Use code DANE50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box plus 20% off your next month of orders at bit.ly/4e1NxWD Also if you wanna watch me play Plants VS Zombies and other games with my buds, go here and take a listen while you game/eat/sleep/repeat: th-cam.com/video/qMHaHUTepBI/w-d-xo.html
Tbh, when it's 30 seconds left and my team is getting steamrolled, I just flee or accept defeat at this point to where I physically raise my hands up IRL before the enemy kills me.
@@SmellyUnfortunate007 "The Victor can't claim themselves victories unless the defeated consider themselves vanquished". When you "throw your hands IRL", you claim yourself vanquished, remember that then and only then can the other team say they won.
I'd argue the domination mechanic was WAY more important when the game first came out, and everyone looked exactly the same. It was a good way to tell who was the top scoring enemy
I remember some of the tf2 devs (I think in an interview or the dev commentary) talking about how the game was designed as a "single player" game where each class's objective is essentially selfish, but by pursuing it you end up helping your team. a demoman who camps the enemy spawn is doing it to get big frags, but ends up helping the team by stemming the flow of enemy reinforcements. an engineer who builds a sentry in a good spot is doing it to get many frags, but ends up helping the team by providing a good safe area for them. a medic healing everyone is doing it to see the number go up and eventually become god with the über, but ends up healing the whole team in the process. et cetera. it's a pretty good way to design a pub game, everyone ends up working together without even thinking about it.
@@diba9281 I am unsure of the full interview, but shounic has a video including parts and summarizing the relevant bits. Search "shounic design and gameplay tf2" should get you it
That is the principle of individualism and honest incentive. That's how you build anything that truly lasts, be it a government, a company or a game: Empower the individuals and align their interests.
one time i saw a guy named Solider Jumpscare and he would just rocket jump and land in front of you holding an objector with the word BOO! written on it, and then he'd detonate himself It was really fucking funny
12:55 "Nobody is ever in voice chat leading the troops into battle.", boy do I have a tale for you. There was one time on a 2Fort match, where the opposing team was made up of mostly hackers spawncamping us. One guy on my team hopped on voice chat and told us what we'd need to do. He made sure that the Medics (about 5) built up their charge in spawn, while also making sure that everyone stayed away from the doors, and telling everyone else what weapons we'd need. As soon as the Medics had built up their charges, he assigned a Medic to almost everyone, made sure that we all knew what we had to do, and then told us to get out there. Guns blazing, ubercharged, we drove the hackers back. Eventually the hackers left, and we rolled over the opposite team to capture the intelligence and win the game. That is the story of Garsaxon44, the man who united his team on 2Fort.
I think you vocalized a key reason why I still love this game so much even in the midst of the bot infestation; there are very few other "team-based" shooters keen on delivering what is both a nominally team-oriented experience whilst also not sacrificing the goals, aspirations, and playstyles of the individual. I remember a bit that I developed with a friend called the Engineer Traffic Association. We would set up on RED on a chokey map with distinct but narrow pathways (like cp_gorge before the bridge of the first cap) and block one of the paths with a dispenser. We would put up literal "Detour" signs with sprays and instruct BLU, calmly through text chat (or VC if alltalk was on), to take the alternative route to the point, but we would essentially act like friendlies and not shoot anyone until they destroyed the dispenser, at which point we hardcore beeline the person who destroyed the dispenser until they died. It was one of the funniest things I've ever done in this game and one of my fondest TF2 memories.
tf2 isn't even the second game in the franchise, there's around 3 or 4 canceled sequels to tf1, the quake mod NOT to be confused with the half life mod called team fortress classic which is a remake of tf1
I was actually in the process of writing a video about Pass Time and how the developers were specifically trying to put emphasis on teamwork, only for the team's 3 scouts to run the ball into a bunch of sentry guns and never pass it ever, and only for the pass time gamemode to end up being extremely close to dead
12:40 I think the word you are looking for is “emergent teamwork”. I remember an old Valve dive into the topic, mentioning the design philosophy of TF2 is for the average player to just be doing their own thing. But when they raise their head up to look around, they think “man, we really are working as a team”, then put their head down and keep doing what they are doing.
Learning about the "Pub push" thing made this game so much funnier to me. Like every casual lobby has this Winter Soldier-esque transformation into a well-organized fighting force that could rival pro players in capability when the old lady speaks into the microphone.
I also wanted to say that in payload, being stuck at the last point is the most fun. For BLUE, it creates this feeling of "one last push, one last attack!" and RED has a feeling of "last line of defense, final stand!", which is far more compelling than being at any other point, except maybe the first one.
I think this explains why Payload is perhaps my favorite mode and the game's most beloved mode Maybe the real 'Team Fortress 2' was being a Team to push the cart as BLU, solidifying your position or Fortress as RED. Together, these 2 are the a Team Fortress 2.
The most important thing to understand is that everything about the fake teamwork is BY DESIGN. They knew from TFC that getting a bunch of idiots to work together is impossible in a pub setting. It's why Medic has to be the strongest class or no one will want to play the healer while everyone frags, and why most classes are countered by core design choices like Pyros flames making it easy to track spies so teams will naturally gravitate towards better class compositions rather than simply a perk that lets you see cloak shimmer or whatever. The craziest thing is that NO OTHER TEAM BASED SHOOTER seemed to learn this lesson from TF2 and expects random pubs to act like pro esports 6s teams, and then wonder how Overwatch ranked got so toxic so fast. EDIT: Adding onto this since it seemed to strike a chord with people. My point here is strictly relevant to the solo queuing style of play, or how most people play multiplayer games. Games like Overwatch and MOBAs can be fun when you get teams that work well together but it's inherently a dice roll, not to mention smaller team sizes inherently discourage people from going off and trying their own thing. Which is fine for those games!, but I think a strong point in TF2's favor that people don't seem to bring up is that casual is 12v12, when was the last time we had a big multiplayer game hit with that concentration of players in a match? I also don't have any problem with 6's TF2, because it's a small scene where everyone involved has to actively seek it out and are far more likely to be taking it seriously than official ranked in most other games (and also because I just find 6s TF2 WAY more fun than any other similar game). As for Valve attempting to """"support""""" the scene and then dropping the game like a rock when they realized it failed, I think the main issue was simply that the core audience for TF2 wasn't super interested in a ranked mode in the first place. If they wanted to play comp, they could join a 6s or Highlander team. The community liked the idea of competitive since it meant Valve had to keep actively supporting the game, but even when Blue Moon finally came out and made it... playable, it died instantly. If the demand was there from the majority of the playerbase that wouldn't have happened. That's still on Valve for not trying to incentivize, or even ADVERTISE why 6s might be cool to try, but it's Valve. As for Medic being the strongest class, it's obviously not perfect, and even the TF2 team admits that (that's why he got the first class update, complete with the original straight upgrade Blutsauger and the Ubersaw, and why the Crossbow never got nerfed, because it gives medic a much higher skill cap and makes him more fun). You could theoretically give him different healing mechanics aside from the Medigun and it would probably work out to make him more interesting to more players, but Valve always seemed VERY hesitant to change Medic too much.
@@Lawlz4Dayzz If you're just playing whatever random pub teams you're automatically put on, K/D is the only metric that makes any sense to care about plain and simple. Which, to be clear, isn't to say you even need to care about that. Whatever floats your boat and all that. Just that if you're going to care about ANY objective performance metric in pubs at all, K/D is that one and only thing.
@@Alloveck Id say its the quality of kills and the amount of time I am alive and in the battle and fights as well. There is more stats tracked than K/D but since I dont know how to access them that arent a new record then I just put it all together in a general feel and highlight reel.
Yea to me I don't even care about k/d anymore. It is all about creating funny/interesting moments. I find that trying to hard to create these moments isn't the best either so I still try to win. But never at the expense of making something interesting happen.
I love the domination mechanic, the game just lets you know incredibly loudly, "THIS IS THE GUY PWNING YOUR ASS, KILL THIS GUY!!!!!!" with a bunch of red arrows pointing at em, meanwhile the sounds that play when you dominate or get revenge are just really satisfying
It was good design choice to make the revenge kills fun and satisfying too. It means that even the people who are losing fights more often than not still get their fun moment of glory every now and then. It's essentially broadcasting "AYY YOU TOOK DOWN A BADASS NICE GOING" So, ironically, because it only takes one kill to get revenge but 4 to dominate, the domination mechanic actually can make it less frustrating to lose repeatedly as you're less focused on the k/d ratio and more focused on keeping them from maintaining the dominating status.
I also hate it , it was really bad for my mental health when i had no friends , at my darkest time of my childhood it felt like a backstab from a game i loved i dont care people keeping but i wished there was an option to remove it. It also resulted it in me not understanding it just a game mentality
12:40 I think the phrase you're looking for is "emergent teamwork." It sort of happens when enough brain cells cluster together for a plan to work and sometimes comes out of the most minor things, like a Pyro inadvertently saving a burning Medic who then both regroup with a respawned Soldier and cooperate on the next push, suddenly becoming their own micro-team telling their own micro-story.
i'm not sure its quite "emergent" in TF2's case. emergent play refers to players finding fun in something the developers never intended: source's funky physics and all that entails, speedrunning/glitchhunting in general, player-made challenge runs (ie: "only use one specific weapon"). TF2's sort of hidden designs which contribute to teams working together are kind of the opposite. devs quietly pushing players towards a fun they didn't realise they could have (in the sense that team-based shooters typically have that competitive gamefeel by default but TF2 doesnt). the silly/serious combination is even kind of encouraged by the game's visual and context design. it's cartoon-ish, but has a level of detail that makes it more realistic if you stop to look for long enough. in the heat of battle, the large blocky silhouettes that give the game it's cartoon stylisation become clear shapes with obvious signs of class and team. during downtime, the serious details like a model's eyes turning to look at the player at the best possible moment add even more to the humour as though it's not a shooter. it started as a super serious team shooter and then the story became that the teams are fighting over gravel using the silliest weapons you could think of. it's very much part of TF2's design to subconsciously push players to that playstyle. i'd call it passive teamwork. players are playing in a team, but they don't realise that's what they're doing. good personal decisions happen to be generally good for the team too. consider most other team-based shooters where even casual play tends to lean competitive: if a player runs off to try and do something cool by themselves, they're seen as annoying or game ruining. but in TF2, if a scout does nothing the entire round but laugh taunt at every death nearby, it's (usually) pretty funny and not too annoying.
