There have been lots of good, or at least interesting, ideas popping up for the new Heavy unlocks (see the Steam thread, the RPS post, and the comments in my last entry), but my favorite, by far, comes (unsurprisingly) from TomMasterPentadactJamesSapFrancisSteathBrannigan.

His first idea is for the heavy unlocking a minigun that sacrifices its critical hit chance in exchange for an absorb damage chance, so instead of occasionally flinging crits for a short period of time, he’ll occasionally become invulnerable for a short period of time. That’s useful in some situations, a drawback in others, plus it’s perfectly reasonable and easy to implement. So, let’s completely ignore it and move on to the less practical but way more fun idea of his.

His idea for the fists alt is the ability to drop all weapons and ammo in exchange for an increase in running speed, to allow the heavy who is outgunned to quickly escape dire situations at the speed of a demo. Or, as I see it, allows him to rush in and punch someone right in the face at the speed of a demo.

A punching heavy is fun. A fast-running, punching heavy with no other weapons is more fun. A fast-running, punching heavy with no other weapons who is also being ubered by a medic? I think that’s the most fun you can have without removing your knickers.

Read all the details right here. I might have to start a petition to get this made.

So, the Heavy is next for new alt weapons and achievements, and in the post on the TF2 official blog, Robin Walker invites us all to play along with the developers by showing us the guidelines they use while inventing class packs.

I’m never one to turn down an invitation, except to parties, or weddings, or reunions, or dinners, or events, or shopping trips, or job interviews, or birthdays, or meetings, or the thing where someone needs help moving furniture so they offer to buy a pizza if you come help, as if that’s some kind of enticement for engaging in hours of backbreaking work.

So, I thought I might have a go at it.

Goal: Make the Heavy more viable when he has no Medic to pair with.

I guess you start by figuring out what the medic really does for the heavy. He heals him, obviously, and healing is a way to extend the heavy’s lifespan. So, the heavy needs some way to look after himself and extend his lifespan when the medic isn’t around. It doesn’t necessarily need to be through healing or health (and it really shouldn’t, because you don’t want to replace the medic) but it should be some way to keep him alive and successfully killing enemies while he’s on his own.

Avoiding taking damage is pretty much the same thing as getting healed from damage taken, so perhaps he needs some way to either protect himself from damage, or become more effective at killing those who would dish it unto him.

So, I have two separate ideas.  Perhaps spinning up his minigun for an extended period of time could create some sort of static charge, a sort of electromagnetic shield thingy that could repel or deflect some gunfire (or maybe just protect him from crit rounds and projectiles) or push charging enemies back (like pyros), or keep the heavy from catching fire. That fits in with protecting him from damage and keeping him healthy.

Or, instead of shielding him, the charge from spinning his gun could instead build up a crit supply that he could unleash at will. Sort of a personal miniKritz, maybe with a meter to tell you how many crits you’ve got stored. That would help him live a little longer by killing more enemies before they can kill him.

The drawback would be as soon as he stopped spinning his gun, the electroshield would completely vanish, and keeping his gun spinning, of course, renders him unable to move at much more than a crawl and makes him prone to sniper attacks and backstabs. I guess he could probably keep his stored crits until he uses them or dies.

Now, let’s see how this fits in with the constraints Mr. Walker has outlined for us.

It shouldn’t have a cumulative effect when being healed by a Medic as well. Heavy/Medic pairs do pretty well as it is.

A bit of a problem. You don’t want an overhealed heavy with a shield or a personal supply of crits, that’s a bit too powerful. So you’d have to shut those items off if a medic is healing you, which means either make the medigun disperse the shield (or be unable to heal a heavy sporting a shield) or suck up the heavy’s stored crits and add them to his ubermeter.

Which means, if a heavy is busy building up his charge, he might not be thrilled if a medic comes along and nullifies it by healing him. And you definitely don’t want heavies running around yelling for medics to stop healing them, right? They’re buddies, after all. You also don’t want a medic being prevented from healing anyone, because that’s how he builds up his uber. So, I think this test is more or less failed.

