GOING LIVE NOW

At 6 PM, Eastern Standard Time, I will be issuing my Official MustardOverlord Response to this post live on my twitch channel, http://twitch.tv/mustardoverlord .

We will set things straight.

https://i.imgur.com/vdEmKVJ.png

forcing div 2 players to confront mirrorman on pyro was the one thing that could've saved tf2, it's over now, we are no longer an esport

wait, does "gunboats always apply" mean including self-damage vs other people, or does it mean you can run shotgun while still taking gunboats dmg

because the former is worth testing while the latter seems absolutely ridiculous

https://i.imgur.com/Dw6JrnV.png

That's fair. I'd like to talk a little bit about why I think an increase in direct pipe radius is good for the game, and I also think there's a broader lesson about the evolution of games and metagames to be gleaned from this discussion, using the overall change in demo pipes as a lesson. Here are two thing that I'm not sure everyone knows/remembers:

1) the iron bomber, while having a larger projectile hitbox than stock pipes, has a smaller blast radius (at least according to the weapon description)

2) the demo nerf of 2014 didn't just nerf stickies, it also nerfed the blast radius of pipes by reducing them to the same as rockets

What do these two facts mean? Well, Valve clearly intended demoman to be a defensive, zoning, artillery based class, and the stock pipes of the time reflected that. Old pipes would hit someone and splash anyone even remotely in the same zip code (as would stickies), and the relative unpredictability of rollers would further punish teams that were clumped too much together. On the flip side, demos could be vulnerable if you closed the distance (especially back then before so many pipe savants existed), and thus Valve figured that their glass cannon, area denial class was balanced.

However, the developer's intentions don't always square with the realities of the ever-changing metagame. It may seem obvious now, but when players discovered the power of the left-click-right-click, the ability for demoman to impact the game as the aggressor in fights went massively up. Couple that with pipes that could splash wide radii, and rollers that could det perfectly on retreating players, and a demoman exhibiting well-timed aggression could sway a fight almost single-handedly. Of course, we play with demo limit 1 for a reason, which somewhat balanced things, but it was still pretty clear that demoman was the most powerful combat class in the game. It was still god-tier at what Valve had originally intended its purpose to be, but it was good at so many other things as well, and was just completely centralizing the meta.

However, when Valve decided to nerf the class, and to buff scout a couple of years later, the balance of power massively shifted. With the reduced blast radius of stickies in general, and quick-fired airstickies in particular, it became much more difficult to reliably lock down an entire zone of the map, allowed scouts in particular to move wherever they please (because they are lower hp than soldiers and don't have the tool of the rocket jump to circumvent a particular area entirely). Coupled with the med movement buff, scouts became what demo was a few years prior- still the best class at cleanup and selecting its own targets, as well as less interesting things like capping, but now the best direct offensive class in the game as well with its ability to chase (and arguably the best defensive class with its ability to give meds easier ability to dodge damage). Of course, that's not even to mention the fact that scout limit is still two, and that the medic's ability to keep up with scouts, coupled with the demo's reduced ability to deny an entire area has made double scouts near the med in dry fights much more powerful. There are lots of consequences to this meta that I don't love (like the loss in specialization between pocket and roamer, positional play of meds becoming too forgiving, the utter mindlessness of the double combo scout strat on mid or dry fights, etc.), but that's for a different time.

Still, tf2 players are adaptable, and eventually demos realized that, to have a larger impact on their game, they had to focus more on single-target dmg. That's not to say spamming an entire team has no purpose or anything, but a demo's ability to precisely hit charge stickies or direct pipes on a single target became more necessary, particularly when those targets are either scouts or feeding soldiers (now that both soldiers are freed up to play roamer a decent percentage of the time).

This is where we come back to the iron bomber- with its larger hitbox and smaller radius, not to mention more 'direct' but also more predictable rollers, its purpose seems tailor-made for the new way of playing demoman- it may not be as good as old stock pipes at killing 4 people at once in badlands choke, but it's a hell of a lot better at directing a lone scout on the top of process mid. To me, this represents a positive overall shift in the metagame- demoman might be EVEN FURTHER from what valve intended it to be, with greater 1v1 ability, but it still fits a specific niche- the best midrange class in the game, with the lack of damage falloff, that can still be vulnerable at extreme close range but only in the form of soft counters.

To be clear, I'm not saying Valve intended any of this; they might not even realize the iron bomber hitbox is so different, and if they do I'm sure they think pubbers are too dumb to notice so they don't have to update the stock pipes. However, this point doesn't matter to me- lots of the best metas that develop in games are not intended by developers, and may even come from bugs originally (see: all of SSBM). I also highly doubt Valve intended scout to be so strong, because I'm sure they were doing the demo nerf more to appease engies who like to build giant sentry nests on badwater than to appease 6s players.

