Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbowl

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Should the two-engie limit be REMOVED from TV-VI-Dustbowl?

Yes. REMOVE the two-engie limit.
34
41%
No. Keep the two-engie limit in place.
48
59%
 
Total votes: 82

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Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbowl

Post by trilobite » Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:34 am

Assessing the results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbowl

A little over a month ago, Soltan (with support of others) suggested placing a two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbowl. The limit was implemented shortly thereafter.
Here is a link to the topic...
http://www.thevilluns.org/forums/viewto ... 15&t=21516
After about a month of play with this limit, I want to make a report.

I have noticed the following:
  1. The sense that one-time engie mains (like Malkazar and rammy, for example) are rarely playing engie anymore.
  2. Engie now seems to be most useful on BLU, and significantly less effective on RED.
  3. Basically, engies (on either BLU or RED) now seem to be most useful in putting up teleporters and dispensers. Sentry guns are significantly less effective, especially on RED.
  4. Two-man engie teams on RED try hard to keep up, but quickly become overwhelmed – no matter how hard they are cooperating. Without a third helper, engies on RED quickly fall hopelessly behind and rarely recover.
  5. Fewer players are volunteering to play engie.
  6. Spys now are significantly more effective at neutralizing any team’s engies.
Personally, I am more willing to play engie while on BLU, and I am reluctant to play engie while on RED. While on RED, I have begun to focus more on the placement and maintenance of teleporters and dispensers. These now have far greater value to my RED team than my SG. While on RED, I place guns mostly as diversionary bait now – to divert attention away from my dispensers and teleporters.

My experience in the last few weeks has been that BLU victory is now almost always assured on all three stages of Dustbowl. In an interesting twist, it now seems that stage two is the hardest. Again, that’s just my personal sense.

With three engies on RED, it is extremely difficult for BLU to succeed. But with only two engies on RED, it is almost impossible for RED to succeed. In my view, the greater burden for victory should fall more on the attackers.
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Bronze Fox » Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:38 am

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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Boss Llama » Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:02 pm

I am not a fan of the change at all. With the significant number of inexperienced players around, and engy being an unintimidating class for many of them, I've lost count of the number of teams I've been on recently where the incompetence of our engineering corp has utterly destroyed the team. Both engies setting up on the second point right at the start, sitting unmoving while each other's stuff is sapped, failing to put up even a single teleport, etc. Even when we have one good engineer, they're stuck without backup because their counterpart is almost inevitably poor quality. If the broad playerbase was any good right now, I would have no problem with the 2 engy limit. Two good engineers is fine for pretty much any map, Dustbowl no exception. Sadly, it is occasion for celebration these days to have even one engineer who knows what they're doing. The good engies give up out of frustration, and the bad ones drag on obliviously, undermining their team.

I honestly don't know what it is about these folks - the concept isn't hard! I don't expect new folks to know all the nuances that come with years of playing, but the basic concept isn't hard. In my first ever game of TF2, I played engy, and I still somehow managed to build an SG in a decent place, defend the objective, get a fair number of kills, and have teleports in place.
-Boss Llama

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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by M's » Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:11 pm

Alizée Fan wrote:I am not a fan of the change at all. With the significant number of inexperienced players around, and engy being an unintimidating class for many of them, I've lost count of the number of teams I've been on recently where the incompetence of our engineering corp has utterly destroyed the team. Both engies setting up on the second point right at the start, sitting unmoving while each other's stuff is sapped, failing to put up even a single teleport, etc. Even when we have one good engineer, they're stuck without backup because their counterpart is almost inevitably poor quality. If the broad playerbase was any good right now, I would have no problem with the 2 engy limit. Two good engineers is fine for pretty much any map, Dustbowl no exception. Sadly, it is occasion for celebration these days to have even one engineer who knows what they're doing. The good engies give up out of frustration, and the bad ones drag on obliviously, undermining their team.
Well put, I love being engie but when you have the other engie sitting there with their thumb in the 3rd point of contact, it's exasperating to do much.
And then if you try to explain how to set up to them they ignore you.
To many times I have seen "apprentice" engies build right next to each other. And no matter how much you try to convince them to separate, they will not.
So I would very much like to see the 3rd engie come back.

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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Larry » Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:52 pm

Third point of contact you say? Never heard that before.
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by ketchuo » Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:59 pm

Im with larry on this one, are you being serious about the 3rd point?

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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by M's » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:02 pm

The 3rd point of contact is your butt.

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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by ketchuo » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:16 pm

Also I should add that dustbowl is in red's favor must of the time and red having 3 engis is just going to make it a lot harder to push and cap a point.

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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Last of The Finest » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:30 pm

3 Engineers on dustbowl is a rage inducing experience. The problem comes from the fact that dustbowl feels like it's tilted in red's favor to begin with. Adding a third engineer can take the map from feeling hard on BLU to being close to impossible, especially at the second points of each stage (2 in particular).

