There's a funny quote from B4nny (top TF2 player) where he said the reason he never moved to Overwatch is because "it's like playing against the Wrangler and Vaccinator in every match".
Tf2 is weird when it comes to balance, on one hand you have some great balanced sidegrades like the tommislav, kritzkreg, iron bomber, dragons fury, ect, ect but on the other hand you have things like the natasha, scorch shot and vaccinator which are horrendous to fight against. It really goes to show how difficult it is to balance weapons for the other players in mind.
@@cthulhubecausewhynot1182 Dont think it matters, RUclipsrs / people don't own words, free to say anything you want even if some RUclipsr or person said the same thing before.
>tomislav this weapon has no role or identity. if it was well balanced people wouldnt be arguing which is the better gun. you dont see anyone arguing stock vs direct hit, or stock vs kritzkrieg, do you? thats because all of those are properly balanced sidegrades that also has their own identity >dragons fury its borderline useless, the only saving grace of pyro is airblast and trading effective airblasts for what boils down to a horrible soldier is not a trade any pyro main wants to make. thats why you dont see good pyros using it, getting to shoot back rockets is always better than this lag machine that randomly decides you shouldnt get that damage bonus >iron bomber yet another weapon with no role or identity, this time its a straight upgrade over stock, because no rollers means you can effectively use it like a stickybomb launcher, any missed grenades land on the ground and act as traps anyways heres all the perfectly balanced sidegrades: FORCE A NATURE, SODA POPPER, BLACK BOX, DIRECT HIT, BEGGARS BAZOOKA, RESERVE SHOOTER, GUNBOATS, ALL THE BANNERS, DEGREASER, BACKBURNER, DETONATOR, FLARE GUN, LOOSE CANNON, SECOND BANANA, FRONTIER JUSTICE, WIDOWMAKER, RESCUE RANGER, EUREKA EFFECT, GUNSLINGER, KRITZKRIEG, HUNTSMAN, JARATE, COZY CAMPER, LE TRANGER, BIG EARNER
I think the posterchild of bad weapon design for me is the upgraded Lava Gun from Ratchet and Clank 2. It goes from a unique weapon that shoots Lava, which will increase in range depending how long you hold it down, and even leaves trails of lava on the ground that can hit enemies. And then it turns into a generic gun that shoots short range fire rocks in a fixed arc. I remember as a kid feeling gutted when I spent forever upgrading it, only for it to become super fucking boring. Iirc the devs got this complaint a lot from fans so they made it a rule to never drastically alter a weapon when it's upgraded.
The one niche it has is it does a fuckton of dps, but who cares when other weapons do that even better with better versatility and I liked the gun for being able to clean up small trash mobs with good ammo economy
@@SoulBL4D3the fuckton of DPS actually comes in pretty handy with bosses, (you can level like 40% of that god forsaken mech boss's health just with the Meteor Gun, it's pretty cracked) it's certainly a weird choice and changes the entire purpose of the weapon, but it's niche of a metric fuck ton of DPS at least softens the blow
I really liked the lava gun but I cannot believe between so many weapon upgrades that one got the worst one of them all I’m pretty sure the aim is bad too I noticed how I couldn’t kill a row of smaller enemies because of that awful upgrade Maybe I should’ve played this game on pc emulator with cheat engine just so I could bring back those hours
6:10 One small thing: Low floor/high ceiling is not necessarily always better, there can be benefits to making the ceiling of something (Not necessarily only but including weapons) deliberately lower, and there can be benefits of making the floor deliberately higher. Just a small thing I felt like pointing out because thats often under-discussed and its something the importance of which I only recently discovered myself.
@@RedGreenBeep256 There are probably more niche reasons one could come up with, but the main reason, especially in competitive games is that, the higher the skill ceiling, the higher the difference between very good players and bad/average players. And in competitive games features generally need to be balanced around their strongest iteration. Meaning, that by giving something a very high skill ceiling, you need to balance it around those that reached that ceiling (or are approaching close to it), making it potentially unusable for those further down on the skill latter. Thats not necessarily always true. It is possible to balance things in a way where they are equally effective at all skill levels. The counterplay to something also has a skill floor and a skill ceiling after all and if you manage to make it so that the skill to effectiveness curve is the same for the "play" and the "counterplay", you don't face that problem. But needless to say, that is something that is a lot easier said than done and its not practical to do for all of a games features. I'd even say that its borderline impossible to do for many of the features you'd want from a game. "Aiming" for example is inherently "play" skewed for the most part. Its probably a good idea to try to get them closer to each other, its very rarely gonna be perfect enough for you not to face the "skill ceiling" problem to some degree. The problem generally also gets worse the older a game gets, because the difference between the best and the worst players tends to get bigger over time. Giving something a high skill floor on the other hand can make for something that is really rewarding for those who do put the time in. There are whole genres that are designed around having a high skill floor. Souls-likes for example are in large parts as addictive as they are because they continuously raise and continuously make you reach that skill ceiling. Reaching a skill floor often leads to very rapid and noticeable changes in gameplay feel and skill and can thus imo be a lot more rewarding (/rewarding in a different way) than "just" progressing on the skill latter of something that had a low skill floor. Also, there often is a sense of bride behind being able to play something with a very high skill floor effectively. Hope that all made sense...
@@emptyptr9401 Fair point but I disagree with skill floors. A low skill floor doesn't necessarily equate to a trade-off for less rewarding gameplay. The mechanical depth of a weapon can reward the player just as much as overcoming a skill floor. Designers reward skill because it incentivizes the most fun playstyle of a game. An accessible weapon is better at this for more skill levels and more rewarding in that facet. Dark Souls hasn't become beloved out of its combat or movement. It's for the times when you finally beat that boss in the game designed against you. When you lower the skill floor, it's a trade-off of fun for accomplishment
Love the point about considering what it feels like to be attacked by weapons as that’s something a lot of discourse in gaming communities miss or undervalue
And this is the reason why Teemo in LoL and Mei in OW have always been hated: they're fundamentally unfun to play against. In Teemo's case: damage over time that keep hurting you when you get out of combat is not fun, an invisible enemy who always has the initiative is not fun, a fast enemy who can consistently run away from you is not fun, a status effect that makes your basic attacks useless is not fun, and getting hurt and slowed by invisible traps when minding your business is not fun. In Mei's case: getting slowed and frozen solid in a shooter is not fun, getting bursted down by headshots while frozen solid is not fun, seeing an opponent freeze itself to become invulnerable and recover over half its health on a button press is not fun, a wall suddenly blocking your way is not fun.
@@f145hr3831jrmei has been struggling in overwatch 2 to be a threat outside her ult ever since they removed her freeze, nowadays sombra is the poster child of being hated by everyone.
Fairly self explanatory. In base Half-Life 2 you use it for one chapter, Ravenholm, then never touch it again for the rest of the game because afterwards it just stops being useful, 1: due to abundance of ammo and 2: due to the level design not allowing you to use it effectively. Nova prospect for instance has almost no gravity gun-able props.
@@MattyMatthew-m4o That's fair, though I'd argue it has it's uses, like with landmines, weapon utility and such. But it's not a good argument against what you've said.
the Chad Beast: willingly makes it easier for enemies to hit you in exchange for being more deadly to them with good aim and positioning the Virgin Natascha: willingly nerfing your damage just for a crutch to make it easier to track enemies and harder for them to fight you
@@whoisanarnb >brass beast is so- (eats a pipe) much fun- (eats a rocket) to use- (eats a sticky) you really gotta- (gets headshot) give it a cha- (gets backstabbed)
For a terribly designed weapon in a single-player game, I'd point to the Gluon Gun from Half-Life. It's dead simple to use, a damage hose in the most literal possible sense, meanwhile the Tau Cannon, which draws from the same rare, precious ammo pool, is one of the best-designed weapons in all of first person shooters (I will die on this hill) thanks to its multiple firing modes, fun movement tech, and unique mechanics. Not only is the Gluon Gun a boring and unfun weapon to use, but dealing more damage than the Tau Cannon while drawing from the same ammo pool actively encourages you not to use a far more fun and engaging weapon.
Nah the hypershot would be so much worse, a one shot quick loading GL on a close range class would be annoying, engi could slap you with his warthog and if you’re too far hypershot. Not to mention he had SSG’s so he wouldn’t even need to aim, just toss on you and watch.
For as much as TF2(Titanfall 2) is hailed as a fantastic game(and it is great), its multiplayer gun design is some of the poorest I've seen. With the quickest killing weapons (CAR, Alternator, R97) have the lowest skillfloor, fastest firing, largest magazine, low falloff, fastest reloads AND are hitscan, while the weapons requiring the highest amount of skill investment, (EPG, Softball, Mastiff), namely any of the projectile weapons, are garbage. To put it into perspective, most if not all of SMGs can kill you before the project you've fired at an enemy even reaches them, such as from the LStar or EPG. If you are decent, you are able to instantly beam down anyone, even if their taking advantage of the games movement, while also not being to be hit yourself, making it a horrible time for new players or anyone not using the meta.
