SEASONAL Changes

Maps from previous Scream Fortress events are now sorted by gamemode rather than being lumped together into a single category. They will still be separate from the year-round maps.

Reasons For Changes

Every single year, more maps get added for Scream Fortress, most of which end up being only playable during the season. To help distinguish these maps in future Scream Fortress events, all maps from previous events are separated from the year-round maps and put into their own category. This was a fine enough system for a while, but after well over a decade of Scream Fortress after Scream Fortress, there are now a monstrous amount of maps for it. So much, in fact, that it becomes challenging to even know which maps are which. For those who haven't been following the game's Scream Fortress events every year and have intimate knowledge of each and every map by name (which if we're being honest is most people), the sheer number of maps in this single category is overwhelming and can put people off from the task of filtering out the ones they don't want to play and just neglect queuing for the category altogether. By instead sorting them by gamemode like the year-round maps, it'll be much easier to know what each map entails and sort through the ones you don't want to play - especially the ones with similar names!

Smissmas-themed reskins of existing maps without significant gameplay changes will now temporarily replace the original map in Casual. Community servers can still play both versions.

Other maps from previous Smissmas events are now sorted by gamemode rather than being lumped together into a single category. These will still be separate from the year-round maps.

Reasons For Changes

The latter change is the same one from Scream Fortress and is being implemented for the same reason. As for the former change, this is to help reduce stretching the playerbase thin from playing two versions of what is effectively the same map, help people get into the Smissmas spirit without having to go overboard with the crazier maps, and encourage more of the reskinned maps to not make major gameplay changes just for the sake of it. Reskins of maps are cool and all, but many of them choose to make some major modification (or several), and most of these tend to hurt the map more than help. With this system in place, they won't have to do that anymore, which inversely can make the brand new maps more special!

MONOCULUS! no longer has a 50% damage resistance against flame throwers.

Reasons For Changes

For a boss that often is high in the air and therefore hard to reach with the flame throwers, it's rather baffling that MONOCULUS! gets a pretty sizable damage resistance to them. Even without this resistance, Pyro isn't the best class for the task (that goes to Heavy, even despite the 75% damage resistance to miniguns). This will be neat for Pyros looking to potentially reflect back some of the eyeball rockets to protect everyone!

Spellbook Magazine (and its variants) no longer have +50% faster deploy speed

Reasons For Changes

This simply makes the time to cast a spell take longer so that when fighting against a player attempting to cast one, you have more time to react to it. I don't know why it was given such a fast casting time, but there we go.

Reduced the damage Fireball does to 50 (from 100)

Fireball now has explosion radius fall-off (previously always did full damage)

Reasons For Changes

Known to many as the single best spell in the game, Fireball fires, you guessed it, a fireball that deals a rather ridiculous amount of damage with a BRUTAL explosion radius with zero fall-off of any kind. If that somehow doesn't do enough for you, it also applies afterburn on top of that! Oh, and you get TWO of them! Crazy stuff. This single spell all but guarantees your victory in combat and desperately needed these nerfs.

Using this spell will now grant the user fall damage immunity until they land.

Reasons For Changes

I mean, c'mon. Why not? This spell is already agreeably one of the weaker ones, so at least let it not damage the person using it!

No longer grants damage invulnerability when cast

Reduced the maximum overheal obtainable with this spell to 150% (from 200%)

Players casting this spell will now use the voice line currently being used by Swarm Of Bats.

Reasons For Changes

The former two changes are simply to reduce the more overpowered effects from this spell, making it so that you have to actually survive fights with the pure healing output, rather than casting it and becoming invulnerable for enough time to already be at good health + not have a source of overheal that is higher than anything else. As for the voice line change, the Swarm Of Bats line roughly translates to "invincible god" and is clearly meant for this spell.

Reduced the uses of Swarm Of Bats per spell pickup to 1 (from 2)

Players casting this spell will now use the voice line currently being used by Overheal.

