Home Editorial Balance Good joke, Valve…. where’s the punchline?

TF2-Soldier-Grordborts2

All right, Gabe. We get it. We all had a good laugh. You put us through our paces with this Grordbort thing.

“Haha, look, some sci-fi weapons! We could use those in TF2, haha!”

“Oh, they’re really in the game. Well, hopefully the Engineer gets them to round out his terrible assortment of weapons choices and revitalize him as a real cla-”

“Okay now seriously, what the fuck?

Look… as my dear readers know, I’m not one to whine when it comes to Team Fortress 2. In fact, one of the most popular articles ever on this site was my position that TF2 players are far too whiny. And for that reason, I’m not going to whine. I’m not even going to whimper. But I think I speak for half the community when I say the Soldier needs more weapons like Somalia needs more starving.

We all know Soldier is the best class by a metric mile. He flies through the air with the greatest of crits, raining down death on everything below with relative impunity. He’s almost always the star of both pub and competitive games, and the in-depth Soldier strategy required to play him makes him a deep, rewarding gameplay experience. But let’s be honest here: he doesn’t need more weapons, hats, or misc items.

Let’s put things “in perspective” as my high school “math” teacher used to say:

  • The Soldier has 21 weapons
  • The Scout has 19 weapons
  • The Engineer has 9 fucking weapons, 10 if you count the Golden Wrench

Is… is that what this is about Valve? Are the designers pissed that they poured effort into the Engineer’s 10th item, only to have it summarily removed? Because if that’s it, I sincerely apologize to the Team Fortress 2 community. I feel super bad about making Valve so angry over giving the Engineer cool toys that they just stopped doing it entirely. After all, what other explanation could there be?

Is there a reason the Engineer can’t get new weapons? New bionic arms? New buildings? Even if balancing new buildings would be impossible, why can’t the Engineer get some fun skins like the Holy Mackerel? Is it so far beneath the game’s designers to even touch the Engineer that he is forever relegated to joke status?

In the Uber Update, the Engineer got nothing. In fact, not only did he get nothing, he got laughed at by Valve, who also sought fit to give the Soldier two goddamn sets of weapons. The Engineer has remained nearly identical to his original gameplay, while the Soldier is now capable of all manner of idiocy:

  • He can deal huge AOE splash damage
  • He can inflict large hitscan damage
  • He can heal himself and his allies
  • He can give himself and his allies speed boosts
  • He can give himself and his allies critical bonuses
  • He can rocket jump and kill enemies by landing on them
  • He can set enemies on fire
  • He can juggle enemies and forestall Uber pushes
  • He can cap at 2x the normal rate
  • He can take a headshot and grow more powerful from it

The Engineer? He can only watch his constructions get blown to bits before giving up and whacking it behind a dispenser all day. If there really is an Athena, she better pull some deus ex machina pronto and rescue our best buddy builder before he blows his brains out from boredom.

 

43 replies to this post
  1. 10 if you count the saaxy.
    But yeah. ENGY GETS NOTHING ;~;
    Soldier gets everything. At least engineer has a teddy to keep him company, on the coold, looonely nights, where he gets nothing.
    But to be fair, its easy to make stuff for soldier, that don’t change his role too much. He fires goddamn rockets. There’s an array of things that fire rockets. Engy has a more complicated role, that is harder to tweak, and change up.

  2. Hey look buddy, I’m an Engineer.

    And I die a little inside every time Valve releases new weapons that are not for the Engineer, and especially those that can disable Engineer buildings. ;-;

  3. I vote for a boycott of the futuristic weapons. They are detracting, popular, and OP. Most of all I simply don’t like them. (but Shade you crafted the pistol twenty minutes after release?) Okay . . . Okay, but I traded it less then 24 hrs later, and in hindsight I should have deleted it and saved the world from what it would ravage. I don’t care if Valve nerfs them, truly I haven’t been killed that many times with them. I do hope their popularity fades. But Valve please make them less detracting. The effects of the beam are tremendous and in any other FPS where I was playing against the swarms of alien invaders sure, but when lights invade the PC monitors of 23 people and blinds them, no Valve, NO.

  4. GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS. NEW SENTRY GUN. IT WAS AT THE SAN DIEGO COMIC CON. GUYS GUYS GUTS GUYS SPY IS GETTING NEW STUFF ALONG WITH ENGY.
    /capsrage
    I have the links if anyone is interested.

      • Hurr.
        Where you at the WETA booth?
        :u
        I was. Cool stuff. Most of the grordborts stuff looked like tf2 stuff, then my friend told be about the sentry, and the killicons in the game, and showed me a photo. I saw most of the stuff with my eyeballs. EYEBALLS. The guns. The sentry I saw over the internet.

