Weapon stat ideas! (because steam workshop ain't enough!)

[Ælement]

Y'all should really document the design philosophy behind your ideas. Would make them seem less "i just pulled this out me arse"ey

 

[Shogun]

Y'all should really document the design philosophy behind your ideas. Would make them seem less "i just pulled this out me arse"ey

That's true, I don't know if you specifically talking to me because I posted last, but the idea behind the gun was to make the Heavy have a more aggressive playstyle that didn't rely so much on ammo.

But you're definitely right, a lot of people make weapon stats for thing that a just "+10% damage, -25% health" Ok, that's great but what does that do to improve on the core basics of the class.

Looking at some of the post in this thread, there's a scout melee weapon that's stats are "+35% movement speed, -25 max hp" Even if this isn't passive, you're asking to move a bit faster (which can be done with simply the BFB) and in exchange you get instagibbed by rockets and nades.

Scout melees in general are pretty bad if they aren't passive seeing that the scout hardly ever gets a chance to use his melee.

EDIT:

I also want to mention this because it has been suggested countless times in numerous forums:

Le Saboteur
(Spy) Sapper​

- Sapper converts the building after 6 seconds of 'sapping'; allowing the Spy's team to benefit from it. Does not disable the building's function while it is being sapped.​

This is a really really REALLY terrible idea because it simply promotes griefing and nothing else. A red engineer will build a sentry gun in front of Red's spawn while his friend will go spy on Blu. The the spy will sap the sentry and the red engineer will effectively team kill the rest of the game.

 

[Doktor Richter]

Ok, this thread got me thinking about what really makes a good TF2 weapon. I thought about it for a little while, and decided that a good weapon has upsides and downsides that enable and encourage you to adopt a new playstyle with that weapon. There's a lot more to designing a weapon than just slapping some neat upsides or a new gameplay style on it, and then tacking on some random downsides that seem to "nerf" it enough to make it not-OP. We all joke about how Valve throws around "No random crits" as an arbitrary downside on all sorts of weapons, but slapping something like "20% slower shooting speed" or "-10% damage" without thinking about what kind of playstyle such a downside would encourage, is just as arbitrary and irresponsible. You shouldn't choose your downsides with the goal of making your weapon "not OP", you should choose them to reinforce the playstyle that your upsides enable. This is the ultimate conclusion I came to:

Upsides should enable you to play with a new playstyle that was impossible or non-viable with another weapon. Downsides should encourage you to stick with this playstyle rather than treat the weapon as a slightly changed stock weapon.

Let's look at a few examples of good weapons that follow this philosophy.

The direct hit's main upsides are more damage and faster projectile speed. With the stock rockets, it's hard to score a direct hit, since you have to lead your target with a (comparatively) slow moving projectile, which he can see coming and dodge with moderate reaction time. The faster moving rockets enable you to score a direct hit much more easily, and that is obviously the playstyle this weapon encourages. Now look at the main downside: reduced splash radius. This makes it almost impossible to kill someone with splash damage, and so it encourages you to go for the direct-hit playstyle. Even though the upsides and downsides are quite different, they both work towards the same playstyle: shooting for direct hits.

Now let's look at l'etranger. It gives you more cloak time, and an opportunity to gain back cloak with damage. This obviously enables you to spend more time invisible and sneaking around, and avoiding encounters where you otherwise might have to pull out your revolver. The downside is a damage reduction, which makes perfect sense. By taking away some of your ability to hold your own in a fight, l'etranger encourages you to use your extra invisibility to avoid fights.

Lastly, the good old degreaser. This one is obvious; the super fast weapon switch time enables you to take advantage of more opportunities to use your secondary and melee, since you can pull them out quickly to finish off your opponent. However, the degreaser does less damage and has a weaker afterburn, which encourages you to use your secondary weapons at opportune times since your flamethrower has less damage output than it otherwise would. It also encourages the playstyle of finishing off enemies with your other weapons since you can't count as strongly on your afterburn to finish off enemies.

I agree very strongly with Dr. Element here. If you're designing a weapon, don't just think of an arbitrary combination of cool upsides and nerfy downsides. Your upsides and downsides should work together to both enable and encourage a particular playstyle that is both different from the regular stock playstyle and is, most importantly, fun.

 

[Auwi]

I got something

The Boulder
level something Minigun
Defensive buff while deployed (-35% damage taken and protection from crits)
+30% more accurate
-40% firing speed
-50% primary ammo
Cannot deploy in midair
Cannot move while deployed

 

[Shogun]

I really like the idea of a defensive buff while deployed, that's clever

 

[HQDefault]

Alright, we already have a couple gimmicky mediguns, so here's my idea:

The Whirlybird
Medic Secondary
+50% faster Ubercharge rate
+heal target gains small speed buff
+50% longer uber duration
*On ubercharge, grants large speed boost, along with 25% chance for bullets & projectiles to miss

If you want to know why I chose this idea, this medigun is designed to bring your whole team to the front lines quickly and effectively. It's sort of like the conch backpack for medic.

