By John Walker on September 27th, 2007 at 5:47 pm.
While chatting with Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker, he let us know, “We’re going to do a Pyro tweak in the next couple of days.”
Specifics of the changes weren’t clear, but when we put it to him that people felt he was comparatively underpowered, Walker diplomatically replied,
“The Pyro doesn’t get lag compensation with the flamethrower in the same way which other characters do for their weaponry, which I think has a really subtle effect on perception, and it gets worse as your net connection gets worse. It’s one of the vagaries of multiplayer. Sometimes you think that what’s going on might not be what’s going on. But this is why we gather lots of data.”
We’re hoping for slightly more range with that flame.
27/09/2007 at 17:59 dartt says:
Did you hear that? It sounded like Seniath howling with joy.
27/09/2007 at 18:04 FringeRock says:
Woop, maybe i will get my Aliens-esque hefty flame thrower!
Ace
27/09/2007 at 18:04 Gulag says:
Mmllfflfflllll!
*Axe-Guitar*
27/09/2007 at 18:32 Kast says:
“Mmllfflfflllll! *Axe-Guitar*”
Seconded.
27/09/2007 at 18:34 Alec Meer says:
Dear Valve, plz fix stats also k thx. Since they broke early this week, apparently my many hours with the Heavy have resulted in a max kills of 6. This is also despite trying to restore my inexplicably vanished honour myself by scoring almost 40 mere moments ago.
27/09/2007 at 18:52 Theory says:
Max kills is per-life. I don’t think you fragged 40 people without dying!
When does the Scout get his comeuppance?
27/09/2007 at 18:53 Theory says:
Also, yay!
27/09/2007 at 18:57 Alec Meer says:
Everything got wiped or something – most of my numbers are much, much lower than they were. Max points, kills, damage… Everything except longest time alive and total playtime. Happened early this week. ANGRY.
Though apparently stats are being wiped at the end of the beta, so it’s academic, really.
27/09/2007 at 19:13 roBurky says:
I’ve actually been witness to pyros being terribly effective when they manage to drop in on a group of enemies in an enclosed space. I actually think now if you improve the flamethrower much, it’s going to be overpowered.
The problems are with the pyros secondary weapon, I feel. Most other that get a shotgun aren’t expected to use it much, it’s just somethign to fall back on when out of ammo or reloading. The sniper is the other class with a main weapon with a very specific use, and he gets his own brand of secondary weapon, which complements his main weapon very well, being short range where his main weapon is long. The pyro also has to use his secondary weapon a lot, but it’s not an interesting weapon, and it doesn’t complement his main weapon, as they’re both short range.
27/09/2007 at 19:16 Seniath says:
/o/
\o\
\o/
/o/ /o/ /o/ /o/
Those last few are people running away from my flamethrower. I can’t make an ascii flamer that doesn’t look phallic o_0
27/09/2007 at 19:22 Ryan says:
One of the major problems I have with the Pyro is that there’s no depth perception on the flamethrower. So the range, regardless of how far, is very difficult to distinguish. Takes experience, really, but since every other class gets some major audible and visible feedback as to the success or failure of their weapons, it’d be nice if the Pyro got the same as well. You know, other than the screaming enemy on fire.
27/09/2007 at 19:35 Richard says:
“This is also despite trying to restore my inexplicably vanished honour myself by scoring almost 40 mere moments ago.”
I’ve had some Engineer games where I murdered whole armies, but ended up with 0 kills. Which sucked. I know, kills aren’t important, but still…
27/09/2007 at 19:37 John Walker says:
It’s beta, moany bums. That’s what happens in betas.
However, spoiling another part of this interview, they have big plans for the stats in the future.
27/09/2007 at 19:41 NightShade says:
I don’t normally worry about stats but got 3 captures in one life the other night and was really upsetat having no record of it :(
27/09/2007 at 20:00 Homunculus says:
Ace. Pyro’s pretty much the only other character I’ve been playing other than my beloved Doktor. Once I’d figured out that the flamethrower acts more like a laser that ignites stuff it passes over rather than an engulfing cone, there was no going back. I love the waddling little muffled Hadoken’ing purse-accessorising maniac.