Now, if we somehow got to go to a pre-demo nerf and pre-scout speed time, then yeah, the direct pipe upgrade (or maybe just the rise of better pipe aimers- remember, a metagame can change despite ZERO actual changes to the game itself) would be too broken, because the demo would just go back to having almost no weaknesses. However, I'd say that scout today doesn't have strong enough weaknesses, and a demo with really good pipe aim is one of the few things keeping them in check. We may have even entered an era where the soft counter rock-paper-scissors is reversed. Years ago, it was somewhat accepted that scout soft countered demo, which soft countered soldier, which soft countered scout. This made sense when demos were worse at defending themselves directly, and when soldiers had a) more heals than scouts and b) a shotgun (not to mention scouts having worse movement, and the map pool having more badlands/granary style maps). Now, it seems like almost the opposite- gunboats soldiers, freed up from as many med responsibilities, can land on demos ad infinitum, while 185 scouts can kite them endlessly, and demos can kill a scout from any distance beyond close range more efficiently than a soldier can. To see scouts whining about iron bomber pipes, therefore, seems pretty myopic to me.

I realize that this is the biggest tl;dr in a thread full of tl;drs but what can I say I love theorycrafting.

well,

is actually does matter if the base value is good or bad, because whether you reduce the radius of the iron bomber or increase the radius of stock pipes is a MASSIVE difference, and part of why I've been defending the iron bomber is that I don't like the idea of the direct radius being lowered in the first place, which I'm gonna say more about in a giant wall of text that I was writing before I read this post.

I would contest that, but either way I don't agree that iron bomber dumbs down demo as much as people say so it's kinda moot

also I am aware that the scorch shot is banned in europe, believe it or not I would like our whitelist to be more like eu in that regard because I believe in taking wisdom from all sources!

I'm even a fan of the 2 map 30 min matches, if you can believe it!

if your argument is that any weapon that 1) is a direct upgrade, 2) dumbs down the role, and 3) prevents what would be an interesting sidegrade meta from existing needs to be banned, literally every single one of those points applies to gunboats too!

btw the other weapon that actually needs to be banned is scorch shot, it's obviously situational because people aren't running around on pyro all the time but in most situations where a pyro is good it's absolutely absurd

ok I take it back, ban all euros except eemes

this is why it's impossible to talk about this rationally, you're acting like I'm in denial that it's a straight upgrade- I literally made a post explaining why I don't believe in banning weapons just for being an upgrade!

wait, so the issue now is lack of intent? like the problem isn't whether ot not the weapon is broken, the problem is whether there's a 'reason' for it to be better? what does that even mean? what if I say "they nerfed demo massively and buffed medic and scout, which unbalanced 6s, so any help the demo class can get is worthwhile"? is that enough of a reason, or does it have to have the valve-intended seal of approval?

again, suspecting there was a hidden stat is not the same as the weapon being OP. OP is short for 'overpowered', and it refers to things that are gamebreaking, uncounterable, unbalanced, etc. just saying the iron bomber is better than stock pipes has nothing to do with any of these things.

ok, same with the demo nerf and the med speed buff, let's revert both. matter of fact, I always hear the 'ban crossbow' crowd say 'just because everyone is used to it, doesn't mean we should accept it'. I guess that means they must be correct!

or maybe we could have a valid discussion about whether or not it's stupid that the weapon does that.

I don't know when I entered this bizarro world where we went from "iron bomber pipes are slightly easier to hit" to "bro they're literally hitscan, you can't miss, the class is so dumbed down lol"

if they were as dumbed down as you're saying then anyone would be able to just 2 pipe their way into invite, with scouts being totally helpless against a demo. need I remind you that the scout class has a double jump, and that the iron bomber is still a projectile??

it feels like scout mains remember some time where the pipe didn't look like it was gonna hit them and still did (which can also be caused by latency, or be a pipe that was going to hit them whether stock or iron bomber but hit 'earlier' because of the hitbox), and silently stewed until people found an actual gameplay bug that explains the issue. I'm sorry, the fact that literally no one was clamoring for this until the bug was found shows that the weapon was not considered overpowered. if you go with the zesty argument and say you don't like buggy or unpolished things in the game, then sure. but don't try to tell me that the thing that makes a weapon go from balanced to OP in peoples' minds is not a player who's sick at exploiting it, not months of anecdotal evidence, but literally reading a forum thread.