Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the FaN. I have seen people argue about it in scrims, in pubs, and on other forums. Kuiper mentioned it in his epic blog post: http://communityfortress.com/tf2/blog/kuipers-17-pages-on-team-fortress-2.php

The Force-A-Nature suffers from the same problem that the sandman does, albeit to a lesser extent. Robin Walker has already stated that they are working with the Force-A-Nature's knockback code, so hopefully the gun's issues will not be long-lasting. As it is, the Force-A-Nature's knockback doesn't seem to be working as intended, a good example being that it breaks a player's forward momentum even when it is fired at their back.

Another gripe about the Force-A-Nature's is that there is only one thing that affects knockback: range. It seems a little bit wrong that a 9-damage shot at close range has the same knockback as a 108-damage shot at the same range. The knockback should in part be determined by the number of pellets that hit the target. (Things could be simplified further if the knockback was simply based on damage, since damage is a function of distance and pellet count.) This rewards scouts for aiming well and landing shots at close range without penalizing rocket jumping soldiers who just happened to get clipped by a single pellet on the way up.


What do you guys think of it?

Once the knockback gets fixed, I doubt anyone will use this weapon. The regular scattergun is just much more useful and can also achieve knockback if you are close enough to an enemy.

I dont hate using it, but I rage hard when a mediocre scout on the other team can clip me for 10 damage,and then meatshot me to death. The 10% increase in damage was ridiculous IMO.

Plus it kind of gays soldiers rocket jumping to spire and then just getting thrown back down. Without a medic, depending on how much damage the shot does, the fall damage and the rocketjump damage, its pretty much impossible/extremely unwise to jump up a second time.

It was definitely an incredibly lethal weapon if used in the right context (see 20id over EG in esea finals), but after the fix, I doubt if anyone will use it to great effect anymore. And given how much I raged in vent whenever I got gayed by 2 scouts juggling me in turn from halfway across the map, I won't miss it at all :)

I don't mind it now that it's been fixed.

It's better now that it's fixed but I still think that stopping movement is still a little much. There have been a couple of instances where I've been jumping and hit by a spam FAN shot profile and it stops my momentum. It's better, but not perfect.

I'm still a bit annoyed by the gimmick factor of FaN jumping. I keep finding spots in levels that are obviously designed with the FaN in mind, but I guess I'm having trouble figuring out why level designers are trying to include it just for the sake of giving it a purpose. To me it feels like weapon welfare: "well damn no one uses this crap, lets give it a mobility advantage over the scatter gun in a couple manufactured scenarios so a few people will choose it"

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