#Spy's secondary slot overhaul general discussion

85 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

gentle mica
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Spy's secondary slot is very unique in the way that it's a gadget that only has one use, and only against one class on enemy team. As a result it's the same in balance as Darwin's Danger Shield or Razorback in live TF2, which isn't a good and fair design in general. Here is the topic for discussion of how to overhaul it and fix it being so onesided, and my personal suggestions of such overhaul:

[SAPPER]:

  • Make sapper affect other game mechanics outside of engineer's buildings. For example, add an alternative attack which would throw sapper on the ground and create a radius in which certain things would be disrupted. Possible disruption effects:
    • Stickybombs and mines explode with long delay arter pressing detonation key (1.5-2 seconds);
    • Dynamite Pack takes 1.5-2 more times longer to explode;
    • Cyclops EMPs fizzle out instead of exploding while in the radius;
    • Buildings operate slower (lower sentry RoF and turn speed, longer teleporter cooldown, lower dispenser heal and resupply rate, lower jump pad jump height);
    • Shock Therapy restores half or third of the normal health on hit;
    • Spy cloak drains 33-50% faster when inside the effect radius;
    • Enemy sappers deal 33% less damage to buildings;
    • Sniper rifle charges up 2 times longer.
  • Cooldown time for throwing: 15-20 seconds.
  • Sapper is killed by 2 wrench hits in thrown mode.

[TRANQUALIZER]:

  • Put tranqualizer gun outside of the primary slot, since it is overshadowed by revolver in almost any situations. Put it either in sapper slot as an unlock, or into it's own gadget slot. Changes for tranq gun:
    • Shooting tranq doesn't drop disguise;
    • Tranq effect no longer applies melee crits to enemies;
    • Reduce tranq ammo reserve to 4 to prevent mindless spamming;
    • Tranq shots disable building for 0.75-1 second;
    • Reload speed reduced by 20-25%.

This way sapper would have some uses outside of engineer engagement, and tranq would be less underused due to revolver being better.

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CLARIFICATION: This suggestion is NOT about new weapons, it is about overhauling how stock sapper and Tranqualizer work and what they do. New weapons for sapper or tranq sidegrades are not the scope of this suggestion.

All numbers are arbitrary, and any other ideas and critique are very appreciated!

Added balance tweaks (ran out of space):

  • Sapper radius should probably be invisible to enemies.
  • Sapper should have proper physics but probably has to not have any glowing effects, perhaps subtle electrical team-colored sparks would be ideal to identify it.
  • If tranq gun is put inside sapper slot, it should disable buildings to make killing the engineer not a suicide task, but buildings should still be repairable when disabled by tranq shot. If it is put into it's own slot this is unnecesary.
  • Same goes for reload speed penalty - it probably isn't needed if tranq isn't doing anything to buildings.
  • Maybe sniper rifle should not be chargable at all when inside sapper radius for balance, due to sniper being relatively safe from any danger when in position.
  • Sapper should stay operational on the ground indefinitely until it is killed by engineer or replaced by another thrown sapper.
distant forge
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you should also think of how a spy plays

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they don't really play around the frontlines to where they'd need to disable dynamite packs

gentle mica
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It's not really an encouragement to play around frontline, it's more of a new use case where you can find sapper actually doing something

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Maybe you're chilling near the engie nest and restoring cloak and see dynamite pack flying in

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At least it can do something now

distant forge
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maybe but that's pretty situational

gentle mica
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It is

distant forge
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sapping stickies is interesting though

gentle mica
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And its intentional

distant forge
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but ig if it can sap stickies why not dynamite too for consistency

gentle mica
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Yep

distant forge
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I was gonna say let him "sap" ammo and health packs but he already hogs ammo pretty well with disguises and cloak

gentle mica
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I don't think that parts of map itself should be sappable, since it's for both teams to use. Plus all saps should be not hard prevention of that mechanic to be used by enemy. Notice how nothing i proposed completely shuts down any mechanic in the game

distant forge
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I think stickies being sapped is fine

gentle mica
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And yeah, spy is an ammo humper already

distant forge
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you could already destroy them with the revolver

fervent olive
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I like the idea. Feels like Engineer Update, but for Spy instead

echo fractal
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the sapper and darwins dangershield/ razorback aren't really comparable

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spy got the sapper so he doesn't get completely ruined by the presence of a sentry

