I think the tf2 dev's just remembered they had a blog

[n00b1n8R]

The first update since the 10th of December:

That's what I'm talking about! (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2193) January 27, 2009 - Robin Walker


We're just about done with the Scout pack, and our design and coding has already moved on to the next pack. The weapons and achievements are all nailed down, and we just have to finish up the final artwork on them. We like to do the final art as late as possible to ensure that we don't waste any work, which turned out to be a good decision this time around due to the large number of unlockables we tried out as alternatives to the Scattergun. Balancing his replacement weapon has been very tricky due to large threat difference of the Scout between skilled and non-skilled hands. More on that soon.

In the meantime, here's a few answers to some questions we get regularly:

"When's the next update going to be out?"




We've got an update that should be out tomorrow with a bunch of bug & exploit fixes. Later this week we hope to have another update out that changes the way we store your unlockable items. You shouldn't notice much difference, other than if you play on multiple computers we'll now propagate your item choices. You can think of that update as the one that moves your inventory into the Steam Cloud. Once that's out of the way, we'll be able to ship the Scout pack.


"Why did you change the minigun's muzzle flash away from the original one shown in Meet the Heavy (http://www.tf2.com/heavy.htm)?"



That muzzle flash was one of the earliest effects that we put in the game and it was done before our new particle system was in place. As we moved forward with the effects we decided that such a cartoony hard-edged look to the effects didn't help the readability of the overall game. If the muzzle flashes and all the effects had well defined edges, they would visually compete with the rest of the TF2 world and the players. So it was decided that the effects should be much softer than the rest of the game so as to not overwhelm an already visually dense game.


"Why should I use Natascha? And doesn't she only do 66% damage, not 75%?"



You're correct, there was a bug that caused her to lose 0.75 damage off each individual bullet she fired. She spits out so many bullets that a tiny amount like that added up to a significant difference. Tomorrow's update will fix that, and also includes a slight boost to the amount of slowdown she delivers. Our internal playtesters have been finding her much more useful, especially on the large number of Scouts running around with new toys.


"Why is the Sniper such a fake Australian? Aren't several members of the TF2 team Australian?"



Yes, it's true, the Sniper is a fairly unconvincing Australian. Most of his lines make him sound more English than Australian, and the voice actor is clearly an English actor faking an Australian accent. As for why we didn't fight to make him more authentic, we though it was appropriate that he was about as convincing an Australian as the Demoman is a Scotsman, or the Medic a German.



And now you know. :eng101:

Really pleased about Natasha!!

[Bodzilla]

:win:

so what natascha does less damage now? or she does the damage she was supposed to do?
and holly shit i just refered to the weapon as a person O__o

BONK!

[CN3089]

There was a bug in the math Valve used to calculate damage for Natascha (it's the same reason small ammo boxes give 41 metal instead of 50). It'll do .75 more damage per bullet now that they've fixed it.

~hth~

[Sel]

Whose going to only play engie and build sentries for the first few days of the scout update?

[JunkfoodMan]

This sucks, I already main scout D=

[n00b1n8R]

Whose going to only play engie and build sentries for the first few days of the scout update?
And who's going to sap these engy nubs? :pervert:

[Sel]

And who's going to sap these engy nubs? :pervert:

no one

because everyone will be too busy playing scout :pervert:

[n00b1n8R]

The history of the scout's design:
http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/_01_28_09/scout_3.jpg (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2195)

:v:

[JunkfoodMan]

fabulous!

[n00b1n8R]

Take your lumps like a man, Private Twinkle Toes! (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2221) February 4, 2009 - Greg Cherlin


On Tuesday we shipped an update that added a bunch of features / bugfixes / balancing tweaks that came out of the community's feedback. In particular, it made some changes to the underlying TF damage system, and as part of that, it modified the way critical hits are determined. We thought it might be interesting to dig a little into the change, and hopefully give you some insight into our thinking.


First, a quick primer on how the critical hit system works. Each player's chance of successfully rolling for a critical hit depends on two factors:



A base chance, which is fixed per weapon (2% for all non-melee weapons, 15% for melee)
An additional bonus, which is based on the amount of damage you've done to enemies in the last 20 seconds. This bonus linearly scales with damage up to a maximum of 10%.


There are two paradigms used for when to roll, and what happens on success:



Rapid-fire weapons roll for critical hits once per second, instead of every shot. If they roll a crit, the next 2 seconds worth of their fire are marked as critical hits.
Non-rapid fire weapons roll for critical hits each time you fire, and if they roll a crit, only that shot is marked as a critical hit.
The sniper rifle and spy knife only score critical hits on headshots and backstabs respectively. They never roll for critical hits.


We had a few things we wanted to change with the old system:



Reduce the overall number of critical hits occurring in the game.
Make critical hits more skill / performance based.


Here are the actual changes we made, taken from the release notes:



Base critical hit chance is now 2% (was 5%)
Bonus range based on damage done changed from 0%-15% to 0%-10
Damage range required for bonus changed from 0-1600 to 0-800


Lets dig a little deeper into these. First, the base critical hit chance was reduced from 5% to 2%. This means that if you haven't done any damage to an enemy, your crit chance is now just under half what it was previously. Secondly, the size of the bonus range was reduced by a third, but the amount of damage needed to earn that bonus was halved. To understand the effect of that, it's useful to graph it:


http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/critHitChanceGraph.jpg

As you can see, the new crit chance is slightly lower across the board, which we wanted. More importantly though, is that the rate at which the crit chance increases based on the amount of recent damage you've done. We like to think of that recent damage total as a rough measure of your performance.

In thinking about the change we wanted to make to critical hits, we decided that there was a point on the graph of particular interest to us, and that was the point at which your critical hit chance was as much a result of your performance as it was the base chance. If you look at at (A) on the old line, you'll see that point isn't reached until you've done 550 recent damage, a feat that occurs about as often as our backstab code works correctly. That point is reached at (B) on the new line, around the point where you've done 175 recent damage. This means that if you've just singlehandedly killed an enemy Demoman/Soldier/Pyro/Heavy, your next 20 seconds worth of crit chances are already more a result of that kill than the base chance. As a result, if you're a highly skilled player, you're going to fire significantly more critical hits than those around you. And remember, if you've just killed 2 or 3 enemies, now's the time to push!



Suck it up MAGGOTS!!

[Bodzilla]

WHAT OF DEMO's?

[n00b1n8R]

Get him out in the open you pussy.
He's a fucking drunk after all, it's not difficult.

No but seriously, crying about demomen is old.

[Bodzilla]

it will never be done and dusted until he lies broken at our feet.

death to demo's.

also talk to CN and innergoat how i demo spammed my way to victory in a match where we where getting steam rolled.

[JunkfoodMan]

Lower the damage done to players by stickies next. Give the demo a secondary, take away one of his primaries, lower crit chance on bases and rockets.
Get to it, valve.

[Bodzilla]

thats rediculous junk food man.

i just dont want him to have so much fucking ammo.

seriously stickies fucking hurt, he gets 8 of them and then backs his shit up with another 4 pipe bombs.

fuck that.

if you need a single demo man to take out 3 sentry's in an uber then clearly your team doesnt deserve to win.