I might be saying this often, but I TRULY appreciate you and your work. The effort your put in, even to talk about one item, is astonishing. It speaks to how one fruit can expose the dwindling design philosophy in an otherwise excellent game (Never expected to write such a sentence). And those IOI stick figures were rather funny. I love IOI as a whole, but I yearn to see a more refined version of Hitman again. In fact, it probably was, but these items are diluting it. Needless to say, I always love watching another video by you.
Thank you for the praise, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! (also, the stick figures are A; posing in a familiar memetic way and B: loosely based on XKCD's "What If?" series).
Really glad to have found this channel from the forum)) I really like the subtle fact that well They just bloody released the oil canister. I am looking forward to seeing this story develop, as currently this is way too broken. I do like to watch the world burn I guess) But the strangest thing is that sometimes they do care about items. Like when they were adding Proximity Micro Tazer to the main game from freelancer, they removed the cook behaviour. This does suck for Freelancer a little bit, but still, it is like they test the idea by chance before implementing it
great video, love the production quality. ngl I'd be fine with them stopping adding items over just adding blatantly broken ones. all it does is ruin contracts mode even further, which is why I stopped making them.
Great video! I love how much thought you put into each of your points, and I agree that the balance has been dwindling pretty much ever since Year 4 started. By the way, have you tried the Oil Can they added today yet? It's literally just the Durian but worse. Free accident explosion for shooting it ONCE, and can also be poured to create a fire accident. Literally just better propane you can bring into levels. There's also an incredibly easy out of bounds glitch with it, where vaulting over a ledge and pouring at the same time puts you over the ledge. Incredibly busted item, yet again contributing to the problem of overpowered items getting added.
I unlocked it while I was uploading this video. I've not tried any of the exploits yet, but I will say the thing that made it balanced for me is that pouring it is illegal regardless of disguise, which is generally a good thing (ditto for the water canister). I don't think it's worse than the durian tbh; this requires setup and cannot be used everywhere and even requires knowing a target's routine to some extent. Even if the spark required to ignite can be done with a taser item, that still requires two inventory slots to be taken, which is going to impact your run to some extent. I'm generally in favour of it, though only time will tell if it gets worse as we can now use it outside of Freelancer's expected gameplay. I'm glad you enjoyed my video, and yes, it is quite disheartening how much the game is slipping into a balance coma.
Its funny because unlike you ive never really seen anyone call the durian overpowered or that it should be nerfed. I saw that with loads of items but the durian? Its such a nothing item that when i saw the video title i was like “really? Isnt it the oil canister thats the big debate now?” Its not that its not useful, its got like you said no real weaknesses, but its just the fact that it is yet another emetic grenade that makes it not really the meta-changing thing that the E-phone was Back when the e-phone came out i saw kotti say that the problem wasnt that the e-phone was overpowered, but that the normal pool of items is so underpowered that anything useful is game-changing. I used to think he was crazy, because in any other stealth game i think an instant kill, no alerts item would be considered OP but now im starting to come around on it. The problem is that in a Hitman (which i use as shorthand for 3/WoA) where you had an E-Phone, the oil canister, the Durian, pre-nerf molotov, the kalmer glitch, pre-nerf Lancer and dual breaching charges along with the classic lockpick and coins combo you would have such a wealth of options that the downsides of picking any of them would be that you couldnt pick the others. But we live in a world where IO essentially makes anything that could shake up the meta becomes a paperweight in two months I also think that the idea that speedrunners, a class of player that is based around house rules, should influence the balance of a game is flawed because they dont play the game in a way a normal person would engage with it. A speedgame happens in spite of the devs, not because of them. Hence why a game like Simpsons Hit & Run is a popular speedgame, because it lucked into being fun. I used to REALLY care about all this stuff, i railed against the phone for months when H2 introduced it and then railed for the kalmer glitch to be fixed for years. Then the molotov got fixed, an item i liked, and then i just stopped caring. My philosophy is that we live in a world where all the leaderboard times are cheated or use tricks so particular that items cant beat them, like the bomb launch paris or 6sec dubai, so speedrunning Hitman no longer has the appeal it did for me in the early H2 days. Youre no longer playing Hitman, youre playing this weird bullet hell shooting gallery where you shoot people from across the map and then run past hordes of guards, if you choose to speedrun. I dont begrudge that, its fun to watch and likely fun to play if youre into that but i realized that Hitman is a fun game and i was ruining my fun by actually caring about all these things like obscure glitches or OP items because the only thing that actually matters is the Speedrun.com forums which already ban stuff like that anyway. The only non-cheated leaderboards other than that site are console leaderboards, which dont matter because the best console player will always be slower than the top 20 on PC and even if you only care about the integrity of the official leaderboards not only are they cheated