Teamwork Is An Illusion

dispenser going [Music] up well I guess that'll do when I play Team Fortress 2 it always goes like this me and 11 other people from around the world ban together and coordinate a tactical move in order to achieve Victory against the opposing team soldiers bomb the enemy Medics the Spy saps the entry just as our Uber heavy rounds the corner to mow down the defensive hold Engineers move their teleporters forward to keep that pressure up and the Scout reeks havoc on the back lines in order to give his team the opportunity to Edge that cart just a little further forward until finally at the very last possible moment the card is tipped over the edge and the bomb explodes queuing up the victory music once again while everyone types GG in the chat like that's ever going to happen L it okay yeah there is something very important about this scenario that I I did leave out sorry uh the entire reason why this incredible sequence of teamwork happened is because less than a minute earlier this simple little voice line rang out across the map for everyone to hear Mission ends in 60 seconds you know when Ellen mlan recorded that almost 20 years ago I doubt she knew just how impactful it would be on the outcome of literally every single Team Fortress match because before that voice line played the atmosphere of this server was completely different nobody was coordinating uh nobody was thinking about the path of Victory nobody was focused on the objective at all the soldier was trying to market guarden the engineer dominating him uh the Spy was going for a stair stab for the fifth time in a row the engineer was AFK and the Scout well he was still back there messing with the backline but it wasn't for the team I can tell you that it's he's just doing that cuz it's funny this is TF2 you know this is what it is this is the entire point of this game to most people really uh everyone is in their own little world trying to achieve their own individual outcomes but when this lady gets on the loudspeaker and lets everyone know that there's only one minute left suddenly then the entire point of Team Fortress 2 stops being individual and becomes a team effort there's a name people give this phenomenon you may already know it's called a pub push and it's basically just that last Terra that the team gives when the difference between their loss and a continuation of the match or total Victory is less than 60 seconds it could be a complete shut out for 10 minutes straight but when the time for a pub push comes it's often the Silver Bullet but why is that like why don't people just do this all the time the objective doesn't suddenly appear at the minute markets there for the entirety of the match like why does nobody seem to care about winning unless the prospect of losing is suddenly presented to them I don't have the definitive answer to why Pub pushes happen so consistently I'm not a psychologist but I do have an interest in game design psychology so I do have some theories uh the main one being that despite the word team being in the title of this game intentional and formulated teamwork in Team Fortress to Casual mode is by design an illusion it simply does not exist real quick though I wanted to talk about the sponsor of this video food factors food specifically breakfast lunch dinner dessert every meal has been figured out ahead of time and all you have to do is eat it no prep No Mess a multitude of options to pick from 35 different meals with more than 60 add-ons every week and they have stuff that applies to diets like low calorie extra protein and keto these meals are always fresh never Frozen and are made with high quality premium ingredients I don't know about you guys but I don't like going into the grocery store the grocery store is outside and people are outside Factor cuts down on the trips that I got to make to the store so there's more time for gaming inside so why are you wasting your precious gaming energy head the factor75.com and click the link below to use Dane 50 and get 50% off your first Factor box and 20% off your next month of orders that's code Dane 5050 at Factor 75 to get 50% off the first box and 20% off the next four boxes it's a great deal so give it a shot thank you to factor for sponsoring this video so the first thing I want to talk about stalemates you failed stalemate seems like the major frustration aimed at certain Maps usually boils down to the phrase uh it's too stal typically these maps have extremely difficult to push choke points limited flank options perfect Sentry spots oppressive sniper sight lines or easily spammable areas that just prevent teams from maintaining a foothold long enough to coordinate an offensive maneuver this can be very frustrating but I believe that without these stalemates Team Fortress 2 would not be the game that it is and honestly I don't think it would be very fun I know that I can't be alone in this when I say that my least favorite matches of TF2 are rolls when one team just blows through the other without much resistance and the game is just over in less than 5 minutes you can blame team imbalance for this sure you can blame valve's flawed matchmaking system or you can blame the team stacking Discord goons all of these completely valid reasons but I think an underrated reason for rolls is actually just payload the game mode especially on my own servers payload is an extremely popular game type and for a good reason I think it's as close to a perfect Pub environment that you can get but the truth of the matter is payload is essentially designed in a way where it encourages roles the secret to winning payload is simple momentum if you consistently get four or five people on the cart at once you can capture four out of five points in just a few minutes easily if you get some people who know how to spawn Camp effectively and prevent Engineers from setting up on forward points you will be pushing to last in no time at all and so then there's the last Point think of any payload Maps last Point how many hours of your life have you spent pushing just that particular Point payload is designed in a way where the first point is supposed to be the easiest for blue to capture and the last point is supposed to be the easiest for red to defend you could think of the payload experience as a ramp and while there are many games I've played where I can't leave badwater first spawn room because