It's also so unimaginably boring. Every now and then I see people who run ONLY stim + CAR combo, with CAR having like 10000-150000 kills, and they're so... soulless. I really question if they even have fun at this point, because all you see them doing is: -enter the match -immediately run to the enemy spawn -start stacking up kills with no effort or competition -never, EVER, drop a titan -match ends, the guy has like 30-40 kills -immediately leave, ignoring the evac phase I tried sweating like this for a week and that felt like working overtime at Amazon
@@n0klaThat's metas for you, the most boring way to play but people do it anyway because they prioritise winning over fun when it comes to entertainment
Honestly, I'd include the Spitfire in the genetal list of metaslave weapons too, even if its power is mostly just escalated by the console environment.
EPG is one of my favorite weapons in the game, and i quite suck at the game. Suck enough to justify using Spitfire (which is another favorite, love LMGs in games as a whole) with A-wall. Though at least i try to avoid camping and use A-wall more as an emergency shield.
I'll definitely agree on the auto snipers being poor design, there are few worse positions for an option in a competitive game than being easy to use at a low level + hard to counter at a low level + non-existent at a high level.
The machete in Hunt used to be extremely powerful in early Hunt, ¨Winchete¨ was the name of a meta loadout before the game transitioned to the current long ammo meta. There was no movement inertia back then and no other melee weapon so you could run at people, dodging shots and hit them with powerful bleed. The game basically evolved around the machete which is why the buffed it a while back. It's current niche is a small slot, extremely cheap, rending melee weapon. The baseball bat is also cheap but blunt weapons are worse against players. There are also some bosses who are weak against rending. Idk if I would call it useless, the problem is that it's so easy to make money in the game that a lot of super budget options just lost their main advantage. Also could be worse, could be the heavy knife.
So it's not exactly talking about a "bad" gun, but I think talking about thr MP40 in Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. See it exemplifies how a weapons aesthetics is incredibly important in a game. It was a perfectly symmetrical game, where the only difference between Allied and Nazi weapons was the non mechanical aesthetics. But this created an issue because the community was convinced that the Tommy gun was more powerful than the mp40. And no matter how much the devs tried to tell us they were the same, no one was convinced. They fixed the issue by making the mp40 louder and and meatier. People were then convinced the mp40 was buffed.
I started using the Natascha after a while of playing Heavy on community servers, where there were almost always a few highly skilled scouts and soldiers on the other team. As it's Heavy's best way of handling high-mobility classes, especially on open maps. People often mention the strafe, but I don't think I've ever seen someone do it in an actual match.
It's easy to do the strafing method against more telegraphed slows, such as the Sandman ball, but when a Heavy pops around the corner and starts chewing you down with a minigun (the -25% damage penalty is something I guess, but it is still a minigun chunking you for 150+ dps even at mid range) it suddenly becomes a lot harder to switch to the technique on the fly. And if you are in the air at all... rest in peace, you got hard countered.
"Why not let the players make their own weapons" -me, who's working on a game where you can do that (you have a set amount of points based on your level which are used to build weapons. Increasing a stat or adding an ability costs points, and reducing a stat or removing an ability refunds points)
16:09 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe back in Blue Moon, they pushed an update to fix the slow mechanic so you could just strafe to run at full speed, then within days they just undid this fix because it made the Natascha so overwhelmingly powerful.
A weapon that I find balanced overall I'd the Flint-knock from Fortnite. It is a single shot, high power pistol with a long reload animation. Dealing 90 damage (ten less than the full health) and 180 damage headshot (leaving a fully healed player with only 20 or 70 health left depending on what mode you are playing). The skill part is it is really had to get close to a player enough to deal the damage, the balanced part is the long reloading animation and single use, and the fun part is that it deals knockback to the player and the enemy. (Unless the player is crouching then only the enemy is shot back)
I used to play pixel gun so much as a kid but over years and after taking a long break and trying to play it again I just can't. The weapon design is just SO all over the place and there's so many weapon and gear and modules and pets that it's hard to figure out what your opponent can do especially since you can switch them mid game and thers so many categories to equip to at once. There's like thousands of weapons in the game now also and some can have like 3-4 gimmicks at on a single weapon
Oh boi if you think the D3 auto sniper is a beast in cs2, you haven't seen the bs wall bang they pull in 1.6, like how tf a guy in assault clear whole team through roof, wall and the guy on the bridge with just the d3 and camera or callout
OMG! THE RETURN! Welcome back, man! I absolutely love your videos and your sense of humor. You're a great inspiration to anyone out there wanting to take a dive into the world of content creation. Love you! 💜
I will NEVER forgive Dishonored for making a ton of cool fucking weapons and then actively punishing you for using them (I’ve beaten all endings, It’s just if you don’t want us to use em why’d you put them in?!?!)
16:20 good god thats a reference and a half thanks for immediately taking me back 3 years speaking of references, with all the runescape gags, osmumten's fang could have sat on this video tbh. tremendously useful in a frankly insane number of places, and in fairness, made a lot more content viable for midgame players, but still blew way too much of a hole in the melee weapon ladder. in the time it took to be nerfed a tiny bit (only having its wacky accuracy passive on stab attack style), it left its mark on content introduced after it (duke succ is a prominent example -- he really felt designed with pre-nerf fang set to slash in mind, and in the aftermath, he's basically as miserable as abyssal sire before the fang existed). so it loses out on balance. also feels quite boring to use -- wheeee look at me hitting about 30 every five ticks. riveting stuff. for the longest time its animations were recycled from elsewhere, too. so it felt like a garry's mod admin gun in an MMO. for the third dimension, skill floor/ceiling doesnt exactly factor into specific weapons in osrs beyond making sense of attack speed relative to whatever dancing around you want to do between hits.
I immediately saw the Machete in the thumbnail and had to click. The cavalry saber always made it irrelevant but funnily enough, they recently added the throwing spear, which is so strong that it makes pretty much all of the melee weapons(except for bomblance) redudant.
Bit of a long shot (pun intended), but the award sniper rifle from the old Battlefront 2.The other rewards make way more sense. Pistols with limited ammo (as opposed to unlimited with an overheating mechanic) but more damage. Tighter spread shotguns. A burst fire rifle instead of an automatic one, to encourage accuracy. But the sniper rifle? Its a reward for a number of headshots in a row that gives you a weapon with less ammo (both total and per mag) but higher damage. This kind of makes sense. "Youre good at being precise, here, your shots count even more now." The issue is that it flat out robs you of your ability to headshot. It might be broken, but it stops working on heads and becomes a gun that can pierce and one hit kill on a bodyshot and has a long bullet travel time. It flips the playstyle on its head. And this isnt something you can opt out of. If you get enough headshots, at some point you can not switch to your secondary and back to your primary without getting a shitty gun. This is worse in single player, since you have an internal rank and once that gets high enough on a given class, you are *stuck* with the award gun.
Great video! You have great style and fantastic editing. The air blast mechanic is so fun. I still play tf2 periodically mainly for that. It's interesting that it's only possible because they introduced another bullet type with explosives. Which let's them split the balance between classes. I don't see scout mains much anymore but when I do they wreck me. Bullets are my weakness. I could go on, but there is a higher skill ceiling to pyro than most people think and its really fun.
I admit, my favorite weapons are sustain weapons and melee weapons. The only real PvP shooter I play is TF2, though I play a shit-ton of Doom clones/mods. It's not the same for everyone, but I get extreme satisfaction over bellowing out a torrent of lead and watching hoards of enemies fall back dead over each other, some of the most fun I've had in TF2 is fighting against some really high level power classes and ending up mostly on a level playing field despite each other's weakness because we all have such high DPS prime to catch each other off guard. And for melee, I'd have to choose 3D platformers to pick my favorite combat styles from, where even your movement tools like groundpounding, kicking, and jumping can be used to dispatch enemies. Imagine if someone made a movement focused shooter that's basically 3D Mario with guns, I'd eat that up like cake. Oh and of course there's Demoman in general. Something about the way his pipebombs arch and how universally useful his stickies are make him so fun to play as for me, plus I can't get enough of that stupid crit axe.
I really wonder if there was a better way to make Natascha a supportive sidegrade. Mad Milk on hit would be effectively as problematic (if not more) as when the very same weapon outright healed the 300hp heavy per hit instead of slowing enemies, Jarate/Deathmark on hit would be equally problematic since you'd turn the minigun into a laser beam and no amount of damage nerfing could balance that out, Gasoline on hit would just be an absolute nightmare of spaghetti code to figure out, and Bleed on hit just isn't really "supportive" to begin with. The only way I could potentially see a feasible rework of Natascha as a supportive sidegrade is to remove the slowdown on hit and instead turn the self-damage resistance on revving+low hp into like a 10% damage resistance aoe on revving -- like the battalion's backup buff, but much weaker and without the anti-sentry and anti-crit aspects -- but even that I wonder if it'd be too much without a further nerfing of minigun damage.
