Team Fortress 2 betatesting going on...

[Purplecat]

People have been seen with a game "Team Fortress 2 beta", mostly players within competition circles and Robin Walker himself. There's a large thread on steam forums speculating what they're doing in this update.

Personally I think it's intresting that Valve tries to caters to the more competitive players of TF2. I trust them enough that they won't ruin the game for more "casual" players.

[Ayeaka]

Even so, changes in the past made for competitive players have...upset things more than a little for casual players.

Here's hoping a healthy balance is kept. :/

[Stormcaller3801]

I don't know that they could really do too much to eliminate what I think of as casual play, at least on the TFP servers. This may be due to my ideas about casual play- meaning, those times when everyone decides to just have fun on a map. Which has, ironically, been the case more frequently on maps people dislike than otherwise. There's better chance of everyone agreeing to something like last night's melee-only single class rounds in the WoW arena map.

Which reminds me- I'm kind of hoping they work on the melee hit detection a bit. The other night I was on a payload map, and I was standing behind the cart, hitting it with my kukri. And somehow this one-shotted the Spy sneaking up behind me.

[Jinx]

Very interesting, especially some of the suspected changes on the steam forum thread. I'm all for better balance ^_^

[Purplecat]

Just keep in mind that stuff that they are testing necessarily won't make into the game. Before people start whining about them too much...

With casual, I meant players who play on public servers and dosen't have 100+ hours under their belt.

[Mr. Munchlax]

Hmmmm... Some of those changes seem like good ideas, a few of the others... not so much. Good thing it's just a beta test.

It'll be interesting to see how many of these ideas actually make it into the game.

[Sekh765]

We can only hope half those things in the first thread are untrue.

Reducing heavy damage/spread is unneccesary, its the heavy, he can die to sooooo many things.
Same with increasing his speed...seems like wishful thinking on some peoples parts, unless they give him some insane speed boost, its not like he is going to arrive that much sooner.

Flameproof suit for the spy would be so broken . Pyros are usually the only class that can catch me when im running around, so unless it has some ridiculous downside, I'm fairly sure if they make it so the pyro can't set the spy on fire, there will be much much bitching...

Sandman change seems nice.

[Stormcaller3801]

I think with the Heavy the reduced spread is meant to be a benefit: same number of bullets, higher accuracy, lower damage. End result: more bullets on target, more net damage, but you lose a little ability to blanket an area. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this ends up being relative to which gun you're using; given their specializations, I could see Natasha retaining a larger spread, given the perceived use to slow and kill faster, flimsier classes.

As for speed, this seems primarily to test whether he's more viable as a melee opponent with some extra foot speed. As I've noted in the Medic Buddy thread, Heavies attempting to punch people are going to have a lot of issues catching their target. This might be an attempt to make this more of an option. But that would require they boost his speed significantly, as you mention- enough to at least keep up with Demomen and Soldiers. So probably 93%+, or a +21% boost give or take.

I'd guess the fireproofing would be in exchange for something else- something significant, such as losing the option to stealth, or possibly the option to use disguises. I.e., the Pyro's hunting ability drops, but make that the new baseline, not a more difficult overall task. It might also make Jarate more useful, since that wouldn't be affected in the slightest.

Sandman I'm reserving judgment on until we have a better idea as to how stun changes.

[iller]

[Sekh765]