A better dead ringer

[light hedge]

Imo i think tf2c would be better off without a dead ringerlike weapon, the niche use of faking your death is hardly something worth trading for on demand cloaking and also i don't think nobody but dead ringer spies really miss it at all even without kunai

[vocal trench]

We are better off without it.
Plain and simple

[flat merlin]

yeah… dead ringer is a no-no in terms of on demand cloak

[surreal shard]

i dont remember the exact stats of the live dead ringer is this just the same but with different numbers

[median hill]

im fairly sure this is the same but with different numbers

[surreal shard]

then yeah the numbers arent the only bad thing about the dead ringer its also the fact that its just not fun to have to worry about if every spy you kill is actually dead or not

its true that spy is about disrupting the enemy team but thats not a fun way to do it for anyone involved

and its very hard to make a fake death mechanic be convincing so it rarely gets used for its intended purpose

[grave dagger]

The stats on the dead ringer are similar however I did make a few changes where it uses less cloak and this and uses less cloak to use

This is a suggestion but the only reason why I'm suggesting it is because all the other classes have far more mobility and rapid fire weapons (unless you're soldier or demo) plus the spy has no means of putting out fires to survive longer when every single person on the map begins to spy check

Plus all the other classes has three to four different changeable items in the spy only has two

[nimble steeple]

Still a 'Deus Ex Mashina' but weapon, off to gulag

[gritty cloak]

People like killing spies and them actually being dead

Its something I consistently hear people celebrate lol

[surreal shard]

spy is meant to be a stealth class not another power class like soldier or scout

of course the spy is not gonna be that powerful if he gets caught since he's meant to rely on backstabs and not get into too many direct fights

[novel obsidian]

my guy you are missing the point of the spy

[gritty cloak]

There is no situation where most of the enemy team is spychecking

[nimble steeple]

Theoretically its happens in competitive, but idk

[gritty cloak]

Ehh, not really

[astral glacier]

i would stop playing this mod if it had any type of deadringer in it.

[grave dagger]

I understand that people don't like the dead ringer but that doesn't stop custom weapons services giving it a try

[tranquil kindle]

Dead Ringer is in purgatory, here's why

1. Its unreliable for the Spy, Spy needs his cloak to sneak into the backlines, and everyone knows when you're using it
2. Everyone and their mother finds it annoying
3. Nobody knows where to start with balancing this weapon
4. When one problem is fixed another pops up
   Its a weapon that is far too hard to balance for both sides to find it as an at least OK weapon, in the end, Dead Ringer serves but one purpose... memes.

we must look towards different ways to cloak

[worn current]

Dead ringer? In my tf2 Classic? No thank you.

[worn current]

I don’t think custom weapons is the bar you want to set for Quality control.

[autumn valley]

My main problem with the dead ringer is that it’s never used for its intended purpose (fooling the enemy with spy tech) and instead exclusively used as an escape tool. To even start balancing something like this it would be such a punishing to use item that it would be useless.

[astral glacier]

true

[autumn valley]

I feel a lot of people first equip the dead ringer for the fake dying, but end up keeping it equipped for the escape and damage resistance utility.

And I have to wonder… even in a perfect world where we get it balanced and people use it for the dying tech, is that right for the game? I’ve never truly liked that I can never tell for sure that I killed a spy. A counter point to this is that you can never trust your teammates either, and being a spy is inherently sowing distrust. But… I don’t know. On paper “fake dying” and “disguising as a teammate” have the same result, but in practice they foster entirely different mentalities.

I think what really makes the dead ringer annoying (ignoring the aforementioned obvious design flaws of resistances and speedy getaways) is that you can never verify your suspicions with the dead ringer even if the fluff was removed. Don’t trust a corner? Or a teammate? Do a check. Fire into the corner. You can’t really do that with the dead ringer because it would inherently ruin the plot since damage often comes in streams.

[astral glacier]

not to mention the people who use it

[autumn valley]

Yeah it’s very much a crutch in normal gameplay.

The only way I think something like the DR would even be worth testing out (in LiveTF2 or custom weapon servers) is if it did something like locking you in place after dying so you really have to sell your death acting and hope the enemy is too lazy to check, or have on demand cloak, but whenever you use it it launches a “dummy” that can easily be verified as fake with a quick inspect or understanding how corpse ragdolls work. But even these ideas would either be useless or exploitable, and wouldn’t address the core issue that faking dying just makes the game less fun for fighting spies. I don’t really want a fake death mechanic.

[surreal shard]

i think most people agree it feels much better not having to worry about the people you killed actually being alive

[flat merlin]

what if you could only fake your death while your health is below 50% but you can only cloak manually if above 50%?