| EngeeMan |
04-16-2008 12:53 PM |
TF2 Medic Update details L@@K
Shacknews reporting:
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Developer Valve released the final details on its upcoming Team Fortress 2 content update during a party tonight in downtown San Francisco.
In addition to the known crit-increasing gun "The Critzcrieg," the remaining two unlockable medic weapons were also available for hands-on time. Dubbed "The Blutsaugher" and "The Ubersaw," they will serve as replacements for the medic's standard syringe and bonesaw, respectively. The weapons will be earned through a new achievement system, and equipped through a loadout menu.
Below you can check out Valve's official descriptions for the weapons. Stay tuned for impressions of the new content--including the fantastic Goldrush map--as well as an interview with Valve's Robin Walker.
The Blutsaugher
For players that earn one third of the 36 new medic achievements, they will be given a new syringe gun. Called "The Blutsaugher," this new weapon no longer has the ability to score critical hits against an opponent. Instead it will draw health from enemies each time a syringe hits. Especially useful as a weapon to retreat away from the fight while staying alive.
The Critzcrieg
Once a medic has earned two thirds of the achievements, they will be granted "The Critzcrieg." This new medigun uses its ubercharge not for invulnerability, but to give its recipient 100% chance to fire critical ordinance. Medics and the player they are charging need to be careful though, because as much fun as it is to fire critical rockets as fast as you can, the other team will see what you're up to and try to put a quick stop to your plan.
The Ubersaw
For the determined medic that has earned all 36 of the new achievements, they will find themselves the proud owner of "The Ubersaw," which will take damage done in melee attacks and convert it directly to ubercharge. Four hits with this new weapon will fully charge whatever medigun the medic has equpped.
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More details here:
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In short, this update will be a much-needed breath of fresh air for those growing tired of TF2's standard offerings. And rather than a dying gasp, it feels more like the beginning of a deep, satisfying inhalation of content.
When it comes to revitalizing TF2, I must confess, I'm far more interested in new maps than extra gameplay mechanics. In that respect, Goldrush--the first map following the "Payload" game type--had fully captured my attention when it was announced. I am happy to report that it does not disappoint.
For those not in the know: Payload tasks an attacking team with moving a mine cart--filled with a Fat Man-styled bomb--from one end of the map to another, the explosive eventually detonating in the defending team's base. The cart follows a set path, with players moving the transport forward by staying within a small perimeter, increasing the acceleration through greater numbers.
Payload feels like a one-way capture point (CP) map in a sense, as the attacking team will be passing checkpoints throughout the map that add time to their clock. The defending team can only hope to halt the assault through a variation of devious ambushes. If they manage to keep the attackers from touching the cart for 30 seconds, the cart will then begin to slip backwards, to the defenders' certain frustration.
All of this is far easier to understand with a quick glance at the simple HUD, which represents the cart's progress with a simple icon that slowly moves forward on a bar. The number of players currently moving the cart is also displayed, in addition to major checkpoints.
Just as Valve bills it, the essence of Payload resembles a combination of Dustbowl and TFC's Hunted. Because of the dynamic element of the mine cart, the map requires smart teamwork and fast, reflexive thinking. There are plenty of areas where the defending team has an advantage, whether it be by way of higher ground or choke points. The attackers must quickly adapt to continuously changing battle scenarios in order to see the bomb home.
The mine cart itself presents some strategic questions. The round begins with the cart on the defensive side of the starting gates, so the attackers must fight through hell to even get the wheels rolling. On the plus side, the bulbous bomb works as a convenient source of cover. Smart players will put such an advantage to use, sniping from behind the moving object, continuously positioning it between them and the enemy.
As in Dustbowl, I found myself equally divided when it came to my preference for attack or defense. On the one hand, defending on Goldrush was a matter of airborne ambushes and downright sadistic sticky-bomb traps, a guerrilla war of entertaining proportions. On the other, guiding the mine cart is one of the most purely team-based activities to be found in TF2, and thus is bound to provide for some classic scenarios.
Not to mention that attacking can often be the easier of the two tasks. In fact, the attackers won most of the rounds during our match. This may have something to do with everyone playing medic, but it also seems that defending will require a solid knowledge of the twists and turns of Goldrush's varied arrangements. While a good team can blast through a CP map in seconds, even the most clueless of public rabble will be able to stand next to a cart and push. Defenders must offer stiff resistance to provide for a good match.
After a while our defending team caught on, and not a moment too soon--the attacking team's cart had been stopped literally inches from the final goal. This triggered an Alamo-style battle, with attackers pouring out of holes to make a charge for the cart. The final point in this configuration clearly resembled Dustbowl, with a catwalk shortcut from above, a long way around to the right, and a nearby spawn.
We put up a good fight, but were eventually overwhelmed, the red team pushing the cart one last inch and blowing a hole in our dreams.
But enough about Goldrush. Probably the more significant of the major additions, the unlockable weapons signal a huge change for Team Fortress 2. And while the other classes will receive their new guns "quickly," the medic weapons will serve as the initial installment.
By far my favorite of the new offerings is the Ubersaw. Looking more like a gun from Gears of War, the Ubersaw is stained from hilt to curved blade in blood, a twisted piece of bad-ass metal. It adds 25% to your ubercharge after scoring a hit, at the expense of a 20% slower firing speed compared to the standard Bonesaw. Meant for the more offensively minded medics--AlexXdude, maldoror, et al--the potential for ubercharge madness, as well as total embarrassment and disastrous medic time-wasting, is huge.
