It’s always important to note when you’re right. If you’ve read our Pyro coverage carefully, you’ll notice that we, along with the rest of the internet, believed that Team Fortress 2’s Pyro is a girl. And she is. It’s almost confirmed.
Robin Walker had a chat with CS-Nation, in which he said,
“We’ve never been terribly happy with the Pyro, in particular with her shallower skill curve than other combat classes. We really want highly skilled Pyros to be visibly more effective than the average Pyro, and the new features are designed to address that.”
Handsome reader Rich Powers tipped us off to this, and threw in this other quote from the interview:
“We’ve been playtesting an upgradeable teleporter, where the level affects the recharge time. It’s working out well, so it’s likely that you’ll see something like it in the Engineer pack.”
Which would seem a pretty strong indication that the Engineer will be next for an upgrade.
In other Pyro news, the update went live yesterday, resulting in THE NIGHT OF THE THOUSAND PYROS. Photographic evidence from the frontline:
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The flare gun does indeed blow, though I left that out of my last post to avoid sounding too angry :P
How should it be improved without breaking the pyro class? It’s useless against snipers, as you said, as well as engies behind SGs (dispensers quickly heal the nominal damage). The shotgun is too valuable to replace with something so dinky.
Buff it too much, though, and it gives the pyro too much reach. How about a napalm-like projectile that burns a patch of ground for
xseconds and, like napalm, can’t be extinguished? Give it a quick drop-off to make it like firing a mortar more than a bullet. Pop one on a sentry gun setup and smoke the engy out. Likewise, you could burn snipers out of their hiding spots for a few seconds.Too powerful? Conflicts with the demo’s role as area-of-effect guy?
Heh, don’t you hate it when your favourite class becomes a hit and you look like a bandwagoner?…
I don’t know if it’s just the surplus of Pyros (stopping me from getting sniped thanks to the paucity of longer-range classes), but I’m actually seeing my foes die occasionally post-update, as opposed to hearing about their death on the grapevine while waiting to respawn after they killed me first. Tweak of ‘thrower behaviour, or reflection of my prior TF2 incompetence? I may never know.
…Well, I’ll have a pretty good idea once people are playing the game properly again. Heh, I wonder how many free-weekenders are going to walk away from the game thinking, “Well that’s stupid, everyone’s playing the same class!…”
“have you taken a look at the male side, most of ridiculously muscular, which one could see as unrealistic from that side of the equation.”
Buh? None of them are particularly muscular, apart from the heavy. The others are burly or just plain fat, or average cartoony build. Not sure what models you are looking at tbh. As for realistic, they are caricatures…
The only interesting use I’ve seen from the flare gun so far is its ability to scare the crap out of people. Everytime I’d get hit by one as a heavy I’d instinctively whip around looking for the pyro that had snuck up on me and set me on fire :D.
I would have much preferred the gender remain ambiguous… I would be disappointed by the revelation of either gender.
Nick: And muscular doesn’t mean overtly sexualised. Heavy’s a big guy, cartoony guy, but he’s not sexualised in his design.
The “But male characters aren’t realistic either” tends to miss the way the characters are made more or less realistic isn’t necessarily equal.
KG
I too was a pyro before they were cool; I played it twice as much as Soldier and at least four times as much as anything else. And there are too many of us out there now. It makes some of the achievements more difficult than they really should be.
I broke some of my Engineer records last night at least.
Tweak of ‘thrower behaviour, or reflection of my prior TF2 incompetence?
Valve changed the flamethrower’s damage output so it doesn’t drop off over distance anymore- the very edge of its effective range is now just as damaging as point-blank. So that probably helps.
Kieron: I’m not sure what you mean (I am probably just missing something here), I wasn’t suggesting I was in favour of the (frankly sad) female versions posted on Kotaku, merely saying the existing characters aren’t overly muscular in the way those female versions were overly breastular.
There was someone doing female concept art of the TF2 steam forum that was, frankly, perfect and exactly what I’d like to see if they did make female models.. I think this was the person, if not they are still what I’d like to see anyway: http://alciha.deviantart.com/
The ridiculous number of pyros didn’t bother me too greatly. I haven’t played much lately, so I decided to work on the medic achievements instead and actually help the team. Wound up meeting a very nice heavy and tripling my assist record and doubling my heal record as medic. Quite fun to just roll over their entire team and make it out alive :D.
