Tbh I'm disappointed by how they changed sandman in this update.
The reason is simple: currently the sandman is pretty much banned from all leagues, which I find a sad and stupid thing to do. (stupid in general, not in the sandman's case)
This update nerfs the sandmann, but it doesn't nerf it enough so that it will get unbanned in leagues.

So Valve reacted to some criticism, but in the wrong way, which will end up causing a lot more criticism and the competitve scene is still forced to ban the weaon.

You want the sandman to be used in leagues?

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All roads may lead to Rome, but all Wikipedia pages eventually get you to the Third Reich. - m3n

I like this nerf of the sandman, it was either this or shorten the stuntime, both would've worked - the fact that you get stunned is tactically fine, it adds a utility to the scout which it didnt have before - now if you use it right you can stun an enemy so your team can destroy him, or you can stun an enemy to escape, or even finish off an enemy. before it was, stun to solo lolsmack. it isnt how the scout is intended to be used and this brings it back to a class that can be utility.

the scout SHOULD NOT stop ubers , it is retarded

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"The bots came, saw Saints post count and gave up instantly."-[SpA]futari

+1

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Flaregun is actually pretty good, you just have to pick your targets. It is useful on gravelpit to stop people jumping on the roof, as the combined damage of the jump + flaregun (40-60 + ~100 damage) means you only need one more hit and they are forced to drop down, then either you or your team can get them (Demomen are screwed if you get them). It is also useful for stopping rushes, since if you can hit the medic they will normally retreat. It is also great for finishing off enemies you you have flamed and are running away (due to the greater impact damage it is also good against other pyros). Also it owns scouts, what more could you want?

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Yep flaregun is more situational weapon, its also great to piss of enemy spies running with enemies in your team colours And stunning ubers will be gone soon I think, I would rather like to see drug effect, with crazy colors and moving world to make aiming harder for ubered players

It shouldn't be able to do anything to ubers, I think instead of a stun it should have a daze effect with no damage reduction, as I've said before :3

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

But without effect on uber this weapon would be totally useless ;] After few weeks probably number of sandmans will drop, so it can stay like now ;]

Ummmm no because it would still own any single enemy and it would still effect kritzkrieg... How is that in any way useless?

If its a stun effect I doubt it will ever be introduced in leagues.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

The best thing Valve could do now is just discard scout updata and make a new one ;]

And you believe they really will do that?

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"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

They wont, but based on usage of scout unlocks you never see bonk now, FaN is also rare, only sandman appears more than once a year

No, I don't! All I'm saying is that I think it's stupid if the competitive community is forced to make such rules, which basically create a seperate version of TF2 that has very little to do with the "regular" TF2. This creates a rift in the community, which is not good for either side. (just go to the steam forums, there are lengthy public vs. competitive debates)

There are a lot of rule changes in competitve TF2 already, but they mostly only remove the randomness, and are by far not as drastic as as completely banning a weapon.

Yea I see your point of course.

Valves definately destroying the game with all the new weapons. Its impossible to balance a whole new 27 weapons with 27 existing weapons from 9 classes. And tbh, I paid to play Team Fortress 2, not Team Warcraft Fortress World.

They could rather concentrate on serious bug-fixes and release new maps only (also community maps) but I really start disliking all the new weapons

Oh and I know theres much flaming, whining and trolling on the Steam Forums. Thats the reason Im not active there

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All roads may lead to Rome, but all Wikipedia pages eventually get you to the Third Reich. - m3n

Oh man - whenever I hear the "new features are destroying the game" pseudo-argument churned out by people who forgot how to have lighthearted fun in video games I want to go on a killing spree in the closest shopping mall.

It's CS 1.5 vs CS 1.6 all over again! And all the people who stayed with CS 1.5 were totally gay! It's a scientific fact!

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

But its true

I never disliked this game on public as much as now.

