3201

yeah…

3202

So far I’ve found one situation where the Ambassador was worth having over the traditional pistol. Heading for the intel on ctf_well, there’s a Heavy guarding it with his back to the wall. I stay up in the dark rafters, decloak, headshot him, recloak. Repeat until he has to run for health, whereupon I nab the intel.

Would have been just as easy with the Revolver, just slightly slower. 90% of the time Ambassador is just less damage, a horrible scratchy rubbish firing sound, nasty aliasing on the engraving of the barrel, a slightly silly looking arm in the 90 degree FOV, and just a horrible, feeble-feeling weapon.

Loved the images on the preview page for this, but I honestly think it’s a terrible idea for an unlock. They’re trying to offer us something they can’t: a hand-held Sniper Rifle; so they have to nerf it to the point of uselessness to compensate. Just comes off like a Steam-forum idea gone wrong.

3203

Given the big variance in unlock rates, I’m wondering if it is somehow tied to steam account or perhaps (and what I’m hoping) variable based on the server you play. For those of you that got all the unlocks in two hours, what servers were you playing on? I’ve normally play on myTF2 and No Heroes servers and I’ve not managed to unlock anything on them. However, when I couldn’t get onto one of them, I managed two unlocks in about 30 minutes (ubersaw, and backburner) on the LotusClan server, which is what gave me this idea. I’m probably wrong, but I’m also frustrated.

3204

Yeah, I’m not sure what Valve was thinking when they rolled out the Ambassador. I would have preferred a handgun that did critical damage from behind and minimal damage otherwise.

As for the unlock thing, a recent post suggests that Valve is looking at ways to let players influence the type of items that drop, which I would prefer to the random system being used now.

  • Alan
3205

I hope Valve goes back and re-does some of the unlocks based on how much playtime they get. There are quite a few that just don’t seem to be worth using outside of extremely specific situations.

3206

the mini crit on the ambassador must be bigger than that because I got killed in 1 shot as an engie from it yesterday…

3207

Took me four point-blank headshots to kill a Medic the other day.

Regarding the unlock rates: feels like it might be server related to me too. Gone about eight hours without anything, hopping from server to server. Then in one hour on our PC Gamer server tonight, I got two. In fact, almost every time I’ve got one, I’ve got another shortly after on the same server. In the long time when I wasn’t earning any, I wasn’t seeing many other people earn any either. Whereas tonight, every couple of minutes someone was getting something.

3208

I’m pretty sure it’s more damage than that, unless the minicrit is also susceptable to regular critical damage heaped on top of it.

3209

I just got the Ambassador on the PCG server. I killed a distant engineer with it in two shots, which was helpful.

Failed to do anything else useful with it, though.

3210

The Ambassador has been changed to do full crit damage on headshots.

3211

Nice! Now those Headshot the sniper/scout achievements will be easier!

3212

“The Dead Ringer now fully drains the cloak meter, even if the Spy leaves cloak early”

Bummer now I wont hear the Domination sound multiple times from killing a spy over and over as he one second spams the Dead Ringer.

-Tim

3213

The reason mmo drops are rewarding is that there is a direct link between your action (killing someone or looting) and the item you get. The brain picks up on this link fairly quickly and makes you feel good for doing that action. Thus it becomes fun to kill stuff.

When rewards just drop out of nowhere, and not as a result of actually doing anything, it doesn’t feel as good. The brain tries to link the random rewards to SOME action, but when it can’t it gives up. There’s a reason slot machines have levers/buttons you press as opposed to just accepting money and passively doling at rewards. The action->reward loop is key to giving a sense of accomplishment.

3214

But the slot machine proves an even scarier point; perform action, maybe get reward is an even more powerful motivator in humans. Maybe for the first week or so they should’ve said that it wasn’t random, there are causes but they are obscure plus some bugs further muddle the issue. How would people have reacted then? Probably with a number of spreadsheets, tracking their weapons…

3215

I’m not sure I understand why they didn’t have some in game event cause weapon drops instead of just randomly give things for no reason at all. I think a simple system would be that whenever you kill someone of a particular class then you have a chance to get an item of that class or even of the class you’re playing at the time. This just seems so obvious.

3216

I’d take it a step further and give medics a chance at items for x amount of healing since they aren’t always killing people. Kill assists might also work. either way it really needs to not just be random per time. very strange getting an item for spectating.

3217

As suggested in the comments on Pentadact’s site: Keep the system as it is now, witht he random rewards for time played, but don’t actually give the items to the player until the next time they win a round.

