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Team Fortress 2 Stats Confirm Every Suspicion
Valve has released another round of stats, this one concerning all that Team Fortress 2 playing we've been doing. They have things broken out along a couple of different metrics, including lifespan, kills, assists, captures, and even just damage dealt. As Rock, Paper, Shotgun's commentary notes, the stats confirm every suspicion you've had about your fellow players. "Yes, there are more rushy-bastard Scouts than any other class. Yes, campy-bastard Snipers earn the most points. Yes, hitpointy-bastard Heavies get the most kills. Yes, hidey-bastard Engineers live longest. And so on. What's slightly odder is the breakdown of which side wins most frequently on each map. BLU has the edge in every killing field except Dustbowl and Gravelpit. Why? How? I thought we were all the same! Damn you for not being neater, demographics." We previously discussed Valve's stats release on Half-Life 2: Episode 2 .
I've noticed that too: Blue wins alot more on most maps. I wonder if it has anything to do with which side of the map they start on? Perhaps it's not so much the class design but the terrain which gives them an edge? Compound that with the momentum you get from winning the first round almost every time?
It doesn't surprise me that Blue wins more consistently than red. Red stands out more on most maps, thus giving the blue opponents a slight edge in spotting the enemy. You definitely see this same thing at play in Halo, and I would suspect it may be even more prevalent there due to the brightness of the colors.
The sniper get more points an hour then the Heavy which gets more kills per hour... As snipers are less likely to defend or capture I am curious as to why that is the case. Perhaps it is killing turrets...
Poor medics die fast... Not in my games!!!! NO ONE SHOOTS THEM THE NOOBS!!!!!!
Rocket launcher does the most damage but the not allot of kills for the soldier... Perhaps this is both the soldier and the turret for the engineer? As I do not see turret stats for weapon damage.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Something to remember about the 2fort death map...
The big red hot spot has 3 levels of height in play: there's the area right outside the spawn, the area below it just before the ramp room, and the area with health in the sewer pathway. All three occupy the same x,y coordinates on the map. I think this contributes to the heat of that particular spot. Would be interesting to see a vertical cross-section of that one area.
"I want to get more into theory, because everything works in theory." -John Cash
I'm surprised the demoman isn't in there for most points, or kills. When I finally got around to trying this class (after 2-3 weeks playing scouts and soldiers primarily) I racked up more points/kills in 30 minutes than I did with any other class in the previous weeks. All I did was sticky-bomb high-traffic areas and blow people up when they walked by... came to point where someone bothered to note how little skill I had (and I didn't argue, it felt cheap and I got bored with it after an hour or so).
I think it was more a commentary on the relative popularity of the classes than their strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you look at the full stats from Valve, you'll see that scouts are the most popular class, but also one of the least effective (fourth-worst in points gained, second-worst in kills earned). Looking at it from the other side, heavies are probably the most effective class overall, but they're the fourth-least popular class. Unsurprisingly to anyone who's ever played TF2, medics are the least popular class by a wide margin -- but they are also the entire reason that heavies are so good, and that's reflected in their scores (almost three times as many assists per hour as the next-highest class, and it's enough to make them get more points per hour than demos and engineers, and almost scouts!).
My only gripe about TF2 has nothing to do with the game, and everything to do with the players. I always end up being a medic because nobody else will do it. I don't get it. Medic is by far the easiest class to play. You'd expect the noobs to gravitate to it, just like they do in CS to the AWP (the easiest gun in the game, since it's the only one that shoots straight). Yet they choose probably the hardest class -- scout -- for some reason.
Anyway, it'd be great if these stats made people realize that all the classes are very special-purpose, and that it's retarded to have more than two or three of each class on any given team, no matter the situation. But that won't happen. So oh well, at least they have pretty pictures.
According to the stats, Red successfully defends Dustbowl some 71% of the time. While I expect the defenders to win slightly more than the attackers, this percentage indicates that's something wrong with the map balance. Dustbowl is also ranked fourth based on time played (ahead of Well and Granary). This might not have anything to do with Red's skewed win/loss ratio, but it's worth pointing out.
(I've been playing Dustbowl since 2000 and it's the only reason I give a damn about TF, in case you're wondering.)
A mediocre Red team still has a decent chance of winning; a mediocre Blu team doesn't. Furthermore, a good player can still have fun on Red even if his teammates are idiots. Not so on Blu, where the entire team must work together to gain ground. Try advancing through the "death corridor" on stage 3 as your four offense engies refuse to switch to a more useful class or move their gear up. (As a side note, I've noticed that as more Blu players switch to engineer, the odds of Blu losing increase exponentially.)
To be sure, I've played some fantastic rounds on team Blu, but I often find myself server hopping to avoid wasting my time as an attacker doomed to defeat (hey, I don't have much gaming time these days and I'm not going to squander it getting raped.)
This trend is the reverse of what I saw in TFC: Blue would win the majority of matches thanks to skilled players pipe/nade jumping the flag into the cap, bypassing the entire defending team. In TF2, one player can't jump across half the map and save the day. In other words, there's a greater emphasis on teamwork.
One of my suggestions: redesign the first capture point on stage 3. Maybe narrow the bunker to give Blu a wider area to navigate and reduce the potency of Red demos. Any other Dbowl players think the map needs tweaking to even the odds, or is this simply due to offense requiring more coordinated teamwork, something in scarce supply on pub servers?