Moving the discussion from the portal 2 thread to over here:
Attack the person rather than their logic, nice.
There was never any large amount of skill in TF2 and with the recent updates theres less.
You're trying to tell me that Natasha and the Sandman added skill to the game? The real skills came from team work and communication which was butchered when valved decided to blur the lines between the various classes.
I guess balance doesn't matter for the competitve community either who usually injects life into the game after the mainstream audience had it full.
I guess it doesn't matter that Valve backflipped on the design policies they worked years trying to prefect just to get some more money out of the casual gamers.
No, It's part of their logic and if you think there isn't skill needed, well, you're playing in the wrong places. I said it in this thread quite a few times, the server you play in makes a huge difference in your experience with TF2. I either play in competitive servers or pub servers where competitive players go to. It doesn't matter if you have a sandman or a natascha or even a valve developer one-hit-kill rocket launcher. Skilled people will own you. I'm not saying I'm a competitive pro, I'm just saying it's more fun to play with them.
I may be very biased on this, but I really don't see any crazy back flip there. The only item that I find really weird is the Razorback, but then again, it wastes the sniper's secondary slot, so. Plus whether people buy things or not doesn't make a difference to gameplay.
You seem to think everyone cares that you spent money at an online store. Some people want to play a game without either paying money to get weapons or spend years waiting to get the same weapons as everyone else.
As for the community. Its crap. Theres no skill left in it, I can join Tf2 and dominate whole teams which is sad. The community just wants more crappy weapons and hats which isolates new players from entering. The community is stranggling itself with its over all shitiness.
TF2 is NOT an MMORPG.
In closing: I wish to state I disagree with you sir. Also to inform that I hope never to meet you in a dark alley.
I've never spent money in the store and never will. Where the fuck did you get that idea? Don't go assuming things about other people.
You don't have to waste years, only weapons from other games aren't craftable and you can always trade. See, that's just whining you want things now instead of enjoying the game... Or not enjoying it, since it sounds more like you hate TF2. In which case, why do you even care?
Again, you're playing at the wrong places. You cannot expect any skill or fun if you go into a random pub server. It also doesn't isolate new players -at all- the vanilla weapons are just as good as any other item and depending on your style of play much better. The community is doing just fine as well and that whole TF2-MMORPG is extremely non-sense. I don't know if you go to the steam forums or not, but seems like you'd fit just fine in there.
And dark alley? Wtf? Weirdo.
Class balance. Balance between items.
Its not about me, my skill, or the items I have, or how well I can use them.
I'm talking about class blurring, items that turn one class into a counter to its "counter class."
There is balance to TF2. It doesn't need to be perfect, but they designed the game around "oh, that's why I died, I'll do this differently" and none of the new items allow for that. There's too many combinations, too many choices, and too much "I can't counter that."
And you said it's not about your skill? There's nothing you cannot counter with skill. Seriously, come play with us in a pro/semi-pro server. I know from personal experience you can bring any weapon you think that fucks the game balance and people will hand your ass to you in a silver plate with vanilla weapons.
You know... I like diversity, I like options, I like combination, and I like choices... If TF2 had stagnated into only having the same old set of weapons and had to play them over and over and over, I wouldn't like TF2 anymore. It's the reason I was bored at CSS. I played it for a month and that was all there was to it. Not only that, but the community was whining about the updates when I asked them what they thought of it and if they would like some changes, more weapons. I don't mean this offensively, but it almost sounded like they were factory workers that only had to press a couple buttons and do something repetitive non-stop. It's very menial and really doesn't keep my interest for long.