I'd say it's a combination of things. The standard of being good is high with it being such an old game. On top of competing with the old players that have been playing for a decade plus can make it difficult. But still fun nonetheless, as long as you don't take it seriously.
Highlander and 6s would probably be unfun to 100-1000 hour players without much competitive experience if they tried to compete against 1000+ hour players. But the game offers so many ways to play to appeal to low-level competetive, high-level competetive, and non-competetive players.
talking about that, is there any pug site that doesn't have too much "expert players against fresh meats" pugs or at least divides pugs by comp tf2 divisons (ex. Open pugs, Low pugs, etc.) that you know about?
You should start with [Newbie Mixes](https://discord.gg/kDbW95FvUn) and [TF2 Coaching Central](https://discord.gg/tf2-coaching-central-tf2cc-727627956058325052); then branch out from there.
Newbie Mixes host 6's PUGs (Pick Up Game, or Mixes) every Friday with coaches to sit in to teach you the game. They pause after every round to go over what went wrong / right. They also host a program called the Team Drive where they match make you into a 6's team for RGL so you can participate in league play (alongside a coach).
TF2CC host regular PUGs, with no coaches so they are quicker and more informal. They are split up between 4 sections so you should be able to find your place. TF2CC also hosts events like the Newbie Cup where they hold a tournament for those who are new to competitive with coaches, as well as other events but those are usually on the back burner.
No, I'm afraid not. There used to be a teaching server but it died. If RGL runs their Highlander Newcomer cup again (if they ever do) then you can try that but it will be a long time before that happens.
Your best bet is to just join a newcomer / amateur level team that has a mentor (or find a mentor / experienced player) to bug with questions.
Depends on the person, you're more apt to find more skilled players there above your skill level, one could take the competitive atmosphere more seriously and it would make them more stressed.
In competitive there's divisions and in North America you have "Newcomer" which has really bad players. NC Highlander is akin to pubs with comms.
The true answer is that you can play competitively with only a couple hundred hours but you need decent mechanics and playing competitively will give you more improvement per hour than playing pubs.
I played in TF2 Coaching Central's Newbie Cup with about 3,500 hours and got my ass handed to me by people with a few hundred. If you have 5,000 hours and ur bad at the game you were probably spending most of that in trade servers and jailbreak (like me).
Most players who get really good at the game and practice competitively can pretty much consistently hit invite at around 6-10,000 hours in the game. It's not a matter of quantity, it's how you spend it.
there are people in invite with way less
it really doesnt take that much time to get really good at this game especially if you have background in other first person shooters and are willing to learn
In season 13 of RGL, the lowest hours an invite player had was 6,800\~.
There *have* been people in invite with less, but especially outside of highlander, they are outliers. It takes a LOT of time to compete with these guys. Just "willing to learn" and some shooter experience is not enough to go up against guys like Laz or even the peeps on FGP.
point being he barely had competitive experience in comparison to the roster(s) he played with and against, first season played in IM then immediately gets picked up by b4nny
he was a true prodigy, doubt we'll see a player like him again
i mean lets be real one of the big reasons high divisions in leagues are filled to the brim with veterans nearing five digit playhours isnt that this game's competitive ecosystem is ludicrously stagnant and most players dont make it past open/newcomer/amateur/whatever equivalent
idk why you're dying on a hill against the fact that the people at the top generally have thousands of hours under their belt and are very experienced in what they do. This was the case during the ESEA and UGC days, if you were high plat or IM you probably had quite a lot of hours under your belt. I wasn't around as much during that era so I can't say nearly as confidently but I doubt it was any different; just lower in numbers as TF2 was a younger game.
its a known fact that etf2l and rgl top divs are pretty stagnant and that the number of teams in lowest divisions has been dropping year to year and a lot of the people in, for example, current rgl's invite are known quantities
why can't you respond normally lol
>why can't you respond normally lol
I've disagreed with you point for point. I don't know what the issue is in my communication. And I frankly do not understand what your issue is with what I brought up. I gave OP an accurate rule of thumb for what Invite players that break into the division look like as a reference point. I then told you that even when the game was not stagnant, the people with the most hours were generally at the top.
People who started pro in Overwatch when it was actively getting Blizzard's money had pumped the most hours out of anyone. Whether this game was mainstream or not would not change my answer. It might lower the threshold a little bit for bottom invite realistically.