It shouldn’t significantly change the Heavy’s role, relative to other classes. In particular, it shouldn’t significantly encroach on another class’s role.

I think we’re safe there, except for those medics who do use the kritzkrieg. If a heavy has his own crit supply, he doesn’t need the kritzkrieg. I don’t see the Kritz in action much, but it should still be an option for a medic, and this steps on his turf a bit.

It should be understandable for both the user and the player it’s being used on.

The shield would be pretty easy to understand, some sort of crackly force field lookin’ thing, though it would have to look different enough from the Kritzkrieg as to not be confusing. It would automatically appear when the gun was spinning, so it couldn’t be easier to use.

The crits meter is easy to understand, since we’re used to how the medic works, and I guess you could hit a key to start throwing your crits around. I think people would catch on pretty quickly.

How much work is it? How many new models, sounds, effects, etc?

A new effect, sure, and probably some sounds, like a humming or fizzling when the charge builds up.  Plus, it’s the heavy, so he’d need some new voice overs, because he’s funy and we all love the things he says.

Does it deepen the Heavy’s skill curve? Is it easy to learn? Hard to master?

I guess the heavy would have to decide when it was worth it to charge his gun by spinning it and when he should just proceed as usual. There are times when you hold your ground, other times when it’s time to stop spinning the gun and move as fast as you can.  Doesn’t really change his dynamic much in the long run, you’d just have to learn when the shield is worthwhile and when it’s better to move at speed.

How often does the Heavy need to think about it? Is it something he uses once every 5 minutes, or is it something he needs to be constantly thinking about?

I don’t know! Stop asking questions!  The shield will appear just by spinning up the gun, so you don’t really need to think about it at all.  The crits supply, you’d have to decide when to use it, if you should use it before it’s full, if you should hold off using it until the last moment, all weighed against how much danger you’re in and how much damage you’re taking.

That’s about what I’ve got for the minigun alt, so maybe I’ll post some ideas for his other weapons later.

That is, if this shady blog is to be trusted.

I’m happy to hear it; I’ve been playing a lot more heavy lately and am really enjoying it. Only problem is, I stink if I don’t have a medic taking care of me constantly, so it’s good to know that Valve is looking at ways to make the heavy “more viable when he has no Medic to pair with.”

So, there’s been a lot of recent cries that the pyro, saddled with his new Pack, is overpowered.

I admit feeling this at times, especially after being roasted to a crisp by a backburner faster that you can microwave a poptart. After crumpling, yet again, into a gooey heap of melting flesh, I’ve thought, “This sucks. Fucking Pyro Pack.” I’ve found myself switching to pyro simply so I cannot be lit on fire by all of the other pyros. I haven’t ragequit over it, but I’ve had some mild, private rage, or at least exasperation, after being scorched by a series of crit flames from the back, front, sides, and above, or all at once, repeatedly throughout a match.

Granted, I’ve never thought the pyro was underpowered (except when playing one myself) and I’ve always found them tricky to deal with. Even with flame damage falloff, catching on fire is a pain — you have to go heal, especially as one of the wimpier classes, you can’t aim well as a sniper while on fire, and as a medic you can quickly make your patients whole again but you yourself remain singed.

Facing them as a demo, my stickybombs seem to always launch the charging pyro right into my lap. I have a bit more luck as a soldier, but even still, they can jump and weave and catch me reloading (and now they can rebound my rockets). A single whiff of flame as a Scout and, well, I might as well run right back out of the enemy base and find a health kit. Mowing them down as a heavy is fun enough, but the more talented pyros can strafe right around you. I won’t even bring up what pyros do to me when I’m spying.

So, as a whole, I’ve always found pyros problematic. And now, to me, they’re more than a problem. They’re an overproblem. It’s hard, I admit, not to feel like they’re too powerful now.

But I found this post on the Steam forums that has given me a bit of perspective on the matter.

The poster asks you to imagine that the medic’s ubercharge wasn’t part of the original gameplay of TF2. Imagine it only came along a couple months ago, as part of his update pack. Imagine the outcry if, suddenly, this useful yet relatively harmless medic was able to charge something called his “uber meter” and then render his patient completely invulnerable to damage for ten seconds.

