8:38 *postive feedback loop It’s not a Jonto video without a grammatical error EDIT: my fucking god the first word of this comment is a typo, I’m not even going to correct it because of the irony
Jonto as the typical trickstab spy main that everyone hates when I enter a server, this advice was genuinely good and true and I think people should take it more seriously than they alr are. During my lower hours I found myself using the same flanks and being frustrated, progressively doing worse and worse, and being scared of failing again but what I didn't know was failure was part of the path of being a cracked spy main and keeping your composure. Also that "it's just a game part" I still had this prob recently but once I started to relax and started thinking of it as a casual game like I'd think about playing pacman the game just flowed like water and I was getting chains pretty easily. To other beginner spy mains out there, keep going and don't let anything stop you bro, if you're far from your goa then you're only gonna get closer.
I like how this video just boils down to “you need to be mentally organized to be good at video games” and you just talk about ways of treating yourself properly and fairly for like 70% of the video. Its honestly a kinda refreshing take of gaming tutorial.
top 5 mistakes i made when starting to play Spy: -attempting to butterknife people chasing me instead of just shooting them -thinking that the enemy players are deaf and decloacking too close -not using ammo packs to refill my cloak -trying to fight the long range class at close range and instantly dying to jarate+bushwacka, a random crit, or a quickscope -believing that Medics are free kills and getting ubersawed to death as consequence
@1qxd as someone who started playing recently, I recognize my decloaking directly behind the enemy only works bc I'm probably also getting paired with newer players (one of my first times playing 2fort I heard someone who said they had just got a frontier justice for the first time and shenanigans ensued until the pybro showed up)
Istg the medic one is just I have a bad addiction of playing kunai + dead ringer, I just like to trickstab, and whenever a medic fights me, it's either i get a stab or they get a one hit krit on me despite me having over 100 HP from kunai. Oh and the decloaking one isn't 100% true. With a cloak, you can easily decloak behind an enemy ONLY if there are a lot of other noises (fighting) I often decloak a literal dead ringer when there are a lot of fighting. (of course not exactly behind them) but you know what I mean.
A week ago i was playing on 2fort and i was in a particularly spy playing mood! And while i was playing i was doing well really well! I got a 12 kill streak (my heighest as spy) with only backstabs! My team then proceeded to kick me and telling me "You can't become one of them!" "We need to save him!" Still my favourite time i have ever been kicked it TF2!
I followed your advice and looked inside. I found a Frenchman there. I truly am a monster worthy of playing Spy. Thank you, John Two Hills. Loved the cameo section and did not expect Martincitopants--great inclusion, sir, and your editing, scripting, and humor continue to be top-notch.
Spy as a class is souls-likes incarnate as a character. No matter how good you get at him, you'll always die in an embarrassing way once in a while. There's a sense of beauty in that.
A thing to note for quick cloaking is that if you swing your knife, you cannot cloak for the entire duration of the swing animation. If you use your *GUN* , you can instantly cloak the next frame after clicking mouse 1 to fire, regardless of how far into the firing animation your revolver may be (this also applies for the sapper as well)
1. Lose your job 2. Stop dating your gf or divorce your wife 3. Stop showering and stop changing your underwear 4. Lock yourself in your house 5. Play tf2 all day 6. Gain 9000 hours of playtime in a month despite a single month only having 700 hours 7. Enjoy your skill
I love how if you have 30 days in a month, you would need 300 hours in per day(24 hours in one day) so you basically just break the laws of time to get good at spy
something i learned while playing spy is that playing semi-aggressively can actually work. When you retreat from a fight, you could just instead turn around and go back in. People dont usually expect a teammate to be a spy as soon as they just chased one out. Its really effectivs until the paranoia kicks in
Making everyone on the enemy team Paranoid is actually Great I think. Makes them distracted, so if you can make it so everyone is paranoid enough you can swap class and make use of that paranoia amd spychecking.