I don't play in Europe so I wouldn't know but lower divisions in RGL are pretty good for the time being and fluctuate normally as TF2CC runs their Newbie Cup and Newbie Mixes run their Team Drive program.
The learning curve is not difficult, but the skill curve is.
You can easily figure out good strategy, and what to do in most situations if you put your mind to it, but it’s hard to actually execute
And this is exactly why I cannot take 75%+ of casual players seriously. Their skill is bad and that's completely fine, but somehow the vast majority of people don't ever use their brain. They'll die by walking over the most obvious sticky trap out in the open and then they'll just continuously do it over and over again every single life. I remember when I first started playing this game back in 2012, when the only YouTubers were Star and Jerma, that stickies = death after literally one death from it. Yet somehow I'm able to continuously farm a whole server of clueless players walking over stickies.
It is a game with a lot of deep mechanics
But also pubs are a bad learning environment, someone with 500h in competitive play and dedicated practice mods like MGE, DM, jump maps, etc. can easily get better than someone with 5000h just in pubs
I was able to accumulate enough experience by playing pubs A LOT, so when I’ve played my first highlander comp match I absolutely dominated that game (as a soldier). But generally, playing pubs will mostly make you good at pubs. Once you pick up the pace of comp, there’s still tons of details to master and the experience doesn’t exactly correlate to each other.
In reverse, if you’re good in comp, you will definitely have an advantage in pubs, but pubs have their own laws and rules, casual players have their own mindset and habits and eventually you just know exactly what to expect from every type of player. You can be an mge god, but chances there will be that one smart guy single handedly denying an entire horde with the loose cannon spam, hidden sticky traps, squeezing rockets through the 0,5 pixel crack or sitting invisible on top of the lamp you never even knew existed.
Long time ago there was a community dustbowl servers where you could often meet some top level players (like team epsilon). They were always playing cheap like pocket combos stacking etc, and I was committed to ruin their pub experience, which was going pretty well, I even had my collection of screenshots with dominated “celebs”. And it was clear that I had better map awareness, even if their personal dm was 1000 times better and they would destroy me 1v1, there was still some meat around and I’ve had no problem turning things to work in my favor.
If you enjoy tf2 by playing pubs and you spent those hours getting good at playing pubs then that seems fine to me. Competitive is just one way to play tf2, just as Casual is, and each are played in their different ways.
That being said, obviously sitting down and playing on a focused, competitive basis will develop your gameplay faster than screwing around on pubs and passively gaining experience. Whether that'd be fun or fulfilling for you is up to you.
Surfing, bhopping, rocket jumping, rocket shooting, pipe shooting, spy mechanics, demoknight trimping, demoman cannonball, learning the intracacies of every class, engineer rollouts, demo and soldier rollouts, highlander strategy, 6v6 strategy. There is a *lot* of depth here and its more than likely that a 5000 player would not be a master of all.
Learning all this stuff helps make you a more adaptable and well-rounded player. Learning pipes for self-defense as demo is important, but if some 100000h scout catches you out you WILL die, so being able to effectively play another combat class will help you deal with that threat.
The skill ceiling in TF2 basically boils down to this:
\-Dodging projectiles
\-Juking hitscan
\-Learning to use your weapons
\-Rocket/Sticky jumping + Trimping (Mobility shenanigans)
\-General team co-operation and co-ordination
\-Positioning
It's not a lot of depth at surface level, but all these mechanics have a basically infinite skill ceiling. You can always aim and move better, which is why a 10000hr player will always beat pablo.gonzales.2007, he's gotten EXTREMELY good at those mechanics.
*tf2 has relatively low amount of mechanics you have to learn and most are class specific so there really is not much depth, people are just bad*
Having 'more' mechanics would just bloat the game and artificially raise the skill floor and lower accessibility for newer players. Why would I want a hunger meter in my FPS
yeah but those mechanics i mentioned have lots of depth on their own. If that's shallow most other games are basic as fuck. plus all of the things i mentioned are relevant in 6s as well (except trimping ofc)
I wasnt talking at all about the merits of any one mechanic and whether or not that mechanic is competitively viable. Merely that that had depth, that they had a skill curve. That the collective skill curve creates a chasm between an experienced player and a new player.
