[QUOTE=Fhux;31143738]old updates all gave us all new ways to play.
[...]
Nowadays it's mostly something along the lines of
+x% damage
-y% rate of fire
or
+x% movement speed
-y% health
It's not an all new road to play, just a tiny little trail that leads to nowhere interesting.
It's simple changes that don't do anything noteable.[/QUOTE]The stats have fairly large effects in game design terms.
Give specific examples where you don't see notable effects in playstyle.
[QUOTE=Allstone;31148929]The stats have fairly large effects in game design terms.
Give specific examples where you don't see notable effects in playstyle.[/QUOTE]
Winger.
Candy Cane.
Liberty Launcher.
Scotsman's Skullcutter.
Natascha.
Tomislav.
Family Business.
Warrior's Spirit.
Eviction Notice.
Southern Hospitality.
Jag.
Blutsauger.
Overdose.
Solemn Vow.
Bazaar Bargain.
Tribalman's Shiv.
Shahanshah.
Not all of these weapons are [i]bad[/i], per se, and some are stretches more than others. But that's the best I can do.
The Winger gives you a rather impressive increase in damage that may be compounded if you exploit situations where you do not experience damage falloff. It also increases ammo efficiency on the weapon you can most quickly run out of ammo for.
The Candy Cane halves the amount of shots it takes to die from one class you will be fighting commonly and one class that is normally vulnerable to you at your optimal ranges. They are also the classes with splash damage. In return, you regain a quarter of your health, extinguish and stop bleeding every kill at your optimal ranges. You lose a fairly large chunk of your resilience in return for vastly increased ability to survive skirmishing.
The Liberty Launcher takes away a quarter of the maximum loaded ammo from a class whose main vulnerability is reload time. It also takes away a third of the ammo which you might be able to use while divebombing. It dramatically increases your effective fighting range, one of your few weaknesses.
The Scotsman's Skullcutter makes you move incredibly slowly on a class who has difficulty in mid-close skirmishing (due to lack of hitscan weapons). It, in return, turns a number of situations into much faster kills when demoknighting.
Natascha is currently fairly over-nerfed and could use more tweaking. It decreases the mobility of enemies who are in a situation where the best option is generally retreat or otherwise exploiting their mobilty advantage.
The Tomislav vastly decreases the heavy's susceptibility to ambush, one of his major weaknesses. Seeing how powerful this weapon was on pub servers pre-nerf is an easy way to see that it clearly makes a difference.
The Family Business significantly increases the ability for the heavy to engage in an extended fight without having to spin up - an incredibly useful boon to heavies using either of the two miniguns which dramatically increase spinup times.
The Warrior's Spirit does have a relatively minor effect on gameplay. It is, however, the melee slot on the slowest class.
The Eviction Notice: see above. It is quite fun to use though.
The Southern Hospitality gives you the ability to almost cancel a spy's cloak's effectiveness in return for dying a lot faster to the class that can easily damage you while you're behind your buildings.
The Jag's effect doesn't currently work correctly, but yes, it does have a fairly minimal effect on gameplay either way.
The Blutsauger greatly reduces your regeneration in between fights in exchange for making it ridiculously powerful as long as you are hitting with it. The syringe guns have some of the highest fire rates of any weapon in the game.
The Overdose gives you a speed boost. The speed difference between the demoman and the soldier is 13% of base. The Overdose gives between 0 to 10% of base speed. For reference, try out the Pyro's Polycount pack upside and compare it to the pyro's normal speed - you'll find the difference in speed is highly significant.
The Solemn Vow allows you to see enemy health and ubercharge. The utility for this is amazing if you are co-ordinating with team-mates.
The Bazaar Bargain is fairly hard to use for little reward and a relatively small effect on gameplay. It somewhat increases your ability to kill overhealed targets.
The Tribalman's Shiv gives you the ability to negate the spy's cloak. It significantly reduces your ability to actually land a kill, however, leaving you fairly vulnerable if you are not using the smg.
The Shahanshah gives you a fair increase in killing power in multiple situations where it would be useful. It does have a relatively small gameplay effect though, yes.
A proper difference in play style is the crossbow/needlegun, the kritz/medigun, rifle/bow, sandvich/shotgun, such.
[QUOTE=WhipperSnapper;31151571]A proper difference in play style is the crossbow/needlegun, the kritz/medigun, rifle/bow, sandvich/shotgun, such.[/QUOTE]I wasn't arguing that the weapons were massive playstyle changes - I was arguing they were significant ones.
Valve isn't doing singular class updates because thats such a lack of content compared to new updates. The Uber Update was themed around Medic, gave the Medic the quick-fix which changes play style, they made all the Medic's weapons, and still added community content. And just before this update was the Replay update which brought a great new feature and a contest that awarded people with a new weapon.
valve y u so lazy
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