Continuing the series one some minor game tweaks I, and my commenters, feel would enhance the TF2 experience.
First stop: This post on Pentadact, with some great ideas on making sentries and Kritzkriegs more effective, and on how to tone down the Demoman’s game without completely hamstringing him.
Some more from my blog comments:
Eikern: I would like to have the deathcam from CoD implemented. The deathcam actually showed a couple of seconds from your opponents POV before you got killed.
I would like this a lot. I really like CoD’s death cam — it’s highly entertaining and you can actually learn from it. I think I’d miss the current deathcam shots, though, as they’re pretty entertaining.
John McClane: Also it couldn’t hurt to hear somekind of “bing!” sound when you are starting to break any of your records. You could start to be more careful and it would add some excitement to the play.
Good idea. It would be neat to get a musical sting, of indicator of some sort, if you’re close to breaking a record, instead of just a notice after you’re dead that you almost broke or tied one.
JoeSnowFoSho: I think the pyro’s airblast should be able to put out burning teammates.
I initially though it would be better if it put out burning enemies, as sort of a drawback to using a weapon that I expected to be overpowered. Anyway, it turned out the backburner is way more powerful and more oft-used than the airblast, so the airblast doesn’t need any drawbacks. My only concern with this idea is that putting out teammates steps on the medic’s toes — that’s his job.
Dante: When you kill a nemesis, you get a little ‘revenge’ message, so how about if your nemesis is killed by someone on your friends list? Surely they should get an ‘avenged friends death’ notice? Perhaps even with an achievement thrown in?
Nice idea. Often, when I see a friend get killed and I kill his killer, I’ll tell my friend I avenged him. The only drawback is that I generally play with a dozen or so people on my friends list, so the constant messages could be a little annoying.
Pentadact: I really wish the TF2 theme would kick in when you nab the intel, and cut to the: DAH! DAH! DAH! Dada da-DUH! Finale if you’re killed while carrying it.
and:
I wish it would automatically spectate the Intel carrier if there is one. Or someone on a cap that’s in play. So often it’s so obvious where the action’s going to be, but it takes forever to cycle through everyone and every cam point to find it.
Yes! I think overall the game could use some in-game musical stings. Add a little James Bond to the proceedings. And the heaven-cam should default on a friend, or something important going on in the game, instead being random, which often nets you a shot of an empty basement or some AFKer in the spawn.
31 responses so far ↓
1 Robert64 // Jul 28, 2008 at 10:33 am
If the airburst is pure oxygen, which it should be, it should fuel an enemy’s flame, leading to crit-damage during the burst.
2 Mr.Moon // Jul 28, 2008 at 10:43 am
Well, assuming that the airburst pulls from the ammo in the flame-thrower, one can assume that it is flammable liquid being forced into a spray. Oxygen doesn’t quite fit the bill, but I like where you’re heads at.
3 Draco_2k // Jul 28, 2008 at 10:47 am
The tag on this one brings a tear to my eye.
4 Gryphon // Jul 28, 2008 at 11:08 am
Heh, Concerned reference? http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2005-08-17
5 J3553 // Jul 28, 2008 at 11:14 am
@Gryphon: LOL!
6 Jimmay // Jul 28, 2008 at 11:53 am
@Gryphon: Wow, nice catch.
7 Talbot // Jul 28, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I’d love Halo3-styled replay abilities. With games stored in the media section that you could go back and watch without having to enter the game.
8 VladH // Jul 28, 2008 at 12:31 pm
@Gryphon, Chris: Freaking brilliant haha
9 Newt Pulsifer // Jul 28, 2008 at 12:37 pm
@Gryphon
Yay!! Nice one!! <3 tags
10 Mike // Jul 28, 2008 at 1:02 pm
The spectator thing in general could do with some extras. It’d be nice to only surf friends, a freecam would be good, too.
And for god’s sake, remove the +50 backburner health. It’s crippling Pyro vs. Pyro.
11 Aeneas // Jul 28, 2008 at 1:28 pm
And to be honest I had not even noticed the ads.
So well done.
Monkey key ring
Monkey Banana
12 Matt // Jul 28, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Agreeing with Chris and Mike on removing the health. I love the airblast, but I hate how I now lose to most pyros.
13 Icarus Tyler // Jul 28, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I’d find it interesting if the map-search showed the stage of the map . This would make it easier (or more chaotic for that matter) to find games that have advanced past stage one, and those are so rare.
14 AlphaHawk // Jul 28, 2008 at 7:15 pm
The airblast will be the pyro’s hairdryer in the Meet the Pyro video, whenever it comes out. You just wait and see.
