Trumpet sounds: Valve have begun their now traditional countdown to the next Team Fortress 2 update, this time, as expected, for the Scout. This means there’s a new website up, and there will be new details about the additional features added every day. The final reveal will be next Tuesday, the 24th. And the first reveal? The Sandman. And it’s a doozy.
The Sandman embraces the Scout’s baseball bat, taking things to their illogical conclusion. Using the bat, you hit a baseball at an opposing player, which will stun him. The farther you hit the ball, the better the result. It will even stun the invulnerable – bring on the sound of an angry mob of Heavy fanatics. The catch: you can’t double-jump when carrying the Sandman bat, but as the site explains, “double jumping never put anybody in a coma.”
It just can’t be a coincidence that the last of the Scout’s baseball themed updates gets announced the day before Spring Training begins. These are the sorts of details we want, developers.
Take a look at the site’s background image, and you can see there was originally a gag to do with “batting order”, and a reference to a comic. Just in case anyone needed to know. Edit: This has been removed now, conspiracy fans.
So, get to speculating. What else will we see revealed over the coming seven days? New maps? New game mode? And most of all, what will the Scout’s other two bonuses be? The more baseball puns, the better.
Related Stories:
I have a sneaking suspicion this will work like the blinding boomer vomit in Left 4 Dead.
Why not port a good idea? Valve games already share a lot and play similarly, and that’s a good thing.
but will my demo stickies be able to deflect the baseball in mid-air? Sometimes i marvel at the chutz-pah of valve. This may well make scouts ‘fun again’. And less double-jumping has to be a good thing.
As mr Jasper points out, being a sniper on update day is always fun :)
Also ++Moon Base map suggestion, it’s what the design is crying out for! Also a good reason for lowgrav hijinks :)
Oh wow, I would love to have a Moon base style map. Anyways, this thing looks like fun.
Pyro blasting baseballs back towards enemy medics and BURRRRRRN them?
YES PLEASE!
All your base are belong to us: In a CP map, take part in every capture in a round.
Bit worried that being on the receiving end is going to be frustrating. Any time controls are taken away from a player, alarm bells go off in my head.
Not that it’s not do-able thing. It’s just very, very dangerous.
Okay.
Achievements:
Bang-Bang Play: Kill a scout with a bat and die of a bat hit within half a second.
Don’t Blam the Messenger: kill 20 demomen
SpamWow: Kill 5 enemies in 10 seconds with the scattergun.
Batting Cleanup: kill three enemies with the bat in one life
HyperSnyper: get 100 pistol kills.
Grand Slam Home Run. Stun and kill four enemies within 10m of a protected respawn/resupply door.
Weapons: ShatterGun: carries 6 rounds/reload does 2x damage on structures
Wunderbat: dunno
Valve does know how to.. pitch their games. *ahem*
Catchers Splat – air blast a scout ball back at him and knock him out and finish him off
Bat to ball to bat – stun and then kill an enemy sniper from over 50 game metres
De Niro – kill a disguised spy with bat near your own spawn
Field of Dreams – knock out defence and cap the point they were on
In a league of their own – survive entire round without dying on cp map – killing or assisting 5 times
Can’t think of other baseball films just right now…
The Courier of the Czar: Kill or stun an enemy Sniper who is aiming at a Heavy.
Base Bawled – Make an opponent ragequit after stunning him repeatedly (similar to BarbeQueQ)
Quicksand – Stun two opponents simultaneously with consecutive balls
Fly Ball – Stun an opponent more than X distance away
Backstop – Use your bat to defend your last cap point unassisted
Bases Loaded – With another Scout, cap consecutive points with no delay between finishing one point and commencing the second
I’ll stop now as it’s obviously too late for any of these to get in…
I like the sound of this. Recently, whenever I can drag myself away from the best multiplayer game (L4D) to play the second best I have been playing as the scout, so I’ve been looking forward to this update.
Worries about stunning – I can understand what you are getting at and being on the receiving end of one could be annoying depending on the amount of time you get stunned for. Having said that, I expect that the ball is going to be really tough to aim and also that the stun will only last for a couple of seconds. Of course, you will then have to contend with an up close scout, which can be deadly for any class besides the pyro. Certainly for Scout players, I can see this being a lot of fun, but the loss of the double jump may be too much to ask.