 

[Zed]

Design philosophy.

The Kneecapitator
Level 37 Shotgun
On hit: slows target for 1 second
+40% more accurate
-33% damage penalty
-25% firing rate
(Pyro exclusive)

Slowdown. Pyro. You know the deal.

The Prognosis
Level 24 Needle Gun
When your most recent heal target dies, you gain revenge crits for every assist
-25% damage penalty
No random critical hits

The Medic as a class is very vulnerable on his own. This gives him a last resort if his pocket dies. 3 or so crits per assist.

The Perfect Crime
Level 10 PDA
Buildings do not drop metal upon destruction

Fairly self explanatory. When your stuff is destroyed, enemies and teammates can no longer use the dropped metal.

The Soviet Stallion
Level 82 Mini Gun
Knockback on target and shooter
+15% speed while deployed
+25% faster spin-up time
-25% firing rate
-25% maximum ammo

What if Heavy had a really rudimentary form of advanced mobility?

 

[iiboharz]

The Home Run
Level 32 Scattergun
While carrying intelligence: 20% faster move speed
10% slower move speed on wearer
Cannot air/double jump while carrying intelligence

 

[HQDefault]

The Quick Draw Engineer pistol
On draw: obtain three seconds of full crits
+25% faster firing speed
-25% clip size
-15% reload speed
Honor-Bound: Cannot holster this weapon until a kill is made

NOOOOOHOHO
Do NOT put honorbound on an engineer weapon, especially if it isn't the wrench. It prevents the engineer from effectively doing his job.

 

[wareya]

Bad Manners
* Scattergun replacement
- four clips per magazine
+ 35% faster reloading rate

Heritage
* Rocketlauncher replacement
+ No falloff
+ Does not reload
- No rampup (even minicrits)
* Does not apply to full crits
- Rockets move at 75% normal speed
- Only holds 10 rockets at once
- Can only get ammo from map pickups
- Rockets glow white

 

[radarhead]

Gettin' experimental

The Riot Shield Heavy Primary
While active: -90% damage taken, -25% move speed
Damage taken increases "Riot" gauge
When the riot bar is full, click to activate and deploy a shield that provides a 75% defensive buff to nearby teammates
+25% charge rate for the medic healing you

ALTERNITAVELY

Damage taken increases "Riot" gauge
When the riot bar is full, right click to activate and deploy a shield that provides a 75% defensive buff to nearby teammates
-50% damage taken
-15% move speed
+25% charge rate for the medic healing you

 

[Digaag Wa Riz]

This is a funny one I had thought of long ago:

Saboteur's Satchel Charge Spy Sapper

-Does not disable buildings
-Does not do damage over time
*Silent, but still alerts the builder
-50% health
*After 5 seconds, the sapper will detonate, dealing damage to enemy players and 300% damage to enemy buildings

 

[radarhead]

NOOOOOHOHO
Do NOT put honorbound on an engineer weapon, especially if it isn't the wrench. It prevents the engineer from effectively doing his job.

The idea was to make a powerful weapon that could quickly finish off a more powerful enemyy, like a far off dodging demoman threatening your sentry, with the downside that if you miss, you can't build for a while.

 

[Corvatile]

The Sixth Sense
Spy Revolver
Enemies hit are 'tagged' and are visible through walls, much like payload carts. Only one enemy can be tagged at a time. Allows the Spy to track enemy movements and ambush/escape them.
-25% Clip Size
-75% Damage


The Deciever's Decoy
Spy Cloak
Upon cloaking, a fake, identical Spy appears to run in the direction the Spy was pointing, look around and pretend to shoot. To teammates, however, it looks like a training target on wheels. If the decoy takes enough damage, it shatters, making it obviously a decoy to the enemy.
-25% Cloak Time
User can only activate cloak at full charge
User takes 150% damage whilst cloaked

The Afterburner
Flamethrower
+30% range
Afterburn heals 3 hp per tick
Extinguishing teammates heals you
-25 max health on wearer


The Hot Shot
Pyro Shotgun
Stores crits for each reflect kill.
-33% clip size


The Second Opinion
Medic Melee
If your patient dies while you have full uber, you recieve crits for 5 seconds but are also marked for death.


The Russian Roulette
Heavy Shotgun
1 in 6 shots is guaranteed critical
On Crit Miss: Shoot yourself
Only reloads once all shots are fired
No random crititcal hits




Other random ideas:

A Flamethrower which reduces damage taken from airblasted projectiles.

