Idea Engineer Rework Idea

Hello,

Many of you will recognize me by my IGN: taynus. I'm writing on this account because I don't remember my user and pass for my other account.

When I rejoined CTF recently over the summer, I was a bit disappointed to see how engineer was changed on Brawl. The underuse of Engineer kit that I and many other players have noticed are a testament to this. I've had some ideas I've been tossing around for a while and I figured I would post them on the forums for community feedback in hopes that engineer will receive the rework that it desperately needs.

Engineer:

Most of the Brawl community remembers the old engineer with the much loved and hated turrets and teleporters. Understandably, the kit was too "campy" and was a huge frustration to players who kept getting spammed with arrows. This resulted in a huge rework of engineer, which has equipped the kit with a weird jumble of tools which resemble something more of a demoman and almost nothing like an engineer.

Last week, DeZilla hopped on CTF for a bit and previewed three kits to the public which were not planned for release at all. One of these kits, mechanic, resembled the original engineer kit known to many CTF players from before the rework. Mechanic was equipped with a pickaxe, a turret, a cannon, and a golden ingot which recalled structures. Based off of the mechanic kit, I'll show how I think engineer should be reworked.
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REWORKED ENGINEER (Based off mechanic):

Diamond Pickaxe: The diamond pickaxe has been the traditional melee weapon for engineers since the beginning. Right from the start, there's already an important nerf on engineer that wasn't available previously. A diamond pickaxe is important for a kit that could be considered "campy" because it allows engineers to be insta-killed by assassins.

Turret: When placed, a turret will fire arrows at players within a certain vicinity. There would be obvious restrictions to where a turret could be placed-- not too close to flags or in the ways of other players or structures.

This is perhaps the most controversial aspect of an engineer rework, so obviously the turret (based off the mechanic kit) is nerfed in a few very important ways.

1. In order for the engineer to do manual override (firing arrows where the engineer wants to), the engineer has to ride the turret. This makes the engineer more vulnerable and prevents the engineer from hiding behind blocks and firing arrows rapidly at players who can't even get close to the engineer.

2. I have two ideas for the second way engineer could be nerfed. Either arrows don't fire as fast as they did with the original engineer kit, or in order to refill a turret, the engineer needs to kill players to get arrows for the turret. By making the engineer kill players to get arrows, it makes it very difficult for the engineer to camp (which was the biggest problem with the original engineer). I think it's very important that only one of the two ideas I mentioned for the second nerf should be used, otherwise the turret wouldn't be very useful at all.

3. Invisible ninjas won't be attacked by turrets. This is good because then ninjas can get past turrets to kill the engineer, which serves as an important nerf. Engineers already don't have great armor so ninjas can wipe them out relatively quickly.

4. The range on turrets would be significantly decreased. I remember before turrets used to go halfway across the map. This isn't something that turrets should be able to do.

5. One idea I just came across as I was looking for other ideas was actually adding a sword to engineer hotbar in addition to a pickaxe. Essentially when holding the pickaxe, the turrets would be active, but when holding a sword (for melee purposes) turrets wouldn't be active. (credit goes to CakeInASuit). The important thing would be to make the sword more powerful than the pickaxe so that engineers don't just fight with a pickaxe all the time. This would mean maybe making the diamond pickaxe a wooden pickaxe, for example and making the sword a stone or gold sword (or maybe even iron, who knows).

Cannon: A cannon is a structure which launches engineers and their team members where they choose. When right clicking, the player will be able to ride the cannon. If you right click again, the player would be launched in the direction he or she is pointing in. This really brings back the engineer feel to the kit because it's another structure which can be built, unlike the previous hand held cannon.

Recall Structures: A golden ingot in the player's hot bar would serve to recall structures.

ARMOR: Keep the same armor engineer has always had.


I would argue mechanic kit, which is what reworked engineer is based off of, is even better than the original engineer for many reasons. Mechanic is able to construct more structures than both the original engineer and reworked engineer. The original engineer tools, turret and teleporter, are replaced perfectly by a nerfed turret and a cannon (which serves as a nerfed form of transportation that the teleporter originally provided). Also, engineer is designed to support the team. By making the turrets and cannons usable by the entire team, I think engineer goes back to its roots of a support system for the team.

I spent a lot of time writing this thread, so community feedback would be much appreciated. My hope is that we get enough feedback on this thread so that engineer is a decent kit that people can start using more frequently.

I hope Brawl and CTF staff take this into serious consideration. I think it's very clear that the current engineer is in a weird spot right now. It's definitely not an engineer and the fact that it is very underused goes to show that engineer needs a rework. The nerfs that were included in this version of engineer I proposed solve the problem of engineer being a very campy kit. Thank you for listening to my ideas, I really hope this is something that can be implemented in the near future (especially since the kit is basically already made).

One other thing I meant to add. In order to make it easier to destroy a turret, I think it would be smart to add a feature to turrets where if a player gets within 3 or 4 blocks of a turret the turret won’t shoot at that player, only players that are further away.

