By Jim Rossignol on July 5th, 2010 at 8:57 pm.
The internet is probably full of information about this. Don’t you think?
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
TF2: Engineers and Logs
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Typically the entire site has gone down for me =/
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Cant get to it, due too many excited gamers i assume
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The internet (or at least the part of it Valve just engineered) just exploded, as it seems.
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Totally not loading like off of the 90′s internet.
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Classes.
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Hmm, its come online now for me!
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I am so confused now, I can’t tell if this is supposed to be official or another one of those fake fan updates.
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It’s officially official.
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… What’s the deal with the Wrench Log? I don’t understand. Are they suggesting that if you craft long enough, you can discover the wrench?
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Basically there are 100 golden wrenches out their that turn people into gold when you kill them with it. By crafting, you might be randomly selected to get one of the 100. Of course, the chances of getting it are ridiculously small, and for someone like me who nearly never gets any drops, I have nothing to craft with so won’t be able to get anything.
A bit silly imo, but meh, its funny seeing everyone raging on the Steam forums.
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I think is the first 100 people that craft the Golden Wrench
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Cockteases. There are ye olde blueprints for portable sentries, a Stovepipe Gun-Hat, and, most excitingly, a teleporter that may add or remove a moustache. Possibly. I’m so confused.
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So the old MMO class-based hat simulator finally updates the engineer. Love the old team in the background image, I’d play THAT.
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‘Love the old team in the background image, I’d play THAT.’
I second that.
I wonder if that is John Henry at the back with the hammer.
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Is there… any chance that they might let us play the old team? What with their ideas of remodeling weapons that they’ve become so good at, would it be too hard to remodel the team? I mean, the core mechanics and scripting are there. Asides from new models and textures, it would only require minor changes.
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John Henry, and Lincoln Pyro, and Freud Medic, and Tesla Engineer, and Crockett Sniper. That picture is the best thing ever.
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John “Tower-of-Hats” Booth. Brilliant.
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All I can say is wow, First time I’ve ever seen someone with my last name. (poster)
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I await Jim’s comment on this. Long lost son, perhaps?
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You do know that there is an entire brand of winter sport utilitys with this name right? No need to thank me now. Just remember me when you finally find out that you are the heir to a vast fortune amassed by selling wooden planks to people so they can slide down a mountain.
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Looking at the electron diagram of Australium, it ought to be extremely unstable. Like burst into flames/explode just from coming into contact with air or moisture kind of unstable.
Also, it’s clear that the gentlemanly hat conspiracy runs deeper than we could have ever guessed.
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According to the picture Australium has an atomic number of 79, the same as gold (Au).
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Right. Australium is obviously the ‘living’ gold ye olde alchemist types were striving for.
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Perhaps Australium is a radioactive isotope of gold?
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Reactivity natch. You correctly spotted the single unpaired valence electron but it’s the same electronic structure as gold (2, 8, 18, 32, 18, 1). Either a radioactive isotope or a clever PR campaign to hide the existence of gold.
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Oh fuck yes
Golden wrench is mine!
Number 25 :D
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We demand reports! Research! Feedback! Feed our desire to feel involved! Dammit!
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Nice; you’re the first since that page went up. I imagine that winning against those odds in a real-life draw could have been pretty profitable.
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@Chizu
So what did you do to get it? What did you craft? DETAILS DETAILS!
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All I crafted was 2 slot tokens and a pyro class token to make reclaimed metal.
It was the first craft I did after seeing the wrench page up.
Though the blog post makes it sound as though the first 25 were given to people who did alot of crafting over the weekend.
And I crafted away a load of dupe items over the weekend.
So maybe that’s why I got one of the first 25.
It’s pretty awesome. I never win things like these :D
The lottery may have been better, but I will settle for gold statues of my enemies.
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Gratz, Chizu, you lucky, lucky bugger.
I HATE crafting…
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Can you craft any item in order to find a wrench ?
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Of course, I had just crafted a hat when I had a backpack of 93 items…then a day later the update hits and I have nothing to craft with…so I went through the items of the classes I rarely play. Still…I want to cry. (not really)
BRING ON THE UPDATE :-D
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Anyone else remember when TF2′s out-of-game artwork, like the Sentry manual, fitted completely with the whole 50′s aesthetic? When you could tell what its weapons did by simply looking at them? When the team looked like a coherent team of mercenaries, rather than a bunch of men who are desperate to show their nationalities through weapons and hats? When it was so elegantly simple that there was no clear distinction between story, setting and artwork? When it could paint a picture without mentioning any names at all?