Actually, an anger-based negative performance making you more angry is called a *_Positive_* Feedback Loop; a Negative Feedback Loop is essentially what counter-balancing methods are, like sweating and shivering among others. So no, you didn't make up that term; you just used it wrong. :^]
I first learnt that term in a Homeostasis lesson, and it was the opposite of what I thought it was, probably because we think that negative = bad. Negative feedback is usually good as it brings the body to a stable function (e.g. temperature). Positive feedback is usually bad as it increases the usually bad change.
i was having an awful time palying spy earlier today. kept requeing to no avail. then as i ragequit i decided to scroll youtube when i found this video. after watching it i decided to give it another try, already being able to point out some errors i had made before. i managed to play a 2 hour long 2fort game with the cloak and dagger, spycicle, and diamondback and topscored. the "spy loop" thing is what helped. once i realized that not every server would be the same, and that the players would find me predictable after a bit, i started switching up my paths like you said. and not ONLY did i topscore, but in the next game i also partnered up with the engineer player i had dominated in the previous round and pybro'd him. so not only did i learn to play spy effectively, but i ALSO made a new steam friend. 10/10 guide
8:38 Erm, 🤓 that's actually a POSITIVE Feedback loop. (Name is deceiving, yeah) but a negative feedback loop is where the loop DECREASES the stimulus that caused the loop, eventually ending it, while a positive loop increases said stimulus, which leads to the loop increasing more and more, and so on
I generally don't click tab to check my death and kills, I usually use it to see if I actually kill a dead ringer spy or see if the cheater had left the game yet.
8:06 ISAAC :D Jonto, one thing I always bashed my head against is how enemies were more paranoid than the NPCs in Hitman 2 (the old one), and they spychecked every single player of their color. I then remembered an old advice from you and tried to get them while they were engaging in combat and... let me say it's so satisfying to kill the heavy locking down the corridor and sneak away ❤
one of my favorite ways to deal with paranoid players is to just look for easier targets or go to a different area. or both. sometimes the only winning move is not to play, so playing somewhere else and only coming back every so often leads to longer lives, at least for me
This series has done so much to help me appreciate spy. Its a major excercise in patience but when things go well its just a good feeling, even as someone who doesnt know fancy techniques like trickstabs. As someone who plays TF2 through the insane method of changing my class every single life, it feels like the way I think changes every single time I play spy and its nice because i never have to get used to enemies being ready for me at every second. 11:38 unrelated but words cannot express how sad i was when the Rules of Nature lyrics didnt come in at the drop and how happy i was when the did a few secons later. Truly the work of a spy main to mind game even the music choice.
Bro used Bury the Light in a TF2 video. Mad respect. Edit: And then proceeds to use the MGRR main menu music right after, SSS video already (I'm one minute in) Edit 2: Another based DMC reference 7:46
The thing that clicked for me was learning the POV angles. When I figured out exactly how much other players could actually see around them, I could start manipulating the angles where I was juuuust outside of their view. This also worked for above and below. Catching someone from around a corner when they never knew I was even there, drop stabs, things like that just made Spy SO mush more fun for me. Never was a trick stab type of player. I always found it more satisfying if they never even saw me in the first place.
The music choice for this video was absolutley perfect! DMC, The binding of isaac (wait, what? hell yeah!) and Metal Gear Rising, all have banger soundtracks
9:51 About that cucumber joke: I don't know where I got this information, but using the same logic as the tomato argument, you do get the answer of both: Tomatoes are biologically fruits but do not fit the culinary definition of fruit, but tomatoes cannot biologically be vegetables due to the lack of a biological definition and thus can fit the only (relevant) definition of vegetables with immense ease. Cucumbers, following the same rules as tomatoes, are technically both fruits and vegetables, being biologically fruits and culinarily vegetables.
As a (semi-aggressive) engineer main, I can confirm that switching class is very important for relaxing a little your brain. Also I'm trying to get better at spy to complete a Foundry achievement. Very nice content, I would recommend it for everyone just to learn a little this bizarre class
I like the fact that you pointed out to not pay attention to the scoreboard. If youre bottom scoring but the entire enemy team is covering last in flame particles and dying to the heavy pushing the cart in a bid to deny you a stab, then you just win.
