TF2

TF2 Market Team Composition, Please

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Okay, I called it. I knew that team composition for people will still be insignificant even after the meet your match. These kids that have so many hats because their moms bought them for them in the TF2 Market whenever they have tantrums will stay stubborn as fuck whether it be casual quick play or in competitive mode. Yeah, team composition is not important for them and apparently, they don’t care if they like losing for like, forever. Yeah, I predicted it and I think with what I’m about to share will actually confirm it.

TF2 Market Kids

While I was just reading some good posts in Reddit about how Team Fortress 2 has become somewhat active again because of the new patch, I came across this thread about some stupid pubs (snipers and spies) not wanting to change roles for defense. Here is the photo of the poster:

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Yeah, if someone is asking you nicely, you should at least not be an asshole right? But no, this individual was so cool that he had to reply with such douchery.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think snipers and spies are strong in Team Fortress 2 but they are not the ideal roles to play on defense. In addition, I assume this is a pub. Original poster must have solo queued and got teamed up with this douchebag. So yeah, one should expect that these pubs aren’t any good. If you are, great! But we ain’t expecting you to be so kindly switch, right? Common sense.

I really feel for IFuckSJWsDaily since you know, he has common sense getting grouped up with people who don’t have. In addition, the desire to win was non-existent for those, again, kids. Losing isn’t fun and without good team composition, you are bound to lose. I really do hope these kinds of people stay in the quick play mode because for sure they will be a pain in the ass in competitive mode. If that happens, yeah, I would definitely trade TF2 for another fps game.

TF2 Trading: Improvement

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Competitive mode has been out for quite some time now and Team Fortress 2 players encounter some problems with regards to being able to compete properly in the new mode. For sure, any casual player like me who thinks more about TF2 trading, gets surprised on how to play competitively despite of the good performance we do in the casual quick play games. So yeah, competitive mode is a whole new arena for us and self-doubt is inevitable.

TF2 Trading: How to Improve

It all starts with the drive to improve. If you don’t have any of that, you will never survive or even enjoy the times you go into competitive play. First step is to accept you are not doing good then afterwards would be searching ways on how to improve. One way to search on how to improve is by asking people (or anyone really) for tips and tricks. Like this guy in Reddit, hajjr6 asked the TF2 Reddit on how he can improve his play with spy and engineer:

My best classes are shit (spy and engi) and anytime I play another class I do awful. I don’t know what to do, and I’m so fed up. Whenever I play Engi or spy in casual, I do extremely well.

Fortunately, someone answered him properly by commenting this:

As spy start working on revolver aim, stock revolver can do a decent 35-40 or so damage at mid range, and crits for 120. the big earner is one of the better sidegrades for its quick speed and combined with the deadringer can get you in to stab and out in no time at all. also, practice on baiting people with the deadringer, keep them distracted finding you and learn ammo locations to keep it up consistently, try for 3-4 deadrings every life or more

For engineer practice shotgun aim, shotgun spread is rather tight and with fast shot speed can do rather well close range on people whom might not notice you. running gunslinger is almost a must, for added health to survive and fast mini sentries for extra DPS. stock pistol for long range

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With this, hajjr6 is on his way to improvement. How about you, do you need to improve? TF2 items will do nothing for you. Be like hajjr6. Ask away!

TF2 Trading: Last Part

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Last time I shared to you, TF2 players and TF2 trading people, the last part of an amazing story about LoopsCode who achieved his dream with the help of actually playing Team Fortress 2.

TF2 Trading: Some Last Words

Well, we finished reading his story but he has some parting words and actually the moral of his own story. Here it goes:

So this is my story of how TF2 helped me achieved my dream of getting a job in Silicon Valley.

The lesson I learned is – just be a good person. Be a good person even under the veil of anonymity. You don’t know when it will bite you in the butt, or when it will literally help you achieve your dreams. Just do it!

tl;dr air shots and med picks achieve dreams

EDIT: I swear I wouldn’t do these type of “front page EDITs”, but damn, I woke up to 800 upvotes and a gild. Thank you all so much for receiving this so well. Frankly, I was pretty happy when I got 10 upvotes.. I’ll try my best to respond to each and every one of your comments, but if I miss you, I apologize 🙂

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This guy is very humble indeed. You know you will get so many blessings if you stay humble and do what you do.