Imagine this wasn’t a familiar staple of gameplay from the beginning. The outcry would be enormous. WTF! The medic is overpowered! The game balance is destroyed! I’m not playing TF2 anymore until the medic is nerfed! It should be five seconds! It should be two seconds! Sentries are useless! Stickymines are worthless! Rockets are pointless! The patient shouldn’t be invulnerable, he should take at least half-damage! The medic should still be vulnerable! The uber meter should charge more slowly! The medic should move more slowly! The medic should explode after using it and the player’s Steam account should be deleted and their computer should be confiscated! Valve has ruined TF2!

I think it’s a great point. The pyro has been beefed up, no doubt. He’s got new gear, new uses, and new life. Gamplay will change to accommodate these changes, and while they seem a bit extreme now, like the uber would be if it were suddenly introduced, we’ll get used to it. Right? Right.

Of course, I wrote this whole goddamn post only to see a Steam update tweaking the pyro (among other things) a moment ago. Swell. Well, I’m posting it anyway.

Some falloff to flamethrower damage has been returned, and the backburner’s critical hits have been adjusted to allow for greater accuracy in determining if the target really has his back to you.

Clearly, the pyro is underpowered again!

There are few final items from the Pyro Pack update that I never gave you my all-important opinion on, so let’s get to them now, won’t you?

Changes to Well (CP)

They added a stairwell to the second floor, which is good for attackage but not so good for defensening. It’s the same stairwell they added to the CTF version. It makes it easy to get upstairs without having to cross the floor of the main room inside the building, meaning snipers need to watch their backs for incoming spies and pyros.

They also redistributed the health and ammo a bit, which I haven’t really noticed since I’ve only played it once, as a pyro, and I was busy trying (and dying) to get my taunt-kill.

Changes to Well (CTF)

They shortened the map some, by removing the central building and replacing it with a small covering over the train tracks. The trains still run, side by side, and there’s some ammo and health on the tracks. There are some boxes piled up that allow you to get onto the roof of the covering via some stationary box cars.

Unfortunately, the water tunnels out of the bases are now kinda useless. They terminate in the moats outside the base instead of reaching the central area, so there’s no real point in using them to slip out of your base. Which sucks, as it was a great route for spies to take and an overall good ambush route. It’d be nice if they connected to each other or at least popped up somewhere near the middle of the map, otherwise, they’re just not useful (except if you’re on fire and need to cool off).

The changes still don’t make Well a good ctf map, I don’t think. A single engie is gonna have trouble covering the intel with a sentry due to the intel room being so darn big. If you build on top of the intel, you’ll get spammed from range; if you cover one door they’ll just come in the other. It’s just a really big room to cover by yourself, and with the base itself being so huge, none of your teammates are going to be anywhere near you unless they’re specifically helping you out.

I think if they were going to shorten the map, they should have made the bases smaller instead of the area outside the bases. A map like 2Fort, Mach 4, or Chaos work better for ctf because the bases are relatively small, and so spawning teammates are going to be close by if an engie needs help defending. I’d say make the water routes somehow useful again and crop the bases in half. Lose the whole rear of the base and just stick the intel between those twin stairwells that lead to the balcony (or maybe on the balcony itself), and maybe put spawn rooms at the end of the two tunnels that lead into the original intel room.

Also, looking at Well as both a CP and a CTF map makes me think it could be both a CP and a CTF map at the same time. A hybrid could be interesting, where capping a point could open up new routes to the intel, sort of like Steel changes the map when you cap a point, only the points could be recapped by the other team. Say, capturing the middle point opens up that new stairwell to the second floor, and capping a third point outside the base opens up the water routes into the base, perhaps. Or something. Some setup that would make owning the exterior areas worthwhile and give you some advantage when you cap a point. Someone make that for me and I’ll tell you if I like it.

