I agree with Eemes on what he’s said this page and think he’s made some valid points.

#69 I think his metaphor of politics is perfectly valid, just because the context is different it doesn’t devalue his point at all. ETF2L, by going forward with the change despite the majority voting against it, are managing their league undemocratically. Their decision represents the smaller group of people. In a situation like this, where the change to the game is so massive, a larger majority should be required. If the amount of people who want the change is anything but an overwhelming majority then why would you ever go through with the change? I understand that more testing is required but the vote itself determined that more people than not didn’t want to have it tested in a season. Also, as Eemes stated, some people who are so strongly against the change will not play seasons with the plugin enabled whereas the people who voted for the plugins’ implementation, I’m sure, would continue to play without it. Also your argument about “people not wanting change skewing the vote” could easily be applied inversely to the players of the old meta who want to revive that so I don’t think it's a fair criticism. (Edit: In hindsight I guess you could say, for example, a majority of 55>45 for the change (hypothetical) would suffice as a majority too and not making the change based on that could also be considered undemocratic, I think the point I'm trying to make is that the change is so drastic and it's not as if theres a demand that change NEEDS to happen, it's that the proposition of this plugin holds so much weight that the level required for it to replace something as steadfast and integral as a metagame should be higher compared to not changing it.)

(I, for one, would not play the season with the plugin active and I’m not the only one of people I know.)

It’s definitely not trivial, and yes it is reversible. However I think having this season with the unpopular plugins implemented would be so harmful for Europe’s playerbase, it would deter people from playing even if reversed and disenchant people with ETF2L, who already don’t have the best track record for popular changes. People’s motivation for playing based on the league’s competency and ability to represent their desires is a huge deal. It’s not as if I don’t agree the change should be tested if 45% of players would like to see it tested, I just don’t agree that a season is the correct or healthiest platform for it when 55% of players don’t want that. I don’t think you should be arguing “how many people will quit permanently because of this test season?” but instead consider the impact of carrying out a decision that 55% of the players don’t want and how that could harm people’s motivation to continue playing in a league that carries out the opposite of what they’ve voiced.

#70, #74 Sure, unifying 70-80% of this continent’s playerbase might be a bit unrealistic but when the proposed change is a monumental meta shift the bar for making change NEEDS to be high and ESPECIALLY when the change is so divisive. At the very least though 45% is not a majority. I also don’t see how his logic is warped.

#71 I really don’t think it’s getting blown out of proportion and I don’t think the points you make about game developers or other games with bigger changes really hold much value. It might be a trivial change in comparison but that doesn’t make it trivial for us? This is huge. And without this being an affront to your skill level but I think it’s a problem that people in general aren’t great at grasping what potential the medic attach speed brings so if a team, or an unorganised mix team like in your situation, does a poor job at playing with the medic's base toolset then I doubt you would notice much of a difference.

#72 I think people were opposed to the change at first but they grew to realise that it brought value to the game. People have adapted since and now play effectively and happily with it, look at a team like FROYO. Yes the possibility of a plugin was a fairly recent revelation, though I don’t think the outcry for the change has been there as long as you’re making out. The plugin just met the needs of a subset of players who had a feeling it would fix some of their problems with the meta, which as I’ve argued previously I don’t agree with in the first place.

#76 I agree with both you and Olgha that this plugin would disallow so much interesting team/medic aggression and reduce general medic play/positioning to more holding. The plugin limits a team’s ability to fight for space both offensively and defensively because the heals have to position themselves so much more conservatively and can’t move as quickly.

#55 So why is half committing bad? Theres a stark difference between fighting gradually/reactive and baiting. If a team just sits and watches their soldiers bomb without taking any risk to support them then that team is just factually bad and they’ll never get anything done. If you’re looking to bait your team then you’re playing the game wrong. A soldier being baited by his awful team is not representative of the meta being stale, people just need to get better at taking advantage of medic attach speed to actually play together. A team’s ability to prod and fight for space with coordinated aggression is what separates a real team from every other shit pug team that pops up every season - anyone has the capability to play all-in, the former actually requires coordination. Anyway I don’t understand why people think medics keeping uber after losing a fight is a bad thing? Would you prefer for teams to get fully punished for every fight they take and mistake they make? Surely its way more interesting for the game if a team loses a fight and has a chance to hold the next point back, its not as if running away and conceding half the map isnt a punishment within itself or that the 1 scout and 1 medic are invulnerable if you chase them - a good enough team can catch them or apply so much pressure for them surviving. Its also not as if the running team doesn’t have any options either, they can take risks like playing with the scouts to kill bombers or wrap to block mid for example. It really feels like the reasoning behind this plugin is just that players want everything for free. Why do you want to win an entire round off the back of one fight? Why do you want every solo soldier bomb to be effective without support? This is a team game. You have to earn success in this game and that includes learning how to play together and making use of the tools that have been a staple feature for five years, not reverting the meta back to something more simple because individuals have failed to adapt.

