Killing is normal. Any class can kill. With critical hits and such, any class can even kill without instantly from time to time, or as near enough to instantly as to make no practical difference to mere humans. Since you can only see in front of you, it's even possible for any class to kill without warning. It's a pervasive and normal part of the gameplay in a way that stuns are not.
Again, how are stuns more unique than back stabs, head shots, and ubers/kritzkriegs. I don't understand why the Scout being able to do something unique is so offensive to you.
When I said annoying, I meant in terms of characterization.
If that's the case, why did you bring it up? It has no bearing on game balance, except to color your preference further. That is to say you find not only the way a scout fights you annoying, but the actual character annoying as well, so you are even more likely to be bias.
You told me to dodge the balls. I gave you many reasons why that'd be too much to ask for a lot of players. Not everybody is a pro gamer.
Being evasive is hardly a
pro gamer skill that you can only achieve through strict training techniques. Just dodge around, it's not that hard. If that's too much to ask of someone, then that person is bad at the game. We're talking basic FPS skills here.
You'll excuse me for thinking you hate critrockets when you listed them as an example of something that's more bullshit than a stun.
This is just lack of reading comprehension. Here is what I said:
How is this worse than a crit rocket or, removing random chance, the headshot or backstab of the unseen sniper or spy?
My point here is that these things are just as sudden, and more absolute in most cases, than a stun ball. I even set crit rockets aside because they were random, and not wholly the result of skillful play as is the case with stun balls, headshots, and backstabs. You're projecting your dislike of the stun ball onto me, because I compared the two, and since the stun ball is so bad, I must hate crit rockets. Well the stun ball
isn't bad, and I don't hate any of the things I just listed.
I'm not just complaining on my own behalf. There's more to this than my frustration at my own considerable incompetence. It's not about how often it happens or how annoying it is relative to a backstab (those things just make me care more about it).
Clearly you are, at least as far as we're concerned. If it's not about how it relates to the rest of the game, what is it about?
The only unfun part of Team Fortress 2 is when control is taken away from the player. Since you are not playing at all during this time, I feel this is an uncontroversial statement. Control is taken away during respawn times, and that's a pain, but the entire game is built around it. You can't take out respawn times without changing the entire game. Good things have been built on top of that foundation.
I disagree with the statement that the fun available to a stunned player is zero. As I've said, while you can't immediately respond, you are still playing more than if you were dead. If you die during the stun it is either because of a concerted effort by the enemy team, or because you were at low enough health that the scout could kill you through the stun, which is little different than if he'd just run up and shot you. So little in fact, that that's not what the sandman is primarily for, and most ambush scouts don't use it.
You can take out stuns, the other source of supreme annoyance, without changing the entire game. In fact, such a game existed for over a year, and was still recognizable as being a slight variation on the same game we have now. The Sandman added a new way to play for 10% of players, and a new way to not play for 90%. The purpose of the game being to play it, I do not see how this constitutes an improvement.
That's a gross over-simplification of what the stun actually adds to the game. First of all, your 10%/90% statistic is bullshit. Every class has the goal of making every enemy player play less, that's how you win. The Sandman serves the purpose of disruption and isolation, making it a very powerful tool in the hands of a skilled player, but no more so than is available to every class.
If the Sandman just made it so you couldn't fire any weapons for the duration, but could still move, it would have much the same effect on the balance, but it would not have the "make the player unable to play" problem. And then my only objection to it would be that I suck.
I don't really have any comment for this, except that I disagree that the effect would be the same.