It would make it into a real hooray moment as several people on the team get a reward at once. It links it to your actions and doing well. But doing poorly doesn’t actually deny the weapons to you as you’ll be on a winning team eventually, and will then gain all of your stored up unlocks.

3218

More generally, they have a whole range of “point” events, so they could just weight them so that different events have a different drop chance. So, Engie teleport would have a very low chance, but so, a spy backstab event would have a higher chance. A Sniper headshot event would have a higher chance than a sniper’s regular kill event, etc.

But I think Valve’s counter would be that the random drops were put in place to counter the “rich get richer” positive feedback loop, and make the whole game, in general, more accessible to new players (in addition to eliminating class imbalance after updates). This makes a lot of sense when you consider that Valve doesn’t charge for these updates at all. So, the time spent developing each update has to be paid for by the number of new sales the updates generate. Each additional update should lower the barrier to entry (and thus expand the user base, resulting in more marginal sales).

3219

Jesus almighty I am good at the sniper. I played some dustbowl last night and was something ridiculous like 15 kills 2 deaths in one round. I ended the night with like 45 kills 25 deaths… but damn…

I haven’t played the sniper much lately, so I decided to go back to my old roots (was my favorite class) It is like muscle memory, it all came back to me. The flick shots, quick hopping in and around corners, finding the best spots. I think I killed something like 5 snipers and was only sniped once.

I really REALLY hate the people that play sniper poorly. (Not hiding the dot sight, sticking to the class even when they should be switching to another class to help out, etc…) Being a good sniper is about 50% preparation and 50% speed/accuracy. You find your spot, know your openings (where enemies can come from) keep those covered, and the rest is all skill.

Jon_Danger’s Guide to Sniperating
PROTIP 1: To kill an enemy sniper… KEEP your dot sight where he can’t see it… or he will be expecting you when he comes around the corner. If you hide your sight, half of the time they won’t even be expecting you. (unless you have killed them a couple times before) This also goes for when you are sniping any lane. If you have the dot sight out, people will often think twice before rounding the corner, or soldiers will just wildly shoot rockets.

PROTIP 2: Change your sniping spot frequently. Nothing is more easy to kill than a sniper sticking on the same spot time and again. 2Fort is a great example of this, people sitting on the roof get killed all the time, because you can be sniped from 4-5 different spots on the map up there. Know the map and all of its sniping spots well. Knowledge is key to being a good sniper. The enemy should always be surprised that they died.

PROTIP 3: Jarate is awesome, especially if you are sitting near a cap. Nothing ends a big rush of people capping the base like a huge splash of Jarate. You should never really be using the gun it replaces anyway.

PROTIP 4: Snipers should be used defensively pretty much exclusively. If you are on the offense, you should only be switching to sniper occasionally to take out targets. Spies are much more useful for doing this though. There are some maps where an offensive sniper can be good for taking out sentries, emplacements, other snipers… but those occasions are few and far between. As a sniper, the enemy should be coming to you, not the other way around.

PROTIP 5: Don’t get caught in endless sniper battles, because basically you are doing nothing to help your team. The two players sniping might as well be not playing at all. The only time they are killing others is when they have taken out the other sniper… even then they are still leery of the sniper coming back to kill them.

PROTIP 6: Leading a target. 9 times out of 10 you don’t need to lead targets in TF2, the gun fires so fast bullets pretty much hit where your dot is. The only class you ever need to lead is the scout. It is also useful to lead targets that are moving across your screen fast… but that will never score you kills that easily. You have to do something that I call “mouse tracking” move your mouse along with the guy, anticipate his movement and make the shot. Nothing is more satisfying than killing a scout mid double jump.

(I have yet to be lucky enough to unlock the huntsman or Razorback, but neither really impress me that much) Spies can be a problem, and if you are scoped, they will probably just shoot you in the head with their ambassador if you have the razorback on.

When you are defending the last cap in a few of the maps, being a sniper is just stupid. The dustbowl level where the cap is right next to the defending base… you should NEVER be a sniper… there are no good spots. It is too easy to get around you… but sometimes you will have 2-3 yokels trying to snipe getting destroyed by rockets.

(I am not trying to brag too much here, but TF2 is one of the games I actually can play well, I figured I should share a few tips for those people wanting to try the class.)

If anyone has anything else to add, let me know… I would love to get some other opinions from fellow snipers, These are just my opinions based on my experiences. I don’t know much about “leading” a target in this game, I usually don’t have to unless they are moving from side to side. PROTIP 1 is my biggest tip to being a better sniper.

3220

Don’t hate too much. Everyone has to start somewhere.