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why tf2 needs more hot artsy asian girls
1
#1
0 Frags +

Haha, don't worry, this is a serious thread. I just made that the title to make this an idiot-free zone inhabited by people with only the most exquisite and refined of tastes.

I’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 competitively on and off for about 6 years now and have seen more than my fair share of internet debates about how to improve both the gameplay and community aspects of Team Fortress 2. These discussions tend to revolve around the ideas of making the gamer faster, easier to watch, increasing class usage rates, and making the game more accessible to new players. Those are clearly all crucial conversations to have, but I believe that the competitive TF2 community hasn’t paid enough attention to a certain issue. I know quite a few people who enjoy it, at least 13 of them if they’re in a good mood and even I occasionally enjoy it myself, but that is not enough. The biggest problem Team Fortress 2 has as both a competitive and public game is that there just aren’t enough people who want to play medic.

Everyone knows that medic isn’t the most popular class, but I don’t think enough time has been spent thinking about deep of an impact this has on the game. The competitive community has always been desperate for new players and a big part of why it is so hard to attract them is because pubs aren’t enjoyable enough to a lot of people who may have ended up loving competitive TF2 if only they stuck around long enough to discover it. Making medic a more popular class to play in pubs would make pub teams more balanced, which would lead to a more competitive and serious pub environment. As competitive players, we all know how quickly the game turns to shit when the medic leaves and how hard it can be get back to playing seriously after you’ve waited 17 minutes for a medic to join, who will most likely just start screwing around himself because that’s what everyone else is doing. It is really silly to blame public players for goofing around when we all do the same thing as soon as one team has a medic and the other doesn’t. It may be too late now, but I think that our best chance at attracting the still significant pub playerbase is to do whatever we can to convince Valve to improve the overall experience people have playing pubs. Not only will this lead to more pubbers finding us, but it will also lead to more competitive players spending their spare time playing pubs, which will make us a more cohesive community as a whole.

From the perspective of our side of the community, the most noticeable change that will occur as a result of making medic more fun to play will be pugs and lobbies starting more often. Reducing the wait time to play a pug or lobby will improve the community by not only making the game’s community feel more alive even if it hasn’t actually grown in population, but by making each PUG people play feel less valuable in terms of time. Its undoubtedly true there will always be people getting upset at new players, but a big part of why people get upset is that they often have to wait 30 minutes to play a game that's either over in 5 minutes or dragged out until the time runs out because they got stuck with someone who doesn’t even know the basics of 6v6. People commonly choose to play medic when they’re trying to play competitively for the first time and it is unfortunate that the class we need more of is the most likely to be discouraged from playing the game competitively. Ideally, Valve would deal with this issue by adding an effective training mode and making the public game more like ours, but I don’t think either of those are ever going to happen. At least we know they at least say they are willing to make significant class changes, such as the upcoming heavy and pyro reworks.

Many public players like the main idea of 6v6, but don’t want to participate because they are unable to play their main class for a significant amount of time for it to be worthwhile to them. The most commonly proposed solutions to this issue is to change the 6v6 format so that utility classes will be more prevalent in the meta and to educate the pub community about why the 6v6 format is the the way it is. What seems to draw people to classes like pyro, heavy, and engineer, the one’s who seem to dislike 6v6 the most, is pretty similar to what draws people to playing medic. All of these classes are heavily reliant on proper positioning, don’t require much DM skill to play effectively, and they could all be considered support or defensive classes depending on your point of view and the current situation. Instead of trying to convince people that what we like is more fun than what they like or taking a huge risk by changing our format to be more inclusive of people, we should do what we can to change the class that is already the centerpiece of the meta in a way that will make it more attractive people who already main a support class.

The number of teams during a season is always limited by how many people are willing to play medic and there's a reason why I wrote "willing" and not "want to". There are currently too many people playing medic not because they enjoy it, but because they just want their team to live. Having people play a class they don't really want to for about 8 hours a week during the season isn't healthy for the community and I’m positive it has lead to the death of many teams.

