official Team Fortress 2

[Denis W. Veteran]

I think I may have a more fundamental problem, I started Portal and I was getting 12fps while rendering the menu screen.

All the menu screen is, is an room with a few props in it. And it was struggling to render it.

Edit: And most of the time was spent in Swap Buffers, seeing the time to render per frame, every time swap buffers spiked the time shot up to 100ms per frame, for a total of 10fps.

Come to think of it, I got the same problem with Portal. Some recent update could be responsible for this sudden performance problem. Just wondering, what Forceware set are you running?

Getting that "Do 1,000,000 million fire damage" or something like that achievement for Pyro is now freaking impossible. :(

Yeah. :(

The pyro is now more of a leaf blowing class than fire maniac.

[Nagisan]

Yeah. :(

The pyro is now more of a leaf blowing class than fire maniac.

I personally think they should BUFF the pyros damage above what it use to be, but shorten its range (to roughly 66% of its current range). That means the pyro has to get close than ever before to do his damage, but he is deadlier than before if he can manage. In terms of the damage buff, there was a post about it on the SPUF, but I think he should push out around half the DPS of the heavy (which is over 500 at point blank) at his pointblank range, and obviously fall off, but fall off quickly, like, lower than his old DPS at his max range (and with the range nerf, his max range will be lower, and he will do less damage than the old pyro did at that range).

So in short, he needs a lot more damage at pointblank that falls off very quickly, and about 33% less range on the flamethrower. Giving him back the "best short-ranged combat class" title that the developers themselves gave him in the TF2 commentary.....to compare, both the scout and soldier with his RL (maybe even his shotgun) out can out-DPS the pyro point-blank.....so I don't know how Valve came to the conclusion that he needed a damage nerf.

EDIT: Here's the chart to illustrate what I mean: http://www.tech-x.de/pyroChart.jpg

Perfect video explaining why the pyro is UP:

Basically, even a scouts pistol at close range can out DPS the flamethrower. In comparison, the pistol does around 174 damage in the time it takes the pyro to do 125 damage. 1 more shot, or a bit of luck, or even some more range between the two, and the scout and engies secondary weapons can out DPS a pyros primary weapon.

On top of that, the pyro has to rely on close-range damage to be effective, while the scout also relies on close-range damage, he has an effective means of dealing ranged damage if need be (the pistol), whereas the pyro does not (flaregun is not hitscan and is hard to hit an aware target at range). Considering he does less close-range damage than most other classes, and he RELIES on close-range damage, thats pretty crappy IMO.

[Denis W. Veteran]

If they implement those changes you mentioned, give them to the backburner. Make the pyro that much more versatile: a defensive support class (flamethrower + homewrecker) or a **** stirrer (backburner + axtinguisher).

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the chart says 20 ammo per blast before and after the update. Isn't the old airblast ammo 25 (8 blasts) instead of the current 20 (10 blasts)?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Okay honestly, the performance slowdown is ridiculous. I am very sure it's CPU related, not drivers. I turned off multicore and the game immediately started hitching like crazy.

As an example, I was on a 2fort bridge and when three heavies started firing, that was enough to drag the game into the sub 25 FPS range or lower.

edit: similar symptoms experienced by a SPUF member with very similar specs (minus motherboard and amount of RAM).

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Come to think of it, I got the same problem with Portal. Some recent update could be responsible for this sudden performance problem. Just wondering, what Forceware set are you running?

...

197.45

Now that Steam's been released for OS X I can compare them, I get 2x as much FPS on my Mac than my PC in Portal with the issue (9400M in my Mac, 8600GT in my PC)

Edit: I don't have the issue in L4D/2, but they have multi-core enabled by default (and a better implementation than Portal/EP2/TF2)

[Denis W. Veteran]

Found the fix :D

See here. The fix is to turn off network throttling in the Multimedia Class Scheduler service. I did that and the gameplay was smooth, when previously I thought the Forceware drivers were to blame for performance problems.

[Minifig]

Did my hour tonight.. got another Razorback.

http://www.tf2items.com/id/Minifig

I'm doing pretty well with duplicates.

[Chasethebase Veteran]

So, in my eyes if the Pyro gets a 5% movement speed cut to be between Soldier and Demo OR he gets a range cut. Once a Pyro is tailing a fleeing Scout and can hit, the Scout will not escape the range.

[ViZioN]

Found the fix :D

See here. The fix is to turn off network throttling in the Multimedia Class Scheduler service. I did that and the gameplay was smooth, when previously I thought the Forceware drivers were to blame for performance problems.

Oooh thanks for the link. I'll try this out in a bit and post back.

[Nagisan]

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the chart says 20 ammo per blast before and after the update. Isn't the old airblast ammo 25 (8 blasts) instead of the current 20 (10 blasts)?

OLD is the flamethrower how it currently is at this moment, NEW is the person who created the charts proposed changes. Basically the current (old) airblast is 0.75s cooldown at 20 ammo, his proposed slight-nerf to the airblast reverts its cooldown back to the 1s it use to be, while keeping the ammo usage at 20. To help balance out the damage buff and make airblast more difficult to use (timing is more important, you cannot reflect every rocket fired at you, etc).

So, in my eyes if the Pyro gets a 5% movement speed cut to be between Soldier and Demo OR he gets a range cut. Once a Pyro is tailing a fleeing Scout and can hit, the Scout will not escape the range.