@@toranine09 "emergent gameplay" is not the only meaning of the word "emergent". Heck "emergent gameplay" doesn't even have the specifications you think it does - it's just complex end results from relatively simple systems.
@@toranine09 Note I didn't mention emergent gameplay, but rather that the teamwork is emergent. Emergent means "arising as an effect of complex causes and not analyzable simply as the sum of their effects." I'd dare say that there's more to bringing together this mini-team in the scenario I described than the simple facts that airblast extinguishing exists, medics are the most important class in the game, and respawning allows a failed push to try again. Teamwork is not just mechanics but a selective series of choices to cooperate, pool strength, and cover weaknesses. If it happens in the middle of a random pub match without the benefit of a voicecall full of prep and coordination, I would classify it as emergent teamwork.
I remember watching a video about how TFC was designed, and I think what was said there is relevant here. The classes weren't designed to fill a role for their, team they were designed to be fun. Pyro for example doesn't exist to support his team, he exists so that high ping players can enjoy the game too. Engineer doesn't exist to support his team, he exists so that low skill players can enjoy the game too. Heavy doesn't exist to support his team, he exists because the devs watched a cool movie and thought that mowing enemies down with big gun would be sick. They are individually fun to play, and then team dynamics emerge from how those playstyles converge. And classes that failed to be individually fun were reworked in TF2 to be more individually fun, with the exception of Medic. TF2 is mostly the same way, with (again) the exception of Medic who just so happens to be the least popular casual class. Even support options usually benefit the user more than anyone else.
I think this also extends to medic as well. Sure, he helps his team out a lot, but he also exists so those with bad aim or favor more supportive roles can play the game.
@@dannerhoinowski9520 this is the exact reason i play support in most games. i dont have good aim, so playin an attacking type isint very good, but playing support allows me to still contriobute to the team (even if i rarely get uber do to being a bit too much in the open)
11:50 or as I like to say it, 2fort is the most casual casual server. It's also where I first got trimping practice for demoknight (the roof of the bridge can be trimped) Also i just realized, in 2fort, the equivalent for "Mission ends in sixty seconds." 1:15 Is both "We have taken the enemy intelligence." And "Alert! The enemy has taken our intelligence!"
I think another thing that helps encourage "teamwork" are how some of the weapons and tools can be used on other teammates, or require teammates to be useful, and even rewarding players for using by giving them buffs/heals, or just reducing cooldown time. The Medic and Engineer's arsenal is the most obvious example, but there's also the Soldier's Disciplinary Action and various backpacks/horns, the Pyro's airblast, the Mad Milk, Jarate, and the Sandvich and other lunchbox items.
Or even the less obvious synergies that SoundSmith and his friend KJ have explored, like Spy baiting, or hiding in a corner with 3 Tomislavs. What better way to exploit a silent weapon, than stacking it to combat its main downside? Also the joke synergies, like Sun On a Stick + Sharpened Volcano Fragment in medieval mode.
Something that really defines a "pub push" for me that I just don't hear anyone talking about very much is how everyone jumps onto the objective - whether it's a payload cart or a control point, *everyone* starts rushing for the objective during a "pub push". I think that's really what makes the difference, and why it seems like people are "more coordinated" during a "pub push" than they were just thirty seconds before. Here's an example: Two minutes left on the clock. You've got two Snipers on each team, focused (more or less) solely on killing each other. You have Scouts on offense running headfirst into sentry guns over and over again - same with Spies, throwing their sappers onto buildings in suicide play after suicide play, or getting one stab per life. Your power classes are all waiting for the Medic to initiate an uber push, and your Medic is waiting on the power classes to go in before they pop (so the uber never gets used). Then, all of a sudden, the immediacy of defeat rings out, and everyone individually says "well, if nobody else is going to push the cart/cap the point, I will". One (or both) of the Snipers swap to a power class. Either the Medic decides "now's as good an opportunity as I'm going to get" and pops, or a power class decides to go in and trust that the Medic will pop. Maybe the Spies are alive and just happen to be in position to sap and/or stab things, and the uber push allows your Scouts to finally make it past the sentry guns. It's less that the team is more coordinated and more that the individuals on the team all independently decided to push at the same time, at least in my opinion.
Pyro being healed 20 health points on Extinguishing a teammate is a perfect example of this. You think I did it because you were going to die. I think I did it because I was going to die. We are not the same.
i do it because i feel bad for the burning scouts and medics. i know how it feels, scunt34738, and doctor sex, to burn to death without someone to save you.
Nobody talks of how incredibly well done the SFM clips for this video are? I really admire the dedication Uncle Dane put in the production of interesting topics about this game. It really makes me happy to see content creators still pushing limits in terms effort to make high quality content.
At 16:05 Dane says "such as doing something for the good of your teammates instead of yourself" while his cursor briefly hovers over a Pyro named "Yourself".
Honestly, I think this is what makes tf2 so fun. In every other semi-competitive pvp game out there, there’s no room for messing around. Even in “normal” queues, everyone’s dead serious, set on winning the game at any cost (or set on sabotaging their teammates in a fit of baby raging). But in tf2, there’s wiggle room. Most people aren’t just mindlessly pushing the objective. You’re having a 1v1 sniper battle at the same time the medics are trading Ubers at the same time the scout is mucking around in the middle of nowhere at the same time a hoovy is getting a sticky trap set on him at the same time a soldier is trying to market garden an air blasting pyro. It’s chaotic but it’s fun that way. Idk where im going with this but it’s why I love tf2
It's the ultimate ADHD dream for FPS. In your average match I might swing between actually trying, dueling, memeing, experimenting, and just slacking off. I think my personal favourite moment is mini-teams, where you just have a team of like 4 people rolling deep.
The fact it's 12v12 is definitely helping it a lot. Nowadays 5v5 and 6v6 is the standard and in competetive environment, you feel the weight of the smaller team sizes. Each player has more expectations thrown at them. Meanwhile in TF2 having 1 less player ain't that impactful, having 1 inexperienced player ain't something you'll feel much in the match, you have way less responsibilities, if any at all. You get that freedom to waltz off to the side and do your own things for yourself, and to get into random dumb, funny, odd, etc. situations.
@@tinkerer3399 Or randomly deciding to partner up with some completely random spy on your team to wreck havoc in the backlines just for the hell of it. Saved a medic? Partner up and get into dumb situations with the guy.
15:24 That voiceline alone boosted my self confidence and made me like playing medic when I was a newbie. When my friend told to me those voicelines were automatic I didn't want to believe him.
They said in the game development commentary, that the entire team work design was made under the assumption that nobody was going to work together nor communicate anything
Tf2 is so chaotic that even in Highlander, winning is completely about who has control of their team's one collective braincell the least. But we can all agree everyone's a winner in a bot-free match.
I’ve noticed that whenever I get multiple dominations at once, more often than not, if and when I loose them, they all happen in quick succession one after the other. I really like this “encouraged teamwork” instead of it just being enforced and expected, the fact that Tf2 is 12v12 lends itself well to this since one player not pulling their weight has less impact. It’s why competitive formats that are actually focused on team play tend to have much less players.
from your explanation i got reminded of other games in general, special rpgs: "dodge ignored, block ignored, parry ignored" But SUDDENLY, when there are like 5 HP left and they cant tank the next hit, they suddenly start to play good.
Im definately sending this video to all my sweaty friends, cause this really explains how I approach games, the small enjoyments are way easier to go for, and they stop me getting mad at games
Nothing makes me feel better as a Engineer than when Im upgrading my teleporter at spawn, And a soldier takes it but before he does he gives me a nod and hits me with the "Thanks" command..
i always like to visibly thank anyone who helps me in any way, whether be a medic who saved me from respawn hell or someone who assisted me in a kill, Z+2 and nodding up and down in a fast manner is always prompted
Some of my favorite moments in TF2 are when me and another player are just on the same wavelength. We never talk to each other but we share the same dumb braincell so we work well together. It's pretty special
Same, I get this moment a lot if i bump into a teammate spy while playing spy in their backlines, and we both nonverbally agree to disguise together to be more convincing to the other team
tbh the energy of "Everyone does their own chaotic thing and that somehow culminates in a victory through sheer happenstance and map design" is the reason no other game has ever come close to replacing TF2. I don't want to tactically vomit six ults (sorry, five ults) onto a control point to win an overwatch game I want to go in without a plan and goof around while still tangentially playing the objective and that be the vibe of the game.
"I don't want to tactically vomit six ults (sorry, five ults)" As a both TF2 and Overwatch player, that made me wince. Dammit Blizzard for making the Tank lonely!
Man, early Overwatch actually felt like this to me. Then the balance patches and the forced Meta ruined it all... Not getting an e-sports scene is one of the best things that happened to TF2.
