official Team Fortress 2

[Andre S. Veteran]

Odd, have you tried type -autoconfig in your TF2 launch options? It will completely reset all graphical settings and usually fixes issues similar to what your having. A new monitor alone shouldn't cause that issue....even if resolution is changed it should adjust the HUD to fit the new resolution. Did you try restarting TF2 after making the changes? I have noticed that sometimes even changing small things that should have no effect on the HUD will end up causing the HUD to disappear. If it doesn't fix itself on second or third launch or so, try throwing -autoconfig into the launch options, it usually fixes most graphical issues as it re-creates the config file.

Thanks for the tip, I will try that tonight.

[Andre S. Veteran]

So as it turns out I had Catalyst Control Center set to ignore application settings for AA. :rolleyes:

Also didn't get any more HUD problems tonight. Everything's back to normal. I kicked some ass.

Deadly and without a hat. :cool: I love it when they start complaining that backburner pyros require no skill.

[Nagisan]

So as it turns out I had Catalyst Control Center set to ignore application settings for AA. :rolleyes:

Figures its something so simple. :p

Deadly and without a hat. :cool: I love it when they start complaining that backburner pyros require no skill.

Do you actually use the backburner, or do they just complain that way against all pyros? (edit: Just noticed the obvious backburner in your image) A good flamethrower pyro will be much more effective overall than a good backburner pyro. Backburner IMHO needs more of a buff to even begin to compare to the default flamethrower. It needs shortened or something to make it easier for the pyro to hide behind corners, and it needs something to give him more advanced movement (possibly only when he is not firing his wep?). As it stands, the pyro is the only combat class without advanced movement tactics, and considering the backburner is designed as an ambush weapon, it really should do something to help in that aspect. Scouts and soldiers are generally much more effective when ambushing than a pyro, which sort of makes the ambush-designed weapon (backburner) somewhat useless unless it does something to make it easier for the pyro to ambush.

But, to each their own....I suppose if all pyros used the normal flamethrower I would have a challenge as a pyro, and even more of a challenge against pyros as a soldier....

[Andre S. Veteran]

Do you actually use the backburner, or do they just complain that way against all pyros? (edit: Just noticed the obvious backburner in your image) A good flamethrower pyro will be much more effective overall than a good backburner pyro. Backburner IMHO needs more of a buff to even begin to compare to the default flamethrower. It needs shortened or something to make it easier for the pyro to hide behind corners, and it needs something to give him more advanced movement (possibly only when he is not firing his wep?). As it stands, the pyro is the only combat class without advanced movement tactics, and considering the backburner is designed as an ambush weapon, it really should do something to help in that aspect. Scouts and soldiers are generally much more effective when ambushing than a pyro, which sort of makes the ambush-designed weapon (backburner) somewhat useless unless it does something to make it easier for the pyro to ambush.

What makes the backburner a superior ambush weapon is the sheer speed at which it kills enemies. If I can sneak behind a couple of enemies bunched up on a cart, I'm more effective than any demo or spy. In approx. 3 seconds everything is dead. I'm usually dead too though, so it's kind of a kamikaze style. But it's fun, effective and rewarding.

The normal flamethrower makes the pyro more versatile and makes him more effective on defense. I like it too, but idk, I just have more fun ambushing enemies and the backburner gives me that edge I need to succeed more than 50% of the time; it does 20% more base damage and like 240% more damage from behind. Sure, it's hard to ambush when you have no cloak, but it works often enough to warrant me the kind of ownage you see in that screenshot, from time to time. On average I don't do too shabby either.

And I disagree with the absence of advanced movement tactics as pyros. There are ways you can circle a bunch of guys and keeping them confused and panicked enough to die before you. With the huge damage output of the backburner, you don't have to do that for long anyway. I like to call that "crowd control", it's a black art though. :p

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Dear PC TF2 gamers:

Tomorrow will be the day. Tomorrow TF2 will finally come to the Mac.

It is time to put up a couple of sentries in your path.