I really like the idea of some form of a weak AOE effect with the natascha, something like you said like one of the banners but weaker. Heavy has always felt like he needed a more team oriented primary and a simple rework to the natascha like that would be amazing.
@@P-Bean I guess a much weaker Buff Banner AOE on revv that still keeps damage falloff (aka no mini-crits) could also potentially work, but a weaker Conch AOE on revv would most definitely not work, whether that be on the healing aspect or the speed boost one -- for obvious reasons. In any case, we just don't have enough debuff diversity in TF2 to make Natascha work as a supportive sidegrade through an on-hit effect, and I doubt the singular intern would be keen on making more of them from scratch.
Changing the slow to a reduction in air control might work, maybe. It's less punishing in some ways, but still fulfills the intended role of absolutely stuffing rocket jumps and flanking scouts. But then, player feedback is a problem - how does a scout know he's got garbage air control until he jumps and finds himself barely able to turn? And how is this useful to people who haven't wasted thousands of hours of their life on the game? I do kind of like the "spray some scout duelling your soldier to give your soldier an easy W", because a scout who can't airstrafe good isn't going to be winning that fight. But it's so hard to make work. The only real way is a complete rework, maybe damage resistance stripping, maybe damage vulnerability to non-bullet damage like a sort of reverse Pain Train on the target, but bleh.
I would say TF2 outside of a few very limited settings is not a competitive game. That is to say the population of a match is not expected to be optimizing it's gameplay.
I consider the Natascha to be very wear, and hearing you upplay it as possibly Heavies best primary is alien to me. The Tomislav and Stock still reign supreme at the top of the food chain and the Brass Beast pulls of the damage resistance better than the Natascha. You could argue whether the Huo Long Heater is better than the Natascha in certain situations, even.
27:52 I'd argue that only rebalancing weapons already frequently used in competitive should look at the competitive scene. The competitive scene in TF2 is unique because it bans weapons that are overpowered or otherwise break how the game would normally play out, and for obvious reasons weapons considered underpowered aren't used often, either. Therefore there's a Goldilocks zone of weapons that matter for competitive balance. If you try to nerf a weapon to get it unbanned in competitive, you're running a fool's errand; TF2's weapons are so unique that they're usually banned due to a fundamental flaw that breaks the flow of the game in competitive formats, so anything short of a full rework isn't going to accomplish that goal. All this culminates in the Buffalo Steak Sandvich. It has never been considered good because, as fate would have it, running around with nothing but your melee in a shooter isn't very strong. However, despite this, it has only received nerfs throughout its entire time in the game because it's banned in competitive. It's only banned in competitive because the speed boost it gives can allow Heavy to rollout faster at the start of the round, which breaks the class's inherent balancing in his slow move speed limiting his high DPS. A Heavy rolling out faster in Casual doesn't matter nearly as much because it's a far less organized gamemode anyway; you're not going to be shutting down tactical Soldier bombs trying to pick your team's Medic. The speed boost, though, is essential to the weapon; Heavy running around with his melee out already sucks, not being able to catch up to anyone either is even worse. Focusing on why the weapon was banned in competitive instead of why it sucks in Casual has given us the worst of both worlds, because now it's even worse in Casual while still being banned in competitive.
The Auto Snipers in Counterstrike 2 just are marksman rifles from what I understand. What if the way to balance the Auto Snipers is to make to have you be able to shoulder fire more effectively to raise the skill ceiling. And a lower price than the AWP, to where it's an AK AWP hybrid.
the awp does not need any buffs. there already is a cheap awp alternative, its called the scout the autosnipers, as much as i adore them, sadly are one of the weapons that just do not work with the gameplay of counter strike, just like the m249, just like the r8
@@Multi1 oh i thought you said lower the awps price no lowering the autos price below the awp isnt it either and at that point it might replace the awp, like how negev replaced m249
This was a great video to watch! Kinda fun tidbit about the hunt machete is it was actually OP for a long time. You used to be able to block headshots when holding the heavy attack. Lots of videos of this floating around on RUclips. That functionality got removed and the machete has been in purgatory (deserved) ever since
when i think of bad weapon design i think of every shotgun to exist in borderlands 3. shotguns that don’t have enough damage to 1 shot, but actively blow the enemy so far back (albeit hilariously) that they will land out of shotgun range.
Wait this was two weeks ago and your Hunt example was the machete? No clue how long you took on this but Hunt has a myriad of far better examples of bad weapon designs because their weapon design has taken a huge hit quality wise ever since they started doing battle passes and now force out new things to put on them constantly. The Slate the Scottfield (arguably) any of the weapon variants that are “we took a rifle and made it shoot faster” special ammo as a whole just being added to all guns all the time because again you have to fill a battle pass with things to make it look enticing, adding so many scopes to so many weapons I could go on and on. Hunt Showdown is (was) my favorite game of all time until it ruined itself but I was there for all of it and when talking game design it is easily one of the greatest examples you can use in any front to talk about anything
As a Heavy main myself I despise using the Natascha, like you said the damage output is impactful enough for me to notice. I hate fighting against it when I'm a different class, I hate how boring it looks, and I hate how it clashes with everything else in the game balance (though of course there are plenty of other weapons I hate too). The only thing its good at is slowing down scunts, soldiers who like rocket jumping everywhere, and demoknights (and spy I guess). The only good thing the Natascha has going for it is its firing sound, sound meaty as hell. I don't know what we could do to rework it other than leaning into the defense boost while spun up. (However thanks to random crits, this upside would mean nothing). A steam friend of mine, King Demomidas, loves posting screenshots of him using Natascha and explaining how people were malding about him using it. (Gee I wonder why)
The machete was not redundant on release it was the best slashing weapon in the game until the combat axe (and is one slot vs the two slot combat axe) and Hunt Showdown is uniquely melee viable. It’s not always a “last resort” but many times a tactical choice to pressure players by chasing them down especially if they have a mid range weapon. But Hunt showdown has killed it’s balancing in the past few years
This is why I love fistful of frags weapon design, most weapons are slow and clunky while melee is a side thing you can either use last resort especially with the throwing mechanic, or you can still be viable full melee as you run way faster and can dodge the slower guns you also can not one shot with any default buy menu melees the machete being the only one shot on headshot melee it all stays balanced because the guns are high damage enough to stomp you and you can strafe these shots as a melee build
There's always going to a meta top-tier build or something that always gets played, but imo what makes a game "balanced" is when those top tiers don't get in the way of another player who knows how to play their character. That being said, there's a certain point where it's pretty clear a weapon feels... overtuned.
Holy production value, my man! I thought nothing could surprise me after dopamine explosion that is AveragePixel, but you somehow topped it and my attention spam-lacking brain is very thankful for that. It must've taken ages to do all these animations, live footage and effects
To me the most fun weapons are always the ones that solve a problem in a very broad way. An example from tf2 is the stock rocket launcher. While it can be used to directly attack opponents, it can also be used for area denial by spamming rockets in a hallway. Furthermore it’s also a very fun and interesting movement tool. I think weapons that can be used in multiple ways like this are some of the best there are.
I think the -20% damage resistance is less a 'last stand' and more a 'don't immediately lose heavy duels,' considering the additional time on target other miniguns will have comparatively--driven by the fact slowing a heavy does nothing to gain you the advantage in a 1v1. The Natascha is a leveling of the playing field, making it so soldiers, demos and scouts can't just run(or jump) around your team. I do think that particular role is better for the engineer to do and not worth sacrificing heavies' main advantage, but in situations with many mobile classes that are consistently hurting your team. To me, saying Natascha is unfun to fight against is similar to a Scout feeling mini-sentries are unfun. Both seriously hamper you and practically require either good timing, positioning and aim OR your team to deal with them in your stead. Therefore, are mini-sentries a bad weapon? Classes that have high mobility need counters to be fair, and Natascha is one of very few active counters any class has other than 1. Have that mobility too. 2. Having the means to kill them quickly e.g. Direct Hit for flying enemies or scouts or remove their mobility advantage e.g. Airblast. 3. Sentry. Thus the Natascha might not be fun to play against, but--as heavy--neither are enemies that can run circles around you with little counterplay. Heavy IS an inherently defensive--or perhaps more accurately support-reliant class--and the Natascha supports this by helping him shut down enemies that could pick his teammates off as well as surviving damage whilst he does so. After all, a heavy without teammates is a doomed heavy. I'm not necessary saying its a good weapon in terms of design, but the actual idea around it is important. The implementation leaves quite a bit to be desired.
