Why no Pyro?!

I make no secret of my love for the supposedly skill-less pyro in Team Fortress 2, so allow me to mention why I figure the pyro deserves to be in competitive play, which is usually 6v6 with very ossified teams (i.e., two scouts, two soldiers, one demo, one medic).

1) Overwork the medic!

There's rarely enough health or water on any map to put out everybody who's on fire, which leaves the job to the medic. And when he's putting out people on fire--or even better, trying to put himself out!--he's not supporting attacks, giving soldiers and demomen the HP boost to jump about with impunity, ubercharging friendlies...

2) Flank attack! (especially true for the backburner)

The pyro is slow-moving compared to the other classes who can jump about like quick little bunnies? If you're attacking the enemy head-on as a pyro, you're doing it wrong. Instead, act like a wild-card; find the medic and extinguish his life, counter enemy flanker scouts by setting them on fire (if they're using the sandman, it won't take very long at all to kill them, and afterburn can do it very effectively after a short, half-second burst, particularly if you control any nearby health packs and/or have already offed the medic), give your friends an unanticipated edge in a soldier-vs.-soldier fight...

3) Neutralize enemy attacks! (for the normal flamethrower)

The two soldiers and the demomen are both distinguished by their primary weapons being explosive projectiles. This means that a pyro with an airblast and some skill or a low ping (reasonable enough to assume at competitive levels) can effectively stop incoming rockets, grenades and stickies dead in their tracks, forcing the soldier to shotgun combat and the demoman to melee. It can also break an ubercharge very effectively, if the pyro has plenty of ammo. It might not do much for the scout, but it can hold them in position for a friendly scout or soldier to finish them off, and again, with their low HP, a quick flamethrower burst will force them to break (especially if you're good with the shotgun or flaregun and can hit them while they run).

So why don't we see more pyros in competitive play, if they can turn half of a "normal" competitive team into glorified shotgunners/melee men? Is the stigma of "W+M1" (so called because of the buttons held down by newbie pyros--move forward and attack) that great?

Muzzle-Loader vs. Assault Rifles!

There's a new game on the market: Darkest of Days. It's an FPS, and the reviews don't look all that great. But the concept...imagine engaging Confederate forces at Antietam with a modern-type assault rifle, or attacking Germans at Tannenburg with a futuristic combat shotgun...very, VERY relevant to my interests!

No Elves!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLwUjyP-dkQ

This actually fits in VERY well with my personal fantasies.

I have a few complaints though; the headshot must've been done with a really low power weapon or something--no pink mist. The recon takes stupid long to actually pull the trigger, and when he addresses the cameraman you can see his finger is on the trigger at all times. But other than that...POP, haha!

The Man With The Broken Guns!

(a parody, inspired by the Spy of Team Fortress 2. Sing to the tune of "The Man with the Golden Gun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50T8nEAa1GU )

He has such a powerful weapon!

Done right, it's a kill with one shot!

Foes will tremble in horror and strife.

The man with the folding kniiiiife...!


He's cloaked in a dark little corner,

Disguised as the Sniper...or not!

Always ready to extinguish a life.

The man with the folding kniiiiife...!


Revolver and sapper, with bladework so dapper

He rises to every kill

Send out your Pyros, he laughs at such tyros

They simply can't match his skill...


One perfect stab, and another poor Engy

Has met an unfortunate end...

He'll kill any man given his price!

The man with the folding kniiiiife...


And he might be...disguised as me...

Am I him...?...Well, we'll see! PEEK-A-BOO!


Revolver and sapper, with bladework so dapper

He rises to every kill

Send out your Pyros, he laughs at such tyros

They simply can't match his skill...


One perfect stab, and another poor Heavy

Has met an unfortunate end...

If you want to end someone's life

The man with the folding kniiiiife...

Will do it right!

He'll stop any life

With his fooooooolding kniiiiife...!

That Valkri is a SPY!

You know the Spy?

Think this guy, but with a red suit instead of a blue one. He has a bunch of fun tricks you can pull on an unsuspecting enemy:

• He can make himself look completely like a member of the opposing team, even choosing a name that matches the class being played (if available). The only clues the enemy has that he's a SPY are that he's solid to them and he catches on fire.
• He can also render himself invisible for a period of time, and extend that invisibility by picking up ammunition boxes.
• He can disable buildings with his "sappers" without dropping his disguise, slowly draining their health and eventually destroying them without engineer intervention.
• And once he gets behind his enemy...

Backstab!

Boom! One shot kill!

I just racked up twenty of these bad boys without getting killed (my team still lost though), shot one guy, disabled several buildings and generally made a real ass of myself whenever the enemy tried to make a push!

And what does Steam decide to do? It says "Nope! Too bad! I'm not keeping a record of it! Even though I got all these fun numbers to show you, I'm not going to actually UPDATE your records!"

Wah....! Anybody else have this problem out there? WAH......!

UPDATE! Turns out it DID save it! I was just looking in the wrong spot! He he...

UPDATED UPDATE: NOOO! It's gone again!

Team Fortress Unlock Ideas

Too much politics! It's game time!

As I noted in the Pyro entry down below, Valve adds special weapons for characters when it gives a big update to TF2. These special weapons are geared towards a particular playstyle, and have advantages that endear it to that role and weaknesses that make it unpalatable to other players with the same class, different role.