I do :( .
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Oh. You’re one of those.
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When it didn’t involve throwing jars of urine at each other? More innocent days indeed.
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I remember.
I also remember when they said “stuff this, if we put hats in the game, it will live on forever!”
Yay for hats, and never-ending team-fortress-izing!
(Also, it’s still pretty obvious what all the classes and weapons do:
The guns all shoot bullets, a jar of urine is disgusting, a bow arrows people to walls, an axe is an axe, whether it is wielded by a cyclops, or wrapped in barbed-wire – where’s the confusion?)
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RodeoClown: the confusion comes from miniguns that slow people down, axes that do more damage when people are on fire, pickaxes that make you run faster, swords that give you health for killing people, and so forth. On top of that, the names don’t speak for themselves either, like ‘Rocket Launcher’ or ‘Shotgun’ did. You didn’t need any weapon stats back when TF2 was released, now it has to resort to giving you them after you’ve been killed by a weapon with some illogical side effect.
The humour has changed quite a bit too; there’s a remarkable difference between Meet the Heavy and this last batch of comics.
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But those effects don’t really matter – you can see a minigun and know it will be inaccurate at long range, you can see an axe and know that you don’t want to be close to it.
The only one I can see being slightly a problem is the equaliser (the pickaxe), but even then, if you see someone running at you fast, you shoot them, and they’ll probably die, because the speed is inversely proportional to their health.
Plus you learn real quick.
—
If there hadn’t been any updates, I imagine there wouldn’t be anywhere near the number of players there still are today. As time goes on, the people playing have generally been playing for a longer time period, and have been learning the differences over that time period. It is a little more confusing for newbies, but then, they don’t have the new weapons, and so the confusion is lessened. They just know to stay away from people in the opposite colour, and when they get a new weapon, there are instructions on how to use it.
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I do agree with the comment on the change in humour. I liked the old style better – the shark-jumping definitely occurred with the advent of the jarate. What was a throw-away joke in “Meet the sniper” was made for reals, and although I use jarate all the time (and in the game!), it definitely marked a change in tone.
It used to be silly, but classy. No longer.
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I just found this: http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/radigan/
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Yeah me too. What is that? I assume it was originally meant to be a tease for the “Frontier Justice” shotgun…?
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So the update is a new shotgun that replace the old shotgun, that does damage, in a way slighty different to the way the old shotgun?
And theres something like a race to be the first to grab a special weapon, with unique props.
I was expecting a bit more, really. I love gadgets, and a this new shotgun don’t qualify as a new gadget to me.
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I would suggest to wait until the whole update is live and just then judge it.
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And slowly ever more my enjoyment of TF2 wanes as I see everyone else around me with much more cool stuff that I can’t be bothered ‘grinding’ for…. or even less waiting for with some ‘chance’ percentage of a drop. If I had a clear goal as to when I would get said extra I would be more inclined to play. At the moment it is like… well I might play an hour here and there but probably nothing will happen so…. it will never happen.
Strangely off-putting even though I like the game in general. I just feel like I’m the fat kid hanging out with the jocks trying to look good in my budgie smugglers…
Nothing infuriates me more in a game rather than something that is hugely limited in quantity across a massive player base, unless it spreads (a la some ‘killing the developers’ achievements etc)
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Then don’t get wound up about it. Something I need to state all too often on the net is that the game is fine without owning any of the crazy items. Most people don’t use them, and the ones that do are just switching it up because they’ve played a lot. Nobody will dog you for not using an unlock.
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Or just stop playing.
That was my solution, around the time of the Scout update first, but really sticking around the whole thing about hats etc.
I’ve not regretted it yet.
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I play scout & sniper predominantly & the only non-default weapon I use is Jarate for the Sniper but I would quite happily use the SMG (there’s been plenty of times I would rather have had the SMG than Jarate). None of the scout unlocks are worth switching out for. Even the classes I occasionally play like demoman or medic I only use the melee unlocks (sword for demo) because the drawbacks & advantages balance out in my opinion. That doesn’t mean you have to have them, I’ve seen plenty of average-to-good medics toting the bonesaw & plenty of demos using the bottle.
