TF2 Pyro Update: Full Details Inside

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Z(+)DIAC

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Dec 12, 2004
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The day has come!

Valve has posted the official additions to the upcoming Pyro update...including a look and description of each new unlockable. Breakdown of the achievements, and the 2 user created maps (Fastlane and Turbine)

See It here

TWEAK TO PYRO:

In addition to the three unlockable Pyro weapons, we've made a significant addition to the base Pyro flamethrower. By hitting the alt-fire key, the Pyro is able to produce a blast of compressed air that knocks enemies away, and redirects enemy projectiles. It’s a highly versatile tool, allowing Pyros to get away from nearby enemies after igniting them, to kill enemy soldiers with their own rockets, or to separate enemy Medics from their healing targets. In particular, it allows a skilled Pyro to contain an enemy invulnerability push, and even to separate the Medic completely if the surrounding terrain supports it.

Bear with me, as it's all graphic based.

Maps

Obviously most if not all of you have played

Turbine
Fastlane

Unlockables

Flaregun.jpg


The first Pyro unlockable is The Flare Gun, which replaces the shotgun. It allows the Pyro to ignite an enemy at long range, but does require careful aim on their part. It’s particularly useful for causing havoc on Snipers and Engineers who want to keep their distance.

Flamethrower.jpg


The second Pyro unlockable is The Backburner. This flamethrower is built for the Pyro who likes to ambush their opponents. It removes the compression blast capability, instead guaranteeing critical hits whenever it’s used on an opponent from behind. To aid in survivability, it grants the Pyro an extra fifty health.
Axetinguisher.jpg


The third Pyro unlockable is The Axtinguisher. This mighty axe guarantees critical hits on any enemy that’s currently on fire, although it’s significantly weaker against enemies who aren’t. A great combination with the The Flare Gun, or with another Pyro buddy riding alongside doing the igniting.


Achievements
PyroAchievements1.png

PyroAchievements2.png
 
Well.

GG TFC2. Between this and the free wkend, TFC is goning to be nothing but voice chat spam and fucking pyros as far as the eye can see. lulz
I'll be @ CS:S for a bit then I guess. It sucks too, cuz I'm horrible at the game =P
 
Sounds pretty sweet. Like the idea of the blast of air (hope its not too effective though).

However, I really dislike pyros as I spend a lot of my time as a solider. This effectively means that I am face to face with them a lot of the time. Although they are relatively easy to kill, you have to hunt down health nearly everytime you kill one. The next two weeks is really going to suck. The world will be on fire.
 
The secondary fire mode blasting air and repelling projectiles and enemies sounds a lot like the air gun from the old Quake PainKeep mod. That was always a riot to use! I wonder if the pyro can use this new feature to increase the height of their jumps in the same way the soldier uses his RL?

U.M.
 
I think the blast of air will be a huge addition, and I like it. The reason I don't play pyro that much is because it is pretty difficult to get near people to kill them. This will allow for more close-range combat, which is what the pyro is all about.

Go Valve!
 
interesting. the achievements dont seem nearly as unreasonable as the medics ones either.
 
Some of this seems tremendously overpowered but it should be fun anyways.
 
From what I've read:

Weapons are gained at 15, 20 and 25 achievements.

I'd personally load out with the Flare Gun, Flamethrower and Axtinguisher.

They should make the Blowback have a lag time though, 1-2 seconds per blowback so that the pyro can't spam it.

Or make it so the Blowback needs to be charged.

Or make it so it uses ammo, 25 per blast.
 
The flare gun sounds awesome. It should be great for annoying enemies who are charging ubers and building up defenses in tunnels (dustbowl). I'm kind of curious to know how it works though. Whether you need to hit someone directly and it only affects them, or whether you can shoot it into a group of people and light them all on fire.

Also, why didn't they just name the air blast, 'the force' :p
 
OMG...I think I love the new upgrades. I'm normally a medic when I play but weapons specific to anti-medic, projectile and SNIPING! Pyro has been rekindled for me, not to say I never liked using him, Nothing like igniting a group aflame, always loved doing that. Could imagine the havoc that caused on people's slower systems... hah
 
blast of compressed air???? are u serious. thats ridiculous! sounds like pyros are actually useful now besides causing a ruckus
 
It's definitely going to change the gameplay. The one thing I like about the game now is that it's simple, like rock, paper, scissors. You can't have a team of all rocks, because if the other team is balanced you're going to lose. With all these updates I think everything is going to mix together. The medic update gave them offense abilities, not what they should have. The pyro update is giving them farther range, which is once again, not what their class is about. Basically they're removing the classes unique roles, defeating the purpose of a team based game. The classes are becoming well rounded. They should be emphasizing their strong points, and not removing their weaknesses. For example, let's take the sniper class which hasn't been done yet.

Sniper - Good at long range, and need to keep their distance from the enemy since their weakness is close combat and low health.

