Teamwork Is An Illusion

Just casually chatting about a casual game. :)
Don't forget to check out @MAXIMUM.DAMAGE gaming videos if you want more casual gaming vibes.

Competitive Beggar's Bazooka clip from @AntoniFP
Pub push animation by @Krunkidile
Sound editing and mixing by @SoundSmithTF2

[UncleDane]

Also if you wanna watch me play Plants VS Zombies and other games with my buds, go here and take a listen while you game/eat/sleep/repeat:

[Bum.]

So called “free thinkers” when the administrator says there are 60 second left:

[Ragnarok]

Team Fortress 2 is a horror game where you're locked in a lobby with 11 clowns. The twist being...there's 12 clowns.

[puzzlepuddles]

pub pushes are like being a student and realizing the homework is due tonight

[fluffydestroyer]

I remember some of the tf2 devs (I think in an interview or the dev commentary) talking about how the game was designed as a "single player" game where each class's objective is essentially selfish, but by pursuing it you end up helping your team.
a demoman who camps the enemy spawn is doing it to get big frags, but ends up helping the team by stemming the flow of enemy reinforcements. an engineer who builds a sentry in a good spot is doing it to get many frags, but ends up helping the team by providing a good safe area for them. a medic healing everyone is doing it to see the number go up and eventually become god with the über, but ends up healing the whole team in the process. et cetera.
it's a pretty good way to design a pub game, everyone ends up working together without even thinking about it.

[NeekyChando]

one time i saw a guy named Solider Jumpscare and he would just rocket jump and land in front of you holding an objector with the word BOO! written on it, and then he'd detonate himself

It was really fucking funny

[Inferno_Engineer]

Everyone has their own objective, but when it’s that last minute it’s just a hivemind with all one goal

[OblivionPrince]

I'd argue the domination mechanic was WAY more important when the game first came out, and everyone looked exactly the same. It was a good way to tell who was the top scoring enemy

[aussiegordon]

“Mission ends in 60 seconds” is a sleeper agent activation code

[epicgamerzfail]

The fortress is an illusion too. And the 2 too. Actually everything is an illusion; all I see are hats and bots

[lonewolfinthetardis]

12:55 "Nobody is ever in voice chat leading the troops into battle.", boy do I have a tale for you.
There was one time on a 2Fort match, where the opposing team was made up of mostly hackers spawncamping us. One guy on my team hopped on voice chat and told us what we'd need to do. He made sure that the Medics (about 5) built up their charge in spawn, while also making sure that everyone stayed away from the doors, and telling everyone else what weapons we'd need. As soon as the Medics had built up their charges, he assigned a Medic to almost everyone, made sure that we all knew what we had to do, and then told us to get out there. Guns blazing, ubercharged, we drove the hackers back. Eventually the hackers left, and we rolled over the opposite team to capture the intelligence and win the game.
That is the story of Garsaxon44, the man who united his team on 2Fort.

[SolarLight]

I was actually in the process of writing a video about Pass Time and how the developers were specifically trying to put emphasis on teamwork, only for the team's 3 scouts to run the ball into a bunch of sentry guns and never pass it ever, and only for the pass time gamemode to end up being extremely close to dead

[follower]

Learning about the "Pub push" thing made this game so much funnier to me.

Like every casual lobby has this Winter Soldier-esque transformation into a well-organized fighting force that could rival pro players in capability when the old lady speaks into the microphone.

[MrPinshadow]

The most important thing to understand is that everything about the fake teamwork is BY DESIGN. They knew from TFC that getting a bunch of idiots to work together is impossible in a pub setting. It's why Medic has to be the strongest class or no one will want to play the healer while everyone frags, and why most classes are countered by core design choices like Pyros flames making it easy to track spies so teams will naturally gravitate towards better class compositions rather than simply a perk that lets you see cloak shimmer or whatever. The craziest thing is that NO OTHER TEAM BASED SHOOTER seemed to learn this lesson from TF2 and expects random pubs to act like pro esports 6s teams, and then wonder how Overwatch ranked got so toxic so fast.

EDIT: Adding onto this since it seemed to strike a chord with people. My point here is strictly relevant to the solo queuing style of play, or how most people play multiplayer games. Games like Overwatch and MOBAs can be fun when you get teams that work well together but it's inherently a dice roll, not to mention smaller team sizes inherently discourage people from going off and trying their own thing. Which is fine for those games!, but I think a strong point in TF2's favor that people don't seem to bring up is that casual is 12v12, when was the last time we had a big multiplayer game hit with that concentration of players in a match?

I also don't have any problem with 6's TF2, because it's a small scene where everyone involved has to actively seek it out and are far more likely to be taking it seriously than official ranked in most other games (and also because I just find 6s TF2 WAY more fun than any other similar game). As for Valve attempting to the scene and then dropping the game like a rock when they realized it failed, I think the main issue was simply that the core audience for TF2 wasn't super interested in a ranked mode in the first place. If they wanted to play comp, they could join a 6s or Highlander team. The community liked the idea of competitive since it meant Valve had to keep actively supporting the game, but even when Blue Moon finally came out and made it... playable, it died instantly. If the demand was there from the majority of the playerbase that wouldn't have happened. That's still on Valve for not trying to incentivize, or even ADVERTISE why 6s might be cool to try, but it's Valve.

As for Medic being the strongest class, it's obviously not perfect, and even the TF2 team admits that (that's why he got the first class update, complete with the original straight upgrade Blutsauger and the Ubersaw, and why the Crossbow never got nerfed, because it gives medic a much higher skill cap and makes him more fun). You could theoretically give him different healing mechanics aside from the Medigun and it would probably work out to make him more interesting to more players, but Valve always seemed VERY hesitant to change Medic too much.

[RandomDude]

15:17 engie isn't talking to himself, he's talking to his teleporter. he treats his buildings like they're his pardner, it's cute :3

[SamOliver]

I think you vocalized a key reason why I still love this game so much even in the midst of the bot infestation; there are very few other "team-based" shooters keen on delivering what is both a nominally team-oriented experience whilst also not sacrificing the goals, aspirations, and playstyles of the individual.

I remember a bit that I developed with a friend called the Engineer Traffic Association. We would set up on RED on a chokey map with distinct but narrow pathways (like cp_gorge before the bridge of the first cap) and block one of the paths with a dispenser. We would put up literal "Detour" signs with sprays and instruct BLU, calmly through text chat (or VC if alltalk was on), to take the alternative route to the point, but we would essentially act like friendlies and not shoot anyone until they destroyed the dispenser, at which point we hardcore beeline the person who destroyed the dispenser until they died. It was one of the funniest things I've ever done in this game and one of my fondest TF2 memories.

[tacticaljunk]

I have a hundred positive memories of moments in this game, but I couldn't tell ya if we won or lost that match.

[PassTheSnails]

Pyro being healed 20 health points on Extinguishing a teammate is a perfect example of this. You think I did it because you were going to die. I think I did it because I was going to die. We are not the same.

[The_Eternal_Grog_Tankyard]

9:00 "its good background noise to study or relax to." tell that to the scout i heard being burned alive with napalm there.

[jjjjjjjjj]

12 friendly hoovies all switch to minigun at 60 seconds. Nightmare fuel