Choose not to pay into game

Didnt TF2 change the way you unlock items? From what I hear Valve added a pointless XP system to their games

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That's exactly my point.

The Sandvich, Kritzkrieg and Crusaders Crossbow are probably the only truly essential items, but there's so many cases where some items are better that it makes it difficult to say. Engineer on attack needs the gunslinger. Crit-a-cola is stupidly strong and easily can replace the scouts pistol. I can't directly say that unlocks are strictly better, but their application in different scenarios can give that appearance.

All cosmetics.

This one is an exceptional case for me. My first game put me against smurfs with more game knowledge. A few games later, I was matched against a person playing my character, and destroying me every time. I added him after, and saw he was level 30 with full rune pages and stats for his character.

League may have those purchases for characters, some stronger than others, but it's never a fair fight if the matchmaking is anything to go by. Why I was matched against someone 20 levels above me is unbelievable, but it happened to me, and it ruined my faith in the games balance.

The thing about TF2s alternate weapons is that they are mostly better in certain circumstances but worse in others, so that they can kill easier when in their strong position is hardly a surprise.

Few weapons are outright better or grant as much benefit as the wielder can manage – The Ambassador, for example, is almost always superior assuming you can aim sufficiently – just like with knowing each class' strengths and weaknesses you have to work around enemy weapons.

There's never really any need to counter specific weapons that can't just be done via class, particularly since if you decide to change a weapon you are just as subject to its weaknesses too.

No, they're not. Practically the ONLY draw to Dota 2 since Valve got its pawns on it was the fact that they would not change the core Dota 1 philosophy that everybody starts a match on the same level (it used to be a Warcraft 3 mod after all). I believe you don't even need to pay to unlock new heroes, like you have to do in shit like HotS (but I may be wrong, I only played Dota 1).

You die from a single not-ever-direct-hit rocket/pipe.

Which, again, are in Dota's metagame since its days as a simple WC 3 mod. Of course the buffs and nerfs where usually demanded by the competitive scene, so you would have heroes nerfed because their power in competitive games (but that were trash in pubs), while heroes that were pubstompers would sometimes get buffs to make them more competitive.

Out of those 3, LoL is the only one that can be considered pay2win because every new champion release goes like this:
Rinse and repeat.
To my understanding all of Dota 2 items are cosmetic and TF2's unlockables are mosty sidegrades with a few notable exceptions, besides every weapon in TF2 is easily obtainable by trading scraps which can be very easily acquired with a few hours of gameplay. Or at least that's how it was the last time i played.

The Sandvich and the Crusader Crossbow serves for nothing but to fix mistakes the Medic did with his positioning or for niche uses, because in regular conditions, your Medic is not gonna need your Sandvich and you're not gonna need the healing either, that just steals Uber from your Medic.
Kritzkrieg is important on Defense only, and even then I still prefer the QuickFix.

Gunslinger in attack is a meme. Sure, it works. But changing to Soldier\Demo works better. If you're gonna put teleporters ahead, you're gonna need a sentry to defend your point anyway.

They release new heroes on a specific schedule so you never have enough Influence Points to buy them by the time they are released unless you skip some. They are made OP as fuck during the first week and then nerfed down afterwards, so everyone that bought them can feel good about themselves and everyone else can eat a dick.
Even if you grind like crazy and can buy every hero when he comes out with IP, you're not gonna have a rune page for him.

League of Legends, much like every F2P game, has a very simple concept: You will pay for the game one way or another. You either pay for the heroes and can massacre everyone else for fun or you can farm and lose game after game, entertaining everyone else that bought said hero.
You either fork over cash or you work to amuse those that did.

Dota 2 is dogshit but you're just looking like a retard claiming cosmetics effect the game

Last I played TF2 vanilla loadout was still the best in most cases, save for some necessary things like Medic unlocks. But the game is saturated with garbage weapons that add nothing, hats that kill performance and bad maps and gamemodes.
Dota 2 is fair but would do well with an option to turn off cosmetics. League is shit no matter you how look at it.

The Runes/Masteries in League of Legends are fucking horrendous when it comes to balance. They add a huge portion of unpredictability to the game. You see someone playing a certain character, but there's a good chance he won't be the same as the last time you saw him. He'll have different stats/abilities depending on which runes/masteries he took, making understanding your opponents far less important/viable than simply being mechanically good at your own character.

They babysit their cows, tbh. It's the reason behind the insane matchmaking times because it's not purely MMR based. High MMR players will still beat the curve even if they are penniless jerks, so it's not so bad and people don't notice too much.

most of the time in TF2 the stocks are the best choice, and the few times they're not, the weapon is easily unlocked via cheevos, see: sandvich, ubersaw, krietzkrieg.

the pointless XP system is just that, pointless, weapon unlocks work the same way they've always done.