It's the funi *SPY HAS A GUN* Guy! :) Love your vids man. I'm too stupid to begin with learning classes myself so I usually switch to youtubers. You're super helpful with your tutorials! Also seeing Marti and some other tf2bers really made me happy.
What makes me happy as a clam is someone finally talking about the mental health aspects of spy in a somewhat serious note. I love tf2 and Spy as a class but boy oh boy I've certainly have had moments where I have said some pretty homicidal things over a game bc of pyros. And ultimately whilst I improve myself I heavily suggest to others to at least have a 2nd main or 3rd on standby if your not having a good day as spy. Or just don't play tf2 at all. Instead play some ULTRAKILL or some other game you like to goof around in!
I love how this video focuses on not only the meta of the game, but gaming in general. I think that laying that foundation down is super important and is something I find very helpful.
10:40 this is good advice for improving in general, focus on what you did well and improve on deficits instead of chasing arbitrary points, especially for support oriented classes like spy medic and engi
about a year ago i randomly downloaded tf2 and had no idea what it was. then out of nowhere, i found your videos (i think my first one was the one with the different watches) no i am a spymain and can never stop playing the game. Thank you for showing me how cool the spy class can be. and thank you for making me addicted :)
For the times that the games just aren’t happening that day A great therapy game is Mortal Sin, a first person hack and slash roguelike, at some point early on you unlock the berserker class which is just heavenly when you get in the groove of cosplaying as Guts without Grifith hounding you 24/7
I instantly got better at spy because of this series, literally learned hidden stats and techniques that when i actually listened and implemented improved my gameplay massively. Thanks for the amazing advice!
0:07 when you get 8h of sleep and for no reason your feel 9000% better than usual I swear I had one of those days and I was trickstabing left and right and bearly missed any shots I felt like a god For 30m then all my skill evaporated away and I could not hit a shot or a backstab to save my life and I have 0idea why
Bro your Bury the Light and Rules of Nature custom remixes hit so hard! I also think your explanation of gaining experience is very accurate. Everyone dies in TF2, and it should always be taken as a learning experience instead of a frustrating setback. Even the best TF2 players die in the game.
My guy, the music syncing with the visual effects in this video is glorious eye-candy. I know they’re pretty simple, but simple can be awesome. Very nice job mah man!
I'm a thousand something hour soldier main but recently picked up spy because its the only class i wasn't really proficient at, and soon i think it's going to become my second most played. After sucking eggs for a week it's finally clicked and I've been performing consistently well and going positive almost every game; your videos are a great help, and the editing is impeccable
your videos are honestly such a joy to watch I've watched nearly all of them despite never having much interest in playing spy (pyro/demo main here) keep up the good work man
A good chunk of what you said here is good advice for every class. I'm mainly a medic/demoknight main who also loves fats scouting, and much of this works for those classes, too.
Whenever I get sick of playing spy, I just play observer spy and freak people out. It is much more satisfying giving people ptsd than getting a backstab.
10:56 for a number of reasons I usually listen to videos like this instead of watching but for a split-second I glanced back at the screen and thought "holy shit MrBeast mains spy???" and I've never been more disappointed with my brain
i've never been much of a spy player throughout my tf2 journey, but these guides have gave me inspiration to try it out very good videos, keep it up :)
4:18 this reminds me of a very good quote that can be applied to quite alot of things "if you know yourself and you know your enemy you shall not fear the result of a hundred battles" Sun Tzu - The Art of War. if any of you haven't read it i would highly recommend.
8:38 IT'S A POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP Since positive basically means encouraging/facilitating the same thing to keep repeating If it was a negative feedback loop you'd get happy quite soon after getting angry
Spy main here I just want to thank you for really helping me to elevate my spy plays, i became a spy main after watching both your, elmaxos and lazypurples videos about spy. Side note :as intriguing as it is to make a plausible disguise, in casual peopl shoot first and think after, i know when i play other classes i just show anyone WHO pops up close to me without thinking so its sad that such a nice and complex mechanic doesnt really work in practice
Usually AS SOON as i die i check the leaderboard and get so frustrated cuz i get more deaths than kills, no spy main has explained this to me so thank you
