And if you don’t remember the previous Strange Parts Post, clickity.
First Archimedes, now Foppish. aabicus’ past self was really lucky when he chose his favorite Medic cosmetics. Pixel art obtained from AG’s Pixelize Yourself.
I’m a Strange Item fanatic. I love showing off how many kills I’ve got with this weapon or that one. Or recently, how many points I have with this and that class (“InstaCakes is credit to team!”) and in general (Strange Speks!).
So I was thinking: Some weapons aren’t Strange yet. Some are Strange Festive, but not plain Strange (Buff Banner! Sandvich!). Some are Strange and deserve to be Festive (I WANT A STRANGE FESTIVE SHOTGUN!). And then there are cool ideas for Strange Parts that no-one has thought of yet, and Strange Parts everyone has thought of but not added. For example, why is there a “Robot Spies Destroyed” part and “Cloaked Spies Killed” part but no plain “Spies Killed” part but Spies Killed has only been added with the latest update? Why isn’t there a Strange High-Five yet?
The Direct Hit can either be the most devastating single-shot rocket launcher unlock or the worst rocket launcher to ever disgrace the battlefield if you can’t place your shots right and want to rely on splash damage. As a Soldier-main who’s retired his first strange Direct Hit for the easier stock rocket launcher after reaching a few hundred kills past Epic Rank, I too can agree that it’s a troublesome weapon to many who don’t know the nature behind using the Direct Hit. But mastering this pesky launcher can pull off some both quantitative and hilarious outcomes.
The Kritzkrieg is considered the pinnacle of balance in Team Fortress 2. Many a Medic will go on and on about how it’s perfectly balanced, how it’s useful, how… Oh, I don’t know. Despite how great everyone says the Kritzkrieg is, I just can’t bring myself to use it!
I’m being original here… Or am I? Today, we’re discussing the Original, the rocket launcher that reminds us all of the good old days, where rocket jumping was something new and grenades weren’t limited to a drunk, black, Scottish Cyclops. While we’re at it, we’ll be answering the question of whether the Original is a reskin of the Rocket Launcher or not…
If you had a baseball bat, and you were insane enough to hit random people with it, you wouldn’t really care about its looks. If it’s hard enough to crack some skulls – it’s good. However, you wouldn’t really hit people with wrapping paper, now would you?
That’s just your preference. If you would like to hit people with wrapping paper, but some federal laws and such nonsense forbid you to do so, you have TF2 for that. Play Scout and you get to hit people with baseball bats if that’s your thing. Unfortunately, you deal less damage (35 base damage per hit). Fortunately, you swing the melee faster. If you fancy some frantic beating while screaming nonsense and double-jumping around, you found your class.
SPUF enjoys arguing about TF2’s balance. A lot. One of the most common issues to sprout up involves TF2 melee weapons. It’s no secret the vast majority of stock melees are underpowered, except those with utility like knife and wrench. If their only job is to deal damage, then they’re gonna suck because every class has a plethora of primary or secondary weapons that deal more damage at longer ranges more effectively.
So when most competetive TF2 players agree that the bottle is the best Demoman melee weapon, this may seem unusual. How can it really be the best choice for its slot when it has no gimmicks beside emergency damage?
In my opinion, it has to do with the way Valve has handled the unlocks in that slot. Using demoman as an example, here is what I think the golden rules should be for designing melee unlocks.
Whoo doggie, the Engineer. If people are not playing rock paper scissors over who between him and the Heavy has the lowest skill floor, they’re having arguments over his weapons so bad that they make [insert appropriate argumentative body here] look like a teen romance! How can one guy cause such a fuss that has SPUF so evenly divided that it could be the motivation for a community made WAR update? Well, if I was to answer it in a reasonably sized sentence (which as an academic, should be impossible) I’d say it’s because the Engineer is, in many ways,… [Continue Reading]
As the devs of a seven year-old game, the Team Fortress 2 team has had a long time to come up with ideas for our beloved shooter. Obviously not all of them can make the final cut, but a good amount of them have been added in unfinished and relatively inaccessible states. Luckily the community has its ways of discovering this unused content, and here are some I feel a slight pang when I think of because they probably will never see the light of day.
1. “That Dispenser is a Spy!”
Picture by Gen. DeGroot
Valve is routinely adding new addconds to TF2. For those who don’t know, addcond, or “add condition” is a console command that changes the status of the player. For example, when a Medigun Ubercharges a teammate, the game initiates “addcond 5” which adds Ubercharge textures, negates all damage, and plays the appropriate noses and voice lines. “addcond 11” bestows the player’s weapons with guaranteed crits and the critglow effect, “addcond 32” is how the Disciplinary Action bestows a speed boost and the motion lines in the air, etc. You can get the full list here.
Well, many addconds aren’t tied to any weapons or in-game events, so you can’t use them. But we can see what they do, and there are some gems. To quote the Team Fortress Wiki:
addcond 49: Crouching causes the player to appear to be a Dispenser of the enemy team to enemy players. As a side effect, forces the player’s speed to 450 Hammer Units/second (diagonal movement is at 520 HU/s). Swapping weapons while in this state will cause the player to temporarily stop moving, then return to 450 HU/s.
You heard that last one right. At one point, Valve was toying with a weapon that disguised a spy as an enemy dispenser if he crouched. That has got to be one of the most hilarious, horrifying, and puzzling ideas. Imagine players routinely spychecking your dispenser. Imagine having no engineers on your team, but dispensers are everywhere. The situations are endless, and every one is hilarious. It’s probably for the better Valve didn’t follow up with this one, but I can dream.
As an Engineer main, the Ranger is by far one of my favorite weapons. While it takes some skill to use well, the payoff is ridiculous and is overall a fun weapon to use. Also, 120 damage crits at any range is a godsend for a shotgun. I’ve jarateed off many friends with a lolcrit smashing them in the face.
The Rescue Ranger is a weak weapon in combat, shooting repair claws that do 60 damage at close range and 20 at long range, with a base damage of 40. But then again, the Engineer was never meant for shooting people to death. Instead, he has 128 DPS aimbots that fight for him. The fact that it has the lowest DPS of all Engineer primaries, it’s hitbox is not the size of a truck and it isn’t the Frontier Justice means it’s rather uncommon to be seen used by most players. Don’t let that put you off though because the Ranger has two amazing practical uses(other than being a Ninjaneer): sentry transportation and supporting other engineers from your own nest’s safety.
After a mere 48 hours of giving us the perfect Crusader’s Crossbow, Valve followed up by nerfing it’s damage by 33%. As someone who has spent hundreds of hours perfecting my skill with this weapon, and considers it my favorite weapon in TF2, let me say that the weapon is now useless.