I’ve written a lot about how I believe the medic’s lack of popularity affects the game, so I guess it’s about time for me to say what exactly I mean by making medic more fun to play. Before I get to that though, there are some things about medic that should not be changed. The class must not have its offensive capabilities any more than slightly improved, it should stay a gamesense rather than DM oriented class, and it should always be possible to estimate how much uber the enemy medic could potentially have as long as you’re paying attention and communicating.

As a medic you do have some impact about how your team plays by choosing when to pop uber, who you heal, and how aggressive or passively you play, but I think that those decisions you make as a medic are a little too easily thrown off by how your teammates choose to play. Part of what makes the other main classes so fun is being able to add your own personal style to how you play them and medic has the least room for that because of how often you are just reacting to the actions of your teammates. Essentially, the general mindset should change from going to your medic to get heals, to the medic coming to you. This is a tricky thing to pull off though. Increasing the medic’s movement speed or giving him some sort advanced mobility so that he can move between teammates more quickly could easily make him much too difficult to kill. My proposition is to increase the medic’s movement speed so that he is always moving as fast as a scout, change his base health to 125, give him the ability to double jump, and replace his medigun with the scattergun. Thank you for reading this.

Haha, don't worry, this is a serious thread. I just made that the title to make this an idiot-free zone inhabited by people with only the most exquisite and refined of tastes.

I’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 competitively on and off for about 6 years now and have seen more than my fair share of internet debates about how to improve both the gameplay and community aspects of Team Fortress 2. These discussions tend to revolve around the ideas of making the gamer faster, easier to watch, increasing class usage rates, and making the game more accessible to new players. Those are clearly all crucial conversations to have, but I believe that the competitive TF2 community hasn’t paid enough attention to a certain issue. I know quite a few people who enjoy it, at least 13 of them if they’re in a good mood and even I occasionally enjoy it myself, but that is not enough. The biggest problem Team Fortress 2 has as both a competitive and public game is that there just aren’t enough people who want to play medic.

Everyone knows that medic isn’t the most popular class, but I don’t think enough time has been spent thinking about deep of an impact this has on the game. The competitive community has always been desperate for new players and a big part of why it is so hard to attract them is because pubs aren’t enjoyable enough to a lot of people who may have ended up loving competitive TF2 if only they stuck around long enough to discover it. Making medic a more popular class to play in pubs would make pub teams more balanced, which would lead to a more competitive and serious pub environment. As competitive players, we all know how quickly the game turns to shit when the medic leaves and how hard it can be get back to playing seriously after you’ve waited 17 minutes for a medic to join, who will most likely just start screwing around himself because that’s what everyone else is doing. It is really silly to blame public players for goofing around when we all do the same thing as soon as one team has a medic and the other doesn’t. It may be too late now, but I think that our best chance at attracting the still significant pub playerbase is to do whatever we can to convince Valve to improve the overall experience people have playing pubs. Not only will this lead to more pubbers finding us, but it will also lead to more competitive players spending their spare time playing pubs, which will make us a more cohesive community as a whole.


From the perspective of our side of the community, the most noticeable change that will occur as a result of making medic more fun to play will be pugs and lobbies starting more often. Reducing the wait time to play a pug or lobby will improve the community by not only making the game’s community feel more alive even if it hasn’t actually grown in population, but by making each PUG people play feel less valuable in terms of time. Its undoubtedly true there will always be people getting upset at new players, but a big part of why people get upset is that they often have to wait 30 minutes to play a game that's either over in 5 minutes or dragged out until the time runs out because they got stuck with someone who doesn’t even know the basics of 6v6. People commonly choose to play medic when they’re trying to play competitively for the first time and it is unfortunate that the class we need more of is the most likely to be discouraged from playing the game competitively. Ideally, Valve would deal with this issue by adding an effective training mode and making the public game more like ours, but I don’t think either of those are ever going to happen. At least we know they at least say they are willing to make significant class changes, such as the upcoming heavy and pyro reworks.