  5. The thing with the engy is, no matter how many tools you have to help you do nothing, you’re still doing nothing. If anything, automated sentries need to be removed from the game in favor of the wrangler!

    • FFFFFFFFF
      A lot of people still hate the wrangler, and are begging for a nerf. It does too well, too easily. Point at enemy spawn, hold M1, and M2, you rack up a Lot of kills. And yeah, engy is the lazyman’s class, but an automated sentry does much better, but sometimes worse than a wrangler engy.
      I say, it’s fine, just sit there and wrench if you want to be bored. Sitting. Wrenching. Wrangler makes it more fun. Besides, what if an engineer leaves his sentry to get more metal because his dispenser blew up or something?
      That sentry Is probably dead before he gets back.

      • I wasn’t trying to imply that the wrangler is perfectly balanced in its current form, only that automated sentries that are as effective as level 3s currently are (against pub teams especially) as a return for zero effort is not good design

      • Nope. Should be some more effort to the engy. A level 3 can completely halt a teams progress. With the engy doing jack squat. Just wrenching it a little. Should be more to it. There’s going to be a new sentry gun (IT FIRES FUCKING LAZORS. ITS TWO GIANT LAZORS CANNONS MOUNTED ON A STAR WARS LIKE CANNON. caps lock :/)
        Maybe valve will make it lock onto where the engy points his lazor rifle? (all the stuff was at comic con)

      • Comic con.
        Engy= new shotty/pistol. New SENTRY GUN WITH FUCKING LAZORS. SHOOP DA WHOOOOOOOOOOOP.
        Spy is getting a revolver, plus an invisiwatch?
        Or Sapper.
        It was at the booth. Don’t know stats of the stuff. I didn’t take pictures, but let me see if I can find someone who did. Kthnx.
        Again. Weta booth. They didn’t give me a free bison. All the lazor guns were mounted on the walls.

    • hurrrrrr probably should of scrolled down to see this durrrrrr.

      But a lazer shooting sentry? Where’d you get that? And these weapons will be in game? How’d you come to that conclusion?

      • Theee WEEEEEEEEETAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA REP
        said there’d be moar grockets. He also was suspiciously saying stuff that pointed to a new LAZER SENTRY and he said tf2 would turn into laser tag.
        Plus, a bunch of these weps have been sitting there doing nothing, they’d be perfect for a few of our own classes. Plus some of them look almost exactly like in game weapons. The saboteur 66 looks like a pistol.

      • Chyeah.
        Last time engy got a weapon was australian christmas I think.
        CHRISTMAS. Like 6 months ago. Or 7.
        At least he has a teddy bear to keep him company on the cold lonely nights, with only his sentry, and like 7 Weapons. 2 of which only a few people have.

      • You’d be correct, it was in Christmas when he got his latest “weapon.” I put that in quotes because it’s barely helpful, and hardly changes the engineer’s playstyle.

      • Dunno, the jag is useful, just for building sentries though.
        Dispensers, not as much, it’ll still take a while. On sentry, the thirty percent faster, saves you a whack on the sentry. And yeah, it doesn’t change much. Almost nothing.

  6. What the Engi needs now is a turret that shoots down rockets, or bionic legs that make him run really fast and kick those Sci-Fi Soldiers.

  7. “If there really is an Athena, she better pull some deus ex machina pronto and rescue our best buddy builder before he blows his brains out from boredom.”

    There’s 4 new weps.
    2 of which are for the engineer.
    One of which is a shotgun that, when used correctly, can be fired continuously.
    The other is a pistol that destroys PROJECTILES!
    Funniest part? It’s from the “Dues Ex: Human Revolution” promotional update

    Is VALVe reading top tier tactics posts or something?

    • Valve have said before that they read well-known websites to see what people are thinking/saying and seeing as this is the home of The Golden Charity, I wouldn’t be surprised.

      Hell, Valve are active in talking to server owners in large communities to help fix updates so I REALLY wouldn’t be surprised.

      • Make more TF2 articles! Who knows what you can subconsciously trick valve into doing?

      • You can have a small collection of planets rotating around your hat in this game (Unusual hat).
        I don’t think it’s THAT ridiculous compared to other things in the game.

      • They added more unusuals? Didn’t notice, I have a skin/modesque thing that disables them. Anywho, it kinda is. Giving the engi invulns to stab-n-saps and the ability to airblast projectiles in return for two of his weaker weapons is VERY op. Not to say the shotgun/ frontier justice/pistol/wrangler/widowmaker/short circuit are bad, this just way surpasses it.

      • That’s where I got it from. I landed Flamethrower, razorback, and jag as engy.
        I pushed back some ubers. Killed spies. Was good.

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