You are deluding yourselves if you think you can’t play without the unlocks. As a scout I love enemy soldiers with the Direct Hit, they die faster than soldiers with the rocket launcher & I’m almost guaranteed to survive as they have to aim instead of simply spamming the ground. Same goes for when I see one running around with the Equalizer, I know one close range blast from my scattergun is going to put him down. Targe demos die just as easily (learning how to dodge in multiplayer FPS games goes a long way) as do Blutsauger and/or Kritzkrieg medics.
Don’t let the door smack you on the arse on the way out.
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Ah, TF2; how the mighty are fallen.
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Fallen indeed.
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This must be doing wonders for Valve’s data storage costs.
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>Put Steam in Offline Mode
>Play against bots
>no unlocks or stupid gimmicks
FEELS GOOD BRO
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>Play TF2
>Have fun no matter what people are shooting at me with
FEELS GOOD, BRO
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Aren’t there unlock free servers?
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@ Nick: Aren’t there unlock free servers?
You get this sometimes if a server “loses it’s connection with steam” (whatever that means) – everyone gets switched to vanilla weapons.
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If you want more than 12 words on this, I’ve been poking around the available info for the last six hours. The link in my name points to it – it’s pretty much everything I could find before becoming a sleep-deprivation zombie. It should tide you over until the RPG hivemind get around to writing something lengthy about this.
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Jaz, thats a great help! I’ve been away from my computer (great timing, right?) and your blog got me all caught up on the hidden bits. Cheers!
A couple thoughts- The third life-extender machine is almost certainly for the female announcer. She appears to be in the olde Mann family photo, she gives Engineer’s grandfather the Australium in the new comic, and she appears in the soldier/demo comics, as well.
However- I like your theory about a new character! Hunted missions with Abraham Lincoln, with or without a hat-gun, would be AWESOME!
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Crafted EVERYTHING I could, including unlocks I actually use
Nada
Shame, would have been cool to have one.
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I find it amusing people still actively hate on TF2 for having class updates and crafting.
I mean, this all started all the way back with the Medic update. We had a pretty good idea of where Valve was taking it right then, and yet people still complain now? Get over it and play something else.
Meanwhile, my friends and I will still have a blast dropping into servers randomly and engaging in the shooting of people, along with tens of thousands of others.
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Word. Eff the haters, pray for hats, play for fun.
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If, hypothetically speaking, you actually paid money for a game because you liked the game, and the game is subsequently updated into something you no longer enjoy, wouldn’t you complain?
I don’t think there’s any particular “expiry date” on such complaints. If you feel the additions ruin the game for you, your complaint is as valid now as it was when the medic update came.
I sometimes think gamers have a real problem with the concept of “empathy”.
Why see the other guy’s point of view when you can just flame him.
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Ahh, but the core game hasn’t changed much. Hats are frivolous and aren’t important at all, and nothing is forcing you to use any new weapons.
The only one thing I don’t really like is the Demomans sword thing, which I feel is overpowered.
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Apart from having to take into account 60 new weapons in order to be good at the game, and apart from people’s priority changing away from actually team-fortressing to grinding and crafting and looting and finding new unlocks, the game hasn’t changed at all, no.
Sometimes, less is more. Some people prefer a simpler, more minimalist game. Which was what they bought and… didn’t get.
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Sorry, I’m with Jalf here:
I bought TF2 (oh, okay, I bought the Orange Box like everyone else… but!) because it was a highly acclaimed team-based game with distinct classes, each with a finely honed set of characteristics. And a particular sense of humour.
It is now none of those things – it’s overcomplicated, less distinct, and the humour has lost its purity.
Why aren’t I allowed to be annoyed that the game I bought doesn’t exist anymore?
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As stated below: there are plenty of servers that don’t allow any unlocks. So just play there.
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I don’t understand the complaints that the game has changed and you’re entitled to a change-free game. Overlooking how you must hate all patches, you can still play on
fununlock-free servers, and none of the new humor you hate is actually ingame except for the unlocks (which you already hate).And how can you complain about grinding instead of playing the game? You grind by playing the game. That’s the most ludicrous complaint I’ve probably ever heard.
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It’s a simple fact of gaming that online games will change with time. Sometimes they’ll change for the better, sometimes they’ll change for the worse, and sometimes they’ll just move away from what you want them to be. I can’t say I’m a fan of the “new” TF2. Then again, for me it was just the free, largely unwanted but unexpectedly entertaining multiplayer mode that came with Portal and Ep 2.
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But as you’ve repeatedly stated numerous repeated times, you don’t play multiplayer games.
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@Malibu Stacy
Except when I do. I logged about a hundred hours on TF2 back in the day, and there were no bots at the time. I don’t buy MP-only games because it’s incredibly rare that I enjoy one, but there are exceptions to every rule.
