Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2

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MvM Etiquette (Basics)
By Frederika the Conqueror
Reading this guide can be your first step towards not getting kicked and not being a toxic player.
   
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Terms you'll need to know to understand this guide.
Money Collector: A player or class effective for collecting most of the money the mission offers.

Med Picker/Medic Picker: A player or class effective for killing most of the uber medics in the mission.

Ammo Distributer: In most situations this is the engi.

Core Role: Money Collector, Med Picker, and Ammo Distributer are the core roles.

Class Blocking: This refers to when a player selects a class for the sole purpose of not having that class on the team. This is done because when a new player joins the server, they will most likely not pick a duplicate class. Once everyone has a class selected, the blocker chooses the class they are actually going to play.
First come, first serve.
This is a concept that refers to role selection when joining a server. In short it means that the faster you join the server, the more open your choice of classes is. It roughly breaks down to this:

First in the server: You get to do w/e you want. Take a core role, off class, class block, some other 4th thing; doesn't matter what you choose, you're the first in the server. Even if the other 5 players are in a lobby and they end up being unhappy with your decision, doesn't matter, if it bothers them so much they can just leave. If you're kicked for class choice when you're the first in the server, then your teamates are in the wrong.

Second in the server: Pretty much the same situation as first in the server, however do not take the same role as the first player.

Third in the server: At this point you should be paying close attention to what the team has. If the current team comp results in low damage and no core roles filled, you should either take a core role or at least a high damage output class.

Fourth in the server through sixth in the server: Fill in where the team is weak. Finish up those core roles, make sure your team has sufficient damage output. If by some miracle all is covered when you get in, you get to play w/e as long as you're not stepping on your teamates feet.

Class Blocker: Alright, everyone else picked their classes, now it's your turn. In most situations, it's your job to select a high damage output class. If there's a core role you'd like to fill that somehow hasn't been taken yet feel free to grab it, but don't feel obligated to. It's unfair of your teamates to assume that you're class blocking and they should have filled the core roles as they joined in case you were planning to stay as whichever class you were blocking.


Some notes about first come first serve:

-If you want a role that's already taken, try asking the player who has selected the role. Quite often we're willing to swap, but don't expect to be able to every time.

-Be respectful of class blockers, they gave up the chance to play a class of their choice to instead play without a specific class. Do not undermine their decision (glares at 2cities players who throw a tantrum when people class block medic.)

-Never assume a player is class blocking. If you need to know before picking your class, ask.

-In a full lobby (or sometimes partial lobbies) it is acceptable to request playing a class while in the lobby under certain circumstances. The first of these circumstances is if the computer they are using isn't powerful enough to handle tf2 effectively and they need to take a class such as engi in order to play well. The second is if their connection is bad and they are consistently last in the server and stuck as w/e the team doesn't want to play as. The third is when they're sick of playing demo/sniper because the rest of you don't know how to med pick and it's time for you to learn (glares.)
Play well.
First come, first serve, only applies to class and role selection. Regardless of how late or early you joined a server, you are responsible to play well. If you cannot play well, you should select a lower difficulty, it is impolite to drag your team down. Additionally, you should kick under performing players (not because you can't carry them, but because they don't deserve to be carried. This isn't UGC, you don't get a participation badge.)

So, how exactly do you determine if a player is doing well? There are three primary aspects we look at, and to understand the first we need to take a look at the scoreboard.



Okay, so you see that column labeled "Tour"? That column is completely useless. Okay, now notice the columns labeled "Score" "Healing" and "Money". We'll be largely disregarding these as well. In fact, the only category that we should really be looking at is "Damage" (also "Tank" on teams without a designated tank buster.) Yes, there are some exceptions to this rule (i.e. designated tank busters won't always be able to keep up with damage due to time spent on the tanks, medics and scouts maining support won't be able to keep up, etc.)

The second thing we're going to cover is canteens, refunds, and buybacks. If someone is spamming canteens and/or buybacks, they don't belong in MvM. I'll be the first to admit, canteens are my guilty pleasure, but all things in moderation. It's one thing to use 4 canteens across an entire mission because you like to, it's another thing to use 3 or more canteens on 3 or more waves because you can't play without them. Buybacks, on the other hand, a player simply shouldn't be doing. They're not worth it, and if you find yourself needing to get back to the fight faster, you should instead not die in the first place. Lastly, refunds, refunds are fine if you've been stuck on a wave for a while and need to change things up. Refunds are fine if you're just goofing and maybe got bored of gunslinger engi and want to try out syringe medic. Refunds are NOT fine if you use them everywave to optimize your upgrades or swap to a class more ideal for the wave. Don't carry people who can't play without crutches, kick them.