As the game evolves with more toys, the need for 3 engineers is lessened. As someone who plays a lot of spy, 3 engies AND pyros who run homewrecker more often than not make sapping all but useless, which limits the effectiveness of a spy. Since one of the key abilities of a spy is being affected, I'll vote for 2 engineers.
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Zork Nemesis » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:41 pm

6Larry9 wrote:Third point of contact you say? Never heard that before.
ketchuo wrote:Im with larry on this one, are you being serious about the 3rd point?
G-Rated swearing

Any attack/defend map is in red's favor (aparently Gravel Pit is the only exception), as red does not have an objective to push out and secure, while blue's purpose is only to capture; once they cap there's no need to defend what they own and they just move on to the next cap. These days the two engy limit is kind of tricky and it does not help red's case. It does help when blue is concerned as even good blue engineers can't push like sollys, demos, and heavies. When the attackers have too many engineers they're already destined to fail, so if at all possible, leave the engy limit in place for blue.

In red's case, everything Alizee mentioned holds true. There are too many "green" engineers about to have a small limit in place, as they often don't realize what they're doing wrong, despite pleas for them to solve their problems. These are the engineers who don't know what it means to spread out, who don't fix each other's stuff, who neglect to build teleporters, and worst of all, who waste 3 minutes prebuilding while the point they're supposed to defend is getting toppled. Stage 2 is a huge offender for prebuilders as the second point is litteraly a 2 second walk out the gate, and the gun can't shoot through the wall that's there between the point and the gate. There's also the matter of the engineers who decide to defend with mini-sentries. While it's still a valid tactic when executed properly, i've done it myself when the populations were low, mini sentries do not have the stopping power that even a level 1 has. Sure, they build in a second and they're cheap, but they're practically made of balsa wood and go down when someone just sneezes at it.

If nothing else, i'm in favor of reupping the limit to 3 if it means that at least one of those spots can be given to someone who knows how to work it properly.

Allow me to advertise the Loch-n-Load once more who are opposed to reupping the red engy limit. Sentry nests in dustbowl often have long sight lines or blind spots. It's very easy to spam down most sentry positions and the Loch-n-Load does this very well, as many Engineers I knock down can attest to.
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by trilobite » Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:33 pm

Bronze Fox says,
"Red wins the majority of the time on all Attack/Defend maps except Gravelpit."
ketchuo says,
"Also I should add that dustbowl is in red's favor must of the time and red having 3 engis is just going to make it a lot harder to push and cap a point."
Last of the Finest says,
"3 Engineers on dustbowl is a rage inducing experience. The problem comes from the fact that dustbowl feels like it's tilted in red's favor to begin with. Adding a third engineer can take the map from feeling hard on BLU to being close to impossible, especially at the second points of each stage (2 in particular)."
These statements reflect the general sentiment that PRECEDED the change.
But I am posting today AFTER the change, and I am reporting on the resulting outcome -- which has its own problems. I enumerated several in the original post. Basically, BLU has been moving across the map with ever-increasing speed and success.

mlite, Alizee Fan and Zork point out onging issues about apprentice engies. The two-engie limit does place more pressure on the two engies and more expectations on their performance.

The question is, given two problematic configurations, which of the two is most preferable?
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Boss Llama » Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:42 pm

I think another reason for my dislike of the limit is its motivation.

I don't like any class limits at all, as I believe teams should succeed or fail on their own merit, and there is no particular class composition that cannot be countered by an appropriate response. That said, I understand why certain class limits are put in place. Sniper and spy limits, for example, are in place to improve the performance of an average team. Too many of those, and the average team will fail. The class limit on Engineers, however, is in place to hurt the performance of an average team. It is motivated by the desire to prevent a team from being maximally effective, and that's just not cool.

I believe that it's always better to encourage every team to do as well as possible, and that means encouraging people to learn how to fight against whatever setup an enemy may have, not just class-limiting the enemy out of existance.
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Bronze Fox » Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:53 pm

You guys keep focusing on the Engineers being new and that a third is needed to balance out the newbies. What about the other side of that coin?
Players attacking can also be new and will have a very, very difficult time winning with three Engineers on Red.
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Boss Llama » Sat Mar 31, 2012 5:41 pm

New players will learn nothing by facing a hobbled foe. If we try to softball everything, everything stays little league forever.
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Re: Assessing results of the two-engie limit on TV-VI-Dustbo

Post by Bronze Fox » Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:16 pm

Eh, there doesn't really seem to be a right answer to me.

If Red gets three Engineers then Blu won't win, but if Red only gets two instead of three then Blu rolls,
according to you guys at least. I'm still in favor of giving Blu the advantage though, sorry.
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