TF2 Update Incoming? - Let me tell you about my best friend.

[Kail]

I wish they'd implemented trading before this stupid crafting system.  I got a fourth ubersaw today, I could give away all of them and still only be down about 1/3 the cost of someone making one from scratch.

Otherwise, I'm generally liking the soldier stuff (the pickaxe not so much, but whatever), but the demoman gear is pissing me off.  They can equip the sword and shield and run around meleeing people, get a kill, and then hit their charge button to get out of the room before anyone can kill them.  Then they come back with more health and do it again.  Then they can run around with more health than a soldier, and whenever they hit their charge, they can move faster than a scout and insta-kill half the classes.  Which would be annoying in itself, but they can do this while carrying the damn intel, which is crazy.  Come up on a room full of defenders, hit the charge, be through and out before anyone can fire twice, and nobody can catch up with you.  Hitting an uber with the intel won't work, bonk won't work, cloaking won't work, so why does this charge thing work?

[Samwise]

I suspect the very next patch will make the charge not work with the intel.  The first time I saw someone charging with the intel I knew that tactic's days had to be numbered.

[schild]

They could do that, but you're stuck with melee when you're carrying the intel this way. Bonk should work though, surprised to hear it doesn't.

[Samwise]

The shield charge thing doesn't limit you to melee.  Doesn't really matter anyway.  For carrying the intel you'd just use it to put distance between yourself and pursuers, and then run normally while lobbing pipebombs behind you.

[Malakili]

I wish they'd implemented trading before this stupid crafting system.  I got a fourth ubersaw today, I could give away all of them and still only be down about 1/3 the cost of someone making one from scratch.

Otherwise, I'm generally liking the soldier stuff (the pickaxe not so much, but whatever), but the demoman gear is pissing me off.  They can equip the sword and shield and run around meleeing people, get a kill, and then hit their charge button to get out of the room before anyone can kill them.  Then they come back with more health and do it again.  Then they can run around with more health than a soldier, and whenever they hit their charge, they can move faster than a scout and insta-kill half the classes.  Which would be annoying in itself, but they can do this while carrying the damn intel, which is crazy.  Come up on a room full of defenders, hit the charge, be through and out before anyone can fire twice, and nobody can catch up with you.  Hitting an uber with the intel won't work, bonk won't work, cloaking won't work, so why does this charge thing work?

Its still slower than sticky jumping, though of course you have to trade health to do that.   I have a feeling they will take it out though.  Frankly the only weapon I'm using for "real" is the pickaxe.  The Direct Hit is ok, but I'm not convinced the extra damage is worth the splash loss on most maps save maybe arena where it is literally only death match.  The bugle is nice, but you really only need one per team.  The Scottish Resistance is just not as good as the regular sticky launcher period, the game is fast paced enough that I rarely want to be sitting back and setting up 1 sticky trap let alone multiples, even on defense.  The sword and shield are fun shenanigans, but isn't actually that effective against someone head on, as even with the charge pretty much any class can take you out as long as they don't miss.

[Malakili]

They could do that, but you're stuck with melee when you're carrying the intel this way. Bonk should work though, surprised to hear it doesn't.

Bonk was pretty overpowered when you could carry intel.  If you were dedicated enough you just inch an intel out of the enemy base with bonk-die-respawn-runback-repeat, it was cheesy but actually really effective.  Now the best you can do with bonk in that regard is to get free touches on the flag to prevent it from returning to base, still useful, but I think more fair.

[Samwise]

Haha, I just got that "Gore-a!  Gore-a!  Gore-a!" achievement and it was fucking sweet.   

[Strazos]

Someone at Valve loves me and gave me the Eyelander and buckler for free, in addition to giving me the Soldier pickaxe I was owed.

I REALLY liked the update. Even if I stink with Demo, the new items make the class playable for me now.

[Prospero]

Not worth another thread, but fairly well done:

The 12 Days of Tf2

[Malakili]

A neat rocket jumping video... I'm going to have to download this map later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9_E5faIHOw

[taolurker]

Veteran tags incoming

AND

Coming Soon Engineers!

[caladein]

Oh, they added a Beta-era badge... which I apparently have now?  Okay.

