ok but have you considered that going 5 and 20 is actually really fun because of the sheer dopamine content in those 5 killa edit: oh shit it is gambling

I hate how a lot of weapon unlocks in the game are just "fuck spy in particular"

Spy would be a better class if the Rocket Jumper were a Spy primary

Sniper is poorly designed in a way that makes him too good. Spy is the complete opposite. Which makes it all the more baffling that Spy's weapons got nerfed far more often than Sniper's.

"Spy needs to be faster so he can catch other spies." I agree he needs to be faster, but what?

One thing that always baffled me as a Medic main was the "teammates automatically call for help when injured" advanced setting making disguised enemy spies do that as well. I've lost count of how many times I noticed a "teammate" suddenly getting injured from random splash damage or stray bullets despite seemingly not losing any health and figured out the spy. I even killed several of them on accident just because I tried crossbow-ing an injured "teammate" I probably would have ignored without that setting on. It's just another thing that invalidates disguises.

The only thing that makes Spy not a total joke is that he's the most fun stealth character I've seen in any FPS due to him having complete invisibility and his primary is actually decent in a fight. Poor guy needs more buffs though, playing him competitively was a nightmare.

Something kind of interesting I would like to note about the "anti-buildings" idea, is that after jungle inferno, there was going to be an engineer versus spy update that was planned (and then got scrapped as the TF team just kind of died) He was going to get "spy traps" that were going to be disguise kit replacement(s) (I'm not actually sure if there was going to be one spy trap PDA, for a bunch of them for different individual spy traps)

Imo a Spy is only as good as the rest of their team. No spy is good enough to solo a competent enemy team. I think Spy is best when actively communicating and coordinating with their team, relaying information, going after backstabs at specific times, and waiting till your team attacks to sap a sentry etc. The reason Spy is so wishy-washy is because he's a cooperation reliant class, in a game where most players dont cooperate with each other

Kaluka: "Spy is the worst class" also Kaluka: *Shows some of the most badass/best gameplay of spy I have ever seen*

Spy may be a weaker class, but you’d be hard pressed to find any players in the very top of the Highlander leagues who would say he isn’t incredibly powerful in the top levels of play. Granted he has lots of very harsh things working against him, and his skill ceiling is easily the highest in the game, but being able to drop medics, or snipers or collect information are all vital and interesting

Sapper replacement: A camera that replaces the sapper. While it is deployed and the spy is decloaked any enemies with line of sight to the spy will have wallhacks turned on for the enemy team. Call it Peeping le peu or something.

There is no other playable character in any game that has as muched nuanced balancing problems as spy does. He should be somewhat honored. The tremendously inconsistent factors with backstabs hurt him so much. The plethora of weapons and mechanics made specially to make spys job harder. The fragility of getting into the enemies base and getting a crucial kill. But spies job HAS to be hard. The ability to instantly kill someone has to be met with telegraphing and traceability. Otherwise spy becomes an unkillable, inevitable force. What i just realized is Demoknight is spy on steriods. He is sneaky, hard to kill, and unavoidably gets one good pick. His speed and strength allow for all of this. He can be a very overwhelming force and boadering on needing a nerf, but his effectiveness comes as long as people are willing to feed into him. Being careless and not taking into account that he can come in at any moment is what makes him so deadly.

13:10 _There's still things valve could do to immediately make spy better. Take some of his items and make them more useful or stronger than they are. That would be a great direction to take him._ What an incredibly enlightening and thought provoking piece of feedback on spys kit.

Surely crippling microphone failures will not occur halfway into production Right

2 sapper ideas that i've come up with that i think would be good are 1; a sapper that takes longer to remove and is really quiet and doesn't notify the engie but saps the building really slowly, and 2; a sapper that can be removed in 1 hit and is really noisy so the engie will most definitely hear, but it very quickly hijacks the building to be on you teams side (eg. with a sentry it would fire randomly in various directions occasionally shooting enemies) before exploding and destroying the building (likely with a long cooldown afterwards)

Fun fact: Spy actually moves SLOWER when disguised as classes slower than him. However, he does NOT move at Scout speed when disguised as a Scout, which is a problem because an observant player will notice this and shoot you for doing so.