on PC there are other glitches that can be used like the 24 hour overflow to get a six second time on any map. So IO’s promise of balance and anti-cheat has failed from the getgo I also think that if you nerf the durian nothing changes. The fartcase is already a frisk-bypass so long as you place it on the ground, so itll go back to that meta. People also like using the fartcase to cheese ETs for the unlocks, so you take that away in an attempt to nerf it youll get people complaining like how they still complain about an NPC that doesnt puke in a toilet even tho theyve essentially removed the bin mechanic which was a buffer for the power of emetics. I also think that in railing against the durian youve missed that the game has been going down this road of power creep since H2, which fucked up the delicate balance of 2016 (granted its balance was achieved by not having anything useful but oh well). Let me explain: Back in H1 days the idea of an item being a melee was so unique that the concealable baton was outright a good unlock. I think because for the most part “souvineer” type items werent a thing, it was mostly gadgets. Then the claw hammer came bear the end of 2016 and that became the best item for melee over ight. Then when the fish came out that was a further revelation, it was a concealable melee and thrown item that was legal to hold and never broke when thrown but also was rewarded at like level 2 mastery on an early and fan favorite map of the game. Now everything from 2016 that was a melee or thrown item was useless. Then the crowbar usurped that and now not only is the idea of picking a melee without a secondary purpose comical but so is the idea of not going into a mission without at least something that could KO at a moment’s notice. When H3 came out, by comparison, i dont think anything has ever shook up the meta like what was in H2. It’s kind of just been the same old 5 mechanics recycled into 30 different items And i think a greater problem of Hitman is for all its modularity they never developed anything to futureproof their additions. For example, your suggestions for making the durian illegal in certain disguises only works because the game specifically encourages a suit only playstyle. If that wasnt the case, that wouldnt affect balance at all because everyone would use disguises all the time. If there were challenges for SONKO, or for no emetics, baked into the classics as a playstyle thats as encouraged as SASO then these items wouldnt matter. Or if they had a custom difficulty like in Dishonored 2 that could be toggled in any mode including contracts, then people could balance around the way they want to play and the way they want others to Overall i dont know what hitman players really want because it seems they run on being outraged that they might be able to use an item in a game that actually is a utility. Like play MGS5: Quiet is way more useful than any item in Hitman and she’s considered a weak companion compred to D-Dog. Play Splinter Cell: they have an entire gun that does everything. oftentimes i wonder if disguises werent introduced to the series from the start if hitman fans would call them OP and demand their removal because “theyre worse than the e-phone, you can bypass entire mechanics by isolating a single NPC”
The fartcase still requires some setup, and even may even require a specific disguise to use it if your target is in a specific area (though it isn't too uncommon for targets to go in public places, I grant you). The fartcase is more an issue in contracts mode to be honest, and I totally get why people don't like that. But there is quite a difference between an illegal item being used in a unique way, versus an item that just supersedes the need to be clever like that. The Durian just sets a bad precedent and really shouldn't be how it currently is. As I said in the video, it's power creep, and it's a bad item to have around in its current state. As I said in the video, the people who know your game the most are the ones best to ask advice from. Not every idea is gold, that goes for any meta group, not just speedrunners, but the reasoning for certain changes are going to be more nuanced the further up the skill ladder you go. Don't ignore casual players otherwise you get a game that's impossible to penetrate. Don't listen to speedrunners entirely otherwise only specific meta's will be viable, and that's not good either. As a developer you strike a balance between the two extremes. You may have noticed that I didn't mention the E-phone. That was deliberate on my part because there are better examples that get my point across that are also interesting to talk about. Free kill buttons are obviously bad and "It was OP therefore people used it and it got removed" just isn't interesting to discuss in a video. Back in 2022 when I was first making this video when the Molly released (which is why I have that footage btw, that wasn't modded), I even had jokes about it being the elephant in the room and refusing to discuss it. The e-phone is just an obviously bad item that should never have gotten past IOI's balance team. It's like arguing that a lethal poison dart gun should be added; it's a terrible idea and would be actively detrimental as you can kill any one target at will for just...being near them essentially (unless you're smart enough to snipe people by working out the trajectory, which is skilful), and there are plenty of workarounds for shooting people (Hide in bushes or just out of sight). But that's not exactly sticking to Hitman's puzzle design philosophy; that's just outright trying to break it, and certainly not in a good way either. Game balance is more than just stats being altered. It's about the feel of a weapon and the satisfaction of it when they repeatedly use it. This is somewhat subjective, but there is still some logic to it. It's born out of balance consideration for the game, not out of selfishness which is a different mindset. Thank you for your rather long comment btw, it was a very fascinating read.