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it exists to ballance out spys interaction against the engineer without actually giving spy an advantige in the fight when you does his job and backstab the engineer it would be unfair for the engineer to still kill him via the sentry

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the dangershield is just a fuck you pyro passive thats not fair nor fun

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about the tranq i think it just needs a complete rework as i can't see it being a sapper replacement nor an extra slot

thick hedge
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spy doesnt have to run directly into a sentry. he can turn invisible. just dont walk into sentries

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its not unfair for scout to be countered by sentries and tf2 team did not see it necessary to give scout a way to deal with them

echo fractal
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the idea of a more generally supportive sapper is interresting tho as a new weapon. i don't think stock needs any change

thick hedge
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im a big fan of the sapper slot being used as a gadget slot for a bunch of weird supportive items and stuff like that and the sapper being reworked with a support altfire

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like ok we have the idea of the sapper altfire being this radius effect thing, that opens the door to a new sapper that is specced entirely into doing stuff like that with the downside that its like the red tape recorder or something. less good at destroying buildings but more powerful support capabilities

gentle mica
gentle mica
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TF2C already goes other way than live TF2, going for less unlocks overall but every one of them being a much more unique and broadly useful weapon. I don't think that adding too much new stuff would be good

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And as for tranq, moving it out of primary slot would in itself be the rework, since the gun fits spy very well, it just gets crushed by revolver reliability.

gentle mica
echo fractal
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if engineer didn't exist spy would be completely ballanced without it

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so i don't really see the point of buffing it

gentle mica
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I don't think that spy is completely fine if we exclude his engineer interaction out of the picture.

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Plus it's not that big of a buff for spy himself, it's more about giving him more stuff he can do outside of trying to kill enemy medic and dying every time or going in circles and killing snipers one after another

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And i don't think that numbers that i suggested would make it THAT good. It's not the same sap effect as for buildings when you use sapper as usual, it's much more subtle (yet hopefully still noticable) effect that would benefit his team when he uses it at the right time.

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Makes him able to work with his team from behind enemy likes when he has occasion to do so but can't go for direct kills

limpid skiff
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the sapper exists because spy needs a way to deal with buildings, most of the times when youre playing spy youre gonna have to deal with engineers so if you make a sapper replacement that doesnt hinder buildings then youre barely gonna get to use it because youre gonna need a sapper in the majority of situations

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the sapper doesnt exist just to counter engineer for no reason, its spy's secondary because he needs it to be able to play around engineers. you should think of it as less of a weapon and more of an ability for the spy

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its not like the darwins or razorback where the sniper replaces part of his loadout to gain a complete counter to a class that he was originally intended to struggle against, the spy has always been able to counter sentries as a core aspect of his design

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its true that you dont get to use the sapper when there are no engineers, but unlike those other class counter weapons, it doesnt outright hinder you if you dont get to use it because it takes away ur weapon, its not intrusive

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the sapper slot should be used for sappers not for unrelated gadgets that cant deal with buildings

echo fractal
echo fractal
gentle mica
# limpid skiff the sapper slot should be used for sappers not for unrelated gadgets that cant d...

Over the course of now 3-day long argument with 1001nuggets i came closer to agreeing with this, but this particular suggestion implies a sapper overhaul, not replacement. I'm not talking about new weapon, i'm talking about the sapper itself. The tranqualizer gun, in my opinion, is still the perfect candidate to go into sapper slot as an alternative, but perhaps only with some anti-sentry capacity built into it.

The point of suggestion is to not make sapper work less against engineer and more against everything else, it's more to make spy gameplay less onesided. If currently he either trying to get a valuable stab (and to not die sometimes), or put down an engineer nest (and to not die sometimes), then with this overhaul spy would be able to, when opportunity presents itself, play around his own team a bit more.

Sometimes you just cannot get into the enemy territory no matter what. Maybe too much spam is going through the only choke point on the map per second, maybe a crazy pyro is hunting you or etc., in this situations spy becomes pretty much useless. Yet a lot of people still try playing spy at these moments, and don't do anything useful for the team, just taking up the player slots. It's why 2 bottom scoring spies is such an iconic sight in TF2.