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This. As much as I fucking hate Dota, you can't accuse it of being pay to win when the only stupid shit that idiots pay for gives no ingame advantage. Microtransactions are still cancer, even for cosmetic items, but it doesn't change the fact that OP is being a faggot.

No comment on TF2 or LoL, since I've played neither and know little about them.

You're just shit at the game, or doing something retarded like playing 6s.

Stock are the best items on tf2, dota only has purely cosmetic skins, and I dont know about lol

Shit thread

Thing about TF2 weapons is that if they aren't just useless sidegrades, their advantages and disadvantages typically follow this format
See: Niggerkinight weapons, Degreaser, Cuntsman, Solider banners, Gunslinger, nearly every melee unlock, etc

Valve forgot what classes meant with the retarded unlocks they keep dumping on the game.

Overwatch is more balanced because everyone has autoaim, thus lowering the skill ceiling so even a half-blind mongoloid can win on their first round.

It seems no one here has played beyond a few games. Absolutely retarded. The game is not p2w, it can be argued it's pay2notgrind if anything. You all have autism.
t. Faggot with somewhere over 3500 games before I quit

Ex-tradefag here, this is what you do. Save up a bunch of shit weapons, then go on a trade server. They're all cancer, but you're here to take advantage of that. Look for a guy who says he's "scrapbanking". Hit up a trade and give him your shitty weapons, and he'll give you one scrap metal for every 2. Make sure they're tradeable and craftable beforehand. The way this works is that you're doing the same that you would do if you scrapped two weapons to make one scrap, but you can do any two weapons instead of two from the same class, and someone else gets the resulting weapons. It's convenient for everyone involved.
Now that you have your scrap, ask around the trade server to buy whatever weapon you want for it. Pretty much every weapon is 1 scrap, and people there would be happy to oblige. You can get every weapon in the game with this same strategy.
Also while you're there, you might as well make the most of it. Trade servers are cancerous, but they're full of shitty kids and shittier admins. They're great places to make people upset. Take advantage of the trolling opportunity if you care for that.

Also TF2's stock weapons are the most versatile in the game. There aren't many weapons that hold up to how useful Stock ones are. Maybe Pyro, because last time I checked the Degreaser was a direct upgrade. If you really want weapons and don't like talking to people just play the game and get achievements. Achievements give you weapons. Rocket jumping with the cow mangler's alt fire gives you the "flaregun a soldier while he's rocket jumping" achievement as of 2013

Fuck off with this bullshit. Someone who has spent money would have access to more champions, giving them more options to take on the enemy, and they would also have a stat advantage because they can then spend their ip on runes instead of more champions. It's pay2win because if you had two players who spent the same amount of time on the game, the one that paid money would have an advantage.

I'll tell you know that the large majority of the community and developers give no fucks when it comes to how newbie balance goes. The game isn't balanced in that sense you retard. You can achieve the same advantage as someone who payed, they merely reach that advantage earlier. When it comes to the main focus of the game's balancing (ranked 5v5), everyone already would have their desired champs anyways, and rune pages to go with them. Therefore, balanced for them.
No, I'll just put my money on whichever one of then bought master yi (450 ip) and plays him first.

Fucking hell, I meant now.

Which items do you mean OP?

Ive been playing since the TFC days but I mostly stick with the stock stuff because its more effective for me.

You just go to any trade server and offer to buy it for 1 scrap. 2 scrap and it's a guarunteed deal.
then again I haven't played TF2 in many months to the economy's probobly fucc'd by now

Bull fucking shit.
You know very well that every hero is always released broken as fuck and expensive as well so the only people that can afford him do so with actual cash.
That week, the champion is insta-win for whatever team takes him and when everyone else has enough IP to buy him regularly, the mandatory patch to nerf him until he's underpowered as fuck already went into effect.

Just because your advantage is merely temporary, it doesn't mean it's not there and people can't take advantage of them.

Maybe you don't have any skills?