my thoughts on the plugin situation

projectiles ignoring teammates is good, it was an unnecessary limitation for a competitive game wherein ammo and spent shots can be so crucial

i really dont understand the pipe spin change, i dont really see what it fixes or who it was meant to appease. like who was asking for this?

the gunboats one was overall a good change, i think taking ~75 self damage for hitting the highest dealing damage, so supposedly best, rocket you could hit is crazy punishing and has allowed alot of scouts to win what would otherwise be unfavourable 1v1s in tight chokes where a soldier should have the advantage. at the same time though i understand the argument that there has to be some sort of tradeoff for dealing face directs and completely removing self damage to being like 11-18 might be a bit too lenient, though as twiikuu points out its more like 30 which i think is reasonable

the winger change is good, that gun is insane so preventing script abuse making it even stronger is a good thing

now as for the removal of medic attach speed: i really think this is an unhealthy and unwarranted plugin. i think people are failing to realise that the way it is now allows for teams to be so much more aggressive and makes the game so much more fun and deep, if the plugin is added then medics will be forced to play way more passive and that'll bring the team back with them. like in situations where you have uber disad, the current medic speed allows teams to be forward despite the ubers which allows for so much interesting pressure and teamplay rewarding teams' coordination and ability to punish mistakes. if the heals cant move as quick then the team is forced to play way more passively alongside him meaning disad situations just boil down to more spam and individual sac attempts. this change also hurts aggression too, the medic is just unable to follow teammates very far meaning players have to be way more restricted in space they take or targets they pick and diminishes a teams ability to punish people. slowing down the meta that we’ve been happy playing for 5 years and limiting our options for plays seems so pointless

ive also seen people claiming that the plugin makes chasing “possible” but chasing is totally viable as it is. like sure, the medic survives alot of situations but the medic kill isnt all you gain from chasing, you can kill stragglers along the way and it forces the team being chased to concede SO much space, its the reason you see froyo chase into last off a midfight and be so successful with it. i believe people, especially in europe, need to stop thinking so one-dimensionally about medic picks/uber advantages, all picks are valuable and you definitely can chase and will gain value from it in the games current state. you dont need uber advantage for a situation to be good for you, just properly capitalise on space and picks - if youre upset that a team has uber after you kill all of them then take that space you earnt and use it to force them

furthermore wouldnt it just be lame if you lost a round for every fight you lost because your medic died and couldnt leave? obviously its not true to that extent because the enemy team’s medic would be slower too, but id argue that medics staying alive more is better for the game. if we were to add this plugin then teams would be even more scared than they are now to commit to fights because they could lose their heals and its already a problem enough that teams, again, especially european, just turtle with risk-free engineer & sniper setups or opt for repeated single sacs. i think people are very uncreative nowadays and fail to take advantage of the aggression that the medic speed offers both offensively and defensively. its not like a situation is unwinnable because one side has uber. the fix for our slowness is NOT to make it even harder and riskier for teams to play aggressive

alot of people in favour of the plugin seem to label it as a scout nerfer or something to make soldier less oppressed. its not like scouts wont be 185 in fights now. this is probably a very unpopular opinion but i think soldier is completely fine and especially moreso with the gunboats plugin. i think people’s perception of “Scout Class” is blown so much out of proportion and alot of the problem comes from people genuinely not being good enough at soldier. the class is difficult yes, but the sheer amount of high level soldiers that i see play so incredibly one-dimensionally is astounding. the class can offer so much more than bombing and landing on the floor if you play the class to its strengths. its not like scout isnt strong, the class can float and has incredibly high dps but the situations you’re punished by the full force of that as a soldier can be mitigated with smarter positioning, decision making and rockets and most importantly playing with your team. if soldier was as useless/unfun as some people make out then no one would play it and especially not with the impact that some individuals do have on it

