Top Ten Team Fortress Stupidities

The Orange Box is fantastic value: three of the greatest PC games every made, and with nine classes Team Fortress 2 provides more ways than ever before to show that you don't know what the hell you're doing. Read our guide to avoid your co-briefcase-grabbers hammering "change team" at the sight of your name.

1.  Scout Rush Suicide

"Hey man!  Let's all be scouts, right, and rush A and then we'll capture it!"  This is a daring and innovative plan, relying on speed, co-operation, and the desperate hope that the other team has somehow never even heard of engineers.  It's a known fact that the scout sometimes drops dead at the mere sight of a sentry gun, and just hearing a rumor that there might be a pyro at the capture point can cause immediate spontaneous combustion.  If you log onto a game and find that half of your team is scouts, start sending nice messages to the other side so that you'll at least be friends with the winners.

The Test:  Have you ever demanded a medic heal you instead of somebody important? You're the best equipped to dash back to a medikit somewhere else, more than enough to restore your lilliputian health bar, and let the medic concentrate on fixing people who won't be killed by a stiff breeze.

2. Single Shot Soldier

As a soldier you should either be firing four rockets bursts or reloading.  There is no other purpose to your existence.  Do not go round a corner without reloading.  DO NOT GO ROUND A CORNER WITHOUT RELOADING.  Once you have to start hand loading each rocket your rate of fire drops to once every three seconds, scientifically established as enough time for even a blown spy to murder you.  Rockets for you are like legs for a racehorse - less than four and you shouldn't even bother showing up.

The Test:  You ever fire at your own feet while trying desperately to kill the guy who's about to remove your skull close range, and noticed how even a wimpy scout can survive that?  If you've done that more than once, you're not very good at this.  (Protip: Pressing the "2" button brings up a whole new weapon!)

3. Long Range Pyro

There's nothing cuter than an optimistic little pyro chasing a target across an open plain, squirting little puffs of flame in front of him as he prays for them to trip or perhaps decide to stop and tie their shoelaces. (Hint: you cannot trip or tie shoelaces in this game). You are death and holy vengeance in a confined space, Pyro, but you're less use than an agoraphobic mole out in the open.  The scout has better long range combat ability than you and that is frankly embarrassing.  But to make up for it you get to set your teammates on fire.  Seriously, they are BEGGING you to set them on fire each and every time you see them! Thousands of miserable workers around the globe dream about covering their co-workers in petrol and throwing a match, and your colleagues WANT you to do it.  Do it!  It's wonderfully stress relieving, it's incredibly useful, and a burning spy is one of the most satisfying and hilarious sights in the world.

The Test:  So simple that Valve included it in the game: if you don't have the Flamethrower achievement, you're not pyring properly.

4. Toe-to-toe demolitions

"indirect (adjective): coming or resulting otherwise than directly or immediately, as effects or consequences."

I wrote that out for all you demomen who don't seem to understand it. Not a single one of your guns will directly kill somebody standing in front of it. You trying to go one-one-one with the enemy is like an an aesthetist deciding he can perform the whole operation by himself - it's going to lead to a lot of blood and screaming, and not in a good way.  If we're heading to gravelpit A, you clearing out the chamber with a brace of your explosive delights will help us win the game. You trying to charge in on your own, however, will provide the enemy with your hilariously ravaged corpse in twenty pieces while we're left one short for the next attack.  The only way you can kill someone in a one-on-one fight is to fire something that won't explode for two seconds and and hope that a stupid enemy stands on it.  (Corollary: if you've ever lost a mano-a-demo fight, you are that stupid enemy, and you might want to apply a slightly more sophisticated tactical strategy than a dog chasing a stick while running over all those strange beeping flashing things).

The Test:  When storming a capture point, do you wait for others or run in by yourself?  If the latter, why aren't you playing as a soldier?  Or even better, playing a different game?

5. This. Is. The Heavy!

I know how it feels, Heavy.  That great big number 300 on the screen just makes you feel so goddamn spartan and manly! Able to charge an army of thousands and only worry about running out of enemies!  This is not the case.  You're useful in defense because you're slightly more mobile (but less intelligent) than a sentry gun, and with a medic to back you up you're a fearsome threat to an entrenched position.  But the top speed of a quadruple amputee turtle going uphill makes you incredibly vulnerable when you decide you can walk out that door and kill everything you see.  Snipers can see better and kill faster and they have wet dreams about only two things: Sniper Wolf, and your mongoloid skull in their cross hairs.   When firing that cannon in the open you're slightly easier to hit than the ground, and less able to do anything about it.

The Test:  Have you ever run out of minigun ammo?  If not, please be informed that you are a terrible heavy.

6. Engineer: Offensive Powerhouse

When your main attack is "build something at them" you do not run out in front of people with rocket launchers and flamethrowers.  It is a terrible sign for the modern world that I actually have to explain that to people.  Probably the stupidest player in Team Fortress 2 is the low scoring terrible shot who loves how sentry guns do the work for him, rushing into a firefight and thinking "Woohoo, if I build a sentry here it'll kill all these guys! Me AM GENIOOOS!".  This idiot is an early Christmas present to his enemies, providing free points in the form of unfinished sentries (slightly easier to destroy than a souffle) and his own decerebrate corpse-to-be standing right next to goddamn thing just waiting for incoming rockets to kill two very stupid birds with one explosion.

The Test:  When playing gravelpit, do you build a teleport or sentry gun first?  If the latter, get back to the spawn point and hand in your wrench because you have no idea how to work that thing.