Many public players like the main idea of 6v6, but don’t want to participate because they are unable to play their main class for a significant amount of time for it to be worthwhile to them. The most commonly proposed solutions to this issue is to change the 6v6 format so that utility classes will be more prevalent in the meta and to educate the pub community about why the 6v6 format is the the way it is. What seems to draw people to classes like pyro, heavy, and engineer, the one’s who seem to dislike 6v6 the most, is pretty similar to what draws people to playing medic. All of these classes are heavily reliant on proper positioning, don’t require much DM skill to play effectively, and they could all be considered support or defensive classes depending on your point of view and the current situation. Instead of trying to convince people that what we like is more fun than what they like or taking a huge risk by changing our format to be more inclusive of people, we should do what we can to change the class that is already the centerpiece of the meta in a way that will make it more attractive people who already main a support class.

The number of teams during a season is always limited by how many people are willing to play medic and there's a reason why I wrote "willing" and not "want to". There are currently too many people playing medic not because they enjoy it, but because they just want their team to live. Having people play a class they don't really want to for about 8 hours a week during the season isn't healthy for the community and I’m positive it has lead to the death of many teams.

I’ve written a lot about how I believe the medic’s lack of popularity affects the game, so I guess it’s about time for me to say what exactly I mean by making medic more fun to play. Before I get to that though, there are some things about medic that should not be changed. The class must not have its offensive capabilities any more than slightly improved, it should stay a gamesense rather than DM oriented class, and it should always be possible to estimate how much uber the enemy medic could potentially have as long as you’re paying attention and communicating.

As a medic you do have some impact about how your team plays by choosing when to pop uber, who you heal, and how aggressive or passively you play, but I think that those decisions you make as a medic are a little too easily thrown off by how your teammates choose to play. Part of what makes the other main classes so fun is being able to add your own personal style to how you play them and medic has the least room for that because of how often you are just reacting to the actions of your teammates. Essentially, the general mindset should change from going to your medic to get heals, to the medic coming to you. This is a tricky thing to pull off though. Increasing the medic’s movement speed or giving him some sort advanced mobility so that he can move between teammates more quickly could easily make him much too difficult to kill. My proposition is to increase the medic’s movement speed so that he is always moving as fast as a scout, change his base health to 125, give him the ability to double jump, and replace his medigun with the scattergun. Thank you for reading this.
2
#2
51 Frags +

dude you wrote a 1300 word long essay about this

dude you wrote a 1300 word long essay about this
3
#3
3 Frags +

where's my "TL;DR"

where's my "TL;DR"
4
#4
45 Frags +

the title, dipshit

the title, dipshit
5
#5
33 Frags +

i may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?

i may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?
6
#6
40 Frags +

i appreciate your commitment to this shitpost

i appreciate your commitment to this shitpost
7
#7
5 Frags +

same

same
8
#8
cp_granary_pro
7 Frags +
s1kewhere's my "TL;DR"

the second last sentence

[quote=s1ke]where's my "TL;DR"[/quote]
the second last sentence
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#9
5 Frags +

i argree

i argree
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#10
4 Frags +
THEBILLDOZERi may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?

f**ck yea bro

[quote=THEBILLDOZER]i may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?[/quote]
f**ck yea bro
11
#11
17 Frags +

i upfragged this without reading it i trust in your posting abilities capn no fapn

i upfragged this without reading it i trust in your posting abilities capn no fapn
12
#12
4 Frags +

Quality read

Quality read
13
#13
5 Frags +

capnfapn is my hero

capnfapn is my hero
14
#14
1 Frags +

i hate playing medic. but i dont think i am part of the problem

i hate playing medic. but i dont think i am part of the problem
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#15
4 Frags +

God fucking dammit Myles.

God fucking dammit Myles.
16
#16
3 Frags +

in times like these, these threads will bring us solace

in times like these, these threads will bring us solace
17
#17
1 Frags +

thank mr. fapn

thank mr. fapn
18
#18
3 Frags +

i would POTENTIALLY get back into medic for a good team. Haven't played medic since one of the first CEVO-P seasons and haven't hardly played at all since 2010... prob been since early 2008 since I medic'd seriously? Only played it because internet wasn't the greatest so once i moved I switched to pocket and the rest was history...

So there you have it. You have someone with experience (albeit a long time ago) that would be willing to come back to TF2 to play for a well established team willing to let me work out the growing pains.