@@Mick0Mania It wasn't the esports scene or the "forced meta" that pushed Overwatch into being less of a chaotic deathmatch game. It was the everlasting march of skill development that pushed the game where it was designed since the beginning to go - coordinated teamplay. Early Overwatch was full of players who didn't really understand what winning looked like, what elements were powerful and necessary to utilize if you wanted to win. Once players started figuring that out, it became much, much harder to stumble into wins. When players utilize high ground, it's harder for a discombobulated group to just kind of vaguely swarm and take over the map. Once players figure out positioning, duels become less frequent and more dependent on game knowledge over raw mechanics. This is the inherent design of Overwatch, it was always a game that requires team-play to succeed. The difference is, people didn't understand how to force teams to actually coordinate in order to succeed.
@@blazefactor6849 That's what I meant to say with "forced meta" but you put it better than I could. There's technically an optimized way to play TF2 as well, but the design of the game doesn't force you into it as rigidly as games like Dota2 or OW does.
@@Mick0Mania Meet Your Match really did a number on weapon balance, that's for sure. A lot of nerfs came about because some weapons were too powerful in competitive, but Valve didn't want to do weapon bans. I shudder to think what would have happened to casual if official TF2 comp had taken off.
The word you're looking for is "emergence", not procedural generation nor accidental cooperation. Emergence is a phenomenon where agents, through their individual action, collectively exhibits a notable trait. A real life example of this is an ant nest: No particular ant is, or even _can_ think about the nest as a whole. They merely communicate through pheromones and dances, and yet a nest is incredibly complex and intelligent. It's not that the ants "accidentally" help eachother, they do so willingly, but always in small actions with small consequences, never thinking about how their actions will help the colony. Compare this to a TF2 team: Players help the team intrinsically just by playing, and sometimes even directly help each other such as with engineer's dispenser. However, they don't think about how much they're helping the team, simply that they're helping the _members_ of their team. This also means that all TF2 players are as intelligent as ants
No matter how much I spam the line, it feels like no one actually takes the Sentry Ahead! command seriously until they see the sentry ahead blasting them To this day I still wish they recorded Sniper! voicelines similar to calling Spies out since they can be so well ahead and have such deadly aim while hiding their laser sight you can’t help but want to warn people about turning that corner
"This is why I'm not a game designer, I'm not smart enough to come up with solutions like this" I fully disagree, as someone with aspirations in said space, people like you who can condense these sorts of topics in a way that everyone can understand are very much so the type of person who would make a great game designer. So many of these reinforcements and design details are so common these days that most people don't actively truly think about their impact and potential and it's so interesting to have someone boil down their well thought out theories of their impact on game flow, players' decisions and how that fundamentally molds the feel of the whole game at a pub level, you're a really smart man and this video gave people like me and others, a lot to think about, thank you!
@@GunSpyEnthusiast Yeah I also always thought the "partner" was supposed to be the teleporter. I mean, he calls his guns cute, so thanking his teleporter isn't outta the question
Ellen McLain is a national treasure, and when she talks, you listen. It's no surprise her little "sixty seconds left in the mission" line contains such an incredible amount of power.
Like a famous food critic once said "TF2 is like a chocolate party, everyone is mostly doing their own thing, but when everyone bands together to do something in synchronism they create something big, a mess but it's big"
@@keabonhall2436It’s when you mix together tons of chocolate like hersheys, Twix, and other crap and it all ends up tasting good, but no better than if you had just eaten the individual components. As opposed to cake ingredients, which do not taste very good individually.
3:34 Yeah this is just Walmart in a nutshell. Every time I go to Walmart, SOME kind of crazy shit has to happen. It's never a peaceful shopping experience
15:36 this is correct, I got so happy when hearing those voicelines when doing good things for the team that I was motivated to do better when I started playing the game
On pub servers, some matches are an absolute uncoordinated mess. But I've been in many pub matches where everyone works together, and it feels incredible. There _are_ a lot of competent "casual" TF2 players, as the game has been around for so long... they may not be on the same level mechanically as competititve TF2 pro players -- no insanely fast perfect Demoman/Soldier roll-outs like clockwork -- but I've been in many pub server matches where people (even "hatless" players) still clearly knew what their were doing, what their class's role was, how to be alert for Spies, to protect the Medic etc. Little moments, when during set-up time on Payload people on RED team briefly switch to Engineer without having been asked and help level up the Engi's teleporter at spawn so the Engi is free to do more imprtant stuff, then switch back to their class. Or Scouts, instead of stealing the Engi's metal at the frontline during set-up, suicide next to the sentry so the engi doesnt have to waste precious seconds to refill his metal. Or during battle if the Medic is gravely injured a Pyro or Soldier retreating and escorting their injured Medic to the next big medkit and standing next to it and motioning or shooting towards it to indicate "Take this!" even if they also are injured. Or a Scout who spawns along the Medic equpping a melee that allows self-harm and helping the Medic build über while we run to the frontline. And if you win not because the enemy team is incompetent and you were stomping them but because both teams were pretty evenly matched yet your team won because they worked together like a well-oiled machine, and the über came in at just the right time, or a Pyro smashed the enemy Spy's sapper off the sentry and dispenser while the Engi was dead to keep them alive, it just feels good.
I think there's a lot of other factors too that still manage to make teamwork work in TF2; the game is constantly rewarding you for helping your teammates (ie extinguishing teammates for 20 health, whipping players speeds not just them up but you too, etc.), and the game is 12v12, which means that each person of the team is not all that valuable individually since there's so many people on the team, compared to most competitive games where it is 5v5 or even teams of just 3, so it basically just becomes a game of numbers.
the consept is simple : Act one : " haha fuck yeah let's fuck around :D " Act two: " * *Sixty seconds left in the mission* * Oh piss victory! and defeat! I WANT VICTORY! " Act three, after winning or losing: " damn, that was a fun game of fucking around. "
Something I would add to the domination mechanic is the killstreak mechanic. Players with high killstreaks are displayed globally in text when going on a rampage. Basicly announcing to everyone “Look at me, I’m killing you all. I’m better than you all. SHOOT ME”
Killstreaks are already on the game, however you need to add the Killstreak Counter to your Weapon yo start counting. And every 5 kills, it's announced to everyone that you are on a Rampage. Valve literally made each player PAY for bragging rights at the same time as marking the one bragging about as a top objective. And that Is just evil
My funny voice chat moment was in a game of vs Saxton Hale last week where one of the guys was playing everything from Mario Kart music, to classical music to anime intros for an hour straight. It made spectating to the beat funny, and the combat was enhanced by some action music that I hadn't even noticed was playing. Lot of fun, hope I find him later.
I love shooter games like TF2. Ones with slow kill times. Ones where your own death is funny. Ones where a community has inside jokes that last for so long that they deform into absolute nonsense to an outside observer.
I find it so hilarious when I die out of nowhere and the cam shows a upward looking sniper from across the map!!! So hilarious!!! What a timeless classic!!
Probably one of the main reasons the more competitive-focused Uncletopia servers are so popular is because the emphasis on teamwork makes for a nice change of pace to traditional casual TF2. It's quite satisfying when once in a while everyone hops on voice chat and coordinates a successful push because most games, like you say, are more free and individual in nature. The end goal perhaps isn't capturing the final point or pushing the payload, it's seeing the team's plans and strategies through to the end that draws people to these macro moments.
i don't usually comment, but i loved this introspective video essay/commentary, and i especially love that you revealed at the end that part of the motivation for this video was your frustration with finding yourself angry at the game. your analysis and the introspection together reflects exactly the process of responding philosophically to an irritating and confusing phenomena. the implicit story in this video, of your coming to understand yourself through the game, concludes so satisfyingly! i never thought of there being "micro" and "macro" motivations to stay invested in a game, but after you pointed this distinction out, it makes so much sense why the silly moments in tf2 and other games are what i remember and care about the most, while the thing that draws me to have those micro moments are usually the macro contexts. even though the outcome of the match doesn't matter, what keeps me invested in playing a match to the end--which is what makes it possible for me to experience more of those silly mico moments--is that macro motivation that maybe my team can win. your analysis of the subtle motivations for "accidental teamwork" also makes so much sense. now that you've pointed it out, i'm starting to see some of the game design tricks in other games i've played, like in hypixel minecraft bedwars, or supercell's brawl stars. anyway, please do make more of these kinds of videos!
Thinking of the domination system, it really does points you towards “this person is doing something that is problematic you need to think of a way to counter it”. Sometimes it’s a Soilder, sometimes it’s a Spy or Sniper. But the domination system really do tells you to be careful and play smarter.
Was playing a match of Harvest the other day, and it went almost exactly like the intro, everyone was goofing off, doing silly strategies, but as soon as the 60-second timer started we all panicked and started fighting for the point. Most fun I've had in a game in a while.
my favorite moment in tf2 to this day is when i loaded up ctf on two fort, and it was a full proper match, minus a unique lack of engi on red, so i picked engi, and then someone else swapped to engi, and then another, so on, by the end of the match we had an eight man sentry nest in red intel, with a scoot running around giving callouts on when we'd have a push coming. we lost that match in the long run, one too many double uber heavy pushes shattered the nest and a few of the gang scattered to other classes, but it was some of the most fun ive ever had playing video games in my life
I personally believe that Control Points is more vulnerable to "Rolls" than Payload. The cart has a set speed and no matter what you do there is no way to speed it up (even if 12 scouts hump the cart it won't go any faster than if just 2 scouts were on the cart). But with CP if one team captures the second to last point it puts the defending team at a very vulnerable disadvantage because they'll have to work hard to try and defend their last point (which is capped 2 times faster than the other points) all while also attempting to push forward to cap the second to last points. It always feels like any team who's capped the second to last point on CP has basically already won the game because of how incredibly difficult it is to defend the last point and also push forwards at the same time.
