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I haven't seen that in any of the update info since I have gotten TF2 (a month ago) and I have gotten 1-hit killed by pipe grenades a ton.....they can still do up to 132 dmg without getting a crit, so they are still potentially lethal to 125hp classes.

Yep, pipes are the strongest weapons in the game.

But it only rarely goes over 125 damage now :)

Hmmm I didn't think pipes could go over 125, I play demo quite a lot and since the update I haven't 1 hit a scout on full health but I kill lots of scouts with my pipes.

I hate a demo who can aim, most of the time I get killed by a demo its either due to stickies, or a single pipe to the face :( If the first pipe doesn't kill me, I'm outta there before they can finish me off.

Bad scout :p, keep strafing left and right and double jump over the demo. He should be dead by then. A few weeks ago I was playing on a pub arena server and it was me (heavy) versus a really good scout. To make things better for me I was also using Natascha. The scout runs at me from behind, one shot at the start and then the second shot, double jumps over my head and gets two shots on me and I'm dead. It was a wtf moment.

There's a post on the TF2 blog about Valve taking steps to delist the bad servers, it's mainly going to effect the ones using the fake players plugins.

Getting rid of those, and filtering out the nocrit/allcrit/fastspawn/instaspawn/etc. servers should lead to finding (hopefully) good servers. Now if only I could filter out the crappy ones with HLstatsX.

Edit: Oh yeah, the post

Two of the servers I play on use fast respawn (not insta) on the 2fort servers only, otherwise the arena and payload servers are vanilla save for SourceMods and HLStatsX. While I'd hate to see it delisted just because of fast respawn, I don't see too many fast quitters as people can rack up to 2+ hours per gaming session.

What do you find crappy about HLStatsX? Is it the amount of text spamming it does on some servers?

edit: reading the graph, it seems like there's a relatively small amount of servers that are "bad." So there's probably little to worry about if you play on large community servers. It's those random forthelulz servers that should get the boot.

edit 2: This may be a BIG problem for servers who have reserved slots. Some people repeatedly join and get kicked when a server's player count is right below the reserved slot threshold - according to this system the server is 'bad' for having players repeatedly drop out because they haven't paid for their slots.

Edited by rm20010

HLstatsX just spams things all the time, I don't need to know the time, or that the server is running it, or that the server has a website (which was mentioned in the MOTD) or that I just killed or built a sentry, the game already tells me about those.

And hopefully the reserved slot plugins will die, Source already provides a nicer method of having reserved slots that doesn't involve kicking people. But unfortunately I don't think it's going to do much against crappy fastspawn/instaspawn ones.

I agree that some servers are really spammy with HLStatsX. Some aren't though.

The points system from HLStatsX is fine; sure it could get annoying when it constantly tells you that you got points for killing someone or building sentries, but how else would it notify you of point gains? (unless there's a client-side cvar that allows you to turn those messages off) Plus on our community's servers, the points system is also used to give free reserved slots to the top five people who accumulate the most points.

As for the reserved slot kicking, I agree that it's very annoying to get booted out after the game spends half a minute loading the map. But it's possible that server admins use this as it's easier to track those who paid for subscriptions via the server's website and sync it with the list of players who have reserved slots.

Reserve Slots just need to disappear from this game completely. I don't care how good you are, how much you pay, or hell, how much you sleep with the server admin. You should have to wait to play just like everyone else.

Someone's paying for those servers, and it's upto them however they want to run it. If it's not you then there are hundreds of other servers to choose from. :)

Someone's paying for those servers, and it's upto them however they want to run it. If it's not you then there are hundreds of other servers to choose from. :)

Not quite. When you filter out all the ones that ping above 100, as well as all the ones that are 24/7 2fort/some-other-bad-map, and THEN remove all the ones that only have 5 people instead of the, say, 20 it claims then you get quite a bit less than hundreds. Hell, you might not even hit 100 servers.

