“Every playstyle has its place in competitive” cant wait to see the spycrab buff.

"every play style has a place in competitive" *looks at the ban list* So that was a fucking lie

Yeah, that was always wrong. Comp and casual were never similar.

>Average >Shows footage of him playing Good one, Dane. I’ve always liked the Texan Half Hour Comedy Hour.

As we all know, Ronald Reagan actually invented Team Fortress 2 in 1986.5.

so the caber is never going to be fixed because pros don't use it amazing

7:17 His medic... I went to the page I was disappointed *seriously, there's nothing there. 1 star on yelp*

"Or just inexplicitly bad at TF2" LOOK MOM IM ON UNCLE DANES!

this is perfect because it compares a non functioning theory of economics with a non functioning theory of game balance

One thing most people never bring up for some reason is that casual and competitive play have different formats. Competitive is 6 players, has class limits, weapon bans and frequent communication. Casual doesn't have any of this. This is why I feel that the whole "if it's balanced for competitive it's balanced for pubs" logic is flawed. The Engineer, for example, isn't particularly useful in 6v6. It's a class that performs better in numbers, but he's limited to one. And yet, we all have stories of having to face a nasty nest of sentries in pubs. Lack of communication makes things worse. This isn't to say that Engie is OP, but he's definitely more useful in casual play. And then, we come to the Spy. Pretty much useless in comp no matter what weapon he holds. Does this mean no weapon in his arsenal should be nerfed? Not necessarily. The entire community let a sigh of relief with the DR nerf, yet that thing has never made any impact in competitive (that I know of). Again, not saying that balancing for higher skill players is a bad thing. I think competitive should be kept in mind. However, I wholeheartedly don't think doing so will AUTOMATICALLY make a weapon balanced across all levels of play.

And just like trickle down economics, it is a complete myth

Fun-fact, trickle down economics doesn't work either.

Did Uncle Dane smokes all my drugs when making that intro?

I agree with you, but I'm gonna go ahead and play devil's advocate for the sake of having an interesting discussion: What are your thoughts on things that thrive in a chaotic pub-like setting (like phlog, or hell, pyro in general after JI)? Against an organized team, these kinds of weapons will not be nearly as effective since communication is the norm there, but against a team full of "Joe Schmoes", as you put it, it often feels like there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it, since they likely don't even know how to use text/voice chat. Of course, the obvious answer here is "just have better communication" or "learn to counter it", but again, in a pub that's *much* easier said than done. Personally I'm of the opinion that people gradually learn to have better communication and learn to counter these types of things, and so the "Trickle-Down Balance" system will eventually work, but I've heard many people make the argument that the constant influx of new players into TF2 means that there will never be a perfect balance between comp and casual. I suppose that's where the compromises need to be made.

My main issue with balancing towards comp when it comes to tf2 is how different comp is to pubs

I forgot Dane had one pretty wrong video lol Especially when competitive is 6v6 and sometime 9v9 (not often). makes a huge difference. Coming back years later shows how much damage was done forcing more competitive into this old game. Like all trickle down, that thought process only really helps the ones higher up

when is volvo gonna finally nerf teh son on a stik?