It's still at the point where only a handful of items are strictly better than stock, and it's always been due to Valve being retarded. Stuff like the Third Degree having the ability to hit both Medics and any patients they're connected to with their beam with the same axe-whack, and with no downside compared to stock. Even then TF2 is most certainly not pay-to-win, everything in the store is either something you can get through normal play, a cosmetic, or a convenience, ie Backpack Expander.

keys sell for nearly 30 refined a piece now

The BEST weapons are the vanilla ones. Except for the engie and medic, but they aren't offensive classes.
If you can master the rocket launcher and the minigun, you can clear any server.

lmao I left that game 5 years ago and they still do that

LoL was actually good when it started, but then, like with everything, the cancer set in and it became trash

League is such a shame since from beta to season 2 it was a very fun game. Now its not very enjoyable since its the least diverse moba in terms of character selection out there. I cannot escape the many "bad" editions of the games even if I would have control over all 6 bans. Their has been way to many editions over the years that pretty much control how the game is played once they're been selected to be in the game. You either direct all your resources and counters around those champions or you just lose. At least in dota/smite/hon I know I'll have some variety in game to game. But you start up league you will be fighting at least one Yasuo/LeeSin/Jihn/Rengar/Whatever FOTM is broken and it will direct the entire games flow. They fuck up? You get a free win. They do the bare minimum of the characters kit? They get a free win. Not calling any of them directly OP but their addition pretty much sucked all the fun out of the game. I'm not even going to bother the awful reworks that either make old champions way shit or just broken.

So many minor mechanics to the game you're better off being a one trick pony then anything else and just farm the dipshits who think the game has any sort of mercy. I have had decent games in some patches over the years but every since Jihns release I cannot tolorate playing teh game anymore. Same shit, every game. No variety. Which seems fairly absurd since it should be the opposite.

Were you only around for xin zhao and leblanc release or something? New champs are a joke. Half the time they blow and stay banned from ranked out of fear of people playing them and sucking ass. Did you only play at level 20 or something? I already told you, riot doesn't give a fuck unless you're level 30 and playing ranked.

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Valve are money grubbing assholes, but I can't complain with their F2P monetization methods.
Riot on the other hand have designed a insidious Skinner box forcing you to drop real cash on characters so you can stay competitive and spend your funbux on runes. Also they're completely owned by Tencent now so it's almost a moral imperative to not support them.

they increased airblast cost and absolutely eliminated afterburn damage.

Stock weapons are most of the time the best for tF2. If you can't win with them, you have to get better at the game.

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Granted the gunboats are extremely useful but come the fuck on, dude.

The three most powerful loadouts in the game are all available by default: stock Soldier, stock Scout, and stock Demoman.

I'm going to get shit on for this but here goes:

Wargaming does free to play right.

You never have to buy a single thing in any of their games. Pay accounts have to grind to unlock new ships, tanks or planes (collectively calling them crafts from now on), and to upgrade them just like you do, you can't buy non-premium crafts. There are premium craft that can be bought, but they are not part of the non-premium upgrade/unlock line, so playing with them does not unlock other craft. And to transfer over the exp earned from premium craft to use upgrading and unlocking non-premiums, the pay players have to shell out more money.

Pay accounts can buy exp boosts, but they have to play well for them to have a major effect. So if the pay player sucks and is just throwing money at the game, only getting 100 or so exp a match, he'll only get an extra 50-100 exp with his exp boosts he bought, meanwhile the free player who is good at the game is earning 500-1000 exp a match, win or lose, and will advance faster.

Pay players can purchase in-game money with real money, but you need both in-game money and exp to upgrade and unlock craft, so they can't just use their wallet to advance, and run into the brick wall mentioned above with exp.

All accounts, free and pay players alike, get a 2x exp boost every day on every unlocked or purchased craft in their line-up. That's not a "first win of the day for your account" boost, that's a "first win of the day with that specific craft" boost. Each craft gets an exp boost on your first first win using it, every day. This further rewards good players and punishes bad players, cause the good players will receive a massive boost to their exp, while the bad player, having either died or made little contribution and only winning by the effort of their team, will only see a marginal bonus.

Also, there are no premium craft in the two highest levels of the game, with some exception. There are a few special premium craft at those higher levels that are unlocked with exp instead of money, so pay players have to grind to unlock them just like free players. Wargaming does this on purpose, so that there are no new players just buying their way into the high level matches and shitting it up for long-time players.

Pay players do not have any distinct advantage over free players, and it is actually rather obvious to identify premium wallet warriors. Their match histories will exclusively be premium craft, and they will routinely be outclassed and get their shit pushed in, since they are put up against players who grinded to those higher levels instead of just buying their way there, and are much more better at the game than them.

Prove me wrong.

Get Gabe's cock out of your mouths you faggots. "Stock is always better" is a load of bullshit that only really applied for the primaries/secondaries of Soldier, Demoman and (debatably) Scout. With the exception of Spy all the Melee slots are superior alternatives since melee weapons were always meant to be jokes weapons and the melee unlocks that provide non-melee boosts turn jokes weapons into something actually useful. And when it's something as valuable as letting classes move faster than than their based speed they are not fucking balanced.

I can speak for league of legends and say that some skins are in fact "op". In that they give an unfair competitive advantage, making some abilities harder to see when cast etc.

