We’ve decided to take a different direction, and look at more than just Team Fortress 2. As such, we’ve moved to a bigger blog at NotGamers.net
It’s currently in it’s early form, but we’ll keep on writing about TF2, but also look at other games such as mmos, older games like Wolfenstein 3D, and anything else we want really. Please, join us over there.
Willies.
First update for the year! It’s quite a long winded one too; the majority of fixes of course dedicated to making the new TF2 Bots work smarter and better.
I sent in my first bug report too last week, and it seems others must of as well, because in this update, yet another problem with the sandman’s stun was fixed. In this case, people who were stunned were still able to run just as fast, and even shoot and quite often kill the scout who let his guard down after hitting the enemy. It was stupid and really made playing the scout less fun, so it’s good to see another fix there. Also amongst all the nerfing the scout was getting in regards to the sandman, a positive was amongst the updates today; the health drop the sandman gives the player was reduced.
Also in this update:
There were a few other tweaks, and a whole heap of bot changes too, but to avoid having this run too long, you can view the complete list of changes here.
The other day I was playing a control point map, the sort where red defends and blu attacks. I was on red playing a heavy, and trying desperately to help hold points. After a short while though, we’d been forced back to our last point, and were trying in vain to hold off the majority of the enemy forces. I was getting frustrated that no one was trying to relay information about who was coming from where, or anything like that. So I asked, “Why isn’t anyone talking?” to which I got the response, “You don’t need to when defending.”
This is where I disagree; you totally need to communicate whether you’re attacking or defending.
The only way a team can assemble against a threat is through communication. No one is psychic; I’m not going to know exactly where an enemy player is going to come through, and if you don’t tell people something along the lines of “Yo dawg, there be soldiers in our intel. Ya dig? Fo’shizzle.” or even just “soldier, intel.”, nobody else will know either.
It doesn’t matter what team you’re on; if you’re not communicating as a team, you have a bigger chance of failing.
But first, ask yourself why you’re doing it.
Many Engineers will place a dispenser right next to their sentry with the idea that they have access to unlimited metal to build the sentry up to level 3 quickly. Afterwards, the engy will probably use the dispenser when repairs are needed. I’ve always done this, but I’m starting to think now that it’s probably not the best idea. In a situation where the sentry is coming under fire without being able to return it (such as when a soldier is around the corner and the sentry can’t see him), the engineer can’t repair as fast as the soldier can damage. In situations like that it’s far more useful to go and try to distract him from shooting it, by shooting him in the face. You don’t need a dispenser for that.
You’ve built up that sentry, and now you want to go do something else. Did you think about placing a dispenser somewhere your teammates can reach it? Scenario; soldiers are defending in 2fort, stopping enemy players crossing the bridge. Suddenly, they’re out of ammo. in a normal situation they would either need to switch to the less effective shotgun, or run all the way up to spawn to get more rockets. In that time the enemy could push across, then everyone is screwed.
However, if there were say, a dispenser JUST inside the door to the base, the soldier could run in, reload, heal and run out again in just a few seconds. That 10 to 15 seconds saved is time spent defending and eventually pushing through.
Good, right?
Anyway, there are many situations where placing a dispenser for people other than you is far better than grouping it with your sentry. If you insist on keeping it for yourself though, just don’t set it up like this:
What are your thoughts on dispenser placement? Any better ideas?
Another update has come out today (thank god), which makes some nice, noticeable fixes to the game.
The big update for me was something I’d been frustrated by since they changed the Sandman to stun only when the ball is thrown from the furthest possible distance. All other times it would just initiate a temporary fleeing animation, allowing the hit player to run away. This wasn’t reflected in the achievement for killing 50 enemies while stunned, and as such made this achievement almost impossible to do unless farming it. It’s not possible to stun the player from that distance then run to them in time to kill them.
I came online today set to write a big ranting post about this, but upon checking the last update, I’ve seen that Valve have “fixed several Scout achievements that were broken by the new type of bat stun”. I assume this means if I kill a fleeing enemy, it counts now. Thank you Valve.
Also in today’s update:
Any thoughts on the new update? It’s all fairly simple stuff, but still.
Valve have released some information on the TF Bots today on the official blog. Apart from working on the big old bad Soldier/Demoman update, they had something else up their sleeve. Valve have been able to program TF Bots, artificial Team Fortress 2 players, to play a quite decent game of KOTH. Seeing this when I checked my Reader, I decided to play a game with myself and a few of my artificial friends.