i dont really agree, the Durian is just a better version of the fartcase but are essentially the same utility. You go up to a target and you make them sick legally. Ones a straight upgrade and more OP, but thats because its essentially removing more and more the layers between pressing a button and winning. It went from two to one See i come from the TF2 fanbase where listening to pros specifically caused the game to die out, because the pros wanted a competitive game and items balanced around 6v6 whereas the majority of the playerbase were 12v12 people who didnt even care about playing the objective. Knowledge about a game doesnt equal game design skill, like how a porn addict isnt good at sex I think that again, the E-phone or a lethal dart gun in the context of a game with actually useful kit wouldnt stick out too much. The e-phone would be less used than a wallbang lancer for a map like new york, itd be less used than the molotov in a map like paris, etc. These items are only so bad conceptually because Hitman’s idea of a good item is a knife that has a bit of poison in it
Yes, which is rather my point. Something shouldn't be immediately better than something else that takes some effort to pull off. Both are still pretty bad though, I agree. Competitive TF2 is something of a joke, not because it's bad or that it lacks any skill, but because the people who play it are ALREADY good at the game and there's no leeway for newcomers to join, something Meet Your Match, an official comp mode, was aiming to try and get started. As you know...that just didn't happen, not because of lack of interest from casual players or experienced players, but because Valve screwed the pooch so hard with its implementation that it satisfied nobody. There were no banned items to satisfy comp players, and the matchmaking system (an outdated "play more to get higher ranks" system) is woefully out of date. Placement games don't exist, and ELO only has a very small part of how MM assigns players. Oh, and they added Turbine into competitive rotation, which is probably the worst thing they could've done. I think the only outright good change they did was Time Attack Payload. Valve do not know what TF2 competitive wanted, and their competitive beta was, and still remains, one of the most useless programs they ever introduced into TF2. This is why community competitive is so low-key and why it's so niche ands has so many rules not made for newcomers or people who are interested. I also suspect Valve, being who they are, just stopped caring after a while. An experiment that failed; that's what TF2 competitive is to them one suspects. The game has....actually useful kit? It's just that the rules Hitman presents are done to avoid the more esoteric playstyles that discourage breaking the game too much. It goes for a rules-based system, and tries to keep things relatively simple to understand. Wallbangs are bad because they discourage map exploration (Sniper Assassin is the only map to have such ammo for a reason), the Molotov was inconsistent to use, not because it was OP by itself (which I actually showed off by the way), and it just doesn't make sense to have like it was in the game. We do not need to try and defend bad item design as if they'd be somehow better in a conceptually different universe, it distracts from the fact that they're bad now. IO are not going to overhaul the games's mechanics specifically to add them.
@@Dribbleondobut the thing is that the durian wont affect any high level play because emetics, while OP, are ways to move the target which already exist in better ways or with speedruns arent needed when they get more and more optimized. The Dubai 6sec run will never be beaten via Durian And while Valve didnt help with its handling of competitive, i cant blame competitive’s failure on solely that. Because it was a dumb idea to begin with, you cant thread the needle between people who dont like playing as half the classes in the game, and people who like to do taunts on 2fort and play friendly. Its trying to peel up an onion with a chainsaw. Sure, competitive players shouldve gotten official support but this Goldilocks player that wants to play friendly AND 6v6 doesnt exist in a way that can support a whole game mode and Valve’s attempts to turn TF2’s core playerbase into competitive-lites killed their enthusiasm for half a decade And again, i dont think the item design is bad, it’s that there’s so little good item design that anything actually good has to be brought down to its level. Theres a million explosive, melee and guns acting as crabs in the bucket pulling down actually interesting items
I might be saying this often, but I TRULY appreciate you and your work. The effort your put in, even to talk about one item, is astonishing. It speaks to how one fruit can expose the dwindling design philosophy in an otherwise excellent game (Never expected to write such a sentence). And those IOI stick figures were rather funny. I love IOI as a whole, but I yearn to see a more refined version of Hitman again. In fact, it probably was, but these items are diluting it. Needless to say, I always love watching another video by you.