Here’s hoping the doppler effect, where running forward whilst firing seems to drastically reduce the flamethrower’s already miniscule range compared to its range when standing still, is addressed.
27/09/2007 at 20:27 Man Raised By Puffins says:
“Here’s hoping the doppler effect, where running forward whilst firing seems to drastically reduce the flamethrower’s already miniscule range compared to its range when standing still, is addressed.”
The laws of physics be a harsh mistress.
27/09/2007 at 21:33 JP says:
Ultimate failure case: Pyro is running forward while flaming, other classes (anyone faster than a Heavy) are running backwards away from the flames and shooting the Pyro. Pyro dies without inflicting a single point of damage.
You could argue that the Pyro shouldn’t be attacking people in an area with that much open space to run away in, but almost every map has several such spaces, so it’s a matter of making him balanced in practice rather than on paper.
The best suggestion I’ve read is to make the damage cone ahead of him take effect instantly, rather than waiting for the particles to travel. That’s where you get most of the “seems like I should have hit that guy” cases.
27/09/2007 at 21:48 born2expire says:
when is the engineer review coming, or more importantly sentry guns?
27/09/2007 at 21:49 Kieron Gillen says:
Born2expire: You’ve missed it. It’s already up. Follow the Goteam tag here and you’ll get the lot of them…
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/index.php?tag=go-team%21
KG
27/09/2007 at 22:39 Andrew Farrell says:
(I think he means NERF SEN3S!)
27/09/2007 at 23:04 born2expire says:
yup, they need to do something about the sentry guns, perhaps not so quick on the targeting, add latency (like they are a player), nerf the amount of metal dispensers give, ect.
basicly the sentrys are super overpowered, once you see them your dead, you dont even have a fighting chance.
28/09/2007 at 00:32 FaceOmeter says:
My favourite flamethrower in a multiplayer game was in a Quake 3 Arena mod. If you ran forwards whilst firing, you ran into your own flames and died. So you got this cunning tech going of running right up to people then going *backwards* whilst spraying them. Great for flag retreats as long as you have someone with you. And demanding a similar level of practice to the TF2 pyro – I think that rather than buffing him it’s more a question of people getting used to his wiles. “Pretend it’s a melee weapon”, as Katsumoto told me at the time.
28/09/2007 at 02:18 The_B says:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
Give. The. Pyros. Molotovs. Please.
28/09/2007 at 08:16 arqueturus says:
Don’t flamethrowers throw jellied napalm 30 or 40 feet in the real world? and at high pressure so that running fowards wouldn’t make you ‘walk into your own flame’?
I know that would result in a massively overpowered character but there has to be a better compromise than a man in a gimp-like mask with a giant comedy bunsen burner gun.
Molotovs would be fucking ace.
28/09/2007 at 08:53 The Sombrero Kid says:
“Don’t flamethrowers throw jellied napalm 30 or 40 feet in the real world? and at high pressure so that running fowards wouldn’t make you ‘walk into your own flame’?”
would you try it?! i know i wouldn’t, maybe a brisk walk at best
28/09/2007 at 09:25 arqueturus says:
How about a handheld one of these?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_riverboat_using_napalm_in_Vietnam.jpg
28/09/2007 at 11:03 Gulag says:
Personally I’ll be very happy if they make a slight tweak to the Pyro’s flame while running, but apart from that I think he’s just right as he is. He is THE ambush class, and without a doubt is tricky to play, but isn’t that sort of the point?
It’s a great feeling when you play him properly and single-handedly head off an assault, or break a knot of defenders, knowing that you’ve played the Pyro to his strengths, and overcome his weaknesses with skill, panache, and lashings of Deadliosity. Who would wish away all that for a fix that does more to excuse sloppy play than reward true skill and ingenuity?
