Confused about what’s going on with Snipers and Spies and updates? Yeah, me too. Tuesday was originally thought to be the launch day for the Sniper update. Two unlocks were revealed, along with a new game mode, and then the switcheroo happened. Now it’s a Spy update, two unlocks were revealed at once, then yesterday the Meet The Spy video made an encore appearance, along with the achievement titles. Today… a Spy unlock. And it’s the pistol upgrade everyone was hoping for.
The Ambassador is a big, heavy gun, described as having “ammo count of a revolver and the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper rifle”. However, you can’t feather the trigger here – there’s a cool down after every shot fired. There’s scant details about it here. As for when this goes live – someone in the comments will know. They always do.
Meanwhile, if you haven’t been following the escapades on the TF2 blog, I strongly urge you to read this week’s updates. After Sunday’s leaking of the Meet The Spy video, Robin Walker has been on a systematic hunt to find out who at Valve was responsible, firing everyone he’s met along the way.
“Yeah, Robin?”
“Ah, come in, Matt. How’s the family?”
“Oh. Uh, good. What’s this ab—”
“Top drawer. How about your little boy? He getting better at the ol’ soccer?”
“Football. No, not really.”
“Do you think he’d be any good at cleaning out your desk by five?”
“I —”
“Because you’re fired.”
It seems at some point during this he fired Gabe Newell, which was an impressive powerplay.
Related Stories:
What I wonder is what’s going to replace the disguise kit?
I’d assume the sapper doesn’t get a replacement since there isn’t a slot for it in the loadout menu in tf2. Wonder what the disguise kit unlock will do, as the standard one seems pretty full featured already.
Where does it say it does more damage? The only thing I can see there is implications. It calls it a cannon and says it packs heat. Both of those definitely suggest more damage, but it also says the latter in reference to its pinpoint sniper rifle accuracy (even at long range).
Also, there’s no slot for the disguise kit in the loadout screen either, is there? IIRC there’s a watch, knife and revolver slot.
For the record, I think it does do more damage, but it’s definitely not explicit about it, especially considering how the description of the Force-a-Nature definitely implied heavier damage (it packs a wallop) but it ended up actually doing less damage.
Further, I think a gun that just did more damage and was more accurate (keeping in mind the vanilla version is already pretty accurate) but fired slower would be a pretty boring update by previous standards.
Also, there’s not slot on the loadout screen for disguise kit either, is there? IIRC there’s one for the knife, watch, and revolver.
I immediately assumed the Cloak and Dagger was just a straight replacement for the standard watch that’s charged by picking up metal. Didn’t occur to me it was a different item entirely, available as an unlock.
It sounded more like a gameplay tweak for spy than anything, I thought.
The alternate melee weapon will be a cornish game hen
I’m pretty happy about what I’ve read of the Spy update, but one thing that’s going to bite is if every Spy achievement is accompanied by that floating Trophy image overhead… and death a second later.
The spy’s melee weapon is going to be the Dracula or PUNCTURE. If it is Dracula it is going to give you health with each stab, and I’m assuming that you’ll have to dash toward the target or you’ll flash colors (something like that). Or if its PUNCTURE then I’ll assume your invincible when you are in the stabbing motion but it takes a long long time. Any thoughts?
just had a look-see at the spy update page and it appears blue spy is about to get a taste of jarate
edit: now it’s gone! there was a jar of urine about to hit the spy from the right of screen, but it’s gone now. oh valve, i’d be happy if this update was never released, if only so every day could bring such surprises
@amesace – http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/5885/picture2yyp.png
(not my screenshot, it looks legit though)
EDIT: http://www.teamfortress.com/sniper_vs_spy/
yep.
@Bill
yep, that’s what it looked like
Jarate, awesome :)
Seems VERY useful: additional damage against the target, spies made visible, and fire put out for allies.
The “Jarate Chop” achievement implies that this doesn’t replace the knife, so that would mean that this replaces the secondary weapon and the razorback replaces the knife.
Or perhaps Valve have some more cunning changes up their sleeve. Hmmm…
Roll on tomorrow and the hats :D
i don’t know, jarate seems a bit weak to me, unless it does a goodly bit of damage to go with the stench
Jarate probably functions like the Sandman does, in giving you one to throw and then letting you use your melee until it’s back up.
Also the 35% increased damage on targets hit by Jarate is nothing to shake a stick at! But it is something to throw jars of pee at. Apparently.
@Hidden-7
Sorry, you were right on both counts, somehow I misread that the description called for a stronger revolver, my bad.