Not quite. When you filter out all the ones that ping above 100, as well as all the ones that are 24/7 2fort/some-other-bad-map, and THEN remove all the ones that only have 5 people instead of the, say, 20 it claims then you get quite a bit less than hundreds. Hell, you might not even hit 100 servers.

The majority of the servers available for me under 100 ping are of the crappy kind.

Reserve

Slots just need to disappear from this game completely. I don't care how good you are, how much you pay, or hell, how much you sleep with the server admin. You should have to wait to play just like everyone else.

They need to have incentives to get people to donate to keep those servers alive...

Just like on this site, being a subscriber means the ability to edit thread titles, and not waiting 30 seconds between searches and posting new topics.

Yeah, some people need to realise that running servers for a community is not cheap. :/ It is better to have the system where reserved slots are just an overflow of the server slots, so there are 2 hidden slots on the server, if they are filled then the next time a public slot opens up (someone leaves the server) someone in the reserved slots is opened up so another person with a reserved slot can join.

Yeah, I'd prefer overflow as well. That way TF2's auto server connector can work properly instead of making people constantly ping the server to see if the number of players falls under 30 or 28 (assuming 32 man server).

I thought most servers implemented the overflow slot now rather than only allowing say 22/24 because there's 2 reserved slots?

Reserve Slots just need to disappear from this game completely. I don't care how good you are, how much you pay, or hell, how much you sleep with the server admin. You should have to wait to play just like everyone else.

If I was paying for a server I'd want a reserved slot. Why should I have to wait like everyone else if I contribute towards the runnings costs of the server?

Now all you sandman haters can relax. It's been nerfed to a point in which it's nearly not worth using anymore. And of course, still no multicore support to add to the let-downs.

Gameplay Changes

* Players who are stunned by a Scout now take 50% less damage

* Increased the minimum distance to stun a player with the Sandman

Fixes

* Fixed problem where clients were unable to join a team or maintain a connection to the server

* Fixed Scout taunt kill achievement firing for people who didn't actually qualify

* Fixed client crash in when creating muzzle flash effects

* Fixed client crash when determining which disguise weapon to use for a spy

* Fixed Natascha's chain not being drawn on the view model

* Fixed stun code regression that resulted in a subtle reduction of Natascha's slowdown effect

* Fixed rocket & grenade jumps not propelling players as far as they're supposed to

I thought most servers implemented the overflow slot now rather than only allowing say 22/24 because there's 2 reserved slots?

If I was paying for a server I'd want a reserved slot. Why should I have to wait like everyone else if I contribute towards the runnings costs of the server?

Most servers i see only allow 31/32 or 30/32.(for example)

If you're the admin himself, then it's fine. But i'm sure you can come up with a better reward for any donater than randomly kicking people who are trying* to enjoy the game.

*why i starred trying is because enjoying the game can be quite difficult since valve will never do anything to lessen the constant team stacking.

Now all you sandman haters can relax. It's been nerfed to a point in which it's nearly not worth using anymore. And of course, still no multicore support to add to the let-downs.

Most servers i see only allow 31/32 or 30/32.(for example)

If you're the admin himself, then it's fine. But i'm sure you can come up with a better reward for any donater than randomly kicking people who are trying* to enjoy the game.

*why i starred trying is because enjoying the game can be quite difficult since valve will never do anything to lessen the constant team stacking.

Great update! Pity about the MC support. Hopefully that'll come soon. The Sandman was starting to get too annoying. Yeah I agree with you there, I didn't just mean any donator. I meant more if every month I was contributing to the cost of running the server rather than a one off fee to get a reserved slot from then on.

With our servers, you get points for the time played on the server, and you can spend these points on setting the next map, spray permits and a reserved slot. We use the overflow system anyway, we try and attract people to our servers, so whats the point of kicking them :p

The sandman can still stun ubers, so it still potentially can be overpowered in defence, hopefully the -50% damage will stop anyone from using it. I think they should just scrap it as a weapon and create a new one but this is never going to happen :p The scout update was a failure imo.

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