Attack of the clones!
Now, we all know that entering any TF2 game can reveal an atrocious lack of balance when it comes to the classes everyone is playing. It’s not surprising in the slightest when you see it, but it is slightly annoying when you have a ton of snipers all becoming fried twigs every time the Pyros on the other team inevitably get up close and personal. Yet most of the time, you get on with it – This team needs an Engineer to fill those Pyros with lead, I hear you cry! I felt like sniping myself, but the need for sentries is greater! For that brave and tactical choice, I run up to you and give you a hug… Yet there’s one type of class imbalance that can occur that’ll stop me hugging people and start me heading for the nearest sharp object. And that’s when other people start switching classes to try and imitate your success.
Take, for example, a match I had on Dustbowl last night. A good mix of classes, but I noted that there was a lack of a Medic, so I took up the role. Oh, and promptly put in one of the best rounds as a Medic I’ve ever had. All the ubers that were popped caused sheer devastation, many a life was saved, and generally we attacked with all the force of an angry bull driving a bulldozer. I’m looking forward to imitating the success in the next round, and spin round in my spawn to look for someone to heal – Only to see at least three more Medics popping up around me, all eager to try and be a medical marvel like myself.
Image credit scalari.net
I mean, what the hell? Medication is a good thing, but we don’t need a damn overdose of it! No amount of muttered complaints into the microphone changed the landscape, so I felt obliged to switch to a Medic-friendly class such as the Demoman. The klaxon sounds, the round starts… And all the Medics either stupidly lumber to their deaths or stick to one patient while someone dies two inches away from them amidst desperate screams for help. In short, they were rubbish, and the bulldozer turned against us… Why? Because people saw the effectiveness of a Medic, wanted a piece of the awesome, and promptly switched classes as a result. It was a literal attack of the clones, but like the Star Wars film with the same name, it all ended up being a bit retarded.
It’s all part and parcel with one of my major annoyances with any multiplayer game, but in TF2 it’s almost a gamebreaker – Selfishness. People won’t defend a point because there’s far more kills to be had trapping people in the spawn. Their fear of dying and looking like “A stoopid n00b” means they’ll never dive onto a point to stop a capture or valiantly fray properly. And they’ll switch classes the second they see a different one is scoring more points than they are. So I hope they listen to me when I say this – Cut it out. Try your best for the team, stick to the class and strategy that is working, and for goodness sake don’t all become Pyros for such a stupid reason as personal kudos. The only time everyone can be the same class is if they’re scouts, because we all know rushes and games like that are severe giggles. Ahem.
Still, suppose it could be worse. I see one good enemy sniper over there, surrounded by a bunch of awful ones. My desire to burn everything is rising…
supremesonic on July 23rd 2008 in rants, team fortress 2
Stumble it!
Poke responded on 23 Jul 2008 at 8:18 am #
Tell me about it. I can easily become first place in a server as spy, but I rarely play it now because every time I do, soon enough my team is complete with 4 other spies. The worst part is that having other spies would actually lessen my efficiency as well, because the enemy is always. fucking. alert.
xsjado responded on 23 Jul 2008 at 8:19 am #
I seem to suffer from this quite a lot. The other day on 2fort I managed a glut of early kills as an engineer giving me a firm lead over everyone else on the server. Once the initial rushing was over and the other sentry nests were firmly established I changed to scout for a bit of harassing fun. A sneaky capture while the rest of the team was fighting in the sewers obviously grabbed peoples attention because we ended up with 6 scouts! They didn’t really understand the true nature of the class and kept trying to rush the intel (which was now properly defended), so there was a big defensive gap in the team. I duly switched to heavy and made a few babies cry by which point all the bandwagon scouts were getting bored. Before you could say “Little baby men” we gave the snipers a large selection of hopelessly under-aware bacon targets.
Maybe some of them will read this and think again next time.
PS: Also agree with the sentiment about defenders forgetting that the rushing the point is the quickest way to stop a capture. The next time I see 3 soldiers milling around the outside of the central point on grainary I’ll be sure to refer them to this article.
Sanns responded on 23 Jul 2008 at 8:59 am #
What bothers me is that every single one of these copy-catting mofos is always such an incooperative player. Don’t get me wrong, a balanced team is inherently more likely to succeed than an unbalanced team, but even an unbalanced team can be successful if they work together.
For example: last night, I was on a server that had 5 ppl decide to go red engineer on Dustbowl 1-1. Now, it’s not the greatest strategy, but if they had been wise and staggered their sentries out and helped each other build, they could have forced blue to fight close to spawn to save a L3 sentry at the point from ubers, then cooperated to rebuild the forward sentries. Instead though they all tried to build their own sentries close to each other, fought over metal, and got rolled when an uber pyro ran straight from the spawn to the point and cleared out all the unfinished sentries. Blue then went unabaded to the second point and won the round in under 2 minutes.
n00bie51 responded on 23 Jul 2008 at 10:18 pm #
I would love to play more often as Spy or Pyro but I always see people filling up these classes on maps like Dustbowl and Gold Rush, and so I don’t contribute to the dumbassery of class stacking, I pick a different class.
Angus Wilson responded on 23 Jul 2008 at 10:45 pm #
YES! Thank you so much for this article, i couldnt agree more. Me and a freind are perhaps 2 of the only competent players on xbox 360, and this happens to me so much with medic.
Dark Master responded on 23 Jul 2008 at 11:24 pm #
Ug, thats one thing I really hate. It seems that whenever I see an oppertunity to play as the only spy on my team, or the only medic or what have you; then a life or two latter, there are at least two other people playing that class. This eliminates the only reason I was playing it in the first place, and when I change to the class that our team is now missing to fill the gap, the same thing happens or I end up playing some of my worst games.
RJ-Pilot responded on 24 Jul 2008 at 3:18 am #
I’ve devised a rotational system whereby I change class every time people start spamming it, going from;
Heavy -> Scout -> Soldier -> Demoman -> Spy -> Pyro -> Sniper -> Medic -> Engineer.
Saboteur responded on 24 Jul 2008 at 9:38 pm #
No spam is really quite as bad as spy spam. I was in a 2fort pub yesterday playing spy, my team generally sucked so about 3 minutes into the game i had 12 points and was at the top of the scoreboard, above mainly pyros and demomen. By the time our team lost, there were 3 other spies on my team, all doing horribly, and generally making things harder for me. By this time a medic and a soldier had risen above me, only by about 3 points however.
ADaggerThrough responded on 26 Jul 2008 at 5:24 am #
I find this happens almost every time I play as a sniper. I’ll find a good spot to overlook all the action and start shooting out some brainboxes, and before I know it there’s a couple more snipers standing in my exact spot, barely hitting a thing (as well as standing perfectly still and always being zoomed in), and just drawing more attention to me! Eugh. >=[