This thread is hilariously OUT OF CONTROL!
This is a perfect time to quickly rack up the extinguishing-100-burning-teammates and burning-5 enemies-with-an-ubered-pyro achievements as a Medic.
He says they are all male earlier in the article. “Her” is just a placeholder for “unknown gender” in the language of English.
Its shame Valve is playing up the silly internet Pyro is a woman thing, and doing a retcon on an obviously male character. The logic of a large, man shaped character with a male voice being a woman because he has a flowered bag is ridiculous. If the heavy wore a dress, I must assume that many of you would start a “Heavy is a girl” campaign. Obviously, any character having a piece of attire most commonly associated with women must be female themselves, regardless of all the other visual and audio clues pointing in the opposite direction.
I’m surprised no-one’s mentioned the female class concepts designed by ‘Neko’, linked on the Valve TF2 forum.
Forum post with links to concept sketches.
The female Scout in 3D
I like these concepts because they completely avoid the fanboyish manga- or Rob Liefield-inspired gals-with-big-tits-and-tiny-waists seen on Kotaku and elsewhere. The male TF2 characters aren’t good-looking or hunky; they look homely and tough and often kind of ridiculous; the females should be likewise.
Except male Pyros: I’m thinking Brad Pitt could play him.
“regardless of all the other visual and audio clues pointing in the opposite direction.”
It’s a person in a huge baggy suit. What the hell visual clue is there that a person wearing said baggy suit and a gas mask is male? Audio I could almost see (I’ve met women with deep voices, /shrugs, it does happen), but not visual.
Perhaps Robin Walker believes the pyro is indeed a naval ship. I know I’ve always had my suspicions.
@Erlam: “If you’re a pyro with a flare gun and a flamethrower, a medic can kill you 1v1 with just the needler. Which is wrong. Very, very wrong.”
This seems about right to me actually. Medics work VERY well while running backwards. The needlegun is potent, but tough to hit with. Pyros seems built for short assault, hit and run operations, not so much on chasing people down. That’s what the extended burn is for.
The Pyro is not a woman, stop being retarded.
Seriously, what the fuck. Effeminate, possibly, but not a woman. I mean, it doesn’t look like a woman, it doesn’t sound like a woman and it’s on a team of men.
I wouldn’t care if you thought it was a woman if there were actually signs of it being a woman.
“This seems about right to me actually. Medics work VERY well while running backwards. The needlegun is potent, but tough to hit with. Pyros seems built for short assault, hit and run operations, not so much on chasing people down. That’s what the extended burn is for.”
My point is, can defeat any Pyro in a 1v1 situation by simply running backwards. I’ve pistoled pyros to death while jumping over them as a scout. I’ve killed so many Pyros as a neer just by running backwards and firing my shotgun. It’s just… it really shouldn’t be that way.
“I mean, it doesn’t look like a woman, it doesn’t sound like a woman and it’s on a team of men.”
Remember kids – women can’t do mens work, and a person in baggy clothes with a gasmask isn’t a woman because… uh… it’s obviously.. what a guy… wears?
Willem, yours was easily the most hilarious defensive post I’ve read in the last six months.
@mgl
I agree, some of the fanboy female character designs I’ve seen have been out of character with the rest of the game, and outside Valve’s usual ethos. Indeedm if valve decided to implement some of the designs, I’d me more disapointed with them than with the initial (possible) absense of female models. That said, Neko’s designs don’t quite gel with the style graphics of the rest of the characters, who have a retro feel to them. The Tattos for example look somewhat out of place, both in contrast to the clean asthetic of the other characters, and their absense on the Heavy, where you’d expect them if part of the art direction.
ETA: Just noticed Nick’s post and I think alciha’s stuff is more consistent with the art direction of the rest of the game.
That’s a good point about the retro thing, and I agree wholeheartedly with you about the alciha stuff linked by Nick: I especially love the bescarved babushka Heavy in the socialist-realist style. Can you imagine three of them advancing on you across the 2Fort bridge, bellowing endearments to their Medics? (”I LUFF ZIS DOKTOR!”) I’d be laughing too hard to play.