I get blasted by 12 players as soon as I stick my pinky toe out of the door I always feel like the diagnosis in that situation is just an unlucky distribution of players but even in the games where teams feel evenly matched and everyone is pulling their own weight nine times out of 10 all the blue team really needs is a little bit of momentum and we're all all back to pushing last again and despite what may sound like criticism for the design philosophy of payload I still maintain that it is the perfect Pub game mode and most of my favorite maps in TF2 are payload Maps because yes the stalemate that you run into at last is not only baked into the design of the maps themselves I believe it's baked into what makes TF2 worth playing in the first place's go I don't want to Stomp the other team in 5 minutes I don't want to get stomped I want to have an excuse to run around and shoot people for 20 minutes to have enough time to sit in a choke and get into scraps to dodge spam and to dodge back you know play Team Fortress 2 this is getting into what I think the most important definitive element of TF2 is from a gameplay standpoint compared to other games in the shooter genre the joy that is extracted from playing this game does not come from the macro it comes from the micro for example in a br shooter like fortnite you are the happiest when you get a victory number one Royale that is a macro event right the micro events are the tiny engagements with players but overall you're going for that dub even in something like OverWatch which leans much more towards a MOA style of teamwork the micro events of 1v1 engagements are often overshadowed by the importance of macro events in team fights where everyone presses Q at the same time Team Fortress 2 because of the contradictory focus on making the individual the main dictator of his or her gameplay experience the best parts of this game are in the singular engagements the 1V one deathmatches even for Support classes like Medic or engineer a lot of the time the most effective way to play those classes comes down to a focus on self- sustainment and focusing on an individual task such as upgrading your dispenser to level three or building your Uber to 100% without dying but if you ever needed any proof that Team Fortress 2 is designed to cater towards the micro instead of the macro just look at TF2 content compare the views that Team Fortress 2 videos get in comparison to the average concurrent view count on live streams this game is extremely popular especially considering its age and yet TF2 twitch streams hardly ever break three-digit numbers on concurrent viewers while TF2 YouTube videos are racking up hundreds of thousands of views a day why is there such a massive disparity well there are probably many reasons but in my opinion a big reason is because watching someone Pub in TF2 in real time is honestly kind of boring it can be like a chill experience for sure like it's good background noise to study or relax to but it's not really engaging because at the end of the day when you're playing TF2 you're not creating a story and live streams in particular are the most engaging when there's a story being told one with a beginning middle and end that has some level of stakes behind it all this is why Battle Royale games and mobas are so incredibly popular on Twitch you tune in and you are compelled to stay and watch because you want to know will the funny streamer win the funny game or will he lose and make a funny face compare that experience to tuning into a live stream of a Team Fortress 2 Pub in which there are really no Stakes at all will the streamer win the pub like who cares winning in TF2 doesn't really matter it's all brownie points it's unimportant by Design even when it comes to the entirely cosmetic casual mode badge the outcome of the match doesn't affect how many experience points you even get there isn't really much of a story being told when you play TF2 casually which is why the main sub community that sees the most relative success in tf2's twitch scene are the competitive players who are consistently playing and organized pickup games scrims and matches and as far as I know the only TF2 streamer who has been able to consistently make a living from streaming TF2 is Banny and it's because he has two hooks to engage sticking around and watch him play one being that he's just really really good at the game which is fun to watch in a pub environment and two he consistently plays competitive lobbies which by their very nature create stories that you want to tune into and see to the very end everyone else who makes a living creating TF2 content including myself we cut out the downtime that would normally be important context for the outcome of a match aka the macro and instead we only focus on including the interesting or funny moments the micro and overall the most popular TF2 videos are video essays like this one mainly just talking about TF2 and never really showcasing the raw gameplay for more than just a few minutes at a time hell even quote unquote TF2 live commentaries benefit from cutting out parts that aren't particularly interesting or more funny and as a result TF2 content is very very popular on YouTube still to this day because the power of editing makes it easy to distill what makes the game fun to play in a contained experience I mean like really good example here soundsmith keeps his studio lights on because Team Fortress 2 is a hot bed for consistently unique micro moments that most of the time have absolutely nothing to do with the game State the win loss condition the teamwork anything like that no one cares like the most amount of teamwork you'll ever see in a meatloaf video is the coordination that involves hitting the same poor soul with a rap assassin Bobble from across the map like it's no coincidence that every soundsmith video takes place on either two for or double cross these maps are the definition of an infinite stalemate there's practically unlimited time at your disposal on these maps to have dozens of entertaining moments independent of what your teammates are doing and it's not just a good place to farm your funny moments clips compilation two4 n CTF as a whole is by far the most popular way to play this game casually so at the end of the day Team Fortress 2 is just an objective focused FPS that is secretly Just A full-on Team Deathmatch Arena and it's been