Team Fortress 2: Engineer Unlocks still up in the air

For those TF2 fans out there, thought I’d share the latest news from over at Valve regarding their last round of unlocks to be released. All classes in the game have received their new weapons and gadgets save for one class, the Engineer, and the developers over at Valve have been hard at work for months putting together the right set of gear for this extremely complex class. Word on the grapevine has been that one of these soon-to-be unlocks was going to be a new build item casually referred to as the “Repair Node”. The concept was that the node would repair nearby structures using an energy pool. Once everything was repaired, the Repair Node would then start building up energy for future fixing. In this way, it would act like the Engineer’s dispenser, doling out ammo until everyone around was full up and then building up energy until more ammo was needed.

Meet the Repair Node!

Well, on the Official TF2 Blog, the developers have regretfully informed the public that they’ve had to scrap the Repair Node as a potential unlock. They were kind enough to put together a truly in-depth post, though, that really spelled out each of the problems with the Node. I highly recommend any fan of the game to jump on over and read the full article but, for those of you who just can’t be bothered, I’ll give you a very vague sum-up. Basically, the Node both threw off the balance of the game, making the Engineer’s base far too difficult to take down, and was, in general, too big a gameplay changer. Points of maps that once were  free flow areas became new choke points, changing the whole experience of the level for attackers. It was just too much.

Okay, now unmeet the Repair Node!

So, for those of us who love our Engineers, I’m afraid we’re back in the dark regarding the future of our class. To pass the time, though, I’m going to share an idea for a potential Engineer unlock and welcome all readers interested to do the same in the comments below. Bear in mind, this is just the first thing that came to mind.

“The Decoy”

Pretty simple design. The Engineer selects The Decoy from his build menu and then selects what it should look like; a Turret or a Dispenser. Build time is much shorter for Decoys than other Engineer build items and, once deployed, the Decoy will act like the structure it’s disguised as. For instance, a Turret will beep and turn while a Dispenser will glow and… well, that’s about it. However, the Dispenser will not dispense anything and the Turret won’t fire a shot. Instead, when an enemy attempts to melee it or place a sapper, they’ll get a swift kick to the groin, stunning them for 5 seconds and removing any disguise they might have. Animation would be something like this.

My Paint skills could use some work...

Engineers on the defending team could set up a whole mock base by working together or give spies an evil 50/50 shot when placing a sapper by putting a decoy right next to the real thing. Spy has to either choose one or wait for the real one to give itself away. Could make for an interesting mechanic.

So, anyone have any better ideas?