Thank you for the praise, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
(also, the stick figures are A; posing in a familiar memetic way and B: loosely based on XKCD's "What If?" series).
Another great video, I love the consistent editing style and artstyle you use.
Thank you very much! I'm glad people like my videos. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside =)
Really glad to have found this channel from the forum))
I really like the subtle fact that well
They just bloody released the oil canister. I am looking forward to seeing this story develop, as currently this is way too broken. I do like to watch the world burn I guess)
But the strangest thing is that sometimes they do care about items. Like when they were adding Proximity Micro Tazer to the main game from freelancer, they removed the cook behaviour. This does suck for Freelancer a little bit, but still, it is like they test the idea by chance before implementing it
Cook behaviour?
Also, I might actually have to do a follow-up about the oil canister at this rate.
great video, love the production quality. ngl I'd be fine with them stopping adding items over just adding blatantly broken ones. all it does is ruin contracts mode even further, which is why I stopped making them.
Ah, that's....yeah, I can't blame ya.
Great video! I love how much thought you put into each of your points, and I agree that the balance has been dwindling pretty much ever since Year 4 started.
By the way, have you tried the Oil Can they added today yet? It's literally just the Durian but worse. Free accident explosion for shooting it ONCE, and can also be poured to create a fire accident. Literally just better propane you can bring into levels. There's also an incredibly easy out of bounds glitch with it, where vaulting over a ledge and pouring at the same time puts you over the ledge. Incredibly busted item, yet again contributing to the problem of overpowered items getting added.
I unlocked it while I was uploading this video. I've not tried any of the exploits yet, but I will say the thing that made it balanced for me is that pouring it is illegal regardless of disguise, which is generally a good thing (ditto for the water canister).
I don't think it's worse than the durian tbh; this requires setup and cannot be used everywhere and even requires knowing a target's routine to some extent. Even if the spark required to ignite can be done with a taser item, that still requires two inventory slots to be taken, which is going to impact your run to some extent. I'm generally in favour of it, though only time will tell if it gets worse as we can now use it outside of Freelancer's expected gameplay.
I'm glad you enjoyed my video, and yes, it is quite disheartening how much the game is slipping into a balance coma.
Its funny because unlike you ive never really seen anyone call the durian overpowered or that it should be nerfed. I saw that with loads of items but the durian? Its such a nothing item that when i saw the video title i was like “really? Isnt it the oil canister thats the big debate now?” Its not that its not useful, its got like you said no real weaknesses, but its just the fact that it is yet another emetic grenade that makes it not really the meta-changing thing that the E-phone was
Back when the e-phone came out i saw kotti say that the problem wasnt that the e-phone was overpowered, but that the normal pool of items is so underpowered that anything useful is game-changing. I used to think he was crazy, because in any other stealth game i think an instant kill, no alerts item would be considered OP but now im starting to come around on it. The problem is that in a Hitman (which i use as shorthand for 3/WoA) where you had an E-Phone, the oil canister, the Durian, pre-nerf molotov, the kalmer glitch, pre-nerf Lancer and dual breaching charges along with the classic lockpick and coins combo you would have such a wealth of options that the downsides of picking any of them would be that you couldnt pick the others. But we live in a world where IO essentially makes anything that could shake up the meta becomes a paperweight in two months
I also think that the idea that speedrunners, a class of player that is based around house rules, should influence the balance of a game is flawed because they dont play the game in a way a normal person would engage with it. A speedgame happens in spite of the devs, not because of them. Hence why a game like Simpsons Hit & Run is a popular speedgame, because it lucked into being fun. I used to REALLY care about all this stuff, i railed against the phone for months when H2 introduced it and then railed for the kalmer glitch to be fixed for years. Then the molotov got fixed, an item i liked, and then i just stopped caring. My philosophy is that we live in a world where all the leaderboard times are cheated or use tricks so particular that items cant beat them, like the bomb launch paris or 6sec dubai, so speedrunning Hitman no longer has the appeal it did for me in the early H2 days. Youre no longer playing Hitman, youre playing this weird bullet hell shooting gallery where you shoot people from across the map and then run past hordes of guards, if you choose to speedrun. I dont begrudge that, its fun to watch and likely fun to play if youre into that but i realized that Hitman is a fun game and i was ruining my fun by actually caring about all these things like obscure glitches or OP items because the only thing that actually matters is the Speedrun.com forums which already ban stuff like that anyway. The only non-cheated leaderboards other than that site are console leaderboards, which dont matter because the best console player will always be slower than the top 20 on PC and even if you only care about the integrity of the official leaderboards not only are they cheated on PC there are other glitches that can be used like the 24 hour overflow to get a six second time on any map. So IO’s promise of balance and anti-cheat has failed from the getgo