I'd argue that although "trickle-down balance" functions really well for items with high skill scaling (as in higher skill is rewarded with much greater effectiveness, like how the BASE Jumper was easy to airshot in the hands of a novice but near impossible if a pro is using it), it's ineffective or outright bad for items with weak skill scaling, or items which are counterable with more advanced techniques or much less effective in a highly competitive environment. The Phlogistonator is the most obvious offender, since it's a highly effective pubstomper weapon and *annoying* but it's also reliant on walking at people at Pyro speed and you can't airblast rockets away, so it can also be incredibly easy to deal with for any Soldier or Demo with aim. Spy as a whole could potentially be negatively affected by trickle-down balancing - he's counterable by solid team communication and is better in more crowded pubs than 6s where his absence or presence is more obvious. Now, I'm not saying that weapons need to be balanced around pubs and not competitive, or that pubstomping is bad - just that effectiveness in comp shouldn't be the only factor devs look at, because "weak in competitive" doesn't mean "weak in pubs", just like "strong in competitive" doesn't mean "strong in pubs". Item effectiveness should scale well with skill - not exponentially like the BASE Jumper where it's suicidal for a newbie but invincible for an expert, and it shouldn't be the minor scaling of "walking at people with Phlog" vs "sneaking up on people with Phlog and decent map knowledge". I think the Baby Face's Blaster is a fairly good success story; old BFB gave you stupid speed for just doing any old chip damage, making it powerful even if you could barely aim and had terrible positioning, whereas now it's punishing if you take any damage at all, forcing you to play it more safely and rewarding skillful damage avoidance and/or good aim to keep your boost high enough to get in and out. That's a nerf that takes a weak skill scaling weapon and reduces its effectiveness in all scenarios, but still rewards skilled players for playing well. The Reserve Shooter nerf also takes away Pyro's ez combo fun while leaving Soldier's rocket combo intact (again, removing possibilities for low-effort exploitation while leaving more difficult techniques as appropriately rewarding), and the latest Dead Ringer nerf brings it towards a rhythmic, more careful form of gameplay as opposed to Sanic-ing around the map sucking up all the ammo and health packs.

you're justifying. my man, the sandman, was murdered, and you're justifying.

you are not human and evil

"Millions of players" That's a funny joke. :(

5:09 yes, the razorback completely denies spahs from killing you, not like he has a gun or anything

It's 2021, still waiting for the Scout mains of high level comp to let Heavy be viable... GRU and Disciplinary Action are still banned...

as others have pointed out, the issue comes when certain weapons require tons of skill and coordination to use properly, resulting in them being useless in casual, but potentially still getting nerfec since they are strong in the competitive scene. you also have the other end of the spectrum where fighting against certain weapons/classes required communication and coordination with your team, which is basically non-existant in casuals, resulting in that weapon/class being op in casuals but not in competitive. then when it gets buffed to be better in competitive, it becomes super easy to stomp with in casuals.

0:16 Wow the TF2 Dev Team has grown recently!

1:18 Hey! I didn’t know you were collabing with After Breakfast.

"in the last wave of balance changes" haha remember when we got those haha

5 years later: BASE jumper still banned on global whitelist. Just even less useful in casual. Thank GOD Team Fortress is no longer getting balanced by this idiotic system. I didn’t even like it in Overwatch, where EVERYONE IS PLAYING THE SAME GAME. Let the funny weapons stay in TF2, sixes can keep their giant banlists. There, that’s compromise, everyone is happy.

I genuinely never thought of the buffs/nerfs like that. Thanks Dane!

What I can't understand about TFTeam's approach to weapon balancing is why they are doing it in big bursts during big seasonal updates and not gradually,in small updates every 2 weeks or so.There are only a few people working on the game,I know,but balancing weapons without reworking them essentially boils down to changing a few values in the weapon's stats.I'm sure that there are quite a few weapons in TF2's arsenal that can become perfect just by tweaking the numbers in their stats.

“If it’s balanced for the highest level of play, than it will be for everyone else.” Overwatch: Well yes but actually no.

A design philosophy like this doesn't work in TF2 because not only is the competitive scene too small to be balanced around, but the gameplay between the two is completely different.

Uncle Dane the Engi Main is back.

the difference is that your trickle-down system works, the real one DOESNT!

GRU proves you wrong. They made it far worse in casual which made an already mediocre class worse, for the "problem" of Heavy getting to mid quickly in comp and slowing down the game, which is a complete non-issue in casual. Fact is, casual and competitive are completely different, and the vast majority of the playerbase couldn't care less about the latter. We don't want the casual experience most of the playerbase enjoys made even *slightly* worse to satisfy the 1% of comp players and the delusions of TFtubers that TF2 competitive being the focus would somehow save the game.

TF2 isn’t really a good game to balance for competitive play because the 6v6 format is wildly different to a 12v12 server with no class restrictions and random crits. It’s not like a fighting game where the conditions are the same at all skill levels.

