becomes.