There is one comment that I would like to highlights and it came from Jordanis. He said:

“The lesson here, folks, is make some friends.”

That’s true. You play an online game and just make an enemy out of every person you see won’t do you any good. Be humble and friendly always. Who knows, one of those people you bump to might be the closest one you will ever be. Which Kepgnar got right:

“Indeed, “playing TF2” didn’t get you the job, “knowing someone who worked there” got you the job. “playing TF2” helped you develop and demonstrate the skills to back up your referral.

Which seems to be the best way to get in somewhere, almost always.”

So yeah, whether it be giving away TF2 Items or just being friendly, the lesson is be good to everyone you meet and stay that way.

TF2 Market: Good Story Pt. 4

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Last time I shared with you the third part of a very nice story. Here is the fourth part for you guys to enjoy as Team Fortress 2 fans and active TF2 market patrons.

TF2 Market: Continuation

I arrived at their office a few weeks later in beautiful California. I went through the rounds of interviews starting at 9 AM. After the seven and a half hours of interviews, of testing me everything from algorithms, data structures, building simple apps, asking me questions about design/UX/UI, career motivations, culture fit questions, and more, it was over. I was emotionally/physically/mentally exhausted, but I felt good. I even got to meet Messiah in person for the first time in two years, and he gave me a TF2 shirt. Even after meeting him in person, I still can’t put a face to his voice from Mumble. It’s just too unreal.

After I flew home, I went through one more phone technical interview with them, just to get more data. Considering they are a data analytics company, that made a lot of sense.

So after around 11+ combined hours of interviews, one day, my now-boss called me to extend me an offer. It was my first offer, from a company of my dreams, and after all those rejections! I don’t think happiness described it. After literally nine months of rejections after rejections, of reviewing those excruciating data structures and algorithms questions (which takes time away from me from developing great applications), of waking up knowing I still don’t have a job while friends around me were getting offers – it was finally over. It actually took me three days to fully process the mental load that it’s over.

I achieved my dream, but I didn’t do it alone. Playing TF2 actually helped me achieve my dream. Thank you Messiah, Borat, and the rest of the team for being such good people. I honestly can say I couldn’t have done it without them!

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Wow, Team Fortress 2 isn’t just a game. TF2 can teach some lessons that can be applied in real life. Amazing story. Trade TF2 or not, it’s still a great game. Hope you enjoyed this story by LoopsCode and learned something!

TF2 Trading: Good Story Pt. 3

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Last time I shared with you the second part of a very nice story. Here is the third part for you guys to enjoy as Team Fortress 2 fans and active TF2 trading players.

TF2 Trading: Continuation

This is the third part of the (true) story of LoopsCode in Reddit:

Fast forward a few more months, the team sort of disbanded because we all had real life responsibilities to attend to (although no worries, we all shoot the shit on our Slack channel on a daily basis). I was talking to Messiah how I was graduating soon in June 2016, and whether he has any tips for me for job search.

Little did I know, Messiah, who I absolutely admire because he is also the main dev of a Steam based website, works in a company in Silicon Valley. I was absolutely flabbergasted. Recall, I’ve known him for around a year and a half by now, and this is the first time I knew about this. He keeps it very low key, a hint to his character. He asked me if I was interested in his company, which is conveniently located in the center of Silicon Valley.

Am I interested? Am I?? My life long dream has been to work in Silicon Valley. I think interested was an understatement. I was more like – fuck yes I am!

I honestly tried to apply for internships in this area all five years of my college career, with no luck each time. Being able to begin my career in the Valley would actually fulfill a long-time dream of mine.

Messiah put in a good word for me to the CEO of the company knowing what I did with the UGC Roster Verifier tool (and our fun technical discussions on coding and tech in Slack/Mumble), and I scheduled my first call with them.

One call led to another technical call. Then a third culture call. Then finally, I was invited to their office in the Valley for a full day of on-site interviews. I flew over from the East coast; everything was paid for. Was I nervous? Goddamn I was. At this point, I was rejected by a few companies already, and morale was at a new low.

TF2 Trading, TF2 Items, TF2, Team Fortress 2

Whoa, what happens next? Stay put for the next part as we continue on with his story! It’s as if winning a lottery of great TF2 Items.