The main difference between a mini and a Natascha Heavy is that a mini is doing around 30 - 50 damage a second and pushing you away from the center of its sphere of influence, while a Natascha Heavy is doing 120 - 300+ damage a second even with the damage penalty and completely eating your forward momentum every hit. A mini is active area denial and being deployed at the cost of a Level 3, while a Natascha Heavy is almost always certain death to mobility classes with barely any counterplay at the cost of... I guess losing Heavy duels; which you might actually win now with all of the enemy team's Scouts, Soldiers, Demomen, and Pyros gone. And yes, a lot of people do say minis are a bad weapon (though they're about where I draw the line between fun for the user and unfun for the opponent; to make my stance and biases clear, the Natascha _very much_ crosses the line of my tolerence on being unfun to fight). So this leaves the point of Heavy being _aggressively_ bad as a class to the point the Natascha is required as a weapon, and Scout being lowkey kind of OP. Soldiers and Demos have limited ground movement and will often be stuck with half a weapon clip after they trapeze across the battlefield. Scout just has movement, period, while Heavy has none (which is why completely removing every other class's movement just by equipping an unlockable is kind of bs). So, imo, the Natascha should be reworked into something else - honestly, giving it something like the ability to push back your opponents just like a sentry would be less toxic than completely removing their w key - and in return Heavy as a class should receive universal buffs, while Scout should receive slight nerfs. Whatever those buffs and nerfs should be, they should be done with the goal of making Heavy more capable of at least combating Scouts mobility outside of a single unlock, and making it so Scout gets more punished for not utilizing his mobility to the fullest.
the natascha shouldnt even exist because its a counterintutive crutch. whats the point of making shit easier to hit or preventing people from running away if your damage is so pathetic? plus, isnt being able to run away from heavy, like, his built-in, intended weakness? im telling you, it only exists because the ludmilla got cut, as the sandvich, in testing, proved to be a much more well-designed self-sustain item. but they liked the model so much they just added it back and came up with some nonsense stats for it >u-uh, if those uhh.. little babies try running, yeah yeah, running, youre gonna like, kill them so much better! just ignore the huge damage penalty! not exactly what the update page said, but thats basically what it came across as
@@christiancinnabars1402 >heavy needs to be buffed dont listen to 6s players. 6s as a whole is designed in every possible way to work against heavy. notice how much use he sees on the last point, however. almost as if hes really damn good at defending areas and killing people who walk into him. the only universal heavy buff im vouching for is being able to switch weapons as soon as, or at least a short while after you begin unrevving. this not only makes throwing lunchbox items easier, it also makes the shotgun a more effective weapon to retreat with. aside from that, all heavy needs is weapon buffs/reworks, because my god his meta has been stagnant forever >what if the natascha pushed people back heavy entirely relies on people walking into him, why would he ever want to push them back? this is the same issue that pushback in mvm has, sure you delay the giant and set it back a bit, but you also deal less damage as it gets farther away from you
its funny, as a fun side project i started to think about how i would rebalance various weapons in tf2, and ended up more or less "discovering" the same thing you mention at 27:52, you cant just balance around competitve without ignoring a few issues in casual, and ruining non-issues in casual, meanwhile if you only balance around casual, you end up ruining things for competitive
I do think the intent of the Natasha's stats it's to be a mid to long range support tool that allows the heavy to assist in focusing down specific targets outside his ideal range. The issue obviously is that despite its name TF2 is not played as a team game. Because of that I genuinely don't know how well it would preform that function with a team fully on comms. I'm not saying it's well designed but it seems like it's doesn't exist in the game it was designed for.
you dont have to think anything, the dev team already stated what it was meant to do heavys back then, i guess, had trouble with people running away. so the natascha exists to more easily kill the fleeing, of course it doesnt work because whatever added screentime your enemy gets is nullified by the huge damage penalty. and the very concept of kill cowards be weaker against the brave is stupid, you dont get brave with heavy, he is a living sentry that deals 500 damage per second. the natascha punishes the intelligent
You can actually check out the original intent for the natascha way back from the heavy update. www.teamfortress.com/heavy/natascha.htm It was originally just a basic side-grade that did less damage and slowed enemies, better at killing fleeing / focusing on one enemy at a time.
I think the screen at the end showing other bad weapons having a smilodon as an example of a bad weapon was hilarious. Like I understand why its there but out of context, its directly beside the Mace of Molag Baahl and an energy sword. It can't not be funny.
I use Natacha and Auto Snipers for the Tilt (rage) factor alone. Especially gamers who think very highly of themselves with a lot of pride can be stripped down and show them they are not invincible or as good as they see themselves, especially in the Esports age and the tiktok montage clip era. Just fun seeing people in VC or Text chat get mad you took them down with a bad or poorly designed gun is just enough to go by As one Butler said : "Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn"
For hunt showdown ive always seen it as a boss weapon before they added every melee for level 1. Especially on the older maps where they sometimes dont have a hammer or axe outside the base
Reminds me of how GOATED the weapon design in warframe can be. The corinth for example is a shotgun with amazing visual and sound design, it hits like a truck with the right build and it's alt fire (airburst grenade with a set explosion distance) is very rewarding once you get good with it. Another example is the trumna, its sound design slaps and having a cool reload animation combined with more good sound design makes me not mind it having the longest reload time in the game.
fish is peak gun design
F2000 supremacy
Fish
Fish
The cod of duty
Counterpoint: banana
There's a funny quote from B4nny (top TF2 player) where he said the reason he never moved to Overwatch is because "it's like playing against the Wrangler and Vaccinator in every match".
I dont even think the worst shit in overwatch comes close to the vaxxinator or wrangler
@@theurbanreanimator7244 dawg you clearly haven't played overwatch 2
@@theurbanreanimator7244 Sombra
@@Ghostpants446to be fair, not a ton of people want to
@@theurbanreanimator7244mauga would like to have a word with you
the frying pan is just the best weapon in all of gaming
Mal0 got out again, I see.
Or even better: Panchaku
fireaxe, katana and machete are all better THOUGH.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 Yeah, but do they have an obnoxiously loud sound that might get you and your opponent deaf? I don't think so!
Get a new joke
Tf2 is weird when it comes to balance, on one hand you have some great balanced sidegrades like the tommislav, kritzkreg, iron bomber, dragons fury, ect, ect but on the other hand you have things like the natasha, scorch shot and vaccinator which are horrendous to fight against. It really goes to show how difficult it is to balance weapons for the other players in mind.
TF2 weapon balance has always been a strange case to me
Using other RUclipsr jokes in another comment section has always seemed like a strange case to me.
@@cthulhubecausewhynot1182 Dont think it matters, RUclipsrs / people don't own words, free to say anything you want even if some RUclipsr or person said the same thing before.
>tomislav
this weapon has no role or identity. if it was well balanced people wouldnt be arguing which is the better gun. you dont see anyone arguing stock vs direct hit, or stock vs kritzkrieg, do you? thats because all of those are properly balanced sidegrades that also has their own identity
>dragons fury
its borderline useless, the only saving grace of pyro is airblast and trading effective airblasts for what boils down to a horrible soldier is not a trade any pyro main wants to make. thats why you dont see good pyros using it, getting to shoot back rockets is always better than this lag machine that randomly decides you shouldnt get that damage bonus
>iron bomber
yet another weapon with no role or identity, this time its a straight upgrade over stock, because no rollers means you can effectively use it like a stickybomb launcher, any missed grenades land on the ground and act as traps
anyways heres all the perfectly balanced sidegrades: FORCE A NATURE, SODA POPPER, BLACK BOX, DIRECT HIT, BEGGARS BAZOOKA, RESERVE SHOOTER, GUNBOATS, ALL THE BANNERS, DEGREASER, BACKBURNER, DETONATOR, FLARE GUN, LOOSE CANNON, SECOND BANANA, FRONTIER JUSTICE, WIDOWMAKER, RESCUE RANGER, EUREKA EFFECT, GUNSLINGER, KRITZKRIEG, HUNTSMAN, JARATE, COZY CAMPER, LE TRANGER, BIG EARNER
@@redstonewarrior0152*strange orange name color intensifies*
I think the posterchild of bad weapon design for me is the upgraded Lava Gun from Ratchet and Clank 2.
It goes from a unique weapon that shoots Lava, which will increase in range depending how long you hold it down, and even leaves trails of lava on the ground that can hit enemies. And then it turns into a generic gun that shoots short range fire rocks in a fixed arc.
I remember as a kid feeling gutted when I spent forever upgrading it, only for it to become super fucking boring. Iirc the devs got this complaint a lot from fans so they made it a rule to never drastically alter a weapon when it's upgraded.