Soldier Changes

So, the soldier takes full damage from his own rockets now, instead of the 40% discount he was getting, except when he’s rocket jumping. I’m definitely feeling it when I play soldier. I won’t say I kill myself a lot more after the changes, but I definitely kill myself a lot quicker. The rocket jump detection doesn’t seem to be 100%, either, as I’ve taken full damage even while rocket jumping a couple times. That could possibly be chalked up to the fact that I’m a fairly spazzy rocketjumper, though.

Like the ammo dropoff, I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but career soldiers are probably feeling a bit of a hit. No worries, someday you’ll get your alt-weapons too, soldiers.

Pyro Flame Falloff

The flamethrower damage used to fall off a bit, so if you were just at the edge of the flames, you wouldn’t get hurt as badly as when the pyro had his spout right up in your business. This has changed, and the flames now do uniform damage. I’m still not convinced the pyros are overpowered, but they’re definitely way more dangerous. I’m seeing most pyros with backburners nowadays, because while the compressed air blast is a hoot, extra health and crit flames are way more useful and it doesn’t always seem to require the pyro to hit you square in the back to do full crit damage (similar to the spy sometimes backstabbing you in the forehead).

Friend Icons

While you’re ingame, you can now see which of your playmates are your steam buddies. That’s nice; I play with a pretty familiar crew most nights, so I can tell at a glance which ones I haven’t friended yet because I hate them. No, seriously, you might play with someone a lot and have just never realized that they’re not on your list.

Join Messages

You can now see if someone randomly joined a team or picked one. Good for accusing people of teamstacking if that’s your scene.

(Return of the) Bug Reporter

Instead of spamming the Steam forums or your 1Fort blog or, worse, your mic, with all your various TF2 problems, you can report them right in-game to Valve, thus making some poor intern very, very busy.

With Portal stealing the show when the Orange Box was released, with TF2 being such a huge, ever-changing success, and with everyone holding their breath for Left 4 Dead, Half-Life 2 Episode 3 has, well, slipped off the radar a bit.

However, the saga of Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance is set to once again enter the crowded spotlight, as it’s been reported that Episode 3 will be showcased at this year’s E3.

Good! I’ve been feeling the itch to go back and play the first and second episodes again, and maybe seeing some gameplay movies and screenshots, or even just a teaser trailer, will get my mind back on the HL2 series.

EDIT:  Apparently, this is bullshit.

So, looking at the last week’s worth of stats on Steampowered, we can see the Pyro Pack was a smash, with pyros owning nearly 25% of the total playing time since it was released on the 19th. The nearest was the engineer with about 15%, while the spy, heavy, and scout scrounged near the bottom with around 5% each.

Pyros have also been second in average kills per hours, third in assists, and fourth in points and captures. In average life expectancy, they place seventh. So, while they’re out there killing a lot, they’re also out there dying a lot.

The damage stats are currently borked, but I’ve been checking the past few days and the flamethrower damage has been accounting for around 30-35% of all damage dealt over the past week. Oddly, with all that damage, not a whole lot was critical, with only around .05%, which is way down the list. I expect this will change as more people unlock the dreaded Backburner and Axtinguisher, which caused me no small amount of pain this past week.

Pyros aside, the real reason I’ve been checking the stats is because I’m curious as to which Pack we’ll be unpacking next. There’s been some speculation that it will be the engineer, based mainly on some interviews in which Robin Walker, and other members Valve, mentioned some potential unlockable items for the engie.

But the medic and pyro were first because, as I understand it, they were underplayed. The new weapons and achievements were given to them to make them more fun and versatile and increase the amount of time they got from players. Looking at the stats from this week, the engie is doing just fine — he’s the second most played class of the bunch (though last in points, probably because he never captures control points or bomb cart points).

In last place right now, though, in terms of most-played classes, is the Scout. This is (probably) due to the immense popularity of Goldrush and Dustbowl, the two most-played maps, and their relative unfriendliness to Scouts. Not to say I don’t see Scouts on those maps, in fact, I was repeatedly getting pwned by a Scout on Dustbowl recently. He was on defense and kept cutting behind our lines and kicking my ass (I was a medic). He was some sort of Snuffleupascout, too — no one seemed to see him but me. He’d slip around behind heavies and soldiers and beat the tar out of me while they tromped on, oblivious.