What they should do:
Enhance the long range abilities. Give them a sniper rifle that has very fast reload time, but does less damage. Give them a sniper rifle that can disable the enemies attack, not allowing them to fire for a few seconds. Etc, etc.

The problem is, they're going to look at the sniper class which they deliberately designed with these strengths and weaknesses, and say, "what kind of abilities can we give him?" Oh look, he isn't good a close combat, lets provide him with more health or an improved assault rifle so he can get in on the action. Bad choice.

Referring back to rock, paper, scissors, you either:

Give the rock other methods to destroy scissors. OR Make the rock even stronger against scissors and weaker against paper.

However, you don't give the rock a blade, otherwise you remove it's unique role.

Does that make any sense?

Edit: I have time to kill so let met continue writing about another class.

Medic class is for support, and has poor attack abilities. Therefore, let's take a look at the two options I mentioned above. First, you could give the medic other support options. An example would be removing their medigun, but in return they act like a dispenser, slowly healing any teammate standing around them. The other option is improving their strengths (support), while making them even weaker (less attack abilities). In this case you could remove their needlegun, but allow them to heal teammates 1.5x faster or up to 2x their normal health.

In my opinion, that's what should be done. Instead they improved the medics weakness (attack) while they should of focused on their support role.
 
This is interesting. I wonder what kind of projectiles will the air pocket shot be able to redirect. Like can it redirect bloodsucker needles? And what will happen if the medic gets hit by them? Guess we'll see soon enough.

And can the flare gun fire underwater? I'm guessing no. If so I think I will be keeping the shotty on maps with water for now.

Nice of them to make the (useless) Axtinguisher unlock last.

Also I never knew that the pyro's hadoken can hurt enemies. Lol Ima noob.

And yes the updates are turning TF2 into a different game then it was at launch. But maybe it will all work out in the end. Or maybe valve will pull a TFC again and screw it up beyond repairability. Who knows. I'll just keep enjoying it while I can. :)
 
Awesome! I will probably wait a week or 2 to get these achievements. I am now just getting the medic ones since there are not as many medics running around anymore.
 
Axtinguisher useless? Such lack of imagination. A pair of pyros (one with flamethrower, one with axtinguisher) could wreck serious havok ambushing enemies.
 
Jynio said:
It's definitely going to change the gameplay. The one thing I like about the game now is that it's simple, like rock, paper, scissors. You can't have a team of all rocks, because if the other team is balanced you're going to lose. With all these updates I think everything is going to mix together. The medic update gave them offense abilities, not what they should have. The pyro update is giving them farther range, which is once again, not what their class is about. Basically they're removing the classes unique roles, defeating the purpose of a team based game. The classes are becoming well rounded. They should be emphasizing their strong points, and not removing their weaknesses. For example, let's take the sniper class which hasn't been done yet.

Sniper - Good at long range, and need to keep their distance from the enemy since their weakness is close combat and low health.

What they should do:
Enhance the long range abilities. Give them a sniper rifle that has very fast reload time, but does less damage. Give them a sniper rifle that can disable the enemies attack, not allowing them to fire for a few seconds. Etc, etc.

The problem is, they're going to look at the sniper class which they deliberately designed with these strengths and weaknesses, and say, "what kind of abilities can we give him?" Oh look, he isn't good a close combat, lets provide him with more health or an improved assault rifle so he can get in on the action. Bad choice.

Referring back to rock, paper, scissors, you either:

Give the rock other methods to destroy scissors. OR Make the rock even stronger against scissors and weaker against paper.

However, you don't give the rock a blade, otherwise you remove it's unique role.

Does that make any sense?

Edit: I have time to kill so let met continue writing about another class.

Medic class is for support, and has poor attack abilities. Therefore, let's take a look at the two options I mentioned above. First, you could give the medic other support options. An example would be removing their medigun, but in return they act like a dispenser, slowly healing any teammate standing around them. The other option is improving their strengths (support), while making them even weaker (less attack abilities). In this case you could remove their needlegun, but allow them to heal teammates 1.5x faster or up to 2x their normal health.

In my opinion, that's what should be done. Instead they improved the medics weakness (attack) while they should of focused on their support role.
Click to expand...


My thoughts exactly.

I hope development of Team Fortress: Source is still strong, cuz this game may lose it's charm here soon. :(
 
Damn... Updated my TF2 server and withing 10 seconds of it being back online there were 10 people joining. heh... all Pyros too. F-tards... Yah, the "achievements" are cool and all, but do it on another server... :( (good thing one of my admins is in there... whew!)

Anyway, going to miss the shenanigans tonight due to class.. imagine Friday night will be full of stuff on fire (most of my time is pyro anyway). Have fun!

 
Great this pyro update just ruined the game for me for the next 2 weeks. Every server is 10+ pyros trying to get achievements and not playing for objectives.
 