By contrast, the nitroglycerin upgrade in Ratchet n Clank 3 was really cool.
The one niche it has is it does a fuckton of dps, but who cares when other weapons do that even better with better versatility and I liked the gun for being able to clean up small trash mobs with good ammo economy
@@SoulBL4D3the fuckton of DPS actually comes in pretty handy with bosses, (you can level like 40% of that god forsaken mech boss's health just with the Meteor Gun, it's pretty cracked) it's certainly a weird choice and changes the entire purpose of the weapon, but it's niche of a metric fuck ton of DPS at least softens the blow
@@flaminginferno6641 Yeah I totally agree, and thinking about it's purpose is probally to be the mid-end game gun to replace your Lancer with
I really liked the lava gun but I cannot believe between so many weapon upgrades that one got the worst one of them all
I’m pretty sure the aim is bad too
I noticed how I couldn’t kill a row of smaller enemies because of that awful upgrade
Maybe I should’ve played this game on pc emulator with cheat engine just so I could bring back those hours
6:10 One small thing: Low floor/high ceiling is not necessarily always better, there can be benefits to making the ceiling of something (Not necessarily only but including weapons) deliberately lower, and there can be benefits of making the floor deliberately higher. Just a small thing I felt like pointing out because thats often under-discussed and its something the importance of which I only recently discovered myself.
Elaborate
@@RedGreenBeep256 There are probably more niche reasons one could come up with, but the main reason, especially in competitive games is that, the higher the skill ceiling, the higher the difference between very good players and bad/average players. And in competitive games features generally need to be balanced around their strongest iteration. Meaning, that by giving something a very high skill ceiling, you need to balance it around those that reached that ceiling (or are approaching close to it), making it potentially unusable for those further down on the skill latter.
Thats not necessarily always true. It is possible to balance things in a way where they are equally effective at all skill levels. The counterplay to something also has a skill floor and a skill ceiling after all and if you manage to make it so that the skill to effectiveness curve is the same for the "play" and the "counterplay", you don't face that problem. But needless to say, that is something that is a lot easier said than done and its not practical to do for all of a games features. I'd even say that its borderline impossible to do for many of the features you'd want from a game. "Aiming" for example is inherently "play" skewed for the most part. Its probably a good idea to try to get them closer to each other, its very rarely gonna be perfect enough for you not to face the "skill ceiling" problem to some degree.
The problem generally also gets worse the older a game gets, because the difference between the best and the worst players tends to get bigger over time.
Giving something a high skill floor on the other hand can make for something that is really rewarding for those who do put the time in. There are whole genres that are designed around having a high skill floor. Souls-likes for example are in large parts as addictive as they are because they continuously raise and continuously make you reach that skill ceiling. Reaching a skill floor often leads to very rapid and noticeable changes in gameplay feel and skill and can thus imo be a lot more rewarding (/rewarding in a different way) than "just" progressing on the skill latter of something that had a low skill floor. Also, there often is a sense of bride behind being able to play something with a very high skill floor effectively.
Hope that all made sense...
Good point, and yes it made sense
@@RedGreenBeep256 weapons that require more skill can still be fun, e.g: the direct hit (tf2)
@@emptyptr9401 Fair point but I disagree with skill floors. A low skill floor doesn't necessarily equate to a trade-off for less rewarding gameplay. The mechanical depth of a weapon can reward the player just as much as overcoming a skill floor. Designers reward skill because it incentivizes the most fun playstyle of a game. An accessible weapon is better at this for more skill levels and more rewarding in that facet. Dark Souls hasn't become beloved out of its combat or movement. It's for the times when you finally beat that boss in the game designed against you. When you lower the skill floor, it's a trade-off of fun for accomplishment
Love the point about considering what it feels like to be attacked by weapons as that’s something a lot of discourse in gaming communities miss or undervalue
And this is the reason why Teemo in LoL and Mei in OW have always been hated: they're fundamentally unfun to play against.
In Teemo's case: damage over time that keep hurting you when you get out of combat is not fun, an invisible enemy who always has the initiative is not fun, a fast enemy who can consistently run away from you is not fun, a status effect that makes your basic attacks useless is not fun, and getting hurt and slowed by invisible traps when minding your business is not fun.
In Mei's case: getting slowed and frozen solid in a shooter is not fun, getting bursted down by headshots while frozen solid is not fun, seeing an opponent freeze itself to become invulnerable and recover over half its health on a button press is not fun, a wall suddenly blocking your way is not fun.
@@f145hr3831jrmei has been struggling in overwatch 2 to be a threat outside her ult ever since they removed her freeze, nowadays sombra is the poster child of being hated by everyone.
The cool glasses guy is back! Happy to see channel's not dead.
"Bad weapon design" *shows the half life gravity gun*
That one you might have to talk about.
Fairly self explanatory. In base Half-Life 2 you use it for one chapter, Ravenholm, then never touch it again for the rest of the game because afterwards it just stops being useful, 1: due to abundance of ammo and 2: due to the level design not allowing you to use it effectively. Nova prospect for instance has almost no gravity gun-able props.
That section was definitely bait. Did you see all the other weapons shown in it? 100% just done as a joke.
@@MattyMatthew-m4o That's fair, though I'd argue it has it's uses, like with landmines, weapon utility and such. But it's not a good argument against what you've said.
@@Awesomeness-iz3dh That's fair too, I think I was just blindsided by it.
the Chad Beast: willingly makes it easier for enemies to hit you in exchange for being more deadly to them with good aim and positioning
the Virgin Natascha: willingly nerfing your damage just for a crutch to make it easier to track enemies and harder for them to fight you
"Brass beast is so mid bro" - no-fun minigun main
@@whoisanarnb >brass beast is so- (eats a pipe) much fun- (eats a rocket) to use- (eats a sticky) you really gotta- (gets headshot) give it a cha- (gets backstabbed)
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 they cant kill you when you shoot them dead first
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413the life of a brass beast F2P heavy is a short and difficult one
I wish it had the rev bonus whenever spun down period. And then remove it from the Natascha, it feels so slapped on there.
0:27 interation tool
For a terribly designed weapon in a single-player game, I'd point to the Gluon Gun from Half-Life. It's dead simple to use, a damage hose in the most literal possible sense, meanwhile the Tau Cannon, which draws from the same rare, precious ammo pool, is one of the best-designed weapons in all of first person shooters (I will die on this hill) thanks to its multiple firing modes, fun movement tech, and unique mechanics. Not only is the Gluon Gun a boring and unfun weapon to use, but dealing more damage than the Tau Cannon while drawing from the same ammo pool actively encourages you not to use a far more fun and engaging weapon.
Tau has weakened movement tech in singleplayer, since you can't launch yourslef forwards. But yeah, it'd be cooler if gluon gun wasn't that simple
hawk
if drg was a pvp game the fat boy would be really really annoying, instead its kinda objectively bad but extremely fun
Nah the hypershot would be so much worse, a one shot quick loading GL on a close range class would be annoying, engi could slap you with his warthog and if you’re too far hypershot. Not to mention he had SSG’s so he wouldn’t even need to aim, just toss on you and watch.
Everyone knows we only have fat boy to kill the scout when he doesn't grapple to the platform under minerals
Also the Lok-I sounds completely broken in a PVP game setting. Long range auto aim that shreds the targets hp in mere moments
DRG actually has a PVP mode, it's called Driller
For as much as TF2(Titanfall 2) is hailed as a fantastic game(and it is great), its multiplayer gun design is some of the poorest I've seen. With the quickest killing weapons (CAR, Alternator, R97) have the lowest skillfloor, fastest firing, largest magazine, low falloff, fastest reloads AND are hitscan, while the weapons requiring the highest amount of skill investment, (EPG, Softball, Mastiff), namely any of the projectile weapons, are garbage. To put it into perspective, most if not all of SMGs can kill you before the project you've fired at an enemy even reaches them, such as from the LStar or EPG. If you are decent, you are able to instantly beam down anyone, even if their taking advantage of the games movement, while also not being to be hit yourself, making it a horrible time for new players or anyone not using the meta.
100% agree, the projectile weapons in that game are so fun to use but with ttk so low there's no point
It's also so unimaginably boring. Every now and then I see people who run ONLY stim + CAR combo, with CAR having like 10000-150000 kills, and they're so... soulless. I really question if they even have fun at this point, because all you see them doing is:
-enter the match
-immediately run to the enemy spawn
-start stacking up kills with no effort or competition
-never, EVER, drop a titan
-match ends, the guy has like 30-40 kills
-immediately leave, ignoring the evac phase
I tried sweating like this for a week and that felt like working overtime at Amazon
@@n0klaThat's metas for you, the most boring way to play but people do it anyway because they prioritise winning over fun when it comes to entertainment
Honestly, I'd include the Spitfire in the genetal list of metaslave weapons too, even if its power is mostly just escalated by the console environment.