Unfortunately this balancing system does have one flaw, and that is you can't apply it to EVERYTHING. Sure, keep the best players in mind 90% of the time, but there's some aspects of the game that you CAN'T balance that around. In League, this would be something like Teemo or Pantheon, for TF2 it would be something like the Phlog. The problem with these parts of balance is that they, with their current design, will NEVER be balanced in both high-level competitive and for the average player. They have designs that just simply keep them unviable at the highest level of play without being grossly overpowered. That doesn't mean these shouldn't get balance changes, I have seen some people think that, for example, Teemo shouldn't be nerfed if he's overpowered in low level play because he's still not a problem in challenger. That is a terrible way of going about things and will only serve to piss off your casual playerbase. But, make no mistake, it is good to look at pros and the highest level of play MOST of the time, just not ALL of the time.

P R O F E S I O N A L G A Y M E R S

That vita saw justification is utter trash "Who knows how much über they have after they die" if you were actually counting, then 20%. It caps at 20%.

7:17 blessed medic

As someone who has been playing ESEA for coming up on 5 seasons, I’m very glad that you made a video on this topic to try and reach this information out to the masses. Just reading the comments on this video I see casual players who understand some of these changes and why balancing for the highest level makes more sense. These types of videos by you and Funke make me very happy because of how you two actually think about stuff from the competitive side and then give this info to your large audiences. Well done Dane

Shhh don't tell pazer... I totally wasn't trying @ 4:08 xD

weird,i played league of legends a lot,and it died out mostly from them trying that "trickle down balance" thing

Just like Trickle-Down Economics, this is a plainly terrible idea.

To me the problem with TF2 right now it's not the weapons balancing, but the players balancing. I get into matches that have a team WAY stronger than the other almost every time. To find a balanced match in TF is very very rare.

And then there are those spanners in the works like the rocket jumper. You won’t see it anywhere in comp, but hop on your average hightower server and there there will be 5+ soldiers using it.

It's actually astounding just how terribly this video has aged, cant believe dane actually had a take THIS deplorable.

High skilled players should decide what’s balanced: high skilled player

3:14 that “ha!” Almost made me spit out my milk xD

Trickle down economics did t work for a reason. When you balance things specifically to balance the highest players that can make it so that the playstyle the weapon now encourages is hard or impossible to use for lower skill players, in effect your making the weapons only correctly useable by the people you balanced it for.

7:18 Wow, that healer has got an interesting name.

Coming back to this video years later and I have to say this did NOT age well at all and it should've been seen from a mile away considering trickle-down economics doesn't work in real life too. Dane usually has a lot of good takes like his justification for TeamPyro but this definitely wasn't one of them.

I thought I was tripping in the beggining irl.

"So a couple years ago, when the tf2 development team, pictured here..." *shows a pic of the DashCon ballpit*

The problem here is that the very top level of play vs the rest is basically a different game. The number of players, the class distributions, and the game modes are the biggest things here.

Dane, while I appreciate the hope you have for no banned weapons, I feel that some weapons will pretty much always be banned purely due to their function. For example, the Scout's Mad Milk or Crit-a-Cola are both mechanically overpowered bc they interfere with standard combat (mini crit dmg, which includes no dmg falloff, and the health leech of the milk is a get out of jail free card). The Quick-Fix is another example, due to how it trumps stock Medi Gun in all but 8 out of 48 seconds of a medic's life, plus means the Roamer becomes a pocket to help them escape. Patches may make them more balanced (e.g, Mark scout for death upon drinking cola, and Milk slows Scout or whatever), but they are more applicable than standard side-grades than they should be, and will continue to be due to their design philosophy and the mechanics they introduce.

