ZOMG medic unlocks revealed

[Negate]

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 equipped.
Source
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52236

Holy shit. That ubersaw is nuts 4 hits and uber = hey don't kill that spy let me saw him for teh uberz. How does that have any disadvantage except taking a ton of achieving to get? Seriously.
Also shameless plug to my cblog inserted here.
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/negate/...1841.phtml

[CaffeinePowered]

Yea, don't expect shit like this on the server, at all.

4 hits for an uber?

Guaranteed crit rockets/stickies?


Goodbye any semblance of balance

[Surf314]

That's bullshit, all the weapon swaps seemed balanced except the ubersaw.  I mean crits are nice, but they can just kill you without the uber, so you are taking quite a chance.  And the medigun swap is the same...crit syringes deal a lot of damage making a mostly useless weapon deadly.  So swap that out and instead of being deadly you are retreating.

But the uber-saw, where the hell is the trade-off?  The saw is already pretty damn useful.  I usually have it set to quick switch between heal gun and saw.  Now the saw uber charges me?

Well now that I think about it...the uber usually takes so long to build most people only can use it at the start or building it up in spawn or somewhere safe...so maybe it does make the medic a bit more useful.  I dunno I guess it could work.  You are risking your neck for those uber points.

[Negate]

sv_overpoweredshit 0

Ok I had to post this quick and dirty because I had to head to class but now that I'm in class I can go into more detail.
The new Syringe gun is fine getting a little health in exchange for crits entirely is fair. The crit syringe gun is obscenely deadly doing 30 damage a shot, as you all know you get a lot of shots.

Now the Cruber gun is 100% fair because 10 seconds of crits but no invulnerability just means that you get critrocketed right back. So you have to be very careful especially the medic if you want to A) Live through it and B) actually accomplish something.

Now most medics use the bonesaw a lot already because its powerful and crits a lot. Giving each hit the ability to fill up 1/4 of your ubercharge is crazy, only good thing about that is maybe more medics will get killed while trying to whack soldiers. Now the Only and I mean only way this could maybe be balanced is if it no longer crits and does lower damage then a normal saw because uber runs this game.

[CaffeinePowered]

I mean crits are nice, but they can just kill you without the uber, so you are taking quite a chance. 

LOL, you can't be cereal can you?

So yea....you cant take down SG effectively, but you can take down masses of people, which is more effective IMO. Just think for a second about a heavy, soldier or demo with 100% crits for even just 60 seconds. A heavy will rape an entire team, crit rockets instagib anything save for a heavy, and crit stickies...dont even get me started.

And remember, these are just the medic unlocks, they said something about having new weapons for every class...what if you mixed that 100% uber with some alternative weapon for the soldier/demo/heavy?

Also what about stacking? Can one medic do crits and one medic do regular uber at the same time, what if you had an ubered and 100% crit'd pyro, yea...No matter how much you think about how to balance things, player will find innovative ways to fuck it up that you had never even conceived.

[Surf314]

I doubt they will allow stacking, and sometimes someone gets a run of crits and still gets killed...I dunno I'd like to see how it plays.  Glad the overhealer is out though, I mean that was definately OP.  You could just imagine a medic staying in the spawn overhealing everyone before they run out.

The only one I can think that would be almost invulnerable is maybe the heavy with all crits.  And thats only if you are in a map with tight spaces.  Plus I doubt they give you more than 10 seconds.  So what you are doing is trading risk for a potential for more damage versus the uber.  Which could be balanced.

I just wanted to add that this would make taking out a sentry almost impossible, which is what the uber is mainly used for.  Also even if it takes out a bunch of people that doesn't guarantee success.  I mean in science me and jorge got that sentry up super quick guarding the center point.  It was 8v8 approx and that sentry took out I think at least 8 within the first 30-50 sec of the round.  That means that we had six guys almost unopposed for a good portion of the beginning of the round, which is the most important time.  They should have been able to lock down that area.  Everyone was distracted by our sentry or dead.  And you remember the out come.  So now imagine a crit run that knocks out 2/3 of a team no sentries.  Does that swing the round?  Not necessarily.

