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Uberr

Unremarkable User
I was playing Skial VSH today, and I was expecting an absolutely normal and balanced gaming experience. After a while, I started to realize everything changed for no apparent reason. Medic's uber was nerfed to shit, pyro has *basically* no phlog resistance, they shortened rounds (this I understand as to why, but don't agree with execution), they apparently nerfed the super duper dangerous and oppressive telefrag, along with other changes I've yet to notice. This has completely destroyed the balance of Skial VSH, and the changes should be reverted.

I don't know who is responsible for this, but I'd just like to talk about it, and hopefully, someone that can do something about it is able to revert this.

Absolutely no Skial VSH player enjoys this update. At the very least, every single person I've spoken to, or heard speak about this update dislikes it. This is completely understandable. *Side note: Is there a list of changes or something that indicates what's changed? I feel that the things I've listed above don't cover everything*

Anyways, as I thought about why admins would possibly consider implementing these random and unnecessary changes, I began to notice a pattern. Every balance has something to do with Cinema, or it is very obviously a result of the cinema experience in Skial VSH.

-Medics uber is reduced so the heavy medic combos are not so oppressive
-Phlog pyro is nerfed to shit so he won't be able to stay close to Hale and deal crit dmg
- Rounds are shortened because of how obnoxious it is to wait for the hale to walk into funny room, or to clear out the ticket booth area, or find the annoying ass spy hiding in the corner in the forest... the list goes on
- The telefrag nerf is so obviously a result of cinema that I do not need to explain why Cinema is responsible for it

If I am correct (and I genuinely feel like I am to a great degree), I hope the admins quickly realize how unreasonable it is to balance the entire game mode over one map. I won't go into the controversy of cinema and whether it's good or bad, I'm not here to discuss this. However, it is extremely annoying that one singular map has destroyed the balance of Skial VSH. Maybe the map itself should be considered (or removed) instead of trying to solve all its problems via massive balancing changes.

Again, please remember that this is not about cinema, but about the new changes. Also, even if these changes were implemented regardless of cinema, I still believe they're detrimental to the balance and fun of Skial VSH, and should thus be reverted.

Anyways, In this post, I'll discuss the changes to the time reduction for uber, and why it's a bad idea.

Medics uber reduction:
I'm an avid medic player, and I enjoy playing medic in Skial VSH. I've found they balance him in a way that's actually fun to play, or at least they did. I understand how one could think I am biased against this nerf, but I've looked at the change at face-value, and have disregarded possible biases.

This uber reduction was completely unnecessary. It's as simple as that. Not only does this reduction basically remove the ability for a medic to save teammates during Hale's rage stun, it also prevents medics from enjoying this gamemode. Why on earth should the uber go down 3% per tick as opposed to the regular 1%??

A good medic who understands where to position himself, where to be before a rage, and how to save teammates with uber deserves to have an uber that allows him to do so; This is not only a huge role medic fills as a support class, but it is also a major part of the fun of playing medic in Skial VSH.

After this update, IF AND WHEN I have uber and I'm In a position to save teammates, I can only really save one person. By the time I flash this one person and head over to a second teammate, my uber has run out and there's nothing I can do. Additionally, if I want to uber a teammate to crit-boost them, the uber runs out so fast that it's significantly less effective than it should be. Using uber for damage is another major role medic plays, and another reason why people would be enticed to play as him.

This is how I think about ubers in VSH:

Against a bad hale, uber is free damage (and even then, there are times where players struggle to shoot or catch up to Hale with uber, no matter how bad Hale is, but I digress).

Against a good hale, uber is essentially area denial, because a good hale knows to evade the crit boosted players as effectively as possible (notice how I said players, because before this update I would be able to effectively swap to a different heal target when ubering for crit damage). With the uber timing being so low, the purpose of the area denial is completely nullified, and a huge part of medic's role is basically removed.

I've already written so much. I'll discuss and get into the other changes later. But I felt I had to start somewhere and begin discussing this horrid update. I also hope some people reply so we can further discuss these changes, and collectively get a better understanding as to why they're damaging.
 
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Bottiger

Administrator
Things were changed because the server was completely empty for 23 hours a day before I even started making these current rounds of changes. I've spent a lot of time analyzing the gameplay on the servers and on other servers that still have people playing on them. These changes weren't made on a whim.

Given your name you are a medic main and understandably upset about medic losing a lot of power, but the class was imbalanced.

And no it was not because of cinema, I've witnessed these issues first hand on other maps.
 

Uberr

Unremarkable User
Things were changed because the server was completely empty for 23 hours a day before I even started making these current rounds of changes. I've spent a lot of time analyzing the gameplay on the servers and on other servers that still have people playing on them. These changes weren't made on a whim.