EPG is one of my favorite weapons in the game, and i quite suck at the game.
Suck enough to justify using Spitfire (which is another favorite, love LMGs in games as a whole) with A-wall.
Though at least i try to avoid camping and use A-wall more as an emergency shield.
I'll definitely agree on the auto snipers being poor design, there are few worse positions for an option in a competitive game than being easy to use at a low level + hard to counter at a low level + non-existent at a high level.
7:52 uhm ackshually toothpicks have two points
1:41 I think of how weapon reskins have always been a strange case to me.
The machete in Hunt used to be extremely powerful in early Hunt, ¨Winchete¨ was the name of a meta loadout before the game transitioned to the current long ammo meta. There was no movement inertia back then and no other melee weapon so you could run at people, dodging shots and hit them with powerful bleed. The game basically evolved around the machete which is why the buffed it a while back. It's current niche is a small slot, extremely cheap, rending melee weapon. The baseball bat is also cheap but blunt weapons are worse against players. There are also some bosses who are weak against rending. Idk if I would call it useless, the problem is that it's so easy to make money in the game that a lot of super budget options just lost their main advantage. Also could be worse, could be the heavy knife.
So it's not exactly talking about a "bad" gun, but I think talking about thr MP40 in Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. See it exemplifies how a weapons aesthetics is incredibly important in a game. It was a perfectly symmetrical game, where the only difference between Allied and Nazi weapons was the non mechanical aesthetics. But this created an issue because the community was convinced that the Tommy gun was more powerful than the mp40. And no matter how much the devs tried to tell us they were the same, no one was convinced. They fixed the issue by making the mp40 louder and and meatier.
People were then convinced the mp40 was buffed.
I use the Natasha, I don’t hear babies crying when I use it.
I use the brass beast, I don't hear babies laughing when I die using it
(Or when I flank and give them a surprise hello)
I started using the Natascha after a while of playing Heavy on community servers, where there were almost always a few highly skilled scouts and soldiers on the other team. As it's Heavy's best way of handling high-mobility classes, especially on open maps. People often mention the strafe, but I don't think I've ever seen someone do it in an actual match.
It's easy to do the strafing method against more telegraphed slows, such as the Sandman ball, but when a Heavy pops around the corner and starts chewing you down with a minigun (the -25% damage penalty is something I guess, but it is still a minigun chunking you for 150+ dps even at mid range) it suddenly becomes a lot harder to switch to the technique on the fly. And if you are in the air at all... rest in peace, you got hard countered.
You make me mad
I really love how you do your video essays. That's why I keep watching your videos.
30:09 you take the gravity gun off this picture right now young man
bfg 9000, fat man, energy sword, smart pistol, and red shell too what the fuck is bro cooking
"Why not let the players make their own weapons"
-me, who's working on a game where you can do that (you have a set amount of points based on your level which are used to build weapons. Increasing a stat or adding an ability costs points, and reducing a stat or removing an ability refunds points)
Get ready for some very tortured patch notes.
What’s your game called. Can I get more details. I have several questions
I really can’t believe you don’t have more subs, this video was great and really well edited, I will definitely be staying for more
Frying Pans goes bonk bonk, great video by the way!
(nice qr code)
Haha I'm glad someone actually tried that!
As a fellow Natascha user myself. I would like to aplogoise....
To absolutely no one :)
At least you're honest!
@@P-Bean like scorch shot players
@@whoisanarnb Lol
Seeing a P-Bean video in my feed feels like you unboxed a Legendary Card in 2016 Clash Royale.
This is a really well done and edited video. You should be getting so much more praise. Excellent video!! :D
16:09 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe back in Blue Moon, they pushed an update to fix the slow mechanic so you could just strafe to run at full speed, then within days they just undid this fix because it made the Natascha so overwhelmingly powerful.
A weapon that I find balanced overall I'd the Flint-knock from Fortnite.
It is a single shot, high power pistol with a long reload animation. Dealing 90 damage (ten less than the full health) and 180 damage headshot (leaving a fully healed player with only 20 or 70 health left depending on what mode you are playing).
The skill part is it is really had to get close to a player enough to deal the damage, the balanced part is the long reloading animation and single use, and the fun part is that it deals knockback to the player and the enemy. (Unless the player is crouching then only the enemy is shot back)
You forgot it has a high damage fall off so it encourages running to the enemy and bouncing on the enemy like a pogo.
I used to play pixel gun so much as a kid but over years and after taking a long break and trying to play it again I just can't. The weapon design is just SO all over the place and there's so many weapon and gear and modules and pets that it's hard to figure out what your opponent can do especially since you can switch them mid game and thers so many categories to equip to at once. There's like thousands of weapons in the game now also and some can have like 3-4 gimmicks at on a single weapon
Oh boi if you think the D3 auto sniper is a beast in cs2, you haven't seen the bs wall bang they pull in 1.6, like how tf a guy in assault clear whole team through roof, wall and the guy on the bridge with just the d3 and camera or callout
OMG! THE RETURN!
Welcome back, man! I absolutely love your videos and your sense of humor. You're a great inspiration to anyone out there wanting to take a dive into the world of content creation. Love you! 💜
I will NEVER forgive Dishonored for making a ton of cool fucking weapons and then actively punishing you for using them (I’ve beaten all endings, It’s just if you don’t want us to use em why’d you put them in?!?!)
16:20 good god thats a reference and a half thanks for immediately taking me back 3 years
speaking of references, with all the runescape gags, osmumten's fang could have sat on this video tbh. tremendously useful in a frankly insane number of places, and in fairness, made a lot more content viable for midgame players, but still blew way too much of a hole in the melee weapon ladder. in the time it took to be nerfed a tiny bit (only having its wacky accuracy passive on stab attack style), it left its mark on content introduced after it (duke succ is a prominent example -- he really felt designed with pre-nerf fang set to slash in mind, and in the aftermath, he's basically as miserable as abyssal sire before the fang existed). so it loses out on balance. also feels quite boring to use -- wheeee look at me hitting about 30 every five ticks. riveting stuff. for the longest time its animations were recycled from elsewhere, too. so it felt like a garry's mod admin gun in an MMO. for the third dimension, skill floor/ceiling doesnt exactly factor into specific weapons in osrs beyond making sense of attack speed relative to whatever dancing around you want to do between hits.
I immediately saw the Machete in the thumbnail and had to click.
The cavalry saber always made it irrelevant but funnily enough, they recently added the throwing spear, which is so strong that it makes pretty much all of the melee weapons(except for bomblance) redudant.
Demoknight is one of the funniest builds I've ever play.
Bit of a long shot (pun intended), but the award sniper rifle from the old Battlefront 2.The other rewards make way more sense. Pistols with limited ammo (as opposed to unlimited with an overheating mechanic) but more damage. Tighter spread shotguns. A burst fire rifle instead of an automatic one, to encourage accuracy. But the sniper rifle? Its a reward for a number of headshots in a row that gives you a weapon with less ammo (both total and per mag) but higher damage. This kind of makes sense. "Youre good at being precise, here, your shots count even more now." The issue is that it flat out robs you of your ability to headshot. It might be broken, but it stops working on heads and becomes a gun that can pierce and one hit kill on a bodyshot and has a long bullet travel time. It flips the playstyle on its head. And this isnt something you can opt out of. If you get enough headshots, at some point you can not switch to your secondary and back to your primary without getting a shitty gun. This is worse in single player, since you have an internal rank and once that gets high enough on a given class, you are *stuck* with the award gun.
and the channel marathon begins! love your work dude!
The Holy Mackerel actually has a hidden stat where you become x1000 times cooler when you use it
Absolutely blown away by your production value bro. KEEP IT UP! You're on your way to being a legend on the levels of Funke.
Great video! You have great style and fantastic editing.
The air blast mechanic is so fun. I still play tf2 periodically mainly for that. It's interesting that it's only possible because they introduced another bullet type with explosives. Which let's them split the balance between classes. I don't see scout mains much anymore but when I do they wreck me. Bullets are my weakness. I could go on, but there is a higher skill ceiling to pyro than most people think and its really fun.
This vid is actually so much better than any else I’ve seen, the colours, the sounds, the style, everything, PERFECT
I admit, my favorite weapons are sustain weapons and melee weapons. The only real PvP shooter I play is TF2, though I play a shit-ton of Doom clones/mods. It's not the same for everyone, but I get extreme satisfaction over bellowing out a torrent of lead and watching hoards of enemies fall back dead over each other, some of the most fun I've had in TF2 is fighting against some really high level power classes and ending up mostly on a level playing field despite each other's weakness because we all have such high DPS prime to catch each other off guard. And for melee, I'd have to choose 3D platformers to pick my favorite combat styles from, where even your movement tools like groundpounding, kicking, and jumping can be used to dispatch enemies. Imagine if someone made a movement focused shooter that's basically 3D Mario with guns, I'd eat that up like cake.