This is why I love pub TF2 more than pubs in quite literally any other game. I can just *play.* Other games don't understand this concept. Even your DRG and Helldivers 2 examples, though good, still don't avoid thinking about your team as thoroughly as TF2 does. Actually, the other TF2 (Titanfall) does a decent job tbh. But that's more from the "it's just TDM with low TTK" standpoint.
I've had the Uncle Dane theme in my playlist for so many years, hearing it so many times in my car, but this is the first of his vids I've ever seen. I don't know how I didn't start earlier(Probably because he became big a year after I stopped playing) His point also made me realize that Deep Rock Galactic makes you appreciate both the macro AND macro moments. From randomly dancing with your drunk buddies, to beating an oddly tough wave of bugs, to beating a Caretaker in a somehow extremely well coordinated fashion with absolute randos. It isn't hard to see why so many TF2 veterans love this game
Honestly, this feels like a video personally made for me. As someone who researches Game Psychology for a living I have always been baffled with how casual TF2 plays and how all of a sudden people can get their act together in the last moments. The way you present this I think does an excellent job at pointing out the subtle ways the game incentivises teamwork without the need for direct communication. Additionally, I am someone who has played this game competitively and actively tryhard in pubs, often to the point where I also get frustrated with my teammates, and I think that your last section really helped me understand my own frustrations and some things I can start reflecting on to start enjoying myself again when playing. Everyone enjoys the game in a different way and whilst my enjoyment comes from doing well and winning hard fought matches, that may not the case for others. I can just focus on my own Micro moments more instead of the team's overall outcome. Great vid :D
Yeah that's always kinda bothered me. Is the original TF like that too? I feel like it has to be a holdover from something because it would make a lot more sense the other way around. I guess at the end of the day, RED and BLU are fronts and so the fact that neither lives up to their name is to be expected.
MatPat did a whole video on why TF2’s teams are colored the way they are. TLDR, RED defends because having RED be offense gives a psychological edge to the attacking team. Having BLU attack balances momentum from a psychological standpoint and further creates the “Illusion of Teamwork.”
Why do you think there's a bunch of explosives on payload last? Those are the explosives RED uses for demolition purposes. BLU explodes RED's demolition tools so that they can no longer cause further demolition. Poopy Joe.
I often have the mindset “We have 10 minutes to dick around its fine” And then when that team bell sounds “Mission Ends in 60 Seconds.” It’s time to kick ass.
ROBIN WALKER: our goal was to make it so that as they all individually and locally optimize for their experience, optimization at the team level falls out of that. They could look left, look right, and see teammates doing some stuff and go, 'Man, we're working well as a team,' even though we started with the base assumption that they were all ignoring everyone else, because it turns out that's the way most players work.
The end discussion about getting mad at tf2 reminds me of the old salt factory video where dane angrily complains about his team for like 20 mins in highpass lol
maybe this is why other team-based shooters are a bit worse for having fun on the face of it, they are designed for optimization and designated roles. they had to limit teams ability to pick whatever character you wanted in overwatch because too many of a single character made the game unplayable. Meanwhile, in tf2, i was part of a blu team that went all heavy to push on upward after getting stomped by red the whole round. We pushed and won, then next round we went soldier, only for the other team to meet us as heavies. Most fun I’ve had in that game ever
I think “subtly encouraged” is the best description. Influence is the name of the game here. From a teleporter going down one of three paths to giving someone an Übercharge, you can influence the outcome of an engagement through what you bring to the table rather than working directly with someone (although you can still do the latter).
Huge character development from 2016, where everyone was saying the game needed to change to encourage more active teamwork and a competitive astmosphere.
Use code DANE50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box plus 20% off your next month of orders at bit.ly/4e1NxWD
Also if you wanna watch me play Plants VS Zombies and other games with my buds, go here and take a listen while you game/eat/sleep/repeat:
th-cam.com/video/qMHaHUTepBI/w-d-xo.html
Ethical Sponsors Are An Illusion
I desire engineer carnally
I eat cardboard
you should try playing risk of rain 2
Next month’s rent = PAID
Everyone has their own objective, but when it’s that last minute it’s just a hivemind with all one goal
Tbh, when it's 30 seconds left and my team is getting steamrolled, I just flee or accept defeat at this point to where I physically raise my hands up IRL before the enemy kills me.
@@SmellyUnfortunate007 "The Victor can't claim themselves victories unless the defeated consider themselves vanquished". When you "throw your hands IRL", you claim yourself vanquished, remember that then and only then can the other team say they won.
Current objective: CAPTURE THE POINT
Except for koth
one goal and one braincell
So called “free thinkers” when the administrator says there are 60 second left:
PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT, LADS!
The guy from slap battles
WHY IS THE CART NOT MOVING?!
TF2 matches for 6 minutes: conga lines, killbinds, silly voice chat
TF2 matches for the last 60 seconds:
Neuron activation: player hears voice line
I'd argue the domination mechanic was WAY more important when the game first came out, and everyone looked exactly the same. It was a good way to tell who was the top scoring enemy
It's still great to have that subtle nerf to good players. Unless they're such tryhards that they switch to Spectator whenever they dominate someone.
@@RdTrler oh don't get me wrong, the mechanic is great, and I'm all for it.
Getting revenge will always be satisfying regardless
love domination
And even if somebody gets their revenge on me it feels satisfying, like I trained somebody who overcame their weaknesses and now I feel proud of them.
I remember some of the tf2 devs (I think in an interview or the dev commentary) talking about how the game was designed as a "single player" game where each class's objective is essentially selfish, but by pursuing it you end up helping your team.
a demoman who camps the enemy spawn is doing it to get big frags, but ends up helping the team by stemming the flow of enemy reinforcements. an engineer who builds a sentry in a good spot is doing it to get many frags, but ends up helping the team by providing a good safe area for them. a medic healing everyone is doing it to see the number go up and eventually become god with the über, but ends up healing the whole team in the process. et cetera.
it's a pretty good way to design a pub game, everyone ends up working together without even thinking about it.
Yeah i remember that interview as well, it wasan interesting interview!
Everyones interests and goals just intersect and we end up helping each other unintentionally, which is pretty amazing game design
@@cavemanpretzel9520what was the interview called so I can watch it
@@diba9281 I am unsure of the full interview, but shounic has a video including parts and summarizing the relevant bits. Search "shounic design and gameplay tf2" should get you it
That is the principle of individualism and honest incentive. That's how you build anything that truly lasts, be it a government, a company or a game: Empower the individuals and align their interests.
pub pushes are like being a student and realizing the homework is due tonight
and the gang bands together to share notes
@@thewall4069and share wrong notes on purpose
one time i saw a guy named Solider Jumpscare and he would just rocket jump and land in front of you holding an objector with the word BOO! written on it, and then he'd detonate himself
It was really fucking funny
Psychological damage, a proven tactic
did u get spooped
@@Trafficallity scariest moment of my life I swear
He’s a man after my heart, can confirm because he owns my soul
Had a scout named petty bully who'd just use the shortstop mouse2 shove and spam voice lines
Team Fortress 2 is a horror game where you're locked in a lobby with 11 clowns. The twist being...there's 12 clowns.
The real clown was inside us all along
@@TheRandomEpicVideos you may say he was among us
@@sayorancode That spy is a clown!
@@TheRandomEpicVideosthe...the...jerker?
@@TheRandomEpicVideos I can feel the clown coming inside of me
12:55 "Nobody is ever in voice chat leading the troops into battle.", boy do I have a tale for you.
There was one time on a 2Fort match, where the opposing team was made up of mostly hackers spawncamping us. One guy on my team hopped on voice chat and told us what we'd need to do. He made sure that the Medics (about 5) built up their charge in spawn, while also making sure that everyone stayed away from the doors, and telling everyone else what weapons we'd need. As soon as the Medics had built up their charges, he assigned a Medic to almost everyone, made sure that we all knew what we had to do, and then told us to get out there. Guns blazing, ubercharged, we drove the hackers back. Eventually the hackers left, and we rolled over the opposite team to capture the intelligence and win the game.
That is the story of Garsaxon44, the man who united his team on 2Fort.
Truly a legend. A champion of the people, the hero we need.
literally the "Team captain" sfm animation
i know this dude, can verify that this is the sort of thing he does
He should be regarded as a folk hero.
"Godspeed you magnificent bastard"
I think you vocalized a key reason why I still love this game so much even in the midst of the bot infestation; there are very few other "team-based" shooters keen on delivering what is both a nominally team-oriented experience whilst also not sacrificing the goals, aspirations, and playstyles of the individual.
I remember a bit that I developed with a friend called the Engineer Traffic Association. We would set up on RED on a chokey map with distinct but narrow pathways (like cp_gorge before the bridge of the first cap) and block one of the paths with a dispenser. We would put up literal "Detour" signs with sprays and instruct BLU, calmly through text chat (or VC if alltalk was on), to take the alternative route to the point, but we would essentially act like friendlies and not shoot anyone until they destroyed the dispenser, at which point we hardcore beeline the person who destroyed the dispenser until they died. It was one of the funniest things I've ever done in this game and one of my fondest TF2 memories.