Outside of that, good, well thought out post. I can agree to a certain extent. I don't think it's the end all, be all, but more medics would definitely be a good thing.

i would POTENTIALLY get back into medic for a good team. Haven't played medic since one of the first CEVO-P seasons and haven't hardly played at all since 2010... prob been since early 2008 since I medic'd seriously? Only played it because internet wasn't the greatest so once i moved I switched to pocket and the rest was history...

So there you have it. You have someone with experience (albeit a long time ago) that would be willing to come back to TF2 to play for a well established team willing to let me work out the growing pains.

Outside of that, good, well thought out post. I can agree to a certain extent. I don't think it's the end all, be all, but more medics would definitely be a good thing.
19
#19
7 Frags +
THEBILLDOZERi may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?

this is my calling

[quote=THEBILLDOZER]i may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?[/quote]
this is my calling
20
#20
34 Frags +
THEBILLDOZERi may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?

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

Show Content
[quote=THEBILLDOZER]i may be willing to cross dress for the good of the game. anyone else down?[/quote]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/NcOpStv.jpg[/img]
[spoiler][img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lI8FLlY-sKY/hqdefault.jpg[/img][/spoiler]
21
#21
7 Frags +

yes let's do this, better idea than a quick fix meta

yes let's do this, better idea than a quick fix meta
22
#22
3 Frags +

the minute i read the title i knew who posted it

the minute i read the title i knew who posted it
23
#23
6 Frags +

you read the title for a minute?

you read the title for a minute?
24
#24
-4 Frags +

no

no
25
#25
0 Frags +

Overwatch has the same problem of not having enough people willing to play supports. And I mean, in general, most people consider support classes downright boring. I mean yeah, supports do influence the game, but you don't play TF2 to heal people. You play it for the face stabs, the mini sentries, the pipes, and the rockets.

I've noticed pub Medics seem to imply a desire for options, and I'm with them on that. Medic would be a potentially more interesting class if there were more viable options for weapon choices. In both HL and 6s, let's face it; we all use crossbow and Ubersaw for the primary and melee, and for our medi guns, we use predominantly Uber, and sometimes Kritz. (Quick Fix isn't used very often in HL, it was only recently allowed again in 6s, and Vax is extremely rare.)

Giving the Medic different weapon choices that would be comparable to the crossbow and Ubersaw I believe would add some interest to Medic for people. For example, a slightly more powerful primary at the cost of healing speed, and/or shoot little healing pellets (small % of health)

Overwatch has the same problem of not having enough people willing to play supports. And I mean, in general, most people consider support classes downright boring. I mean yeah, supports do influence the game, but you don't play TF2 to heal people. You play it for the face stabs, the mini sentries, the pipes, and the rockets.

I've noticed pub Medics seem to imply a desire for options, and I'm with them on that. Medic would be a potentially more interesting class if there were more viable options for weapon choices. In both HL and 6s, let's face it; we all use crossbow and Ubersaw for the primary and melee, and for our medi guns, we use predominantly Uber, and sometimes Kritz. (Quick Fix isn't used very often in HL, it was only recently allowed again in 6s, and Vax is extremely rare.)

Giving the Medic different weapon choices that would be comparable to the crossbow and Ubersaw I believe would add some interest to Medic for people. For example, a slightly more powerful primary at the cost of healing speed, and/or shoot little healing pellets (small % of health)
26
#26
-1 Frags +

I think it's a bold statement to say that pubbers don't get into competitive because pubs aren't competitive enough themselves, and I don't think making pubs a more competitive environment will increase the popularity of competitive TF2, simply because pubs are meant to be a very relaxed environment where the general mindset of players is to just fool around and enjoy themselves. Valve tried making pubs more interesting by replacing quickplay with casual mode, which put a bit more emphasis on the score of the two teams, but that didn't really change much.

Also, I don't see how those points you mentioned about pubs tie in to the points you made about making people want to play medic. And medic doesn't need any more buffs as he is. Good medics are incredibly difficult to kill as they are. Giving them perma scout speed will give them even more survivablity and make them even more difficult to kill, even if their health pool is reduced by 25 points. And games where both medics survive a lot have a higher tendency to be a bit more stalematey, which nobody wants.

