Finally, Some TF2 Content

I know my readers have been dying to hear more about TF2 on the blog, and I live to please. Have you ever checked out the TF2 Statistics page that Valve maintains? Some things are immediately obvious: If only 58% of players have the most common achievement, and not even 50% have the next most common, we can safely assume that most people who own TF2 haven't played it all that much. For purposes of determining Achievement frequencies, I'd double the percentage of people who have earned the particular Achievement to determine the number of people who have earned it that have played for more than a few minutes.

Despite this adjustment, we find that only 50% of people, (adjusted from 25%), have earned possibly the easiest achievement ever: Surgical Prep. A weight on the left mouse button can charge a full über before the round starts, yet more people have killed 1.000 people than have held down the heal button for about 40 seconds.

The first achievement in frequency that I don't have is Sentry Gunner. I just don't play the "safe" locations for sentries, and when I do, some über comes in and rocks my base. The thing is, people have gotten better at dealing with sentries over time. If I had played engineer at the very beginning of TF2, I could have walked away from a level 1 sentry and earned the achievement in the first round.

Everyone loves the unlockable alternate weapons for the classes, and I've thought of one that could be cool. You know how Solid Snake can plant C4 on people's backs, then set it off later? I think it'd be neat if a spy could put a bomb on someone's back instead of backstabbing them. It might not drop disguise, since there would be several penalties:

• The bomb would have some sort of countdown, and would have a beeping noise, or something to that effect. Medics could activate übers, or overheal the target, bringing them outside of the fatal range.
• There would be limited ammo, so a spy couldn't bomb everyone on a team all at once.
  

I don't know how practical this would be, but it seems like it could be fun. I'm sure there are balance issues that I'm not anticipating, but I don't imagine it would have a huge game-changing effect.