28/09/2007 at 12:23 Grill says:
I *am* annoyed all the grenades are gone. I loved the spy’s hallucinogen grenades – drop one of them outside the enemies’ spawn point for big lols.
28/09/2007 at 13:58 Kast says:
I was rather looking forward to the Demoman’s cluster bombs of TNT – as seen in the second trailer.
28/09/2007 at 16:37 JP says:
Don’t give the Pyro molotovs. Grenades were removed to make the game less spammy (except the Demoman who is the designated Spam Class). If you don’t believe this was necessary, I invite you to join a crowded TFC server and witness the horribleness. Even one class having the ability to spam areas (particularly if the flame lingered for a while after exploding) would make the game significantly less playable.
As for punishing the pyro for running forward into his own flames, that argument seems to stem from realism which has no place in a game as unabashedly cartoony as TF2.
28/09/2007 at 17:13 Martin Coxall says:
Give the Pyro a GAY BOMB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb
It’s the one thing that would bring much-needed balance to the game.
28/09/2007 at 18:33 Pod says:
Why didn’t they notice this imbalance before hand?
answer: because there isn’t one. There’s just people with loud mouths and no ability to play the class properly creating excuses for themselves.
28/09/2007 at 19:51 Martin Coxall says:
Why didn’t they notice this imbalance before hand?
Data gathering. The point of the beta was to allow a massive statistical exercise. It’s these statistics on which classes will live and die. And clearly, the statistics have shown Valve that there’s something wrong with the Pyro, in a way in which no in-house testing ever could.
29/09/2007 at 07:24 Homunculus says:
Looks like the update’s gone through:
Changes/Additions
Added option to change Field-of-view, between 75 & 90, from the Options->Multiplayer tab
Added option to disable Player sprays
Increased flamethrower damage at point black range (sic – maybe a Freudian slip because of the next item)
Demoman grenades (not stickybombs) no longer explode on contact after the first bounce
Bug fixes
Fixed flamethrower hit detection
Fixed a startup crash
Fixed a case where players could get stuck in tc_hydro
Fixed player movement prediction errors
Fixed third-person sniper aim animation not matching player’s view exactly
Fixed achievements and stats being awarded when watching other player’s demos
Fixed rare server crash due to data corruption in networking
Fixed a case where some sounds had incorrect volumes
Looks like the flamethrower’s been made King of point blank damage (where previously Heavy Weapon guy’s heavy weapon would outdamage it at that range) and given the same latency compensation as all the other weapons, the prior lack of which meant the worse your connection was, the shorter the flame length when running around; so you should no longer suffer scenarios where you have a high ping, are behind and abutting an enemy that’s running forward and unaware of you, but your flamethrower’s not damaging them or setting them alight (true story!)
Fellow Pyros! Go forth and melt faces!
29/09/2007 at 12:53 Seniath says:
Hmmm, interesting. Shame I wont be able to try it out till this eveinng. Burn, bitches!
29/09/2007 at 14:51 Kieron Gillen says:
Having just spent a couple of hours playing, people are complaining about Pyros. This strikes me as the correct level of fix. Also, flame looks great.
KG
29/09/2007 at 18:21 Seniath says:
Strange parralels could once again be drawn between my class of choice in WoW (the Warlock) and in TF2. Warlocks were intitialy underpowered, but have been buffed greatly since release, much to the chagrin of the general WoW populace.
29/09/2007 at 21:31 Kadayi says:
I think the tweak is about right, you still have to get in close, but the damage is that much better. What people forget whilst they complain about the Pyro now is that fact that after the initial couple of days of class exploration a lot of players abandoned the class entirely so the Pyro wasn’t as prominent. Now he’s back..there are definitely more pyros running around causing chaos (as it should be)
Flame on ;)
18/06/2008 at 08:22 Captain p0t n00dle says:
OMG here: LOOKS LIKE MOLOTOV COCKTALES