to conclude, i think its a pretty misguided decision by etf2l in the first place to test it in a season when just one season ago the majority voted against that very thing. that being said a large amount of players did vote yes so more rigorous testing is obviously required, though i think theyve done a poor job representing the majority and shouldve made better use of gaps in the schedule to arrange appropriate testing instead of making 55% of season 37s participants not want to play. etf2l’s handling of this aside, i really dont think this plugin should be implemented. it seems like people want to bring back the old meta as if it was better and not just different, but if we think rationally about what we gain versus what we lose i really think staying in our current situation is the better option. not only what ive mentioned before but also we’ll risk further segmenting our playerbase by continent and it could even harm prospects of future internationals. i do think its a valid criticism to say that medics have an easier time escaping resulting in them dying less but i think its totally a worthy tradeoff for the depth in aggression and fun that the medic attach speed adds to the game

likely my last post in this one just to conclude my thoughts and show how they mightve changed after this thread on reflection, in response to redcoat #114, i think i better understand the point youre making about "assuming the grenade launcher is perfectly balanced" now and if you look at the hitbox image it is fair to say that stock also doesnt have an accurate hitbox. though the distinction that i think is worth making is that the iron bombers model is actually smaller than the hitbox which results in it being harder and more unfair to dodge whereas the stock launcher's pipes are perfectly dodgeable by sight. though im not sure if i or anyone can say if the stock pipes having a 4x4 collision box is too little and when you compare it to the model it does look quite slim. but at the same time, as far as i know up until the iron bombers inception people had no problems with the stock not connecting enough and its only since the iron bomber has shown the power of an 8x8 collision box that the argument of stock being that much weaker arose. and from personal use with the stock too i dont think ive ever felt scammed that a pipe didnt hit whereas with the iron bomber, both using it and playing versus it, ive felt that ive gotten plenty hits that someone hasnt deserved. personally, i think 8x8 might be too big, even if the model were to reflect that. but at the same time i cant really argue why and it could just be bias, its not like i have any authority on saying which is right or wrong. similarly im not sure if i can without a doubt say that 4x4 is the best size for both either. maybe both being 6x6 with accurate models would be a good option. its hard for me to say atm, i understand the arguments for all the options and it isnt an easy decision. the final thing i'll say that i think we can all agree on is that its best for them to both be equally good options with unique rollers and models that represent the hitbox. if thats whats been determined and achieved with this thread then i think thats a success, and the matter of sorting the rest out with plugins and the decision to buff one or nerf the other is another discussion.

#104 redcoat, like mastercoms mentioned im not sure if its my place or the purpose of this thread to determine if the stock pipes/demo as a class are perfectly balanced, they are what they are and my main issue with the iron bomber is that it stemmed from a hidden stat/bug - because of that i deem the ease of hitting pipes an undeserved/unwarranted and unbalanced advantage over the stock when it would have otherwise been an interesting sidegrade. id be happy to have a choice for using either rollers but one is just much better at piping. as for why i think having the majority of demos use the iron bomber in its current state is a problem is that it doesnt reward the same amount of skill as the grenade launcher and having a projectile with a model that isnt accurate to its hitbox is not fit for a competitive setting. and youre right in saying that theres little variation in everything else too but i think thats a problem with banned weapons as a whole, not all weapons are healthy for the game in their current states; some are broken at their core and some are just number tweaks away from being solid. having more healthy weapons and options for everything would be great but with how weapons are designed/balanced currently its just not possible. im just discussing the iron bomber because its the most immediate problem presented to us. the weapons in tf2 need some serious work for us to be able to provide clear-cut rules for a whitelist like "if it creates an interesting sidegrade meta it should be allowed" because what we're working with is just so inconsistently fit for competitive.

i really feel like the point mak/i made has been lost somewhere in this thread. our argument was that we were happy to ban the iron bomber until its design flaws were corrected. if you dont agree that itd be healthier for competitive play to have both the stock grenade launcher and iron bomber be viable options and have functional models/collision boxes and have both offer unique sidegrades to roller play then i really dont know what to say

#75 why even bother quoting what i said if youre going to twist and paraphrase it? i never said the gun was hitscan. youre completely exaggerating the extent to which i stated the game is dumbed down, but as a matter of fact i do think the iron bomber has contributed to worse players making it to prem and invite on demo relying on the iron bomber and DM alone. and of course people didnt jump immediately to the iron bomber being broken, the stats are completely unassuming and for years plenty of people have just dismissed it as a placebo or just a result of the projectile being a more consistent shape. its totally reasonable that people are now more demanding of change that actual fact has come to light

