Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2

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Using the negativity bias to prove pyros in mvm are bad
By [FP] jh34ghu43gu and 1 collaborators
Mathematically proving pyro bad
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Negativity bias
Commonly used in the random crits argument, this bias states a negative experience has the equivalent mental effect as 3-6 positive ones (depending on your source). This can be expressed as a negative experience equals -3 and a positive experience = 1 as you would need 3 positive experiences to cancel out the negative experience (or change the negative number depending on your source, we want to give benefit of the doubt here by using the low value).
Negativiy bias relating to mvm lobbies
You can divide mvm players into 3 categories: No pyro, play pyro, yes pyro. The no pyro players do not want a pyro in their game and thus receive a negative experience should one exist (-3). A person playing pyro can be assumed to be having a good time and thus a positive experience (+1). For yes pyro it will depend on the person if it is a positive experience or not, however it will not be negative (0 or +1).

We can now make a table of teams based on this.

Assuming yes pyros have no positivity

Assuming yes pyros have +1 positivity

These tables do not list every possible team comp, however it will be most team comps as you are unlikely to see more than 2 pyros for most waves.

As seen by both tables there are more situations where the total negativity in a lobby outweighs the total positivity and thus the conclusion:
Conclusion
Don't play pyro outside a 4+ stack.
5 Comments
cralo 27 Aug, 2021 @ 8:26pm 
wrong lol
[FP] jh34ghu43gu  [author] 26 Aug, 2021 @ 4:23pm 
Congrats you found me out
[FP] jh34ghu43gu  [author] 25 Aug, 2021 @ 3:33pm 
I believe the population difference between people who want pyro and don't want pyro is very vast; I'd argue that most people don't *want* any class outside of engineer, rather a job that some class should fill ie money collection and med dropping.

This guide is more on the satirical side anyway compared to my other guides and while I wholly believe new players should not play pyro, I don't think this guide as a whole should be taken seriously.
Hydrogenated Oil 24 Aug, 2021 @ 9:35pm 
I might just be missing something here, but if someone who wanted to have pyros wasn't able to, doesn't it stand to reason that would be a negative experience for them? Then whenever there weren't any pyros they'd be experiencing the -3 compared to the anti-pyro player, who would only experience the +1, so you could literally just switch pro-pyro and anti-pyro, and "Use the negativity bias to prove pyros in mvm are good".

So if the number of pro and anti-pyros is the same, the total positivity will be the same either way, and if either side has a numerical advantage, then the total positivity will favor them.
Gativrek 24 Aug, 2021 @ 4:42pm 
Better Math - Pyro has bad damage output outside of tanks compared to Sniper

Conclusion - Play Sniper

Problem - There's Tank

Solution - Play Soldier