“Why do we have four Spies and no Soldiers?”
I’ve been sitting at this screen for god knows how long now, almost catatonic, trance like, thinking “What the hell do you have to say that’s worthy enough to be put up on a website viewed by quite a few people?”
After much meditation in high mountains and all that junk, I decided i would start with my tf2 pet hate. Class stacking.
Now, we have all recently seen it with the Medic achievement fiasco. A server filled with almost an entire class, making the game almost impossible to play and enjoy yourself. But what i find worse, is if even a minor amount of your team decides to play the most useless class for the map.
Let’s take gold rush for example. Everyone is playing it, it’s a bunch of fun, but it is a useless class hotbed. Snipers are rarely effective (up until stage 3) yet i always see a good 3, sometimes 4 on a team of 12. I just don’t understand it.
I know that everyone has their own favorite class and want nothing more than to play that class all the time, but there has to be a time when you have to stop and think “Ok, time to be a team player” and pick something that either no one has yet, or is needed at a certain point ie. to break a stalemate situation.
I think a lot of people seem to forget the title of the game: TEAM Fortress 2. That means playing the right class to fit the team and their objective. I could go more into the selfish play styles of TF2 and their origins, but I think I’ll leave it for another post, I don’t want my first to be long winded and everyone thinking “Oh god, this guy is going to be painful…”
So people, please, for the sake of my monitor/keyboard/headphones/microphone/neighbors/father/dog/voicebox, I urge you to pick your class for the team, not yourself. If I find some people stacking on a server who refuse to change, I may start screen capping and posting them, in similar vain to the clan stack images (which reminds me, I have a few of those).
Although, Engie ho-downs are still, and always will be acceptable.
Welcome and congrats to /D/irection on his first post on ubercharged.net. He’s one of the new authors, in hopefully what is the first of many rants 
- madlep
Direction on June 3rd 2008 in rants, soldier, spy, team fortress 2
Stumble it!
/D/irection responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 3:20 pm #
Oh god, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry…
TfTack responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 3:42 pm #
I could not agree more. One thing I always hate is seeing a bunch of spies (the class I like to play) on a server accomplishing nothing while I am forced to be one of my less effective classes. But in terms of effectiveness, you just cant have too many soldiers.
KuroFalcon responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 4:31 pm #
Welcome /D/irection
Neuromante responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 4:41 pm #
Snipers useless in goldrush? Hell! I have had LOTS of fun in every stage sniping the enemy (defending and attacking),goldrush has many wide sites ideal for sniping!
Btw,I’m 100% with you. It’s frustrating playing with people who, for example, place a sentry at 1 cm from yours, watching 4 spies in a team or medics who don’t heal (after over 20 “medic!” calls ¬¬)
Anyway, I see it’s not the general rule, and people use to play in team generally.
madlep responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 4:45 pm #
Sweet! Other people doing my posting work for me.
)
I’m off to go buy a tropical island with all the cash I’m raking in from this
(HA! As if
Josh responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 6:40 pm #
You could have been.
vbigiani responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 7:23 pm #
Guilty as charged. I’m training as a scout, so I always play one, even if the team doesn’t have a Medic or another more important class.
At least, if the team already has a scout, I switch classes and play something useful instead - I don’t class stack on a less useful class (although ending Dustbowl.2 as Red with a score of 20:15 and three dominated enemies isn’t exactly useless).
Gusbob responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 8:04 pm #
First off…Congrats /D/irection on your first post. I agree with your points, but sometimes its fun to have a whole team go all heavy, all demos, or all soldiers. It actually helps the whole team stick together (same speed, no preconceived idea about where you’re ’supposed to be’).
Pinko responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 9:01 pm #
Man, snipers are useful in the map on every stage, excepting the possibility of stage three, second cap. Which always gets taken immediately.
But I see your point.
All engi turtling will always be the best part of any game.
Welcome to the writing world of ubercharged!
Dr. Leh responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 9:33 pm #
Happens to me all the time… having 3+ worthless snipers, a complete lack of medics, etc, on a 16 person team. My class choice is almost always completely dependent upon the spread, as i call it. No medics? Well, somebody’s got to do it, so i be one. A healthy amount of each class? Then i pick whatever the team needs me as most, depending on the situation. Usually demo though.
madlep responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 9:48 pm #
I’m just glad I can go back and play medic again now that the achievement grind has died Down. I’m usually the one that switches class first when the team doesn’t have any, but that hasn’t come up as much since the patch.
Although with the snipers, I always thought it would be cool to have an entire team of snipers lined up and acting as a firing line in some random pub game.
Gusbob responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 9:57 pm #
I think a sniper firing line will be entertaining. Perhaps you can organise something like this (plus other crazy stuff we can think of) on the ubercharged server.
/D/irection responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 10:04 pm #
Thanks for the comments everyone, I am going to promise you my next one will be better haha.