With this overhaul spy would be able to use his gadgets (sapper and tranq, either only one of them or both) to properly help his team in the fight without suiciding into the enemy, even from his team's side of the frontline. You may not need to use sapper in this throwable mode if you are in generally good spy situation, but if you aren't - this may be very useful when nothing else works, but you still want to remain spy, maybe hoping for better opportunity.

gentle mica
gentle mica
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And also the concept of item entirely relying and sometimes entirely unusable because of one in-game factor is just a bad design concept. No other class have this in TF2C (and only sniper and pyro have those in live TF2) and i think it could be replaced safely with more broadly useful item that would still retain it's use against that one original factor.

proven bough
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There should be a bomb sapper replacement option

gentle mica
proven bough
proven bough
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Are the devs open to the idea of giving the spy a sabotage gadget? I’ve seen lots of suggestions but they’ve all been shut down by others who say that the sapper shouldn’t have a direct upgrade when the enemy team has no engineers, and a direct downgrade when there is one. Why not give it a try though?

gentle mica
# proven bough Are the devs open to the idea of giving the spy a sabotage gadget? I’ve seen lot...

I don't know what dev team thinks of it, i really hope trotim or someone else would respond here and clear things out for us. And as suggestions being shutdown, it's usually because some people are too used to how sapper behaves now and don't want to choose away their sentry killing tool, some people are afraid of what spy can become if his sapper slot was a bit less one sided (i think it wont become anything bad for the game), and some people are just not very fond of changing core mechanics, even if they are kinda shitty.

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Plus this suggestion aims to overhaul the sapper itself, without giving away sapper's building killing ability

tough canyon
# thick hedge im a big fan of the sapper slot being used as a gadget slot for a bunch of weird...

That's the way I feel it should be. I came up with an idea to have another weapon in the slot be a smoke bomb that blocked the line of sight of enemies and enemy sentries. It provides other utility and still protects you and your team from the sentry, but is worse at dealing with them by itself since the Engi can now repair or move it. Though if we style new 'gadget slot' weapons like this they should probably have some passive downside just so it isn't a direct upgrade when buildings aren't present.

dim shell
# gentle mica I don't know what dev team thinks of it, i really hope trotim or someone else wo...

Out of any slot, the sapper is gonna be the trickiest to decide on. Historically weve avoided class-counter weapons, but the sapper is the only class counter item on stock. On one hand, there's a number of really cool spy concepts that do not fit into any other slots for the spy. On the other hand, replacing the sapper could not only make an item an automatic pic for players, but also could severely hurt spys ability to operate behind enemy lines.

I would ask people to not shut down spy item ideas out of any principal for how the slot should be used. To put it simply, we do not have a decision set in stone for what to put in this slot, if we decide to even use this slot at all. I dont think any specific conclusions can be drawn on what's the best move until something is actually tested.

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Its also not something I'd set in stone until we have an item that actually works for it. We could decide "sapper will be used for other gadgets", but that could pigeon-hold us if all of those gadget prototypes don't end up working.

gentle mica
# dim shell Out of any slot, the sapper is gonna be the trickiest to decide on. Historically...

I'm really happy to hear that you're still considering some additions or changes for spy secondary tools. But what about not replacing the sapper but adding more utility to it? Maybe then making a more specialized or differently-oriented replacement for overhauled stock sapper won't be as hard and would impose less potential ways of hurting the spy's toolkit overall with any addition?

shell tiger
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tbh i feel like adding another function to the sapper is going to be the smoothest way to make the slot usable for more than the sapper

bronze sky
bronze sky
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Having an extra tool at all that isn't just the revolver/trabq would be nice

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Could be on the same level as like airblast where it makes the class better overall

thick hedge
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absolutely

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i think people are too caught up on maintaining tf2 orthodoxy

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like yeah in our world (the dark timeline) valve never did anything with this fourth spy slot except for sappers. that doesnt have to be the case for tf2c

orchid heath
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I like to think of each slot having a theme. For example: demo primary is always self defence. What should all sappers do?

distant forge
orchid heath
thick hedge
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smoke bombs, grappling hooks, pepper spray, tranquilizer darts 👀 , secret cameras, decoys, weird new sappers, caltrops ..

worldly mist
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Since tf2c has no kunai and diamondback I think it would be a great inclusion to the kit without being stupidly op

bronze sky
worldly mist
light kettle
thick hedge
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FREE THE SPY FROM DOGMATIC BUILDING-ORIENTED THOUGHT

light kettle
# thick hedge this is a stupid and limited mindset

i don't make the bloody rules, this is just the reason why nobody else can hold the Sapper in Randomizer. Slot Classification.

another reason why i hate that the Revolver is classes as a primary in this mod, because now Spy has a Fucking Rocket Launcher.

light kettle