The Scout Update

**DISCLAIMER**
This article was written before the War update and the changes to the Sandman and has NOT been changed to reflect this. Sorry. Maybe in the follow-up article I have planned.

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Everyone that plays TF2 has had/will have that moment when their favourite class updates is announced. There is a brief moment of elation that is quickly replaced with the dread of everyone on the server playing your favourite class which in turn is replaced by the terror that comes with the announcement of the unlocks themselves. Never has this been truer then with the scout update for me. This article will focus on the scout update as a whole, while it will mention the unlocks, I want the main focus to be on why I personally think that this particular update failed in spectacular style!

Now I’d like to move onto the topic at hand: The Scout Update or, as I nicknamed it, How NOT To Update A Class.

Day 1 - Sandman....Melee weapons are usually my favourite part of new updates, big fan on getting up close and sticking the bat on people as some of you know. As for the sandman not a great start as a melee weapon in its own right and it means I loose my double jump, but a new mechanic setting a new tone for TF2; sure stun shouldn’t be in an FPS, but we don’t know how it will be implemented and Valve are the masters of picking an idea out of left-field and making it work right? RIGHT?

Day 2 - User made maps arena_watchtower and cp_junction. I have nothing against custom maps (I’m a bit of a fan to be honest), so I didn’t really have too much of a problem with this as generally in these updates user made maps are bought forward. Ok, so I won’t play watchtower that much not being a big arena fan and junction is a bit of a pig of a map, but hey, Valve are rewarding the community for their home made content and who am I to take that away from them.

Day 3 - Bonk drink and achievements. Now, I know that the Steam forums come up with a surprising amount of the new Unlocks (Sandvich, Natascha and Sandman [1]) but they really did a sterling job cocking this one up. The request from Valve was to implement something that would make the scout viable on maps like Goldrush and Dustbowl (chokey spamfests I think they mean by this Wink). Bonk! was the proposed solution and is basically a mini, self activated, mainly useless uber. Except you can’t shoot. Or cap points. Or take intel. And you make a lot of noise as you go zooming past. And then you’re reduced to soldier(ish) speed for 10 seconds afterwards. About 3 seconds after this was announced I saw had a psychic moment and saw exactly what was going to happen: drink Bonk!, run past entire team, have entire team follow you until Bonk! wears off, die horribly. Not terribly impressed. Again, I like to try and keep an open mind to new features and as we didn’t know how it would be implemented you can’t really moan too much about it, but what was said in the post didn’t fill me with excitement and make me want to spend all night getting achievements to unlock it.
As for the achievements, well, they are funny, but without the descriptions (revealed on Day 5 if I remember rightly), they don’t really mean much. Not only were we given Bonk! and the achievements today, a possible new game mode was teased that had 2 payload carts on a Badlands/water style map. Nice move, need moar teasing pl0x Valve.

Day 4 - cp_egypt and cp_fastlane update. Sorry, what? ANOTHER custom map? And a fix? Is that a proper use of a day of a class update? NO! Day 2 was map day, add this stuff then and give me something worth while on day 4 (Meet the Medic/Pyro/Spy would’ve been killer, shit, I’d take "Meet the Bonk!" if it was done in a similar way to the "Meet the Sandvich" video). Most disappointing day yet and I can remember feeling totally deflated at having stayed up until 3am to be given this as part of an update.

Day 5 - Force-a-Nature (FaN). I have to admit, I really liked the sound of the FaN (I nearly bought the T-Shirt!). This was also the first time we had the awesome faux advert style which would later be used for the Spyper update. Can’t really knock this day at all, good job Valve, have some internetz. The actual weapon though, that’s another story; don’t worry, I won’t go into it (this time).

Day 6 - Release day.......................Hmmmm.....sorry....I think I passed out from rage, too much blood flowing out of the corners of my eyes.

If using one day of the update to release a fix for a very average map is bad then using the last day to allow the community to vote for which order the unlocks should come in is like burning down a children’s hospital, panting your face with the ashes and then going door to door to the grieving families chasing them around to Yakety Sax. Please Valve, don’t ask the community to do things that have this much of an impact on the game ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU HAVE SET ACHIEVMENTS THAT YOU CAN ONLY GET WITH THE NEW WEAPONS! I can very specifically remember that quite a lot of the achievements needed Bonk! and the Sandman, but thanks to the public vote, they were the last two items to be released. Nice one Steam Forums, thanks for making an arduous task that bit more annoying. The community as a whole is stupid. Stupid people make bad choices and there was nothing that pleased me about the decision to open this release order to a public forum. Nothing was wrong with the melee/secondary/primary order so if it isn’t broken DON’T ASK THE PEOPLE ON THE STEAM FORUMS FOR IDEAS HOW TO CHANGE IT!

ARGH!

Seriously, I love Valve, the Half Life series is my favourite video game series of all time, Portal is amazing and I’ve played TF2 more then any other game I’ve ever owned, but this just seemed like a really cack-handed, cheap way to fill an update day. I know this is going to sound like "spoiled brat syndrome" but seriously, look at the previous update: the heavy, the first one to use the 6-day release cycle and do a quick comparison. Looking at the Heavy update you can see what should have happened. One day for each of the new weapons, one day for the new game mode, AN OFFICIALLY MADE VALVE MAP, a new "Meet the....." video (OK it was for the Sandvich, but its still pretty badass) and community map being "supported" [2]. So here we have new official content in the shape of arena mode and pl_badwater. New "custom" maps in the shape of Steel. 3 new weapons and a "Meet the....." video. Now for the scout update. No new Valve content, double the amount of custom maps, no "Meet the........" video, no new gametype (although one was teased) and instead of all the good stuff, we get fixes for the stuff released in the Heavy Update!
Now I hear you ask (or is that the sound of heads banging into desks, I’m not sure) "what does this matter? Why are you so bothered about no new offical maps and no new videos?" Well, the problem is we have been treated to so much cool new stuff in all the previous updates that when it came to this particular update I personal felt short changed. Again, probably spoilt brat syndrome but still, if some long lost relative gives you a chocolate bar every three months for a year and a half and then one day when you’re expecting a chocolate bar they give you a carrot covered in AIDs, the disappointment will be apparent.