The Blutsauger--"The Vampire" in German--looks more like a blaster than a needle gun. It will suck away your enemy's health and add it to yours at the rate of three health per hit, a nasty self-healing weapon. But again, while it sounds superior to the Syringe Gun on paper, it lacks the ability to score critical hits, making it more of a defensive tool than anything else.
The Critzcrieg we knew about, but it was no less interesting to play around with. The gun itself emits a passive yellow glow, and upon ubercharge, casts a Palpatine-esque lightning around your teammate's weapon, imbuing him with non-stop critical hits for 10 seconds. Deadly to be sure, but much like a standard ubercharge, it only stays active for so long. The charge must be well-timed, and fully taken advantage of. Unlike the health variant, this crit-uber provides no defense for your attacker, relying totally on the skill of your teammate. If your soldier wastes his few critical rockets on the wall, you'll be forced to beat a hasty retreat, with little gain to show for it.
A loadout menu allows for between-spawn changing of each weapon. From the looks of things, Valve is planning to eventually add even more than the three extra weapons per class, as the loadout lists under each currently-equipped item: "(1 other in inventory)." Changing the primary Syringe Gun, for instance, brings you to an individual Primary Weapon loadout screen, with only one other option--The Blutsauger--currently available.
Like many of you, I was skeptical of the new weapons at first. I asked an imaginary Valve questions like: Why would you take the risk of potentially unbalancing such a balanced game? Why jump on the "unlockable" bandwagon when the game is already so solid? Why would you do this to my beloved pastime, Valve? Why?
The simple answer is, I think, that Valve might just succeed in digging the core of this game even deeper.
The Ubersaw is my favorite example. In recent weeks, growing a little bored of my typical Heavy setup, I've been playing the medic as an offensive melee class. The game, at present, makes it very difficult to do such a thing, and thus the challenge. However, with the Ubersaw, Valve is rewarding me for the same experimentation that I naturally gravitated toward. It is those kinds of wild gameplay scenarios that, if carefully balanced on a weapon-by-weapon basis, could add a huge amount of replay value to the TF2 experience.
As far as the development process behind these new toys, TF2 team captain Robin Walker told me that the unlockables have been far easier to balance than the actual classes. He seemed less concerned with balancing in general than I expected, though he noted that if any of the changes are unpopular amongst the community, the team will certainly take note.
I know a lot of Team Fortress 2 players--past and present--are worried about the longevity of the game. I didn't play Goldrush for thirty hours, so I can't tell whether it's the second coming of gameplay addiction. I don't know if these unlockable weapons will please everybody, and who knows what it will do to the game in terms of balancing.
All I know is, if you're trying to get ahold of me in a couple of weeks, you might want to look on Steam.
The new TF2 content is scheduled to go live sometime in the next few weeks.
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An Interview with demigod aussie Sir Robin Walker
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Shack: How did you approach the balancing of the new weapons?
Robin Walker: So the same way classes have pros and cons and strengths and weaknesses, you just adopt that here. We took that same approach with items, where items have those trade-offs. So the Blutsauger, you know, you add 3 health every time you hit an opponent, which is great if you're fleeing and you wanna keep yourself alive, but it never critical hits, and any medic who plays is gonna tell you that a lot of your kills with the Syringe Gun come from those critical hits, so there's this trade-off to make there. But we really wanted that kind of trade-off, the same trade-off you make when you choose a class, to be there when you're choosing an item.
Shack: My first reaction was to worry about how this might change the core game. Have you guys been play-testing this like crazy?
Robin Walker: We play-test this a lot. It's funny, this a lot easier of a problem than balancing the classes. Because you've got a fairly balanced case with the classes right now, and we can add an item and test, and see what changes. Whereas a year ago, when we were testing nine classes all at the same time, we had a ton of balls in the air. It was really hard.
Shack: Does the staggered release have anything to do with the issue of balancing?
Robin Walker: The staggered release is more actually--that's how fast we can get things done. This [first release] needed a lot of work in the backend. We have persistent data storage on the Steam backend now for what items you've unlocked--your weapon inventory is going to show up on your Steam profile, all that kind of stuff. So there was a lot of backend work for this that we're not going to have to do as we go forward, so we envision the next ones being done a lot faster than this.
Shack: Is it your priority now to finish up the rest of the class weapons?
Robin Walker: We're still pushing on new maps as well, because obviously map-makers aren't terribly involved in this stuff, but our programmers are crushing away on the big new achievements. Aiming for around 35 new achievements for each class, and the three unlockables. We're also going to be looking at ways that players can get items other than achievement unlocking. We really want everyone to sort of have that fun of choosing that trade-off, and obviously that gets more interesting as you get more items and so on.
And of course, as always, we'll be seeing how the community reacts to these. That's another reason why we like doing staggered releases, why we ship as fast as we can get done, because that way we learn as we go, instead of building all these achievements at once and then finding out that our entire achievement design philosophy is broken.
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Shack: Are you planning another map with Payload gameplay, or will Goldrush be unique for now?
Robin Walker: We already have some plans for what we want to try next. We really want to try out a map where you're escorting a cart, and the cart's big enough that engineers are actually building on it, so you have a moving fortress. So we're going to try that out probably next.
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TF2 owns.
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