I will admit, in my darkest moments, to having played an undue amount of Team Fortress 2 recently. I'm finally starting to understand how to play the Spy, and massively enjoying both the Demoman and Pyro classes - so much so, I go through alternate phases of each. I'll begrudgingly go Engineer or Medic if the team hasn't got the right mix of roles, although Engineers bore me now, and Medics are just score whores. Gravel Pit seems to bring the Soldier out in me. And half the time on Well, I'll go Sniper and rush.I just can't play a Scout.
The balance of classes in TF2 is meticulous and has come about due to man years of playing and play testing until each class is like a fine wine or liquor in the right hands
Since there's nothing like a game design challenge, I'd like you come up with some new classes to mess with the game. Valve, are you listening? If you don't want to spoil yourself reading my ideas, stop now and jump to the comments section of this post where you can put in your contributions
My suggestions are based on a number of observations. Firstly, there are no Hispanic, Asian or Middle Eastern characters in the game. Tread carefully here - we don't want to play to stereotypes. I'm going to borrow ideas liberally from other class based games. In particular, if you haven't played the Half-Life 2 mod Dystopia, you need to - just to check out the weapon selection which seems to have inspired TF2 and Halo 3
The Cowboy
Ethnicity: Mexican
Weapon 1: Self-loading rifle
The self-loading rifle is a low damage, fast firing, long range weapon, that ricochets off the target it hits and does damage to a second enemy as well. This allows you to hit people around corners - do more damage in crowds etc.
Weapon 2: Pair of revolvers
The pair of revolvers are supremely accurate. You only have to tag a target with the first shot, and then you can keep shooting, and the enemy will be hit, even if they move out of line of sight. Left-click to fire left revolver, right-click for right.
Weapon 3: Knuckle dusters
Reason to live: Anti-scout and to an extent anti-sniper/anti-engineer. And it can't hurt to have another newbie class where accuracy isn't a factor
The Ninja
Ethnicity: Japanese
Weapon 1: Shuriken
Short range throwing stars. Enemies get poisoned by the shuriken - as if they are on fire, except water cannot put it out.
Weapon 2: Grappling hook.
If the grappling hook hits an enemy (but not a building), the enemy is pulled towards the Ninja at high speed. If the grappling hook hits a wall or building, the Ninja is pulled towards it at high speed.
Weapon 3: Katana
Special Ability: Smoke bomb.
Right-click to drop a smoke bomb at the Ninja's feet. The smoke bomb fills a corridor or roughly 1/3rd of a capture point with line of sight blocking smoke. Enemies get poisoned moving through the smoke - as if they are on fire, except water cannot put it out. The Ninja becomes temporarily invisible and insubstantial for a few seconds afterwards - as per the spy, but they can move through enemies and enemy buildings as well. The smoke dissipates after about 5-10 seconds.
Special ability: Wall and water run
Ninja's can jump near walls or while in water to run on walls or water for a short space of time.
Reason to live: There are enough crazies in TF2 who go melee only, to justify a melee specific class.
Scientist
Ethnicity: Old
Weapon 1: Laser
See Dystopia laser. Or Spartan laser. Alternately, see Tesla gun in Dystopia for another crazy scientist like weapon implementation that doesn't replace the sniper rifle.
Weapon 2: Jet pack
The jet pack allows the scientist to fly, up to the a height ceiling allowed in the map. See Natural selection for the specific jet pack implementation - it's fun.
Weapon 3: Cattle prod
Weapon 4: X-ray glasses
These allow the scientist to see through walls, letting them see enemies and buildings nearby. They also see through spy disguises.
Reason to live: With all the crazy 50s science lab locations, the scientist is sorely lacking as a playable character. The scientist is another rush type character. With the Spartan laser, they become an even more annoying individual than scouts, and people will scream l33t hacks. With the Tesla gun implementation, they become an extremely good anti-scout rush character. Note that by having the jet pack as a weapon choice, scouts still can out maneuver scientists.
Priest
Ethnicity: Syrian
Weapon 1: Hand cannon
Think scout gun but shorter range, more damage. Or play with the Basilisk in Dystopia, against lights.
Weapon 2: Stun Grenade Launcher
A grenade launcher with stun effects. But it restricts anyone stunned to their melee weapon, for about 3-5 seconds.
Weapon 3: Bible
Reason to live: Because there aren't enough biblical quotes in the game.
Comments welcome.
[Update: Apparently Valve are 'still pursuing' the idea of new Team Fortress 2 classes. So there is hope.]