Anyway, time to focus-fire and sum up my thoughts on the Scout update as a hole (intended). It seems to me that Valve caved into community pressure to squeeze out a turd of an update, so that instead of the praise that they should have rightly been showered with you get uppity little buggers sitting in the dark writing articles about how much it sucked (Hi!). I know that I was probably one of the people that moaned about how long the update took to come out (it was first announced on 10th December in this post and was actually released on 17 February, 3 months near enough), but seriously and I think I speak for the vast majority of players when I say this but I would much rather have an update that contained all the excitement of the recent Spy/Sniper update and have waited another few months then have some half baked, somewhat silly ideas as new weapons and a shit-ton of custom maps and bug fixes, but as we all know, the community shouts, Valve responds. More on this below.

The maps, I admit, I was very disappointed with. Junction is an absolute nightmare to play, poorly balanced for all classes, very defence favoured and not an easy one to co-ordinate an attack on. The same can be said for Egypt, although it is slightly better for the lighter classes as it’s a bit more open, but still, hardly a classic. Watchtower I only played whilst farming and have had very little to do with it since then, so if anyone wants to add anything about it, do it in the comments below. One of the things I always look forward to (and haven’t got so far) is a new official Valve map using one of the styles they used for some of the new arena maps. A nice 5-point alpine style map or a sawmill style payload map that is made by Valve would be epic in my opinion. I know that there are a couple of custom maps that use this style, but as good as the community map makers are, nothing compares to the level of detail or general all around balance of a good ol’ fashioned Valve made map (dustbowl doesn’t count ok? ).

The other point that I was particularly sour about is the supposed input from the TF2 Steam forums. Now I’m sure we all know what happens in the Steam forums, trolls and griefers high up on their soapboxes suggesting ideas for the most overpowered new weapons and ideas for the 10th class all of which have the title "PLEASE VALVE, LISTEN, THIS IS A GREAT NEW IDEA" [3]. I’m sure there are some sane people on there (the moderators, saints that they are, probably make up most of this number) but the general view of the TF2 Steam forum is that if you give them a nicely balanced game with good support, regular updates and new, unique features from the get-go, they will moan that all classes are OP, bitch that updates take too long to come out, bitch that every update that comes out creates new bugs (see other articles on this site about this topic) and then flame any questions/serious discussion points with comments like "learn2guns" "ITT:n00b gets pwnd by W+M1" or "pl0x nerf stickies" so I don’t think asking these people to suggest ideas about key gameplay elements is the greatest move on Valves part. Still, its nice to get the community involved eh? [4]

One of Valves greatest attributes (and at the same time their biggest shortcoming) is trying to please all types of players which is, frankly, unrealistic and totally unachievable. There’s no point in making unlocks balanced for competitive play as they will be over/under powered in public play and vice versa. In the same way, listening to the Steam Forums isn’t a good way base for acquiring information about your user group as they are generally not an indicative cross section of the TF2 community. The only reason that I mention this is when one sector of the community has a larger input then the other, the game breaks for the other sector. I would much rather forgo the charade of having the Steam forums, sorry "Community" decide what they want as unlocks and have something created by Valve themselves, for the game that they created, to fulfil the criteria they require for the class in question. It has become apparent that in the last few updates the focus has been changed, from trying to get more people to play the class or offer viable sidegrades to existing weapons/items, to offering items that completely change the playstyle of the class receiving the new update to the point of encroaching on other classes remits.

Another point I think worth mentioning at this juncture (and is one I have been banging on about quite a bit recently) is them messing with the rock/paper/scissors relationship between the other classes. This update is the perfect example for that; before now, sentry guns were one of the scouts "hard counters" (by this I mean something that 99% of the time will kill you, in a similar way to spies being a snipers hard counter, and snipers being a heavies hard counter). With the Bonk! drink, they have taken away the scouts vulnerability to sentry guns. Admittedly they can’t attack them in any way, but before now I have seen scouts team up with a demoman and whilst the scout is distracting the sentry, the demoman can take the gun down in relative ease and comfort (the engineers team-mates intervening notwithstanding). In doing this you completely change the relationship between the scout and the engineer, adding another method to an already long list of ways to take out a sentry gun. The same goes for the Sandman; before now a scout wouldn’t dream of running head on into a heavy/medic combo, but with the addition of the sandman and its stun mechanic this is now a viable strategy and one that frequently pays dividends; ending in either a uber that is poped early to save the medic (or patients) life or a dead medic and a seriously pissed off heavy!

Further tinkering with these roles in future updates may well lead to certain classes being underplayed or even made redundant. "Why do we need a medic when we have the scout that can use Bonk! to distract the sentry whilst the demoman spams it and the heavy to throw out Sandviches to the wounded?" It may sound ridiculous, but the number of times I’ve jumped on a server and found the lack of medic, solly, heavy and pyro (fundamental classes generally) but found teams with 4 scouts, 2 snipers and 2 spies instead, show that things aren’t looking good for the less glamorous classes, or at least the ones that received their updates early in the process and the attraction to them has died down a bit.

Now, as for the actual unlocks and their uses and applications, that’s for another article, but I will say right now I’m not a fan and leave you with this closing thought: be careful what you wish for, someone on the Steam forums might suggest it and then we’ll all be doomed!