I'm a spy main, and when I see like someone saying that he hates spies, that means that there at least one spy in the world who has done well during at least one round.

Turning to face the Spy is good and all until he facestabs you.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with what's being put out here. I don't disagree that spy is weak or that he needs more tools, because he absolutely is and does, but I disagree that spy is solely a class for gamblers or that beating him is as simple as turning around. It seems to me that Spy at his peak is all about exploiting situations when the enemy can't turn around, situations where his one-shot is most effective, and situations where him being a nuisance distracts the team enough to pull them off of the objective. I believe that every match of TF2 ever played has moments like that -- it's up to the spy to find them. When I see a player say that spy is a class that is so easy to beat, all you have to do is turn around, I see either an uncreative spy player or someone who hasn't gone up against a superlative spy. The reason people play spy isn't just because backstab fun, although that's certainly part of it. The reason people play spy is the idea of succeeding despite stacked odds, fooling people with a mechanic that doesn't even let you pretend to shoot, and reading your opponent like a book. They aren't playing him because maybe this time they'll roll double sixes and the enemy team will all be ftps with their game muted.

I've always thought that giving spy a button that makes it look like he is shooting while in disguse would really help him with actually fooling people, maybe even if you want to go extra crazy imagine him fake healing someone as medic and being able to make it look like you have uber and telling the person you're healing "ubercharge ready" to make em push into their death.

PDA that removes spy's ability to disguise himself as a merc but adds the ability to disguise himself as a prop

increase spy speed so that he can catch up to other spies... hmmmmmmmmmmm

valve actually did have a scrapped set of "anti-buildings" that were found in the code leak a few years back

16:02 I'm glad you have this great gameplay footage in the background, it adds to the video plus shows that you're good at spy.

Giving spy more supportive options sounds like a great idea. I've always thought of a couple things. >a debuff gun, this gun would bassically have 3 different debuff on enemies, maybe a tracking debuff, a mark for death and a mad milk debuff in turn it would have one clip and not do a lot of damage. >two slots for things like sappers and other utility that could be added to the Spy such as negative effect buildings ect. >Increase movement speed by a small amount and allow spy while holding down a button as a slower disguise run at normal speed. In general I think spy needs 1. More support options 2. More movement and escape tools. 3. More gameplay styles.

14:43 "that way spy could actually catch other spies" as if only YOU got the buff😂😂

rlly good video, loved the part where you showed the ragdoll definitively best part of the vid. I think you were talking about something like balance based on how many of each class are on a team or something but i was more focused on the spy dying over and over in funny pose that i cant rlly remember

honestly, I think just adding spy specific voice lines that play for everyone on your team would make it so much better. that way, mic or not, you can still relay specific information to your team, like: "sentry above, sentry left, sentry below, [x number] enemies"

Spy's true strength is the threat of his presence. The sheer possibility of getting instantly killed at any moment causes enough distraction & potential for psychological torture that Spy doesn't even need to be present to impact a team fight. The more the enemy is shooting at ghosts trying to find you, the less they're shooting your team.

So you want spy to get a move speed boost so he can catch other spies?

Placable distractions is definitely a great idea, it would additionally let Spy bait people into positions where he can stab them rather than having to run around chasing people constantly.

Interesting buff idea for spy: If you press (toggle) or hold reload while uncloaked and disguised, you get your normal move speed. Because it's hard having to find a smart disguise that's not another spy, and having to cloak to get your movement speed back because most everyone else is slower than you

