- Force-A-Nature & Flamethrower air blast knockback effects no longer work on disguised spies
Oh well. The FAN made a great spy checker while it lasted.
If you air blast a player on the other team who’s on fire, does it both knock them back and put out the flame? Or does it just knock them back?
It only knocks them back. You can’t put out the other team’s fires. In fact the Jarate crit bonus applies to fire, which makes no sense at all.
Actually I was reading on the Steam forums that air blast now puts out disguised enemy spies. I’d assume Jarate will as well but I’m not sure.
There are going to be a lot of confused pyros, including me.
Interesting. They removed the movement speed penalty for the Razorback. I don’t have one, so is that a big deal? It seems like that was in place to balance it, so maybe they figured giving up SMG / Jarate is balance enough now?
The movement speed reduction wasn’t that big enough deal for me, but giving up Jarate sure was.
so, how approachable is this game for new players? I played a bit at launch, but I’m curious with all these updates that apparently imprved the game tremendously. Can I even go back without getting tarred and feathered off the Internet by the ensuing cries of experienced players?
You could hear some shit, much like any internet game, but TF2 has new players in it all the time with all of the free weekends and deals and so on.
You’ll be fine. Just get in there and push little cart.
The TF2 crowd is pretty welcoming to new players (depending on the server), and there’s a wide range of skill levels most of the time. I’ve never seen anybody be verbally abused unless they were actively griefing, or for instance, achievement farming in a non-farming server.
I give the same advice every time somebody asks me this question (so I apologize if other people are tired of hearing it), but if you’re unsure about getting back into the game, play as a medic:
- Medics are vital to a successful team, but few people want to play them, so there’s always a shortage. As a result, everybody is happy to see you.
- The medi-gun locks onto a target, so you don’t have to aim that precisely, and you can focus on the action around you.
- As a medic it’s your medic-buddy’s job to protect you, so people don’t blame you if you die.
- If you pick a good medic-buddy, he’ll know the way around the map, so just by following him you’ll start learning the map. It’s a great way to learn maps without worrying about getting lost or wasting time going the wrong way.
The only class I get nervous about playing is Engineer, since if you do something stupid (put turret in terrible place, for instance) everybody can see how stupid you were. But there’s usually enough going on that people are too busy to hassle other players.
Also, because it’s such a different game with each class, there are “newbies” all the time, even for experienced players. If you really feel bad, just say “I’m new to X, I usually play Y”, where Y is the most populated class on your team.
There is a setting in the advanced options where you can just click once to have the heal beam stay on, rather than having to hold down the button. Do this.
Strato
3415
And see if it works for you. I tried it, but I had to go back. But yeah, the medic is the best class to begin with.
A few other things if you go in as medic.
You can overheal people to 150% of their health.
As you heal people, you’ll see a little meter in the bottom right gradually filling up. When it hits 100%, you’ll have what they call an ubercharge ready. You can easily get this to 100% before the start of the game waiting for the timer to tick down by doing said overhealing. When you right click, you’ll release the ubercharge which makes you, and the person who has your healing beam invulnerable for 8 seconds. For your first time, just right click as you exit spawn (or the other team leaves theirs) and hopefully your medic buddy will react accordingly.
Next most important thing is you can be killed very easily. If it looks like trouble, then run away. You’re of more value alive than dead.
Rimbo
3416
In a sense I’m kinda glad I got the Xbox 360 version of this game and not the PC version. Because if I had the PC version, I would do nothing other than play this game constantly.
This is really one of the most important things to learn with any class, and it took me quite a while to catch onto this as a medic. It’s pretty easy to charge in with your buddy and get killed holding onto the bitter end; The trick is to hold back a little and let the heroes be heroes while you actually make a real difference. Changing your first priority to staying alive makes for a much more interesting game than waiting on the respawn timer between suicide runs.
Adree
3418
Experienced players? Screw em, real men use the Heavy with only the boxing gloves equipped.
I often go melee-heavy, but I could never use the boxing gloves. How could you possibly live with yourself when an opportunity for a taunt-kill gets away because you had the wrong weapon?
I find that the lack of a taunt kill is made up for by the fact that you can make annoying bell sounds at will and irritate both teams :)