You can maybe say runes are pay to win because it takes quite a few games to stack up enough IP (ingame currency) to get a full set of tier 3 runes, but you can get a full page of tier 2 runes with just a game or two. The skins though, you need to buy with RP (bought with real cash).

That said, there are plenty of poorfags who make new accounts and smurf all the way to challenger, buying nothing. More likely than not you just need skill.

I don't think this reasoning is quite right. For one thing new champs are usually banned just about every game for weeks after release, so the window to actually play them, let alone learn how they're meant to be played, is pretty slim. Even though it's true they're often busted on release. But there's also quite a few champions in the game that have been op for months which all players have had access to, and remain more op than whatever new champs get released. Examples right now are Syndra, Ryze etc.

Also, contrary to what you might think it's not a very good strategy to switch champs all the time when you're trying to gain elo. It's better to stick with one or a few champs that you're really good with. Unless you're already high elo, in which case you probably have enough IP to get the new champ anyway.

Most of the time, people who complain that they're losing because a new champion got released and is killing them are just bad.

I don't think buying things will help you on TF2, sounds like you just need to git gud. Since I'm not an homosexual I wouldn't know how things work in MOBAs though.

Matchmaking is a welfare system.

The base items in TF2 are all the best, the only exception is the escape plan.

Dota 2 doesn't sell performance improving items.

Are you retarded?

Coincidentally, this is also how World of Tanks does their f2p model.
The costs for getting them never go down, though.

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With TF2, it's never easy to say. You can still get the first three unlockable weapons via achievements, the problem is that anything released after that requires you to either strike it lucky with the random drops, craft them after waiting a ridiculous amount of drops, trade them with someone who is not a hat-kike or simply "try" them out by either picking the weapons off of fallen players or using the store to get a free sample. Or you can just buy them off from the store and waste money that way.

The problem with TF2 though is that half the classes require that ONE specific tool to play on an even field with everyone else. Some of these tools you can just get through achievements, other ones are pretty hard to come by if you don't spend time (or money) solely looking for them - Spycicle and Rescue-rangers in particular are almost a necessity to play the game right. Also the game gets balanced every six months, so you could be wasting your time trying to adapt to some weapons and Valve will just rend it useless and make another weapon or class the top dog of the game.

The only sensible unlocks are visible-secondaries since they remove firepower for another passive bonus, yet you don't have to randomly guess what the other player's stats are since you can just look at him and know it immediately.

It doesn't matter what weapons are good in TF2 anymore, in the next big update whatever you're using is most likely going to be completely obsolete and no fucking fun to use. See:

TF2's stock melee includes a baseball bat, a beer bottle, and a shovel for crying out loud. They were always joke weapons which you would use to humiliate your opponent before taunt killing became a thing. The only reason you would get any use out of them at all would be the high crit chance which just reinforced their role as a risky gambit.

When you can replace those weapons with ones that do things like increase movement speed or provide more mobility like with the atomiser, and the only downsides are things that only apply when making use of them, it's not going to be fucking against the original.

Melee weapons are meant to be the backup to the backup and their high crit rates are there to compensate for the lack of range. They have always been useful when in close quarters situations.
The medic's default bonesaw is great for dealing with Scouts and Spies, same goes for the Demo's bottle and the Sniper's kukri. Not to mention that a good amount of the unlockable melee weapons add crippling weaknesses like more bullet or fire damage.
There are weapons that are objectively superior to their default counterparts but those weapons also have their downsides and even in those cases, obtaining any weapon in TF2 without spending a cent is easy as fuck you can even rent them from the store to try them out.

the premium tanks usually released by WeeGee usually suck dicks tho, this is to compensate their absolutely jewish way of gaining money
Also if you thought the game was bad, you haven't seen the Chinese server

I was talking about the non-premium tanks. The ones you have to either grind from the bottom up for, or spend hundreds of dollars in gold to skip all the bad tanks and only play the good ones. Or spend even more, skip all of them, and only play the tier 10, if you're a super whale.

oh i see, my bad, but yeah they have a bad habit of releasing ridiculously unbalanced tanks early on. Biggest offender would be those Japanese Superheavies It's based on super sekrit jap document guise :DDDD
You know that's not really profitable, and T10 tanks barely makes any profit to coup up the humongous upkeep of the tank, most people say that the profit of playing stopped around Tier 8 so better rev up those tier 5s if you want to grind through all that shit. Also if you even want to get those tier 10s through shortcut, you STILL have to play some games in premium tanks / elite tanks to get those EXPs to unlock those shit. Honestly, WeeGee's tactic of F2P is Pay-2-not-Grind in a nutshell
-t. WoT player stopped around 2015

It's already ogre for them
i miss the short circuit and the Phlog most