I'll try to control the heavy use of gratuitous exclamation points, but I'm just SO SHOUTIN' HAPPY here!
How It All Happened
When crafting was first announced, during the recent war between the Soldier and Demo, I popped into it to try it out. I'm pretty sure this was before they had improved the interface, and there was nothing on the inventory read-out that indicated that any of the items on the list were actually EQUIPPED.
That is, they listed ALL my weapons -- not just the extras.
So when I tried my hand at creating a Medic class token, it asked for any four Medic weapons. I had four Blutsaugers, so I took those and crafted a class token. Cool! Neat! Wowzee!
Until I realized that I'd just cannibalized ALL my Blutsaugers!!!!
Oh noes!!!!! Horrors!!!! Oh, the humanity!!!!
Ahem. Exclamations aside, I was filled with dismay. A medic is a vulnerable enough class without losing my upgraded primary weapon. Boo-hoo!
So I've played without my Blutsauger for a month or so I've felt the loss. When my attack class partner dies, leaving me fending for myself behind enemy lines, the little syringe gun doesn't do much to keep me alive. Where I used to survive maybe 30% of the time by sucking the health of my enemy for my own as I backed away at speed, now I mostly just visit the re-spawn room.
Did I mention, "Oh, the humanity"?
Okay, okay, enough melodrama. I took a little time today and explored Crafting again, figuring that perhaps some gamers with more time on their hands than I have figured it all out. A bit of Google searching, and couple of experiments in the Crafting area, and whatayaknow!
I've got my Blutsauger back. Hallelujah!
How I Did It
Part of the issue is just understanding how the crafting system works, how it is designed to do things. For some reason, it didn't seem obvious to me at first.
It's a building blocks system. To craft my Blutsauger, I followed this line of reasoning:
I want a primary Medic weapon.
Therefore I need:
- 1 Class token (this tells the system what class the weapon is for)
- 1 Slot token (eg, primary, secondary, melee -- this tells the system what kind of weapon to create)
- 1 Scrap metal
- 4 Medic weapons = 1 Medic class token
- 4 Primary weapons (of any class) = 1 Primary slot token
- Any 3 weapons/items (any slot, any class) = 1 Scrap metal
Fortunately, I had found 5 Huntsman over the last month or so, so I kept one and crafted the other four into a primary weapon slot token.
And finally, I gave up all 3 of my Razorbacks (which I've never used, even the rare times I've played Sniper) to create some scrap metal.
My Advice?
After all this, I have one piece of advice for anyone who wants to try crafting: DO NOT TRUST THE INTERFACE in TF2 to tell you everything you need to know.
It WON'T.
Read up online to find out what others are doing, and it will help IMMENSELY.
During the course of the crafting process, twice the interface had NO BLUEPRINTS listed that would give me what I wanted. I had to go on faith, putting the items from the online crafting recipes together and hitting the crafting button "blind".
Fortunately, what I needed is pretty straightforward, so there weren't really any random factors involved. From what I've read, some blueprints will create a "random" item from the specified class and slot. But since Medics only have one unlockable primary weapon, I got what I was hoping for.
But if I hadn't had the online recipes/blueprints (telling me that they existed), then I would have seen no option in the crafting interface for doing what I wanted to do.
This TF2 crafting blueprints site helped a lot.
Also, TF2Wiki.net has a good page on crafting, with some handy reference tables.
Tell me YOUR crafting adventures!
Leave a comment!
Posts
I find this all very confusing. I have crafted a couple of tokens but am not sure what to do with them or why I made them. However, as I think about it more it does add another level of combat and skill which I had never thought about.
ReplyDeleteI hate the new mods on the soldier and the demo and just turn tail whenever either has a killeverythingaroundthem fancy new weapon.
One thing I think might be interesting though is if players played closer attention to points in a game. I do. I pay VERY close attention and actually cannot find a chart online which specifies what points are awarded for which action. I only just discovered tonight that if my dispenser extinguishes a player I get 1 point. Fantastic. Now, the reason I think it would be more interesting if 'points' were of 'a value' other than just a ranking chart is that platers would be more concerned about losing them. I find a lot of players are playing 'foolishly' ie they are not afraid or bothered if they die. They will happily just keep respawning and killing stuff. It is very important that people try and stay alive as we would then rely more on wits and skill to beat the enemy other and would value our health. My experience is players just plough in and do as much damage as possible and then die. What if dying a lot meant you couldn't get the cool stuff? What if...the points were renamed 'credits' and built into an online economy...you could buy ingredients for crafting.
Currently when I die I lose 25 points if the other my killer has a low ranking. I'm therefore targeted often by the other team as Im a gold mine to them. This means players run up to me and just do suicide runs at me and my sentry. Its more annoying than skillful as eventualy they WILL kill me and get the 25 points. Where as I only get 10 points for the 5 times I kill them.
Buttercup - if you feel so inspired to let me know what points are awarded for what then I think you may be the first person on the web to of produced a points chart. Its actually really interesting.
I'd also be interested to hear what people think about the idea of a virtual economy in the game utilising crafting options and points/credits... would this be the first shoot-em-up to have an economy?
Fascinating economy concept.
ReplyDeleteI am certainly all-for the idea of playing more real-to-life, actually valuing your own health and life. Giving people a motivation for this is always good.
Medics have a sort of built-in motivation to stay alive. While I'm alive and healing people, I'm building an uber or kritz charge. The more time I have invested in that, the more I find myself protecting my life (and the valuable weapon charge).
I keep an eye on Medics around me, too, and will heal them over an attack class guy if I see they are carrying a 100% ubercharge and they're moving towards using it.
But I admit, I almost never pay attention to points. And I would guess that if no one has posted a points chart, then there's a good reason. Because players FAR more addicted to and involved in this game than I are out there analyzing every detail of this game.
I'll take a peek around and see what I can find...
Ah, here's one place with a points list (doesn't look complete, though)...
ReplyDeletehttp://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Points
This table is incorrect and VERY VERY empty. There are points for many, many more things which arent listed on the wiki page. Also (for example) in my experience teleporting a player is 1 point not 0.5. It would also be interesting to know why one player gets 12 points for killing me and why another gets 6..etc How on earth is THAT worked out?
ReplyDeleteGo on you know you want to do it! Get charting! x
A lively discussion on the flaws/benefits of the points system:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.teamfortress2fort.com/forums/t/Pointsystemflawed-6483.aspx
Not being an expert on such things, but having picked up a lot of ideas via osmosis....
ReplyDeleteI'd guess that I'd need to see some server logs (or at the very least, watch my dev console in-game) to begin to understand what points are being awarded for what actions... and even then, it may not be clear WHY that number was earned.
I'll look into it, but I imagine we'd need a programmer type to parse the logs and tabulate the data.