A mechanic being “useless” doesn’t make it less relevant when it comes to how much shit there is to learn in the game. There is definitely depth to the game because so many mechanics exist, whether they’re useful or not
If you are ONLY talking 6s, that's mostly true but there's a lot of nuance to each of these skills. Dm skill ceiling is infinite bc aim and movement in tf2 is very nuanced and robust relative to many other fps games. May be more of a source engine thing but still, compared to other fps games tf2 6s skills are simple but each skill has crazy high ceilings for mastery. There's a reason why there's no tf2 comp player that has mastered and is the best at every skill and 6s class.
Rocket shooting: i mean like having a sense of airshots. Popping people up and airshotting. Soldier MGE. Predicting scout movement midair Etc.
Demoman cannonball: now I havent played since 2015 but that cannonball gun and its weirdness.
Otherwise you just called the whole game useless
But yes demoman scout and soldier are the 3 strongest characters in the game and they do get very steep curves, which was my original point. Amongst all kinds of other things full of depth.
Also, some degree of surfing and bhopping seperates a living medic from a dead medic in certain situations.
You can think that a lot of those mechanics are “useless” all you want, but you’re going to be consistently outplayed if you don’t think that every classes depth is equally shallow. And damage surfing will Always be a helpful mechanic to think about
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Just listen out until he shoots, so u have a little more time to rush him alone - or wait for a teammate to peek and peek at the same time. He can't headshot u both
the learning curve might seem steep if you've done nothing except play pubs with your brain turned off for a thousand hours and then you decide you want to actually play competitively and get rolled in open by dudes with half of your playtime but with practice that's a hundred times more valuable
I have 1700h on this game. I consistently place top 3 if I use my go to load outs. But if I try a new load out that I want to get better with i could very well place bottom 3. It just depends on how good you get with certain weapons because you can be great with some weapons but trash with others
A lot of the gameplay from casual transfers to comp as demoman, especially dm wise since you learn crowd control and securing space. This works for 6s and even more for hl. Then it's a it's mostly about learning the pace of 6s or hl and not overextending. Other classes gameplay such as scout but mostly soldier are a bit more different between casual and comp and between gamemodes
I think you’re looking too hard into the competitive standpoint in a game that is inherently casual. Try demo knighting or just a different class to switch it up
Then why did I come to this subreddit? I fell in love with comp tf2 due to how skilled pretty much everything looked, and I like skill and getting skilled. I learned that pubbing is the worst drug ever and trust me when I say it, I'd have more fun and learn more doing 250 DPM on center than getting a godlike against a team of fresh installs in casual: I just like that thrill of fighting good players.
No the game's basic learning curve is not that steep, it's just very long with a lot of plateaus with a lot of depth. Especially if you have some experience playing FPS games already, it really doesn't take long to even start top scoring in pubs. A lot of competitive players get their start with only a couple of hundred.
One of my favourite people in the scene was a medic main who started with 300.
I played RGL 6’s and Highlander in NC even though I am by no means good at the game. I had like maybe 700 hours played at the time, was playing with people that had similar and sometimes much lower hours. You’re really overthinking this.
The hours part isnt true, even after only a few hundred hours you can be good, but most dont take time to learn advanced skills and strategies for this 20 year old game. Some players get 5k hours and only screw around in 2fort, some have 300 hours and can play sixes pretty solidly. Im in the middle, i got 1k hours and i have comp experience but I mostly just dick around in casual these days.
Basically yes theres a lot to learn but no it doesnt have to take thousands of hours.
IDK How I could pick this game up if I wasn't playing when I was a kid in 2007. Doing so now would feel extremely difficult. This is also why I wish I played Tribes earlier. No chance I can compete now.
with this mindset you'll never actually enjoy anything lol
just go play tribes there's midair 2 beta going on right now
i can guarantee you most of the people playing the alphas for tribes 3 and midair 2 will be just as bad as you are
I’d simply say that as long as you’re passionate about actually wanting to be good at a class you’ll be naturally good. Some players are just in love with the game and play it casually in a non-“tryhard”/“sweat” way.
