Dominated

I really enjoy TF2, and I think it's starting to make people I play games with hate it. See, I did not play FPS games before I played TF2--well, I did, but it was a dabbling that I begrudgingly accepted while I hung out with people hungry for those fights. I certainly didn't enjoy FPS games at the time, and I still for the most part don't now, although they're much, much better.

However, TF2 has become my gold standard, and every time I play a new FPS, I'm astounded at the seemingly obvious design decisions laid out in TF2 that make everything else look like total rubbish. Recently I realized that I have never been teabagged in TF2, for example, and I realized this is because of two factors (well, maybe more). For one, TF2 has taunts, which are cooler than teabagging for just... so many reasons. I might have to watch a bit of Monday Night Combat to see if teabagging happens there, because it's the only other FPS I can think of that has taunting.

The second, and this is speculation on my part, is that TF2 has dominations. The game tells your victims when you're better than them. It even hangs a flag over your head that is designed to say "come at me, bro". I understand why it might not work in other games, games with smaller teams where often of course you know who's killing you, he's the only other guy on the map, or at least he's the only one that speaks with that particular Cold War accent.

Now, the absence of teabagging is no small thing to me; but the community feels less like a sack of soggy douchebags for it. Don't get me wrong, the TF2 community has its scumbags, just like anyone else, but it is so nice that they don't do that one thing.

Okay, so this wasn't the greatest discussion of why TF2 has better design principles than most FPS games. But thank Gabe there's no teabagging. Or Robin. Actually, I don't know who to thank.

The Man in Tin

Everybody seems to think that the Engineer should get an Iron Man style suit. I disagree, but I have a lot of ideas on the matter that I think could fit into TF2's overall design style, without an unnecessarily elaborate changeover in mechanics, new keybinds, or inexplicable abilities.

When I was writing this idea out, I didn't bother with balancing it because I don't think it's a good idea. The engineer is a bit of a middle child in TF2, he fulfills both a defense and support role. He's not the best defender, or the best support, but he has more support capability than better defenders and more defense capabilities than better support.

So no, I wasn't balancing it, I'm simply experimenting with the form, looking for keybinds and controls that fit into TF2, that allow the player to make fun decisions with his loadout underneath the armor, and this is the result of that experimentation.

The Hand of Tin
Melee Weapon
Replaces the sentry with the Tinman Suit Generator
Alt-fire removes Tin Man Suit

The Tinman Suit Generator 
150/180/216 HP
30/20/10 seconds on suit generation
20/25/30 DPS
150 metal (+200 per upgrade)
Standing on this will activate the Tinman Suit. Upgrading the Tinman suit confers extra benefits to the suit, reduces the downtime between suit productions. It also repairs suits of any Tinman engies standing nearby. Building suits costs 100 ammo, repairing suits costs 1 ammo per damage tick.

Tin Man Suit

100/125/150 Armor HP
+10/15/20 percent damage to primary and secondary weapons
+25 jump height
At level 3, gains a bonus ability*
The generator grants additional benefits (?) while suit wearers are near it, and will warn you when you leave its proximity. The Suit will be destroyed when its armor HP runs out, when the Generator is destroyed, or when you use alt-fire on the Hand of Tin to manually destroy the armor.

You will be dual wielding a second weapon when your primary or secondary is out (regardless of what t is)

*Bonus Abilities List:
Exploding debris (the suit's chunks will explode when shot at, like pumpkin bombs)
Hover jump (hold jump to slow a fall)
Goom stomp (deals damage by falling on enemy heads)
Fortify (crouch to repair HP)

Writing Weapon Unlocks

Writing unlocks is something I do a lot here at On The Subject of TF2. In real life, I do it all the time. Almost subconsciously, I tend to turn everything into a TF2 weapon at some point or another. It's just something I enjoy doing. I'm not the only one, either: the SPUF forums are soaked in a hip-high slurry of weapons ideas. About forty somebodies have an idea every day for a new weapon that should totally be in TF2, and while I don't think anybody seriously thinks their ideas are going to totally get picked up, everyone always really hopes. It's like auditioning for American Idol by walking past Simon Cowell's house and singing really loud. Every day.

Anyway, I just wanted to kind of write out my process so I could get some perspective on it. These aren't actually in any order.

Keymapping
 Building a mechanic means remembering how keymapping works in TF2. Most weapons have access to M1 and M2, so you can have a primary and secondary fire. Hold M1 is also an option, but the only use of it I've seen is charging stickies for greater distance. Some weapons have special activation on taunt, but those abilities are generally expensive. I try to avoid taunt action for personal preference. Get creative! Some weapons could interact with your other action keys, especially the crouch and jump keys.

The Demoman and the Spy are unique, in that they have specific weapons bound to M2 that trumps everything else. The watch, the stickies, and the charge are all universally activated on alt-fire, no matter what weapon is out. That means that primary and melee weapons can't use M2 for these classes. I think that presently, the Soldier is the only class with zero alt-fire abilities across every unlock.