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Sweet! More updates! The only people that hate unlocks and free stuff are idiots who are never satisfied with anything. Thankfully those morons are the minority and no one cares what they have to say. Case in point; look at the Steam forums. At least half of it consists of morons complaining about anything and everything. Not to say there aren’t some legitimate things to complain about.
To Valve, please continue updating, people love it! Also, jarate is awsum, no matter what anyone says :D
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I see Valve have been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a lot recently.
Each Golden Wrench should give you the opportunity to meet Robin “Willy” Walker for a guided tour of the improbably huge insides of the Valve offices, staffed mostly by small Orange Box Men, with the promise of a lifetime’s supply of Steam games at the end.
And then someone ends up getting eaten by the Ant Lions they use for mocap. You can’t get authentic Ant Lion animation unless you use real Ant Lions after all!
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And whilst you are playing a multiplayer game by yourself, I’ll be having fun. Not caring about unlocking things.
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And thats a failed reply.
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Oh man, you guys have to check the steam forums. They’re aflame with misplaced anger from people who realise their chance of getting a golden wrench is really really small. ENTITLEMENT AHOY!
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Ok, crafted all the spare stuff I had. No wrench, but I did get a stovepipe hat so that’s good.
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wy not gif avnybody a golden wrench and the first 100 get a specal golden wrench how can gif 50 metale in one hit in place of 25
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is fare
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p.s. i dont get any weapons in 3 days how can i craft
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Even if everybody would get a wrench that turn people into gold, and just a handfull (say 100) get a special wrench that turn people into rock those players that are going ape s*** over the whole issue on the Steam forums would still be going ape s***.
These are un-mature children we are talking about here (or un-mature adults) so there is no way to avoid this. Unless Valve would give everyone the same kind of wrench. But where would the fun be in that, I like reading posts from some kid with a sense of entitlement that is talking about rage-quitting.
Can I haz yo stuff?
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i so anger i craft avry weapons i have and stil no golden wrench and i dont gowing to craft more of my hat I WANT GOLDEN WRENCH
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Given the vast level of freedom servers have in setting up their own modes and features in TF2, I don’t doubt for a second that there are ‘purist’ servers that limit everyone to just the original weapons loadouts, and maybe even disable hats.
But if these servers do exist (I admit to not having played much) then they are a very small minority. While it may seem like at least half the playerbase are grumbling constantly, that’s just because the majority aren’t saying anything – they’re playing the game and having fun instead.
So be proactive. If you hate the new weapons and hats, set up your own custom server without them. If people want to play on it, that’s great. Just don’t whine. It helps nobody.
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@Dominic White:
Amen brother, these servers do exist. I know because I’ve played on them. Anyone grumbling about how their game has been ruined and now its not worth playing is cutting off their nose to spite their face before coming here to complain. So I don’t get what the problem is. Everyone should be happy! TF2!
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Yeah lets have 32 player servers with instant respawn, random crits & running only dustbowl, goldrush & badwater because that’s fun but these god damn weapon unlocks (most of which aren’t worth using) are ruining the game.
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@Malibu:
Can I haz yo stuff?
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You might want to check the batteries on your sarcasm detector ezuz as it doesn’t appear to be functioning adequately.
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::licks finger::
::pokes ezuz::
Tsssssss!
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@Malibu:
Sorry bro, I haven’t unlocked it yet
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i have a idea fore a new wrench the FIRE WRENCH fore the engineer and pyro the same as the wrench but if you hit somebody dan he is on fire (pyro gets 100 metal)
:D
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i’m crazy but good
and i have many ideas
fore the scout and heavy a knuckle-duster
and fore the spy and sniper a toxic dagger
and fore the soldier and demoman a pain train wait they already have it
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I wonder if Valve is reading this
UPDATE:
ENEMIES SHARE WEAPONS
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O_o
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NEW AUSTRALIUM DAGGER FORE SPY
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Slow day here at the office so I ran through the source for the site, and don’t bash me right away if this has all been posted on the Steam forums (which wouldn’t surprise me) but by going through the css link I found this background image without the image of the “Frontier Justice”. It has a rather funny image of Abe Lincoln and apparently Australians have colonized space!
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/tf2/engy/bg_01.jpg
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That image was visible before the Frontier Justice info appeared and still can be accessed by clicking on the “left arrow” on top of the page, which will get you to http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/v00.php
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