15:17 engie isn't talking to himself, he's talking to his teleporter. he treats his buildings like they're his pardner, it's cute :3
true,
My sentry is my bro
Hey Edd
The engineer -----> :3
"Ain't that a cute little gun"
The fortress is an illusion too. And the 2 too. Actually everything is an illusion; all I see are hats and bots
We can fix bots as a community #fixtf2 support the cause
tf2 isn't even the second game in the franchise, there's around 3 or 4 canceled sequels to tf1, the quake mod NOT to be confused with the half life mod called team fortress classic which is a remake of tf1
All i see are flying T-pose Heavies being obssesed with anime girls and THE CART IS NOT MOVING MAGGOTS!!!!
It's all cgi
@@Bootman43 its gonna fail fuck savetf2
“Mission ends in 60 seconds” is a sleeper agent activation code
Im pretty sure the game drops the respawn timers down for the pushing team to give an advantage. Its coded into the game.
I swear if you play that out loud in a convention, you will activate hyperspeed for all individuals aged 13-30 in the vicinity.
Just reading it make my bowel movements go brr
I was actually in the process of writing a video about Pass Time and how the developers were specifically trying to put emphasis on teamwork, only for the team's 3 scouts to run the ball into a bunch of sentry guns and never pass it ever, and only for the pass time gamemode to end up being extremely close to dead
Pass time was such a joke lol
Hush now scrub.
Close to dead? That means I can still play it???
Least liked solar light comment
Least liked solar light comment
9:00 "its good background noise to study or relax to." tell that to the scout i heard being burned alive with napalm there.
*scout burning to death* ahhh music to my ears
@@thewall4069 Demo mains be like:
@@PitofTrognessengineer mains furious about demo mains be like:
was about to type this comment 😭😭🙏
@@Cloudofsun. Lmao sorry i beat you to it dawg
12:40 I think the word you are looking for is “emergent teamwork”.
I remember an old Valve dive into the topic, mentioning the design philosophy of TF2 is for the average player to just be doing their own thing. But when they raise their head up to look around, they think “man, we really are working as a team”, then put their head down and keep doing what they are doing.
Learning about the "Pub push" thing made this game so much funnier to me.
Like every casual lobby has this Winter Soldier-esque transformation into a well-organized fighting force that could rival pro players in capability when the old lady speaks into the microphone.
I also wanted to say that in payload, being stuck at the last point is the most fun. For BLUE, it creates this feeling of "one last push, one last attack!" and RED has a feeling of "last line of defense, final stand!", which is far more compelling than being at any other point, except maybe the first one.
last point is the most fun because red gets to play the game
@@whatgoeshere24 true there mate
solution: ultra short maps with 2 checkpoints at the most
That's pretty much ctf
I think this explains why Payload is perhaps my favorite mode and the game's most beloved mode
Maybe the real 'Team Fortress 2' was being a Team to push the cart as BLU, solidifying your position or Fortress as RED. Together, these 2 are the a Team Fortress 2.
The most important thing to understand is that everything about the fake teamwork is BY DESIGN. They knew from TFC that getting a bunch of idiots to work together is impossible in a pub setting. It's why Medic has to be the strongest class or no one will want to play the healer while everyone frags, and why most classes are countered by core design choices like Pyros flames making it easy to track spies so teams will naturally gravitate towards better class compositions rather than simply a perk that lets you see cloak shimmer or whatever. The craziest thing is that NO OTHER TEAM BASED SHOOTER seemed to learn this lesson from TF2 and expects random pubs to act like pro esports 6s teams, and then wonder how Overwatch ranked got so toxic so fast.
EDIT: Adding onto this since it seemed to strike a chord with people. My point here is strictly relevant to the solo queuing style of play, or how most people play multiplayer games. Games like Overwatch and MOBAs can be fun when you get teams that work well together but it's inherently a dice roll, not to mention smaller team sizes inherently discourage people from going off and trying their own thing. Which is fine for those games!, but I think a strong point in TF2's favor that people don't seem to bring up is that casual is 12v12, when was the last time we had a big multiplayer game hit with that concentration of players in a match?
I also don't have any problem with 6's TF2, because it's a small scene where everyone involved has to actively seek it out and are far more likely to be taking it seriously than official ranked in most other games (and also because I just find 6s TF2 WAY more fun than any other similar game). As for Valve attempting to """"support""""" the scene and then dropping the game like a rock when they realized it failed, I think the main issue was simply that the core audience for TF2 wasn't super interested in a ranked mode in the first place. If they wanted to play comp, they could join a 6s or Highlander team. The community liked the idea of competitive since it meant Valve had to keep actively supporting the game, but even when Blue Moon finally came out and made it... playable, it died instantly. If the demand was there from the majority of the playerbase that wouldn't have happened. That's still on Valve for not trying to incentivize, or even ADVERTISE why 6s might be cool to try, but it's Valve.
As for Medic being the strongest class, it's obviously not perfect, and even the TF2 team admits that (that's why he got the first class update, complete with the original straight upgrade Blutsauger and the Ubersaw, and why the Crossbow never got nerfed, because it gives medic a much higher skill cap and makes him more fun). You could theoretically give him different healing mechanics aside from the Medigun and it would probably work out to make him more interesting to more players, but Valve always seemed VERY hesitant to change Medic too much.
I wish I could upvote the above comment 10 times instead of just once.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog This is youtube.
We dont do upvotes here.
to be fair, overwatch is secretly a moba and thus is more directly balanced around competitive if you think about it
Could this be why demoman is op? otherwise nobody would destroy the sentries
It explains why Overwatch public experience was so awful.
12 friendly hoovies all switch to minigun at 60 seconds. Nightmare fuel
“Uncle Dane, who did this to you?”
“TELEPORTER DOW-“
I have a hundred positive memories of moments in this game, but I couldn't tell ya if we won or lost that match.
I mean, in a pub match, people having fun and the positive memories are all that matters.
I used to go by K/D only but random crits and snipers are unprecentable at times so i just go by general performance and feel now
@@Lawlz4Dayzz If you're just playing whatever random pub teams you're automatically put on, K/D is the only metric that makes any sense to care about plain and simple.
Which, to be clear, isn't to say you even need to care about that. Whatever floats your boat and all that. Just that if you're going to care about ANY objective performance metric in pubs at all, K/D is that one and only thing.
@@Alloveck Id say its the quality of kills and the amount of time I am alive and in the battle and fights as well. There is more stats tracked than K/D but since I dont know how to access them that arent a new record then I just put it all together in a general feel and highlight reel.
Yea to me I don't even care about k/d anymore. It is all about creating funny/interesting moments. I find that trying to hard to create these moments isn't the best either so I still try to win. But never at the expense of making something interesting happen.
I love the domination mechanic, the game just lets you know incredibly loudly, "THIS IS THE GUY PWNING YOUR ASS, KILL THIS GUY!!!!!!" with a bunch of red arrows pointing at em, meanwhile the sounds that play when you dominate or get revenge are just really satisfying
It was good design choice to make the revenge kills fun and satisfying too. It means that even the people who are losing fights more often than not still get their fun moment of glory every now and then. It's essentially broadcasting "AYY YOU TOOK DOWN A BADASS NICE GOING"
So, ironically, because it only takes one kill to get revenge but 4 to dominate, the domination mechanic actually can make it less frustrating to lose repeatedly as you're less focused on the k/d ratio and more focused on keeping them from maintaining the dominating status.
I hate this because it often results of people targeting and salt switching to cheap class - spy/sniper or any other in order kill you
@@TehPlayer14Exactly! That's what pick classes are for
This guy loves being dominated
I also hate it , it was really bad for my mental health when i had no friends , at my darkest time of my childhood it felt like a backstab from a game i loved i dont care people keeping but i wished there was an option to remove it. It also resulted it in me not understanding it just a game mentality
12:40 I think the phrase you're looking for is "emergent teamwork." It sort of happens when enough brain cells cluster together for a plan to work and sometimes comes out of the most minor things, like a Pyro inadvertently saving a burning Medic who then both regroup with a respawned Soldier and cooperate on the next push, suddenly becoming their own micro-team telling their own micro-story.
Teamwork = Buffoonery + Pressure
The good stuff
i'm not sure its quite "emergent" in TF2's case. emergent play refers to players finding fun in something the developers never intended: source's funky physics and all that entails, speedrunning/glitchhunting in general, player-made challenge runs (ie: "only use one specific weapon").
TF2's sort of hidden designs which contribute to teams working together are kind of the opposite. devs quietly pushing players towards a fun they didn't realise they could have (in the sense that team-based shooters typically have that competitive gamefeel by default but TF2 doesnt).
the silly/serious combination is even kind of encouraged by the game's visual and context design. it's cartoon-ish, but has a level of detail that makes it more realistic if you stop to look for long enough. in the heat of battle, the large blocky silhouettes that give the game it's cartoon stylisation become clear shapes with obvious signs of class and team. during downtime, the serious details like a model's eyes turning to look at the player at the best possible moment add even more to the humour as though it's not a shooter. it started as a super serious team shooter and then the story became that the teams are fighting over gravel using the silliest weapons you could think of.
it's very much part of TF2's design to subconsciously push players to that playstyle. i'd call it passive teamwork. players are playing in a team, but they don't realise that's what they're doing. good personal decisions happen to be generally good for the team too. consider most other team-based shooters where even casual play tends to lean competitive: if a player runs off to try and do something cool by themselves, they're seen as annoying or game ruining. but in TF2, if a scout does nothing the entire round but laugh taunt at every death nearby, it's (usually) pretty funny and not too annoying.
@@toranine09 "emergent gameplay" is not the only meaning of the word "emergent". Heck "emergent gameplay" doesn't even have the specifications you think it does - it's just complex end results from relatively simple systems.
