The Gun Mettel Update – Pre Update thoughts

So, um, er…

Well…

Um…

I don’t know what to say.

Well, let’s start off with the good stuff. Loch-n-Load and Baby Face’s Blaster are getting nerfed. Holy fuck that is a vast amount of changes. Spy essentially got a rework and Engineer got a lot of changes when it comes to wrenches and jag-whacking. It all seems incredibly ambitious. Huge stuff everywhere. The balance changes seem rather overwhelming. Lots of good and bad there.

And there IS bad there. The Vaccinator is now a Uber-and-Leave-Them thing, It’s good that you can’t fuck with Snipers any more. That’ll need testing out, but that 66% overheal reduction AND 66% overheal speed, ow. Let’s hope it’s just the one. It’s really something we need to try. Also the Solemn Vow got a very stupid tiny nerf. Nothing noticeable.

It’s a lot of stuff. The Spy buffs are interesting too. In fact, the whole update has rendered one of my other articles moot. I don’t think players will have any issues with the fact that there’s a lot of balance changes. People WILL complain about certain weapon changes, and people will jump for joy when they realise it now takes 96 damage to stop a Tide Turner Demoknight rather than 32 damage. Also they did the Kunai buff I suggested – changing the damage penalty so Spies can survive one melee hit. Not sure about the Dead Ringer effect on all cloaks, but the disguise time and reload animation changes sound fun. I’m in for a lot of backstabs.

There’s new maps too, a bunch of community ones. Borneo finally made it. There’s also a nice flowery map too. Oh, and Snowplow. The poor bastards finally got that map into the game, with a snow and non-snow variant. Guess which one will be tested out in competitive. Not the snowy one. I assume the non-snow one is just called Plow.

Then we move on to the slightly more cosmetic stuff. Turns out, all that Spy VS Engineer stuff turned out to be for ‘Contracts’, just like Counter-Strike. You pay into it ($5.99 a pop) and you get a bunch of contracts – things you have to do to get a prize. The prizes? Weapon skins. Really ugly ones. Just for stock weapons currently, and not even all of them. Scout gets a Scattergun and Pistol, Demoman only gets a Sticky Bomb Launcher and Medics have to put up with hideous-looking Medi Guns. And in varying qualities, from how nice the stickers look to strange and unusual variants. You know, just like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

At least we’ll be able to get a good look at our weapons though, what with the changes to the Inspect Player key. While not looking at anyone, you can take a nice look at your weapon. Just like in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Oh, you can also pick up people’s weapons off the ground, using the previously unused Use command (which will need to be bound to a key probably). Only if your class can use that weapon though. So no Medics picking up rocket launchers. What that DOES mean though is that someone can kill me and get their Medic to pick up my Strange Festive Medi Gun or my Collector’s Professional Killstreak Overdose. Slightly worrying. Just like in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Still no matchmaking though. Come on, if you REALLY want to turn Team Fortress 2 into Counter-Strike: Fortress Offensive, give us matchmaking and a ranked system.