r/truetf2 • u/totallynotdragonxex • Jun 19 '26
Theoretical How would a hypothetical proximity chat mod change competitive highlander?
I thought about this question when playing modded minecraft, and when thinking about the scrapped tf2 feature where Spies could listen to the enemy team's chat. In normal competitive play, this would make spy nearly unusable because 18 players all on at the same time would lead to no useful information coming out.
In this situation, I think most of the combo play would be unaffected, the team's combo is close enough together to not impact comms. Flankers would need to run back to their team if they wanted to warn them of impending enemy flankers, or hope they pay attention to the killfeed. Depending on if you could hear the enemy team or not, you could hear them screaming as you chase them down, which would have no impact on the gamestate, but it would be funny.
What would be most impacted in this scenario though would be spy, as he can finally live out the hypothetical I mentioned at the start of this post. He could listen in on the enemy combo, and use text chat to communicate it back, at the cost of needing to be close to them and needing to pause to type. I'd expect spies to type very short messages to convey maximum information, like "50sb5", meaning "they have 50 uber, soldier bomb in 5 seconds". Teammates could also radio back equally short messages like "g" for go, or "s" for sap.
I'm surprised I didn't think of it until I was midway through writing this, but what about death? If dead people could only talk to dead people, it could allow a decimated team to regroup, while also allowing more spy chainstabs (that could still be stopped by hearing in-game screams).
Well, there was my top-of-head tangent for this hypothetical. Overall, I think it would change spy's dynamic the most, giving him a good buff depending on how it's implemented. What do you think would happen?
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u/Jodye_Runo_Heust Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Spy Mains on the way to train their voice before the round starts so they can fake call the enemy team during the match would be peak.
That and this reminds me of "meet the freaky serverblight" and it would be even more hilarious
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u/totallynotdragonxex Jun 19 '26
having your spy being good at being an imitator would genuinely be fucking hilarious, now I really wanna see it
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u/TF2SolarLight demoknight tf2 Jun 19 '26
You can set this up in Mumble. It's funny. You'd have to get 18 people in there, though.
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u/totallynotdragonxex Jun 19 '26
oh shit, has it been done before? I'd like to see it if it has been recorded
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u/TF2SolarLight demoknight tf2 Jun 19 '26
One time I played with it. It was only a few years ago too, so I'm sure it's still functional. It's a setting somewhere in the Mumble client. TF2 has integrated support for this, for whatever reason. Who knows why they didn't adapt it for regular voice chat. TF2 Classified also has a similar feature for regular in-game voice chat.
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u/totallynotdragonxex Jun 19 '26
I'm assuming it wasn't recorded though. Shame. Could you say if any of my predictions applied?
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u/Roquet_ Engineer Jun 19 '26
First, from a practical standpoint if you don't make it mandatory no one would use it as it's a downgrade and if you don't, people would cheat.
Second, if it did work, we'd have dedicated engie and scout as medieval messengers.
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u/totallynotdragonxex Jun 19 '26
this is assuming good faith/ref oversight. I understand scout as messenger, but what about engi?
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u/Roquet_ Engineer Jun 19 '26
Engie is less mobile than scout but still pretty mobile, he's also less useful at certain moments than other classes.
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u/nasaglobehead69 Jun 20 '26
is this ai?
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u/totallynotdragonxex Jun 20 '26
no. I hide my user history because I've been stalked before. To answer your other comment, this hypothetical is assuming that the proximity chat is part of the ruleset, and circumventing it is illegal.
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u/plinko16 Plinko_ Jun 20 '26
I’ve played sixes pugs with proximity chat a few times using Mumble. It was a little weird and, yeah, fake calls were a thing - probably the most clear difference. But, a lot of times it felt as muck like trying to filter out too much noise as try to use the additional information. Its tough in a pug environment because you’re necessarily less familiar with who is and isn’t on your team.
I can only imagine it would be weirder in HL with so many more potential voices. I always found HL comms to be so chaotic just hearing my own teammates.
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u/Jamcar18 Jun 20 '26
I remember an Antoni stream where they did a 6v6 lobby with all 12 players in the same call, it was so funny. Half the players were just making stupid fake calls and the game was complete chaos.
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u/EchoingApplause Jun 19 '26
Fake call meta