I also think that if you nerf the durian nothing changes. The fartcase is already a frisk-bypass so long as you place it on the ground, so itll go back to that meta. People also like using the fartcase to cheese ETs for the unlocks, so you take that away in an attempt to nerf it youll get people complaining like how they still complain about an NPC that doesnt puke in a toilet even tho theyve essentially removed the bin mechanic which was a buffer for the power of emetics. I also think that in railing against the durian youve missed that the game has been going down this road of power creep since H2, which fucked up the delicate balance of 2016 (granted its balance was achieved by not having anything useful but oh well). Let me explain:
Back in H1 days the idea of an item being a melee was so unique that the concealable baton was outright a good unlock. I think because for the most part “souvineer” type items werent a thing, it was mostly gadgets. Then the claw hammer came bear the end of 2016 and that became the best item for melee over ight. Then when the fish came out that was a further revelation, it was a concealable melee and thrown item that was legal to hold and never broke when thrown but also was rewarded at like level 2 mastery on an early and fan favorite map of the game. Now everything from 2016 that was a melee or thrown item was useless. Then the crowbar usurped that and now not only is the idea of picking a melee without a secondary purpose comical but so is the idea of not going into a mission without at least something that could KO at a moment’s notice. When H3 came out, by comparison, i dont think anything has ever shook up the meta like what was in H2. It’s kind of just been the same old 5 mechanics recycled into 30 different items
And i think a greater problem of Hitman is for all its modularity they never developed anything to futureproof their additions. For example, your suggestions for making the durian illegal in certain disguises only works because the game specifically encourages a suit only playstyle. If that wasnt the case, that wouldnt affect balance at all because everyone would use disguises all the time. If there were challenges for SONKO, or for no emetics, baked into the classics as a playstyle thats as encouraged as SASO then these items wouldnt matter. Or if they had a custom difficulty like in Dishonored 2 that could be toggled in any mode including contracts, then people could balance around the way they want to play and the way they want others to
Overall i dont know what hitman players really want because it seems they run on being outraged that they might be able to use an item in a game that actually is a utility. Like play MGS5: Quiet is way more useful than any item in Hitman and she’s considered a weak companion compred to D-Dog. Play Splinter Cell: they have an entire gun that does everything. oftentimes i wonder if disguises werent introduced to the series from the start if hitman fans would call them OP and demand their removal because “theyre worse than the e-phone, you can bypass entire mechanics by isolating a single NPC”
The fartcase still requires some setup, and even may even require a specific disguise to use it if your target is in a specific area (though it isn't too uncommon for targets to go in public places, I grant you). The fartcase is more an issue in contracts mode to be honest, and I totally get why people don't like that. But there is quite a difference between an illegal item being used in a unique way, versus an item that just supersedes the need to be clever like that. The Durian just sets a bad precedent and really shouldn't be how it currently is. As I said in the video, it's power creep, and it's a bad item to have around in its current state.
As I said in the video, the people who know your game the most are the ones best to ask advice from. Not every idea is gold, that goes for any meta group, not just speedrunners, but the reasoning for certain changes are going to be more nuanced the further up the skill ladder you go. Don't ignore casual players otherwise you get a game that's impossible to penetrate. Don't listen to speedrunners entirely otherwise only specific meta's will be viable, and that's not good either. As a developer you strike a balance between the two extremes.
You may have noticed that I didn't mention the E-phone. That was deliberate on my part because there are better examples that get my point across that are also interesting to talk about. Free kill buttons are obviously bad and "It was OP therefore people used it and it got removed" just isn't interesting to discuss in a video. Back in 2022 when I was first making this video when the Molly released (which is why I have that footage btw, that wasn't modded), I even had jokes about it being the elephant in the room and refusing to discuss it.