Some ideas for Spy weapons with what you said in this video in mind: New Revolver: Damage penalty (around -20%), Large clip penalty (maybe 1 or 2 bullets), +Guaranteed crits against the last enemy you hit with your melee weapon for x seconds. >Gives the spy a backup option when his target turns around last second. A nice alternative for the l'etranger for spies who just want to focus on the knife. New "Sappers": 1) Deploy a building. All enemies nearby the building (say the range of a dispenser, but through walls) are outlined to your team. [Costs 200 metal, can only have one present at a time] >A little niche for the spy to fill in chokes where stabs are too deadly. Have it make a noise so enemies can hunt it down. 2) Place a fake health kit. It appears like a normal health kit, but deals bleed damage for x seconds when picked up by an enemy (has a unique model to your own team). [Costs 100 metal, can have up to two out at a time] >Deception plays. Most players know where the health pickups are, so you could maybe change the level of the pickup by "rotating" the building (, or let them be Ammo packs instead). They deal bleed damage to dissuade you from placing them on top of real health packs. They'd probably end up being dropped in doorways, or around corners, but they can be destroyed by damage so... not 100% sure about this one. New "Disguise Kit": No disguises. +x% movement speed. (Maybe: Sentry range against you is halved) (The YER wouldn't disguise you) >What you said in the video, it'd let him catch people easier and also give gun spy more of a niche. I think this way is better than boosting his base stats, but either's fine really.

1:36 Disguises are not a tool for getting BEHIND the enemy, that’s the cloak. Which is weird as you said cloak in the same sentence. 2:45 That is the ‘paranoia management’ aspect of spy, something all good spies should take into account. Basically, it’s the act of not targeting a specific player too much so they don’t become spy-checking happy maniacs. 2:54 That is the reason spies have to be adaptable and have to get used to not being able to play their favourite class all the time if winning js a top priority 4:00 Maybe attempt a backstab at a target currently shooting or scoped in, if a heavy is dishing out supportive cover fire, they’re less likely to turn around randomly. 5:45 Use the YER. It still makes a noise but a substantially harder to detect one. 6:07 It lets you attack instantly any time, lets you attempt to get close to the enemy, even lets you fake the death of a teammate to stop the enemy suspecting a spy has entered their lines. 6:52 That is not a good illusion and relates back to my first statesment. 8:58 *Denies the existence of gun-spy*. 10:24 Valid point, but cloaking halves the duration of visible after-effects. Yes, I wrote a multiple hundred word essay about silly sneaky French-men. I’m a depressed spy main, what can I say?

BLU Engineer has his moments, especially on payload offense

He did get a movement buff, though! he moves slightly faster then most normal movement speed classes!!!

You mention the whole new PDA buff at the end, but I think that would make a better new unlock: Pros: Buff based on class choice: - Scout: +25% movement speed - Soldier: No immunity to damage knockback (for blast jumping and bullet surfing) - Pyro: Afterburn immunity (would probably require a Spy-cicle rework) - Demoman: +30% explosive resistance - Heavy: +100% bullet resistance - Engineer: Sappers have the reverse effect on friendly buildings - Medic: +5 healing per second - Sniper: Damage falloff immunity - Spy: Lets you pick which disguise opponents see you using Cons: -25 max health

A throwable sapper that shows the enemys position is a cool idea

Wow, this is actually the best video I've ever watched as a spy main, very cool

That bit about information gathering you mentioned is actually pretty interesting, i wonder if a spy relaying information while hiding via voice chat do your team was something the devs had in mind

As Spy main, i can say that Spy for me feels the most rewarding BECAUSE of how weak he is. All odds are against you YET you still can outsmart your enemy and defeat them.

honestly, as a spy main, you're exactly correct. even being able to fake a reload without having to waste a bullet at the start of a round would be awesome.

the spy skill ceiling grows as time goes on and people learn the strats I think a decoy gun could work for spy, makes a sound or plaves a fake modep to direct enemy attention

"just turn around" - as a heavy, when youre having a fight with other heavy, when a slight misaim will mean they will do more damage and you will die before you do? its like the main part of spy gameplay, you look for enemy to be distracted by your teammates. they check their back all they want when coming from spawn but they cant do that in the immediate danger of being two shotted by another foe. have you mentioned this even once in this longass video?

I wish Spy had the ability to mimic class specific animations, like scoping, carrying buildings and even reving. wouldn't change that much, but at least the disguise kit would become less useless.

i think a great addition for the spy is to allow him to pick up any weapon a teammate or enemy drops, but he cant reload the weapon after its clip runs out.

