A Plea From a Broken Sword

To the Developers of Team Fortress 2 and the player fanbase.

Hello. As a figurehead in the Demoknight community (Yes, that’s a thing), I have been vetted by a few other Knight enthusiasts to make an official statement on the status which is our beloved demoknight.

It appears the community has gotten mixed responses from the backlash of the changes to the Chargin’ Targe turning bypass involving a joystick. Probably leaning towards positive since our methods of execution were nothing short of exploiting. For a lot of people it was a cheap way to get a kill, the next best thing would be a fly-by-wire missile. Except you were using your body, which the other side thought was a fair compromise.

If you want my honest opinion, I see the Demoknight as having the potential to be an inverse Soldier, albeit a more melee oriented pick class which has as many hazards as a close-range Soldier, if not more so. As I understand it, this was the reasoning behind the initial resistance buff changes for the Targe. What I came to address is that the Demoknight is really fun, and (though I risk sounding biased as the spokesperson of the Knight class), balanced and pretty fair. Taking turning away from a Grenade launcher-holding knight is like only allowing Gunboats Soldiers to jump. Got a Shotgun? Too bad, you’re walking.

Also, I need to mention the lack of follow through from our developers on getting the Ali Baba Wee Booties to work correctly in the first place. It’s why plenty of Knights including yours truly fathomed bypassing the turn restrictions in the first place. They were introduced a little after the Free to Play update and they have not worked since. (The knight in the video wasn’t even turning; he turned after his charge) I believe the only time I’ve seen them work on an actual mouse was when I’ve joined a Multiply a Weapon’s Stats by Ten server. It’s honestly infuriating to see the execution of what “+100% increase in turn control” is actually like, more like steering a car into the next lane on a freeway than any sort of meaningful turning ability.

That’s not 100%, that’s the Demoknight needing a wheel alignment. You see how the reality of the situation would be so off-putting that it made more sense to use a joystick over using an item that was produced by the makers of the game which in reality never really worked to begin with.

I can’t say I feel somewhat responsible for having the knight get cleaved by the developers of Valve. I’ve made numerous videos of slaying players as well as inevitably releasing the code to the public, which I felt may be it’s it’s own undoing. I’ve made about… 5 subclass tutorials and Valve has nerfed three of them to Oblivion. Not to sound condescending but I believe STAR’s exposure may have put that final nail in the knight’s coffin as his coverage spans across the entire community.

Here lies my suggestions on how to please everyone.

1: Enable turning for all shields. For everyone. 1000%. I absolutely say one thousand percent because 100% is still the equivalent of an ocean liner steering.

2: Buff the booties, completely remake them. If turning is enabled for everyone, the Booties wearing knight should be a Juggernaut. Give him some Bullet or Sentry or Melee resistance. He has no weapons outside his sword and speed. Give him the difference in survivability.

3: If we have to use the booties to turn, at least bump the values a good several thousand. Take a field day and have your dev team and potted plant play in a x10 server to understand how it truly feels.

Regardless of how the decision was made, the mixed opinions of the public are still hot for molding from this fix. I want the devs to know that this isn’t just some bug fix; you’re eliminating the equivalent of rocket jumping from the item you gave the demo when he lost the war. Was it enough? Couldn’t the demo have his consolation prize in peace?