Anyway. Goldrush and Dustbowl are both very engie-intensive maps, and thus you don’t see a whole lot of scouts. Could the Scout Pack be next?

Also languishing near the bottom of the most-played list are spies. Still, there’s always a spy or two on Goldrush and Dustbowl, and I think they’re pretty effective on those maps, what with all the sentries to sap and all the clusters of backs to stab (around the bomb cart and in the bottlenecks). Sure, he doesn’t get many assists (due to backstabbing so many healthy players) and is low on the kill list (though the buildings he kills don’t register), and he’s next to last in life expectancy (due to mingling in the enemy masses). So, I don’t really think the spy is in immediate need of class changes, though I’m sure he’s ready to see the pyro swarm dissipate.

Finally, there’s the heavy, who also appears to be underplayed, though those of us who play heavy are doing quite well: number one in points and kills per hour, number two in assists, and third in caps. I don’t really think heavies really are underplayed, it’s just that you’ll generally see only one per team, and one is usually enough, especially if they have a medic keeping them alive while they’re scoring all those points. I don’t imagine they’ll be next for alt weapons.

So, my money is on the scout for the next pack. As for the unlockables, I have no idea what they could or should be, but that won’t stop me from suggesting some, and I’m sure these are not at all original, especially the one I completely lifted.
Alt Bat: A wooden bat with a nail through it. It could have a higher crit chance, perhaps with the drawback that it also has a chance of shattering, forcing the scout to get a new one from resupply. They could call it The Sosa.

Alt Pistol: Rubber bullets. They don’t crit like the regular pistol but can bounce off your opponents and do do damage to others in the area as well. Also good for bouncing around corners and damaging sentries while staying out of the line of fire, and rebounding in tight hallways like a swarm of rubber bees. Maybe a pyro flame could melt them in midair, though.

Alt Scattergun: Tom’s idea seems realistic, so I will reprint it: no crits except from directly above the target, where it always crits, and holds fewer rounds.

Also, someone somewhere someplace sometime suggested a baseball the scout could throw to distract a sentry; I think that’s a fun idea, provided you could also bonk it off people’s heads for comic effect, and maybe self-pitch and hit it with a bat for a crit or something.

If you’re interested in the inner workings of the medigun, there’s a new post on the TF2 Official blog that explains its healing rate amid injury factors.

While testing the game, the designers noticed that injured players weren’t running back to find a medic to heal them, preferring instead to simply keep fighting, die, and respawn since the medigun’s healing rate was uinformly slow. In response, they ramped up the healing rate based on the amount of time since a player had been injured, thus, a soldier returning for a heal would regain health at a faster rate then someone who had fresh injuries.

You can read all the interesting details here.

A Steam update has done away with the medic’s burden of having to acquire all the achievements in order to unlock his new gear. Now, the system matches the pyro’s, where the unlocks come at 10, 15, and 20 achievements, which means some of you aspiring medics might find you’ve gotten some fancy new weapons just by joining a server. Mazeltov!

I wrote a review of cp_Steel recently, a map I’ve known about for a while but have only recently had a change to play in real matches. The five-point attack-defend control point map has quickly become one of my favorites, due to its creativity, complexity, and dynamic strategic elements.

It’s certainly unique, and amazingly well polished for a custom map, so I decided to find out more about it and the guy who made it. I interviewed Fishbus, the creator of cp_Steel, via e-mail.

1Fort: I assume, based on the complexity and polish of Steel, that this isn’t your first time making maps. What other maps have you made, for TF2 or other games? What got you started with map-making initially?

Fishbus: Yep, this isn’t the first time making a map. I’ve been designing levels periodically for the last 10 years, for as long as I can remember I have been dabbling, creating levels for games when I was young, sketching out maps for Red Alert as a little kid. I have always been fascinated by creating play-spaces. Counterstrike, Half-life, TFC and CS Source have a few maps to my name. I look back on them and find my faults with them, constantly learning from my mistakes. Steel is my first, but rather controversial foray into TF2.

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