TF2 Trading: Good Story Pt. 2

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Last time I shared with you the first part of a very nice story. Here is the second part for you guys to enjoy as Team Fortress 2 fans and active TF2 trading players.

TF2 Trading: Continuation

This is the second part of the (true) story of LoopsCode in Reddit

As you all know, some teams would bring in unregistered ringers (often times higher skill divisions than what the current team is), imposters with the same name and display picture (played by a higher level player), or sometimes, the team leader just doesn’t know it’s against the rules. Prior to a match, there isn’t much time to actually check one-by-one whether the player on the team is really who they say they are, or whether they’re in the official roster. My team leader, let’s call him Messiah, knew that I was a software developer. He is also one. He expressed to me his frustration, and it clicked to me that maybe I should try to take a stab at solving this problem.

A few weeks later, the UGC Roster Verification tool (now offline) was born. Initially, only the players in the team used it. After awhile, I started sharing it on /r/tf2, /r/truetf2, the UGC forums, TF2Center forums, and more, and it kinda blew up. I recall over 1000 unique players used it, and for a kid like me, that was pretty insane. Hearing people’s thoughts on the tool prompted me to learn to gather user feedback, test for bugs, and ultimately implement new features to it. This was a great feeling, and it really trained me to become a better software and product developer.

 TF2 Trading, TF2 Items, TF2, Team Fortres 2

Wow, this is really getting pretty interesting, right? Were you guys able to use this UGC Roster Verification tool? Did this program also helped in terms of TF2 Items? Let us know if you did!

TF2 Market: Change of Scenery

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

It’s all bad news about Team Fortress 2 recently and these days have been no better either. No, let us not blame Blizzard with Overwatch. If there’s one we can point a finger to is to Valve and how they mishandled Team Fortress 2 in many different ways. With the overflowing news of all things bad for TF2, let us divert our attention to a good story that might never have happened if not for Team Fortress 2. Surely, this cannot be seen in the TF2 Market, so read on.

TF2 Market: Good Story

This is a post by LoopsCode in TF2 Reddit. I am merely sharing it to you guys!

This is a story on how TF2 got me a job in Silicon Valley, the place of my dreams to begin my career as a fresh new computer engineering grad.

This story started two years ago, when I was invited to sub as a Soldier in a UGC Silver Highlander team from a friend, his name Borat, I met in TF2Center. We played a few games while we chatted in Mumble, and in the first few games, we clicked pretty well. A few days later, this friend asked if I was interested in joining their team full-time as their main soldier for the upcoming season. I first hesitated, but eventually agreed because I thought the dudes were all very swell.

Fast forward a few months, we were deep into the weekly games. Our team didn’t have the best DM, or the best players, or even the best strats, but gosh darn, we had team work and good vibes. The group of guys were just great people that encouraged each other when things went south, and in general, made the sometimes-toxic UGC environment tolerable, and even fun!

Speaking of toxicity, this is how the story really started.

 TF2 Market, Trade TF2, TF2, Team Fortress 2

To be continued…

LOL. Look forward for the continuation everyone! Don’t trade TF2 yet!

TF2 Trading: Copying Overwatch

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

It is funny to see that the table has turned between Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch. In the previous months, people has nothing to say but Overwatch is just Team Fortress 2 with better graphics (which Blizzard admittedly taken concepts from different shooters including Team Fortress 2). Yeah, I am pretty sure those people haven’t tried Overwatch before commenting like that or watched Blizzard interviews and press cons. Now, TF2 is learning from the success of Overwatch. Valve are implementing game modes and other stuff in TF2 that they see are working for Overwatch. I guess, it is a give and take of ideas? TF2 trading ideas? Yeah, that sort, if you will.

TF2 Trading Ideas but Still Short

There is nothing wrong with the copying of this and copying of that between games. Moreover, if they are in the same game genre, there will be similarities and copying of ideas. It is not wrong, in my opinion, if you would copy another aspect of a competitor’s game so as long as you make it better. Take a look at World of Warcraft. People would say or said that they only copied Everquest, right? Blizzard’s biggest moneymaker was just from an existing idea but made better. Same goes for their other games i.e. Hearthstone to Magic: The Gathering, Starcraft to any other RTS existed before it and of course, Overwatch to objective type shooter.