this way for almost two decades now so how on Earth does anyone categorize this game as a team based shooter when teamwork is hardly on the mind of the average person who's booting it up well it's not that teamwork in TF2 doesn't exist wholesale players do occasionally communicate in voice chat and lobbied groups are definitely more likely to coordinate with each other and obviously there are competitive leagues where people play the game with the soul intention of coordinating with their team in order to win I do believe however that teamwork in a casual setting is merely simulated subtly encouraged uh procedurally generated I don't really know exactly how to describe it but it often feels like nobody is really working together at all and yet we're able to spontaneously come together every once in a while to make something happen without an actual Catalyst nobody is ever in voice chat leading the troops into battle and TF2 voice chat is usually reserved for things like this [Music] instead so what the heck is going on how are people coordinating largely on accident so often in this game if you thought the answer this whole time was that Team Fortress 2 is a Timeless Masterpiece you're right it all comes down to the game design and not the yellow paint kind of game design the psychological kind of game design you know the kind that gets in your head and tricks you into doing things without you knowing why you didn't them the most obvious one is the inclusion of that administrator alert that I was talking about earlier because that is a literal call to action that has a very clear cause and effect so much that it's become a meme within the community that pubs do not push until the lady in the megaphone says Mission ends in 60 seconds but I'm much more interested in the ways in which teamwork exists in the background of this wannabe Deathmatch strange weapon farm that has become so integrated into our subconscious that we don't even notice them anymore how have we all become like Pavlov's mercenary reacting without a thought to sounds visuals and choices that the game developers made all the way back at the beginning of the century that hold up so well to this day that TF2 remains one of the most easily accessible games on the PC market as long as you you know ignore all the Bots and cheaters and racists obviously there are so many tiny little things that contribute to the illusion of teamwork in TF2 such as the concept of respawn waves the game always tries to respawn players in chunks so that when you leave spawn you'll often leave with at least one other person by your side or even take these team outlines when leaving spawn actually like that is there so you can quickly see where your team is gathered at without having to purely rely on sound but on the subject of sound voice lines are definitely where a lot of subtle teamwork encouragement comes from for sure I mean the voice lines that you can do your sell from the menu as more of a direct form of communication obviously you can often wordlessly let your pocket know that you're about to Uber recharge them by pressing Z and then three but there are voice lines that consistently automatically play when something happens in the game like when the cart stops getting pushed little men steal our C or the automatic thank you response that your character will say after taking a teleporter much oblig wait why is the engineer thanking himself for building his own teleporter or the automatic thank you voice line that plays after a meta heals you appreciate it DOC these voice lines after you hear them enough can often blend into the background sometimes but I really do think that especially for new players hearing literal positive reinforcement being directed towards you for doing something that ultimately helps your team that really helps get it into a player's head whether they recognize it or not that what they did was a good thing and they should continue doing it they think I should keep building teleporters because the funny Russian man says was good trip after he takes it oh I should Uber the soldier because when I do he does that funny scream I should Air Blast the burning Scout because he's running around shouting fire fire this is a fantastic example of the game recognizing that encouraging actions that contribute to the macro such as doing something for the good of your teammates instead of yourself should be achieved by creating these fun micro moments driven entirely by the TF2 casts iconic and expressive personalities another thing that I think contributes a great deal to this teamwork illusion is the domination mechanic Believe It or Not uh if you're like me and have never been dominated in your whole life um I'll explain what dominations are after you get killed four times in a row by a player without getting a kill or assist on them they are essentially given a little badge above their head that only you can see that lets you know that they are owning you right now so either get revenge or rage quit now this mechanic I feel may be a little controversial in today's gaming landscape like I bet you like 20 bugs that if TF2 came out today dominations would have been removed in play testing due to it making players feel bad for dying too much and hurting their egos but I actually really love this mechanic because it contributes that much more to the idea of subtly encourag ing teamwork see TF2 is a neat game in that individual players given that they put in the hours and practice can get very very good at this game there's a high skill ceiling it's a very fundamentally and mechanically demanding game and I mean it's generally accepted that you don't really truly reach the beginning of your potential ntf2 unless you've sunk at least a few thousand hours into it which is insane if you really think about it so it's by design that there will always be at least one or two players on the enemy team who are just absolutely on on everyone who are just a complete Menace and who are just inexplicably allowed to roam free and get every kill with ease with a domination mechanic you'd think that these players are getting rewarded I mean they have this cool little badge next to their name that displays how many noobs they've pounded into the ground and how many years they've stayed up practicing their Rocket jumps and air shots but in reality they're being slightly and suddenly nerfed they're being given