15 responses so far ↓

• 1 Ev // Jun 2, 2008 at 8:23 am

  I’d say some of them are quite overpowered. What would the trade-off for the Heavy scattergun be, for example?

• 2 Ayrton // Jun 2, 2008 at 8:55 am

  I haven’t read Pentadact’s article yet, I might reply again later when I have done so.
  I realise that people can be biased against achievements because they just think that the classes are getting better more powerful weapons. I don’t think that giving every class better weapons is the way to go. From here on out they should just make the weapon balanced, no idiotic “no (almost meaningless) crits for a massive advantage” type thing.
  However, I think that the medic should have been given higher powered weapons.
  The medic was a very weak class (especially when he was trying to defend himself) and he gained the boost he needed which could be attained by regular medic players.
  The thing that ruined it was everyone going “OMG ACHIEVEMENTS DO WANT!!!!”.

  I think that from here on out all the unlockables should be balanced and made so that they will be used when the situation calls for it and they can be used tactically instead of all the time.

• 3 Pentadact // Jun 2, 2008 at 9:13 am

  I didn’t mean to!

  Ev, that one was a little tongue-in-cheek. But in general, I vaguely used the Medic unlocks template: most are meaningful trade-offs, but it’s okay if one is just flat-out better. Particularly if it’s not the class’s primary weapon. I don’t think anyone who’s earned it is going to be putting away their Ubersaw any time soon.

  I tend to agree with Ayrton that ‘no crits’ is an almost meaninglessly tiny drawback for most weapons, particularly since the nature of crits means you can never rely on them anyway. Rather than tag that onto anything that didn’t overwhelmingly need a huge drawback, I just left some as all-good.

• 4 Ayrton // Jun 2, 2008 at 9:26 am

  “I’m more interested in ideas that would make you think about and play a class differently, than in trying to ensure everything is perfectly and exactly balanced.”

  Agreed. This is a great alternative to my original opinion and leaves room for new ways of approaching situations.

  Engineer:
  The Shield Spanner is a great idea. I hate having to sit around my buildings for fear of getting them destroyed within 2 seconds. I especially hate how when your buildings are being sapped and there’s a friendly engie 2 feet away they just ignore it and carry on whacking their sentry, though I guess that’s more of a people problem.
  The mini dispenser.
  “It appears as a cardboard box full of dynamite, with dispenser decals drawn on in crayon.”
  I love this bit.
  However, I think a crit rocket is a bit over powered, maybe a normal rocket at point blank?
  Telepault
  I’m all for it if it means I can build my sentries in hard to reach places.
  Plus heavies flying about is just plaing funny.

  Pyro:
  I have nothing much to say here, the prospect of not having heavies keep firing without having to worry about burning to death is surely an exciting one.
  Damn heavies.

  Heavy:
  Not a big fan of the scattergun and I doubt valve would hang an iddy biddy scout arm from the trigger.
  Knuckle dusters = yay!

  Soldier:
  I like all the ideas apart from the shotgun, I don’t think it should be drawn by pressing one button. If you manage to switch to it and shoot THEN you REALLY deserve a crit.
  “Why not… grenades!”
  Is this a joke?

  Demoman:
  I like the grenade launcher, a 4 grenade clip is a big enough delay to kick his arse. However, maybe they could make it so that he has to reload all his grenades before he can fire, or if he tries to fire it’s like russian roulette, as in there’s a chance he’ll shoot one of his empty barrels.
  What they REALLY need to fix is the 6 barrels, it should be 4 damnit!
  Why would the wee creepers damage your teammates? They could just make it so that your team doesn’t get damaged, like every other weapon.
  The bottle idea is great.

  Scout:

  I don’t know what precludes means so fuck it.
  “small nails each skewering a Post-It note with “Crit me” written on it.”
  Love it.

  Sniper:
  Can’t really say anything here because I never EVER play sniper.
  Well sometimes when duty calls, but even then I’ve only done 40 minutes max.

  Spy:
  I love the man-sapper, I’d definitely use it.
  The hack-o-tron’s cool, and easy to dodge because you’d have to be pretty skilled to avoid being killed before it works.
  All the other stuff is cool, and I like the name spotting feature of the identi-kit, definitely something I’d use as I keep getting killed for this.

  All in all some pretty good suggestions made by him.

• 5 Punjabi Fury // Jun 2, 2008 at 9:59 am

  I love how they got steadily more rediculous towards the end.

  More enjoyable than some musings I’ve read on the subject, but to be honest I don’t see the point.

• 6 Punjabi Fury // Jun 2, 2008 at 10:50 am

  *ridiculous.

  I am ashamed.

• 7 Pete // Jun 2, 2008 at 11:11 am

  This is a little side note but has anyone heard anything about “real” updates for orange box coming to xbox360. I know…blah blah I should get it for computer but the thing is my computer isnt nearly as nice as my xbox360.

  It just makes me so sad because Valve is downright legendary when it comes to updates and new content and well the last update for the xbox 360 version was 4 mini bug fixes.

  P.S I love your blog…I started by reading Concerned(awesome), and then i loved your Livin in Oblivion blog so I decided that you were news feed worthy.

• 8 Pentadact // Jun 2, 2008 at 12:17 pm

  Valve said recently somewhere that there’ll be some news on this soon, to the effect of: they are coming. Valve want them to be free, Microsoft hate people giving things away for free, as well as kittens and chocolate and your mother. WHO WILL WIN?

  Valve have said before that they don’t believe in charging for updates in any circumstances, and charging for it presents a real problem: you split the player-base into the haves and have-nots, potentially halving it the number of possible games a given player can get into. My bet is Valve will win.

• 9 AlphaHawk // Jun 2, 2008 at 12:42 pm

  Valve always wins :) Just like those MS pain addons to the weapons man :) Although in all honesty, after the medic achievements, they should’ve made us wait for them to put together all the OTHER achievements and unlocks, then release it, instead of one at a time. They’re great, don’t get me wrong, but in a few months it’ll be a pyro fest, and all I’ll hear is FUDDA FUDDA HAAAA!!! =/

• 10 Dan // Jun 2, 2008 at 7:16 pm

  I like his booby trap dispenser idea.

• 11 Baggie // Jun 2, 2008 at 8:31 pm

  I’d actually prefer the option to replace your teleporters with 2 jump pads, and being able to build sentries, but only having a total level of 3, e.g. 3 level 1 sents, 1 level 2 and 1 level 1 etc.

• 12 chris12 // Jun 2, 2008 at 11:56 pm

  man, i like the gun

• 13 Ten-High Charlie // Jun 3, 2008 at 2:18 am

  For the Demoman, I’d like a grenade launcher that had bouncier grenades. Like lined with rubber or something with a longer explosion timer and possibly farther range if fired properly, but utterly useless if shot at far away. Maybe with a trade off of less impact/knockback. They could cause some panic in corridors or maybe a small room like the first cap point in dust bowl.

• 14 Gothic // Jun 3, 2008 at 6:30 am

  I demand tags.

  Also, the booby trap dispenser NEEDS to be implemented.

  I can imagine the great lulz it will make.

• 15 Shawn Poulsen // Jun 3, 2008 at 10:45 pm

  Actually, I think giving the Heavy a scatter gun would be a great idea.

  The trade off being that, unlike a scout, it’s really really hard to use a scatter gun well when you’re as slow as a heavy. Forget running up to people to minimize the effect of its scatter - The only times it’ll be better than the normal shotty is when people are running up to you.

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