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Team Fortress 2 though, man, they fell short. Even on the copying of what is working for Overwatch, they failed. I have seen so much comments on how Valve continues to not disappoint on disappointing their players. Take this post in Reddit, there are so many people commenting on all the faults and the shortcomings in TF2 even if they tried updating in the game that of Overwatch. So yeah, sad but true and sometimes rage inducing, to be quite honest. And no, inb4 put out more TF2 items, that will not work as well for sure. So yeah, hopefully this changes soon. If not, we will really have to say goodbye to TF2.

TF2 Trading: Veteran Voiced Out

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Team Fortress released recently a big update that included the competitive mode and the quick play matchmaking mode. I have only read the patch notes since, well, I don’t play Team Fortress 2 that much anymore because Overwatch. Going back, after I read the update, I thought to myself, “Wow pretty cool! Valve is putting an effort to compete in the FPS market again.” But then it hit me, “This sounds a lot like Overwatch.” Maybe it was just me. Until I found a video that reaffirmed my assumption after reading the patch notes. This is going to be bad for TF2 trading.

TF2 Trading: Muselk Talks

Muselk has been playing Team Fortress 2 since forever so it is very reliable in terms of his opinion. I also think of him as a non-biased first person shooter player as well. You will surely agree when you watch his other videos and most definitely this video:

I loved the “Overwatch is doing great with it, let’s do it as well” comment. For one, I really thought of the idea when I read the update notes and Muselk seconding the thought, what a relief for me. Valve doesn’t have to do that. They were first in the market anyways, they could’ve done that a long time ago and maybe got the success of that idea before Overwatch. Who knows, that would be another “TF2 did it first” argument and Valve could’ve gotten the credit and not Blizzard. What’ surprising was the ranked rating. You did great in a game with three gold medals and won and still ranked down? Maybe this was a bug but with the anxiety of the remaining handful (LOL) of Team Fortress 2 players, it’s almost unforgiveable. Valve is a veteran in the industry as well, they should know better.

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The last thing to cry about is that Valve is as if they are just giving TF2 players disappointment after disappointment as if they don’t care anymore. I really anticipated that Overwatch will bring the best out of Valve but it was otherwise. TF2 items surely will not sell again.

TF2 Market: Team Composition

Posted on by Mei Satsuki

Now that there is a competitive mode in Team Fortress 2, the game’s play or meta changes. Team Fortress 2 was more of a casual game but now that competitive mode is one of the game’s mode, players should be more aware on how to cope with other players thus the importance of team composition. There were games that our team had no medic in them and caused the loss because noon was healing damaged teammate and it was frustrating. I was so frustrated that a cheap guy like me looked into the TF2 market and thought of buying something to relieve the stress. What more in a more serious mode in competitive mode. That’s why I am here to share with you guys on how to setup an optimal team by having a great team composition.

TF2 Market: According to Wiki

So I looked up for some write-ups on the proper team composition on competitive Team Fortress 2, because honestly I haven’t set foot in the mode in fear of getting frustrated again. Good thing TF2 Wiki provided some info on team composition:

The standard competitive lineup is made up of the following team composition:

  • 1 Medic
  • 1 Demoman
  • 1 Pocket, usually a Soldier
  • 1 Roamer, also usually a Soldier
  • 2 Utilities, usually both Scouts

The Medic and Demoman almost never change classes within a game. Depending on the map, either or both utilities might spend more time as other classes, especially on asymmetrical maps like Gravel Pit or Badwater. Soldiers most commonly remain Soldiers throughout the entire game, though the pocket sometimes switches to a Heavy, and other switches are not unheard of.

The combination of the Medic and at least one of his partners (generally a Soldier and a Demoman) is referred to as “The Combo”. The Combo will usually receive the Medic’s Übercharge, and represents a team’s location in a map. The Roamer and Situational classes will move around and look to gain picks, back-cap, or force the enemy medic to deploy an Übercharge to save himself.

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Trade TF2 for another game isn’t a good idea now since the addition of fresh content / new modes.

We will go further on this topic on my next article. Do you think this is the right team composition in the game? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.