#tf2weaponideas

[tf2workbench]

Le Sappateur (Sapper)

Attaches to enemy players, rather than buildings

(+) causes the weapon equipped at time of sap to damage friendlies, and 10% damage to the sap victim

(+) consumables will have the opposite effects (e.g Sandvich drains health)

(+) engi buildings would be take +50% damage from wrench

(-) cannot sap buildings

(-) only one active on a target at a time

(-) destroyed by any victim-friendly melee weapon (in case there are no engies about)

(-) +15% bullet and fire vulnerability

Submitted by thescootybootypootypatootie some many months ago when I wasn’t checking my inbox.

It’s an interesting idea, definitely, but my concern is that it alters class dynamics a lot to give engineers more leeway. Could also cause unprecedented effects given how many weapons there are in the game; I don’t have the brainpower to list them all and figure out what their effects would be when reversed.

[tf2workbench]

The psychology behind flames

It may surprise you, but Valve designed the Pyro’s flamethrower with the psychology of the human on the other end of it in mind.

In the developer commentary they stated that they wanted fire to be as visually noisy as possible so as to disorient players and give them a sense of urgency and panic. It doesn’t just stop there.

There are a few things I, and probably most people, feel while they’re on fire:

A sense of vulnerability that comes with losing health

Urgency, even if it’s not going to be lethal

The constant distraction of losing health that puts me on edge

So there are tactical benefits to setting your opponent on fire, too. I fight worse when burning; that’s something I’m almost sure of. And I do believe Valve took that into effect when making the class.

Dreams of cruelty indeed.

[tf2workbench]

A little about the author

Hi, all. Most people on the internet call me Gray. That, or Swede. It kind of depends.

Here are a few FAQs about my experiences (and by “frequently asked,” I mean more than one person has asked them).

How did you get into TF2? Like many young teenagers, I watched a lot of YouTube in the days of 2013-14. Eventually I ended up watching Expiration Date, which had recently been released, and got kind of absorbed in the TF2 universe. Upon learning it was free, I downloaded it. The rest is more-or-less history.

How old are you? Not really comfortable with saying. Suffice it to say that I was a teenager, a young teenager, in those years. It’s 2017 now. Do the math.

Have you ever played competitive TF2? Yeah. In late 2015 and early 2016, I was part of an Iron Highlander team and an Iron 6′s team. We finished season 18/22 with mediocre records, but I learned a lot throughout my time. Since then I’ve been a sub on at least two Highlander teams and been a ringer for multiple iron and steel highlander games (and one silver, but it was low silver).

What nationality are you? I’m Swedish-American - dual citizenship. My father emigrated from Sweden because he was bored with his parents, and eventually became a citizen when I was pretty young.

Do you speak Swedish? I have to ask because myehhh, it’s the thing you’re supposed to ask people from other countries! Sort of, strawman. I did a lot of denying my ancestry once I got into school, so I lost all of the Swedish I had learned before then (which was about as much as a four- or five-year-old would know, since I was that age). Recently I’ve come to accept that people aren’t going to attack me for it (anymore).

Why do you like game balancing so much? Why does anyone like their passions? I assume it’s something deep in my psyche that manifests itself in a love for ranting about how the Short Circuit should never have been born.

Why don’t you curse? I do curse. I can curse in ten languages (it’s my greatest skill). It’s just that I don’t do it here because I want it to be a welcoming environment for all kinds of people. When I was a kid, I was afraid to show things on the internet I liked to my mom because they had cursing in them. I don’t want kids to have that same experience with my content.

What classes do you play in TF2? I’m kind of all over the board. Time-wise, Demoman is far above the others (145 hours); Engineer is a far second (85); and everything else is between 15 and 60-odd hours. Keep in mind that I’ve reset my stats a few times and have done a lot of practicing with bots; my total hours in the game are at a little over 1500 hours.

There’s no class I dislike playing (though up until recently, that particular class was Sniper). I just happen to be better at some, and find that my team could use more of certain classes. I try to be flexible.

[tf2workbench]

Reworking the Machina

I had a couple of ideas to rework this weapon. Here. Take ‘em.

Machina: Iteration 1

(+) On full charge: Explosive headshot

(-) -15% charge rate

(-) -20% bodyshot damage

Iteration 1 is designed similarly to the Hitman’s Heatmaker in that it tries to potentially alleviate a weakness of the Sniper: his focus on single targets.

The goal here is to take the penetration ability and the focus on full charges to make a weapon that does just as well as another rifle in single-target eliminations, but adds another variable in the constant judgement of whether to charge or not. 

My worry is that it’s slightly underpowered, especially in a competent sniper’s hands, because an explosive headshot would have to be powerful to justify not always using two or three uncharged shots, and when explosive headshots get powerful, people get murdered. Excessively, that is. I’m not against murder if it’s in moderation. Wait, hold on.

Machina: Iteration 2

(+) +20% critical damage

(-) 20% damage vulnerability while scoped

(-) Fires tracer rounds

(-) Marked for death on scoped miss

This one gives you great potential as a pick class, since you can now one-shot Demomen and Pyros without charging a shot, but forces you to rotate around a lot if you want to make the most of it. I based it off the tracer rounds attribute, which is very interesting to me.