[schild]

Yea, I have one of those equipped. Desperately exciting. Guess they had to fill that accessory clothing slot.

[Kail]

Coming Soon Engineers!

Engy is my most played class and I gotta say... this is going to suck...

[Prospero]

The medal was to satisfy the Steam forum troglodytes. They've been begging for another way to measure their epeen.

[ezrast]

Just caved and bought this after playing it on a friend's compy. Is there a noob quickstart guide on how all the systems work? A THIS-IS-WHAT-A-HAT-IS type of thing would be nice.

[Kail]

Just caved and bought this after playing it on a friend's compy. Is there a noob quickstart guide on how all the systems work? A THIS-IS-WHAT-A-HAT-IS type of thing would be nice.

Hats do nothing, as far as I know.  They're purely cosmetic.

There are three ways to "unlock" things in game, unless I'm forgetting one: Achievements, Crafting, and "Random Unlocks"

Random unlocks happen randomly over time (e.g. every hour you've got a 50% chance to find a new weapon or hat, numbers pulled directly from my ass).  These can be any weapon or hat, including ones you already have unlocked.

Achievements allow you to unlock specific weapons for the class.  For example, completing 16 Scout achievements will finish your "Scout Milestone II" achievement, and unlock the Scout's Sandman weapon.  Most hats don't have an achievement associated with them (except the Ghastly Gibus) so you'll be forced to rely on crafting or random unlocks for them.

Crafting is also possible, but it takes retarded amounts of items to do.  It'll be way easier to just unlock things by achievements, usually.  It can be used to craft spare weapons into hats and junk, just make sure you don't break down your last remaining copy of a weapon or you'll lose it until you can re-craft it.  List of recipies, if you're interested.

In fact, if you're lost, a lot of basic info can be found on that wiki.

[eldaec]

Coming Soon Engineers!

Engy is my most played class and I gotta say... this is going to suck...

Class upgrades that have made tf2 a better game, an exhaustive listing:


Spy
I dunno pyro maybe?

fin.


So the odds are not looking good.

[Samwise]

Crafting is also possible, but it takes retarded amounts of items to do.  It'll be way easier to just unlock things by achievements, usually.  It can be used to craft spare weapons into hats and junk, just make sure you don't break down your last remaining copy of a weapon or you'll lose it until you can re-craft it.  List of recipies, if you're interested.

Note that if you end up with two duplicate hats from random drops (which I actually did), you can craft them into one random hat.  So there's that.

I've also been diligently melting down my extra weapons and hoarding metal.  I'm at 2 refined and 1 reclaimed metal, so I only need 18 (out of 81) more weapons for a new random hat.  Currently the random drops happen about 1 per hour, so it shouldn't be much longer.

[Teleku]

Coming Soon Engineers!

Engy is my most played class and I gotta say... this is going to suck...

Class upgrades that have made tf2 a better game, an exhaustive listing:


Spy
I dunno pyro maybe?

fin.


So the odds are not looking good.

You're insane.

[Rishathra]

What about his insane?

[eldaec]

Coming Soon Engineers!

Engy is my most played class and I gotta say... this is going to suck...

Class upgrades that have made tf2 a better game, an exhaustive listing:


Spy
I dunno pyro maybe?

fin.


So the odds are not looking good.

You're insane.

Probably, but what, you don't like the spy? I thought new watches were neat enough, and they fixed the broken revolver.

[Kail]

Probably, but what, you don't like the spy? I thought new watches were neat enough, and they fixed the broken revolver.

Personally, I hated the watches.  With the new motion sensitive watch, they can literally spend the entire match cloaked, and the dead ringer watch means that even if you kill one, you don't know if he's really dead or not.  So now you have to spend the whole match shooting into every corner and down every hallway because even if you haven't seen a spy in ten minutes, even if you just killed the spy, he might still be there.

Most of the other updates were decent, though.  I liked the medic and heavy ones, especially.

But what's most worrying to me is the idea that when this pack is released, it's going to be another "single class" update.  Whole maps of engineers leapfrogging sentries trying desperately to get a kill against the two people on the enemy team not babysitting a dispenser.

[Teleku]

That damn revolver is overpowered imo. 