Okay, now on to the third aspect that is taken into account. It is disrespectful to make the game harder for your teamates. When goofing around with your friends that you play MvM with on a daily basis, they probably won't mind if you make it a bit harder; in pubs and when playing with someone you rarely play with, it's an absolute "No".

Here's a list of weapons, abilities, and actions that would be considered to be net negatives:
-force of nature's knockback
-airblast's knockback
-scorchshot's knockback (simply having this weapon equipped is an auto kick in the eyes of many good players)
-loose cannon's knockback
-causing a demoman's sticky bombs to be destroyed or scattered (particularly disrespectful if they burned a canteen to place them)
-Heavy's knockback rage
-using medic's shield when the pyro wants to reflect the projectiles (glares at medics on wave 4 of metro malice)
-healing/reviving players who can't stay alive without a medic (stop encouraging their incompetence)
-making robots turn around and face your spy
-making sapper your priority upgrade on spy
Conclusion (and a short bit about commenting etiquette.)
tl;dr: Disrespect, that's the worst kind of respect.

Hopefully this guide will help tone down the level of stupidity the community offers, but realistically writing it was a waste of time. For etiquette on commenting, please click the following link: https://youtu.be/yKC6XmsLWVQ?t=129

16 Comments
Immeasurable 27 Dec, 2023 @ 7:26am 
What about if my pc is an cancer but i still struggling to be a "good" player?
Cart Pusher 5000 9 Nov, 2020 @ 12:33am 
Theres NZ players in the screen shot, and i got kicked by a heavy for using the gas.can get 200k+ damage on 666 with gas
Frederika the Conqueror  [author] 5 Sep, 2018 @ 11:41am 
Pretty much what Manns said, though I'd add to that that if the team is getting pushed back enough that you end up in one of those niche scenarios where knockback is useful, it's better to just leave than swap to using knockback. Whether the team can be carried or not, they don't deserve to win until they get better.
MannsOverMeta 5 Sep, 2018 @ 7:30am 
Knockback only serves to draw things out, not make them easier. Players will suffer damageage falloff, and classes that rely on positioning and/ or aim or projectiles will be screwed. So in the end pretty much every class is hindered. This means more time for the bots to shoot you, for backup to come, and for the bomb to buff. Even putting a bot or dropping it into a different path can be harmful to the team. The bomb carrier will come back buffer and with followers, which can be pretty hard to deal with, especially if your team couldn’t keep them from pushing through their defenses up front.
By to mention that all knockback comes at the lack of your own damage output and even credits if you invested into it. This means whenever you’re not using he knockback you’re doing worse that you would have if you just focused on damage. Knockback is a niche that is only good for certain situations, and thus it should be treated like that.
A Brony Stoner 5 Sep, 2018 @ 6:53am 
The net negatives obviously means things that are bad right? If so then why is the pyros airblast or any knock back that isn't a trolling weapon considered bad? Isn't easy gimps on giant robots and bosses good to make waves easier?
Frederika the Conqueror  [author] 18 Jan, 2017 @ 5:31pm 
@Levit : Very well said. I do miss when MvM was in it's prime.
Levit 18 Jan, 2017 @ 4:57pm 
It's something that shouldn't, but definitely happens. You can't pick your teams, and lately everything is getting worse and worse haha.
I can see where you're coming from on the refunds though. I remember when we didn't have refunds at all. Either way, that particular part doesn't bother me at all. To each their own I guess.
Frederika the Conqueror  [author] 18 Jan, 2017 @ 3:48pm 
@Levit : Knocking things into a death pit is effective, however the bots will never reach any death pits (on valve maps) when playing on a competent team. The reason one shouldn't refund has nothing to do with time, it's because refund takes away what little thought and effort is requested by this already easy game mode. Using refund is like having your mother pre chew your food, it enables you to avoid learning a basic aspect of an activity.
Levit 18 Jan, 2017 @ 2:43pm 
A few of these I honestly don't agree with. First of all, the scorch shot on a few select missions is probably the most fun to use, especially into the banana grinder. Second, I don't mind my self when people refund. It takes like 2 extra seconds to ready up for the next wave. Other than that, can't really argue with the rest. It's a good basic intro to a few things.
Frederika the Conqueror  [author] 19 Jun, 2016 @ 8:00pm 
@Name.exe : That's exactly the sort of crutch I'm talking about in that section of the guide. These missions were balanced without refund in mind. Taking your example, if one wave has pyros and the next wave doesn't, the intention was that you'd either run without fire resistance on the wave with pyros or you'd have fewer useful upgrades for the next wave.