February 24th 2022
Team Fortress 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. Even though the game hasn’t gotten a major update or any balance patches for over five years it is still an extremely fun game with a thriving community.
Speaking of which, many parts of the community have their own servers that run “balance mod” plugins for TF2. They usually consist of a team of people that keep the servers running as well as design & code the server plugin itself but I found one plugin that allows me to change the attributes of weapons by using the item attribute system in the game.
I might not be able to create entirely new mechanics but I can still change far more than I thought I could with so many weapons!
Tools | Steamcmd / Sourcemod / Rebalance Fortress Plugin Duration | One Month Team | Solo Roles | Balance
Development Process
Balancing
I first determined what goal I would be seeking with my balance changes. In my opinion the best version of TF2 Is when it is “casually competitive”, when there is a full server of 24 people and they could either be coordinating with each other or every player plays for themselves. I have the most fun in that scenario especially if teams are near equal in skill because the match becomes this exhilarating tug of war with twelve players on each side doing safe, crazy or experimental strats that constantly keep you on your toes and almost always makes you a better player after figuring out how to deal with something new.
I then made a list of the weapons that I felt were either under performing or very rarely overperforming. I came up with a starting list of 63 weapons. Considering there are over +150 weapons in the game its crazy how very few overpowered weapons / dominant strategies there are. Which in 12 vs 12 scenarios they do not come up often due to the sheer chaos of the matches, but compared to the standard competitive format of 6 vs 6 that is a very different story. TF2’s main problem is that a decent amount of its unlockable weapons (which by design are supposed to be side-grades that excel in specific situations) are too niche or just underwhelming in general.
After that I put every one of those weapons onto a spreadsheet with their current stats, and my balance changes right next to them. And under each weapon I wrote a “short” explanation and reasoning of said changes. This was to act more as a guide to help tackle each weapon one at a time and keep track of each change & what I have accomplished so far.
Link to my Balance Spreadsheet
Mod Development
To start developing the mod I had to research how to run a local TF2 server, install Sourcemod and install and use the plugin to make the balance changes. All of this was unknown territory for me so I learned a lot about how the game itself works and how surprisingly easy it was to do all of this because of the dedicated community TF2 has and all the tools they have developed over the past decade and a half.
After all of that I finally started making my balance changes a reality using the Item Attribute list that the game uses to manage weapon stats. but as I was going through said list I realized a lot of my proposed changes needed entirely new interactions and or mechanics to be developed. So I went back and re-examined the changes that I couldn’t currently make, and for some weapons I created entirely new changes that would fit with the limitations of the plugin. And a lot of them I honestly think were better for it.
In the end I still had to cut a few weapons due to their mechanics being wholly unique and hard to adjust in the first place or I still believed in some of my initial proposed changes. Which if I decide to actually learn how to create plugins for source mod I would create those weapons first!