With that in mind, here's some ideas for classes that Valve hasn't updated yet.

Rocket-propelled Rocket: For the Soldier

Normally a Soldier carries a four-shot rocket launcher (4 loaded, 20 reserve) designed to engage groups of enemies with splash damage at short to medium range. The rockets are slow-travelling, limiting their use at longer ranges.

The Rocket-Propelled Rocket is designed slightly differently. It's a much larger, much faster moving rocket that does more damage and has a greater area of effect than the normal rockets. Downside? You only get one shot before you need to reload, and the animation is significantly longer than reloading normal rockets. I'm thinking 1 loaded, 10 reserve, but that's subject to balance issues.

So if the RPR carrying soldier is engaged at close range by a normal soldier, the normal one would probably win. If the RPR soldier catches the normal soldier with his buddies off guard, he can fire his rocket to massively weaken or kill a large group of targets.

Semi-Automated Pistol: For the Engineer

The most common tactic for Engineers in Team Fortress 2 is simple--hide behind your sentry nest. If the sentry nest refuses to take something out, like a disguised spy, the Engineer can engage with his shotgun at close range or with his pistol (12 loaded, 200(!) reserve) at longer ranges.

The Semi-Automated Pistol (I'm thinking 12 loaded, 120 reserve) is designed to encourage the nesting habit. At any time, the engineer can set it down; it will quickly restructure itself into a level 1 Sentry gun. He can use this in addition to his normal sentry to cover a larger area, or use this new sentry to cover his back. He can repair and reload it like his normal sentry (hit it with his wrench), but he cannot upgrade it.

Should the Semi-Automated Pistol be destroyed as a sentry, that's it; the Engineer cannot reacquire it until he dies and respawns. Further, the pistol-to-sentry transition is one-way; he cannot recover the pistol, leaving him only his shotgun to engage targets not covered by his sentry.

Team Fortress 2 players, what do you think?

A Question of Role

This blog was never intended to be 100% political, but looking at the current post load, I count one full political posting, two politic-inclined posts/jokes, and an introduction. Let's change that. And here's the fellow who will help me change it...





Meet the Pyro! One of nine classes in Valve's multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 (go get it now! It's really good, I swear!), classified as "offensive", though we'll see that's not a hard and fast rule. This particular pyromaniac happens to be my favorite of the bunch, even though other (sore loser) players say he's (or she's) only for amateurs and newbies (LIES!).

Now, the Pyro has two options for his primary weapon. Both are gas-spitting flamethrowers, so their range is a bit on the short side--for some reason, video game flamethrowers never use napalm or other chemicals to increase their range. They are:

The Flamethrower:
The Pyro's default weapon. As you can guess from the picture, essentially a propane tank attached to a gas-pump hose and nozzle attached to a tube with an underslung burner. Sets enemy targets on fire, causing continuous damage until the flames subside. Has a random chance of doing "critical", or much increased damage, at any time. It also comes with a compressed air blast, which requires 1/8th of its maximum ammo stock per use, which is its supporters' primary claim of superiority.

And The Backburner:
Essentially the Flamethrower in design, but the nozzle where the flame is now has a "predatorial" paint scheme. It doesn't have access to a compressed air blast, or do "critical" damage randomly. Instead, it will always do critical damage when lighting up targets from behind in a ninety-degree cone (I'll call enemies killed in this manner "melted" in a bit).

Those who advocate the Flamethrower's superiority (like my friend Winter, go see her: http://www.reddit.com/user/WinterAyars) assert that the Backburner has nothing to distinguish itself or show its superiority to the Flamethrower. And true, the compressed air blast of the Flamethrower allows it to do some interesting tricks:

• Defend forward bases set up by friendly Engineers ("Sentry nests") from incoming projectiles, such as the Soldier's rockets and the Demoman's grenades
• Put out teammates set alight by enemy pyros
• Defeat "ubercharges" (a period of time activated by Medics where both he and his heal target are rendered invulnerable for about eight seconds) by shoving the invulnerable character off a cliff
• Push enemy units into "kill zones", such as areas covered by friendly Sentry nests

Thus, the Flamethrower turns the Pyro into a hybrid creature, capable of attack (he still has the flamethrower), defense, and support. But since each compressed air blast requires 25 of a maximum 200 points of flamethrower fuel per use, such a Pyro would be tied down to nearby ammo stocks or be quickly rendered impotent. The Backburner, however, has its own fun tricks. With it, a Pyro can:

• Annihilate enemy "pushes" towards objectives, usually led by hard-hitting but slower-moving enemies, by getting behind them and melting crucial targets, such as Soldiers and Heavy Weapons Guys, while they are distracted by forward incoming fire
• Abort ubercharges before they even begin, by melting Medics as they focus on their heal target or incoming fire
• Defeat enemy Engineers setting up forward bases of operations, who are focusing on their equipment
• Quickly clear "sniper nests" of enemy Snipers by melting them while they aim downrange

The Backburner effectively turns the Pyro into the equivalent of a light tank, flanking and getting behind his enemies and shock-attacking to break their offenses. In a way, he becomes like his mortal enemy, the Spy, who gets instant kills with his knife while behind his foes. He is also, admittedly, somewhat dependent on either the remainder of his team to provide enough distracting fire or the layout of the map to outflank incoming attacks.