@@toranine09 Note I didn't mention emergent gameplay, but rather that the teamwork is emergent. Emergent means "arising as an effect of complex causes and not analyzable simply as the sum of their effects."
I'd dare say that there's more to bringing together this mini-team in the scenario I described than the simple facts that airblast extinguishing exists, medics are the most important class in the game, and respawning allows a failed push to try again.
Teamwork is not just mechanics but a selective series of choices to cooperate, pool strength, and cover weaknesses. If it happens in the middle of a random pub match without the benefit of a voicecall full of prep and coordination, I would classify it as emergent teamwork.
I remember watching a video about how TFC was designed, and I think what was said there is relevant here. The classes weren't designed to fill a role for their, team they were designed to be fun. Pyro for example doesn't exist to support his team, he exists so that high ping players can enjoy the game too. Engineer doesn't exist to support his team, he exists so that low skill players can enjoy the game too. Heavy doesn't exist to support his team, he exists because the devs watched a cool movie and thought that mowing enemies down with big gun would be sick. They are individually fun to play, and then team dynamics emerge from how those playstyles converge. And classes that failed to be individually fun were reworked in TF2 to be more individually fun, with the exception of Medic.
TF2 is mostly the same way, with (again) the exception of Medic who just so happens to be the least popular casual class. Even support options usually benefit the user more than anyone else.
Engineer was made to award those who were bad at aiming but could utilize his kit. Not because they were just terrible.
Some Pyro players don’t have high computer ping… Just high brain ping 😂
But we love em anyway 🔥
I think this also extends to medic as well. Sure, he helps his team out a lot, but he also exists so those with bad aim or favor more supportive roles can play the game.
@@dannerhoinowski9520 this is the exact reason i play support in most games. i dont have good aim, so playin an attacking type isint very good, but playing support allows me to still contriobute to the team (even if i rarely get uber do to being a bit too much in the open)
11:50 or as I like to say it, 2fort is the most casual casual server. It's also where I first got trimping practice for demoknight (the roof of the bridge can be trimped)
Also i just realized, in 2fort, the equivalent for "Mission ends in sixty seconds." 1:15 Is both "We have taken the enemy intelligence." And "Alert! The enemy has taken our intelligence!"
0:33 "The default uber in sfm is broken, for some reason, and it always flashes like it's about to end"
SlowViolet
@@blackshock116lethargicmagenta
ApatheticAubergine
Unmotivated indigo
Truant Pink
They always say “dispenser going up” but they never say “is dispenser feeling down?”
Everybody wants a dispenser up but nobody wants to keep it up
Literally me
Erecting a dispenser
Dispenser down! PUSH
Unprotected dispenser when Red Tape Recorder:
Me when I yell to my medic to activate charge as he just stands there doing nothing:
then he ubers the demo who gets 1 kill
@@fishisfancy that was me
@@fishisfancy1 kill is generous
F2p moment, this is why issue vote kicks on useless medics and engineers
My medic with 100% charge watching as I fly around the corner into 3 sentry guns dying instantly
I think another thing that helps encourage "teamwork" are how some of the weapons and tools can be used on other teammates, or require teammates to be useful, and even rewarding players for using by giving them buffs/heals, or just reducing cooldown time. The Medic and Engineer's arsenal is the most obvious example, but there's also the Soldier's Disciplinary Action and various backpacks/horns, the Pyro's airblast, the Mad Milk, Jarate, and the Sandvich and other lunchbox items.
Or even the less obvious synergies that SoundSmith and his friend KJ have explored, like Spy baiting, or hiding in a corner with 3 Tomislavs.
What better way to exploit a silent weapon, than stacking it to combat its main downside?
Also the joke synergies, like Sun On a Stick + Sharpened Volcano Fragment in medieval mode.
Something that really defines a "pub push" for me that I just don't hear anyone talking about very much is how everyone jumps onto the objective - whether it's a payload cart or a control point, *everyone* starts rushing for the objective during a "pub push". I think that's really what makes the difference, and why it seems like people are "more coordinated" during a "pub push" than they were just thirty seconds before. Here's an example:
Two minutes left on the clock. You've got two Snipers on each team, focused (more or less) solely on killing each other. You have Scouts on offense running headfirst into sentry guns over and over again - same with Spies, throwing their sappers onto buildings in suicide play after suicide play, or getting one stab per life. Your power classes are all waiting for the Medic to initiate an uber push, and your Medic is waiting on the power classes to go in before they pop (so the uber never gets used).
Then, all of a sudden, the immediacy of defeat rings out, and everyone individually says "well, if nobody else is going to push the cart/cap the point, I will". One (or both) of the Snipers swap to a power class. Either the Medic decides "now's as good an opportunity as I'm going to get" and pops, or a power class decides to go in and trust that the Medic will pop. Maybe the Spies are alive and just happen to be in position to sap and/or stab things, and the uber push allows your Scouts to finally make it past the sentry guns.
It's less that the team is more coordinated and more that the individuals on the team all independently decided to push at the same time, at least in my opinion.
Me after spamming "sentry ahead!" To the scout as he runs past me and into the cave of beeps and boops.
He was simplying scouting the area to fact check your claim
scout no! thats where the rizzterloper is!! he's gonna gyatt you!!! watch out!!!!!
@@benwaffleiron there are 60 billion TF2 hat keys in your mailbox
Pyro being healed 20 health points on Extinguishing a teammate is a perfect example of this. You think I did it because you were going to die. I think I did it because I was going to die. We are not the same.
haha true
Well what if I told you before Jungle inferno you only did get 1 point and it was a gesture of being cultured to put someone out
i do it because i feel bad for the burning scouts and medics. i know how it feels, scunt34738, and doctor sex, to burn to death without someone to save you.
@@TehPlayer14 it's what separates the pyro players from someone just picking pyro imo
Even something minimal... I added the "Teammates Extinguished" tracker to my Strange Jarate and now I'm a team player.
hi uncle dane can you file my taxes
Texas
Sure thing, partner!
Dear Uncle Dane
Please file out Starrazing‘s Taxes.
You have one week.
Sincerely, Swiftblitz.
file ur texas
@@SwiftBlitz.Taxes is an illusion
Nobody talks of how incredibly well done the SFM clips for this video are?
I really admire the dedication Uncle Dane put in the production of interesting topics about this game. It really makes me happy to see content creators still pushing limits in terms effort to make high quality content.
21:14 it feels great to come together with a group of strangers
I just had this exact discussion in a casual match the other day.
What I stated was: "Noone cares about the objective, but also, noone wants to lose"
gotta avoid the humiliation round bro
At 16:05 Dane says "such as doing something for the good of your teammates instead of yourself" while his cursor briefly hovers over a Pyro named "Yourself".
Accidental comedy gold there.
Honestly, I think this is what makes tf2 so fun. In every other semi-competitive pvp game out there, there’s no room for messing around. Even in “normal” queues, everyone’s dead serious, set on winning the game at any cost (or set on sabotaging their teammates in a fit of baby raging). But in tf2, there’s wiggle room. Most people aren’t just mindlessly pushing the objective. You’re having a 1v1 sniper battle at the same time the medics are trading Ubers at the same time the scout is mucking around in the middle of nowhere at the same time a hoovy is getting a sticky trap set on him at the same time a soldier is trying to market garden an air blasting pyro. It’s chaotic but it’s fun that way. Idk where im going with this but it’s why I love tf2
except in cs2 but that doesn’t count
It's the ultimate ADHD dream for FPS. In your average match I might swing between actually trying, dueling, memeing, experimenting, and just slacking off. I think my personal favourite moment is mini-teams, where you just have a team of like 4 people rolling deep.
The fact it's 12v12 is definitely helping it a lot.
Nowadays 5v5 and 6v6 is the standard and in competetive environment, you feel the weight of the smaller team sizes. Each player has more expectations thrown at them.
Meanwhile in TF2 having 1 less player ain't that impactful, having 1 inexperienced player ain't something you'll feel much in the match, you have way less responsibilities, if any at all. You get that freedom to waltz off to the side and do your own things for yourself, and to get into random dumb, funny, odd, etc. situations.
@@tinkerer3399 Or randomly deciding to partner up with some completely random spy on your team to wreck havoc in the backlines just for the hell of it.
Saved a medic? Partner up and get into dumb situations with the guy.
STOUT SHAKO FOR 2 REFINE
15:24 That voiceline alone boosted my self confidence and made me like playing medic when I was a newbie. When my friend told to me those voicelines were automatic I didn't want to believe him.
They said in the game development commentary, that the entire team work design was made under the assumption that nobody was going to work together nor communicate anything
Tf2 is so chaotic that even in Highlander, winning is completely about who has control of their team's one collective braincell the least.
But we can all agree everyone's a winner in a bot-free match.
Which is why everyone loses since jungle Inferno
@@leonardo9259 it is because i found a way to control your teams collective braincell for 90% of the time
winning highlander is about killing sniper
hot take but 6s is easier to coordinate than highlander
I’ve noticed that whenever I get multiple dominations at once, more often than not, if and when I loose them, they all happen in quick succession one after the other.
I really like this “encouraged teamwork” instead of it just being enforced and expected, the fact that Tf2 is 12v12 lends itself well to this since one player not pulling their weight has less impact.
It’s why competitive formats that are actually focused on team play tend to have much less players.
Really? Do you have a source? How many can you get with the kunai and Diamondback? Or theyre not OP and you're just bad. I need a video for evidence.
@@Lawlz4Dayzz bro its not that deep
@@Lawlz4Dayzzare u acoustic?
