Played the game since launch, around 800 hours total. Really don't care for the direction the free to play initiative has steered their update choices in, so I'm hanging up my hat(s). Had some fantastic times with this game - hope they balance out the new soldier weapons for all that continue playing. This is what you're up against as of right now, though.

Good luck!

Yeah, I'm right there with you pal, although I quit months before this F2P stuff happened. At a certain point they stopped caring about the balance of the game and more about pushing monetized content out.

Is this footage even supposed to be out!?

Yeah the new items are fucked, no crits and less building damage are not a fucking downsides.

I'm sure this shit will be fixed within a week if SPUF keeps it up.

They will.

I don't know why you think they only care about monetizing items though, these are fucking free if you craft them and it really doesn't take that much. In fact they are less costly than a lot of the Uber Update weapons.

You cant quit.. What will you do with all of your hats? Think of the hats man.

Is this footage even supposed to be out!?

The person in the video is playing against bots.

@LordXavierBritish said:

I don't know why you think they only care about monetizing items though, these are fucking free if you craft them and it really doesn't take that much. In fact they are less costly than a lot of the Uber Update weapons.

Actually I was the one who said that, not the OP, and the argument "you can craft them for free" doesn't really hold water with me when crafting has always been deliberately inconvenient so as to encourage you to buy the items as all F2P games do.

Sounds good man, can I have your hats?

But yeah it seems pretty damn cheap, and I have gotten weird lag spikes when being hit directly my the lasers. They better balance this shit.

Yay knee-jerk reactions... You're jumping to conclusions.

@President_Barackbar said:

@LordXavierBritish said:

I don't know why you think they only care about monetizing items though, these are fucking free if you craft them and it really doesn't take that much. In fact they are less costly than a lot of the Uber Update weapons.

Actually I was the one who said that, not the OP, and the argument "you can craft them for free" doesn't really hold water with me when crafting has always been deliberately inconvenient so as to encourage you to buy the items as all F2P games do.

Each of the new items costs a reclaimed and one item which is equivalent to seven items. I've been playing for awhile so that is almost nothing to me as I have over 200 items sitting in my back pack right now.

The system is set up to make buying seems as, if not more appealing, to new players or those with little patience. If you have been playing for even a few months you should have more than enough items to craft both of these weapons relatively painlessly.

@LordXavierBritish said:

@President_Barackbar said:

@LordXavierBritish said:

I don't know why you think they only care about monetizing items though, these are fucking free if you craft them and it really doesn't take that much. In fact they are less costly than a lot of the Uber Update weapons.

Actually I was the one who said that, not the OP, and the argument "you can craft them for free" doesn't really hold water with me when crafting has always been deliberately inconvenient so as to encourage you to buy the items as all F2P games do.

Each of the new items costs a reclaimed and one item which is equivalent to seven items. I've been playing for awhile so that is almost nothing to me as I have over 200 items sitting in my back pack right now.

The system is set up to make buying seems as, if not more appealing, to new players or those with little patience. If you have been playing for even a few months you should have more than enough items to craft both of these weapons relatively painlessly.

IF the item system goes your way. Sometimes you don't get enough dupes to make metal and sometimes you don't get the right items to craft the others. The point is, its needlessly complicated in order to frustrate you into buying them. That's just my experience though.

@LordXavierBritish said:

@President_Barackbar said:

@LordXavierBritish said:

I don't know why you think they only care about monetizing items though, these are fucking free if you craft them and it really doesn't take that much. In fact they are less costly than a lot of the Uber Update weapons.

Actually I was the one who said that, not the OP, and the argument "you can craft them for free" doesn't really hold water with me when crafting has always been deliberately inconvenient so as to encourage you to buy the items as all F2P games do.

Each of the new items costs a reclaimed and one item which is equivalent to seven items. I've been playing for awhile so that is almost nothing to me as I have over 200 items sitting in my back pack right now.

The system is set up to make buying seems as, if not more appealing, to new players or those with little patience. If you have been playing for even a few months you should have more than enough items to craft both of these weapons relatively painlessly.

IF the item system goes your way. Sometimes you don't get enough dupes to make metal and sometimes you don't get the right items to craft the others. The point is, its needlessly complicated in order to frustrate you into buying them. That's just my experience though.

@Akrid said:

Yay knee-jerk reactions... You're jumping to conclusions.