Thats simply wrong. A scout runs BACKWARDS at 120% speed where a pyro runs forwards at only 100% speed. A scout can backpedal and outrun a pyro. That being said, if a scout is in close range, he can currently 2-shot the pyro with his scattergun FASTER than the pyro can kill him, or if he has his pistol out, just spam M1 and still kill the pyro likely before he dies.

The old flamethrower was only weaker than a few offensive class main weapons (RL, Scattergun, Minigun, etc) and about even with the the secondary shotgun. In its current state at this moment, it is weaker then every primary and secondary weapon except the SMG, and only ties with the pistol in terms of DPS.

I dont know about you, but NO classes primary weapon should be weaker than every classes primary AND secondary except for one.

That IMHO means the pyro needs a damage buff beyond his old damage (with a range cut) to be considered a combat class. I will agree with rm20010 and say those changes could go to the backburner, instead of crits from behind, increase its damage and reduce its range. Then, like he said, you will have a defensive option and an offensive option.

[Chasethebase Veteran]

I've found when running away from Pyros as Scout I still take damage from the flamethrower direct. Oh well. Then again, Pyro is my #1 hated class, alongside Sniper in terms of making me annoyed :p

Pyro fire damage can get buffed, range reduced. Backburner can get its 20% boost still and Flare Gun stays as is.

[_neutrino Veteran]

Anyone else install steam on their mac and TF2 disappear from your games list, however, on a PC you still have the game, the MAC version lists a lot of other games that will not run on it however, this game is simply missing from the list.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, that's normal.

TF2 for mac is nearly done, but not entirely, so they hide it from the list so people can't install it.

[Nagisan]

I've found when running away from Pyros as Scout I still take damage from the flamethrower direct. Oh well. Then again, Pyro is my #1 hated class, alongside Sniper in terms of making me annoyed :p

Pyro fire damage can get buffed, range reduced. Backburner can get its 20% boost still and Flare Gun stays as is.

Sometimes running away from a pyro (with your back to him) is not the best way to get away from him. Unless you are fighting a pyro you know uses the airblast, jumping over his head will usually confuse him, most pyros do not expect you to jump straight at him, once you are above his head, you can jump in just about any random direction, and unless the pyro uses airblast to disrupt your jump he will not know where you went until he takes the time to look around, giving you a short time to gain some distance between you and him.

Also, the only time you should be losing to a pyro is if he surprises you, if he approaches from range and you die to him, that is your fault and has nothing to do with how weak or strong the pyro as a class is. The pyro has extremely limited options for range, almost every other class in the game out-ranges him, making it very difficult for a pyro to kill anyone who knows he is there before he is in flamethrower range.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Two new posts were added to the TF2 blog yesterday, the first of which seems to be Valve teasing with upcoming features.

10th class coming soon-ish perhaps?

[Nagisan]

Two new posts were added to the TF2 blog yesterday, the first of which seems to be Valve teasing with upcoming features.

10th class coming soon-ish perhaps?

I highly doubt there will ever be a 10th class in TF2, maybe in TF3 if they ever make one, but adding a 10th class would require much more work then all the updates they have done thus far IMO. They would need to completely change the class selection screen, along with the backpack screens, and the disguise menu, not to mention balance 3 brand new weapons and an entirely new classes abilities with the other 9 classes. But, they do seem to mention hats many times in the first blog post, so there are probably going to be quite a few new hats along with the Engy update.

[Radium]

I'm sad... :(

I reinstalled TF2 two days ago. I haven't played it in about 2 years or so. I had Windows XP Professional last time I played. Now I have Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) and more RAM.

I've run into the following problem:

When I connect to a server and join the game world then it would take 1-20 seconds before I get "WARNING: Connection problem. Auto-disconnect in xx.x seconds." and it will disconnect.

I've enabled the console and I see lots of text there but the text that ALWAYS show up is:

Requesting full game update...

Server connection timed out.

I've deleted the game directory but I've kept the GCF-files. I also ran a file check using Steam and it didn't say that I had any errors in my GCF-files.

I've posted it on Steam Users' Forums too: Link to my thread.

No responses. :(

Please help! :(

[Chasethebase Veteran]

Ah, try deleting local game content and downloading again, this may take a while but it's worth to see if it fixes it.

[Denis W. Veteran]

Ah, try deleting local game content and downloading again, this may take a while but it's worth to see if it fixes it.

Before you delete, backup the files using the backup wizard before you delete local game content.

[Radium]

A complete reinstall didn't help. :(

[SoapyHamHocks Member]

A complete reinstall didn't help. :(

Try using 'Verify integrity of game cache', or deleting 'ClientRegistry.blob' in your Steam install directory.

[Radium]

Try using 'Verify integrity of game cache', or deleting 'ClientRegistry.blob' in your Steam install directory.

I don't dare claiming victory over the problems, yet. I've been able to play on some servers now but I run into the same problem on a few servers.

I uninstalled (delete local game content), made sure that game directory was gone and redownloaded the whole game. That didn't help so I verified the files and it seemed to have helped but I randomly run into the same problem. :(

I hope that the remaining servers giving me the problems somehow stop messing with me. :(

[ViZioN]

If it's only happening on a few servers maybe they're running a plugin that's interfering with your setup. Not really sure how that's possible but the more you can narrow it down the better.

[PixilEyes]

Two new posts were added to the TF2 blog yesterday, the first of which seems to be Valve teasing with upcoming features.

10th class coming soon-ish perhaps?

Or could it be something to do with the engy update? Just a thought.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Or Valve's making fun of us for focusing on the hats.