@@Lawlz4Dayzz Somebody had a bad day
@@Lawlz4Dayzz man does not know who jontohil2 is
That last 60 seconds makes something click in the mind of every pubber. Their inner competitive persona takes control and its always so fun to see
from your explanation i got reminded of other games in general, special rpgs: "dodge ignored, block ignored, parry ignored" But SUDDENLY, when there are like 5 HP left and they cant tank the next hit, they suddenly start to play good.
Im definately sending this video to all my sweaty friends, cause this really explains how I approach games, the small enjoyments are way easier to go for, and they stop me getting mad at games
Nothing makes me feel better as a Engineer than when Im upgrading my teleporter at spawn, And a soldier takes it but before he does he gives me a nod and hits me with the "Thanks" command..
as one other engie who helps another engie i would say thnx as well
i always like to visibly thank anyone who helps me in any way, whether be a medic who saved me from respawn hell or someone who assisted me in a kill, Z+2 and nodding up and down in a fast manner is always prompted
i love to take Eng meanwhile 1min till start and help other engie to upgrade his stuff adn then switch to my normal class
Some of my favorite moments in TF2 are when me and another player are just on the same wavelength. We never talk to each other but we share the same dumb braincell so we work well together. It's pretty special
Same, I get this moment a lot if i bump into a teammate spy while playing spy in their backlines, and we both nonverbally agree to disguise together to be more convincing to the other team
That one spy that saps the sentry so you can push ❤
tbh the energy of "Everyone does their own chaotic thing and that somehow culminates in a victory through sheer happenstance and map design" is the reason no other game has ever come close to replacing TF2. I don't want to tactically vomit six ults (sorry, five ults) onto a control point to win an overwatch game I want to go in without a plan and goof around while still tangentially playing the objective and that be the vibe of the game.
"I don't want to tactically vomit six ults (sorry, five ults)"
As a both TF2 and Overwatch player, that made me wince. Dammit Blizzard for making the Tank lonely!
Man, early Overwatch actually felt like this to me. Then the balance patches and the forced Meta ruined it all... Not getting an e-sports scene is one of the best things that happened to TF2.
@@Mick0Mania It wasn't the esports scene or the "forced meta" that pushed Overwatch into being less of a chaotic deathmatch game. It was the everlasting march of skill development that pushed the game where it was designed since the beginning to go - coordinated teamplay.
Early Overwatch was full of players who didn't really understand what winning looked like, what elements were powerful and necessary to utilize if you wanted to win. Once players started figuring that out, it became much, much harder to stumble into wins. When players utilize high ground, it's harder for a discombobulated group to just kind of vaguely swarm and take over the map. Once players figure out positioning, duels become less frequent and more dependent on game knowledge over raw mechanics.
This is the inherent design of Overwatch, it was always a game that requires team-play to succeed. The difference is, people didn't understand how to force teams to actually coordinate in order to succeed.
@@blazefactor6849 That's what I meant to say with "forced meta" but you put it better than I could. There's technically an optimized way to play TF2 as well, but the design of the game doesn't force you into it as rigidly as games like Dota2 or OW does.
@@Mick0Mania Meet Your Match really did a number on weapon balance, that's for sure. A lot of nerfs came about because some weapons were too powerful in competitive, but Valve didn't want to do weapon bans. I shudder to think what would have happened to casual if official TF2 comp had taken off.
The word you're looking for is "emergence", not procedural generation nor accidental cooperation.
Emergence is a phenomenon where agents, through their individual action, collectively exhibits a notable trait. A real life example of this is an ant nest: No particular ant is, or even _can_ think about the nest as a whole. They merely communicate through pheromones and dances, and yet a nest is incredibly complex and intelligent. It's not that the ants "accidentally" help eachother, they do so willingly, but always in small actions with small consequences, never thinking about how their actions will help the colony.
Compare this to a TF2 team: Players help the team intrinsically just by playing, and sometimes even directly help each other such as with engineer's dispenser. However, they don't think about how much they're helping the team, simply that they're helping the _members_ of their team. This also means that all TF2 players are as intelligent as ants
Underrated comment.
That airblast of the loch n load by the pyro got me hype. Mans stood on business while you were on a rampage 16:53
There's only two times where it can be called "Teamwork"
ONE: Medic using his UberCharge
TWO: "There's a Spy creeping around here!"
No matter how much I spam the line, it feels like no one actually takes the Sentry Ahead! command seriously until they see the sentry ahead blasting them
To this day I still wish they recorded Sniper! voicelines similar to calling Spies out since they can be so well ahead and have such deadly aim while hiding their laser sight you can’t help but want to warn people about turning that corner
"This is why I'm not a game designer, I'm not smart enough to come up with solutions like this" I fully disagree, as someone with aspirations in said space, people like you who can condense these sorts of topics in a way that everyone can understand are very much so the type of person who would make a great game designer. So many of these reinforcements and design details are so common these days that most people don't actively truly think about their impact and potential and it's so interesting to have someone boil down their well thought out theories of their impact on game flow, players' decisions and how that fundamentally molds the feel of the whole game at a pub level, you're a really smart man and this video gave people like me and others, a lot to think about, thank you!
I like to think that the Engineer is thanking the player for having the good sense to build a teleporter to hustle around the map
No, he feels that the teleporter is underappreciated, and thanks it.
@@GunSpyEnthusiast Yeah I also always thought the "partner" was supposed to be the teleporter. I mean, he calls his guns cute, so thanking his teleporter isn't outta the question
these little micro moments you showed in the vid made me chuckle, i love tf2
"gyattconnoisseur"💀4:38
literally me
Ellen McLain is a national treasure, and when she talks, you listen. It's no surprise her little "sixty seconds left in the mission" line contains such an incredible amount of power.
when GLaDOS or the Administrator tell me to do something! 🫡
The "Fortress" part is being trapped in spawn
Like a famous food critic once said
"TF2 is like a chocolate party, everyone is mostly doing their own thing, but when everyone bands together to do something in synchronism they create something big, a mess but it's big"
What is a “chocolate party”? Ain’t no way that’s a real expression
@@keabonhall2436It’s when you mix together tons of chocolate like hersheys, Twix, and other crap and it all ends up tasting good, but no better than if you had just eaten the individual components. As opposed to cake ingredients, which do not taste very good individually.
oug doug
His quote aged like fine wine
@@TheAllSeeingGamer1I used to hate that guy but then he killed hitler and I've loved him ever since
just noticed that the inro ends at exactly 1:00. Whether this is purposeful, or accidental genius, its absolutely brilliant.
15:15 Engineer's probably thanking the teleporter itself and calling it his pardner?
3:34 Yeah this is just Walmart in a nutshell. Every time I go to Walmart, SOME kind of crazy shit has to happen. It's never a peaceful shopping experience
15:36 this is correct, I got so happy when hearing those voicelines when doing good things for the team that I was motivated to do better when I started playing the game
On pub servers, some matches are an absolute uncoordinated mess. But I've been in many pub matches where everyone works together, and it feels incredible. There _are_ a lot of competent "casual" TF2 players, as the game has been around for so long... they may not be on the same level mechanically as competititve TF2 pro players -- no insanely fast perfect Demoman/Soldier roll-outs like clockwork -- but I've been in many pub server matches where people (even "hatless" players) still clearly knew what their were doing, what their class's role was, how to be alert for Spies, to protect the Medic etc.
Little moments, when during set-up time on Payload people on RED team briefly switch to Engineer without having been asked and help level up the Engi's teleporter at spawn so the Engi is free to do more imprtant stuff, then switch back to their class. Or Scouts, instead of stealing the Engi's metal at the frontline during set-up, suicide next to the sentry so the engi doesnt have to waste precious seconds to refill his metal. Or during battle if the Medic is gravely injured a Pyro or Soldier retreating and escorting their injured Medic to the next big medkit and standing next to it and motioning or shooting towards it to indicate "Take this!" even if they also are injured. Or a Scout who spawns along the Medic equpping a melee that allows self-harm and helping the Medic build über while we run to the frontline.
And if you win not because the enemy team is incompetent and you were stomping them but because both teams were pretty evenly matched yet your team won because they worked together like a well-oiled machine, and the über came in at just the right time, or a Pyro smashed the enemy Spy's sapper off the sentry and dispenser while the Engi was dead to keep them alive, it just feels good.
Tryharding on tf2 is fun
This soldier just messing around appreciating their new parachute item made me laugh so damn much. 20:54
I think there's a lot of other factors too that still manage to make teamwork work in TF2; the game is constantly rewarding you for helping your teammates (ie extinguishing teammates for 20 health, whipping players speeds not just them up but you too, etc.), and the game is 12v12, which means that each person of the team is not all that valuable individually since there's so many people on the team, compared to most competitive games where it is 5v5 or even teams of just 3, so it basically just becomes a game of numbers.
the consept is simple :
Act one : " haha fuck yeah let's fuck around :D "
Act two: " * *Sixty seconds left in the mission* * Oh piss victory! and defeat! I WANT VICTORY! "
Act three, after winning or losing: " damn, that was a fun game of fucking around. "
*CONSEPT*
There's no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Queen of England and there's no team work in TF2
And there is no Megamind 2
@@InsertFunnyThingHere There is no need for such.
“wait, santa claus is fake?”
And there is no 70k players online
and there is no medic
Something I would add to the domination mechanic is the killstreak mechanic. Players with high killstreaks are displayed globally in text when going on a rampage. Basicly announcing to everyone “Look at me, I’m killing you all. I’m better than you all. SHOOT ME”
Killstreaks are already on the game, however you need to add the Killstreak Counter to your Weapon yo start counting. And every 5 kills, it's announced to everyone that you are on a Rampage.
