TF2C: The Puzzling Case of The Tranquilizer

Yes, this weapon swayed me enough to make an entire video about it. (-Please, DO NOT EXPAND until prompted to do so!-) NOTE: Things below are intended as separate suggestions and not as a cumulative buff. UTILITY: • Let Tranq spy be more resistant to spychecking by giving his disguises damage resistance or temporary overheal. • Or allow Tranq spy to recover the health he’d lost to an attacker upon killing him, putting some survivability on his bony frame. • As a quality of life, Shanks could prioritize the tranqed victim even if somebody else is in the way: Victim Back - Stray Back - Victim Shank - Stray Butterknife. • Or, make Tranq-n-shanks THE tool that bypasses all overheal, making its risk predictible in every situation. • Speaking of modifying, how about increasing the stab area for the tranqued target? It’s what the sensitivity-reducing concept planned on doing anyways, but, this time, it’s a fairer change that rewards skill from both sides. • Continuing this concept, killing the tranqued victim could grant you an increased stab angle for a short time as well, enabling risky plays in exchange for exposure. • Or the reward could be speed, gaining a burst of momentum after either hitting the dart/shank or killing the tranqued target. • Another thing I wished for was faster weapon swap speed for those cases when spy fumbles his shot. • Also, the delay between clicking and projectile spawning should also be addressed. Tranq could benefit from a combined hit detection model: drawing a hitscan for the first, say, three meters, and then spawning a projectile at that distance if nothing was hit – compensating for the lag delay. Or just speed up the dart again. • Remove the ability to melee crit for tranqued players. • Remove knockback on shanks (the hilarious part is that darts themselves have this!) • And lastly, are tranq shots supposed to get stuck in friendly buildings? MANIPULATION: • Let Tranq spy pass through the edges of enemies' collision boxes, his own shrunk in turn, passively or after a tranq hit. • Conversely, let Tranq turn enemy collision boxes solid, preventing passage to and through friendlies and maybe even blocking the incoming friendly fire. • Hell, we could even take advantage of careless shooting and make tranqued targets receive a portion of the friendly damage they caught, maybe in a poison-ish, drawn-out way. • Let Tranq make the victim see people not just in gray, but in the opposite/randomized teamcolor (suggested by ‪@Odium_DOB‬) • Getting shot by the Tranquilizer "freezes" the victim's health bar state (and maybe disables all damage indicators?), so they become obliviously misinformed about their true health, as well as to whether they're taking damage or not (suggested by ‪@VTYSktu‬ ) • Revert the duration ramp-up, but give each player a window of resistance to subsequent tranqs. STEALTH: • Let Tranq shots be near silent, also muting any and all exclamations from the merc hit. Disabling voicechat bubble icon and dazed over-the-head effect for the victim’s team could also help while still leaving enough contextual clues to figure out that someone is in danger. • Continuing the theme of stealth, victim’s HUD damage indicator feels like an absolute no-go, defeating the purpose of a paranoia-inducing weapon. Same can be said about this weird projectile trail seen by the enemy team, leading straight to spy. • Now more towards escape, how about tranqued targets being unable to see the spy’s cloak shimmer while cloaking IN, bumping or shot. • A more extreme idea is to let Tranq be fired while cloaked/disguised (latter pointed out by ‪@owndoing2055‬) with certain restrictions, enhancing the whole subtle support spy idea. • …or at least to be fired while uncloaking and cloaking in. • Lastly, Tranq is simply begging to have an expanded palette of feignable actions, such as swinging, scoping, revving and taunting. COMBAT • Let Tranq hold two shots. • Tranq shots could deal damage in a dot that scales the more darts you put into the target OR could multiply its damage with every successive shot, making support spy somewhat more viable damagewise. • Long-distance shots could be rewarded with higher damage, trading dot time for lethality. Or, honoring the memory of the Ambassador, let Tranq headshot and thus apply full duration regardless of distance • Let Spy shank tranqued targets from FURTHER AWAY (eyelander style) • Make Tranq a knife option MUSIC USED: 1. TF2 - Dapper Cadaver; 2. TF2 - Seduce Me! (Soundtrack); 3. Dick Walters - Hot Liquorice; 4. Fizica - Тик-Так (Tick-Tock); 5. TF2 - A Little Heart to Heart; 6. FireLake - Dirge for the Planet; 7. Undertale OST - 045 - NGAHHH!!; 8. Laura Shigihara - Zombies on Your Lawn; If there's one weapon in Team Fortress 2 Classic that has me foaming by the mouth, it's Tranquilizer. And since the distance between players and developers is pretty small, I decided to put in my two cents of feedback and impression!