7. Premature Uberulation

A sad story of embarrassment and failed romance - a Heavy and a Medic meet up, hit it off, and go to have some fun.  They're having a good time, building up to 100 % together and then suddenly the medic gets overexcited, fires it off too soon, and it's all over before the heavy has even started.  That guy has like three hundred hit points, medics, and you're healing him the whole time - wait until the shooting starts before loosing that hard-earned uber charge.  Hallways aren't that threatening and we don't need to waste half an uber on the dangerous task of "Walk through an area with no enemies".

The Test:  Your combined score should go up by at least seven points for a decent uber.  More if you're helping a pyro.

8. The Essential Sniper

Listen carefully:  the sniper is in the 'support' category for a goddamn reason.  If there are less than six people on your team, there are at least eight classes you could be more useful with than the sniper. Until Valve add the much anticipated "Accurately shoot a bullseye across the map" objective, get your ass down out of that nest and choose a soldier to help us get the briefcase, or an engineer to defend it.  Ask yourself honestly "Do I ever actually hit anything I shoot at?"  Videogames aren't hollywood, and just believing in yourself really hard isn't magically going to make you a better shot.  Other fun things to avoid include standing still longer than a second searching for a target (enemy snipers love that), wasting your charged up shot on a fast moving target (enemy scouts love that), and refusing to budge from your perfect spot even as the last capture point goes down (your entire team hates that, and you, you idiot).

The Test:  Have you ever been the highest scorer on a losing team?  You caused both of those things to happen.

9. The Dumbass Spy

Far and away the class with the widest range of intelligence.  A good spy is often the highest scorer on the team, while a bad spy makes a retarded Charlie Chaplin with buckets on his feet wielding a feather duster look like a valuable contribution to the war effort.  Here are some (but not nearly all) of the dumbass things a spy can do, as represented by what you imagine him saying at the time:

- "Well hello, fellow Blue team!  I'm your friendly BLUE scout, down here in the blue intel room to, um, have a look at the lovely briefcase! Please excuse my slow speed, I've sprained may ankle, so please don't shoot me to tiny retarded pieces as that might slow the healing process."

- "I'd love to heal you, but your health insurance has expired so I'm going to hold this syringe gun instead of the healing gun that all genuine medics are firing all the time, at all times, always.  But I'm a genuine medic too!"

- "Atten-SHUN!  Soldier mysteriously running back from the battle with full health to perform a surprise inspection of the Sentry Guns, the Sentry Guns that I - as a soldier - have no goddamn reason to be anywhere within ten meters of! Oh god, cease fire, CEASE FIRE!"

- "I love how there's nothing suspicious about me decloaking, in your team colors, right in front of you!  Isn't it awesome how I think you're an idiot who won't immediately murder my stupid ass, buddy?"

The Test:  Is that score of yours high or low?  Low?  Then how about you break this secret code, spy boy:  STOPAYBEINGAYAYSPYAYYOUAYASSHOLEAY.

10.  The One Man Team

Team Fortress 2 is the best team-based shooter ever made.  The entire point is the combination of balanced classes to achieve team-based objectives, half of everyone you see is dressed in the same color as you and just in case things aren't clear enough yet they put "Team" right there in the title.  You have to think about the group.  Note: shouting "Come on guys, we need a medic!" while repeatedly feeding your red Heavy into a grinder made of blue bullets does NOT count as "thinking of the group".

The Test:  Do you think "What does the team need?" or "What do I want to do?"

Posted by Luke McKinney

Comments

[Jonanin]

Haha, great post. I was laughing the whole time, and agreed with you on most points. However, in number 4 (The Demo), I disagree a little bit. Your primary weapon (key 1) explodes when it hits an enemy. I've killed plenty of scouts chasing after me doing that. Especially the scouts that are too retarded to do anything except chase me in a straight line.

[Prime]

Brilliant! Excellent advice all around :)

[Luke]

Thanks for the feedback, Jonanin. But if somebody's bad enough to need this advice, we can be fairly sure they're not bullseying scouts with the low speed demo charges - at least, none of the hundreds of teammates I've cursed at have!

[sco]

I couldnt understand what you were to point out in most of your posts, and i have been playing tfc and tf2 for 9 years. Please re read or have someone else read it and edit your article and it could be very good!

[Natural Selector]

Thanks mate, this text made my day! Even after having played only a few hours of TF2 this text let me burst into tears while laughing my a/ off! :DDD

[krugmik]

Thanks for these comments, now when I get stuck with noobs I can refer them to this site so I don't have to press "Disconnect from game" every time I see their name :)

[sam]

So yeah this was pretty much hilarious, i found this while looking for tf2 backgrounds while avoiding tech writing homework at 4am... one more to add to the spys, "Hello im a Heavy but ive recently started running on the treadmil and can now run faster than any other Heavy... i also dont like to shoot my gun like other Heavys..."

[-=Secondgunman=-]

Here is something to think about In both TF2 and TFC you have Snipers this to can be a hard hit to the people on the other end of their sights. But if one sniper is teamshooting or bloccking the other one it is not good for the snipers and the team... another thing I see that is a real team choker is people that not only block Snipers shot but try to snipe stuff or people are Medic Spy Pyro Solly or the best class to snipe with other then Sniper is Fatty... real winners. Play your class if you want to play another class play it with that class not the one you are at that time.

[Teh Blasta]

This was great. Kept me laughing the whole time. The Spy part was the best. The Heavy comment was also very funny. To add, got to get the fellow spy in there. "Hello fellow blue-atons! I'm your spy! Thats right! I'm not cloaking or in costume because I left my cigs at home. And it may look like I have full health but I need my insulin, I think I left in in the intel room..."

[not a sniper, but...]

Another tip for snipers: Stand away from the back wall of the area you are using for cover. There are two reasons for this. First, you give folks a place to walk instead of right through you or your field of view. Second, you don't get splash damage from rockets aimed at your sorry behind. Yes you can get backstabbed by the spy this way, but then you have another reason to dislike poorly played pyros.