Given your name you are a medic main and understandably upset about medic losing a lot of power, but the class was imbalanced.

And no it was not because of cinema, I've witnessed these issues first hand on other maps.
How could the server have been empty 23 hours a day? It is consistently full past 6:00 pm. I'm not sure if that was just an exaggeration, but the US Skial VSH server was not dead. I'm not sure what's included in "other servers". Are you including freak fortress in your considerations for these changes? Because that's completely different to VSH. I can't speak on other VSH servers outside America, but it's the same mod just in a different region.

If servers were dead, how would this update encourage people to play? These changes makes the game less fun, and way too vanilla (I could elaborate if you want).

Also, could you elaborate on what issues you witnessed first-hand? I'd like to see the thought process behind these changes. What problems did you find? And in which maps? These changes seem random, and nobody enjoys them. The telefrag nerf is something I just think is weird. I'm not sure what gameplay you observed but telefrags are seldom a problem against bad hales, and virtually impossible to pull off against good hales. Reducing them to 7k damage makes no sense.

Were these changes possibly added with Freak Fortress in mind? Because that's the only way these changes have some explanation as to why they're so random. Also, I only see 2 skial VSH servers in the list. I'm not sure which one you referred to when you said it was dead, but I'm assuming it was the EU one, because the US one is consistently full.

Med not only lost a lot of power, but he's also become unfun. He's now just some class that occasionally makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds. I don't see why there was a need to nerf uber charge; it wasn't unbalanced, and it definitely shouldn't have been reduced to what it is now (useless). I seriously think the uber nerf should be reconsidered, along with the pyro resistance nerf. I hope you don't just disregard this because I play as med; He's not the only class I play in VSH. I would admit if it was overpowered, but don't see how it was a problem. Also, I've recently discovered that the soldier's battalion's backup was also nerfed to be just as useless as pyro's phlog resistance, which is also ridiculous. I seriously don't see why these changes were implemented, I hope you give an explanation as to why. The US Skial VSH player base is not enjoying them, it made fighting against Hale so much more restrictive.

I'll give my opinion on the other changes if I find that someone will actually read and listen, otherwise, I'll wait for a response explaining why these changes were implemented, and what the goal was.

Thanks for the initial response.
 
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Uberr

Unremarkable User
How could the server have been empty 23 hours a day? It is consistently full past 6:00 pm. I'm not sure if that was just an exaggeration but the US Skial VSH server was not dead. I'm not sure what's included in "other servers". Are you including freak fortress in your considerations for these changes? Because that's completely different to VSH. I can't speak on other VSH servers outside America, but it's the same mod just in a different region.

If servers were dead, how would this update encourage people to play? These changes makes the game less fun, and way too vanilla (I could elaborate if you want).

Also, could you elaborate on what issues you witnessed first-hand? I'd like to see the thought process behind these changes. Most of them are strange and nobody likes them.

Med not only lost a lot of power, but he's also become unfun. He's now just some class that occasionally makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds. I don't see why there was a need to nerf uber charge, it wasn't unbalanced, and it definitely shouldn't have been reduced to what it is now (useless). I seriously think the uber nerf should be reconsidered, along with the pyro resistance nerf. I hope you don't just disregard this because I play as med; He's not the only class I play in VSH. I would admit if it was overpowered, but don't see how it was a problem. Also, I've recently discovered that the soldier's battalion's backup was also nerfed to be just as useless as pyro's phlog resistance, which is also ridiculous. I seriously don't see why these changes were implemented, I hope you give an explanation as to why. The US Skial VSH player base is not enjoying them, it made fighting against Hale so much more restrictive.

I'll give my opinion on the other changes if I find that someone will actually read and listen, otherwise, I'll wait for a response explaining why these changes were implemented, and what the goal was.

Thanks for the initial response.
Also how would I move this to suggestions? I don't want this discussion to die just because I didn't put it in the correct section.
 
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Bottiger

Administrator
How could the server have been empty 23 hours a day? It is consistently full past 6:00 pm. I'm not sure if that was just an exaggeration
No it is not an exaggeration, just a few days ago it was only full for 1 hour. And this is before I started making any changes, and the server used to be full 24/7 and it's only been full during the day for many months now so reverting to previous changes or keeping things mostly the same is out of the question.

dead.jpg


I know this is going to be a hard pill to swallow, nobody likes their main nerfed, especially when it was the same way for years. But this is needed to make the game mode better.

All I can say is, keep an open mind and give it a chance. Many people are having a knee jerk reaction and inventing scenarios that never happened like saying the uber is useless now and never saves anyone when it still constantly gets bosses to run away all the time. Nothing was changed on pyro. People are just making up stuff up.