I've never seen that B.A.S.E. Jumper strafe strategy. I feel kinda bad whenever something gets nerfed or removed, not so much because I'm disappointed with the changes because it's always meant to change with TF2. I'm disappointed because I never get to try out or even witness these wacky shenanigans until after they get patched. Sorta like the Ardanian Soldiers' lines.

we must seize the means of game development

coming back to this video, this was such a bad idea

3:41 Comp players really trying to pretend nowadays their bitching wasn't the sole reason the BASED Jumper became the cringe jumper

I knew I shouldn’t have taken that candy from that uncle in an alley

The damage that this video has dealt to fun weapons in TF2 is still palpable to this day.

Competitive players just used one weapon anyways and the same ones why they had to touch them

The noob tube is a perfect example of how you’re wrong. At high levels it is less than average, while at low levels it is overpowered.

Love the name in 7:20

Ronald Reagan would be a great developer for valve. He was also known for being a really good engie main like you.

"Balance" It was the nerf or nothing update lmfao

This video has hurt tf2 more than all the bots and cheaters combined

You used the ball pit image from dash-con. 11/10 you get an extra hour in the ball pit

2:16 what steam chart are you looking at cuz when I look at the player count for TF2 I see that at its all time high the game was at 117k. That was in july 2012. On average approximately 50 thousand people play it still today.

*Ahem* The ambassador didn't deserve such a bad nerf. *sees pitchforks* well nobody complained about it for like 2 millenia... *sees even more pitchforks* I'll just get out now.

When i left ow there was a problem, the pro players knew how to counter bastion and so he was pretty much useless (so he should get a buff) But the new players didnt know how to react to a bastion, and to them it wad OP (so he should get a nerf) but blizzard didnt know how to help and what you said in this video didnt make a lot of sense

I don't care about balancing that much, but i want the old panic attack back.

There's only 1 thing. Many people are confused by it, and it seems you are too, so let me clarify: Old Vita-Saw stat: keep up to 20% uber upon death. This does NOT mean that you keep 20% of whatever you had. This means that you can keep maximum of 20% of total uber. Which means, if you have vita-saw equipped and you had 5% uber when you died, you will respawn with 5% uber. If you had 13% uber when you died, you will respawn with 13% uber. If you had 20% uber when you died, you will respawn with 20% uber. If you had 25% uber when you died, you will respawn with 20% uber. If you had 73% uber when you died, you will respawn with 20% uber. If you had 100% uber when you died, you will respawn with 20% uber. This mechanic is still the same with new Vita-Saw except the percentage limit is determined by how many organs you have collected, but it is still the percentage of TOTAL uber and NOT of the amount which you had when you died.

Yeah, balancing around the 1% of people who have put a lot of effort and time into being the best at a game generally ruins it for normal people because you have to castrate things beyong reason to keep them in line. Casual and competitive balancing should always be kept seperate.

I've always liked this video, especially for its tone. The music is super laid back and subdued, the VO is quieter and more "librarian-like" than usual, and the pacing is much more explanatory and scientific your typical videos. It's always had such a unique vibe to it that I wish was more prevalent in your content.

But trickle down balancing will never fix problems on the lower end of your bell curve that isnt an issue in higher levels of play. it cant fix *insert random weapon here* turns mister blind with no ears guy who installed the game 2 minutes ago into someone who is more or less invincible against newer players because there are things that they dont know about or cant abuse to win. Pyro is a pretty good example. if you're viewing it from a high tier competitive standpoint then he is pretty weak and could still use more buffing/tweaking but from a completely new players perspective hes just a instant I don't need to aim to kill people machine with pretty decent move speed and health, and i dont think the solution comes from only viewing it from the more experienced players perspective. It might not be a problem for the competitive player but a VERY bg problem for the newer ones. and saying git gud is not a solution when they give up and start playing a game that cares about their new players instead.

Vita-saw was just straight up a bad change and will now see practically no use in either format. The old vita-saw was fine if you took into consideration that all classes are available to play and use. Pyro being a particularly powerful counter to Uber with airblast. (Sorta bullshit but whatever.) Now the vita-saw will see no use since the reward of preserving Uber is nowhere near as powerful as just having 25% right now. Especially considering the fact that you have to gather a decent amount of organs to even say the vita-saw was worth it. Competitive balancing and metas are so disconnected from the vast majority of people who play TF2 and I don't want my game balance / experience tailored to fit someone else who doesn't use 70% of the other weapons or sometimes half the classes for that matter.

