Be Gabe Newell In The Team Fortress 2 Update
My Team Fortress 2 addiction, which is now mostly in hand thanks for asking, used to be fueled by Valve's updates. The magnificent teases that they were, they'd hold my attention with week-long pieces of performance art. The mighty clang when everything finally dropped and was unwrapped was the best thing ever. Now, with the community contributions happening in plain sight in the Workshop, that seems to be lost. We know what's going to be in the game, and Valve have said things will be added more swiftly. So we've probably seen the end of things like the Spy uncloaking during the Sniper reveal. The latest, even with two new maps and over 60 new community addons, arrived instead with a quiet thump. And another. And another. Wait, that's my heart...
I do want those Gabe glasses. They look magnificent. This nameless update's additions, which includes hats, jackets, maps, and new crates and keys, aren't as interesting as the vast rebalancing exercise that's taken place. They've gone through each map and fixed as many exploits as they could. They've also rerolled a few underused weapons, or rebalanced overused weapons. Here's how the approached the Dead Ringer's overuse.
Let's look at another example with the opposite problem: The Dead Ringer. At roughly 80%, the equip rate for the Dead Ringer is staggeringly high. Given the many other items available in this category, this means that players feel they don't have any other viable option but choosing the Dead Ringer. We've gotten emails from players who describe the item as frustrating to fight against, requiring too little skill from the Spies and too much from their opponents.
In our next update, the Dead Ringer will work generally the same way it always has, letting Spies feign death to escape from damage that would have otherwise killed them. However, now any damage the Spy takes after his "death" will decrease the maximum length of time he can spend cloaked. This gives any players chasing the Spy more of an opportunity to catch up and deal a real finishing blow, while also requiring more skill from any Spy trying to make his way to actual safety.
I'm no longer a regular TF2 player, so I'll be unable to comprehensively detail what the full effect of these changes will be, but forgotten things like Dalokohs Bar getting a touch up and tc_hydro being tweaked suggests it's fairly comprehensive. Want to see the new maps?
This is cp_standin.
And this is cp_process.