Me, Myself and DeadHead
Apart from a few bugs, which will be detailed later, these bots sure did know how to game. To put it in perspective, these bots were not programed to be ultra elite players. You’d expect the same skills from ANY new player. Some of the bugs that the bots displayed definitely reminded you of your first time, “HOW DO I CAPS POINT?”
In the first game I tried a one on one. I placed myself on BLU and the bot on RED, I was a Scout at the time and the RED bot was a Demoman. After about 30 seconds, at the most, the bot killed me. I didn’t know the feelings that were inside of me when I saw the notification, I was happy, disgusted, thrilled and angry all at the same time. It was great to see how these bots worked. Then I got my revenge and blew the Demoman up with a few rockets to the face.
Next I tried a small team, my frame rate progressively started to get worse. However, for researching purposes I switched to spectator. It was interesting ins seeing how the bots worked with each other. The Engineerrs built and upgraded their buildings and the other players defended or tried attacking the point, with the objective of also destroying the Engineers.
I switched to the BLU team and went Spy. I wanted to see how the bots worked. Unfortunately, my created server did not have the updated items so I was left without Cloak and Dagger. My Spy skills are appalling to say the least without the cloak and dagger. However, the bots notice when you seem to be an obvious spy. I disguised myself and ran across the field from the BLU side, a bot Pyro flamed me and a fellow Heavy finished me off. I noticed that a couple of Engineers were creating a sentry nest that was covering the point, so I switched to RED. The second attempt was to sap that Engineer nest with two sentries being worked on, along with a dispenser. I bumped into one of the opposing Demoman yet I wasn’t being fired at. I hurried past the Engineer and sapped his dispenser, I was disguised as an Engineer at the time. Once his building was sapped, his objective had definitely moved from upgrading and protecting the sentry to getting the sapper off the dispenser, I sapped the sentry. I still did not make it out alive, I was killed by any BLU surrounding that particular area however the bot managed to protect his buildings.
Germans, Germans, Germans. The Medic was next to test. I noticed that any bot Medic will not heal a Spy or another Medic. As a Spy (this happened when I was trying to attack the Sentry nest) I called for the Medic. The bot just stood there, healing the Soldier rather than healing me. After my failed attempt of trying to sap the Engineer nest, I switched to BLU, kicked all players and set up 3 bots, on on my team BLU and two on RED, a two on two match. I spawned as a Medic first, however, apparently BATTLE MEDIC wasn’t listed in this bots preferred criteria. I switched to Soldier and the bot begun healing me straight away. I headed out onto the point where two REDs were capturing it. I blew up a Pyro and by this time, the Medic had half his Übercharge filled. One of the bot Pyros snuck up behind me and managed to kill me. the Medic ran away back to the spawn. Clever bot. Once I spawned again, he was 3 quaters away from reaching 100%, once we headed to the point again, the two Pyros emerged again. The Medic filled his charge and managed to deploy it as soon as we had both Pyros shooting at us (it was long range), and I fired at them. We managed to kill both Pyros when the charge stopped.
By this point I was grinning like a maniac. The bots have pros and cons, and I am taking into consideration that they are still in beta, but it is impressive to see how they worked on an individual basis and as a team. Even though my computer got raped by the framerates being spewed out when I added 20 bots to the server, it was well worth the lag.
PROS:
- Good for practicing on a moving target.
- The bots work well as a team.
- The Medics aim to heal rather than battle.
- A team of bots will gather around a surrounding capture point.
- Most bots tend to stick with at least another bot.
- Pyros will use the airblast to deflect rockets back at you.
- Each bot comes with it’s own name, which is cute.
- A bots class will switch if a bots class has not been determined via console.
CONS:
- Detecting Spies, then again that could be a fault on my own behalf- The Medics being class determined while healing.
- Übercharge deployment methods, if you are being shot at with a Medic at 100% charge, he will deploy it.
- Sticking to a large group, rather than pairing off or wandering away on an individual basis.
The testing is still being done, I may even provide a follow up post as to what the other classes work like, and hopefully I can fix my framerate problem. However I do advise people to test out the bots, they work like normal average AI. Don’t be afraid to try it out, bots WILL NOT spawn camp you, which is either a good thing or bad thing, depending which end of the stick you are on.
For more details visit here.
Yesterday the inevitable bug fix following the major update came out, and included one particularly funny fix:
Now, I don’t know how they accidently enabled the spy to being able to do this, but it turns out that with the War Update, spies were actually able to build a dispenser, by either typing “build 0” into console, or using the engineer’s direct bind. Doing so would cause the spy to lose his sapper until he either died or went to a medical cabinet.