There should be a tv show where you get hit by different cars every episode.

I'd agree with comp tf2 if they actually played tf2. Instead they play a bastardized version of it which supports their own biases. Like the stickes. It took ages for players to finally get valve to give the damn thing a slap on the wrist nerf. The weapon was basically the poor man's rocket launch but nearly better in everything but reload. It's slightly better now but having something that helps I. Checks and balances would be great. Like that glorious 3 week period after they finally implemented sticky breaking where heavy or well timed and really accurate shotgun players could shoot stickies out of the air. Demos needed to know when to use the stickies and pipes then rather than have their spam cannon.

Isn't this missing out the situations where an item is shit unless you have high skill, making it underpowered in low skill teirs. Or where an item is hard to play against unless you have high skill, making it balanced among skilled players and unbalanced among lower skill players. Ie a powerful but dodge-able rocket. So I'm not sure that 'trickledown balance' works as a concept although it does sound like it's generally true.

The only instance where I can see this reasoning fall appart is when buffing a weapon _specifically_ to be more viable at a certain level of skill. I'm gonna have to bring up Overwatch to give a decent example. Simplifying things, the Reaper (a character that's basically a slower Scout for those not playing Overwatch) recently gained a buff that allowed him to gain back a substantial amount of damage dealt as health, not too different from the effect of the Mad Milk. Apparently the reasoning for this change was to make him more resistant to chip damage while still making him vurnerable to a quick burst of damage from a combo or similar. Since better players could more reliably execute burst damage combos the buff initially appeared balanced. However, because newer and lower skilled players sometimes have a hard time simply aiming, let alone combo-ing moves and abilities, this buff lead to Reaper becoming an absolute monster in both "casual" gamemodes and lower skilled competitive games.

7:21 don’t go to the link... don’t go to the link.. Don’t go to the link... GODDAMMIT RICKROLL

I love your Economics references and how you reference the Lorenzo curve for the player base. Great video

The B.A.S.E. Jumper was nerfed far too much. It used to be viable for a professional-level players and frustrating for below-average players when faced with them in a pub. Now it's viable to no one and basically dead weight on the game since nobody uses it. Instead of balancing around pubstomping, the TF team should make sure that weapons can be used two different effects depending on skill level.

"I'm glad Reagan dead" - Killer Mike

Trickle down economics doesn’t work, do you think this worked?

what I learned from this video is that if you aren't competitive enough, your opinion is invalid.

This applies ok other games but in tf2 12v12 and 6v6/9v9 are completely different formats plus balance and fun are 2 different things

The intro was like "I've snorted cleaning products"

loved the editing style in this! very laid back and minimalist. reminds me of stabby's vids

man trickle down economics worked so well we better start putting it into all of our games. 5 years old and still one of the worst takes. games are still trying to do this, it's why can't take overwatch seriously.

I miss the old panic attck they shouldve just splt the weapon in two

No idea why, but that intro had me laughing my ass off. Gud jobe ankle din.

So far this system of balancing has been effective in my eyes, but I wish The Gloves Of Running Urgently weren't sooooo punishing to use now. I understand they only got nerfed due to comp roll-out times but in a pub they were not op at all. And now if you decide you want to get back to the fight a little bit faster from respawn, you will get there with 150 hp and die in 2 seconds. At this point the negative out ways the positive so much that it isn't worth equipping, and this made heavy even less fun to play in TF2 pubs. I think the drawbacks need to be re imagined and changed as I don't think this balance made both comp and pubs happy.

1:05 Ganondorf in Smash Ultimate: *Are you sure about that*

Now my big question how would this work to make something balanced thats underpowered. Seeing as there's quite some classes and/or weapon options that could use a boost.

He forgot to mention the part where reganomics became an enormous dumpster fire shortly after its implementation

Dead ringer: *Wasn’t balanced after nerfs* Valve: Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to nerf you again.