On the plus side, if I see a friendly telefragged by a friendly, it’s a dead giveaway to whomever just popped out…unless it was the spy that just got telefragged.

Then what happens is, you start a new map, teams are up in the air, and you think, “right, if I join an empty team and roll spy, I did it first.” I mean, I’m a good spy. I’m not as good as some, but better than most. When you’re alone in the spawn until four snipers join at once, though, you just feel guilty being a part of that. Soldiers, medis, couple pyros and a heavy; that’s all a decent attack needs, in a way; everything else is thwarting skilled specialist opponents. Imagine fielding an army with 500 soldiers and 700 snipers from the SAS; it’s just daft to have the bulk of your force be anything but all-rounder fighters. I do think the huntsman has vastly improved the standing of the sniper in the capping-and-pushing-forward stakes, though.

I had my defining why-this-new-system-is-obviously-rubbish moment last night; I was on a 2v2 on pipeline, last stage; I was a pyro, they were scouts, and my team mate was a spy. He had the ambassador and the C&D. He wasn’t cloaking, he was just running at them shooting. So I’d come up from under them, set them alight, blow them off the edge, their cart would roll down, and he’d be doing what exactly? Getting bodyshots with the Ambassador. Standing away from the cart. That’s why this system sucks, gentlemen, because if I had the ambassador, they’d be little dead scouts with a side of stabby paranoia. I assume.

I’m glad there’s this here intelligent blog we can all hang out on the steps of, though, because I really wouldn’t want to rely on the Steam forums for my discourse on this matter.

I’d prefer they just give us all the weapons from the start, or tie them to achievements again.

I had fun farming achievements with friends. It was fun discovering how each one worked exactly, and the best way to do it.

And if the weapons are so balanced, then giving them out early shouldn’t cause any trouble in the first place.

There are actually some very good engie spots on Hoodoo, I’m a pretty poor engie and I managed to top the server defending it once, despite the rain of spies. You just need a modicum of cover from your team and, most importantly, for them not to fold before you’ve put one up (sigh).

In fairness, gamers are trained exhaustively to find the weakness in a system and exploit it. You can’t raise a kid on Zelda bosses and not expect them to game your award mechanism.

Still. “Achievement idle”?

Now I just want the Fedora, screw the weapons.

You’ll still have achievements and they’ll still be fun – I don’t know why more people aren’t suggesting this though =(
Can someone give me feedback on this?

I, too, love Pipeline 3. There is nothing more satisfying than, through luck and timing, being able to waddle my pudgy Pyro body up the tracks behind the enemy team and gleefully set them ablaze before inevitably being reduced to confetti.

Hoodoo as a soldier is great. As an engie, the inclement weather gets in the way.

By inclement weather, I mean Craig.

I was playing Hoodoo yesterday, as sniper, noticing all the support classes everywhere, and thought ”Man, this game could use some heavy firepower”. Switched to soldier and rocked my way to the top of the leaderboard, with the help of a kritzkrieging medic. Snipers and Spies can do little to counter that kind of awesome firepower. Great fun, too.

It’s pretty frustrating, as while those classes are useful, it’s generally in a specific set of circumstances which don’t occur when there’s not a team of other classes backing them up. For the Sniper it’s the ability to take pot shots at range (an advantage which you don’t have for long with no team-mates to get in the way of the enemy), and for the Spy it’s causing mayhem at the right moment with a backstab or sentry take-down (not very useful if there’s no-one to take advantage of it).

I usually play a combat class (generally Heavy or Pyro), or as a Medic. Not fun at all to get totally steam-rolled by half of the other team while your buddies are sitting back looking through scopes or cloaked off in the shadows.

I also really dislike Pipeline, with the last section acting as my own personal hell. The narrow elevated rails which you need to push the cart up really don’t allow for a group of your team to stick together or maneuver well. Too many people ignore the map goal, and being sniped constantly is painful. The above mentioned issues compound these. Ugh.

On the positive side, I’m looking forward to trying out a Commando Sniper role using Jarate and the Huntsman. I’ve unlocked the Jarate, still waiting on the awesome bow.

Going way up the page, Nico’s suggestion of awarding unlocks on a win is a great idea. It avoids the skilled-get-skillederer(?!) issue with the achievements that Valve have tried to fix, while still presenting players with an incentive to work together as a coherent, winning team.

This actually works. And it’s annoying.

1. Give everyone the unlocks right at the beginning of an update

OR

2. (my preference) Have the unlocks the old way, but how to get an achievement is NOT shown so you can’t possibly farm it. The only way to get an achievement is through normal play.

If so, I don’t understand.

Except you don’t ask that question, any more than waking up to glaring orange heat and roaring conflagration causes you to update your blog with “Is my house on fire?”

I like Pipeline :)

http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Oktoberfest

Secondly: I want to give some sort of medal to whoever it was who came up with the idea of a) HUGE CIRCULAR SAWBLADES. and b) freaking basketball hoops on the walls to give you something to aim for when you throw yourself into the blades after a victory.

Lastly I think Hoodoo is a really great, well crafted map and is probably my favourite thing about the update so far.

We (were) running a map on our own (apparently now dead) server called depot. It had a pied red/blue cart that each team could push in either direction along the middle track.

What’d be cool would be switch gates you could activate to bamboozle the enemy.

Also, the unlock system has been explained, as you all now know. I just wanted to prove that I read it first, nyah nyah, etc. Most noteworthy is that they had problems yesterday with the new system, which is apparently designed to reward you with items for continuous play (tying it to time removes the ability to manipulate the system by altering what you *do* in that time, clumsily but effectively circumventing the reward for grinding) and “so that timeframe was not indicative of the system as it’s designed.”

Which means we saw launch problems, not design problems. We’ll see those today.

The third map is a blast. I honestly wouldn’t have minded if Pipeline 3 was the ONLY map (maybe of course, a little more extended). The reason being is that the two carts are next to each other and its absolute chaos – but it’s very fun at the same time.

I’m kind of annoyed at the spy now appearing with a mask when disguised. Why? Because every damn time I’ve played spy so far, some idiot has kept checking me even though I’m disguised, and thus can’t possibly be a spy. Now instead of them learning that, the game has vindicated them.

Earning points would be suceptible to servers dedicated but would takea while and as actually playing is more fun than trying to get those hard achievments – I reckon most people would go for that.