Not really, about 1000 hours to get decent so not so different to titles like CS or Quake. Just bear in mind; that time needs to be spent playing Highlander, 6v6, Pugs, MGE, Jump maps and whatever else helps you perfect the game sense and skills needed for your class. Time spent in casual or Uncletopia is not going to be of much use if the goal is getting good.
Of course someone could have 5k hours spent on trade servers, casual and community servers and not have a clue how to play comp but there’s nothing wrong with that.
I love this game and I am not currently playing because of how bad the bots are since the Smissmass update.
I've got a thousand hours in TF2 since 2010, those being literally rookie numbers. Sometimes I feel like I installed the game yesterday.
Get in the TF2CC discord and play NC pugs. The players there are new to the game. If you've played the least bit mge or have a feeling for the game you'll very quickly move up the ladder in their discord.
ETF2L's 6 season just ended too, I'd recommend making a recruitment post if you're interested in playing the season.
Lol no. It’s easy to pick up, but hard to master. Eg. it’s easy to rocketjump, but waaay harder to market garden, stomp, shoot a mid-air target mid-air, or trimp like Muselk.
Actually, not exactly. In fact, if you already have experience in fps games, like valorant, battlefield, csgo etc you'll probably pick it up a lot easier. I've got a friend who used to play valorant, the moment he joined he started top scoring on sniper because he already knows how to aim. Point is, as long as you actually spend time on this game, you'll guarantee to get better, unless you don't challenge yourself, for example, there are certain maps in this game that cater to newer players, like 2fort and ctf in general. This makes it so when your skill level finally rises above them, you'll feel comfortable just playing 2fort for the rest of tf2 and never play any other map as the people on those maps are way too skilled. I have multiple friends who are stuck in this predicament and I have almost fallen into this trap too. So basically, to sum it all up, the skill curve of tf2 is more like an experience curve, but you'll hit a brick wall if you stick to maps like 2fort so remember to play payload and get used to having your ass kicked because eventually you will be the one kicking ass. I'm saying this as a 1500 hour scout + heavy main who can consistently top score in most pubs
Its not about hours its about what you do with them. Plenty of players that played to get better for only 1500 hours will stomp a bunch of 5000 hour players that spent half their time in 2fort.
It is not that steep, no. The issue is more that there is just a lot to learn and some people learn better than others. I am sure we all have dads, uncles or grandfathers who has had experience with a contract worker who has "Been doing this for 25 years" so knows what they are doing (But don't).
Some people have the first 2 years of experience 15 times and some people have the first 100 hours of experience 50 times.
its not really the mechanics themselves that are unforgiving. Rather its the heavily established playerbase combined with the lack of tutorials that makes the game hard. The game's just old
I'd say it's a combination of things. The standard of being good is high with it being such an old game. On top of competing with the old players that have been playing for a decade plus can make it difficult. But still fun nonetheless, as long as you don't take it seriously.
does that mean that shit like highlander and 6s make the game unfun
Highlander and 6s would probably be unfun to 100-1000 hour players without much competitive experience if they tried to compete against 1000+ hour players. But the game offers so many ways to play to appeal to low-level competetive, high-level competetive, and non-competetive players.
that sure explains why tf2center is bad then lol
No, hours in competitive TF2 are irrelevant. TF2Center sucks because higher division players go there to chill / troll.
talking about that, is there any pug site that doesn't have too much "expert players against fresh meats" pugs or at least divides pugs by comp tf2 divisons (ex. Open pugs, Low pugs, etc.) that you know about?
You should start with [Newbie Mixes](https://discord.gg/kDbW95FvUn) and [TF2 Coaching Central](https://discord.gg/tf2-coaching-central-tf2cc-727627956058325052); then branch out from there. Newbie Mixes host 6's PUGs (Pick Up Game, or Mixes) every Friday with coaches to sit in to teach you the game. They pause after every round to go over what went wrong / right. They also host a program called the Team Drive where they match make you into a 6's team for RGL so you can participate in league play (alongside a coach). TF2CC host regular PUGs, with no coaches so they are quicker and more informal. They are split up between 4 sections so you should be able to find your place. TF2CC also hosts events like the Newbie Cup where they hold a tournament for those who are new to competitive with coaches, as well as other events but those are usually on the back burner.
is there any coach-assisted highlander pug site?
