Neowin's official Team Fortress 2 server

[EmuZombie Veteran]

It may be a few years late, but Neowin now has an official TF2 server sanctioned by Neobond himself!

Its location: Chicago, IL, United States. (sorry those on the other side of the world)

IP and port: 8.9.16.185:27015

You can also easily find the server by setting the game to filter the tag "neowin"

Neowin subscribers of any level also get extra perks including:

Their own custom achievement

Auto balance immunity

End round immunity.

Please see this thread for more information. (View restricted to current subscribers)

Come join us and play with your fellow Neowin members at our new home for TF2.

Want to join but aren't sure how? Here's a brief tutorial:

Any questions, comments, or suggestions can be directed to me. Just send me a PM on the forum. Hope to see you there!

[Minifig]

This needs to be stuck.. And I am THERE.

[strelok1911]

USA hosted?

No thanks.

[Nagisan]

Hmmmm.....would love to play on it, but I only play 24-person, and would prefer to have nocrits if possible (even better, nocrit, disable damage spread and disable shotgun spread).

[Zeet]

Even though it's hosted in the USA, I don't lag that much so I'll still play on it now and then

[Denis W. Veteran]

Ooo, another Chicago server. I get great pings from there :D

[Chasethebase Reporter]

Hmmmm.....would love to play on it, but I only play 24-person, and would prefer to have nocrits if possible (even better, nocrit, disable damage spread and disable shotgun spread).

So basically ruining the fun of the game. No spread makes the Heavy way overpowered and no shotgun spread turns it into a single shot, overpowered pistol (Read: FAL equivalent from MW2).

Random crits are great fun, I feel that you lose some of the charm that is the randomness of it when you're playing. Crit wrenching people is so fun.

24-30 isn't that much of a difference, just 3 more players per team.

[Nagisan]

So basically ruining the fun of the game. No spread makes the Heavy way overpowered and no shotgun spread turns it into a single shot, overpowered pistol (Read: FAL equivalent from MW2).

Random crits are great fun, I feel that you lose some of the charm that is the randomness of it when you're playing. Crit wrenching people is so fun.

24-30 isn't that much of a difference, just 3 more players per team.

Anything more than 24 players gets massive spam from demos and soldiers.....even on 24-person servers, half my deaths are from demos that had no idea I was even there.

No damage spread disables the random damage spread, not damage falloff, that does not overpower a heavy any more than it overpowers every other class. Instead of a soldier doing 105-112 damage at point blank range with perfect hit, he will do 112 every single time. That goes for all other weapons equally, so its not overpowering any single class, as all get equal damage ranges.

Look at it this way for damage spread, you die and notice someone has 5 or so health left. If the random damage spread worked in your favor during that encounter, they would have died and you probably would not have. Disabling damage spread means if they had 5 health left, then they did a better job at getting their damage to hit you, than you did trying to get your damage to hit them.

For shotgun spread, no, it does not turn it into a single shot, have you ever tried playing with most randomness removed from the game? It honestly sounds like you have not.

Disabling shotgun spread puts 1 bullet directly down your crosshair (like it does already) and puts the other 7 pellets in a sqaure around that middle pellet. That means your shotgun will always fire pellets in the same exact pattern, allowing you to more easily hit a target with more pellets than if it had been random spread. As an example: With random shotgun spread, you can fire 3 shots at medium range and not hit your target with a single pellet. Without random shotgun spread, you can fire those same 3 shots, but hit your target every time with at least some of the pellets.

And how is the pistol overpowered by doing either of the above? Damage falloff is STILL in the game with damage spread disabled, so a long-range pistol shot is still going to do like 5 damage or whatever.

Random crits blow......they are basically a way for a crappy player to kill a top player with luck and luck alone. Sure its good for average pubbers that have little experience in the game, but when you get completely killed from a crit rocket fired from across the map as you turn a corner, and know that without that pure lucky crit you would have only taken maybe 50 damage, it gets quite annoying. Do I like killing a bunch of people in a single crocket? Sure, its pretty funny to see, but I would much rather NOT kill someone because I didn't get a lucky crit, than get killed from across the map due to a lucky crit.

I do not mean to try to insult you, but you sound like an average pub player who enjoys killing and getting killed due to luck. I personally do not get joy out of killing people with luck, to the point that when I play on the normal server I play on, I will start a vote (or try to, at least) to disable crits the second I kill someone with one if I forget to do it when I first join.

As for random damage spread and shotgun spread, you have no idea what you are talking about, which tells me you have no experience playing on servers with them or testing them on your own. Both remove luck, neither increases damage in a way that any class becomes overpowered. Without random damage spread, a heavy minigun bullet is still going to do low damage at longer ranges.