[Negate]

I was browsing the comments in that article and the guy who wrote it said that "I didn't notice it in the play session, but from the documentation it seems that it has a 20% slower firing speed.  I think that makes it a little fairer.

[CaffeinePowered]

I was browsing the comments in that article and the guy who wrote it said that he noticed the ubersaw didn't hit as quickly he thought it was about 20% slower. I think that makes it a little fairer.

Um, still no

Also in reply to your earlier part, there is still little trade off with the whole crit thing. The entire idea of crits in an FPS game at all are horrible, the only saving grace in TF2 being that they are fairly rare (5% change ranged weapons, 15% chance melee). On occasion people get small strings of one or two, but in reality these are rare, the chance for a successive shot to also crit at also 5%, so 5% * 5%, well you do the math, its fairly rare to get back to back criticals.

All crit heavy or soldier I still stand by as being absolutely monstrous and unbalanced, just because something seems balanced on paper, does NOT mean it will be in practice. More times than not, it wont be balanced in practice, no one remember how badly planetside got fucked up by stupid shit like this, maybe some others of you have experience in previous MMOs that decided to introduce "new content" and it completely cocked everything up.

[Negate]

I found another thing written by shacknews that gets down into all the new content so far announced.
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=833
Not gonna copy paste it if you want to read it you can if not whatever.

[Tragic Hero]

It is a shame that they added this feature into TF2.  Hopefully they change the guns up immensely (think the rate of fire should go down to maybe 40% or more and maybe crit gun takes longer to charge or lasts for only 3 seconds) otherwise achievement whores are going to have the upper hand.

But I am excited to see what they do to my beloved scout class...

[CaffeinePowered]

I found another thing written by shacknews that gets down into all the new content so far announced.
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=833
Not gonna copy paste it if you want to read it you can if not whatever.

Yea I read it and the comments I think were mostly spot on, like 'why cock up the balance', of course the writer doesn't want to be overly critical, but when you only get one days play with the things you really don't get an opportunity to truly experiment with things.

The best idea that I saw was to take some of the top custom maps and release them officially so that all servers and players have them on rotation.

Why does the game get stale? Well, when you only release a grand total of 6 maps (7 if you count ctf_well), and of that bunch two of them we've been playing since the dawn of team fortress (2fort/dustbowl) and theres really only one option for CTF (Still fucking 2fort), one of the maps blows utter ass (Granary), the game starts to get stale. Why do you think no one plays it on the console at all, well 6 maps gets pretty fucking boring after a few months.

Thank baby jesus for custom maps or no one would be playing the game any more. If valve wants to breathe more life into the game do the following...

1) Better Documentation for Hammer TF2 Mapping - for the love of god its almost non-existent

2) Another territory control map, the only one that exists is Hydro, I believe that Zauve (TFC God-Like mapper) is working on one but its a fucking long time in coming, a friend of mine thats seen the alpha won't even tell me a thing about it, they aren't allowed. A tc map takes for fucking ever to design and they also have no documentation on how to do it (see point 1).

3) More Achievements - this is coming, but make it for all classes, make some take a ridiculously long time to get (50,000 frags, ect)

4) Community Map pack - ask a few custom makers kindly and I bet they would love to see their maps distributed to all players and servers, I can think of a few off the top of my head that would deserve it off the bat...

Custom Pack
1) ctf_turbine_v3
2) cp_labor
3) ctf_mach4
4) cp_warpath_final (or warpath2, whatever, you get the idea)
5) ctf_chaos or cp_science2

I still wonder for the life of me why they don't do the map pack thing, they did it for some customs in CS 1.6 that were really popular became real releases in CSS.


5) Port more maps from TFC, wheres my fucking crossover2, canal_zone, hunted, rock2, cornfield, shutdown2, get on it.

6) Stop delisting shit with custom rule sets

[cbre88x]

I think Valve is thinking about a counterbalance for these medic weapons, but I don't think it will be as bad as we think..there just can't be any stacking of the medic at all. The only problem I have is with the Ubersaw, but since that will take getting 36 damn achievements..I think only those that are desperate enough will have it. This will also force people who play as spy to get better AND sometimes to sacrifice themselves more for the team to get the medic.