I think it's a bold statement to say that pubbers don't get into competitive because pubs aren't competitive enough themselves, and I don't think making pubs a more competitive environment will increase the popularity of competitive TF2, simply because pubs are meant to be a very relaxed environment where the general mindset of players is to just fool around and enjoy themselves. Valve tried making pubs more interesting by replacing quickplay with casual mode, which put a bit more emphasis on the score of the two teams, but that didn't really change much.

Also, I don't see how those points you mentioned about pubs tie in to the points you made about making people want to play medic. And medic doesn't need any more buffs as he is. Good medics are incredibly difficult to kill as they are. Giving them perma scout speed will give them even more survivablity and make them even more difficult to kill, even if their health pool is reduced by 25 points. And games where both medics survive a lot have a higher tendency to be a bit more stalematey, which nobody wants.
27
#27
5 Frags +

Go back and read the reactions to forced public matchmaking. 'This isn't fun anymore' 'I don't want to try hard to win'. These are people who want to be a minority in an fps game, where they can still get to shoot people and have an impact without being at risk for helping you lose.

I've seen a lot of friends get into OW, enjoy it, then slowly realize it's like any other moba. You play the wrong class, you don't perform as expected of the average player. The same goes for matchmaking. You go from being 1 of 12 to 1 of 6, you have to do twice as well and in most cases also be the only player of that class. That alongside with suddenly having to be on voice and interact with strangers is jarring to most.

Even if you do want to play medic, you're one of the most important components of a team. Can't drop ubers, can't miss arrows. Useless shit scout on the flank? "Oh I'm having a bad day". There's no easy way around this other than to be a ballsy player, and a hat simulator doesn't motivate that kind of behavior.

That said, it's also just not a competitive format. Competitive cs:go? Literally the same map and setup. In that way the new 6v6 MM is pretty nice for introductions, but obviously it's still shit. There really isn't a way to go about this without diving in head first. Playing with other noobs is probably the easiest approach, but hey. Who wants to do that.

Go back and read the reactions to forced public matchmaking. 'This isn't fun anymore' 'I don't want to try hard to win'. These are people who want to be a minority in an fps game, where they can still get to shoot people and have an impact without being at risk for helping you lose.

I've seen a lot of friends get into OW, enjoy it, then slowly realize it's like any other moba. You play the wrong class, you don't perform as expected of the average player. The same goes for matchmaking. You go from being 1 of 12 to 1 of 6, you have to do twice as well and in most cases also be the only player of that class. That alongside with suddenly having to be on voice and interact with strangers is jarring to most.

Even if you do want to play medic, you're one of the most important components of a team. Can't drop ubers, can't miss arrows. Useless shit scout on the flank? "Oh I'm having a bad day". There's no easy way around this other than to be a ballsy player, and a hat simulator doesn't motivate that kind of behavior.

That said, it's also just not a competitive format. Competitive cs:go? Literally the same map and setup. In that way the new 6v6 MM is pretty nice for introductions, but obviously it's still shit. There really isn't a way to go about this without diving in head first. Playing with other noobs is probably the easiest approach, but hey. Who wants to do that.
28
#28
-2 Frags +

Give medic an ultimate that revives people

Give medic an ultimate that revives people
29
#29
-3 Frags +
PendjiI've seen a lot of friends get into OW, enjoy it, then slowly realize it's like any other moba.

I'm not sure if you know what a MOBA is. Adding abilities to an FPS game doesn't turn it into a MOBA. You could call SMNC (I wonder if someone still plays this game) a MOBA, but not OW.

On topic, games with both male and female playable characters seem to be much more successful. Only exception I can come up with is CS. Maybe this is what we need?

[quote=Pendji]I've seen a lot of friends get into OW, enjoy it, then slowly realize it's like any other moba.[/quote]
I'm not sure if you know what a MOBA is. Adding abilities to an FPS game doesn't turn it into a MOBA. You could call SMNC (I wonder if someone still plays this game) a MOBA, but not OW.

On topic, games with both male and female playable characters seem to be much more successful. Only exception I can come up with is CS. Maybe this [i]is[/i] what we need?
30
#30
-1 Frags +

good idea I guess

I mean, 5cp still exists.

good idea I guess

I mean, 5cp still exists.
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