You only need 22 achievements to get the axetinguisher. I already have it, and I'd imagine that most other people aren't far behind. The axetinguisher isn't all that, as in it's not a one hit kill, but boy does the back burner kick ass.
 
Yeah Im almost at Milestone 3 after a little over an hour's worth of achievementboxing. Took me longer to connect to the server than it did to get the achievements. :mad:
 
Jynio said:
It's definitely going to change the gameplay. The one thing I like about the game now is that it's simple, like rock, paper, scissors. You can't have a team of all rocks, because if the other team is balanced you're going to lose. With all these updates I think everything is going to mix together. The medic update gave them offense abilities, not what they should have. The pyro update is giving them farther range, which is once again, not what their class is about. Basically they're removing the classes unique roles, defeating the purpose of a team based game. The classes are becoming well rounded. They should be emphasizing their strong points, and not removing their weaknesses. For example, let's take the sniper class which hasn't been done yet.

Sniper - Good at long range, and need to keep their distance from the enemy since their weakness is close combat and low health.

What they should do:
Enhance the long range abilities. Give them a sniper rifle that has very fast reload time, but does less damage. Give them a sniper rifle that can disable the enemies attack, not allowing them to fire for a few seconds. Etc, etc.

The problem is, they're going to look at the sniper class which they deliberately designed with these strengths and weaknesses, and say, "what kind of abilities can we give him?" Oh look, he isn't good a close combat, lets provide him with more health or an improved assault rifle so he can get in on the action. Bad choice.

Referring back to rock, paper, scissors, you either:

Give the rock other methods to destroy scissors. OR Make the rock even stronger against scissors and weaker against paper.

However, you don't give the rock a blade, otherwise you remove it's unique role.

Does that make any sense?

Edit: I have time to kill so let met continue writing about another class.

Medic class is for support, and has poor attack abilities. Therefore, let's take a look at the two options I mentioned above. First, you could give the medic other support options. An example would be removing their medigun, but in return they act like a dispenser, slowly healing any teammate standing around them. The other option is improving their strengths (support), while making them even weaker (less attack abilities). In this case you could remove their needlegun, but allow them to heal teammates 1.5x faster or up to 2x their normal health.

In my opinion, that's what should be done. Instead they improved the medics weakness (attack) while they should of focused on their support role.
Click to expand...


Agreed. It's fucking WoW all over again.
 
I think Valve sits on a very tall precipice right now. They have cornered themselves into this update thing and can't back out now. However, doing this is changing the very dynamics of what made TF2 so much fun. Nothing can be said until all the updates are final, but as it stands, TF2 is becoming a whole different game then what I bought and it really is disadvantages to people like me who don't have time to AchBox every class to get up to par with everyone else.
 
I really hate these updates. I won't be able to have a good match for weeks. Every server I've joined has 6+ pyros per 12 person team, and it really makes the game hard to enjoy.
 
ScretHate said:
I really hate these updates. I won't be able to have a good match for weeks. Every server I've joined has 6+ pyros per 12 person team, and it really makes the game hard to enjoy.
Click to expand...
Don't worry, it is also a free TF2 weekend so the noobs will be out in force pretty quick.
 
Does anyone else think this air blast is completely ridiculous? Pushing enemies, and reflecting projectiles. What the heck. I don't have the time to worry about these kinds of things. I want to light people on fire and cut them down like trees. They're forcing me to think when I want to have some mindless fun, and I'm not liking it. Also, the flare gun is just going to add more spam flying through the air which I have to try and dodge.

I have a feeling these updates are going to destroy the balance and simplicity of the game. They should invest this time into new game modes. Not just CTF, or CP maps, but just some wacky game modes for fun. Both the hunted and push from the original tfc were a blast. These both offered an adrenaline rush. Does anyone remember rushing the ball in push, all by youself, nearing the goal with their entire team chasing you? Or what about the hunted when you can see him about the make the escape, with sniper dots all over him trying to get the shot? That got your heart beating faster. One person could make a difference, but you still needed teamwork.
 
legendz411 said:
it really is disadvantages to people like me who don't have time to AchBox every class to get up to par with everyone else.
Click to expand...

The thing is....the Medic upgrades aren't all that great. You can still be a Medic with stock "level 1" weapons and still make a huge difference in a match.

I haven't loaded it up since the Pyro update hit, so it remains to be seen (for me, anyhow) how much this will change the dynamics.
 
I have logged on to play the new pyro updates before guess what valve foobared the game. There's this crazy respawn bug that they introduced into the game and its really annoying. Once you die, you get stuck in a state in between spectator and player which is totally retarded. Only way to get out of it is to hit comma key and spawn as something else to get back into the game. Ugh bunch of pyros, free weekend n00bs, and new bugs introduced. Just perfect, won't be playing for another month.
 
that "new" bug was there right after the medic achievements updates. I think it means the server hasn't been patched yet. try a different server

edit: looking at the steam forums, the respawn problem is specific to the BeetleMod.
 
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