Team Fortress 2 Etiquette, Unspoken Rules and the Ultimate Beginner's Guide

Learn the unspoken rules and the terms which have come to be slang for the Team Fortress 2 and Steam Community.

Intro

When anyone starts playing Team Fortress 2 for the first time, they hardly know much about what to do. Luckily for me, I had a friend who guided me through everything and helped me understand it all but this is not the case for many. Like with social messaging when you use the server chat, there are many abbreviations and slang. Read on to find them all !!!! :)

PS. If you do know any of these please do not get angry or irritated because this guide is purposely made for Team Fortress 2 immediate beginners (people who just started playing)

I hope you have fun and understand a lot from this Guide.

What does F2P and P2P mean?

F2P stands for : Free -To - Play
P2P stands for : Premium - To - Play

F2P: An F2P is someone who either has not paid $5 USD in Steam purchases (Purchased in-game items;Games;Money added to Steam Wallet etc) or someone who has purchased an item in Team Fortress 2.

F2P is mainly used in a derogatory way and a joke but it honestly, in my opinion, no that big of a thing because, being P2P (the opposite) only enables trading and a few other small features. (Also, there are many F2P's)



P2P: Someone who has paid $5 or more in Steam or paid money for an item in Team Fortress 2

P2P's can trade and do a few other things (features). That's simply it.

Gibus = F2P?

The Ghostly Gibus better known as the "Gibus" is a Team Fortress 2 hat usually asscoiated with F2P's because mostly everyone thinks of it as the easiest hat to get because all you have to do is dominate someone wearing it.

It's not a good idea to wear a gibus, most people underestimate players wearing gibus's, and will therefore target them. Sometimes people may go easy on gibus players but the people who do so are mainly advanced and they don't really care about it. But normal players (the main type) target gibus wearers.

What are Maps and Servers?

A Server is the name for whatever game you are on (not the design, the game).

A Map is the design of the server you have connected to.

What does "cap" or "don't cap" mean?

"Capping" is short for capturing and means when someone captures the control point or pushes the payload cart or captures the "intelligence". Many modes have a form of capturing in one way or another.

Many people say "don't cap" because some servers have players who just want to play and attack each other and not worry about a place to guard or defend. The most notable map that people are against "Capping" is the map Hightower.

What does "Pub" mean and What are "Bot servers"?

"pub" is short for public servers which is simply random normal servers which you get by clicking on and playing Mltiplayer Mode

"Bot servers" are games which is where a human player plays on a server where players on his team and the opposing team (the enemy) are controlled by the Computer/Game.

Mann vs. Machine (MvM)

Mann vs. Machine (MvM) is a game mode where a party of 6 or more real life players compete agaiinst a large group of robots, not like the bots on bot servers but robots which range in size from normal size to massively huge.

What does "wm1" and "strafing" mean

"wm1" is the name given to players who move by only pressing the "W" key and turn by moving their cursor. This is usually hated by many because no one likes it and the proper way is to use all of the 4 "WASD" keys which when turning, if using all 4 keys in mind, is considered strafing.

Also, it is considered "wm1" if you shoot and waste all your ammo by not actually having aim on an opposing player and literally just spraying it everywhere in hope it may hit anyone. This is a bit more common among the pyromancers (pyros) in the game.

Taunts

Taunts are small little "dances" which are meant to "tease" and "mess around with" players.
This guide is about Team Fortress 2 etiquette so you might as well know that when someone taunts, don't kill them. If you do, people hate you; you can kill them right after taunt: but never while. When I started playing and I did this, I got voted off many servers.

Friendlies

A friendly is someone or a group of players who do not plan to inflict damage on anyone. They simply walk around taunting and standing in front of players. The most notable is the "Hoovy" which is the Heavy crouch-walking with his fists/boxing gloves out.

Like taunting, killing friendlies is one of the worst things you can do and will get many people upset because friendlies usually hang around other players. Sadly, other than "Hoovy's", there's no easy way to determine friendlies. In the past, I have seen people who were on a killstreak (I'll explain what that is later on in this guide) and then suddenly became friendlies.

Friendly Servers are servers where everyone on it are friendly and are jsut taunting and having fun. When I started out, on friendly servers, I would just go wm1 pyro and kill everyone and get like 5 achievements at once. But then I would get voted off. So yeah... don't be a douche on friendly servers.

Strange and Killstreak

Strange weapons are weapons which record/count your kills and sometimes even points. The more kills you get, the higher your weapon's rank becomes.
List of Strange Ranks

Killstreak weapons are weapons which after attaining a certain amount of kills without dying a player is given labels such as "Unstoppable" and such.
List Of Killstreak Ranks

Economics/Crafting System

This may be one of the most important parts of this guide: Crafting

Put together	Result
2 weapons of same class	1 scrap metal
3 scrap	1 reclaimed metal
3 reclaimed	1 refined metal

One crate key is equal to whatever price is on the homepage of http://backpack.tf

A crate key is around 18 ref (Prices vary easily)
Crate Key= Around $2.50 USD

Cosmetics

Cosmetics are different types of clothes and design on the default appearance of all the classes. You can buy them or use the various results of the crafting system to purchase them.
Simple as that.

Paints

This is short.

Paints are mainly used to paint hats. :)

Unusual Hats

Unusual Hats are Hats which have an "effect" over them. Unusuals are usually really expensive.

In Conclusion...

In Conclusion, Team Fortress 2 is a fun game which has many players, slang, weird rules an systems. I hope this guide was helpful and will improve your Team Fortress 2 experience.

I have a bad gut feeling that I may have left out a few things that didn't come to mind while writing, so please tell me in the comments if I forgot anything that should've been mentioned.

Finally, if you have any questions that you'd like to privately ask me, you can add me as a friend. Please like this guide and comment. I hope you had and will have great fun when you play Team Fortress 2, after reading this guide.

Yours Truly,
pheboustre
:)

[/previewicon]

[Big Dick Stareways]

Okay.

[Sneaky]

Helps me understand what the community's talking about better.

[AllSeeingAI]

It won't let me reply for some reason but in reponse to your comment, phebourstre: I understand that it's for new players, and I'm definitely not trying to knock what you're done here. I only suggested it because the fact that I used the in-game craft system when I was starting out is one of my biggest regrets when it comes to this game. Still, it's a great guide, and I'll recommend it to any new players I see.

[Ocey]

I'd also talk about friendlies and the bad stigma that comes of killing them. :)

[Ocey]

Nice guide! If I were you, I'd change 'pyromancer' to 'pyromaniac' and add a short section about how trading is for advanced players, with a quick overview of how it works and the different qualities of items :)

[Big Dick Stareways]

Dear Phantom Gamer, I was gonna mention scrap.tf (where you can get weapons for 1/2 a scrap) and sites like backpack.tf where you can get many weapons for cheaper prices but i didn't because this guide is meant for beginners who usually are f2p. Due to this, I had to leave out many things. Thanks for liking it.

[AllSeeingAI]

Good guide! I could've used this starting out. If I make a suggestion, maybe add that cosmetics can also be strange. and definitely add that nearly all standard weapons are worth 1/2 of a scrap, so crafting it using the in-game craft system is a massive waste. In the same vein, nearly eveything on the Mann Co Store can be found cheaper on trading sites or through the market.

[{True Darkian}]

Can you tell me more about the storage I have behind me?

[guy who respects the silence]

Why is there not a section about using the gunslinger and why anyone who does should end themselves?

[Big Dick Stareways]

Thanks Cryptic !!!! :)