And maybe scouts could reveal spies like they did in the old TF2 after they run into them for like 4 seconds. That way it won’t just be one guy running around screaming “SPY SPY!” when everyone else is too focused on fighting others, and the scout won’t be able to reveal the spy after 4 seconds if he shoots before the 4 seconds, and can’t use any of his weapons 2 seconds after revealing the spy.
Yes, no?
15 Aenir // Jul 28, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I think Spies should be left alone for now AlphaHawk.
16 Nophysicalbody // Jul 28, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Expanding on the deathcam idea, i’d like it if when you were an engy and you died it defaulted to your sentry if you had one. It’s annoying on 32 man servers cycling through the players to try and see whether your sentry is okay or not.
17 Baggie // Jul 29, 2008 at 12:47 am
I agree that the pyro doesn’t need the +50 health, I don’t like having to back down from pyro v pyro because I don’t have as much health for some reason. Increase the backburner crit cone and take off the health, and it’ll be a lot more fair.
18 Nibwoddle // Jul 29, 2008 at 1:36 am
I think they should make a remixed neverending version of the theme and have it playing the whole time. Or, give each map a theme tune or something. And make the main theme belonging to 2fort.
19 al // Jul 29, 2008 at 2:07 am
That f..awesome autoteambalance algorithm (btw. it’s:
if teamsImbalanced { switchTeams(getPlayerByName(’*al*’); }) should be tweakable by the server admin.
I. e. always swap the last joined player or the last not-automatically-assigned player or the best player of the past 5 minutes.
20 Icarus Tyler // Jul 29, 2008 at 5:52 am
The 50+ plus health always irritated me….. So the gave you 100% crits form behind PLUS a health bonus?
There is no decision in this, since the newer option is inheritly better (and no decision is bad game design).
Of course there is the airblast-thingie, which I personally LOVE, but it has to establish itsself widely before the 50+ health become justified to be a reasonable alternative to the airblast.
21 Jory // Jul 29, 2008 at 6:15 am
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the deathcam already automatically shows your friends (assuming they’re not already dead.) For the most part I only play TF2 with a buddy of mine, and usually when I die it cuts right to him.
22 Baejung92 // Jul 29, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Wow, I swear Valve actually reads this blog. Among the latest updates:
“Added a gear symbol behind the health bar for Engineer buildings, in both target IDs and freeze panels”
“Removed health bonus from the Backburner”
“Players killing themselves will now give a kill credit to the last enemy who damaged them”
23 Matt // Jul 29, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I agree with Baejung92. My first thought when reading the update list was, “Chris is rather influential.”
24 Ivan // Jul 29, 2008 at 4:44 pm
It seems like they were listening to you. There is a new update for TF2 and they added couple of things everybody was talking here about.
25 Alek // Jul 29, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Ivan is right! You have power, because they sure as hell listened to us.
26 ZomBuster // Jul 29, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Wow incredible
27 bbot // Jul 29, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, the afterdeath cam selection needs work. It’s bad enough being on a badly losing team, it’s even worse when the game rubs in the stupidity of your teammates by showing you some guy methodically laying eight stickies in the spawn, then blowing himself up.
28 Robert64 // Jul 30, 2008 at 4:41 am
If you look at the latest TF2 update, buildings now have gear symbols behind their health. Wow, that was fast. And kill credit for players killing themselves who were injured by someone else. What I am not so happy about is the health bonus has gone from the backburner, but I guess I can adapt back to 175.
29 Robert64 // Jul 30, 2008 at 4:42 am
Ah didn’t read last posts, missed that it was already pointed out.
30 Seth Troisi // Jul 30, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I love the idea of CoD style death cam (maybe 3 second clip + 2 second screenshot)
The pyro airblast should ignite enemies (as it is something flammable) maybe do 25 or so damage
Better in-game sounds would be nice. picking up intel and getting the theme would be awesome. Quake sounds from css were cool but I enjoy the friend mic banter instead. friends avenge achievement would be cool, and a nice noise for achievement would be my main suggestion. The noise for achievements would only take a couple man hours as they already generate a message just pair it with a noise and then designing the noise.
31 mazzybabeuk // Aug 1, 2008 at 3:37 am
agreeing with most featured wishes so far what I wouldn’t mind seeing is points awarded for damage, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure you don’t get damage points. It just seem a bit silly to me that the game keeps a track of your damage but you don’t get points for it.
I think 1 point for every 1000 damage makes sense it will make people want to survive longer and won’t make medics feel sour when a rocket or grenade spammer gets more points than them when they are healing.
I speak from a personal frustration when I see that I can damage someone to the point where they are almost dead only to have someone with a medic come along and finish them off leaving me with nothing. Anyway thats just a little tweak I thought of.
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