That said, what attracted me about the Neko concepts was not the precise details, like tattoos and so forth, but the fact that they look like they’re as ready for a fight as their male counterparts, unlike the girly girls of the Kotaku-linked illustration. I mean, I’m not one to cry sexism, but look at the female Soldier fergawdsake. That’s just insulting.
The upside to Night of a 1000 Pyros is finally getting a chance to collect some of the Medic achievements, like joining/healing a medic-less team and extinguishing 100 burning teammates.
As for whether the Pyro is female or not, the flamethrower kills you all the same regardless.
The 1 vs 1 thing isn’t as true any more now the pyro does max damage at the extent of his range. A quick blast does what will be killing damage; then, as a pyro, you bail in the opposite direction and the medic turns to charcoal with no healing available.
The flare gun can do some damage if the person it hits doesn’t get to health in time – I got hit by a single shot as a scout and it stripped off over half my health. Scouts however are pretty good at getting to health packs. Snipers tend to take positions near health packs. Engineers have dispensers. Other pyros don’t keep burning. Generally, then, not as useful as a shotgun – though it’ll do more damage against a heavy or demoman from outside the other’s effective range, and I imagine a couple of hits could probably give a medic a bad day. Giving medics a bad day from outside the range of their heavy buddies is a relatively worthwhile thing to do, however.
The night of a thousand Medics was one thing… but Pyros? Oh gawd, the new gameplay mechanics associated with… er, her… would make it hard enough an adjustment to play against the usual one or two of them per team. But Pyros making up the bulk of the players on each team? If I would somehow be thrust into this scenario as reality, I’d have brown pants by now… obscured by heavy amounts of charring.
More on-topic though, I always thought of the Pyro as more of a flamer (*chhk… snicker*) because it was more… punny. Oh well.
Snarky, it’s fine. After getting bored in the flaming scrum I switched to soldier and heavy and racked up the kills, top of server even though I’m not that good (granted, free weekend). Might be harder when people have the hang of the deflector alt fire.
I got a medic the ubi concordia achievement by attacking gravelpit B as a heavy. THEY JUST RAN AT ME. IT WAS GLORIOUS.
Ok, so for the next couple of weeks TF2 becomes nearly unplayable, but the real value of the Pyro update is the added dimension it adds to the class and the game as a whole for the rest of recorded history. It’s nice to see the synergy between it and the medic update for some of the achievements. As more classes receive the upgrade treatment, we can expect to see more common purpose as people try to pick up the harder to achieve ones. Of course, the latest update will always be held guilty of ‘breaking’ the game, but once the dust settles, it improves TF2 overall.
Pyro is my favourite man-character, but I won’t toch the game untile the achievements craze dies.
Yesterday I unlocked some of the hardest achivements, but for the rest, I will aim to obtain them by playing normally with the man-pyro.
The pyro is a burn-scarred mess. It has no gender. It probably doesn’t even have lips.
Good point, Buckaw.
Also, those female TF2 character ideas by Alciha are the best I’ve seen. If they were to implement female versions (which could be put in random rotation with the rest, or perhaps chosen on a class-by-class basis by the player?), then anything close to these designs would be fantastic.
I like your idea, buckaw. I imagine the man-pyro to be horribly scarred behind his man-pyro man-mask.
In relevance to like the achievements and stuff i reckon Steam should release should like release the achievements three at a time. one in each section. like scout achievements for offense, and like demoman for defense and maybe sniper achievements for support (or whatever the sections are). this way if everyone piles into the classes that have received achievements the teams will still be reasonably balanced.
Also im pretty nuetral with the different gender teams. the way i see it its still the same old game.
i love how pyro keeps on submitting his opinions. i also love how he would like to make us think he’s talking about himself in the third person. but anyways, i don’t really care either way. if the pyro is male, then it fits in. if the pyro is female, then it’s an amusing little detail.
Valve is always going back and forth.on the TF2 website blogs it said HE and SHE’LL.on Valve blogs(Valve.com)it says HE.an interveiw on youtube said SHE.
and also pyro could be a women:have you ever tried to talk in a gas mask?its pretty hard to understand and your voice sounds WAY diffrent
But look at how the pyros shaped.and if there wasnt a pink purse in the locker room none of this would ever of happend!go over all the facts…most lead to:male little lead to:female
i think pyros a guy