-- signed, a Mac gamer

[lalalawawawa]

Dear PC TF2 gamers:

Tomorrow will be the day. Tomorrow TF2 will finally come to the Mac.

It is time to put up a couple of sentries in your path.

-- signed, a Mac gamer

Yea, most likely that is the case.

[Chasethebase Veteran]

Dear PC TF2 gamers:

Tomorrow will be the day. Tomorrow TF2 will finally come to the Mac.

It is time to put up a couple of sentries in your path.

-- signed, a Mac gamer

*grabs Rocket Launcher

Just bring it, I'll be waitin'

[ViZioN]

I've got a feeling there's an update coming along with the release of TF2 for the Mac. Maybe the engi update? :p

[Chasethebase Veteran]

I've got a feeling there's an update coming along with the release of TF2 for the Mac. Maybe the engi update? :p

Yeah, I called it in the other thread ;)

[Denis W. Veteran]

Anachronism right there. :rofl:

[Chasethebase Veteran]

~snip

Anachronism right there. :rofl:

Is it true? Yes. Is it badass? Yes.

Therefore it doesn't matter, it still looks awesome.

[Ayepecks]

http://teamfortress.com/post.php?id=3923&p=1

For those that want more confirmation, the official post.

Very awesome. :D

[Blackhearted]

Heh. TF2 on the mac. Source games already run with vastly inferior performance(and not to mention lesser IQ) on the mac compared to their windows counterparts as we all know. And when you add in the fact that tf2 is probably the worst performing(even on windows) of all the source games from valve to that.. You know this wont end well for the mac kids. They're gonna need alot of luck to get an enjoyable experience here.

[Ayepecks]

Heh. TF2 on the mac. Source games already run with vastly inferior performance(and not to mention lesser IQ) on the mac compared to their windows counterparts as we all know. And when you add in the fact that tf2 is probably the worst performing(even on windows) of all the source games from valve to that.. You know this wont end well for the mac kids. They're gonna need alot of luck to get an enjoyable experience here.

Obvious troll is obvious.

It's going to take time to get things running smoothly. No crap.

[Nagisan]

What makes the backburner a superior ambush weapon is the sheer speed at which it kills enemies. If I can sneak behind a couple of enemies bunched up on a cart, I'm more effective than any demo or spy. In approx. 3 seconds everything is dead. I'm usually dead too though, so it's kind of a kamikaze style. But it's fun, effective and rewarding.

Thats the thing though, 3 seconds is too long to spend trying to kill everyone. It may work well if everyone is stacked on the cart looking forward while pushing, or other similar scenarios, but unless you are on a crap server you are going to have at least 1 person watching the rear of the cart (typically, I am that person when I play), who will warn everyone of the pyro behind them, in which everyone turns around and your backburner no longer crits, making it only marginally more powerful (less-so if soldiers are on the cart and start firing rockets) when compared to the flamethrower.

Even sneaking up on a heavy, with the heavies reduced spin times, he can get hit with a backburner from behind, jump, spin and turn, and kill the pyro. Then go eat a sandvich and be back at full health (or at least not die).

The normal flamethrower makes the pyro more versatile and makes him more effective on defense. I like it too, but idk, I just have more fun ambushing enemies and the backburner gives me that edge I need to succeed more than 50% of the time; it does 20% more base damage and like 240% more damage from behind. Sure, it's hard to ambush when you have no cloak, but it works often enough to warrant me the kind of ownage you see in that screenshot, from time to time. On average I don't do too shabby either.

The problem is as TF2 is a team-based game, it is typically difficult to get behind an enemy or a group of enemies. They will generally know of your presence before you get in range.

So yes, it may do more damage, but unless you are playing against a team that has NO coordination, you are going to be much less effective than the 5th sniper that just joined your team.

And I disagree with the absence of advanced movement tactics as pyros. There are ways you can circle a bunch of guys and keeping them confused and panicked enough to die before you. With the huge damage output of the backburner, you don't have to do that for long anyway. I like to call that "crowd control", it's a black art though. :p

The pyro has no advanced movement tactics. By advanced, I mean similar to the double jump, rocket jump, sticky jump, etc. Circle-strafing or cornering a person is not an advanced movement tactic, that is something that can be done by any class at any time.