Oh and of course there's Demoman in general. Something about the way his pipebombs arch and how universally useful his stickies are make him so fun to play as for me, plus I can't get enough of that stupid crit axe.
the fact that he used Clash from caravan palace in the clash royale section was gold
I really wonder if there was a better way to make Natascha a supportive sidegrade.
Mad Milk on hit would be effectively as problematic (if not more) as when the very same weapon outright healed the 300hp heavy per hit instead of slowing enemies, Jarate/Deathmark on hit would be equally problematic since you'd turn the minigun into a laser beam and no amount of damage nerfing could balance that out, Gasoline on hit would just be an absolute nightmare of spaghetti code to figure out, and Bleed on hit just isn't really "supportive" to begin with.
The only way I could potentially see a feasible rework of Natascha as a supportive sidegrade is to remove the slowdown on hit and instead turn the self-damage resistance on revving+low hp into like a 10% damage resistance aoe on revving -- like the battalion's backup buff, but much weaker and without the anti-sentry and anti-crit aspects -- but even that I wonder if it'd be too much without a further nerfing of minigun damage.
I really like the idea of some form of a weak AOE effect with the natascha, something like you said like one of the banners but weaker.
Heavy has always felt like he needed a more team oriented primary and a simple rework to the natascha like that would be amazing.
@@P-Bean
I guess a much weaker Buff Banner AOE on revv that still keeps damage falloff (aka no mini-crits) could also potentially work, but a weaker Conch AOE on revv would most definitely not work, whether that be on the healing aspect or the speed boost one -- for obvious reasons.
In any case, we just don't have enough debuff diversity in TF2 to make Natascha work as a supportive sidegrade through an on-hit effect, and I doubt the singular intern would be keen on making more of them from scratch.
Changing the slow to a reduction in air control might work, maybe. It's less punishing in some ways, but still fulfills the intended role of absolutely stuffing rocket jumps and flanking scouts. But then, player feedback is a problem - how does a scout know he's got garbage air control until he jumps and finds himself barely able to turn? And how is this useful to people who haven't wasted thousands of hours of their life on the game?
I do kind of like the "spray some scout duelling your soldier to give your soldier an easy W", because a scout who can't airstrafe good isn't going to be winning that fight. But it's so hard to make work.
The only real way is a complete rework, maybe damage resistance stripping, maybe damage vulnerability to non-bullet damage like a sort of reverse Pain Train on the target, but bleh.
what if it worked like the po6 from cod bo3, a charge burst but wen you hit all your shots you create a AOE that heals teammates and a bit you.
Apocofists on top, truly peak
I forgot you existed, thank you for reminding me that you exist with this banger x3
The production value is insane, incredible editing right here
I would say TF2 outside of a few very limited settings is not a competitive game. That is to say the population of a match is not expected to be optimizing it's gameplay.
I consider the Natascha to be very wear, and hearing you upplay it as possibly Heavies best primary is alien to me.
The Tomislav and Stock still reign supreme at the top of the food chain and the Brass Beast pulls of the damage resistance better than the Natascha. You could argue whether the Huo Long Heater is better than the Natascha in certain situations, even.
somebody has been playing garden warfare 2
27:52 I'd argue that only rebalancing weapons already frequently used in competitive should look at the competitive scene. The competitive scene in TF2 is unique because it bans weapons that are overpowered or otherwise break how the game would normally play out, and for obvious reasons weapons considered underpowered aren't used often, either. Therefore there's a Goldilocks zone of weapons that matter for competitive balance. If you try to nerf a weapon to get it unbanned in competitive, you're running a fool's errand; TF2's weapons are so unique that they're usually banned due to a fundamental flaw that breaks the flow of the game in competitive formats, so anything short of a full rework isn't going to accomplish that goal. All this culminates in the Buffalo Steak Sandvich. It has never been considered good because, as fate would have it, running around with nothing but your melee in a shooter isn't very strong. However, despite this, it has only received nerfs throughout its entire time in the game because it's banned in competitive. It's only banned in competitive because the speed boost it gives can allow Heavy to rollout faster at the start of the round, which breaks the class's inherent balancing in his slow move speed limiting his high DPS. A Heavy rolling out faster in Casual doesn't matter nearly as much because it's a far less organized gamemode anyway; you're not going to be shutting down tactical Soldier bombs trying to pick your team's Medic. The speed boost, though, is essential to the weapon; Heavy running around with his melee out already sucks, not being able to catch up to anyone either is even worse. Focusing on why the weapon was banned in competitive instead of why it sucks in Casual has given us the worst of both worlds, because now it's even worse in Casual while still being banned in competitive.
Slipping in that Elephants Garden OST is just crack cocaine to my nostalgia.
The Auto Snipers in Counterstrike 2 just are marksman rifles from what I understand. What if the way to balance the Auto Snipers is to make to have you be able to shoulder fire more effectively to raise the skill ceiling. And a lower price than the AWP, to where it's an AK AWP hybrid.
Like the guardian from valorant?
the awp does not need any buffs. there already is a cheap awp alternative, its called the scout
the autosnipers, as much as i adore them, sadly are one of the weapons that just do not work with the gameplay of counter strike, just like the m249, just like the r8
@@Milk_Bag67 I don't know Valorant.
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413How is that an AWP buff? We are trying to give more cheaper alternatives to the AWP, that sounds like a nerf.
@@Multi1 oh i thought you said lower the awps price
no lowering the autos price below the awp isnt it either and at that point it might replace the awp, like how negev replaced m249
This was a great video to watch! Kinda fun tidbit about the hunt machete is it was actually OP for a long time. You used to be able to block headshots when holding the heavy attack. Lots of videos of this floating around on RUclips. That functionality got removed and the machete has been in purgatory (deserved) ever since
My favorite part of the machete is that its outclassed by the throwing spear, which goes in the tool slot
The video starts at 10:44
when i think of bad weapon design i think of every shotgun to exist in borderlands 3.
shotguns that don’t have enough damage to 1 shot, but actively blow the enemy so far back (albeit hilariously) that they will land out of shotgun range.
Wait this was two weeks ago and your Hunt example was the machete? No clue how long you took on this but Hunt has a myriad of far better examples of bad weapon designs because their weapon design has taken a huge hit quality wise ever since they started doing battle passes and now force out new things to put on them constantly. The Slate the Scottfield (arguably) any of the weapon variants that are “we took a rifle and made it shoot faster” special ammo as a whole just being added to all guns all the time because again you have to fill a battle pass with things to make it look enticing, adding so many scopes to so many weapons I could go on and on. Hunt Showdown is (was) my favorite game of all time until it ruined itself but I was there for all of it and when talking game design it is easily one of the greatest examples you can use in any front to talk about anything
it's been so long that i forgot that you went live action mode, the vid looks great!
Your editing style makes my brain go bvvvvv
Here before you blow up because Jesus the editing is not only good but so filled with personality
As a Heavy main myself I despise using the Natascha, like you said the damage output is impactful enough for me to notice. I hate fighting against it when I'm a different class, I hate how boring it looks, and I hate how it clashes with everything else in the game balance (though of course there are plenty of other weapons I hate too). The only thing its good at is slowing down scunts, soldiers who like rocket jumping everywhere, and demoknights (and spy I guess).
The only good thing the Natascha has going for it is its firing sound, sound meaty as hell.
I don't know what we could do to rework it other than leaning into the defense boost while spun up. (However thanks to random crits, this upside would mean nothing).
A steam friend of mine, King Demomidas, loves posting screenshots of him using Natascha and explaining how people were malding about him using it. (Gee I wonder why)
The machete was not redundant on release it was the best slashing weapon in the game until the combat axe (and is one slot vs the two slot combat axe) and Hunt Showdown is uniquely melee viable. It’s not always a “last resort” but many times a tactical choice to pressure players by chasing them down especially if they have a mid range weapon. But Hunt showdown has killed it’s balancing in the past few years
This is why I love fistful of frags weapon design, most weapons are slow and clunky while melee is a side thing you can either use last resort especially with the throwing mechanic, or you can still be viable full melee as you run way faster and can dodge the slower guns you also can not one shot with any default buy menu melees the machete being the only one shot on headshot melee it all stays balanced because the guns are high damage enough to stomp you and you can strafe these shots as a melee build
Thank you for reminding me of fistful of frags, and you're so right.
@@P-Bean Thank
Surprised to see MegaKnight in this video lmao
P-bean sudden return is welcome for sure
man you're so incredibly talented
4:12 Tiny Desk Engineer spotted
There's always going to a meta top-tier build or something that always gets played, but imo what makes a game "balanced" is when those top tiers don't get in the way of another player who knows how to play their character.
