Negative Nancy

Too long, do not read

The Scout Update has been out for over a week now and I haven't yet commented on it because:
a) I've been playing it
and
b) I don't think it's very good, and the fact that Valve are releasing these updates free-of-charge sort of makes me feel as though I don't have the right to complain, especially as TF2 has one of the finest hours-of-enjoyment:money-paid ratios of all the games I've ever played.

But what the hey.

The problem with the Scout update is that new weapons aren't very fun for any and all concerned.

The Force-O-Nature: it's third jump is negligible, and the knockback it delivers to the enemy is not only irritatingly disorientating for them but means that the Scout has to chase after his target and recalibrate his aim with each shot due to them being launched out of the point-blank range in which the weapon is remotely effective. Being hit by the knockback generally propels you into the air, making maneuvering to safety (or at all) difficult, an ability that can now be claimed by the Scout, the Soldier, the Demoman, the Pyro, and partly the Heavy.

The Sandman: A purely terrible weapon in all ways. The idea of rendering the player incapable of even reacting whilst the enemy team lays into them should not have even been considered. It's maddening. Whilst the removal of the Scout's double jump is admittedly a steep and restrictive trade-off, balancing out an annoying effect with another annoying effect does not make good design.
Plus, having to wait 10 seconds for your baseball to replenish screws with the idea of the Scout being a fast, twitchy class.

Bonk! energy drink: Useless. Presumably the idea behind it was that the Scout could use the invulnerability to get through particularly bad choke points. Unfortunately, the 1 second it takes to drink the thing necessitates that you use it out of combat, and the 6 second invincibility only lasts long enough to get you into enemy lines, rarely out the other side. Bizarrely, despite dodging the projectiles thrown at him, the scout still takes knockback, so that any choke-point sporting an enemy sentry gun (i.e. all of them) is extremely difficult to navigate.
If you somehow succeed in passing through the choke-point, you're reduced to the speed of a Soldier, ensuring that all but the slowest classes who care to follow your giant blur-trail can hunt you down with ease.
Why is the Scout even slowed down after use? Surely the lack of a pistol is trade-off enough.

Then there's the inability to cap a point or carry the intelligence while under the effect of Bonk! So you can get into a base, but not out of it.

And then there's the fact that Valve forgot to remove the word final from the end of the new maps. It's a minor detail that suggests that Valve aren't really giving the updates their full attention and, while I'm in no position to hold them to any standards but their own, they run the risk of mucking up a fine game with sloppy updating.

Whine complete.