And of course, here’s the obligatory video of spies doing what they do best; exploiting.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
The Soldier and Demoman update is now released, severs are being spammed with the two classes (the same turn out on the day the war was announced, nearly everyone on your team will either be a Solider or Demoman),all those neat little achivements can now be found in your own Soldier section are now YOURS! Rejoice and punch a communist right in the family jewels because YOUR DAY IS HERE.
Note that I am unable to do a full summary of the weapons and their usefulness in battle – the dropping system hasn’t been particularly kind on my end with distributing the Soldier’s new weapons, I kept getting Axtinguishers at one point – so once I obtain all items, I may do a re-review. This is a review I of what I have seen so far. 
This is a quite interesting weapon, considering that it stops Soldier’s from rocket spamming a particular area this weapons allows you to deal out critical hits when direct head on to a target. This weapon has been designed for players who have took their time learning to shoot direct body hit kills rather than killing their opponent via splash damage (the damage taken from a rocket, sticky bomb or pipe bomb exploding near you) from the rocket. Even though the Direct Hit lacks splash damage radius by 70%, the 25% more destructive force when the rocket connects with a target with the speed rate of the rocket being deployed raised up by 80% definitely compensates for what it may seem to lack. People can bitch and whine about how much of a useless weapon it may be, the intentions of what Valve is directing to the community beg to differ. That can of coursel be left for another post at another time, right now, we’re talking about the Soldier and his brand spanking new weapons.
Not only that it is an epic pick axe of pure American patriotic iron, it also comes with a brand new (and quite funny) kill taunt. The equalizer will replace your melee weapon that is now currently a THE shovel. The Equalizer was one of the items I was able to obtain with that mass weapon drop glitch system. Equipping it, I ran out and tested it with the confrontations with RED scum. The Equalizer does well on the field of battle, the hit damage of the pick axe becomes more powerful the more you are hit. The only downside to this weapon is that Medics cannot heal you while you are using the Equalizer – to avoid any confusion, you can still have the Equalizer equipped in your Soldier’s loadout. Once you are using it to kill a poor innocent Scout with it, you cannot be healed by any Medic until you have switched to another weapon. The taunt is quite interesting to, once you press G, your Soldier will throw away his pick axe, pluck a granade from his belt undoing the pin, punch his fist in the air and EXPLODE. Nothing like a bunch of suicidal Soldier’s running across the field to wake you up in the morning.
Not, it’s not gay to tote around a backpack carrying a little trumpet, it may be considered quite masculine by some birds. The Buff Banner now makes Soldier yet another good contributor to the team, by buffing surrounding team mates once the Soldier blows his own horn, so to speak. Medic’s over in the corner, eating German chocolate cake – “First it vas zhe Sandvich, now zhis?!” - and crying like a little schoolgirl. I have luckily been able to have seen the Buff Banner in action. While I was on Goldrush, I was ironically playing a Medic who was healing a Soldier equipped with the buff banner. While fending off the BLUs at their spawn, my Soldier blew into the Buff Banner, everyone around us lit up, the soldier had a golden flag on top of his head and a mass amount of mini-criticals was being passed around for 14 seconds. It is a good weapon to have, however if you are known for getting into fights n’ stuff, it’s best to keep your awesome American paws on that shotgun. Your team won’t need half the majority of soldier’s with a buff banner equipped, one to two is enough.
The Soldier’s screaming eagle’s taunt has now been replace with the 21 gun salute.
For a better detailed description of the new weapons, vist here folks.
Today as mentioned earlier, the war is over. With the end came the major update for the Soldier and Demoman classes, plus the introduction of new maps and the crafting system. But we’ll discuss them in later posts. For now, lets focus on the minor changes, and all the bugs that have inevitably come with it.
Minor notes:
As happens, there are always bugs that frustrate people to no end. This is a continuing list, which we’ll update as we find more/they’re fixed.
Well after a week of people furiously spamming soldier and demoman, we have a winner. The update is live now, with all the soldier and demoman weapons, new achievements and glorious crafting system now accessible. But what about that mysterious bonus weapon? Who won?
Well, as I’d hoped; the soldier. What did he get? Boots.
You heard me.
The Gunboots are a secondary slot item, meaning that if you wish to use them, you have to say goodbye to the shotgun/bugle. What do they do? They minimize rocket jump damage. I can see SOME use in that, but honestly, I’d rather have the shotgun. Wouldn’t it of been better to create a whole new slot for feet, or at least made this into a hat?
Either way, I’m actually not that impressed by this. What do you guys think though? Would you sacrifice the slot for the ability not to run for a medkit when you skip up to the third floor?
uberedsniper
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