Hey good job, there, Hardhat! (an end to Valve's silence)

[YM]

Taken from http://www.teamfortress.com/:

We've been pretty quiet lately, but thankfully, that's about to end. In the next few days we'll have an update out that has a couple of new features for the Engineer and Spy, and a variety of other smaller fixes.

• Teleporters will be upgradeable to level 3. As the teleporter is upgraded, the cooldown will decrease.
• Dispensers will be upgradeable to level 3. They will heal faster and generate metal faster as they are upgraded.
• Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.
• We've made a bunch of minor changes by adding particle systems and upgrading the HUD to show things like deaths by critical hits, players that are overhealed, and giving more information to medics when people are calling for them.

These are just to work on some class balance and depth issues that we've seen in the wild with these two classes, but aren't meant to replace their entire class packs. They will be getting more attention further down the road.

While that's in testing, we're off working on several things that folks have been emailing us about, so we thought it'd be good to provide some detail:

• The next class pack will be the Scout. One of the main goals we're focusing on for him has been to provide tools that make him useful in maps like Dustbowl & Goldrush. If you have any ideas for what you think would work well, post them over on the Team Fortress 2 Forum and we'll take a look.
• We are actively working on a massive XBox 360 update, which will include pretty much everything we've shipped on the PC in the last year. We'll provide you with a rough date when we have one.
• We're also working on bringing over a variety of engine improvements from Left 4 Dead into the TF2 engine, but it won't be a wholesale replacement of the engine. This means we'll get some of L4D's performance improvements, like the better multicore support, but not all of them. For example, we can't bring over some improvements without dropping support for DX8, which we're not prepared to do.

 

[Armadillo of Doom]

Very cool indeed. I play offensive engie quite a bit, so this is welcome news. Though I honestly thought Spy would be next for a class pack. The additional medic info is especially cool. Go Valve! And when are we getting our interview dammit?

 

[MrAlBobo]

more upgradable stuff...awesome

and...you fail at linking things

 

[Dox]

Teleporters will be upgradeable to level 3. As the teleporter is upgraded, the cooldown will decrease.
Dispensers will be upgradeable to level 3. They will heal faster and generate metal faster as they are upgraded.

Im guessing that may entail a nerf of low level things and make level 3 only slightly better

Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.

*giggle hysterically* Sweeet.

 

[Spike]

Same I've said on the other post:

The next class pack will be the Scout. One of the main goals we're focusing on for him has been to provide tools that make him useful in maps like Dustbowl & Goldrush. If you have any ideas for what you think would work well, post them over on the Team Fortress 2 Forum and we'll take a look.

I hope Valve don't pay attention to steam forum posts...

And:

Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.

what about taking ammo from dispensers, lockers? Isn't it the same thing?

Go Spy Go

 

[ProfFiendish]

YES, more Engie awesomeness.

...however, now I'll be increasingly fearful of spies D:

 

[Cameron:D]

Can't wait for upgradeable dispensers/teleporters

 

[A Boojum Snark]

I'm not sure I like the spy thing... downed guns are a little easy to come by, regardless of how much cloak each gun will give you. I still prefer my idea of making the mediray recharge cloaking, as it would help improve spy/medic relationships since most of the time spies don't like medics healing them, as it is an instant giveaway if seen.

Further... while the medic bit sounds ok, what I would like most is giving more info to the people CALLING for medic. There is nothing I hate more than having someone call for me and continually run away... they should get a HUD icon pointing to the nearest medic.

 

[Chris|Gramps]

Just updated Guys

 

[grazr]

Spies should only be able to recharge from dispensers and lockers imo. It's fairly overpowered considering, all they need to do is fix the damn backstab. Done.

 

[Icarus]

You only get like an extra 2 seconds for picking up medium ammo/dropped weapons. Most of your cloak will come from dispensers/cabinets, where you can remain cloaked forever (however, dispenser healbeams still give you away)

Demo stickies disappear after being shot once. Seems harsh at first, but c'mon, either they'll be using them as rockets or by the time you see them you've already lost. Besides, demos needed some form of a nerf.

This update doesn't affect the core gameplay much, but it's very, VERY nice added polish.

