Deterrences

Last week I was linked to this article (by Tom Crowley of Couch Athletics) and even though it deals mostly with elementary techniques that I’m sure everyone knows, hearing these techniques named and explained sparked some interesting ideas.

The author makes an excellent point with the statement “Ultimately the goal of every class is deterrence, and that’s really what area denial is all about – deterring the enemy team from entering a space”. Really, every aspect of one’s role in competitive TF2 comes down to deterrence. Capping points is a way to physically deter the enemy by restricting his respawn points and lengthening his respawn timers. Fragging the enemy is another way to physically deter him, as it teleports him to spawn and keeps him out of the battle for a certain length of time. Putting damage on the enemy is a way to deter him based on his fear of getting fragged (and, in the case of enemy soldiers and demomen, lowering his mobility). Guarding an area can deter enemies based on their fear of taking damage and getting fragged, and attacking (pushes and flanking maneuvers) deters enemies by fragging them or putting damage on them: both deterrences, as mentioned above. And, of course, the Demoman’s remote sticky bombs and the Engineer’s sentry gun are excellent deterrences that work off the enemy’s fear of getting fragged and taking damage.

The important thing to note about deterrences, however, is that they are not at all preventative measures. The only point at which this article and I disagree on is the wording: there is no such thing as “prevent[ing] an enemy from getting to a point of interest” because anything in the game can be defeated or bypassed with some fragging skills, spam, alternative routes, and/or an uber deployment. Every good map is designed with multiple paths between control points (the gods shall frown on those that design an area where every entrance is within firing range of a sentry!) and because we are playing TEAM Fortress 2, there is very little reason for a single scout or soldier to be attacking all by his lonesome; he’ll likely end up fighting 1v2 since the “buddy system” is the accepted standard lately. To accomodate the special case that one is moving alone, perhaps we should make things completely clear by amending the above statement to read that there is no such thing as permanently preventing an enemy from getting to a point of interest. Thus, a mindset that classifies certain things as “prevention” is dangerous, as the nature of the game dictates that everything is a deterrence rather than a preventative measure.

I will not address the rest of the article point-by-point (though I’d love to, if I thought I could get away with a 2000-word essay here) because it discusses mostly situations that come up almost exclusively in pub games or scenarios that a team should be performing in every scrim anyway (e.g., “mobile defense”, spam, etc.). There are many little gems of wisdom that can be pretty thought-inspiring, at least if you’re an oblivious noob like me who has barely ever thought of why I dance forward and back when attacking an enemy with my shotgun (the answer: keeping them in optimal range). The experienced player will certainly read this article and become bored with the descriptions of techniques that seem second nature to him, but maybe thinking about those things that we do without thinking can spark some interesting ideas — like how everything in TF2 is about deterrence!

We could be the philosophers of TF2 or something!