Well, it’s all over, and the Soldiers are victorious, out-slaying the Demomen by a spread of about 33,000 kills. Pretty darn close if you consider the 12.7 million dead on both sides. And pretty much a great, fun week all around. My own contributions were pretty small: I think I killed maybe 75 Demomen and 35 Soldiers, though I sure died a lot so I gave to the war effort that way, at least.
And to the victor go the damage-reducing boots! With the Gunboats equipped in place of his shotgun, the Soldier will do far less damage to himself while rocket-jumping, so you can see why this prize would have be coveted by either side (I assume if the Demoman had won, it would have replaced his grenade launcher).
In related news, two new maps came out last night. I played them both and they seem fine, though I’m really sensing an instant classic in either of them. There were plenty of other surprises in the update as well, notably:
- New headshot and backstab animations
- New taunts for the Soldier and Demoman, including two fun kill-taunts
- The ability for the Spy to wear both the camera-beard and a hat at the same time
- Changes to the Scout’s Sandman, which now only stuns at full range, while causing enemies to flee at closer ranges (like the ghost from Harvest, I presume.
- Medic’s UI changes, with the option to automatically display nearby low-health allies, and a marker over your current patient
- The Pyro’s chicken hat now has jiggle bones. I don’t know what this means but how can you not be happy about a sentence like that?
The Steam servers were kinda borked last night, so there were times when we couldn’t change our loadouts or acquire new goodies, but during the times they connected everyone seemed to be getting massive amounts of drops. I picked up a ton of loot, many duplicates, but also the Spy’s Camera Beard and several of the new items, like the Direct Hit, The Equalizer, The Scottish Resistance, and The Chargin’ Targe.
The Chargin’ Targe, in particular, monopolized my entire evening. The damage resistance it provides is simply awesome. Even being swarmed by Pyros and Soldiers, I still managed to escape with most of my health intact. And the charge itself is ridiculously fun: spot an enemy some distance away and zip toward him like you’re a Charger from Left 4 Dead 2 (though you can actually steer a bit).
As you reach the end of your charge, your bottle goes crit, and if you’ve judged the distance right, BAM, no more enemy. And if you’ve judged it wrong, as I usually do, you’re still in great shape to do some damage or escape due to the amazing damage resistance. It’s a huge amount of fun and I can’t wait until I get the sword so I can start lopping off heads. I’m addicted to the Targe to the complete neglect of everything else: other classes, other weapons, team goals, my own safety, getting to sleep on time, etc. Running at people like a screaming loon is just too much damn fun, even when I don’t connect.
The Targe even works when you’re carrying the intel (I expect this to change), which is great for quick getaways on CTF maps. It’s also great for just sprinting on ahead of your teammates on bigger maps, and the recharge time is pretty short.
The Direct Hit is great as well. Quick-firing, deadly when you hit, less so when you miss, fantastically fun. Expecting a nerf because I’ve been hearing it’s doing more damage than it should. The Equalizer is a gas, too — being a heavily wounded soldier who can run fast enough to overtake a Scout is hilarious.
The Scottish Resistance, though I didn’t play with it much, seems like a great weapon as well. Lay out as many as 14 stickies that are highlighted when you target them. Detonate the highlighted stickies with a click, while the other bombs remain undisturbed. It’s neat to lay down a wide spread, and when an enemy walks over them just look and click. They go boom and the rest of your bombs are still armed.
The weapons I don’t have yet I still saw in action, like the Soldier’s Buff Banner. I was part of a few charges centered around the Soldier’s new flag last night, and it’s a neat blockade-breaking enemy-scattering element to the game, like a mini-Kritzkreig that a whole team can use at once.
Due to the server problems last night I didn’t get to do much crafting, so I don’t have much of an opinion on it yet. Seems like it’ll work okay, though. Combine items you don’t want or need and work toward building new stuff you do want. It seems a bit silly in an FPS game, but no more silly than spending an entire evening charging around with a bottle trying to bash people’s heads in.
All in all, a great update. I’ve spent very little time this year playing TF2, but this update has definitely rekindled my enjoyment of a game that was feeling a bit stale to me. Can’t wait to get back in there.
34 Comments
December 18, 2009
“The Pyro’s chicken hat now has jiggle bones.” — this means that the fingers of the “chicken hat” glove should now wobble and bounce with realistics physics as the Pyro moves.
December 18, 2009
Just to let you know Chris, don’t expect to get any Equalizer achievements any time soon, they’re glitched and won’t budge. Except the taunt kill with it; that works.
December 18, 2009
http://x.mzzt.net/2009.12.17.21.04.16.jpg
I went a bit overboard on the tokens.
December 18, 2009
I got an equalizer last night. I start shooting the ground during the 5 seconds before you can move, then switch and take off towards the first cap point. Grab a health pack on your way and it’s nice to get to the front lines faster.
December 18, 2009
Just gotta stop running into those sentries, Chris. ;)
And I hear when you unlock the sword, it’s got a ridiculous range, so judging the distance becomes not as finicky.
December 18, 2009
@Dan
>billions of hats
Screw you too, jerk!
December 18, 2009
Darn item servers are down again.
December 18, 2009
I tried it, but unless the item drops have been really stepped up (and from what you say they have been) I’m not getting anything out of the crafting system soon.
December 18, 2009
I managed to get an Eyelander and a Targe relatively quickly. I’ve been charging people down and severing heads exclusively for the past 12 hours.
Here’s the kicker, though: I’d never be a Demoman otherwise. The only reason I’m playing him is because charging is just so fun.
