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| Re: Medic unlocks and achievements! by Ray of Light 04/16/2008, 10:55pm PDT | ||||
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| 550 hours of accumulated playtime and I've hardly said a thing about this game! I think it might be the best game ever made. I've disagreed with some gameplay decisions (example: long respawn timer + long walk from spawn to battlefield = MEGA LONG RESPAWN TIMER), but each time it's turned out that I was wrong, or that I was right but it wasn't that important.
Meanwhile, they've gotten most of the important things right (fuckups, strangely enough, are not tough design decisions but routine technical jobs: things like keeping textures intact and uncorrupted, making sure that dropped flags don't fall through the world, or making a patcher that doesn't corrupt your settings every couple of weeks and corrupt your 8GB store of downloaded game data every few months and require itself to be running 100% of the time. This dichotomy tells me that they hire and tolerate a lot of Chets over at Valve -- ordinary people with ordinary tasks and extraordinary self-opinions -- and as I type this I can hear Chet's condescending, nasal explanation of why it's crucial that waterbubbles generated in the basement be visible through the solid floor 2 storeys above). I hate the idea of unlocks in an otherwise stateless game, and doubly hate the idea of unlocking by way of skillless, cumulative achievements. But I'll give them a chance and see if the game can remain good in spite of them. Here are my detailed comments and authority-giving stats. Trivial accomplishments, things you can pick up in a session or two of normal play, are denoted by 
1. First Do No Harm: Play a full round without killing any enemies and score the highest on a team of 6 or more players.1. Requires competent teammates (to keep your pacifist ass alive and collecting assists) who are also incompetent (unable to outscore a guy who isn't shooting). This will be one of those dumb luckers that you pick up by accident after a 2-minute ownfest where you have two empty-net captures and score 9 points to the second MVP's 8. Perfect example of what's wrong with unlocks: suppose I need this ach and I'm second in points while healing the current pointleader, and I see a spy uncloak behind us? I am going to run away, correctly. 3. Trivial on any assault map with a setup time. 5. I think I've done 3 ubers in one life on a stock map before, once, and not in under 5 minutes. Find a duel_duel server for this one. 
8. Kind of dumb since, if you wait until you see a crit rocket or nade, you won't get the uber off before it arrives. Look for a field of stickies with at least one sizzler, then uber and run through it I GUESS. Or make a habit of popping the uber as late as possible and wait for the law of averages to sort you out. 9. Whatever. "OK guys, great brainstorming session! But we need one more ach idea before we can leave this room." 10. Cool. Med-med combos can be very tough to beat. 11,12: Obviously cumulative. Poopsock-service. 13: Probably easiest on duel_duel. Or just cheat for it, since it only needs three people. 14: Actively trying for this would be stupid. It's probably easier if you have the crit-uber unlock. 15: 8 enemies is 2/3 of their whole team! I think the number of times I've had 8 enemies in view on a stock map is a number smaller than 3. duel_duel to the rescue. 16. Blast Assist: Assist in exploding 5 enemies with a single uber-charge on a soldier. 16,17. A lot of these are about wasting ubers on things that have nothing to do with winning the game. Here are 2 good examples. 18. I'm pretty sure this is chronologically impossible without the enemy team assisting you. You'd need to prerig a couple of teleports/dispensers with stickies, reload, uber, and then have a perfect run on the 6 other buildings, which must be well clustered in order for 13 shots to do them in. 20. Seems pretty straightforward. They don't have to all be at once. 24. Risking an unused uber like this is not constructive. Mandatory cheat. 25. I'm going to try hard for this one. 26. Intern: Accumulate 7000 heal points in a single life. [WHAT]26-28. 3 computers, heavy, medic, level 1 sentry. Medic and engy have their fire buttons taped down, YOU take a vacation. 30. Medical Prevention: Save a falling teammate from dying on impact.30. Pretty neat idea, encourages medics to pay attention. 32. To clear up confusion on how to do this: kill enemy, press taunt. 33. I'm guessing this is cumulative and not in one life? 34,35. Valve apparently learned nothing from the 0.02% uptake on the existing friends-based acx. 36. Nontrivial today, but if they're adding 30+ acx to every class then a typical game will look like slow-motion trophy factory explosion. The Blutsaugher...will draw health from enemies each time a syringe hits [and never crit].Seems like a fair trade, medic auto-heals anyway so the gun is less useful to him than it would be to another class. CritzcriegNeat. One side having this and one not could decide the game on a map like 2fort, allowing the "have" team to clear the outdoors from inside their base. It looks like you can get 2/3 of the acx with just a couple hours of ach-specific whoreplay and/or collusion on top of some normal regular play, so lots of people will have this. UbersawDoes "convert" mean it won't do melee damage in the first place? That would be ok. The bonesaw is already one of the best melee weapons in the game (fast strike time, second highest non-crit melee damage after the heavy's fists, and weilded by the second-fastest class); having it retain damage and give a 25-50% uber boost on top seems unbalancing. |
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