If I could do anything, I would probably make it so enemies who are backstabbed cannot use talk or use chat until they respawn, and backstabbing someone is quieter. Would this be good for spy? Yes. Would it be good for the game? Probably not. But it would be cool, and that’s the only reason people play spy.

If spy rewards were increased that wouldnt even fix his problems unfortunately, as when he got those rewards it would still be wildly inconsistent and the spy still wouldnt have much agency. Not to mention how much more annoying it would be for other people. So if anything its the risk that needs to be changed to be less , giving the spy more agency and consistency.

Why is Your Final Reward so unpopular? Instant disguise, no sound, the body disappears, it's so easy to chain backstabs especially in casual lobbies where randoms don't communicate as much

based vid

disguising allows for spy to act on quick confusion, it also negates knockback allowing stuff like criclestrafing more doable, as impossible as that shit is. Id argue that disguises like scout are usefull in the sense that you want people to run at you, easier to matador/circlestrafe stab, people are very aggressive when it comes to chasing a spy. Changing weapons like the enforcer, spycicle, and maybe adding a new cloak would be help spys limited playstyle tons, maybe a little health/speed boost would be great aswell. I honestly love spy as he is however, I love how difficult he is to play and how after insane amounts of time he can get to a point where that gamble is less and less risky. I love how difficult stuff like circlestrafing is and how unique he is to play. Great video btw, seeing a non spy mains view on this type of thing is very interesting.

I think buffing Spy's overall health pool to 150 would be a great change. Spy has to work very hard to get kills - unlike Sniper, so I think a general +25 health would be a great start to balancing Spy.

Have you USED the le tranger? Like used it, for days. Its perfectly balanced.

It is almost like every time someone says Spy is bad they rely almost exclusively on melee and not that powerful pistol they have that they can reliably get behind people (like Scout) through areas with 1,000s of enemies and shoot them in the back. They spy has the tools for any situation, taking down a sentry, quick killing unaware targets, taking out people in sentry range, safely walking through sentry range. Use your gun, in that Engineer example... this is going to cause them to collapse from stress as they empty their shells into their entire ally team. A pyro? Stay away from them or use your revolvers like a Soldier uses their Shotgun for. Did you know that having a Revolver and Cloak means you can pick people from corners without melee and get their team chasing you as you cloak away? A lot of people don't consider the value spy has because they focus on backstabs as they sit by a spawn door disguised and complain about the outlines. Sure if there is 50 pyros Spy sucks, till you realize that if you shoot them and get them to chase you they will be lighting their base on fire ignoring the objective. They see a spy as a defenseless easy kill. Just like people who get trick stabbed.

"A little iddy bitty tiny movement speed buff" It's funny because Spy already recieved just that buff. He use to run at 100%, which is the 'standard' speed (with Medics and Scouts pulling ahead). Then Valve in their infinite wisdom bumped Spy up to 107%, which is still slower than a Medic. It DOES allow him to trail the other 100% and slower classes, and also run away from them, albeit very slowly. Also sidenote, you called Scout disguises pointless? Let me tell you, throwing in some jumping really helps with that one.

1:24 ok i will not let french boi get these accusations! He clearly loves scout mom and he even called her "Ah, my little cauliflower" and also it is said that one of the biggest reason spy decided to join the tf2 team is to watch scout...and money of corse but he is there for scout till the moment he died

okay being able to unleash smoke bombs or poison gas as spy sounds super cool

I couldn't take this video seriously when I realized him ragging on the L'etranger wasn't a meme and called for it to be reworked

Amazing job keep them videos coming and you’ll go far on KZfaq 😊

Spy is a glass canon by design and it doesn't have to change

Honestly I think spys problem is more so all the shit working against him. The disguise kit is a broken mess, spawning wall hacks, after death cams that show the entire battle field, anti spy weapons like razor back homewrecker that stuff. It makes him incredibly hard to learn. Also if you have more than 1 his effectiveness drops dramatically Also honestly I think your just not a great spy. The argument that disguises don't work on good players is just wrong. Disguises do work on good players. Something as simple as backing away from the Frontlines faking a reload and calling medic has got me tons of picks on top scoring players. Also sappers aren't a tool for destroying sentries there a tool for disabling them to work in tandem with team mates to break them

Spy is fine. The community as a whole decided that disguises are useless, stopped using them, and now people complain without even using his tools.

friendly fire would be an insane spy buff ngl

Watching this KZfaq video on my shift at Northrop Grumman is the funniest shit ever dude, your scripting is golden 🖤

The biggest problem with spy is every match has atleast 3 spies per team.

