I know it's the beta. I know what a beta is for.
Yet there's no point in testing these unlocks because just one minute of thinking already reveals their mechanics are terribly flawed. None of them have any potential, address any issues a class had or offer an alternate playstyle.
Milkgun is absolutely useless and no tweaking of numbers can make a syringe gun that applies Mad Milk useful without making the Blutsauger useless.
Bonesaw showing enemy health is stupid and will make some Medics switch away from their Ubersaw which is bad because it allowed for awesome clutch plays and gave them a reason to melee. This Bonesaw and the Vitasaw make Medic boring again (while Vitasaw also screws up all Uber timing etc).
Pocketlauncher is broken and overpowered. Again, no tweaking of numbers can make the mechanic play well.
Pockgun is another upgrade that again screws with timing (when Medic heals another target for a second) and increased burst damage on an already strong weapon is only frustrating and not warranted in any way.
Both of these together tie the Medic to his pocket Soldier even more than already was the case and I can already see the "omg you wasted shotgun damage" "omg you wasted my crits" complaints coming when you get killed without humping your pocket.
Splitting the Equalizer makes some sense but the speedqualizer is what 99% of Soldiers will use regardless. All it does is make their melee useless at dealing damage again, which is okay though all things considered, but once you realize this there's no need to split anything. Just give the EQ -40% damage or whatever and done, no additional items_game entries needed. We really don't need more.
Sniper Kukri is just random stats. 81 damage at half health or lower instead of the stock 65, 49 damage when above. Not only does it barely make a difference (other than you can't kill Spies in two melee hits anymore and even then all Snipers use the Bushwacka to just make it 1 hit) but the mechanic makes no sense on Snipers. Much like the Bushwacka's.
The Sniper Rifle has very messy stats and once again screws with all sense of timing Snipers and their enemies learned over the past 3 years. That said it'd be an upgrade to the normal rifle as good Snipers only go for quick headshots anyway. If anything it will make Snipers use this 24/7 and stock rifle users will be labelled noobs, making it more difficult and frustrating to play well again.
The big problem is this: These unlocks are very comparable to existing ones and don't address any issues or needs. The Flare Gun was a great unlock because it was nothing like the Shotgun and still worked fine as a Pyro Secondary. Since Mannocomy however it seems that all new unlocks are just an already existing unlock with a tiny random twist that most of the time blurs the class definitions tremendously (Mad Milk, Black Box, Concheror for healing etc).
What TF2 needed was never more unlocks. The TF2 Team has to grow a spine and remove items now instead if they want to really improve TF2's gameplay again. Even then it's already months too late for this.
However if they only want to sell more random items and keep people playing in this little Skinner box, fine. Add more random items, make the once refined gameplay even more messy. If they want to go in this direction, all problems concerning balance and gameplay mechanics are instantly solved since clearly they don't want to appeal to hardcore TF2 (or FPS) players anymore anyway and more casual players that don't play seriously are bound to like anything that's added considering their lack of insight. Yeah they'll have fun because they play for fun, but players who had fun because they played seriously, trying to complete goals and play as a team, are having less and less.
Unlocks can be banned for competitive play but it's no solution and the more items like this are added, the fewer people will play seriously in pubs and thinking they will go for comp play because the unlocks are flawed is very optimistic...