December 18, 2009
I’ve been unable to play TF2 since June when I moved to a house with satellite internet (ever try to play with a 500ms ping?). Reading about the new weapons, hats, and the whole war has been driving me absolutely nuts. I hope everyone has an awesome time with the new weapons, they sound awesome! [wipes away tears]
December 18, 2009
Haven’t had much chance to play recently. I’ve also had exactly zero (0) random drops in about three week’s fairly-solid playing, so I decided to milestone farm most of the day’s new unlocks.
Yes, I’m aggravated about the fact that the US players apparently got to enjoy a glitched cluster of random drops when they started TF2 today, and Valve fixed the problem just as Europe was waking up. Not entirely happy that I’ve been thirsting for drops for weeks now, and people (That likely got a few drops themselves in the same time) received a nice little Mann Co. crate stuffed with random goodies. On the plus side, at least the milestone drops worked for me.
December 18, 2009
I agree that this update has found a new love for the game. Just a few days ago I steered clear of TF2, as I’d found that everytime I played it, I just got pissed off with it. Now, it’s gotten a lot more enjoyable to play :)
December 18, 2009
Well, have played a couple of games today, first in several months. The problem I have is all the servers in the browser either require a crapload of custom content, or are just filled with arsemuffins.
Anyone got any favourite server IP’s that I could check out? I don’t want to hate TF2 because I can’t use the server browser properly ( I play on consoles a lot, sadface ).
December 18, 2009
Chris, crafting is only a way to make hats. 81 items=hat. A couple of more if you want to specify a class. You can also make weapons, which is not very RPG like (just hats) until Valve releases special weapons (do you guys rmeember that? With the colored titles? Rarity settings?).
Also, what makes the Direct Hit really OP is the minicrit.
Didn’t you guys hear about the Spy dispensers? These are great.It will be fixed soon, I guess. Abuse it wisely!
December 18, 2009
@Jimborb:
The DoormanIsGod (DiG) Dustbowl 24/7 server is fun, just be sure to join it when it has 30 players or less, there’s one reserved slot, so 31/32 players means you’ll get 99% there only to be told you’ve been dropped because of a slot reservation. Really wish they’d add an option to not see those servers one of these days =/
December 18, 2009
So I’ve been playing Mass Effect for the past few weeks. Bloody fantastic game, can’t believe I’ve been missing out on it all this time. Mass Effect 2 is out January 28th.
December 18, 2009
I think you’ll find, that if you take away the points from the propaganda contest, that the demoman actually killed more soldiers.
Which is interesting to say the least.
December 19, 2009
I played for 4 hours.
Not a single item drop.
December 19, 2009
New update is totally awesome, except for the fact i get bare minimum of item drops. I don’t even have much in a way of duplicates, and ZERO of class-specific hats (i do have halo and Halloween ones, mind you).
I presume Valve still reads that blog, so here’s two ideas.
- The targe is way too small. If it was two times bigger, damage resistance and charges would make much more sense. Anyone else thinks it should be scaled up?
- If you kill three other players in less than 10 seconds, a class-specific musical score starts playing. And for the Soldier, it should be Alert Theme from Meet The Spy, rather than Drums Of War. I despise that one.
December 19, 2009
Ah Chris, it’s so nice to see you writing more frequent updates again, and about TF2 no less! Makes one reminiscent of the old days of 1fort…
December 19, 2009
Yeah, Kollega, the item drops have really been screwy. The eight hours I played before the update, I got zero. After the update, there were several hours where the games couldn’t connect to the Steam servers. Then there were a couple glorious hours where just about everyone was getting 2, 3 items at a time about every 20 minutes. Then, the servers were out again. Last night, except for the milestone items, I think I got one drop the entire night.
December 19, 2009
I’m sure the items are perfectly fine (I should know, being on the receiving end so often), but I’ve yet to obtain a single one as of yet. And, for some reason, whenever I try crafting, I wind up getting a “server is down” error.
December 19, 2009
I unlock demo milestone 1 and the achievement that gets you the Ghastly gibus hat, neither have unlocked the items that they’re meant to. Also, I’m getting the ‘the server has disconnected from steam message’ a lot, i.e. all the time.
December 19, 2009
Yeah, the item servers are behaving not very nicely.
They are separate from the achivement ones though, which means you can unlock an item but not be able to use it.
December 19, 2009
Hey guys i just bought Team Forteress 2 and iv got an Question:How to gain weapons or item?
December 20, 2009
@Guggibi
You can either complete achievements to earn unlocks - look in Achievements menu in the game, pick a few, and get grinding
OR
just wait and randomly get random unlocks at random intervals.
Hats (which are purely cosmetic) can only be earned randomly, though.
December 20, 2009
And by random, guggibi, he means if you’ve played for maybe 5 or 6 hours total you’ll get about 7 hats, but the more time you play, say 50 or 100+ hours, you won’t find anything.
December 20, 2009
I’ve never got a hat, I’ve raked up a lot of time on it and only got a handful of drops, mostly repeats.
Also, Valve are going to run a process to check that people receive the weapons they are entitled to and give them to those that haven’t got them.
December 20, 2009
Lol i dont think my name is guggibi but Guibibi.What hat does?I would like weapons rather than hats :P
December 20, 2009
Sandvich + Sandvich+ Sandvich = Scrap Metal.
Ugh, food poisoning? Remind Heavy never to make a triple sandvich.
December 20, 2009
Good thing you moved away from “1fort.com” to remove this unfounded belief that you only report on Valve happenings.
December 20, 2009
Does anyone know if the Equalizer achievements are working yet? I swear I’d have gotten all of them about 5 times now if they were working.
December 20, 2009
Is achievements server legal? Cause i dindt got in one :roll:
December 21, 2009
@Jimborb:
Forget that server I told you earlier. It sucks ass.
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