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All roads may lead to Rome, but all Wikipedia pages eventually get you to the Third Reich. - m3n

+1

What you fail to grasp and what all the "+1s" in the world won't change is the fact that the only people who complain about new gameplay features are hardcore gamers because they are, ironically, the least flexible group ever - change the jump physics by 10% and they will all come crying like little girls - it's pathetic.
Now - hardcore gamers are only a very small group of the gaming community, even if they are usually the most vocal one - many developers have fallen for this ruse and tried to carter mostly for them, which indeed DID destroy the game for the general community, luckily Valve knows better. If the update packs destroy the game so much then it's pretty funny that Valve registers a sales spike each time they release one of them and enlarges the user base - Gabe Newell held a speech about that on a recent game developers summit.
Hence neither Valve nor I will shed a single tear if they lose one "OMFG, you b0rked the game!" nerd compared to 100 new customers.
Considering that, Valve will not stop to bring out new packs and whatnot and I'm happy with that - just like the majority of players - bring out another 50 maps and weapons! They will also continue to balance the game to make it enjoyable for the majority of players - sometimes you need to change your gameplay style, adapt a bit, and I know that it's hard for "pr0-gam0rs" because they have been practicing their air-rockets for the last 100 hours and even the slightest change might force them to *gasp* learn something new.
Suck it down!

Yes, I'm writing intentionally in an aggressive tone because this particular topic ALWAYS makes me angry, in any game it might pop up, because some snobbish minority pretending to know best always try to push through their unimportant (consumer-wise) opinions feeling like they're the kings of the game who should be universally admired and respected just because they have a K:D ratio of 10:1 and 50 points per minute.
Yet it's Valve with the millions of dollars, over 20 millions Steam users and a Metacritic rating of their products close to 90%! Ha, ha, joke's on you!

P.S. Have you considered the fact that the game might have been unbalanced before the updates? I mean for the average player - not the "I'm so pr0" group. Scouts were the least played class, so apparently they were unbalanced "appeal-wise" - Valve are reasonable people and they try to make all classes equally attractive to the average Joe and do not listen solely to competitive players who can master anything and oppose any changes to the things they're used to.

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

Yep hardcore clan gamers group is gettin smaller every year, which is a brilliant thing, because FPS games are getting more and more new awesome features. If there were only hardcore gamers, we woulb be stucked in early counter strike years But you have to admit, that scout unlocks will be only used after people unlock them for about 5 minutes, since every unlock takes away one key feature from scout - pistol, double jump or powerfull scattergun, and FaN jumps doesnt really replace regular double jump.

Im not generally against the updates - most of the new weapons indeed make the game more interesting. But if Valve comes up with a weapon that takes next to zero skill (hitting any class but scout with the sandman is easy) and leaves a player totally helpless for several seconds then I really dont want it to be in the game. This also changes one of the earliest features of the game - medics are able to make themselves and one/some patient/s invulnerable (fucking *INVULNERABLE* that means fucking nothing can fucking hurt them!!! except a little ball? LOL just lol) as a reward for healing for a longer period of time. Now 2 Scouts with sandman can just stun the ubered person twice and the uc was totally wasted. So why should I keep playing Medic if I cant even help my team destroying a sentry even with a demoman anymore?

If stunning ubered players would be disabled by Valve I really could adapt to it, but right now its just bullshit.


Also, even if the omfg-pr0-gamers are probably the smallest group of a gaming communty, they are also one of the most important. Do you think CS 1.6, Quake 3 etc. would still be played if there were no e-sports? ;P

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All roads may lead to Rome, but all Wikipedia pages eventually get you to the Third Reich. - m3n

+1 for Lim-Dul

I like updates. Always have, always will. I remember back in the day, when every major CS beta update spawned a wave of complaints. Of course 1.5->1.6 was the worst, but 6.0->7.0 and 7.0->1.0 were pretty bad too.
It's so strange, that there are so many young and mentally agile people, that like playing games that require you to change and adapt your tactics, don't like change.

But Lim, in this case it is a bit different. The sandmann really should not be in the game. Valve themself's said in the beginning, that they didn't want anything that impairs another players vision or movement, becaue it pisses people off. And they were right, because being stunned like this should not be in a FPS game.
You can compare it to the flashbang from CS because it has a similar purpose. If you do that, you'll see that the sandmann is just too "out of control" to be fun or fair.

And I also think that your assesment of the importance of the competitive community is wrong. A good competitive community is what decides if the game will live or die. It's one of the most important factors too, because the competitive scene is the major selling argument for a game after it's initial release (think internet communities, lan-parties, ...)
Prime example for this is NS, which was always balanced for competive gaming first and public second. But because of it's strong base, it survived a lot longer and stronger than any other 3rd party mod.