Btw, I'm loving the new manly dispenser

too bad the new teleport is so hard to maintain. but damn is it worth it. Instant teleports ftw

 

[ProfFiendish]

Demo stickies disappear after being shot once. Seems harsh at first, but c'mon, either they'll be using them as rockets or by the time you see them you've already lost. Besides, demos needed some form of a nerf.

If only you could shoot down rockets...

 

[The Asylum]

all they need to do is fix the damn backstab. Done.

This.

 

[Ida]

Spies shouldn't be able to refill cloak at resupply cabinets or from dispensers. The fact that they need to use ammopacks encourages them to stay out on the battlefield (it's not like Spies are the masters of turtling, but they might start doing just that if all their free cloak is right by their base), and it makes them feel ever so slightly safer in the enemy's presence. There's nothing wrong with giving Spy players a bit more sense of safety, since it often feels a bit too hard to stay sneaky and stealthy, even for good Spies (assuming I can be called a fairly good Spy).

 

[Hawk]

I really like the changes for the Engineer. But as much as I like them, I hope they don't cause any serious trouble with balance and such. Oh well, I guess I'll find out tomorrow when I play.

I was curious and decided to measure just how good the Engineer's upgrades are.

Lv1 Teleporter: 8 second recharge
Lv2 Teleporter: 4 second recharge
Lv3 Teleporter: 2 second recharge

This was just counting to myself, though... not exact timing. But wow! The cool thing is, you can upgrade the teleporter by hammering away at either the entrance or the exit... I was worried you would have to upgrade both.

With a completely filled Level 3 dispenser, you can lay down a brand new sentry gun and keep upgrading it to Level 3, and the dispenser will be just short of running out by the time you're finished. I'm sure most engineers will get to work on the sentry before any dispenser upgrades, but this will give me something to do when I have a level 3 sentry and I'm just sitting and waiting for people to come.

And good for the poor scout. I've seen very little use for him in Dustbowl/GoldRush/Badwater, and these are the maps I spend all my time on. So it's good to see that they're focusing on that.

 

[ryodoan]

With a completely filled Level 3 dispenser, you can lay down a brand new sentry gun and keep upgrading it to Level 3, and the dispenser will be just short of running out by the time you're finished. I'm sure most engineers will get to work on the sentry before any dispenser upgrades, but this will give me something to do when I have a level 3 sentry and I'm just sitting and waiting for people to come.

Hmm.... I seem to recall that previously a fully filled dispenser could do the same thing, which means they nerfed the dispenser so that the previous dispenser = level 3 dispenser....

 

[Hildreth's Will]

Sounds good.

The Spy one will be the most interesting, I have spent a lot of time hiding waiting for my cloak to return.

Engineer's dispeners will cost metal to upgrade, so it shouldn't speed up the building process too much. Also, I presume the entrances will be the ones in need of upgrading, not exits when it comes to teleporters.

 

[Psy]

The spy buff is amazing. Now you're rewarded for backstabbing people by picking up their weapon and instantly receiving extra charge for the cloak.

 

[ryodoan]

THe game seems unbalanced with the lvl 3 teles and Dispensers.

I will have to play it, but if you ask me the engineers really needed some kind of a buff. It it feels "unbalanced" now, it is just that engineers can actually do some good again.

When the game first came out engineers were awesome because nobody knew how to dislodge them, however, now all the popular engineer locations have known methods for digging the engineer out. Its gotten to the point that if I play on a standard Valve map I can count on getting maybe one sentry kill before the sentry gun is destroyed.

The way I play as an effective engineer is I have started to get creative and build my sentry guns in uncommon locations. Then, once I get a kill i move to a different spot because the person that just died has just alerted his entire team to my position.

As for teleporters, I build them all the time and NOBODY takes them. I will put the entrance right by the spawn, and tell people in chat to take it, and NOBODY takes it. They needed some kind of a boost.

For dispensors, well, I will need to play the game, but I thought they were in pretty good shape, although the healing was a bit slow.

/A proud engineer with over 95 hours of service.

 

[Icarus]

Spies shouldn't be able to refill cloak at resupply cabinets

Seriously?

This part of the update was done so spies wouldn't need a workaround. Pre-path, spies had to switch classes and back to refill their cloak. This eliminates that need.