Bars + Benefits
Lots of weapons have bars these days. Some weapons--like Jarate, Bonk, or Mad Milk--use them in place of ammo counters, to let you know when it's safe to use that weapon again. Others have them as incidental meters, showing you how far your sticky will fly or how much damage your sniper rifle has charged. The final and most common bars are charge bars. They reward you for doing something specific:

Have A Plan
 There are lots of potential goals in TF2 that a new weapon can reach. Expanding a class's role in combat, or drastically changing their playstyle, introducing a new mechanic, patching a balance gap, or just being fun... your unlock should do something like this. That said, do not try to raise skill ceilings. You can introduce new skill trees, but making a class harder to play (and then giving them extra benefits for mastering the more difficult moves) is not the best goal, since it doesn't introduce any new skills other than "coping with unnecessary problems". Downsides shouldn't be arbitrary limitations, is my point.

Additionally, stat-stealing is fine if you have a plan. Think the Blutsauger would be fun for the Scout? You can't just steal the stats, explain what you're doing and why the scout deserves those benefits.

Be Fun For Everyone
Make sure your design is fun.For me, "fun" means making interesting and unique choices and getting interesting and unique results. It's pretty common to design unlocks that counter specific scenarios, but the more specific the scenario, the less likely you are to carry that weapon in your loadout. Having something that's fun to use will make it more accessible than something that counters a specific scenario, especially if that scenario only lasts for a few seconds. Nobody's going to carry around an anti-banner to defeat that one soldier that's carrying a banner. But somebody might decide that carrying around a support banner is better than using a shotgun.

Generality
Weapons should be general, in my inexpert opinion. I don't like weapons that fit into very narrow scenarios. The Pain Train only comes out when you're attacking on CP maps. The Razorback only comes out when you're getting harassed by a spy. They have their place, but I don't like them and generally try to avoid writing them. Unlocks that only work in certain gamemodes are best avoided. However, if a weapon is better in a specific game mode or map type, mention it. "This weapon is better for the small maps typical of Arena Mode". "This weapon is useful for vertical maps like Egypt."

The Single Class Server

Recently I've taken to playing TF2 on my Xbox, where the game is simpler and I can play in comfort instead of inside my freezer. My computer is a piece of crap and I can't afford a new one, these things happen. Anyway, Xbox Team Fortress 2 is different than PC Team Fortress 2. That's an obvious and actually kind of dumb statement; PC TF2 is several times larger than Xbox TF2 in terms of pure content and even though every new weapon slightly tweaks the game's balance even the vanilla stuff has been changed, nerfed, buffed, and gold-plated. The maps have changed: Dustbowl is slightly different but Granary massively so, new maps have been added, new gamemodes... Mann Versus Machines practically added a new game to TF2.

There is one feature that appears to be Xbox only. It might be a server tool but in four years of TF2 I've never encountered it on the net. No, wait, once. Maybe; I forget. Anyway! Class limitations. The Xbox's TF2 has built-in adjustable class limits when you're creating a server, meaning people can decide that if they want their game to feature only one medic per side, or that they'd like to see a game of Sniper on Sniper, they can do that. That's actually what lead me to this post.

Playing two rounds, one Engineer Only Dustbowl and one Sniper Only 2fort. Both games were incredibly fun and incredibly frustrating. The engineer one was badly broken, of course, because engineers are dangerously useless on Offense and they are almost infinitely stackable on Defense. Red would cede the first point after the initial "two sentries over spawn doors" trick, then build seven sentries on the point. I think the longest anyone stood on the point without being turned into a chunky Southwest-style salsa mist was two seconds. But at the same time, it was oddly compelling even to be on offense, killing sentries with your pistol, etcetera.

The Sniper one might have been fair. I'm an awful sniper, but I make up for it by being sneaky; with no engineers I strolled onto the 2fort battlements and stabbed three fictional people to imaginary death. Then I realized that these people were almost cartoonishly oblivious, so I climbed back up to the battlements and shot eight of them in the head. I think I might have shot some of them twice. Then the host changed the rules so one team (his, I assume) had an engineer to control the courtyard, and it turns out that if you switch a class limit to 0 while somebody is rolled as that class, they will stay that class until they change classes. So one side had an engineer that controlled walking-class access to the intel. Snipers aren't great for fighting a well-placed sentry and the game stalled, one side feeling helpless and the other steamrolling them.

But I had an idea that I'd like to see executed: two rounds of exclusively one class. One server, two rounds, all Medics. One server, two rounds all Demomen. Still 12v12 like TF2 was meant to be played, but iterated through individual classes. Who wins when Dustbowl is exclusively guarded by Soldiers? Or attacked by scouts? Is 2fort more fun with 24 pyros?