Each time I look at these stats, I get a different opinion. Sometimes I say that “no, this is way too strong, a one-shot on those classes is ridiculous.” Sometimes I say “what if it’s not really that big a deal, and I’m making it way too underpowered?”

Well, if it’s not really a big deal:

Machina: Iteration 2.5

(+) +20% critical damage

(+) Pierces damage resist effects

(-) Fires tracer rounds

(-) 30% damage vulnerability on wearer

This is all very uncertain and it’s making me slightly uncomfortable. But there are options. Definitely options out there.

[tf2workbench]

In-depth look: Machina

(+) +15% damage on fully charged shot

That means it’s able to one-shot an overhealed Fists of Steel Heavy, which the other rifles can’t do. Fully charged bodyshots will do 173 damage as opposed to 150, which is no meager amount, even if it’s not a one-hit-kill on Pyros and Demomen; even a tiny bit of scratch damage before or after will seal that player’s fate.

(+) Penetrates targets on full charge

Can often be more useful than it sounds, especially if the sniper using the weapon is unable to move around too much. The ability to eliminate two classes, especially heavy ones, clustered around a cap point is very useful for a sniper, as it can save a few precious seconds of time that would be spent charging up another shot. Nevertheless, oftentimes it’s faster to just deliver two uncharged shots.

(-) Can only fire when scoped

Largely depends on the skill of the user in determining its impact. Some snipers are able to hit scoped headshots at ridiculously close ranges, but many aren’t. Should the user be one of the majority, they’ll want to keep an SMG on hand, which removes the utility of items such as Jarate or the Razorback.

(-) Fires tracer rounds

My favorite attribute on this weapon, because it relies on the psychology of players (a little). It means that the user has a hard time keeping unnoticed, which makes it practically unusable in competitive play, where the sniper is a high priority target. Machina snipers are forced to change location often and can’t risk missing shots.

What’s my opinion? Well, it’s got a confusing collection of attributes. I see a lot of people saying that it encourages “sloppy sniping” in bodyshots, hard-scoping (the act of charging up a shot and scanning around for someone to peg) and lurking in far-off corners.

Well, I have no problem with bodyshots; function over form. Even with that, I find it easier to guard my head than my whole body, so I’m happy that it can’t quite one-shot demos and pyros.

Hard-scoping, when used in moderation, is a legitimate tactic. As shown here, it’s got serious benefits when used properly, which doesn’t mean just sitting there zoomed in. That’s a recipe for disaster. If you’ve got a target picked out, and zoom in on them, and wait to fire until you’re charged up, that’s completely sane.

Lurking in far-off corners (”camping”) isn’t necessarily bad by any means. It can be frustrating to be killed by someone you didn’t see, but they’ve got a good thing going. So long as the sniper in question isn’t ignoring their own team’s needs, it’s fine to do. And the tracers seem to be designed to mitigate this anyway.

I’d say that the Machina needs a more solidly defined niche; not a complete rework, but a tweak based on some of its existing stats. I’ll work on that.

[tf2workbench]

New URL

The old one was a misnomer. I like this one better. Say hello, I guess.

[tf2workbench]

On blogs and bloglike structures

Over this blog’s existence of probably more than a year (I can’t remember), it’s changed form a lot. Its very first iteration, circa 2014 or so, was a loose attempt at sketching weapons in a notebook I carried with me. It then morphed into a blog format where I dumped my general stream of TF2-related consciousness and then, following a hiatus, turned into pretty much its current shape and size. In the future, historians will refer to those as the Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of TF2 Weapon Ideas/TF2 Workbench. Or maybe not.

Point is: are you happy with what I’m doing right now? I kind of like the tack I’m on, but I want to make sure that it’s:

Accessible/easy to digest

Walls of text aren’t ideal ways for me to get my point across, so I’m trying to optimize the blog’s writings in a way that allows me to get my point across while not giving a full-on mind-numbing lecture.

Interesting and eye-catching

The material I work with is interesting to me, but maybe not to other people. Is it just something that isn’t too intriguing to your average player? Is there a way I can make it more appealing?

Generally a stable and balanced source of advocacy within the community

Don’t get me wrong, I know how miniscule my influence is at the moment. But I’d like to believe that what I’m preaching is sound and that I’m being half-decent about it. Given success in the other two criteria listed, I’m hoping to be able to maintain integrity, good relations with my audience and a relatively unbiased look at the game.

Countrymen, lend me your feedback.

[tf2workbench]

It’s okay that some weapons are used less than others

No, seriously, it is.

I don’t want to present the illusion that I want all weapons to be used the same amount; not only is that borderline impossible, it would lend itself poorly to gameplay. I just want each weapon to have a fighting chance of sorts and be adequately designed to bring something new to the class that has it.

A certain amount of imbalance in weapons is a good thing, so long as it’s not too terrible. Sometimes a less-effective strategy is better than a commonplace one because of the human element of the game. We won’t fight well against something we aren’t expecting, and that’s why a “really stupid” strategy can sometimes work out surprisingly effectively.

Stay flexible! It’s key to victory. Just because they say that XYZ is the top strategy if you want to squeeze that extra two damage-per-minute out doesn’t mean you have to use it!