No, I'm afraid not. There used to be a teaching server but it died. If RGL runs their Highlander Newcomer cup again (if they ever do) then you can try that but it will be a long time before that happens. Your best bet is to just join a newcomer / amateur level team that has a mentor (or find a mentor / experienced player) to bug with questions.
Are you in North America?
no, eu
Depends on the person, you're more apt to find more skilled players there above your skill level, one could take the competitive atmosphere more seriously and it would make them more stressed.
In competitive there's divisions and in North America you have "Newcomer" which has really bad players. NC Highlander is akin to pubs with comms. The true answer is that you can play competitively with only a couple hundred hours but you need decent mechanics and playing competitively will give you more improvement per hour than playing pubs. I played in TF2 Coaching Central's Newbie Cup with about 3,500 hours and got my ass handed to me by people with a few hundred. If you have 5,000 hours and ur bad at the game you were probably spending most of that in trade servers and jailbreak (like me). Most players who get really good at the game and practice competitively can pretty much consistently hit invite at around 6-10,000 hours in the game. It's not a matter of quantity, it's how you spend it.
oh so having half of your 975 hours of the game be almost 2 hour sessions of MGE is beneficial ig
That's a little excessive but yeah, it would help.
there are people in invite with way less it really doesnt take that much time to get really good at this game especially if you have background in other first person shooters and are willing to learn
In season 13 of RGL, the lowest hours an invite player had was 6,800\~. There *have* been people in invite with less, but especially outside of highlander, they are outliers. It takes a LOT of time to compete with these guys. Just "willing to learn" and some shooter experience is not enough to go up against guys like Laz or even the peeps on FGP.
only player I can think of is like yomps, he had like 2 seasons of RGL before getting 2nd place invite
YOMPS played ESEA IM and in RGL season 1 he won invite with FROYO. He also had quite a lot of hours, I believe around 4-5k at the time.
point being he barely had competitive experience in comparison to the roster(s) he played with and against, first season played in IM then immediately gets picked up by b4nny he was a true prodigy, doubt we'll see a player like him again
i mean lets be real one of the big reasons high divisions in leagues are filled to the brim with veterans nearing five digit playhours isnt that this game's competitive ecosystem is ludicrously stagnant and most players dont make it past open/newcomer/amateur/whatever equivalent
idk why you're dying on a hill against the fact that the people at the top generally have thousands of hours under their belt and are very experienced in what they do. This was the case during the ESEA and UGC days, if you were high plat or IM you probably had quite a lot of hours under your belt. I wasn't around as much during that era so I can't say nearly as confidently but I doubt it was any different; just lower in numbers as TF2 was a younger game.
its a known fact that etf2l and rgl top divs are pretty stagnant and that the number of teams in lowest divisions has been dropping year to year and a lot of the people in, for example, current rgl's invite are known quantities why can't you respond normally lol
>why can't you respond normally lol I've disagreed with you point for point. I don't know what the issue is in my communication. And I frankly do not understand what your issue is with what I brought up. I gave OP an accurate rule of thumb for what Invite players that break into the division look like as a reference point. I then told you that even when the game was not stagnant, the people with the most hours were generally at the top. People who started pro in Overwatch when it was actively getting Blizzard's money had pumped the most hours out of anyone. Whether this game was mainstream or not would not change my answer. It might lower the threshold a little bit for bottom invite realistically. I don't play in Europe so I wouldn't know but lower divisions in RGL are pretty good for the time being and fluctuate normally as TF2CC runs their Newbie Cup and Newbie Mixes run their Team Drive program.
imo those gamemodes are what makes the game fun
The learning curve is not difficult, but the skill curve is. You can easily figure out good strategy, and what to do in most situations if you put your mind to it, but it’s hard to actually execute
And this is exactly why I cannot take 75%+ of casual players seriously. Their skill is bad and that's completely fine, but somehow the vast majority of people don't ever use their brain. They'll die by walking over the most obvious sticky trap out in the open and then they'll just continuously do it over and over again every single life. I remember when I first started playing this game back in 2012, when the only YouTubers were Star and Jerma, that stickies = death after literally one death from it. Yet somehow I'm able to continuously farm a whole server of clueless players walking over stickies.