That being said, there's a certain point where it's pretty clear a weapon feels... overtuned.
Holy production value, my man! I thought nothing could surprise me after dopamine explosion that is AveragePixel, but you somehow topped it and my attention spam-lacking brain is very thankful for that. It must've taken ages to do all these animations, live footage and effects
Congrats thanks to nakey jakeys lacking ass upload schedule your fantastic editing is my new favorite on RUclips
Holy the drip is crazy, very stylish
This video is insanely good. I'm surprised it doesn't have more view than it does now. Good work, made my morning!
To me the most fun weapons are always the ones that solve a problem in a very broad way. An example from tf2 is the stock rocket launcher. While it can be used to directly attack opponents, it can also be used for area denial by spamming rockets in a hallway. Furthermore it’s also a very fun and interesting movement tool. I think weapons that can be used in multiple ways like this are some of the best there are.
your videos are very nicely put together.
Thank you. :)
Boy this feels.... something... around all the Helldivers 2 drama.
This needs a sequel where we talk about non gun "weapons"
For anyone curious, I believe the music playing in the background of the Pixel Gun 3D segment is a version of the Papers Please theme
I think the -20% damage resistance is less a 'last stand' and more a 'don't immediately lose heavy duels,' considering the additional time on target other miniguns will have comparatively--driven by the fact slowing a heavy does nothing to gain you the advantage in a 1v1.
The Natascha is a leveling of the playing field, making it so soldiers, demos and scouts can't just run(or jump) around your team.
I do think that particular role is better for the engineer to do and not worth sacrificing heavies' main advantage, but in situations with many mobile classes that are consistently hurting your team.
To me, saying Natascha is unfun to fight against is similar to a Scout feeling mini-sentries are unfun. Both seriously hamper you and practically require either good timing, positioning and aim OR your team to deal with them in your stead. Therefore, are mini-sentries a bad weapon? Classes that have high mobility need counters to be fair, and Natascha is one of very few active counters any class has other than
1. Have that mobility too.
2. Having the means to kill them quickly e.g. Direct Hit for flying enemies or scouts or remove their mobility advantage e.g. Airblast.
3. Sentry.
Thus the Natascha might not be fun to play against, but--as heavy--neither are enemies that can run circles around you with little counterplay.
Heavy IS an inherently defensive--or perhaps more accurately support-reliant class--and the Natascha supports this by helping him shut down enemies that could pick his teammates off as well as surviving damage whilst he does so. After all, a heavy without teammates is a doomed heavy.
I'm not necessary saying its a good weapon in terms of design, but the actual idea around it is important. The implementation leaves quite a bit to be desired.
yeah between the Natascha and this guy’s opinions on snipers I feel like he just doesn’t like thinking about the enemy team and just rushes in
The main difference between a mini and a Natascha Heavy is that a mini is doing around 30 - 50 damage a second and pushing you away from the center of its sphere of influence, while a Natascha Heavy is doing 120 - 300+ damage a second even with the damage penalty and completely eating your forward momentum every hit. A mini is active area denial and being deployed at the cost of a Level 3, while a Natascha Heavy is almost always certain death to mobility classes with barely any counterplay at the cost of... I guess losing Heavy duels; which you might actually win now with all of the enemy team's Scouts, Soldiers, Demomen, and Pyros gone. And yes, a lot of people do say minis are a bad weapon (though they're about where I draw the line between fun for the user and unfun for the opponent; to make my stance and biases clear, the Natascha _very much_ crosses the line of my tolerence on being unfun to fight).
So this leaves the point of Heavy being _aggressively_ bad as a class to the point the Natascha is required as a weapon, and Scout being lowkey kind of OP. Soldiers and Demos have limited ground movement and will often be stuck with half a weapon clip after they trapeze across the battlefield. Scout just has movement, period, while Heavy has none (which is why completely removing every other class's movement just by equipping an unlockable is kind of bs). So, imo, the Natascha should be reworked into something else - honestly, giving it something like the ability to push back your opponents just like a sentry would be less toxic than completely removing their w key - and in return Heavy as a class should receive universal buffs, while Scout should receive slight nerfs. Whatever those buffs and nerfs should be, they should be done with the goal of making Heavy more capable of at least combating Scouts mobility outside of a single unlock, and making it so Scout gets more punished for not utilizing his mobility to the fullest.
the natascha shouldnt even exist because its a counterintutive crutch. whats the point of making shit easier to hit or preventing people from running away if your damage is so pathetic?
plus, isnt being able to run away from heavy, like, his built-in, intended weakness?
im telling you, it only exists because the ludmilla got cut, as the sandvich, in testing, proved to be a much more well-designed self-sustain item. but they liked the model so much they just added it back and came up with some nonsense stats for it
>u-uh, if those uhh.. little babies try running, yeah yeah, running, youre gonna like, kill them so much better! just ignore the huge damage penalty!
not exactly what the update page said, but thats basically what it came across as
@@christiancinnabars1402 >heavy needs to be buffed
dont listen to 6s players. 6s as a whole is designed in every possible way to work against heavy. notice how much use he sees on the last point, however. almost as if hes really damn good at defending areas and killing people who walk into him. the only universal heavy buff im vouching for is being able to switch weapons as soon as, or at least a short while after you begin unrevving. this not only makes throwing lunchbox items easier, it also makes the shotgun a more effective weapon to retreat with. aside from that, all heavy needs is weapon buffs/reworks, because my god his meta has been stagnant forever
>what if the natascha pushed people back
heavy entirely relies on people walking into him, why would he ever want to push them back? this is the same issue that pushback in mvm has, sure you delay the giant and set it back a bit, but you also deal less damage as it gets farther away from you
Not even mentioning the bomb lance as one of humanity’s peak achievements of weapon design is criminal
3:45 not bad, not bad at all. you dropped your crown, king 👑
Wow this is stellar editing, surprised you don’t have more subs
its funny, as a fun side project i started to think about how i would rebalance various weapons in tf2, and ended up more or less "discovering" the same thing you mention at 27:52, you cant just balance around competitve without ignoring a few issues in casual, and ruining non-issues in casual, meanwhile if you only balance around casual, you end up ruining things for competitive
"Mega Knight showing up as Bad Weapon Design was as unexpected as it is fitting" 0:56
Nevermind, he had a whole honourable mention dedicated to him
It's fun to recognize the "the elephant's garden" 's music
Finally he resurrected from the death.
I do think the intent of the Natasha's stats it's to be a mid to long range support tool that allows the heavy to assist in focusing down specific targets outside his ideal range. The issue obviously is that despite its name TF2 is not played as a team game. Because of that I genuinely don't know how well it would preform that function with a team fully on comms. I'm not saying it's well designed but it seems like it's doesn't exist in the game it was designed for.
you dont have to think anything, the dev team already stated what it was meant to do
heavys back then, i guess, had trouble with people running away. so the natascha exists to more easily kill the fleeing, of course it doesnt work because whatever added screentime your enemy gets is nullified by the huge damage penalty. and the very concept of kill cowards be weaker against the brave is stupid, you dont get brave with heavy, he is a living sentry that deals 500 damage per second. the natascha punishes the intelligent
You can actually check out the original intent for the natascha way back from the heavy update.
www.teamfortress.com/heavy/natascha.htm
It was originally just a basic side-grade that did less damage and slowed enemies, better at killing fleeing / focusing on one enemy at a time.
We do have a point two in fact per toothpick
Love the editing in this
There's a Valve-game reference every 5 seconds, love this guy.
Please God send this to the balancing team at arrow head for helldivers 2
I think the screen at the end showing other bad weapons having a smilodon as an example of a bad weapon was hilarious. Like I understand why its there but out of context, its directly beside the Mace of Molag Baahl and an energy sword. It can't not be funny.
I use Natacha and Auto Snipers for the Tilt (rage) factor alone. Especially gamers who think very highly of themselves with a lot of pride can be stripped down and show them they are not invincible or as good as they see themselves, especially in the Esports age and the tiktok montage clip era. Just fun seeing people in VC or Text chat get mad you took them down with a bad or poorly designed gun is just enough to go by
As one Butler said : "Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn"
21:35 i believe something is missing in that pile of scout melees
Fix it.
Now.
i love the principles: balance , skill , and fun :33
For hunt showdown ive always seen it as a boss weapon before they added every melee for level 1. Especially on the older maps where they sometimes dont have a hammer or axe outside the base
Reminds me of how GOATED the weapon design in warframe can be. The corinth for example is a shotgun with amazing visual and sound design, it hits like a truck with the right build and it's alt fire (airburst grenade with a set explosion distance) is very rewarding once you get good with it. Another example is the trumna, its sound design slaps and having a cool reload animation combined with more good sound design makes me not mind it having the longest reload time in the game.