 

I agree. My idea with this post is to give plenty of ideas to staff on how to nerf this kit so they can bring it back.

 

I appreciate your feedback. A few things I'd like to address in your post though. I think keeping the tnt cannon wouldn't be true to the original engineer and I think the engineer would have too many things in its inventory. I think the turret and the cannon should be enough. One thing I think would be really cool to do with a tnt cannon though would be to implement it into a new class, demoman, but let's talk about that in another thread.

Personally I don't like the idea of allowing other teammates to utilize the turret, just the engineer, but I think other people might agree with you. It creates problems of people constantly manually overriding the turret which can be quite frustrating to some players on the other team as well as the engineer who wants to use the turret. Again, I could be wrong, I don't really know until we give it a try! Another thing. I don't think turrets should fire only when engineers are riding them. I think turrets should be auto firing even without an engineer riding them. Riding a turret should only be for overriding.

I disagree with your point that engineers mounting turrets should be immune to archer snipe instakills. But this might make it to easy to kill an engineer, so I'm not sure. If engineers aren't immune to sniper kills it becomes incredibly difficult to get close to and kill an engineer who is manually overriding turrets which fire arrows at a pretty constant rate. The idea here is to make it so that engineers aren't as OP as they were ORIGINALLY because they were difficult to kill, making engineer a very campy kit. Remember, the original reason engineer was reworked was because it was too campy and needed to be nerfed. Again, something that needs to be tested out before we know for sure, which is why I'm encouraging staff to start experimenting with this reworked engineer kit.

I don't think engineers should take fall damage from the cannon. Mechanic kit, which is what the engineer rework would be based off of, doesn't deal fall damage to players who use the cannon. I believe the cannon was a minecraft furnace with tnt underneath (you'd have to see it to be able to picture it). It's pretty cool!! It's hard to describe the velocity with words, but no it's not like an arrow being drawn back, it's less than that but still really cool for mobility. I do think all players should be able to use the cannon in my personal opinion. It makes the engineer more of a team supportive based kit.

Thanks for your feedback!

 

Hey Nemo. Thanks for the feedback. I also think the cannon idea is something new and cool for the engineer's transportation aspect. Right now the speed pad is kind of useless since the duration that you have speed is the same duration it takes for you to be able to recall the speed pad and use it again. I think having flag carriers ride cannons would be a bit powerful, and I think you could be right about that. In terms of a cake for restoration, I never thought about that until now. I think that might be a cool addition!

 

Thanks for your feedback, Russiandragon2. I agree, the new engineer is a complete split from the original engineer. Engineers added an element to the game which several people miss, but many also did not like because of how over powered turrets were. With the nerfs mentioned in the article, I'm positive we can fix a lot of problems players had with turrets, and I'm hoping staff can give old engineer another shot.

 

Thanks for you feedback. I agree, I feel like some changes made to kits turned off old players that are rejoining in 2020. This is a cool idea that should be discussed further.

 

Thanks for your feedback. I agree with you. The reworked engineer plans to do exactly what you just mentioned. Turrets, which were the most annoying and fun things for players, would be nerfed in this reworked engineer to make engineer a fun class that wouldn't be a nuisance to all other players.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I disagree with you here. I think you're creating this image of "camping in a corner" which is an inaccurate portrayal of how the turrets I mentioned would really work. In order for a turret to actually be useful you'd have to be in an area with lots of players, which means the engineer is vulnerable to being attacked, whether that be by ninjas, archers, etc. Also the nerfs I mentioned would prevent exactly this from happening. Remember, everything I mentioned in this article was brought up specifically to prevent exactly what you described from happening. I don't think this ruins the game, but of course there are two sides to an argument. I've gotten feedback from many players who've said they do enjoy the old engineer more than the current one. I think the current engineer would be more movement oriented, especially with a cannon which would help engineers be more mobile and as a result, not able to camp by a turret.

I don't think engineer would be solely for defense. I think engineer would be able to work as a strong offense to allow teammates to gain ground on the offense, especially with a cannon which allows players to launch themselves closer to the flag. I see a nice balance between defense and offense capabilities with an engineer. With the current state of engineer, there's no balance, it's primarily offense (and very underused as a kit). I think engineer would bring back a new aspect to the game many old and new players would enjoy, but we won't know until we try.

 

Thanks for your feedback. I agree, I think engineer would be less used in competitive matches, but I think the same could be said with some other kits. Regardless, I think this concept should be tested at least before being discarded.

 

Dude I completely agree with the competition part. The game used to be completely casual and just for fun. Ever since competitions started becoming more frequent, a ton of kits were nerfed (some for the better) for competitive gameplay rather than just casual gameplay. This has removed some fun aspects of the game that players enjoyed simply because the game was casual (small things like elf's earth element, ninja's blindness eggs, necro, and of course engineer's turrets). The game is going in a very competitive based direction which is driving away some players who enjoy casual gameplay. I feel like a compromise can be made for both competitive and casual gameplay, and the engineer rework in this case would be a great way to bring more fun back to the class that has been changed to better suit the needs of competitive rather than casual players.