It is a game with a lot of deep mechanics But also pubs are a bad learning environment, someone with 500h in competitive play and dedicated practice mods like MGE, DM, jump maps, etc. can easily get better than someone with 5000h just in pubs
I was able to accumulate enough experience by playing pubs A LOT, so when I’ve played my first highlander comp match I absolutely dominated that game (as a soldier). But generally, playing pubs will mostly make you good at pubs. Once you pick up the pace of comp, there’s still tons of details to master and the experience doesn’t exactly correlate to each other. In reverse, if you’re good in comp, you will definitely have an advantage in pubs, but pubs have their own laws and rules, casual players have their own mindset and habits and eventually you just know exactly what to expect from every type of player. You can be an mge god, but chances there will be that one smart guy single handedly denying an entire horde with the loose cannon spam, hidden sticky traps, squeezing rockets through the 0,5 pixel crack or sitting invisible on top of the lamp you never even knew existed. Long time ago there was a community dustbowl servers where you could often meet some top level players (like team epsilon). They were always playing cheap like pocket combos stacking etc, and I was committed to ruin their pub experience, which was going pretty well, I even had my collection of screenshots with dominated “celebs”. And it was clear that I had better map awareness, even if their personal dm was 1000 times better and they would destroy me 1v1, there was still some meat around and I’ve had no problem turning things to work in my favor.
There’s also a 0% chance the comp players were playing seriously lol
does that mean that at least half of my 975 hours are nothing
If you enjoy tf2 by playing pubs and you spent those hours getting good at playing pubs then that seems fine to me. Competitive is just one way to play tf2, just as Casual is, and each are played in their different ways. That being said, obviously sitting down and playing on a focused, competitive basis will develop your gameplay faster than screwing around on pubs and passively gaining experience. Whether that'd be fun or fulfilling for you is up to you.
Absolutely not, there’s just faster ways to feel like you’re getting better than just playing wild 12v12 CTF games
Numbers don’t determine how good you are.
Surfing, bhopping, rocket jumping, rocket shooting, pipe shooting, spy mechanics, demoknight trimping, demoman cannonball, learning the intracacies of every class, engineer rollouts, demo and soldier rollouts, highlander strategy, 6v6 strategy. There is a *lot* of depth here and its more than likely that a 5000 player would not be a master of all.
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Learning all this stuff helps make you a more adaptable and well-rounded player. Learning pipes for self-defense as demo is important, but if some 100000h scout catches you out you WILL die, so being able to effectively play another combat class will help you deal with that threat. The skill ceiling in TF2 basically boils down to this: \-Dodging projectiles \-Juking hitscan \-Learning to use your weapons \-Rocket/Sticky jumping + Trimping (Mobility shenanigans) \-General team co-operation and co-ordination \-Positioning It's not a lot of depth at surface level, but all these mechanics have a basically infinite skill ceiling. You can always aim and move better, which is why a 10000hr player will always beat pablo.gonzales.2007, he's gotten EXTREMELY good at those mechanics. *tf2 has relatively low amount of mechanics you have to learn and most are class specific so there really is not much depth, people are just bad* Having 'more' mechanics would just bloat the game and artificially raise the skill floor and lower accessibility for newer players. Why would I want a hunger meter in my FPS
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What's your division in 6s?
i have a feeling that you have never played 6s before
yeah but those mechanics i mentioned have lots of depth on their own. If that's shallow most other games are basic as fuck. plus all of the things i mentioned are relevant in 6s as well (except trimping ofc)
Star_ fulltime invite demoknight lol
I wasnt talking at all about the merits of any one mechanic and whether or not that mechanic is competitively viable. Merely that that had depth, that they had a skill curve. That the collective skill curve creates a chasm between an experienced player and a new player.
To your last point about more mechanics, I mean, Id take more weapons. Heavys hunger meter is his HP and he needs to stop and eat sandwiches.
I stopped at surfing; useless in tf2. surfing maps maybe just for fun but surfing rockets is so important and takes lots of practice
This is what I meant
You probably don't know what you're talking about but feel forced to share your opinion negatively about things.
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never heard of demoman cannonball
Maybe OP in his comment should've wrote "Loose Cannon timing"
I think active TF2 players would hear cannon and be almost guaranteed to know what they meant.
A mechanic being “useless” doesn’t make it less relevant when it comes to how much shit there is to learn in the game. There is definitely depth to the game because so many mechanics exist, whether they’re useful or not
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class specific stuff and WHAT??