"KoreRat" responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 10:08 pm #
I agree completly, last night I was playing on a team of eleven, and there were FIVE Medics! I thought we were past this point of Medic Mayhem.
Whenever I join a server, my first instinct is to go Soldier(my best class) but I always check the team, and any class with more than two I avoid. Often this leads me to be Demo, and then I feel like a hindrence to the team…
kklkfsl responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 10:54 pm #
the mars volta suck
oldmeme responded on 03 Jun 2008 at 11:08 pm #
This is odd because I have never played a FPS on a PC until I got TF2 last Nov. and yet I cannot play a decent soldier for my life. I always go Spy (my favourite class :3) or Demo, arguably the two hardest classes to get good at.
What has shown up now more for me is that I go Demo and see that there is one medic on the team.
“Thats ok, he’ll keep us alive.”
No. He never does. The amount of thick headed Medics still swarm the place. Once, one of these medics was constantly healing a Heavy (who was an utterly useless noob), only brisking from one person for a heal before getting back. I had 2-4 HP left so I called right beside him. He healed me back up to around 100 and turned around to the heavy again. I just said, “F*** that, he’s a useless Medic”. I then watched both get blown to pieces. Again. And again. And again.
What ever happened to Medic and Soldier or Demo buddies? I never see them around nowadays. Its all Heavy hogging.
ANYWAY, enough of my rant and Welcome, /D/irection. Hope we get to see some more frequent updates now
Eivind a.K.a Mr.Alko responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 12:47 am #
My class choice depends mostly on the weather ;). I can play almost every class, I got my class days. someday I own as solly, another day as demo, then one day i pwn engies as pyro ftw :D. But if my team need medic I gladly change.
BTW: I’m not one of those medics healing ONE person and die together with him every round without getting a single uber because he’s so ‘tarded that he cant protect me. I try claiming a teritory where my team know i will be, then its easier to defend. If you get me :P.
sorry for crappy spelling (im norwegian FTW)
-Alko the ubercharged reader
Stray responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 12:47 am #
I often hear dick heads crying whenever one or two people are playing spy or pyro. Because apparently they need to switch to soldier or demo because the spy and pyro are useless, and they’re the sole reason were not gratitiously raping red team. Thankfully however, i usually join servers with a large amount of friends. This is around the time we all decide to play pyro.
BreadHeadFred responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 12:58 am #
It’s kind of funny - whenever I play Spy on a public server, somebody else ALWAYS picks Spy just after me, and they are often useless. One Spy is usually enough, and if a team is gonna have two, at least those two should be good, which is not the case in most of these…cases.
I don’t mind four or five Soldiers, Demomen or Heavies (etc) on one team, but such a high number of Spies never ceases to piss me off.
BreadHeadFred responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 1:05 am #
“Once, one of these medics was constantly healing a Heavy (who was an utterly useless noob), only brisking from one person for a heal before getting back. I had 2-4 HP left so I called right beside him. He healed me back up to around 100 and turned around to the heavy again.”
How I hate that. Just recently, I was standing right in front of a Medic with … I believe it was 14 HP, hammering E (after a bunch of “polite” attempts), while he was healing a Demoman. I eventually had to taunt and hit him with my shovel numerous times before he bothered doing anything. >.<
RiteSedFred responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 1:10 am #
i think /D/irection’s dog is a pretty cool guy. eh listens to him rant about puter games and doesn’t afraid of anything.
D4rkone responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 5:09 am #
Heh, 4 spies no solis….
I guess that’s why I’m a primary Spy and secondary Soldier. Sometimes you just have to resist that urge to backstab the mantrain and blow them up instead.
BreadHeadFred responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 5:12 am #
Somehow, I think that comment was directed at me. If it was, may I ask why you’re saying that?
(And if not … just ignore me)
n00bie51 responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 5:58 am #
Sometimes I have to resist the urge to blow them up after my knife fails to hit its target. It’s easier to play a Soldier than a Spy.
Engineers hoe downs are epic win.
b4dboyz- responded on 04 Jun 2008 at 6:10 am #
I say f**k the team element and play whatever you want to play.
seanman responded on 05 Jun 2008 at 4:36 am #
‘ello /D/irection
Dark Master responded on 06 Jun 2008 at 11:17 am #
To BreadHeadFred:
That happens to me constantly, I’ll switch to a class, say spy or sniper, because we have been in great need of one for some time and suddenly there are 2 or 3 other people playing that class after a minute or 2. This is esspecialy annoying when the people who switched are completly incompetant, I was enjoying myself as that class, and now we have no offense because they all switched classes so I have to change classes again.
RJ-Pilot responded on 09 Jun 2008 at 6:35 am #
True, as long as it remains perfectly acceptable for the entire team to choose sniper on 2fort. Forever.
vyral responded on 15 Jun 2008 at 5:41 am #
They should call you whiners Dr. NOOOOO!