a small imperceptible debuff that they are likely not even aware of the more dominations that they rack up the more that they are at risk of being the victim of the teamwork illusion you see the answer always to a rampaging carry player on the enemy team with a Godlike killstreak and the medic latched onto them with a critz is simple Focus fire but how unfortunate Focus fire is a team effort you have to coordinate that you have to somehow let everyone know that this particular player needs to be shot at by the entire team simultaneously but you're too shy to press your push to talk button or you don't want to wake up your grandma so that's where the domination mechanic comes in the more people who are being dominated by this guy the more likely it is that they will all see this problematic gamer with a big blinking sign over their head that says get revenge on me your ego demands it and focus this guy down and the best part is none of them even realize that it was a team effort when this happens in reality the motivation to shoot him on site was to get their own personal revenge and then taunt afterwards but what they really did was contribute to a spontaneous moment of focus fire at best and at least take out the other team's carry and allow the rest of the team some respit for 20 seconds getting that satisfying Revenge was a micro moment that can snowball into a macro event and the most impressive part about all this in my opinion is that the illusion of teamwork is not a trick if you think about it it's an answer to a problem that anyone designing a team-based objective Focus game has to answer how do we get these antisocial beta Gamers to occasionally work together without requiring that they get into voice chat to explicitly explain what they were about to do while also maintaining that fun element of micro moments that make up the majority of the entire game's experience see this is why I am not a game designer I'm not smart enough to come up with Solutions like this but I can definitely appreciate them especially when you consider that TF2 was designed so long ago you could certainly say that they were ahead of their time because nowadays pretty much every game where the illusion of teamwork exists TF2 has been a jumping off point which has been expanded upon in various ways many ways in which I would love to have seen added a tf2 at some point but uh yeah anyway the point I wanted to make just boils down to this really uh Team Fortress 2 is great but what makes it great is that the teamwork part is an illusion whether you win or lose the match ultimately can come down to a coin flip but whether you have fun or not is pretty much just up to what you choose to spend doing during that 15minute stalemate before the inevitable pump push and after you've been hoodwinked into helping your fellow mercenaries in a microscopic way I felt like talking about this because relatively recently I personally reached a point with this game where I had to sort of uh I don't know face the truth in a way uh for a long time especially in the last couple years I'd always felt frustrated with how UNS seriously my teammates seem to take the role that their class choices bestow upon them I found myself getting upset even angry at my team for not taking advantage of opportunities or not dedicating themselves to the objective a goal that I believed had to have been shared between myself and everyone else in the entire server but the truth of the matter is the lack of sameness in mindset contributes a great deal to what makes Team Fortress too memorable in the long run I think back to my favorite moments while playing this game and hardly any of them have anything to do with winning or losing practically none of my true enjoyment has come from the macro moments and sure those moments are satisfying it feels great to come together with a group of strangers and make something happen and I love those moments but that's just a piece of a greater hole of this game and I was unnecessarily making my own gameplay experience worse by allowing only that piece to dictate my enjoyment of playing it like I'm not kidding when I say I used to get genuinely mad at my team when they let me down like I would get angry at a video game it was only when I realized that I was getting upset for literally no good reason at all and decided to consider why my experiences were consistently like this that I came to realize that I had felt entitled to a phantom a thing that does not exist on purpose a random event in a greater Arena of organized unpredictability I had to let go I had to accept that teamwork is and always has been an illusion and what do you know I started having fun again when I started thinking like this does this mean that I don't get frustrated with this game anymore absolutely not uh does this mean that I've changed my mind about random crits uh hell no but I hope you enjoyed listening to me rant and Rave about TF2 for a while I appreciate yall coming back and watching my videos there's more to come soon so I will talk to you nieces and nephews next time oh also if you uh enjoyed this uh more more casual uh Style video of me kind of chatting over gameplay uh then you should check out me playing games with my friends on the maximum damage Channel we played uh balers Gate 3 we played Plants versus Zombies a classic uh We've uh we coming out with more uh of these kind of I don't know I guess you would just call them Let's Plays or uh like a game grumps only plays style of uh commentary yeah if you're interested in seeing me play other games besides TF2 uh go and check that out here's a clip from the plants versus zombies one sounds like rain hitting a tin roof and all yeah but look look how many nuts I have I dude I love that sound specifically you get that sound when you hit the bucket guys oh yeah the yeah I love that super satisfying this is honestly like this game is so well made feels like there's rats in my ears or something right now sound design is so good I love the rats in my ears the evil I love evil rats I'm loving the rats in my ears right now

Channel: Uncle Dane

Views: 546,297

Keywords: team fortress 2, tf2, engineer, gameplay, guide, tutorial, tips, first person shooter, uncle dane, professional, pro, free to play, free, steam, sale, deal, items, crafting

Id: hhwvbPH0eh0

Length: 23min 32sec (1412 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024