Valve literally made each player PAY for bragging rights at the same time as marking the one bragging about as a top objective. And that Is just evil
i love how the most replayed part is the end of the sponsor
My funny voice chat moment was in a game of vs Saxton Hale last week where one of the guys was playing everything from Mario Kart music, to classical music to anime intros for an hour straight. It made spectating to the beat funny, and the combat was enhanced by some action music that I hadn't even noticed was playing. Lot of fun, hope I find him later.
I love shooter games like TF2. Ones with slow kill times. Ones where your own death is funny. Ones where a community has inside jokes that last for so long that they deform into absolute nonsense to an outside observer.
if your death in a game is consistently funny, its a great game
getting your ragdoll yeeted into a wall after an explosion will never NOT be funny
I find it so hilarious when I die out of nowhere and the cam shows a upward looking sniper from across the map!!! So hilarious!!! What a timeless classic!!
@@leonardo9259 mostly consistently funny*
"Ones with slow kill times"
[Laughs in Scottish]
9:39 "It's all brownie points"
Killfeed: "Brigadier Brownie"
Probably one of the main reasons the more competitive-focused Uncletopia servers are so popular is because the emphasis on teamwork makes for a nice change of pace to traditional casual TF2. It's quite satisfying when once in a while everyone hops on voice chat and coordinates a successful push because most games, like you say, are more free and individual in nature. The end goal perhaps isn't capturing the final point or pushing the payload, it's seeing the team's plans and strategies through to the end that draws people to these macro moments.
They're the only consistently filled botless servers
i don't usually comment, but i loved this introspective video essay/commentary, and i especially love that you revealed at the end that part of the motivation for this video was your frustration with finding yourself angry at the game. your analysis and the introspection together reflects exactly the process of responding philosophically to an irritating and confusing phenomena. the implicit story in this video, of your coming to understand yourself through the game, concludes so satisfyingly!
i never thought of there being "micro" and "macro" motivations to stay invested in a game, but after you pointed this distinction out, it makes so much sense why the silly moments in tf2 and other games are what i remember and care about the most, while the thing that draws me to have those micro moments are usually the macro contexts. even though the outcome of the match doesn't matter, what keeps me invested in playing a match to the end--which is what makes it possible for me to experience more of those silly mico moments--is that macro motivation that maybe my team can win. your analysis of the subtle motivations for "accidental teamwork" also makes so much sense. now that you've pointed it out, i'm starting to see some of the game design tricks in other games i've played, like in hypixel minecraft bedwars, or supercell's brawl stars.
anyway, please do make more of these kinds of videos!
Thinking of the domination system, it really does points you towards “this person is doing something that is problematic you need to think of a way to counter it”.
Sometimes it’s a Soilder, sometimes it’s a Spy or Sniper. But the domination system really do tells you to be careful and play smarter.
Another thing is that when you lose, the enemy team gets to humiliate you. It’s great for motivating pub pushes
Was playing a match of Harvest the other day, and it went almost exactly like the intro, everyone was goofing off, doing silly strategies, but as soon as the 60-second timer started we all panicked and started fighting for the point. Most fun I've had in a game in a while.
Fortress' are an illusion. Welcome to Team 2
2s are an illusion. Welcome to Team Fortress
Teams, fortresses, and twos are an illusion, welcome to
Your mom is an illusion
Teams and Fortresses are an illusion. Welcome to Hats 2
my favorite moment in tf2 to this day is when i loaded up ctf on two fort, and it was a full proper match, minus a unique lack of engi on red, so i picked engi, and then someone else swapped to engi, and then another, so on, by the end of the match we had an eight man sentry nest in red intel, with a scoot running around giving callouts on when we'd have a push coming. we lost that match in the long run, one too many double uber heavy pushes shattered the nest and a few of the gang scattered to other classes, but it was some of the most fun ive ever had playing video games in my life
I personally believe that Control Points is more vulnerable to "Rolls" than Payload. The cart has a set speed and no matter what you do there is no way to speed it up (even if 12 scouts hump the cart it won't go any faster than if just 2 scouts were on the cart). But with CP if one team captures the second to last point it puts the defending team at a very vulnerable disadvantage because they'll have to work hard to try and defend their last point (which is capped 2 times faster than the other points) all while also attempting to push forward to cap the second to last points. It always feels like any team who's capped the second to last point on CP has basically already won the game because of how incredibly difficult it is to defend the last point and also push forwards at the same time.
I have coined this phenomenon with my friends about a year ago in a moba. I call it the "oh shit we are going to lose" buff
since then you are calling it at the beginning of the game and last week you won one mil championship xdd
This is why I love pub TF2 more than pubs in quite literally any other game. I can just *play.* Other games don't understand this concept. Even your DRG and Helldivers 2 examples, though good, still don't avoid thinking about your team as thoroughly as TF2 does. Actually, the other TF2 (Titanfall) does a decent job tbh. But that's more from the "it's just TDM with low TTK" standpoint.
the maps we play on are also tachnically not fortifications, so this game in reality is just "2"
Technically the first game was not a stand alone game, just a mod. So its just " "
“boo random crits” - guaranteed crits engie
I've had the Uncle Dane theme in my playlist for so many years, hearing it so many times in my car, but this is the first of his vids I've ever seen. I don't know how I didn't start earlier(Probably because he became big a year after I stopped playing)
His point also made me realize that Deep Rock Galactic makes you appreciate both the macro AND macro moments. From randomly dancing with your drunk buddies, to beating an oddly tough wave of bugs, to beating a Caretaker in a somehow extremely well coordinated fashion with absolute randos. It isn't hard to see why so many TF2 veterans love this game
I think the best way to describe a TF2 match is a bunch of people with completely separate goals that all conveniently led to a singular outcome.
Honestly, this feels like a video personally made for me. As someone who researches Game Psychology for a living I have always been baffled with how casual TF2 plays and how all of a sudden people can get their act together in the last moments. The way you present this I think does an excellent job at pointing out the subtle ways the game incentivises teamwork without the need for direct communication. Additionally, I am someone who has played this game competitively and actively tryhard in pubs, often to the point where I also get frustrated with my teammates, and I think that your last section really helped me understand my own frustrations and some things I can start reflecting on to start enjoying myself again when playing. Everyone enjoys the game in a different way and whilst my enjoyment comes from doing well and winning hard fought matches, that may not the case for others. I can just focus on my own Micro moments more instead of the team's overall outcome.
Great vid :D
Its same with procrastination. You know you can do the project in couple hours but you tend to delay till the end and then you lock in.
WHY DOES THE DEMOLITION TEAM DEFEND AND THE BUILDER TEAM ATTACK THAT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE
I think a building company would have a lot to gain from buildings in need of rebuilding
Especially since red is a much more aggressive colour than blue.
Yeah that's always kinda bothered me. Is the original TF like that too? I feel like it has to be a holdover from something because it would make a lot more sense the other way around.
I guess at the end of the day, RED and BLU are fronts and so the fact that neither lives up to their name is to be expected.
MatPat did a whole video on why TF2’s teams are colored the way they are. TLDR, RED defends because having RED be offense gives a psychological edge to the attacking team. Having BLU attack balances momentum from a psychological standpoint and further creates the “Illusion of Teamwork.”
Why do you think there's a bunch of explosives on payload last? Those are the explosives RED uses for demolition purposes. BLU explodes RED's demolition tools so that they can no longer cause further demolition.
Poopy Joe.
20:41 he sounds like hes testifying when he says his following sentence
The best description of that thing has a person, and that person is madekoo with all the micro moments
I often have the mindset “We have 10 minutes to dick around its fine”
And then when that team bell sounds “Mission Ends in 60 Seconds.” It’s time to kick ass.
"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." -Thatcher the Milk Snatcher
There are individual men and bots, and there are pub pushes
why do they call him the milk snatcher
@@user-bkey *her
@@huks9380 "There is no gender spectrum. There is only milk and snatchers."
@@huks9380 my bad why do they call her the milk snatcher
ROBIN WALKER:
our goal was to make it so that as they all individually and locally optimize for their experience, optimization at the team level falls out of that.
They could look left, look right, and see teammates doing some stuff and go, 'Man, we're working well as a team,' even though we started with the base assumption that they were all ignoring everyone else, because it turns out that's the way most players work.
The end discussion about getting mad at tf2 reminds me of the old salt factory video where dane angrily complains about his team for like 20 mins in highpass lol
maybe this is why other team-based shooters are a bit worse for having fun on the face of it, they are designed for optimization and designated roles. they had to limit teams ability to pick whatever character you wanted in overwatch because too many of a single character made the game unplayable. Meanwhile, in tf2, i was part of a blu team that went all heavy to push on upward after getting stomped by red the whole round. We pushed and won, then next round we went soldier, only for the other team to meet us as heavies. Most fun I’ve had in that game ever
I think “subtly encouraged” is the best description. Influence is the name of the game here. From a teleporter going down one of three paths to giving someone an Übercharge, you can influence the outcome of an engagement through what you bring to the table rather than working directly with someone (although you can still do the latter).
“Babe, take the kids away, Uncle Dane just uploaded. Leave me be.”
Watch with the kids instead
"My wife told me it was either her or Uncle Dane videos. God I miss her sometimes."
Teaming in my Fortress Two. Deading my Locks. Halving my lives.
Counter striking to?
Leaving for dead
Punching Out my Garry’s Mods!!
Huge character development from 2016, where everyone was saying the game needed to change to encourage more active teamwork and a competitive astmosphere.