If it were me, I’d let players pick an unlock to work towards, and tell them how many points they have to score to earn it – 500 for the Huntsman, say. Then there’d be a little toggleable bar on the HUD showing their cumulative progress towards achieving it.

I might be a terrible person.

The achievements are fun, the new weapons are fun to play against and in general, a really good update.

the effectiveness of the 35% increased damage depends on the range and splash. If you can only ever hit one target it won’t be all that interesting unless you hit a heavy with a medic or 2 on him. +35% damage will take him down fast no matter how many medics are healing.

If there is a splash and you can hit an entire group coming out of a doorway or tunnel your team can devastate them all very quickly.

It will be very interesting to see how it works.

PS: It is also there so that you can throw pee on people. HEE!

I’m glad they’re giving him unlocks that are entirely cooperative in nature because it’s going to force him to recognize the first word in the game’s title. Stuff like the Razorback, which only provides a specific benefit for his usual boring battlements-camping, I find much less interesting.

I’m still waiting for the spy to get spraypaint, though.

Now, will you lie about hating both or admit that you’re being overly critic about Jarate EVEN WHEN IT HASN’T COME OUT YET. GOD.

Give Pinkerton a disguise and a bit of power, and suddenly nothing is sacred.

Bless ’em.

Oh, this is gonna be FUN.

I hadn’t thought of that. We’re quickly seeing the sort of build that really sucks in certain situations, then: Your Ambassador with a Dead Ringer (which probably doesn’t allow at-will cloaking) coming up against a heavy with Natascha is, you know, dead. A lot is hinging on how the Dead Ringer reacts to flame. Maybe you’ll have a half second of immunity from fire? How long before you’re visible when hit? A heavy will still fire the hose in your direction after you’re dead, even for a microsecond.

@Tom

Yeah, whatever sorcery they’re employing for the Ambassador, they didn’t break it out for Natascha. Also, I’m glad Valve weren’t afraid to try something as accurate as a sniper rifle that isn’t being held by a sniper. Nothing beats that CS Deagle one-shot-kill thrill.

@Gentlemen,

My favourite thing about TF2 is that a class is more than just its stats, it also sits somewhere on a particular player’s list of priority targets. So a spy and a sniper can have the same health, but the spy effectively has less because he draws more fire. I’ve been trying to crash-course myself in the spy before the update, and man, you can’t even show a bit of french shin before the enemy offensive is totally detoured to deal with you personally. Hell, I’d settle for a faster (un)cloak with less charge.

The spy shouldn’t get easier to play though, having said that. I think it sits comfortably as an elite class, relying on a solid knowledge of game mechanics, map layouts, class play styles, seduction, etc.

The Razorback isn’t going to change much though, the new magnum will probably be designed for quickly killing snipers, with good close range damage.

That, or I’ll use the old magnum for sniper killing.

I do like the look of abasador – sometimes you just cant kill an engi with a backstab correctly, Or snipers at funny angles. This would sort out those issues whilst making sure your not ultra powerful against Pyros or the like so you still have weaknesses. Also I really like powerful things with Euphemistic names – The T3 Bomber in Sup Com was called the ambassador so id mass loads of them. So I might choose it even if its crap.

Spy is my 3rd class in playtime. 50 hrs. And i love it – yes sometimes you fail miserably but others you get a perfect spree and wipe out whole advances. I hope the tools make it less about luck though, thats the really annoying part of spy.

The Sniper’s Razorback creates another set of situations where DPS is more important than accuracy for a Spy, since he can easily get point-blank to a Sniper but needs to be able to take him out before the poor guy can competently react. The current Revolver is excellent for that, I speculate that the Ambassador will be worse, perhaps outright bad.

Most likely, the ambassador will allow the spy to kill low health classes with his first shot, while offering lower dps against the soldier, heavy, et al. It’ll also be advantageous when you can hide around a corner to cool off after your first shot.

If you think about it, it’s all about DPS. If it takes the normal revolver 3.4 seconds to do about 250 damage (mid range, no crits), that’s 75-ish damage per second. So whatever the Ambassador’s time between shots, it’s either better or worse, right?

So, the factors determining its usefulness for a given person are A) how accurate is it, B) how accurate are you, and C) any weird factors like slowdown or knockback.

Amirite?

“Troll Spammer” – Broke Tom’s blog code

“F This” – Give up in exasperation trying to fix blog code

Hurf hurf hurf I live in a bin.

I have a TinyURL lengthener so I can see what the fuck people are Tweeting, it automatically expands any shortened URL. But of course it operates on a higher level than my blog’s link-castrator, so it makes sense that on my screen the whole thing is fucked.

No wait, what’s the word? Irritated.

Note how it is spelled “blue” (BLUE actually) as opposed to the traditional “blu” spelling.