You might be wondering, what's the point of all this is. It's kind of a balance thought experiment, to see how differently the game plays when you make subtle changes like that. For example, with all Engineers a game of Dustbowl favors RED. Of course, with no players Dustbowl favors RED. But what happens in a game of all Scouts? Competitive TF2 is a game played in the margins of an ubercharge--what happens when it's not?

Most of all, there's something vaguely liberating about it: "When everybody is OP, nobody will be".

The Quick Switch Cabinet

Recently, TF2 added support for multiple loadouts to the backpack. Well, a year ago, so... recently enough. The Preset Loadout GUI, if you're unfamiliar with it, allows you to create four loadouts for each class. These loadouts can be any permutation of items an individual TF2 class can have, with individual items available for use across multiple loadouts. Ideally these loadouts reflect "ideal loadouts" for various situations. As a Demoman you might have loadout A set to your vanilla Demoman and loadout B equipped with the Demoknight set.

Anyway, I had a crazy idea. Since you have four available loadout presets, why not create an in-map interface that automatically allows you to swap instantly between preset loadouts? In keeping with TF2's deliberately very-simple design, the Quick Switch Cabinet requires that you walk up to it and press 1, 2, 3, or 4. With that press, the relevant loadout is activated. You can still play around with your loadout in the loadout menu, but now each preset loadout is accessible at the press of a button, without having to go into the backpack and select.

Upon activation of a particular loadout, the loadout appears on the right hand side of the screen so you can be sure it's the one you want, and boom, transaction complete.

Stick one of these in every spawn room from Teufort to the Gravel Sea!

Engineer Buildings in Medieval Mode

Buildings that are generally applicable in both Medieval Mode and regular gameplay don't work. Medieval Mode--currently relegated to DeGroot Keep--has a very specific game imprint and buildings introduce a number of problems.

First of all, buildings inherently favor RED. RED has more access to metal and more time to work on buildings. While BLU is inside the Keep after an A/B capture, they are concentrating on capturing the final point. That would leave very little time to engage buildings built inside the higher reaches of the Keep, whereas BLU's map area is huge and immediately accessible to RED. With no objectives outside the Keep to defend and no bottlenecks to improve the effectiveness of buildings, BLU won't benefit from offensive buildings and support buildings become very vulnerable.

Buildings also form natural barriers. Even if they had no other function at all, they could be built to block access to DeGroot Keep's final point. Friendly REDs can clip through them, using them for cover, while BLUS need to either engage or circumnavigate them. The point's access is only about two dispensers wide, so a pair of Engineers could stop access to the point for at least two seconds, and unless their melee weapon swings slowly or repair rates are modulated for Medieval Mode, they could outrepair any damage done.

Sentries are generally expressed as automated crossbows. I don't know why. It's not like they're a thing. However, the common expression is slow firing rate, fire-friendly arrows. Inexplicably common, also, is the condition that Engineers must continuously hit the sentry in order to make it work. Specific stats relating to fire rate may change, but the requirement for constant Engineer supervision is mystifying--it's absolutely no fun for the Engineer. Weighed against the sniper the sentry is guaranteed to have lower potential DPS on arrows but it requires less effort so players using it would look doubly bad-they're not maximizing their damage output and they are taking the easier job. Nothing about this translates out of Medieval Mode--the sentry is too weak to justify the expensive balancing measures used to make it fair in the Keep.

Dispensers are often replaced with kegs of mead. Tables of food or healing fires show up less commonly. They favor RED for all the reasons already listed; RED has more time and resources, they offer more effective cover for RED inside the keep than they would for BLU outside. Often dispensers have no metal generation in exchange for extra healing, which obviously doesn't make any sense; only snipers, Crossbow medics and other engineers will ever need ammo, and the extra healing gives RED a big advantage when BLU is pushing for the point. Dispensers are normally fragile, but without ranged weapons enemies must expend valuable time destroying them, both to break through or to deprive the REDS of the extremely valuable boost.

Teleporters aren't that great in their traditional role. Again, they favor RED because the BLU field is not large enough to hide them or necessitate their use relative to the cost of building one. At best, a sneaky BLU engineer could build one inside the keep, but putting the effort into hiding it instead of gunning for the point is probably wasted. On the other hand, REDs can use them to potentially stall enemy Democharges on the point, or build effective telefrag traps since it's easier to guess where enemies will be when their only access point to your base is a 110HU door.
Plus, they're always generic "magic portals". Allow me to wiggle my fingers in disgust.

Ultimately, if the Engineer needs a buff in Medieval Mode, other opportunities should be examined. Most buildings offer a pretty unconditional advantage. Since Medieval Mode is already reasonably balanced (i.e. fights can go to either BLU or RED), creating new items that will mostly have appreciable benefits only for RED unbalances the game in RED's favor.