I'm not, though. While this last update certainly influenced my decision, if you read my post you'd know that it's been a slow burn. I don't think it's mere coincidence that the first substantial update they put out after the game is made free to play is also easily the most suspect update the game has seen. Balancing arguments aside, the rocket launcher and the projectiles it fires cause severe frame rate drops because the model itself is around 4000 polygons, and the projectiles are entirely made of particle effects that are clearly not optimized. Add on top of that the lackluster animations included with the update and I don't think it's wrong to be suspicious of Valve giving the update duties to a B team now that the game is free to play. A last effort to make some money with a 4 year old game and move important development resources elsewhere.

@SSully said:

Sounds good man, can I have your hats?

But yeah it seems pretty damn cheap, and I have gotten weird lag spikes when being hit directly my the lasers. They better balance this shit.

I'd give them to you if I hadn't already uninstalled.

@SmotPoker said:

The person in the video is playing against bots.

Something worthy of note, however it doesn't change anything regarding poor balance and optimization.

@DillonWerner said:

You cant quit.. What will you do with all of your hats? Think of the hats man.

Updates get remembered, but hats never die. Follow your heart kid, and you'll never go wrong.

@LordXavierBritish said:

Yeah the new items are fucked, no crits and less building damage are not a fucking downsides.

I'm sure this shit will be fixed within a week if SPUF keeps it up.

They will.

I don't know why you think they only care about monetizing items though, these are fucking free if you craft them and it really doesn't take that much. In fact they are less costly than a lot of the Uber Update weapons.

Hopefully it is fixed soon, not only for game balance but to remedy the new plague of server crashes associated with this update.

Based on the reaction of the community, the recent TNT and that video (of which I understood absolutely fuck all) you couldn't pay me to play Team Fortress 2. 
 
Good luck, everyone.

As soon as I saw that video I just had to jump in and make one of those for myself...

I think I might be missing the point.

Just played a round with someone who had it. Its apperent in the video the guy is playing vs bots. The shots I could easily dodge and did not seem to take much damage from. A medic all ways kept me alive and I got quite a fewk ills on the guy using the gun. We also had a guy on our team using one. He..got a few lucky kills but it seems the gun might do lower damage then a normal rocket. 

That laser rocket launcher really is in the game? Looks OP as f******ck. 
I think I might have to get one soon, before it gets balanced!

Anyone interested in fixing the lag issue due to the insanely high poly count on the projectile here's a link to someone who replaced it with a normal poly count model.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2008995

I just started playing after a long hiatus again and saw all this. Its super OP and I really hope there's  a way to fix it, but it doesn't seem like they can since people payed for it. It really sucks...guess we'll just have to wait till TF3...if that's even a possibility! 

I just started playing after a long hiatus again and saw all this. Its super OP and I really hope there's  a way to fix it, but it doesn't seem like they can since people payed for it. It really sucks...guess we'll just have to wait till TF3...if that's even a possibility! 

@LordXavierBritish: Ehh, trading is kind of a cop out instead of dealing with the actual problem.

Whoa.

Wow, that rocket launcher is just... wow.

WTH!? Been away from TF2 for 3 days and this happens!

@LordXavierBritish said:

Yeah the new items are fucked, no crits and less building damage are not a fucking downsides.

Yes they are. Random critical hits make rockets hit really hard, and the tooltip for the gun is wrong, it doesn't do less damage to buildings, it does no damage. So I can disable a turret for 4 seconds with alt fire, but can't destroy it easily. Also, while I have only spent a short amount of time with it, the actual lasers don't appear to be any different than the rockets except for the fact that they sometimes cause my fps to drop.

@Bigrhyno said:

@LordXavierBritish said:

Yeah the new items are fucked, no crits and less building damage are not a fucking downsides.

Yes they are. Random critical hits make rockets hit really hard, and the tooltip for the gun is wrong, it doesn't do less damage to buildings, it does no damage. So I can disable a turret for 4 seconds with alt fire, but can't destroy it easily. Also, while I have only spent a short amount of time with it, the actual lasers don't appear to be any different than the rockets except for the fact that they sometimes cause my fps to drop.

They seem to move slower. Though, I tend to gravitate toward no-crit servers, so 'No Random Criticals' becomes meaningless.

Anyway, to OP complaining about drops, these guns are so inexpensive to make that I was actually surprised at how cheap they were and instantly made the Mangler. I have more than enough to make the pistol as well but I'm waiting to see if they release any more items as is speculated before I do.

Having put 800 hours into the game as you say you have (which is consequently about the same (though a little less) amount of time that I have), I can't see how it's possible that you don't have enough metal to craft this stuff. How are you complaining about not finding dupes? At this point every item you find should be either part of the Uber pack or second Polycount pack that you didn't have, or should be a dupe.

Not to be a dick, but if you are really throwing in the towel for TF2, why make a thread about it? If you instead mean to influence our opinions about the game by showing us some changes by Valve that you dislike, why not represent it as so, instead of this weird "farewell to TF2" forum post? At the very least, why not make it a blog post?