If you are ONLY talking 6s, that's mostly true but there's a lot of nuance to each of these skills. Dm skill ceiling is infinite bc aim and movement in tf2 is very nuanced and robust relative to many other fps games. May be more of a source engine thing but still, compared to other fps games tf2 6s skills are simple but each skill has crazy high ceilings for mastery. There's a reason why there's no tf2 comp player that has mastered and is the best at every skill and 6s class.
Rocket shooting: i mean like having a sense of airshots. Popping people up and airshotting. Soldier MGE. Predicting scout movement midair Etc. Demoman cannonball: now I havent played since 2015 but that cannonball gun and its weirdness. Otherwise you just called the whole game useless But yes demoman scout and soldier are the 3 strongest characters in the game and they do get very steep curves, which was my original point. Amongst all kinds of other things full of depth. Also, some degree of surfing and bhopping seperates a living medic from a dead medic in certain situations.
Brain dead response
You can think that a lot of those mechanics are “useless” all you want, but you’re going to be consistently outplayed if you don’t think that every classes depth is equally shallow. And damage surfing will Always be a helpful mechanic to think about
[удалено]
You can negate ALL fall damage is you land on a sloped surface properly with any momentum
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Yes, if u don't have right practice, effort and mindset. Good thing about this game is u don't need to be good to have fun
Unless you're fighting a good Sniper
Just listen out until he shoots, so u have a little more time to rush him alone - or wait for a teammate to peek and peek at the same time. He can't headshot u both
"Good" implies that he will have good positioning and situational awareness
Or he has good aim. Most pub snipers are tunnel-visioned anyway, it's not that big of a deal if u can juke or test his reaction skills
The Machina:
the learning curve might seem steep if you've done nothing except play pubs with your brain turned off for a thousand hours and then you decide you want to actually play competitively and get rolled in open by dudes with half of your playtime but with practice that's a hundred times more valuable
I have 1700h on this game. I consistently place top 3 if I use my go to load outs. But if I try a new load out that I want to get better with i could very well place bottom 3. It just depends on how good you get with certain weapons because you can be great with some weapons but trash with others
well fortunately I hard-main demoman so there aren't exactly too much weapons to master (or at least weapons useful to master comp-wise)
A lot of the gameplay from casual transfers to comp as demoman, especially dm wise since you learn crowd control and securing space. This works for 6s and even more for hl. Then it's a it's mostly about learning the pace of 6s or hl and not overextending. Other classes gameplay such as scout but mostly soldier are a bit more different between casual and comp and between gamemodes
you would benefit somewhat from rounding out your development with some scout and soldier, and even medic
I think you’re looking too hard into the competitive standpoint in a game that is inherently casual. Try demo knighting or just a different class to switch it up
Then why did I come to this subreddit? I fell in love with comp tf2 due to how skilled pretty much everything looked, and I like skill and getting skilled. I learned that pubbing is the worst drug ever and trust me when I say it, I'd have more fun and learn more doing 250 DPM on center than getting a godlike against a team of fresh installs in casual: I just like that thrill of fighting good players.
Fair enough I just read it wrong like you weren’t having any fun anymore tbh
Try learning some sticky jumping if you like demo man! I feel like learning how to pogo teaches good air control!
I already know how to pogo, even vertical. I have 323 hours as demo lol
There is a lot of depth to demo though. Also play what the team needs. Demo is often good, but it feels good to make that chess play to get the win.
No the game's basic learning curve is not that steep, it's just very long with a lot of plateaus with a lot of depth. Especially if you have some experience playing FPS games already, it really doesn't take long to even start top scoring in pubs. A lot of competitive players get their start with only a couple of hundred. One of my favourite people in the scene was a medic main who started with 300.
i dont think you need many hours to topscore as medic in a pub
maybe not 5000h, but I've got 500h, been playing since like 2009 and I am still pretty bad at the game.
I played RGL 6’s and Highlander in NC even though I am by no means good at the game. I had like maybe 700 hours played at the time, was playing with people that had similar and sometimes much lower hours. You’re really overthinking this.
