Stupidly Simple Fixes

There’s a lot of stuff wrong with Team Fortress 2 currently. People are having huge problems with performance. Cheat-users are making new accounts the second they are banned. Everyone still hates Sniper and Engineer. There’s bugs that need fixing. The Betas that Valve made have been ignored and are really just giant failures. Quickplay still hasn’t been removed. These are all complicated things that I can’t fix. Apart from Quickplay being removed. But then there’s weapon balance. Now that’s easy. There’s a few quality of life things we can do just to make people happy.

So this article is going to cover a bunch of easy fixes. Just a few for now.

The New Quick-Fix
Level 8 Medi Gun Prototype
ÜberCharge increases healing by 300% and grants immunity to movement-impairing effects
+40% heal rate
+25% ÜberCharge rate
50% max overheal
Cannot capture control points or intelligence while under the effects of this Ubercharge
Maximum charge rate stops at 117.5% health
Move at the speed of any faster heal target.

This one is pretty simple. Something that makes you unmovable shouldn’t be allowed to capture control points. So no more Ubering a Heavy with the intel and laughing as no one can budge you. And no more carrying the intel away while Ubered. The second point is slightly more complicated. The Kritzkrieg, which the Quick-Fix is supposed to be equal to, gets Uber slower than the Quick-Fix because it stops charging as fast when you reach 142.5% health. The Quick-Fix never reaches 142.5% health, so it’s always charging super fast. This change fixes that.

The New Vita-Saw
Level 5 Reskin
Is now a reskin of the Ubersaw

That was easy. Uber insurance is just a bad idea. You worked hard to kill that Medic, he should have been more careful, he doesn’t deserve to save up to 19% of his Ubercharge. Plus, the damn thing looks like it totally would steal Uber from people.

The New Spy-cicle
Level 10 Knife
On Hit by Fire: Become fireproof for 3 seconds
Backstab turns victim to ice
Melts in fire, regenerates after 10 seconds
When killed: turn into a puddle of water
No longer reveals Spies who are cloaked

I don’t think the Spy-cicle is that bad. The silent killer thing makes no sense, you’re going to scream if you’re stabbed with a cold, jagged piece of ice. The bug of being able to see invisible Spies who are holding this weapon is silly. Alright, the being immune to fire thing does suck, but that’s why I’ve added the puddle downside – if you DO kill him, you’ll know 100% that he’s dead because he’ll melt in front of your eyes – a Deadringer will show a corpse instead.

The New Conniver’s Kunai
Level 1 Kunai
On Backstab: Absorbs the health from your victim
-50 max health on wearer
Stolen health decays more slowly the more people you backstab

The Kunai is great in theory, but that downside is soooo painful – you will die to literally anything. Upping your health to 75 means you will survive one melee strike, but rockets and grenades and all that will still kill you. I’ve also added that last line to reward people who actually survive and are sneaky, but you’ll have to kill 2 people to get it started.

The New Cow Mangler 5000
Level 30 Focused Wave Projector
Does not require ammo
Alt-Fire: A charged shot that mini-crits players, sets them on fire and disables buildings for 4 sec
No random critical hits
Deals only 20% damage to buildings
If crit-boosted, all attacks behave as charge shots.

Not being able to be crit-boosted is sad on a power class that a Medic would pocket. As for the reloading delay, personally I’d like to see it go, but if being able to be crit-boosted is too strong, we can keep that in.

The New Air Strike
Level 1-100 Rocket Launcher
Increases attack speed while blast jumping
Clip size increased on kill
-25% damage penalty
-15% explosion radius

Another really simple one. The Airstrike is hard enough to get rolling with, what with the damage penalty and explosion radius, so having only 3 rockets on top of that makes it too Direct-Hit-y, you end up playing Sniper with a Rocket Launcher and might as well not bother.

Last one for today:

The New Wrangler
Level 5 Laser Pointer
Take manual control of your Sentry Gun
Your shield absorbs 33% of incoming damage
If killed, your sentry’s shield instantly goes down and is disabled for 4 seconds

Let’s be honest, a 66% damage reduction means a stupid amount of effective health. People hated the Fists of Steel for the same reason, but at least you could melee the Heavy to death. So let’s tone it down a bit. Also, fuck that 1 second downtime if you kill the Engineer. He should be punished for not paying attention, not rewarded with a quicker cooldown on his sentry.

It sounds stupid, but it’s true. Almost all the weapons in this game could easily be fixed.