EDIT: So no, I am not removing the fun out of the game, I am removing the luck that you have little to no control over from the game.

[Drew]

I'll give this a try tonight when I get home, I think my pings are usually OK to USA servers so fingers crossed :)

edit: server browser shows about 120 so should be playable :)

[Chasethebase Reporter]

And how is the pistol overpowered by doing either of the above? Damage falloff is STILL in the game with damage spread disabled, so a long-range pistol shot is still going to do like 5 damage or whatever.

I am an average pub player, I don't play competitively, shotguns never shoot that accurately in real life so why should a game be different? This part of my post you read wrong, I read yours as putting all pellets down the crosshair, as such I said the shotgun would be the same as the pistol except with higher damage and lower fire rate/clip size.

Random crits, well, I don't mind them at all, but it's quite a laugh when you crit wrench a scout about to cap the intel.

[Nagisan]

I am an average pub player, I don't play competitively, shotguns never shoot that accurately in real life so why should a game be different? This part of my post you read wrong, I read yours as putting all pellets down the crosshair, as such I said the shotgun would be the same as the pistol except with higher damage and lower fire rate/clip size.

Random crits, well, I don't mind them at all, but it's quite a laugh when you crit wrench a scout about to cap the intel.

Ah, okay, yeah....it doesn't put all the shotgun pellets down the crosshair (which, as you said, would be way overpowered), it instead sets a pattern so all shotgun bullets follow that pattern for every shot.

And yes, shotguns never shoot that accurately in real life, but, how many people do you know can survive shooting their feet with a rocket? IMO TF2 should not be about realism, it should be about fun. As such, all weapons should have a somewhat predictable pattern in which they shoot. Beyond that, crits actually seem to simulate realism more than no crits, as a single well-placed crit will kill most classes with just about any classes primary weapon. Whereas with no crits, it takes more shots to kill people, which lead to more fun IMO.

As I said, I definitely do get a laugh out of getting random crits at perfect times, but I absolutely hate shooting a sniper at close range with the scattergun, only to have him turn and 1-hit crit kill me with a kukri lucky crit. Or, like yesterday, I nailed a guy with 2 rockets (an enemy demo), and he got a lucky crit nade. Before he got the nade, I was at roughly 150 health. When I died, the deathcam showed he had a whopping 5 health. Had he not gotten the crit at that exact moment, chances are I would have killed him and lived. Instead, he got lucky, and I died, which is what I do not like about crits.

What makes things worse, is with random damage spread, that 5 health he had left would be in the range that, if my previous 2 shots had done just slightly more damage (within the damage spread of rockets) he would have died before he got the crit. Instead, due to random damage spread, he killed me.

That being said, the server I play on currently has random crits and random damage spread (random shotgun spread, however, is disabled), but I simply have been unable to find a good 24-person server that has random crits, random damage spread, and random shotgun spread disabled that has less than 100 ping.

[Chasethebase Reporter]

Do you have the IP of this server you play on, I'm intrigued and would like to try it :)

[Nagisan]

Do you have the IP of this server you play on, I'm intrigued and would like to try it :)

209.51.145.133:27015

Control Point Podcast #1 server.....I get around 40 ping on it and most of the normal players actually work together and get things done (sometimes they will screw around for the fun of it, though).

[Blackhearted]

USA hosted?

No thanks.

You do remember that due to the crutch called ping compensation you'd still be able to do well even half way around the world thanks the the hundreds of false positives per hour this 'wonderful' crap generates. right?

[ObiWanToby]

You do remember that due to the crutch called ping compensation you'd still be able to do well even half way around the world thanks the the hundreds of false positives per hour this 'wonderful' crap generates. right?

He's too hardcore to deal with that...

I play on UK servers all the time. It really doesn't matter too much anymore. In any game. CoD, BFBC2 or TF2

[Guest]

He's too hardcore to deal with that...

I play on UK servers all the time. It really doesn't matter too much anymore. In any game. CoD, BFBC2 or TF2

It does make a big difference, try rocketjumping when you have +100 ping, it just doesn't work. Feels like your rockets come out later.

[Nagisan]

It does make a big difference, try rocketjumping when you have +100 ping, it just doesn't work. Feels like your rockets come out later.

While lag compensation does help tons with most classes, it is increasingly difficult to play projectile-based classes as your lag increases.

As you state, rocketjumping is more difficult at high pings, due to the fact that projectiles are not lag compensated, you have to correct for your latency (like what had to be done in older games). So, for rocket jumping, if you have 100 ping, you have to try jumping 100ms after firing, which can be difficult to learn if you are use to playing on a low-ping server.