But no, the spy update was fine.  I just think all the updates made the game better.  Some certainly could have been done better than others, but I feel they all helped the game out.  The inevitable period of everybody playing one class right after the patch sucks, but thats bout the only draw back to any of the updates.

[Prospero]

Originally they said they were going to avoid shipping the engineer on his own to prevent the single class syndrome. I'm hoping they roll out some new toys for his natural enemies as well.

[Megrim]

Probably, but what, you don't like the spy? I thought new watches were neat enough, and they fixed the broken revolver.

Personally, I hated the watches.  With the new motion sensitive watch, they can literally spend the entire match cloaked, and the dead ringer watch means that even if you kill one, you don't know if he's really dead or not.  So now you have to spend the whole match shooting into every corner and down every hallway because even if you haven't seen a spy in ten minutes, even if you just killed the spy, he might still be there.

Most of the other updates were decent, though.  I liked the medic and heavy ones, especially.

But what's most worrying to me is the idea that when this pack is released, it's going to be another "single class" update.  Whole maps of engineers leapfrogging sentries trying desperately to get a kill against the two people on the enemy team not babysitting a dispenser.

Any spy that spends that much time cloaked is worthless. And the dr is only annoying if your team doesn't have a pyro (or is just has tunnel vision and doesn't know how to check for spies).

[Strazos]

No, the dead ringer is annoying because it gives a spy who just fucked up a few moments of invulnerability.

[Musashi]

No, the dead ringer is annoying because it gives a spy who just fucked up a few moments of invulnerability.

Yea, that needs to go.  Nothing like chaingunning the shit out of a burning invisible spy, only to realize that you've just wasted all your bullets.

[Sjofn]

Just caved and bought this after playing it on a friend's compy. Is there a noob quickstart guide on how all the systems work? A THIS-IS-WHAT-A-HAT-IS type of thing would be nice.

I found playing as a medic until I sort of knew the map layouts to be a decent way to learn the game. You just latch onto someone (a heavy or pyro are my favorites) and follow his ass around. When he dies, you latch onto someone else. Bear in mind I had never really played anything FPS-y before TF2, so the medic had the added bonus of me not having to actually try to shoot anyone. 

[Megrim]

No, the dead ringer is annoying because it gives a spy who just fucked up a few moments of invulnerability.

Yea, that needs to go.  Nothing like chaingunning the shit out of a burning invisible spy, only to realize that you've just wasted all your bullets.

You people are exactly the reason why dr spies get away with being the nuisance that they are. Chase him down, and kill him. Every time.

[Strazos]

Dude, they're invulnerable and then can just flip the cloak back on. Can also be tough to chase down if you're not next to the spy.

[Prospero]

They aren't invulnerable, just cloaked. They burn just fine. 

[Samwise]

Dude, they're invulnerable and then can just flip the cloak back on.

No.  Once they decloak, they are sitting ducks for something like 15 seconds until it fully recharges.  Just keep shooting and follow the shimmer in the air.  Or listen for the loud decloaking sound.  One way or another, they are now decloaked, unable to cloak again, and very squishy.

[Musashi]

When spies get hit by fire and they're using Dead Ringer, they get 6.5 seconds of 90% reduced damage.  The Dead Ringer knocks off the fire, but usually they're immediately lit again - taking only 10% of the fire's damage.  So you can see their outline, like you normally could an regularly invisible spy who's been hit by fire.  But they're taking 90% reduced damage.  It's incredibly frustrating to try to determine whether you're shooting at a regular spy who just got de-cloaked by fire, or one who's got Dead Ringer and functionally invulnerable.  So you pretty much have to shoot him.  And 6.5 seconds of sustained fire is pretty much all your ammo.  Also for a good spy, 6.5 seconds is more than enough to find a way to disappear whether they're on fire or not.  So you're pretty much not going to kill them without a sniper headshot.

Basically, Dead Ringer is so powerful in the right hands that I don't really think it deserves that damage reduction.  Or at least take away the sustained DR, and just give 90% reduced damage on the first hit - the one that pops the Dead Ringer.  That is if fire is supposed to be the rock to the scissors, anyway.

[Prospero]

Now for something completely different: Portal guns in TF2