The e-phone is just an obviously bad item that should never have gotten past IOI's balance team. It's like arguing that a lethal poison dart gun should be added; it's a terrible idea and would be actively detrimental as you can kill any one target at will for just...being near them essentially (unless you're smart enough to snipe people by working out the trajectory, which is skilful), and there are plenty of workarounds for shooting people (Hide in bushes or just out of sight). But that's not exactly sticking to Hitman's puzzle design philosophy; that's just outright trying to break it, and certainly not in a good way either.
Game balance is more than just stats being altered. It's about the feel of a weapon and the satisfaction of it when they repeatedly use it. This is somewhat subjective, but there is still some logic to it. It's born out of balance consideration for the game, not out of selfishness which is a different mindset.
Thank you for your rather long comment btw, it was a very fascinating read.
i dont really agree, the Durian is just a better version of the fartcase but are essentially the same utility. You go up to a target and you make them sick legally. Ones a straight upgrade and more OP, but thats because its essentially removing more and more the layers between pressing a button and winning. It went from two to one
See i come from the TF2 fanbase where listening to pros specifically caused the game to die out, because the pros wanted a competitive game and items balanced around 6v6 whereas the majority of the playerbase were 12v12 people who didnt even care about playing the objective. Knowledge about a game doesnt equal game design skill, like how a porn addict isnt good at sex
I think that again, the E-phone or a lethal dart gun in the context of a game with actually useful kit wouldnt stick out too much. The e-phone would be less used than a wallbang lancer for a map like new york, itd be less used than the molotov in a map like paris, etc. These items are only so bad conceptually because Hitman’s idea of a good item is a knife that has a bit of poison in it
Dribbleondo rejects the power. Not the responsibility.
Yes, which is rather my point. Something shouldn't be immediately better than something else that takes some effort to pull off. Both are still pretty bad though, I agree.
Competitive TF2 is something of a joke, not because it's bad or that it lacks any skill, but because the people who play it are ALREADY good at the game and there's no leeway for newcomers to join, something Meet Your Match, an official comp mode, was aiming to try and get started. As you know...that just didn't happen, not because of lack of interest from casual players or experienced players, but because Valve screwed the pooch so hard with its implementation that it satisfied nobody. There were no banned items to satisfy comp players, and the matchmaking system (an outdated "play more to get higher ranks" system) is woefully out of date. Placement games don't exist, and ELO only has a very small part of how MM assigns players. Oh, and they added Turbine into competitive rotation, which is probably the worst thing they could've done. I think the only outright good change they did was Time Attack Payload.
Valve do not know what TF2 competitive wanted, and their competitive beta was, and still remains, one of the most useless programs they ever introduced into TF2. This is why community competitive is so low-key and why it's so niche ands has so many rules not made for newcomers or people who are interested. I also suspect Valve, being who they are, just stopped caring after a while. An experiment that failed; that's what TF2 competitive is to them one suspects.
The game has....actually useful kit? It's just that the rules Hitman presents are done to avoid the more esoteric playstyles that discourage breaking the game too much. It goes for a rules-based system, and tries to keep things relatively simple to understand. Wallbangs are bad because they discourage map exploration (Sniper Assassin is the only map to have such ammo for a reason), the Molotov was inconsistent to use, not because it was OP by itself (which I actually showed off by the way), and it just doesn't make sense to have like it was in the game. We do not need to try and defend bad item design as if they'd be somehow better in a conceptually different universe, it distracts from the fact that they're bad now. IO are not going to overhaul the games's mechanics specifically to add them.
@@Dribbleondobut the thing is that the durian wont affect any high level play because emetics, while OP, are ways to move the target which already exist in better ways or with speedruns arent needed when they get more and more optimized. The Dubai 6sec run will never be beaten via Durian
And while Valve didnt help with its handling of competitive, i cant blame competitive’s failure on solely that. Because it was a dumb idea to begin with, you cant thread the needle between people who dont like playing as half the classes in the game, and people who like to do taunts on 2fort and play friendly. Its trying to peel up an onion with a chainsaw. Sure, competitive players shouldve gotten official support but this Goldilocks player that wants to play friendly AND 6v6 doesnt exist in a way that can support a whole game mode and Valve’s attempts to turn TF2’s core playerbase into competitive-lites killed their enthusiasm for half a decade
And again, i dont think the item design is bad, it’s that there’s so little good item design that anything actually good has to be brought down to its level. Theres a million explosive, melee and guns acting as crabs in the bucket pulling down actually interesting items
When i see your videos i forget your an indie channel and not a 100k+channel
I put a disgusting amount of effort in to videos because I can. That, and I like making them.