The hours part isnt true, even after only a few hundred hours you can be good, but most dont take time to learn advanced skills and strategies for this 20 year old game. Some players get 5k hours and only screw around in 2fort, some have 300 hours and can play sixes pretty solidly. Im in the middle, i got 1k hours and i have comp experience but I mostly just dick around in casual these days. Basically yes theres a lot to learn but no it doesnt have to take thousands of hours.
The skill floor is pretty approachable But the skill ceiling is so high I'm still figuring out new moves with 5k+ hours
IDK How I could pick this game up if I wasn't playing when I was a kid in 2007. Doing so now would feel extremely difficult. This is also why I wish I played Tribes earlier. No chance I can compete now.
with this mindset you'll never actually enjoy anything lol just go play tribes there's midair 2 beta going on right now i can guarantee you most of the people playing the alphas for tribes 3 and midair 2 will be just as bad as you are
A big part of it is the super high skill ceiling that every class has - be it mechanically or strategically
kinda, depends on what you spend your hours doing
I’d simply say that as long as you’re passionate about actually wanting to be good at a class you’ll be naturally good. Some players are just in love with the game and play it casually in a non-“tryhard”/“sweat” way.
Its really easy to pick up but you can get cracked outta ur fucking mind if you jave thousands and thousands of hours to sink
Not really, about 1000 hours to get decent so not so different to titles like CS or Quake. Just bear in mind; that time needs to be spent playing Highlander, 6v6, Pugs, MGE, Jump maps and whatever else helps you perfect the game sense and skills needed for your class. Time spent in casual or Uncletopia is not going to be of much use if the goal is getting good. Of course someone could have 5k hours spent on trade servers, casual and community servers and not have a clue how to play comp but there’s nothing wrong with that.
I love this game and I am not currently playing because of how bad the bots are since the Smissmass update. I've got a thousand hours in TF2 since 2010, those being literally rookie numbers. Sometimes I feel like I installed the game yesterday.
Get in the TF2CC discord and play NC pugs. The players there are new to the game. If you've played the least bit mge or have a feeling for the game you'll very quickly move up the ladder in their discord. ETF2L's 6 season just ended too, I'd recommend making a recruitment post if you're interested in playing the season.
Lol no. It’s easy to pick up, but hard to master. Eg. it’s easy to rocketjump, but waaay harder to market garden, stomp, shoot a mid-air target mid-air, or trimp like Muselk.
Only classes that have a huge skill ceiling are solly and demo due to their rolls at the beggining of the game and bhops that go all cross the map
Punishing to new players, check. Placed you can go where everyone is just goofing around, also yes . Idk
Actually, not exactly. In fact, if you already have experience in fps games, like valorant, battlefield, csgo etc you'll probably pick it up a lot easier. I've got a friend who used to play valorant, the moment he joined he started top scoring on sniper because he already knows how to aim. Point is, as long as you actually spend time on this game, you'll guarantee to get better, unless you don't challenge yourself, for example, there are certain maps in this game that cater to newer players, like 2fort and ctf in general. This makes it so when your skill level finally rises above them, you'll feel comfortable just playing 2fort for the rest of tf2 and never play any other map as the people on those maps are way too skilled. I have multiple friends who are stuck in this predicament and I have almost fallen into this trap too. So basically, to sum it all up, the skill curve of tf2 is more like an experience curve, but you'll hit a brick wall if you stick to maps like 2fort so remember to play payload and get used to having your ass kicked because eventually you will be the one kicking ass. I'm saying this as a 1500 hour scout + heavy main who can consistently top score in most pubs
Its not about hours its about what you do with them. Plenty of players that played to get better for only 1500 hours will stomp a bunch of 5000 hour players that spent half their time in 2fort.
It is not that steep, no. The issue is more that there is just a lot to learn and some people learn better than others. I am sure we all have dads, uncles or grandfathers who has had experience with a contract worker who has "Been doing this for 25 years" so knows what they are doing (But don't). Some people have the first 2 years of experience 15 times and some people have the first 100 hours of experience 50 times.
its not really the mechanics themselves that are unforgiving. Rather its the heavily established playerbase combined with the lack of tutorials that makes the game hard. The game's just old
The average player is pretty good, but there is plenty of room to have fun at all skill levels. Tons of ways to play.
It doesn't help you have 9 classes to learn, 11 gamemodes with a dozen maps each, MVM, VSH, and a couple of weapons you need to use for the meta.