This guy! —>

Today Valve released the Goldrush Update for Team Fortress 2. Along with some gameplay updates and bugfixes (which will be talked about in a later article), a major addition of this update is the Goldrush map. Goldrush introduces a new gameplay type called Payload, with the premise being that Blu team is pushing a large bomb (the payload) to the objective deep in Red territory. As members of the Blu team stand around the payload it moves forward (with greater speed the more teammates are around it) while simultaniously dispensing ammo and health. When the offensive pushing (Blu) team doesn’t push for 30 seconds, the payload starts slowly moving back down the track from whence it came. This is a key point, because on defense you need to remember that the cart CAN move back, but it moves back at a constant rate no matter how many people you have pushing it.

This map (or perhaps the gameplay type, I’m not sure which yet) are excellent and ridiculously fun to play. Even in the one night that Goldrush has been out I’ve noticed the playing community crafting very different strategies and counter-strategies.

It’s exciting! The primary strategy I’ve encountered thus far is the juggernaut “Heavy Push”. While effective, I think that strategy’s prevalence is due to the large amount of medic-whoring occurring because of the new update. While effective, it’s not a sure thing. An awesome defense I witnessed with a large Pyro Pack sprinkled with engineers and medics. Very effective.

The one tip I can give you this early is do not underestimate the scout on offense. The scout acts as 2 people pushing the payload, and is small enough to use the payload cart as great cover from fire. Also on defense, if you get near the cart you stop the other team’s pushing progress, so when the payload is near the end just just get in there as close as possible and stop that cart from moving (this is where the Pyro defense is VERY smart). I seriously love this map and think it will help increase the levels of teamwork on servers to new highs! Now join up on on the Montana Fragfest server and get pushing that cart!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 12:21 am and is filed under Team Fortress 2, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.