In a bit, Valve, will be revealing the Pyro update here – 7pm GMT, if that holds. But the men of the press were able to look at it earlier here. We were among those pen-wielding men and then wrote this news up as quickly as possible. Except one of the men of the press leaked the link early, the 7pm thing went out the window and Gillen has to swiftly alter Walker’s beautiful prose to make the post vaguely work. Oh no! Our wives!
The bit you want to know: they have tweaked the flamethrower. Hit alt-fire and the regular Pyro weapon will send forth a blast of compressed air, capable of knocking enemies away, and deflecting enemy projectiles. Oh, and a Flare Gun, the Backburner, and the previously mentioned Axtinguisher. Much more below.
Valve give some thoughts on the role of the flamethrower’s new ability:
“It’s a highly versatile tool, allowing Pyros to get away from nearby enemies after igniting them, to kill enemy soldiers with their own rockets, or to separate enemy Medics from their healing targets. In particular, it allows a skilled Pyro to contain an enemy invulnerability push, and even to separate the Medic completely if the surrounding terrain supports it.”
This will be fascinating. The Pyro is now a far more tactical tool in any battle. And invulnerability suddenly got a bit less invulnerable. Expect to see a lot of pissed off Medics in the next couple of weeks. But onto those new weapons.
The first thing you’ll unlock, and cunningly sneaked into Meet The Sniper yesterday, the Flare Gun replaces the shotgun. It’s the means by which a Pyro can set someone on fire from a distance, but only if their aim is good enough. Valve point out it’s particularly useful on Snipers and Engineers who are trying to stay away from the fray.
Next is the Backburner. It’s an ambush flamethrower, losing the newly added alt-fire compression blast, but guaranteeing critical hits when used from behind. Missus. And by some mystical property – perhaps the Pyro covers her face because she’s entirely made of fire or something – it heals the Pyro for fifty as well.
The final unlockable, the Axtinguisher, is a critical hit machine, guaranteeing a heftyy blow when your opponent’s on fire. But it’s lame-o when they’re not. Valve suggest Pyros work in pairs to use this effectively, one setting people on fire, the other chopping them up with an axe. Ahhh, videogames.
Of course, to get all these you’ll need to unlock them. And that’s where the 35 new achievements come in. Just look at these names: Dance Dance Immolation, Next Of Kindling, and best of all, OMGWTFBBQ. Head to the Pyro’s page for details on all of them.
The two player-made maps included in the pack are given pride of place at the top of the update information. Congratulations to Arttu “skdr” Mäki for his CP_Fastlane, and to Bill Johnston for CTF_Turbine, being picked as Valve’s two favourites. It would seem a fairly big deal for Valve to rate your map design.
In conclusion? Well, you do that bit. What are your conclusions? Absolutely certain that the entire game is now ruined, imbalanced, and likely to cause all players to get genital warts? Delighted that one of the perceived weaker classes is now endowed with some fairly essential tactical abilities? Or sure that this is the second coming of videogaming, and will heal all war?
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I love the achievement names – and a lot more of them seem doable (if gradually so) than the medic ones. I’m honestly not entirely sure whether this is a good thing or not. I want to be able to get the unlockable weapons, but it feels like achievements ought to be, well, achievements. Not something that just kinda automatically accumulates as you play a particular class in the melee, as most of the pyro ones seem to. So…yeah. On the one hand, the medic ones requiring me to survive through multiple ubercharges and the like are never ever going to happen for me, but on the other hand, they do reward skill (that I don’t have).
“I sure hope they get the soldier glitch fixed for the “dead heat” award. i don’t know how many times I have been killed by a soldier I am frying by a rocket at his feet and he gets the kill and a suicide, while I get nothing.”
I don’t see that as a glitch. A rocket at your feet causes much more damage than the flamethrower does, especially as the flamethrower is made up of lots of tiny attacks rather than one big one.
Ah, so happy. These look really cool but one issue that I see is that hardly anyone taunts – thus rendering the “Kill a spy flicking a cigarette” very difficult without farming. I mean, honestly, who taunts here? I always try to when playing as a sniper. Other classes, not so much.
I haven’t played this game in a while, and it seems like they’re on the way to making it so people who don’t play all the time can never come back. Is the plan to make it so that every regular character becomes an unlockable uber character that only serious die hards will ever get to play while everyone else can’t compete?
@Ted
Not really, as the medic’s unlockables aren’t that much better than its regular counterpart. We’ll have to wait until Thursday to find out if that is true for the pyro.
I hope Valve updates the the spy with a flame resistant suit after these new toys.
Why all the unlockable hate? I constantly switch my unlocked medic stuff to circumstance because the unlocks are not _better_ than the old stuff. Same for this: the new weapons are hot, but significantly different from the old stuff to the point where I would switch back to the normal weapons depending on what I need
Speaking of sigma, do you find that the current process for switching between standard/unlockable weapons is a tad cumbersome?