#81 i agree wrap assassin should be banned

#86 its definitely more than a slight improvement with the iron bomber, just look at the sheer number of people who use it nowadays. and even if it is only a slight improvement a huge part of the problem is the fact that the weapon meta is just stale because its such a compelling option. on top of that i never argued iron bomber rollers themselves lowered the skill floor, just the fact that they det so quickly is often a free hit for the demo after missing. i actually even praised the iron bombers rollers for being a cool utility. the reason that stock rollers arent that big of a problem is also their det time, you have plenty of time to see and dodge the roller compared to iron bomber and they actually behave alot more realistically and predictably for their shape compared to the iron bomber. for the second part i think youre reading too much into my hyperbole, i dont see how you could argue that a weapon that offers both easier pipes AND a safety net of roller damage due to unfair det times is more beginner friendly and lowers the skill floor, thus allowing worse players to do better on demo. not to mention the inconsistent model and collision box making it harder to dodge and able to connect faster resulting in it being overpowered in its current state

#88 on the first page in the thread the two most vocal proponents of this change specificed that the ban was until the gun was fixed

#90 i dont know how the pace of the game would change with the iron bomber fixed and again if people understood my point, im actually all for the inclusion of the iron bomber; if it was a balanced and functional sidegrade then who wouldnt want it in the game?

#92 i really dont think youre approaching this correctly, the argument im making is that the fact the iron bomber is a direct upgrade is unhealthy for the game and having it as a viable sidegrade would make the game more competitively healthy and interesting. i dont think anyone here is trying to change the meta or nerf demoman to the ground, just the fact that one unlock weapon gives demo an artifical buff based on the benefits of it being poorly designed. and i strongly disagree with you about the combo scout statement, there are 1000 more consistent ways of dealing with one scout as a team than relying on one pipe

#98 i dont think just giving the iron bomber a large model would help. the problem of it still being easier to hit than a normal pipe with no tradeoff in 99% of situations would persist

#99 i agree the scorch shot is overpowered and its actually banned in europe. maybe youd be aware of that if you didnt immediately go to attacking peoples regionality in a reasonable discussion about video game balance @ #64 #66 #67

people keep repeating "why not ban other straight upgrades" point as if it hasnt been covered multiple times; items like the gunboats, crossbow, escape plan are healthy for the game competitively because they offer deep and interesting playstyles and raise the skill ceiling of the game. sure, theyre direct upgrades to the stock weapons. why is that a bad thing when them exisisting improves the game and quality of competition? no one is arguing for two shotgun soldiers like mustardoverlord suggests. the iron bomber in its current state makes hitting pipes easier and harder to dodge and also offers a safety net of its rollers damaging whoever they miss. this does the complete opposite to the aforementioned "straight upgrades" and lowers the skill floor, allowing any bot to play demo and hit alot of pipes and completely devalues the ability to actually aim pipes. in a competitive setting where pipes and kills will impact fights, the iron bomber is objectively better and renders the spam offered by stock an unworthy tradeoff. fixes should aim to make them both be equally easy to connect pipes with and have fair and visually representative hitboxes and both have unique rollers options, making them sidegrades. i dont know why people are okay with one being this much better when it dumbs down the game to this degree

yes i agree it should be banned until fixed, also i wouldnt be opposed to the rollers detting a little later. i think #9 has a fair point in that they often just benefit the demo for missing his pipes because the guy has no time to move, though the actual rollers do have cool utility as a stopgab between stickies, making them a nice sidegrade to stock rollers, but having the roller det a bit more in line with stock rollers in actual time would increase the guns skill cieling by lowering the reward for missed pipes. and in response to #19 the argument for those straight upgrades are that they offer new interesting playstyles and increase skill cielings whereas the iron bomber just lowers the skill floor and diminishes actual talent by dumbing down the level of entry for hitting pipes

though this isnt the only thing that deserves to be banned, so many weapons are just unbalanced and make the whitelist uncompetitive (winger, wrap assassin, banners, market gardener, quickies, solemn vow, etc) and i really think more serious and inclusive whitelist discussion needs to be had because people are clearly not happy with these weapons. myself and many people i know are so demotivated by this awful whitelist and makes us less likely to play seasons, like how can i put time into a competitive game when the whitelist just degenrates every season and rewards skill less and less. ive felt for so long i have little control over the whitelist and just have to put up with whatever decision is layed upon me by the whitelist illuminati and i hate to see the whitelist continue in that direction with shit like the solemn vow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caiN1RYow1c

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