the wolf who cried STACK!

[v3xin87]

(1) Play a full back and forth before deciding to swap/balance teams. This means let both teams get a shot at playing on RED and BLU. Sometimes both teams are just horrible at defense.

(4) DO NOT SWITCH FROM BLU TEAM TO RED TEAM FOR STAGE 3.
It's not cool! To explain: BLU team will sometimes powertrain through RED on the first two stages which puts the timer for RED to defend at 20 minutes. The good players that were carrying the BLU team will swap to RED and now everyone on BLU hates their lives for the next 20 minutes. Please, please, PLEASE stop doing this. I *will* start calling people out who do.

Huh never really thought about that before, but that's pretty true. I'll definitely keep that in mind for the future. Idk maybe I've been fortunate, but it doesn't feel like the stacking on TV6 is as bad as it sometimes was in the past. Idk if it's because the overall skill of the regulars has gone up or the increase in skilled regulars has gone up, but I usually have a fairly decent amount of competitive games when I play. Then again, I'm a pretty frequent team switcher and one of my favorite things in TF2 is helping a team that was getting rolled to victory love dem 20 min defenses on stage 3. But apparently my constant team switching may have been to a negative degree, so thanks for the heads up!

[Perfect Villain]

The bad part is when you see stacking going on by typical regs and it continues until people just start rage quitting that actually bothers me more then stacking itself.. i'm not pointing fingers but i will say it just doesn't feel right..

[jettah]

Opinions on engineers switching teams in the event of stack.

When I go, my buildings go too. When I am on defense, if we have a solid hold and the blue team's numbers are dwindling, I feel like I am doing red a disservice by switching to balance (especially if I am the only engineer). I feel like it throws things off balance in a completely different way.

I feel like the same might be true for medics being forced to switch (especially if they are the sole medic on a team).

Your thoughts?

[Soltan]

I'm often the solo medic on a team but will switch teams if they appear to be unbalanced in terms of skill. It basically forces the team I leave to find another medic (not necessarily a bad thing).

[trilobite]

Opinions on engineers switching teams in the event of stack.

When I go, my buildings go too. When I am on defense, if we have a solid hold and the blue team's numbers are dwindling, I feel like I am doing red a disservice by switching to balance (especially if I am the only engineer). I feel like it throws things off balance in a completely different way.

I feel like the same might be true for medics being forced to switch (especially if they are the sole medic on a team).

Your thoughts?

I can relate... totally. When I am the only pyro on a stacked team and I switch to the other team, my former team shouts, "YAY! TRILO'S GONE!" Then they replace me with a demoman or a soldier, or some other class that actually DOES something. If pyros had feelings, it would hurt.

[Boss Llama]

I can relate... totally. When I am the only pyro on a stacked team and I switch to the other team, my former team shouts, "YAY! TRILO'S GONE!" Then they replace me with a demoman or a soldier, or some other class that actually DOES something. If pyros had feelings, it would hurt.

http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/294

[Snidely Whiplash]

last night I was mean to some people complaining about a stack and it bummed me out.. as somebody who frequently finds himself on a 'stacked' team it can be frustrating to switch after helping to form the winning team via mic/ filling a key role, but I know it's much more frustrating to be on the losing side of this. Please don't wait until the rage is seething from your ears before you speak out about the issue. Typically it is the good players who get frustrated first, so any attempts to balance are met with the opposition of good team mates dropping out, even as you try to help reform the team. Dustbowl is a really hard map to balance and it takes a lot of patience. Also some niceties involved in asking for people to switch can go a long way. "Dang I would totally medic if somebody on red would switch" or "hey can somebody join spectator so we can balance teams?" are examples of non frustrating ways to explain that the game is stacked.

[prang]

I really enjoy playing on TV6 with all the regulars most of the time but after last night I can relate to the huge number of Villuns who refuse to play there. There were 4 or 5 top ranked players (meaning they play a LOT) using the easiest weapons and tactics to wholesale slaughter a team half full of randoms.

You guys are not stupid. You KNOW red demo man on dustbowl is extremely powerful. You KNOW kritz makes it more difficult for blue to organize a push on point 3. You KNOW a team full of noobs is easy pickings for a dead ringer spy. Nobody on blue should have to say something when they are pushed back to spawn for 10+ minutes. Its embarrassing that some of our players find more enjoyment racking up useless rank points than they do actually playing a video game with other people.

I left after Spiff was given 8 or 9 kritzes in a row at the first corner. I literally could not spawn and teleport to the first point before you guys were pushing another kritz around the corner wiping our team out just to back up to the sentry gun and reload the next one. It's Dustbowl last for God's sake! How hard do you actually have to try??!!