The weird thing,is that I thought of these cross-classes before I read this article.
ReplyDeleteOn a completely unrelated note, you forgot "Jill-sandwich"
I Thought it would be cool to have a swordsman who was similar to the pyro and the soldier
ReplyDeleteHe could have one big bulky sword that dealt 90-150 in one hit but was slow and like the pyro needs to be upclose in order to do so. He could have as much health as a soldier and be somewhere around the demomans speed.
The only problem with this kinda of character and anything like the ninja you said is that they dont really fit with the others in any way but who knows im sure they could find a way
A class my friend and I thought up would be Chef.
ReplyDeleteEthnicity: Italian (Spy is French :P)
Primary: Tommy gun with drum clip. low accuracy, high rate of fire, moderate-low damage. The kind of gun that you hold the mouse down to use, not precise clicking.
Secondary: T-Bone. Just a slab of meat that restores health when right-clicking, and can stun enemies by slapping them with it (primary fire).
Melee: Meat clever. An over sized clever (in classic Valve fashion) that acts as any other melee weapon.
http://jackal-lord.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24#/d2rvr87
ReplyDeleteName: Chef
Ethnicity: Italian
Primary Weapon: Tommy gun with drum clip. Low accuracy, medium damage. A vamped up version of the sniper's SMG. It's the kind of weapon that you spam-fire, not aim and click.
Secondary Weapon: T-bone. Just a steak, but when you primary fire, you can slap people with it. This stuns for 3-5 seconds. Secondary fire will make you eat it, which restores some amount of health.
Melee Weapon: Meat clever. Acts just as any other melee weapon.
Reason to live: Who doesn't want to run around as an overweight Italian and smack people with meat products?
Nurse
ReplyDeleteGerman daughter to the medic ( hilarity ensured)
Primary: Dart gun looooooooooong range but really slow rate of fire
Secondary Uber amplifier fills uber faster and makes it last longer
melee needles
Class: supplier
ReplyDeleteboosts teams weapons with his modifiers giving them special affects and refilling ammo as well as giving them no reload
Modifiers use metal at a rate of 1 every two seconds
Once you get to full metal all metal collected after that will go to your tinker bar filling it by 1% per metal collected can not be collected from resupply cabinets or full boxes
As well as building turrets that classes can mount for boosts Using 200 metal for them
Mounted turret
People in the turret are mostly covered
In a turret you can't move
You turn 50% slower
Takes 3 seconds to get out
No reloading ammo is refilled
Shotguns: 90% accuracy 200% fire rate
Bazookas: 200% fire rate slight honing 200% splash area
Flame throwers 500% range with no fall off
Flare guns 400% fire rate 500% range and double damage
Snipers 300% fire rate
Pistols 200% damage 200% fire rate 200% accuracy
Sticky bombs: 300% fire rate auto releases and 500% range
Grenade launcher: 200% fire rate
Primary: shrapnel cannon: a relatively powerful low range shotgun
Shrapnel cannon
Level 1 shrapnel slinging device
Launches 8 pieces of shrapnel per shot they are slow moving projectiles that cause bleeding
It launches every .5 seconds using 10 metal per shot
Each piece of shrapnel does 5 damage but 20 damage in bleeding over 4 seconds
Secondary: destructive device: similar to the medi gun it refills ammo and boosts weapons damage
Destructive device- better name needed
Refills ammo at 5 per second and gives weapons pierce and 50% more damage
Hooks up a tube and a small ammo belt to ammo supply of weapons
Tinker gives weapons 100% more damage and 10x refill rate for 15 seconds then shorts out for 5 seconds
Melee: sledge hammer takes off sappers in one hit and has high knock-back
More tinkerers for this class
Belter- better name needed
+50% refill rate
Gives targets 150% fire rate
Tinker gives targets 500% fire rate for 5 seconds then shorts out for 10 seconds
Infernal infuser
Makes targets hit with projectiles light on fire and refills ammo but at 75% speed
Tinker makes enemies stay alight forever does this for 10 seconds then shorts out for 5 seconds and lights you on fire
Ye olde Grindy rack
+40% damage has infinite pierce and bleeding
200% damage for melee weapons
Does not work with ray guns or flame throwers
Refills ammo at 25% speed
Tinker makes resuply targets shoot twice as many projectiles at once and do large amounts of bleeding for 10 seconds then exploding in shrapnel for 10 seconds inflicting bleeding on you
-75% range
Extends the grinder with a robot arm to resuply targets