@LordXavierBritish said:

@Bigrhyno: It's a rocket launcher with no ammo and five shots. Building damage is not a downside, this is not a 1v1 game and the Soldier is not the only person on the team capable of taking down buildings. And no-crits has always been a bad downside that some servers completely negate.

No ammo is not really an issue if you know maps well enough to keep yourself stocked up on ammo. Five shots may be a bit overpowered. I know this isn't a 1v1 game, but I can't always trust my teammates to finish off a turret, it's more reliable to pop out of and back behind walls between rockets to destroy a turret myself. The no crit server isn't an issue for me since I enjoy that aspect of the game. I'm not saying the weapon is balanced (I am also not saying it isn't, I just haven't used it enough to make a decision) but I don't think it's game breaking. The only thing I think may need to be changed is the five shot aspect.

TF2 hasn't been balanced in a long long time. It's mindless fun i don't play it to win or be competitive i play it to relax and fuck around. If i want competitive and balance I'll go play halo/cod and listen to people raggee.

@Asurastrike said:

Not to be a dick, but if you are really throwing in the towel for TF2, why make a thread about it? If you instead mean to influence our opinions about the game by showing us some changes by Valve that you dislike, why not represent it as so, instead of this weird "farewell to TF2" forum post? At the very least, why not make it a blog post?

It was made to both describe my distaste for the recent changes as well as the tipping point where I just don't want to bother with it anymore, and to also get a discussion going on other's feelings about the latest update as well as where they're at with TF2. Not really sure why that's weird, it's a message board about video games. I think more people can relate to the situation then you give credit for.

The Mangler does less damage, does about 10% damage to buildings, and the charge shot leaves you vurnerable while charging and with 0 rockets afterwords. Take away the 5th rocket and it will be fine.

The Mangler does less damage, does about 10% damage to buildings, and the charge shot leaves you vurnerable while charging and with 0 rockets afterwords. Take away the 5th rocket and it will be fine.

@J12088 said:

TF2 hasn't been balanced in a long long time. It's mindless fun i don't play it to win or be competitive i play it to relax and fuck around. If i want competitive and balance I'll go play halo/cod and listen to people raggee.

did you say cod was balanced ..No

Competitive tf2 as in the 6v6 format and rules are as balanced as they get. NO unlocks allowed expect the medic's kritz and ubersaw.

No one class is overpowered.

HOLY SHIT.

That laser rocket launcher really is in the game? Looks OP as f******ck. I think I might have to get one soon, before it gets balanced!

I was on right after the update and ran into a whole team of soldiers with lazers. My observations:
 
*Particle effects are annoying, blinding everyone
*Takes no ammo, so soldiers can flank, rocket jump into positions with no dispenser or ammo spawns and just spam rockets without worrying about ammo
*five shots per clip adds to the particle spamming, etc
*charged shot sets you on fire, so it's like a pyro that gets a sniper rifle that burns 
 
All in all, felt pretty unbalanced and highly annoying

God I hate people like you.

@Zyte said:

That laser rocket launcher really is in the game? Looks OP as f******ck. I think I might have to get one soon, before it gets balanced!

The "problem" is that the guy using it is really good, and the guys on the wrong end might not be as good. I haven't tried the Cowrangler, but I crafted the other one and it felt like a more dangerous flaregun. Didn't get that many kills with it straight of the bat. But yeah, kind of feels OP, but more than OP it feels just out of style and fashion of the rest of the TF 2. That fizzleeffect is just not any good as it reminds me of HL 2 Death Match. 

Played it since release.. I'm glad I stopped playing this game when the engineer-update came out... didn't regret it at all!

@J12088 said:

TF2 hasn't been balanced in a long long time. It's mindless fun i don't play it to win or be competitive i play it to relax and fuck around. If i want competitive and balance I'll go play halo/cod and listen to people raggee.

did you say cod was balanced ..No

Competitive tf2 as in the 6v6 format and rules are as balanced as they get. NO unlocks allowed expect the medic's kritz and ubersaw.

No one class is overpowered.

@Gentlegamer: You mean a flare gun? Which pyro's have been "sniping" with for ages? They have two of those.

After playing a few games with soldiers using these, they don't seem OP and only seem effective when they're a good player.

It needs a little balancing but it's not that bad. I still prefer the regular rocket launcher.
I never tire of seeing people "give up" on TF2 after every single update and have recently started blaming all the new updates (which have been awesome, mind you) on the game going F2P.

So your saying there's less whiney TF2 players now? Hooray!