A passive Engineer secondary which causes all damage you deal to be directly used to upgrade your buildings.

An Engineer shotgun with a firing rate which increases each time you hit an enemy but resets if you miss. Obviously the spread would have to be changed so you can't just take potshots at people from miles away.


A Scattergun which can't fire when you're airborne.

 

[Ælement]

The idea was to make a powerful weapon that could quickly finish off a more powerful enemyy, like a far off dodging demoman threatening your sentry, with the downside that if you miss, you can't build for a while.

Problem is, 3 seconds is enough crit time for a pistol to kill an elephant

 

[Pocket]

Here are a few I came up with ages ago; no idea if they'd really be any good.

The Bouncing Bonnie (Demoman primary)

• Fires projectiles coated in superball-style rubber coating
• Projectiles have far more rebound momentum but do less damage due to the coating dampening their explosions
• Projectiles will always explode on contact with enemies or buildings
• Launcher holds one bomb at a time, which reload by simply popping a new one in the top — shooting and reloading four bombs takes less time than the stock launcher but with more time in between

This started out as an idea for a weapon that would be more effective for firing around corners in tight spaces like the 2fort basement. As such it's probably a useless idea but I still really like the name.

The Dead Man's Switch (Demoman secondary)

• Upon the player's death, any leftover bombs detonate with full strength
• Bombs take a full second to arm and cannot be detonated in mid-air at all
• Shooting more than 8 bombs causes the oldest existing bomb to disappear harmlessly rather than detonate

I designed this as a "newb weapon" out of frustration with trying to lay traps only to die before they could be of any use. I think it would work pretty well for players who prefer laying traps over trying to use stickies in direct combat.

Mutual Healing (medic primary)

• Removes needle gun entirely, applies effect to whatever medigun you have
• Healing teammates heals the medic at the same rate, up to 200% overheal
• Medic's health does not regenerate at all

Designed to incentivize constantly keeping teammates healed and discourage direct confrontation with enemies. Originally conceived as a medigun, I changed it to a needlegun replacement when I realized that the regen debuff would be less of a downside if you had the Blutsauger and couldn't come up with a way to reconcile that. But I think taking away the medic's ranged weapon works better as a downside than anything else I could have come up with anyway.

 

[HQDefault]

The Deciever's Decoy
Spy Cloak
Upon cloaking, a fake, identical Spy appears to run in the direction the Spy was pointing, look around and pretend to shoot. To teammates, however, it looks like a training target on wheels. If the decoy takes enough damage, it shatters, making it obviously a decoy to the enemy.
-25% Cloak Time
User can only activate cloak at full charge
User takes 150% damage whilst cloaked

While this could work, it would take some serious getting used to, because a lot of people use their "emergency cloaks" while facing their opponent, to the point where they do it naturally. This habit would be as hard to break as trying not to hold W while rocket jumping! (Seriously, can never get used to that)

And if you're going to the extent to try and fool the enemy, just use the dead ringer. People won't fall for a decoy that moves on rails, never moves the mouse, and holds down fire like a crazed gunman.

 

[Shogun]

Here are a few I came up with ages ago; no idea if they'd really be any good.

The Bouncing Bonnie (Demoman primary)

• Fires projectiles coated in superball-style rubber coating
• Projectiles have far more rebound momentum but do less damage due to the coating dampening their explosions
• Projectiles will always explode on contact with enemies or buildings
• Launcher holds one bomb at a time, which reload by simply popping a new one in the top — shooting and reloading four bombs takes less time than the stock launcher but with more time in between

This started out as an idea for a weapon that would be more effective for firing around corners in tight spaces like the 2fort basement. As such it's probably a useless idea but I still really like the name.

I like this idea, but I think it would be more fun if there was some sort of damage bonus for bouncing the bombs off of things, like "bombs bounced off of surfaces minicrit enemies". Lower damage and explosive weapons tend not to pair well, and right now the main attraction of the gun only takes away from the weapon's power. Cool idea though.

 

[ProselyteCanti]

The Supply Runner
Engineer secondary
Mini-Dispenser that functions like a backpack

• + 10 health every five seconds

• 50% chance of blocking backstab (will have to be repaired)

• cannot be upgraded

• generates ammo at 10 per second, holding a maximum of 100

• - 20% move speed on wearer

• wearer cannot be overcharged by medic

• dispenser is taken off of pda

 

[BigBros]

Overloader
Sapper
Buildings destroyed while sapped damage enemies
Only one sapper at once
Put this on a building, and when the building explodes, it hurts its owner and anyone/anything else nearby.

Sorry to go so far back into the thread, but I read through and found this weapon here.

It seems to be a weapon from the depths of griefville.