I know this is hard for you to accept and believe, all these forced changes coming from someone you never seen before. But I have been in charge of balancing and maintaining many of these game modes for over 10 years now. If anyone knows how to balance and revive a server, it is me, not random players even if they play there 10 hours a day.

This isn't the first time I've made major balance changes in an attempt to revive the server and every single time there are loud complaints from the doomsayers who say I've killed the server. But more often than not, we are still around years later while countless others have died. In fact, the same thing happened with this server 4 years ago when we changed to vsh2.
 
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Uberr

Unremarkable User
No it is not an exaggeration, just a few days ago it was only full for 1 hour. And this is before I started making any changes, and the server used to be full 24/7 and it's only been full during the day for many months now so reverting to previous changes or keeping things mostly the same is out of the question.



I know this is going to be a hard pill to swallow, nobody likes their main nerfed, especially when it was the same way for years. But this is needed to make the game mode better.

All I can say is, keep an open mind and give it a chance. Many people are having a knee jerk reaction and inventing scenarios that never happened like saying the uber is useless now and never saves anyone when it still constantly gets bosses to run away all the time. Nothing was changed on pyro. People are just making up stuff up.

I know this is hard for you to accept and believe, all these forced changes coming from someone you never seen before. But I have been in charge of balancing and maintaining many of these game modes for over 10 years now. If anyone knows how to balance and revive a server, it is me, not random players even if they play there 10 hours a day.

This isn't the first time I've made major balance changes in an attempt to revive the server and every single time there are loud complaints from the doomsayers who say I've killed the server. But more often than not, we are still around years later while countless others have died. In fact, the same thing happened with this server 4 years ago when we changed to vsh2.
I appreciate your concern for what I have to say. At the end of the day, there truly isn't much I can do about this, but write here.

I'd also like to know if there's any place to access a list of changes that were made so I'm more informed because I have no idea what's new.

I'll continue playing and give the update a chance. Also, the graph isn't labeled so I don't understand what it means, but I'm assuming that the peak you circled is pointing out how it's only full for a certain period of time. Also, I don't think Skial VSH is gonna die because of it, it's just unfortunate because I thought most of it was fine as it was. I don't know how dead the servers are/were, because I only play at certain times, so who am I to say? You have access to the stats, so I believe you.

Thanks again for responding to the messages.
 
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Uberr

Unremarkable User
I'm fine with most of the changes (Uber did last a little long). Only execption being the new sudden death capping which I am still a bit unsure on. But a more easily findable changelog would be nice all things considered.
I do agree that uber was long. But I don't think it should've been reduced to what it is now. The regular 8 seconds should be fine, 5 is way too low. Especially now since revives were added and it takes ages to revive people (even with uber because ubering doesn't make the revive go faster).
 
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Seminal Inhalation

Legendary Skial King
Contributor
I'd also like to know if there's any place to access a list of changes that were made so I'm more informed because I have no idea what's new.
But a more easily findable changelog would be nice all things considered.
Someone should make a suggestion out of this. "Post changelogs whenever changes are made to a server/gametype". At the very least major changes.
 
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LizzieSteph

TF2 Admin
Contributor
Someone should make a suggestion out of this. "Post changelogs whenever changes are made to a server/gametype". At the very least major changes.
Sounds like a wonderful idea! I think we could just simply make a thread on the discord just for posting changelogs. Wouldn't be very hard to add at all!
 

halcyon

Mildly Menacing Medic
Please revert the time rounds take, it is either the hale dies from being ripped apart or a stalemate.
It's literally a speedrunning category to play hale now and you have to tryhard so bad to even get the round over with 20+ people
The medic changes also ruin the gameplay of medic
 
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Bottiger

Administrator
Please revert the time rounds take, it is either the hale dies from being ripped apart or a stalemate.
It's literally a speedrunning category to play hale now and you have to tryhard so bad to even get the round over with 20+ people
The medic changes also ruin the gameplay of medic

This is why I had the boss win by default, but people were whining so I tried removing it and this is what you get.

And it doesn't ruin the gameplay of medic, medic is still saving people and making 9/10 bosses run away when they see uber.
 

halcyon

Mildly Menacing Medic
A good hale, knowing uber runs out after about 4 seconds will just stand there and not care that he is ubered compared to the long duration uber which could deal 12k with a heavy.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
100% of pro hales ran away as soon as they saw uber over the past few days I've been watching. It is only the noobs that sit there and they take a lot of damage.

This keeps medics in line with escapes on other classes.
 
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halcyon

Mildly Menacing Medic
I haven't been playing till now, so I'm not running from medics really
Oh and the rounds are broken with this new timer...