Design flaws

So this weekend I cleaned for the upcoming parental visit. In between shifts as apartment janitor, I played a little Team Fortress 2 (TF2). It's a fun game, but with some frustrating problems.

I was playing one of the converted old-school maps included with the game, 2Fort. It's a symmetrical map where the blue team and red team battle it out to play a more modern, violent game of capture the flag.

I was rocking the shit as I usually do except periodically I would die. Dying is inevitable in TF2. However, the frustrating aspect was not that I died, but rather the manner in which I did. I scored approximately 65 legit kills (not assists) and had about 23 deaths. Approximately 16 of those deaths were the result of cloaked spy players.

The spy is a rather unique class in the game. For killing other players, he is armed with a pistol and knife. For destroying enemy buildings (turrets, health and ammo dispensers, and teleporters), the spy is armed with a 'sapper' which drains the strength of a building until it explodes. The final weapon a spy possesses is a disguise kit. A spy can disguise himself in the form of an enemy class. I lied about the final part. The spy also has a cloaking device to turn completely invisible. This sounds pretty fun and good, doesn't it? The downside to being a spy is they have a very low amount of health and can be killed easily.

It can be observed that the game design intention for the spy was to disguise and cloak deep into enemy territory, sapping enemy buildings and knifing enemy snipers in the back. However, there's a flaw in this game design idea. Very few players actually do this. Most players either play defense, cloak to about mid-level or the more brave go barely to front of the enemy territory, cloak, knife an enemy player, retreat, and repeat. It is efficient and amazingly unbalanced. A spy breaks one of my cardinal sins of good game design in a very horrid way. A spy can not only get a guaranteed first hit on an enemy player, but that first hit is a guaranteed one-shot kill on that player. It's an unavoidable death. Unavoidably horrible.

Now, I understand in more advanced play, teams will be spy checking more often with pyro burst (another class which shoots fire). This still isn't a constant even with good play. Again, here is the winning formula to consistent guaranteed kills.

1. Disguise.
2. Cloak.
3. Uncloak to quickly knife in back for kill.
4. Redisguise and cloak quickly, running away.

No other class in the game has the capability for guaranteed kills. This is horrible game design. Every other class must rely aim or positioning. The only other class in the game that doesn't rely on aim or positioning is the engineer who relies on upkeeping static buildings to do his dirty work. An engineer can never reliably get kills in mid-field or on the front enemy lines because it will be near-impossible to maintain good upkeep on those buildings against good players.

There's a number of other problem areas in the game. Here is what I would do to balance out a few of the weaker classes.

* Soldier
Increase the number of rockets available by 4 to reduce dispenser runs.
Increase the number of rockets loadable by 1 or 2 (to go up to 5 or 6) to equalize demoman grenade spam.
Increase rocket damage due to the risk of playing a more mid-range/close-range class.

* Demoman
Decrease number of loadable sticky grenades to 6. There's no reason a class with high action management should have such a high payload.
Decrease sticky grenade damage slightly. The damage is too high for a class with a blatant action management advantage.

* Spy
Replace the ability for spys to go invisible with the ability to become semi-invulnerable while disguised. Players can still shoot spys to do damage (although significantly reduced while semi-invulnerable), but will not be able to be set on fire during this semi-invulnerability time period thus removing the most obvious sign of being a spy. This means that aware players can still kill disguised spys and also see them coming. However, unaware players will still get a knife in the back.

* Engineer
Buildings are fragile already due to uber rushes and range limitations. Reduce the costs of all buildings so they can be made and upgraded more quickly. The most fun games are when two teams are playing a tug-of-war game to gain positional advantages. Making buildings easier to build will enhance this factor.

* Scout
I wouldn't change much about the Scout. The double-jump with improved speed is very cool and deadly at the hands of a good player.

* Sniper
Reduce all randomness in sniper damage. A headshot is an instant kill. A non-headshot hits for a set amount based on the sliding sniper power scale regardless of where you hit an enemy on their body.

* Heavy
Decrease the scatter shot of heavy fire which will slightly increase damage at further ranges.

* Medic
Increase movement speed slightly to give medics a touch more survivability.

* Pyro
Reduce the length of the pyro fire damage over time effect. There's no reason for a class with higher than average action management to have a DoT effect that lasts as long as it does.

* Game changes
Remove critical strikes entirely with the exception of Kritzkrieg charges and headshots. Random critical strikes add artificial game flavor, but is a detriment to fair play. Randomness sucks hard when it comes to FPS play.