Wish there was a bind that would bring me straight to that weapon select screen.
I haven’t read *all* the comments here, so forgive me if this has already been asked, but does anyone know whether or not the achievements take into account things you’ve done beofre the update?
So for instance, if I’ve ignited three enemies carrying my intel prior to this update, will the game know I should only need to light up two more to get the “Cooking the books” achievement?
The achievements will take into account things like ‘points of fire damage inflicted’ because they were already tracking those stats beforehand. I wouldn’t be certain that things like “Plan B: Kill 10 enemies while you’re both underwater.” will have been tracked. Even if you’re certain you’ve accomplished “Burn Ward: Ignite 3 medics that are ready to deploy an Uber-charge.”, I think you will still have to do it over again.
The upgrades themselves look a lot better than the Medic upgrades. The ‘kill 50 X with Y’ awards should discourage all but the most dedicated achievement farmers. There are a few stupid awards in there that seem to require co-operation between two enemies, like “Got A Light?: Ignite an enemy Spy while he’s flicking a cigarette.”, which is a bit worrying. But it looks like all of the achievements are at least doable if you have 1 online Steam friend to your name.
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I’m happy to see the community maps getting a look-in, it’s even better that Valve have included them in the update, effectively endorsing them as official. It’s a bit strange that they chose Turbine, though. While it’s a nice, simple map that’s balanced through symmettry, the area around the spawn is still a little weak since the spawn exits are both on the same corridor (and in a straight line, making camping a very feasible tactic). The vent over the flagrooms can also get camped quite easily once you get a sentry in there.
I think maybe one reason they chose it could be to show that maps don’t need to be complex and graphically astounding to be popular. If Valve are trying to inject some steam into the custom mapping community, this could be the motive behind Turbine’s inclusion. It’s also a CTF map, and people have been crying out for more CTF maps from the start.
The pyro achievements and the number needed for unlocks makes it a much more reasonable proposition than the medic ones. As I play pyro quite a lot on some maps I’ve already done more than half of them, though as Valve weren’t watching I’ll have to do them all over again.
But I wouldn’t like to be a spy for the next few weeks. Every game will have a bunch of pyros frantically flaming everything seen and unseen as they try to get their quota of fried spy.
Apparently, “the Pyro only needs 15, 20 and 25 [achievements] for his new toys.”
Source: CVG
The site has since updated the article with that you only need to get 10, 15 and 20 achievements for the new toys. Whatever numbers are correct it’s good to see them lovering it so you can quite easily get the new weapons through normal play.
I don’t mind the unlockables. They’re not all clear and cut upgrades. E.g. the Kritzkrieg is imo worse than the regular medi gun.
The new air burst functionality will be available for all pyro’s so that’s not going to drive new players away. The backburner will depend on your playstyle and how effective the airburst is in practice. It’s not a no brainer upgrade.
I still can’t quite decide whether I like the idea of unlockables in TF2, but I am glad to see the Pyro get quite a significant buff. He really needed it, and it will be fun to see how the air-blast gets used.
‘Speaking of sigma, do you find that the current process for switching between standard/unlockable weapons is a tad cumbersome?’
Yes but I only ever do it while dead anyway so it’s not a _huge_ deal. I would have liked L for loadout, maybe it’ll get put in
I just wish Valve would have taken a bigger step towards preventing farming servers. I understand that it would be impossible to stop farm servers, but allowing ones with maps directly built for farming to unlock achievements is just dumb.
Not sure if Valve can do anything about it as they don’t have some form of ranked server control ala Battlefield 2.
I spent an hour on a Heavy the other night destroying a Medic achievement farming server because I hate the idea of them, but eventually got banned after 85 kills :P
Overall, the achievements are great, but easily exploited and of no merit other than to the person that achieved them. I know of NO medics that have gotten all achievements legitimately, and I know a few medics that are hardcore 4+ hours a day players with clanmates actively trying to help them during regular play.
It took me like three hours of regular play just to get the EASY medic achievements and I was fortunate enough to have played when medics were everywhere and bonesaw kills were plentiful :)
Sadly people go to a farm server and three hours later they have every achievement :(
When the Spy and Sniper unlockables turn up TF2 servers are going to become rather unpleasant places.
It might be an idea to release multiple Achievement packs at once, so you don’t get so many people farming one particular class. I mean bring out Engineer and Soldier achievements at the same time and things would start to even out a little.
With luck the Spy and Sniper packs will be last purely so that the sort of people who go in for farming will have become slightly bored of the idea (or even of TF2 entirely) and moved on to something else that attracts their low-patience Pokemon approach…
I like to play Pyro and Sniper if I can, so loving the idea of unlockables but hating the idea of everyone else blundering around without any of the appropriate skills. It certainly will be tempting to go anything-other-than-Pyro for a bit just to collect the kills…
Oh yes, I fear the day when the Sniper pack goes up, though the Spy pack will be Happy Times for Pyros, heh.