Big props for posting though Snidely. I appreciate hearing your voice and I definitely could have done more to steer blue on to a more positive course.

[trilobite]

I was there too -- but playing under a different account (I do that sometimes).
And I was on the team that was struggling... but I was able to get in a few good licks nonetheless.

In my experience, there are several top players who never ever ever switch to balance teams. And there are many top players who usually DO switch. I have the greatest respect for those players who switch. For those who don't -- no respect at all for those ragamuffins. I mean NO respect. I don't care what their KPD is.

If switching teams is not possible, then I sometimes see top scoring players who switch class to relieve some of the pressure and give the other team a chance to make some progress. I know lots of players who do this and I am very impressed by it.

The point of playing here is to have fun. For me, that usually means a balance of some wins and some losses. It's no fun for me to be on a team that rolls and rolls and rolls. But it's worse to be on a team that gets rolled over and over again because of several key players (and their attending medics) who, together, could dominate the map with their eyes closed.

There is also the issue of formulaic play style. That is, there is a pretty simple formula for dominating the map. It usually involves pocket medics and power classes. Not hard to do. It only takes the will to do it. A year or two ago, we had a heavy who would show up, take ownership of the team's medics and obliterate everyone on the other team over and over. Everybody knew his name and despaired. His play style was so formulaic and non-spontaneous that he might as well have been a bot. But this formulaic play style sucked the fun out of the map. It got so bad that when he would arrive on the server, we on the opposing team just refused to play. We just stayed in spawn and told jokes. After a few rounds of this, he would either switch out of heavy or leave the server. It was amazingly effective.

btw, who is that cool pyro on the Ville banner playing air guitar with his/her mailbox?

[InBOUND HD]

In my experience, being the top player in the server DOES NOT ALWAYS guarantee a win for your team, especially if they are "stacked". I once led my team as the top scorers as a sniper, but we still lost the round. So I switched to soldier, hoping to serve a far more powerful and devastating role in the battlefield. I did way better than I expected, killing more players and doing more damage on the battlefield. Our medic was exceptionally well calling out players and timing ubers, but still the other team won. This puzzled me greatly. How could the other team win when we had far more players with more points and more experience?

It was because of the opponents teamwork, their ability to be flexible with their classes (switching classes once in a while to counter our class setup) and an occational 3 engy defense that prevented us from winning, EVEN THOUGH we had far more players that had more kills, points, etc.

So yeah, there is hope for those other teams that are falling behind. It just requires teamwork, the ability to be flexible with class choice, and being able to sacrifice for the good of the team and for the good of the game (switching from the stacked team to the underdogs. yay!).

[SchruteFarms]

I was on the server last night as well, and joined the unstacked steam (blue) even though I had the option to join either team. I then spent the next 15 minutes as engi trying to move gear past the first corner on Dustbowl Stage 3. Red was very powerful and had a nice rotation of kritz and ubers. A few people casually mentioned to unstack, and several players on red switched teams after the round ended. Oh yeah, blue DID end up winning thanks a sticky jumping demo (not me), even though we could hardly take the second corner all match. The following rounds were pretty pleasant as teams were closer to even.

I still had fun, but I only had to fight the stack for a minimal amount of time.

[YoullNeverWalkAlone]

I don't switch much because frankly I don't think I'm good enough to tip the balance of power, especially when I am limited in my use of a mic (playing on a laptop in bed will do that). If I'm on the team that is rolling, I tend to go sniper since I have fun playing it, but I'm pretty bad at it.

However, I appreciate those who do switch in an effort to help.c

[cam]

So, just reminding everyone about last night when the server was PACKED full of regulars and good times were had by all. I loved the scout round!


Here's to hoping everyone's jimmies are slightly less rustled.

[ADevilishPotato]

So, just reminding everyone about last night when the server was PACKED full of regulars and good times were had by all. I loved the scout round!


Here's to hoping everyone's jimmies are slightly less rustled.

Indeed, we all failed at defense together!

[Earthworm James]

Me on dustbowl:

"this is awesome, i am totally kicking ass"
"o wait, look how dope my team is, and I dont recognize any of the noobs on the other team"
"i'll switch"
"...that may not have been the most fun idea..."

point being:
i get it, it is more fun to win, and if fun is why we play, then it can be easy to justify "letting it slide", "this time", where IT is the amount of awesome players you notice on your own team, compared to the mostly random opposition. BUT,
but, it is the quality of the win that determines how awesomely fun the game truly was, not just that we have more points on the scoreboard.