I am not saying the pyro needs double jump or rocket jumps, but something to improve his ambush ability. Something like maybe 5-10% faster movement while NOT firing his weapon and only when the backburner is equipped and selected?

I mean hell, the backburner is designed as an ambushing weapon but even the normal flamethrower is better at getting into an ambush position (reflected rocket jumps, which carry the pyro both farther and higher than it does a soldier).

I've got a feeling there's an update coming along with the release of TF2 for the Mac. Maybe the engi update? :p

I doubt the engy update will arrive with the TF2 for mac, but I have hopes that they will at least announce it. Tomorrow is Thursday after all, the day in which the TF2 team always reveal major updates (by major, I mean class updates).

[Andre S. Veteran]

Sure, if the other team is playing well it's very tough to be effective as backburner pyro. I find myself constantly backing away and wasting a lot of time between ambush opportunities. But the thing is, they aren't playing well most of the time. Like last night on that koth_harvest_event server. That's where it gets fun. :laugh: And then they say it requires no skill, which is just ironic.

[Lewism]

I doubt the engy update will arrive with the TF2 for mac, but I have hopes that they will at least announce it. Tomorrow is Thursday after all, the day in which the TF2 team always reveal major updates (by major, I mean class updates).

The engi update will not come because like any other class update, your have 3-5 days of blog post with the new weapons then you have the update.

[Nagisan]

Sure, if the other team is playing well it's very tough to be effective as backburner pyro. I find myself constantly backing away and wasting a lot of time between ambush opportunities. But the thing is, they aren't playing well most of the time. Like last night on that koth_harvest_event server. That's where it gets fun. :laugh: And then they say it requires no skill, which is just ironic.

Its more accurate to say that backburner requires less skill than the flamethrower because once you are behind someone you simply have to W+M1.

And it depends on the server you are playing on.....if a server has good, talkative players that are on quite often, then backburner pyro simply isn't efficient enough to be useful. The time it takes you to ambush a group of people, I could move into position and pick 2-3 people off 1-by-1 as a scout. Might get less kills in the end, but constantly keeping a few key classes (such as medics) down is much more important than killing a few demos, soldiers, etc.

The engi update will not come because like any other class update, your have 3-5 days of blog post with the new weapons then you have the update.

As I said, they may reveal it, but it will not release today.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

...

It's going to take time to get things running smoothly. No crap.

Yeah, Mac's have never had a really vibrant game community or much support from Apple. And they've never had a company on the scale of Valve consider them to be a teir 1 platform.

So yes, the drivers suck, the graphics hardware is pretty low end and it's the first version of the engine to run on the game (Meaning there will be bugs and performance issues). But things will change in time.

[Andre S. Veteran]

Its more accurate to say that backburner requires less skill than the flamethrower because once you are behind someone you simply have to W+M1.

That's like saying that to be effective with spy you just have to click your mouse once you're behind an enemy. The trick is getting there undetected. It actually takes skill and experience to set up ambushes, especially without disguise or cloak. You have to know your maps, you have to observe what everyone on the opposing team is doing, and the window of opportunity is usually about half a second, so you have to make very quick judgments. Since the backburner is more reliant on this tactic than the flamethrower, it does require more skill in that department.

If the backburner required no skill, you would see newbies doing quite well with it. Which isn't the case.

And it depends on the server you are playing on.....if a server has good, talkative players that are on quite often, then backburner pyro simply isn't efficient enough to be useful. The time it takes you to ambush a group of people, I could move into position and pick 2-3 people off 1-by-1 as a scout. Might get less kills in the end, but constantly keeping a few key classes (such as medics) down is much more important than killing a few demos, soldiers, etc.

Sure, I usually switch to another class when I see that the other team is too well coordinated, as I said.