[Chasethebase Reporter]

209.51.145.133:27015

Control Point Podcast #1 server.....I get around 40 ping on it and most of the normal players actually work together and get things done (sometimes they will screw around for the fun of it, though).

Oh right CP #1. I go there quite often but crits are usually on. Is shotgun spread different there, never noticed.

Also I play fine on 100+ ping so I don't see an issue. If it's 200+ then there's a problem.

[Nagisan]

Oh right CP #1. I go there quite often but crits are usually on. Is shotgun spread different there, never noticed.

Also I play fine on 100+ ping so I don't see an issue. If it's 200+ then there's a problem.

Yeah I wish crits were disabled by default......sadly its one of the best servers I can find with a low ping. As for shotgun spread, try shooting a wall and you will see the difference. Instead of a pretty random distribution, it will be in a big square (almost) with 1 pellet hitting in the middle, its much different than normal shotgun spread. Here's an example of what disabling shotgun spread does: http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/File:Fixed_weapon_spread.png

While there is no comparison, random spread has a cone in which each pellet is randomly assigned a trajectory, so you can shoot dead on a target, with 80% of the pellets going to the left and therefore completely missing the target. With shotgun spread disabled, you know where each bullet is going to go, so you can better aim your shots for maximum output.

EDIT: I was wrong about pellet counts earlier......shotguns shoot 10 pellets, they shoot 2 pellets down the very middle (where your crosshair is, the red dot in the image) and 8 more spread out in the square shape. The FaN which shoots 12 pellets, it shoots 3 pellets down the very middle (red dot), with 8 more spread around in a square shape (that comes to 11) then 1 extra down the right-middle path (yellow dot). So, with the FaN on a random spread disabled server, its best to aim slightly to the left of a target....that way if you are at a range where not all the pellets hit, you are hitting with an extra pellet due to that extra pellet on the right side......but at a long range its best to shoot directly at them, due to getting a total of 3 pellets down the crosshair.

[shakey]

That fixed shotgun shooting seems like it would make it a little overpowered. I can rape as is with scout and his scatter gun shooting randomly around people... I could only see dropping people quite quickly with it set like that.

[Nagisan]

That fixed shotgun shooting seems like it would make it a little overpowered. I can rape as is with scout and his scatter gun shooting randomly around people... I could only see dropping people quite quickly with it set like that.

It depends highly on the skill of the other people around you. It also depends on the situation. Sure 1 on 1, disabled shotgun spread is going to make a scout more powerful, but if your fighting a scout 1 on 1, the scout already has the advantage even with random spread. But, it also helps soldiers fight smart pyros, and even skilled scouts. Many soldiers have a difficult time fighting skilled scouts with their rocket launchers because they dodge just too easily compared to every other class, so fixed shotgun spread coming from the soldier makes it easier to dish out damage against an enemy scout, despite you taking more damage.

The only reason scouts get more of an advantage out of it, is because their primary weapon is a shotgun (different kind, buts its still there). Also, remember, the scattergun and FaN have a larger firing cone than other shotguns. So at medium range, a soldier/pyro/engy is going to do more damage to a scout than a scout would to any of them due to the basic shotguns having a closer grouping of bullets.

Plus, as I mentioned before, fixed shotgun spread removes a bit of luck out of the game. With random shotgun spread, you can shoot someone at medium range and not get a single pellet to hit them, with fixed, you can better estimate where your shotgun pellets will go, allowing you to more reliably hit them.

EDIT: And its really not that much of an advantage...here's a graph of spread vs no spread: http://sadpanda.us/images/84922-TKWN4AJ.png

As you can see, on average, no spread has only very slightly higher damage than spread. The values are so close in fact that if a scout killed someone with random spread, he likely would have killed him without random spread. The main difference is it makes it easier to predict where your shotgun will hit at longer ranges.....at close range (which is the scouts most effective area) it makes little difference.

For reference with the chart above, a teleporter is roughly 57 units wide. Making 300 units (the minimum on the above chart) roughly 5.25 teleporter widths in terms of distance.

[MightyJordan]

Glad to see a Neowin TF2 server. :) Shame I haven't spoted anyone else on there yet. :(

We should arrange a game night.

[Pajter]

Haven't seen anyone on either. Are there actually people using the server? If so, what time are you on?

[Lovell]

The problem is if people look at a server with no people on it or even a few people, they won't join, no one wants to sit on their own and wait for people to join.

[+shift. MVC]

Ooo, another Chicago server. I get great pings from there :D

*Shakes fist*

Looks like I'll be seeing 80-109 pings :p