“I know of NO medics that have gotten all achievements legitimately”
That should be an indication that the achievements are a little too hard, don’t you think? Everyone views achievements differently. It seems like you look at them as a genuine challenge to overcome. For me, who plays primarily as medic, I saw them as a fun little diversion for a while, but then as I cleared away the ones accessible during regular play, I kept making stupid decisions, such as ubering scouts, or sticking to heavies with total disregard for the rest of my team, just to get the achievement. I would be playing as a medic even when our team needed something else. So I went to an achievement server, wrangled the folks there into cooperation, and we helped each other.
Other people view achievements just as something in the way of having a new weapon. achievementsunlockall. And that’s FINE! I’d much rather have someone with an ubersaw on the OTHER team, than an achievement chasing medic on mine. the new weapons make the game more interesting, and there is simply no need to enforce your purist views on the rest of the community. It’s fine that you want to get them legitimately, I just want to get them out of the way so I don’t play like a retarded person anymore.
PS: you’re an asshole, a pretty big one, for being proud of disrupting an achievement server.
I’m just happy that turbine’s been made an official map, we have it on the server I play on and its brilliant. Look forward to playing fastlane too.
Did anyone else think of the Terran Firebat when they read “Got a light”?
@mechtroid: I was, and maybe the dudes at Valve were too.
Let’s burn.
Any ETA for the release? I hope it does get delayed a week or something as I took the day off of work tomorrow to blunder about getting those achievements.
It’s out…
And as predicted, every other person playing TF2 is now a Pyro. Including a lot of people who really aren’t very good at playing the Pyro. A lot of camping by doorways performing taunts, and a lot of map Axe wielding… Really not that enjoyable if you’ve not in the mood for Achievement farming.
*sigh*
Was to be expected, I guess. Still, as a career Pyro (and in the game), it is rather annoying. And yes, logging on to a server only to be told “stop shooting, we’re farming” is just…sad.
Out RIGHT now.
Pyros aplenty. So I’ve got a 60-point boost towards my Infernal Medicine achievement. :D
My brother got annoyed at one point. So he went Soldier.
Interesting fact: the taunt is an INSTA-KILL.
They’ve removed the damage drop-off from the flamethrower so now it’s equally lethal from all distances.
Mind these distances are still really short, but still :P
I just gave TF2 a go with the Pyro, and I’ve gotta say, 90% Pyro matches (lol matches) are FUN. Especially when you take Sniper. Although the dude running around with the Axetinguisher, reminding everyone “It’s legit! Didn’t cheat!” was a little sad, assuming it’s true. Dude, go outside…
The Air Blast is a fantastic addition. The Backburner is stupid overpowered (given TF2’s definition of “back” is a lot sloppy), but that Air Blast… mmm-hmm. Stupid soldier, tricks are for Pyro!
ETA: yeah, the medic achievements were stupid-hard, and I’m unhappy that I had to wreck my modest legit stats just to try a weapon. The Pyro achievements seem a little more realistic; you won’t (or shouldn’t, see:go outside) get a new weapon in a session, but you will get them, and I imagine it’ll be a nice surprise.
EATA: Also, it seems Valve didn’t track any of the pyro stats. All of mine were at 0 to start…
@Crash T
‘“Kill an enemy with a taunt.” WTF?’
Actually, it’s OMGWTFBBQ.
Got 23 achievements tonight on an achievement server. Need a good admin to keep the llamas out, though.
I’d much rather have people grinding away on achievement servers than disrupting regular games with achievement shenanigans.
There’s now a TF2 blog. Yay. Hopefully RPS is going to follow it for us: “Bookmark this page”. Seriously? In 2008? Are you shitting me?
I still use bookmarks… only for the toolbar at the top of Firefox, so they effectively become buttons, but it’s the same basic thing.
Also, the way to kill an emeny with a pyro taunt is to switch to the shotgun first – he does a Ryu-style fireball.
What the?! There’s no RSS feed. Fail.
I made an RSSpect feed for the site.
It will alert you whenever a change is made (but you still need to go through to the site).
http://www.rsspect.com/rss/teamfortressblog.xml
@itsallcrap: what Seniath said. I was just being subtle.
Edit: I wrote to Robin Walker – let’s see how that goes..
SCOOP! The TF2 blog interview in full:
“Hi Robin! I assume there will be an RSS feed soon? Bookmarks are so 20th century.”
“Yep.”
>I spent an hour on a Heavy the other night destroying a Medic achievement farming server because I hate the idea of them, but eventually got banned after 85 kills
Heartless you nob – just cos you don’t agree with achievement farms doesn’t give you the right to dictate to others what they can and can’t do. I guess you must be american.
BTW – I was healing you for 20 of those kills. Thanks!