Baseball pre-season begins. And the Scout Update goes live. After the vote to see in which order the unlocks should be added, the order is announced. It’s Force-A-Nature first, then The Sandman, then finally the Bonk Energy Drink. You can read all the details of all the updates with this handy link.
Valve have also announced 50% off the price of TF2 until Friday (and presumably 320% more dosh for Valve). That makes it £7 in the UK, 10€ in Europe, and $10 in the US. We don’t know if there will be a free TF2 weekend this weekend, as has previously happened with updates, but have contacted Valve to find out. So let us know your experiences of the new Scout below.
As you’ll have noticed, there’s no Meet The… video announced, which is a shame. And as commented below, still no mention of the dual payload map we saw a glimpse of. However, there are a bunch of other updates tucked in with the Scout’s new bits and bobs.
Along with the Scout’s unlocks and achievements and the new maps, there’s also some new sound effects, new dialogue, and some new details for the Spy.
The Spy can now choose which weapon the enemy sees him holding, and has had the backstab tweaked to fix stabbing people in the face (sometimes games journalism has you write some stark phrases). Also, a disguised Spy can now see player IDs for enemies. The full list of changes are below.
New features
* Added The Force-A-Nature, The Sandman, and Bonk!
* Added 35 new Scout achievements
* Added crit boosted on/off sound effects
* Added new sounds for upgraded teleporters
* Added new sound for a fully charged medic dying
* Add bonus points section to scores
o Scouts earn a bonus point for killing Medics who are actively healing a target
* Added several new speech concepts, mostly hooked up to new Scout lines
* Added new “Remember last weapon between lives” option to the Multiplayer Advanced dialog
* Spies can now control which weapon the enemy team sees them holding. Hitting the “last disguise” key while disguised updates the disguise to show the Spy’s currently held weapon
* Added several new Arena mode announcer speech events.
* Added “First Blood” to Arena mode
* Removed 2x item respawn times in arena
* Changed backstab handling to fix facestabs
* Spies disguised as enemy team can now see player IDs for enemies
New maps
* Added community maps: cp_egypt, arena_watchtower, and cp_junction
* Updated cp_fastlane with Arttu’s new version
Mapmaker requests
* Added new input for forward speed modifier to FuncTrainTrain
* Added TeleportToPathTrack input to func_tracktrain
Bugfixes
* Fixed a bug where players would sometimes gib from non-gib damage kills
* Fixed stat screen showing an entry for a class called “map.”
* Fixed item model panels not using team skins
- Fixed obscure bug where spectators were able to carry the flag
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“And I believe scouts can hit back enemy scout balls with their own bat.” – Incorrect. They can pick up a ball that misses and -if they have the Sandman unlocked- hit it back. That’s what the achievement’s about.
Sentries were a counter for the Scout. They only counter the Sandman by preventing the Scout from Sandmanning in that area, they don’t stop you from Sandmanning at the spawn once you get past the sentry, for example.
The Pyro blast I was informed did not work. Are you sure about this? A clan claimed they’d tried everything and nothing worked. If what you say is true, Pyro is only real counter.
There is no other ability that absolutely requires 2 players to counter it.
- Flare/flamer can be countered alone (get med, jump in water, or simply tank the damage and kill the Pyro quickly).
- Uber can be countered alone by airblast, force-a-nature, stickies to separate the medic, soldier can also do knockback if done correctly and at least slow down the ubered pair – oh and need I forget, Sandman also hard-counters uber.
There’s a vid of the unlocks for those interested, plus how to knock someone 25m (it’s the taunt move).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mqxkwfMnoM
Thanks for clarifying about that achievement, well that does suck how you cannot just hit it straight back whilst it’s travelling with your own bat.
Last night I was pushing around baseballs with the airblast, changing the colour of their glow in the process, it didn’t go far but it’s better than nothing.
I’ve had a scary thought though, could a scout take out a sentry and engineer combo just by using bonk + sandman? Stun the engie, dodge the bullets, break shit before he can recover. The current counters aren’t really effective enough, that stun should either be shorter or more like a CS flashbang. I would rather people were still able to fire blindly for a few seconds than to be a completely sitting duck for a few seconds, even if it makes little sense.
I agree with the flashbang suggestion. The stun should make your screen very blurry and wobbly for some time, at least then you could attempt to go hide or spray into the blur to defend yourself. Making you completely immobile and defenseless for several seconds was just an extremely stupid idea.
There’s no charge-up and unless you let it off at point blank range the time the target is left immobile is more than enough for a Scout to finish them off, Heavy or not.
I have actually yet to be killed after getting bonked. Even as a pyro on the bridge in 2fort, standing there with my pants down.
The Force-a-Nature is particularly annoying to pyros who are trying to get closer. And particularly fun on low-gravity orange_x3 maps :)
They never announced a new game mode, not a word about it, everyone just saw that background picture and assumed there was going to be dual payload maps. More likely is that Valve just made a random photoshop montage and didnt care or did it to tease us.
That goddamn ball ruined the game. TF2 is officially not fun anymore and the heavy, may he rest in peace, is a dead class.
I did do a quick search on Bonk! before I posted and it seems you go into 3rd-person mode while using it, and it looks like you cannot fire/aim any other weapons during this time. I’m not 100% sure because it could be they just had SandMan equipped, but it also looks like you can’t double-jump during Bonk! either, not that you really need it.
Anyway, it’s good to know Pyros can counter it, but you still have to be pretty damn twitch to do this from mid to short range. I think if the Sandman were given a more readable animation coupled with an uninterrupible chargeup it would restore the balance somewhat.
Also someone else has tried this for me and you can’t just pick up ammo to get a new ball; it has to be your own or another Scouts’s or restocked from a cupboard in the spawn.
At the risk of sounding too melodramatic: the Sandman has made TF2 unplayable for me, especially as a Heavy. There’s no reason a scout should be able to dominate a heavy 1 vs. 1 head-on. Medics are frustrated that ubers are so easily countered (the counter to ubers? DON’T LET THE ENEMY BUILD THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!) And actually getting stunned, regardless of the situation, is really annoying and jarring. It totally pulls you out of the action.
Maybe you guys should try playing scout.
It’s freakin’ hilarious!
The problem is I don’t want heavies to stop playing. I also don’t want to play scouts vs scouts. That’s basically Quake, and if I want to play Quake i’ll load up Quake!
Stunning an uber I think needs to go. Possibly have the medigun heal the stun, so that a Heavy Medic combo still works.
As it stands at the moment playing a Heavy is not fun.
The Sandman needs a charge-up time and preferably an uninterruptible one (well, you can interrupt it, but it won’t do an attack if you do).
Right now there’s no anticipation time for the other player (or the Scout player strictly speaking), and there’s no way to avoid it other than the Scout in question being a bad shot (and apparently a Pyro), the stun time is MASSIVE, at just 5-10 feet you’ll be down for 1-1.5s which is a long time for a Scout to bat your face or double-barrel you in the back of the head, or for the rest of the enemy to send off rockets at you.
What’s most annoying is that 99% of the Scouts playing with it haven’t earnt it, so I’m a bit bitter that I’m doing my achievements properly this time and am having to wait on getting Cycle (which can only be done on a few levels, Well being best) before I unlock this noobgun.
Been playing this lots. “I love my ball”