What intrigues me is what are we going to get behind the other links. Obviously, two of the other five will the remaining weapons and one will be the achievements, but what about the remaining two. Maps are an obvious guess for one of them, probably more alpine maps (and hopefully more payload, no more arena maps.)
Could the final one be a new game mode?
It’ll be 2 weapons, a new mode, new maps and a new ‘meet the…’ class video.
So wait, if this is replacing the standard bat, does this one still have a melee attack? If you can’t stun them and then run up for the *BONK!* then I imagine it might be more of a tactical weapon.
Although having said that, in either case it sounds like a big gain for a big loss. The loss of double jump is probably too much for my own playstyle with the scout, so I’d likely use it sparingly.
@ Subedii:
See the three strip pic at the top, that Scout is definitely Boinking the Solider.
So long as you can get a bit of a rally going between two skilled Scouts with bats this is awesome imho. Also I agree, a boomer vomitesque ’stun’ which encourages other players to cover you while you recover is much, much, much better than cheapshot-kidneyshot-gouge-blind-RAGEQUIT type stun.
@ eyemessiah
Although a boomer-esque stun in TF2 may be more like Counter-Strike flashbangs, annoying as hell.
I do wonder about this stun mechanic. It says the farther away the stun, the longer it will last. So presumably at top scout speed you’ll be able to make it up to them, but the question is, how long before they come out of it? 1/2 second? 2 seconds? Presumably this will allow you to get a hit or two in on a disabled enemy, but I doubt it will be that devastating (especially if you can’t double-jump and have to take the long ramp up to where they are). This stun will be nice on 2fort. I’m tired of getting auto-sniped from the battlements.
Probably this will be best-used in conjunction with another player. Imagine stunning someone with a friendly pyro next to them. Or stun the invulnerable medic while his heavy partner runs out of range :) fun times ahead.
Achievements:
Speedy Delivery – return the intel at max speed, never stopping
Shootin the messenger – kill x scouts carrying your intel
Double/Triple play – kill 2/3 players within 3 seconds (or however long the kill list stays up)
Aussie rules baseball – bat 5 snipers to death
New York minute – ??
Bonk! – bat 5 players to death in one life
Oh, and new weapon: what with all the city-related stuff, how about a taser for the pistol? Not sure what it’d do, maybe people and make it AoE in water? Stun would be nice, but that’s out with the Sandman. Maybe a motorized bike to go even faster. Or heat-seeking missiles that drop your speed by half. I wouldn’t mind seeing a mine to replace the scattergun. Drop a few mines while you’re running down spiral with people chasing you.
Monchberter – Of course, I forgot about a “meet the…” video. If one of them is a new video that will mean probably no new game mode (3 weapoons, achievements, new maps and new video makes 6.) I’m not too bothered about no new modes, they have enough types and variety all ready.
Someone on the forums had a good suggestion for a weapon alt: a giant hamster ball that protected the scout, but could also be pushed around by bombs/rockets/pyro airburst.
That would be fun!
I suspect the baseball will serve the same function that the flaregun has now : Something to harass Snipers with.
What do you like better Christmas or TF2 update season?
How long has it been since the last class update? Asking ’cause I only just recently got back into TF2 and was really surprised at all the new content that was suddenly there since I last played, and would just like to know how often they release packs like this. Can’t wait to see what they’ll do with the other classes.
But will other scouts be able to hit the ball back?
I hope the baseballs have a long lifetime so you could litter the field with them :)
New maps announced:
http://www.teamfortress.com/scoutupdate/watchtower_and_junction.htm
Well, sort of new I suppose. I’ve played Junction previously. Good to see it getting some official Valve Love.
As a pyro, I want to be able to A) set these things on fire and B) push them back at others. Extra damage bonus for balls of fire!
Otherwise, not interested.
Surely Valve have already thought of this…
Played Heavy today after the Scout patch was installed. Hated it. Getting bonked and frozen sucks. Had a fast Scout dead to rights cornered at point blank range, unloaded on him and all I saw was “Miss… Miss… Miss” then he killed me. I think they really screwed this up. The 2 servers I played today were nothing but Scout fests. My $0.02