I think it will be ok as long as people will learn to adapt instead of completely rely on one weapon/class.


When it comes down to it..I will still always kill the medic first. Headshots all the way baby.

[Eschatos]

Personally, I think this is going to be awesome.  A great way to add more variety to classes.  I hope that in time they do this for all eight other classes.  Just imagine the possibilities...

[cbre88x]

Alright, I just read the shacknews article. I don't feel so bad about the weapons now..why?

The ubersaw is definitely going to be for the offensive medic, but medics are still fairly easy to kill..especially if they stumble upon groups..and spies. It also has a slower firing speed which is effective to a point..since the bonesaw has a really long reach..ugh..

The Blutsaugher could potentially outbalance my previous point, but I think it can be evenly balanced with a smaller clip size.

The Critzcrieg seems to be the root of everyone's fear, but since it leaves the attackers defenseless, I think skillfully placed engis can easily stop this.

Just no stacking..can't be any..nada..zip zero.

[HuckBerryGee]

ubersaw doesn't seem too bad of a deal, converts damage into uber, meaning it doesn't make any damage, so the medic is still at high risk while doing this.
and the Blutsaugher, I think this is almost a no brainer, sacrifice crits for stable damage over time. we'll see how this works.

Critzcrieg seems ok since you can still kill the guy since he's not healed.

People felt all shit would go wrong with the Uber when the medic was announced, this is no difference. I have faith that it will work out as intended. It will add more variety of medic gameplay, more strategies to be used.

seems balanced to me, they all have a sacrifice for that

Caf doesn't even want to test it. I say stay optimist.

[CaffeinePowered]

Caf doesn't even want to test it. I say stay optimist.

If I hear that you can turn it off with a server variable, I wont be worried because if they suck you just turn them off. You never went through planetside, you dont know how shitty unbalanced content can utter destroy a game overnight.

[Tragic Hero]

[quote author=SanityMask link=topic=129.msg2965#msg2965 date=1208371718]

Caf doesn't even want to test it. I say stay optimist.

If I hear that you can turn it off with a server variable, I wont be worried because if they suck you just turn them off. You never went through planetside, you dont know how shitty unbalanced content can utter destroy a game overnight.
[/quote]

Oh I know though through city of heroes.  I agree I don't like what Valve is doing but be glad they are adding things instead of nerfing them.  All they did was Nerf in City of Heroes and everyones favorite classes were ruined. 

[Kor]

ubersaw doesn't seem too bad of a deal, converts damage into uber, meaning it doesn't make any damage, so the medic is still at high risk while doing this.
and the Blutsaugher, I think this is almost a no brainer, sacrifice crits for stable damage over time. we'll see how this works.

Critzcrieg seems ok since you can still kill the guy since he's not healed.

People felt all shit would go wrong with the Uber when the medic was announced, this is no difference. I have faith that it will work out as intended. It will add more variety of medic gameplay, more strategies to be used.

seems balanced to me, they all have a sacrifice for that

Caf doesn't even want to test it. I say stay optimist.

Agreed and appluaded.

I'm all over this shit, because there's isn't a new weapon listed here that isn't going to need more then half a brain to use effectively. The 'ZOMG CHARGE CRUBERS FTW' is going to get gibbed in seconds. Perspective: How many scrubs playing medic right now live long enough to actually effective use their uber? Now tossing the fact that Cruber gun shows a yellow beam, how much faster are people going to zero in on said scrub that can barely live long enough to waste an uber, let alone a cruber?

Simply put, any anxiety about the balance of these weapons is a result of overestimating the skill of the average player.

[Negate]

@kor
In the end I trust valve and like that they are finally adding stuff into the game instead of removing like they do most updates.

[copulatingduck]

Ubersaw is fucking retarded. All you need is one medic with a real uber, he can uber his other medic buddies one at a time into the foray, boom! you got two more ubers instantly, plus a kill or two.

EDIT:

If it only took 4 hits to build uber, couldn't you just pair-up with another medic and run around ubered, build your uber, then when it's ovre, uber him, let him build his up, switch again, run around ubered....

WHY GOD WHY?