Spy has to jump through a million different hoops to get his insta-kill Sniper just has to stand at the end of a sightline and wait for you to step into his field of view.

BLU engie on payload at least has a job. To set up a sentry to pick off overextending RED players. He is the last line of defense basically

strange for kaluka to not have 15 family guy funny moment gags per second

15:00 personally I think that type of thing would work really well with the Your Eternal Reward, especially since the your Eternal reward focuses on disguises more than the other weapons.

Team fortress 1 has friendly fire, so Spy checking is WAY harder and people allmost never Spy check unless they are sure its a Spy, what if Tf2 had that?

11:24 I like how even you looked back at the demo probably in disbelief that was a "backstab"... Jesus that was a facestab

blu engineer is good. for instance : " teleporter "

damn we really just gonna ignore the dead ringer the whole vid huh

Spy needs to be faster than Spy so Spy can catch up to Spy

I don't think spy buildings would be too bad with multiple spies compared to a shit ton of engineers placing sentries everywhere

3:13 for Pyros you can use the Spy-cicle and/or the Dead Ringer for overlapping sentries you can use the Your Eternal Reward or the Dead Ringer

14:44 So Spies can catch up to other Spies. by buffing spies speed, for the player and enemy spy do you see the problem here?

I love the feeling of truly fooling a player with a disguise, especially because it’s hard to do. The art of perfect evasion and deception, we live for it!

2:57 Jontohil2: SPY HAS A GUN!

I think one thing that could work well for the Spy is the option of a sort of subclass revolving around information gathering. This would be a more support style subclass where instead of fishing for backstabs you would get information on the enemy team to relay back to your own team. For example, Spy Camera, a new 'sapper' that instead of sapping buildings lets Spy take pictures of enemies that gives you and your team wallhacks of this one specific enemy for a brief period of time, and will give you assists if a teammate kills them during this time. Could also add something like gaining cloak or brief mini crits for each assist you get with it. Or perhaps a new 'cloak watch' that instead of cloaking you gives ONLY you wallhacks of enemies within a certain radius of yourself. Obviously it would have a meter so continous use would drain it, but allow you to tell your team where important targets are and what not. Also think it would be cool if an item like this was in the form of a compass. A way for the Spy to check which classes the enemy is using. This could be a stand alone item, or an idea I had is make it so the disguise kit only lets you disguise as classes that are on the enemy team. For example, if they don't have any scouts you can't disugise as a scout, but that also means you know they have no scouts. Could help your team plot out what classes your team will use, what loadouts to use, and what to look out for. Final idea I had was an item, perhaps another 'sapper' that lets you listen in on the enemy team's voice chat and team text chat. Spy is really the only class that gets hard countered by literal voice chat, so a way for Spy to listen in and hear if someone is calling him out or not to better decide to pursue a stab or retreat would be nice. Not to mention being able to listen for coordinated team pushes and similar such things. Just some ideas I had. Feel free to critique

It‘s almost like… He was designed that way.