The key here is that a game's long-term survival doesn't necessarily mean any viable financial benefits for a company - sometimes it could be even worse because it draws away players from new products (CS vs CS:S argument - I can tell stories about that - I was responsible for introducing the first CS:S leagues in the ESL back in the day) OR costs loads of money for continuing support of a relatively small player base. So what that some aficionados play a certain game for years when they all bought it years ago as well? From a company's perspective that's dead meat and e-sports are usually governed by different bodies.
Trust me - I have the data at hand (as a video game journalist) and the sad (?) truth is that catering to competitive gamers is not a valid marketing solution - it's always beneficial to cater to them AS WELL but if presented with an either-or choice it would always be the first target group to be dropped. That's why there's such a huge trend towards DLC (quite often for free!) THIS is what keeps the game alive for the general public and actually translates to sales.

As to the Sandman - I think time will tell whether it was a good idea or not - to me it currently seems like a gimmick that does piss people off but has little strategic value - EVEN with its uber-stopping power.

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

It has one of the biggest stratigic powers, for the simple reason that it can stop ubers so effectively. A decent player with an uber used to make the game interesting, since he could kill pyros most of the time (airblast is an annoyance sometimes, but they can sometimes be killed). Normally people won't have enough stickies down already to make the ubered people fly up (Sometimes but not consistantly). These two things used to be the main counters, except for a counter uber. Where-as if there is a scout on the team he can stand at a safe distance and stun the uber for up to 8 seconds, which gives the team mates time to get ready to own them afterwards. This, instead of making the game more interesting, as the updates should, makes it much more likely for steamrolls or stalemates because it does not have a counter, and completely removes control from the player it hits.

I love the updates, flaregun is amazing, the axtinguisher, blutsauger, kritzkrieg, ubersaw and KGB.

All of these updates give a new tactic to the game, but they all have their counters, what counters the baseball? I have only ever seen one scout deflect a baseball, mainly because the baseballs are aimed at medics/soldier/demo/heavy/snipers.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

well I think the airblast should be able to do it. It is now able to return the ball but not without being stunned first which I think is silly.

and I must agree with Lim here. it's basically the old Longbow versus Crossbow debate all over again, takes years of training to be good with the longbow but the crossbow can be picked up by a non skilled person and kill just as easily,
and England (pro-gamers) went and banned it cause it was such an unfair weapon to use.
so what I'm saying here is that there's just new rules to the game, adapt or not, it's still here.

Scout were the least played class, and they made it interesting for newcommers and people who plays other classes.

Mr.Moose has a point too, there SHOULD be something that could counter it, as per date there's nothing at all that can stop it.

now I don't see any point in whining about the weapon on OUR forums since all it does is really..... nothing. now go to Valve's forums and complain there, they'll probably don't care, but it would remove the problem from our forums.

and for relentless this line seriously pissed me off. -1

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[SpA]Revenge "Wheres the element of surpise :/"

[SpA]Mint "IN.... MY....PANTS"

[SpA]Minimoose "Revenge is going to jump out of your pants?"

in my humble opinion , i see the scout's new weapons , turning him into a disruption class . If that is so , why don't valve give him LESS damage , because if he can disrupt attacks and also have a lot of dmg dealing ... preety imba ,wich sucks.

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"The bots came, saw Saints post count and gave up instantly."-[SpA]futari

It doesnt. I once did it and only the Scout got stunned.

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All roads may lead to Rome, but all Wikipedia pages eventually get you to the Third Reich. - m3n

Stuns are bad mkay. What they should do is make the scout ball inverse your controls. You can still move and still get rewarded if you can adjust (I know 90% can't xD)

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Da boyz need themselves a Nob they do

I find the fact that an enemy spy can see your health, and pick you off from afar with his revolver, just because he knows you're low, and the fact that he can decloak just next to you, and before you have the time to even react he facestabs you, so much more frustrating than the little toy the scouts got!

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<@Howard_s> usa just has a made up economy - they can't really go broke

JuncoPartner: I could barely hold it up for long.

With the first overflow of scouts gone I got stunned with uber what? Twice? Without being ubered and stunned as heavy by a scout you now (with the less damage) have a good chance to kill the Scout as soon as the stun vanishes. As soldier it's also fun to stick near a heavy and shoot the scouts who stun him .
You're still invulnerable when stunned, aren't ye?

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SaintK: I'm completely lost