[Denis W. Veteran]

Case in point about backburner pyros doing ambushes:

Imagine cp_fastlane with three medic/heavy pairs attacking our last point. They're in the entrance directly facing the point, with a stair ramp to its right (looking out from our spawn door). All I did was go upstairs, down the ramp, and roasted all three pairs with some little help from other teammates. :p

The server I was on was a freezetag server so players don't die, but instead get frozen with unfreeze circles drawn around them. Thus, on that server generally kamikaze tactics work better: your team can barrel themselves past a pack of players and come out of it unscathed as long as one player stays alive.

[Lewism]

We can expect at least a new CTF map in today's Mac update:

"Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at Valve. Things involving cultivated tree-fruit"

[Andre S. Veteran]

I thought "cultivated tree-fruit" simply referred to Apple... anything I'm missing?

[Nagisan]

That's like saying that to be effective with spy you just have to click your mouse once you're behind an enemy. The trick is getting there undetected. It actually takes skill and experience to set up ambushes, especially without disguise or cloak. You have to know your maps, you have to observe what everyone on the opposing team is doing, and the window of opportunity is usually about half a second, so you have to make very quick judgments. Since the backburner is more reliant on this tactic than the flamethrower, it does require more skill in that department.

Which means its often easier to use when you are on RED, where your enemies will often be running past areas (typically, on BLU, your enemies are going to be holding chokepoints, making it impossible to get behind them). Its a bit different on CTF maps, but the backburner is generally more useful when you can wait in a spot for enemies to run past you, which happens much more if you play on red (defense) than if you play on blu (offense). As such, that means the backburner is most effective on defense, where the flamethrower, due to the airblast, is even more effective.

Obviously, it depends on the situation, I look at the backburner vs the flamethrower similar to how I look at the scattergun vs FaN. The scattergun (flamethrower) is much more versatile than the FaN (Backburner) due to its overall utility compared to the alternative. Sure the FaN (backburner) can do well if you can ambush your opponents, but given the lack of mobility the pyro has, its more difficult to do with the pyro than it is with the scout. That being said, 9 times out of 10, the scattergun (flamethrower) is the better choice.

Case in point about backburner pyros doing ambushes:

Imagine cp_fastlane with three medic/heavy pairs attacking our last point. They're in the entrance directly facing the point, with a stair ramp to its right (looking out from our spawn door). All I did was go upstairs, down the ramp, and roasted all three pairs with some little help from other teammates. :p

The server I was on was a freezetag server so players don't die, but instead get frozen with unfreeze circles drawn around them. Thus, on that server generally kamikaze tactics work better: your team can barrel themselves past a pack of players and come out of it unscathed as long as one player stays alive.

You could do similar with the flamethrower.....instead of killing them all on your own, you could light them up, airblast the heavies forwards (closer to the point, but into your waiting team mates) then turn around and roast the medics. Sure the backburner kills quicker if you ambush people, but the flamethrower has so much more usage theres no comparison IMO. What about that medic on fire with 10 health? As a backburner pyro all you can do is watch him die, with the flamethrower, you can at least put him out and likely get more health from him yourself. Also, backburner pyros are completely useless against ubers. With airblast (especially its lower time between airblasts) you can get a medic away from his target more easily, leaving his target to either A) Run into your sentry nests without uber (aka no communication with his medic) or B) Waste uber time killing you instead of focusing on your sentry nests. There is virtually nothing a backburner pyro can do against an uber, making the flamethrower just that much better.

EDIT: In the end I guess it comes down to playstyle. When I play pyro, I prefer to help my team instead of attempting to rambo the enemy. I would rather stay alive assisting my team on the front lines with little to no kills, than suicide into the enemy in an attempt to get kills.

As for the "cultivated tree-fruit", pretty sure that simply refers to Apple, but we shall see.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Team Fortress 2 is now available on the Mac. Get it while it's hot.

Additionally there's a free weekend. TF2 is free to play until the 13th of June.

Mac gamer special: Play TF2 before the 14th and receive a set of in-game earphones.

Edit: Check the Mac Update page on the TF2 blog as well.