Involving the "anti sapper" idea you mentioned I'm pretty sure there was code found in the files showing that Valve experimented with a similar idea to that in the form of traps I don't remember it completely cuz it's been awhile since I heard about it, but basically it looks like they experimented with giving Spy an unlock that worked like Engineer's pda, that allowed Spy to place 4 different trap buildings, I forgot what most of them were, but I remember one being a bear trap I think I heard about this from a shounic video

3:50 The idea of spy pinging enemies sounds kinda cool... Annoying, but cool

You fix spy by turning on friendly fire

The game and spy in general would be greatly improved with friendly fire

17:20 So a sapper which makes enemy unbuffed instead of dealing damage, maybe it could reduce the damage of a sentry or the healing and ammo for a dispenser this -red tape recorder- sapper sounds like an interesting idea which im sure wont be dissapointing sompared to a sapper

remember guys, always CLOAK before disguise, other wise chemtrails will be following you :)

Fun fact, spy doesn’t technically have a primary weapon, his revolvers are considered secondary weapons by the game

Welp. Now I want a Blu Engineer video. lol

11:25 That facestab destroyed that demo's dreams

I sense a slight bit of seeth tzeentch in your joke delivery, i love it hahaha

spy, like every class in the game, wasn't designed for competitive balance; robin and the boys saw a bug in quake fortress (players appearing as the wrong team) and thought "wait what if there was a class that actually did that on purpose" and gave him a knife to capitalize on sneaking around. Hell, pyro was added for people with bad internet (aka everyone playing quakeworld this is the 90s people). Heavy exists solely because the tf team watched predator and thought the minigun was badass. this isnt a bad way to come up with ideas for your fun deathmatch game but some of these have a LOT more growing pains in becoming fun skill sets than others

the whole floor sapper could be a non-stacking effect like afterburn, and could either replace the sapper or pda

This is the best explanation to the spy problem

A disguise kit that could let you fire fake shots from the weapon you’re holding or a watch that just lets you pass through enemies if disguised would be super cool

4.5 minutes in and you never tell us that *Spy has a gun*.

The problem with spies are the players, and they are little selfish pricks who refuse to learn to play more patiently and think any rush to kills will get them reward. It's all about timing and positioning, relying on team to to make moves that distract enemies the most. Simply by existing, you cause the enemies to panic and constantly checking back, which also lets whole enemy team guard down and that also benefit team a lot. Most common mistake is that spy assumed to be pick class, while it's an infiltration class, a spy, that can do sabotage. And, yes, going invisible to infiltrate enemy team to communicate all their movement is actually what spy can be very useful for and benefit the teammates, after all it's a SPY class, and it's a TEAM fortress game where each class has their own class role you assign to in order to help the TEAM. Spy is already fast enough, especially after a buff, any further buff would make spy just become a hard counter to pyros at this point since pyro has inferior ranged weapons and revolver is a hitscan that you can't dodge yet does fair amount of dps against single targer. For selfish little prick spies, there is dead ringer already that just makes escape plan basically effortless, no matter in what situation you get to. Given with his boosted speed buff, he's already pretty mobile to escape and strike as is, but dead ringer speed buff just makes it very cheap. Red tape recorder is good as it gives far greater benefit to the team to help finish, git gud. Saper is a good SUPPORT weapon, perfect one, to disable the main defense tool of enemy and let teammates finish the sentry, so homewrecker is alright, nobody uses it anyway. Also razorback saves sniper back when he's in safe place protected by either teammates or sentry, so shooting sniper with revolver will leave you dead before you land another shoot, it's more of a tool against salty spy players who switch to spy after getting dominated by a sniper, and it helps. If anything, spy could use more consistent backstab that doesn't fuck you up due to netcode, which becomes a big problem on servers with ping above 50. Regardless how good you're at spy, this gonna fuck you up, so rework knife to automatically do backstab by just holding M1 button and having a back near you would help, even though that may sound cheesy but that's how games like Dark Messiah multiplayer turn Assassin class pretty useful in multiplayer, even though he has smaller angle for back. There is also facestab problem that needs addressing, which is a poor game design where by mere moving camera a bit too left or right to the foe can make you do facestab, which should be fixed by having geometric location checking on the map that would prevent you to do cheap kills if you're not actually aiming at the enemy as you should do.

You didn't mention it in the video but are you aware spy already got a movespeed buff some years ago? The first time was already a bit weirdly received so I don't think giving him another movespeed is gonna matter, he is currently tied for 2nd highest movespeed with medic. That asside great stuff, this video is really funny :^)

spy has already been made slightly faster in one of the last proper content updates from last year to catch up with every non-scout class