Reasons For Changes

Being that Swarm Of Bats is a more situational and argreably worse version of Fireball, I felt that the best nerf to it would be to keep its current power (40 damage + 24 more in bleed + fall damage the enemy takes), but trade it out for not being able to cast it twice with one spell pickup. As for the voice line change, see the changes to Overheal above.

Doubled projectile speed and gravity on splitting pumpkins.

Pumpkin MIRV pumpkins will now automatically explode if they still remain after 20 seconds.

Reasons For Changes

The former change is to buff the speed in which the pumpkins spawn while not altering their positions to counteract the change to the spellbook magazine, as it is admittedly a weaker spell. The latter change just simply makes sense so that unused pumpkins don't linger around for an excessive period.

User now undergoes the cloaking animation upon casting Stealth.

User now must decloak before being able to attack again after having cast Stealth (either by pressing attack or waiting out the spell's timer). Initiating a taunt kill will begin the decloak process, but continue the taunt animation.

Stealth will no longer heal the caster (currently heals for 40 health)

Reasons For Changes

Outside of Fireball simply winning fights almost entirely on its own, Stealth still remains as one of the most absolutely annoying spells to fight against. There just really isn't any counter to it. Either someone either uses it to escape a fight (and they will, unless you get super lucky), or even worse, uses it in a similar manner to Spy's cloak and gets to freely get behind the enemy lines and get an attack in before they are even visible! I think for that reason, Stealth should absolutely have similar limitation to Spy's watches.

Summoned MONOCULUSes will no longer target each other if they're nearby.

Attacks will now pass through a summoned MONOCULUS (currently, they will block attacks, despite being invincible).

Reasons For Changes

Both of these changes frankly qualify as just general quality of life changes. I don't really have much to add.

Skeletons summoned by Skeleton Horde will no longer summon skeleton children when defeated.

Skeleton Horde is now in the common spell pool rather than the rare spell pool.

Reasons For Changes

Skeleton Horde... is one of the least helpful spells, honestly. I don't know why it's in the rare spell pool, outside of the fact that skeletons are annoying. Defeating them only results in spawning more in the form of small skeleton children that are just as effective as their larger counterparts. To rectify both of these, this spell is now in the common spell pool based on its power, but I also removed the skeleton children part.

Reduced Ball O' Lightning's damage per tick to now 5 (from 20)

Reasons For Changes

For as much control the Ball O' Lightning zaps from players trapped inside, it makes little sense for it to ALSO deal a lethal amount of damage in the process. It may be a rare spell, but that shouldn't mean it absolutely can decimate multiple enemies in a single cast without providing your own damage.

Fireballs from Meteor Shower receive the same nerfs Fireball got.

Reasons For Changes

Meteor Shower basically instant kills anyone in range of it now. Being as it's basically just a rapid fire Fireball, it getting the same nerfs seems like the best way to make it somewhat survivable. It'll still be an absolutely devastating spell, but HOPEFULLY not an instant kill like it feels today.

No longer forces third person.

Now provides doubled jump height and +1 air jump instead of infinite air jumps.

Reduced the firing and reload speed buffs to +25% apiece (from +50% - aka double speed).

No longer provides a speed boost or 100 health heal on use.

Now has significantly improved detection on whether or not the user will become stuck after the spell's effects wear off, reducing false positives where the user is killed.

No longer replaces kill icons with its spell icon.

Reasons For Changes

Power Up (or as it's more commonly known, Minify) is definitely the spell with the most number of problems. The forced third person mode of the spell makes it rather difficult to use, as your character completely covers your crosshair. It's actually possible to just type the first person command into the console to undo this effect, and it becomes quite clear that this single change is a net positive for the spell - but necessitates some nerfs to it, namely the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th changes I made. This will make it much easier to both use and fight against. The final two changes are the quality of life ones that I think most people can agree with.

Pumpkin Bombs that have been used will now be transparent rather than not being there, and will show how many seconds until they respawn.

Reasons For Changes

If pumpkin bombs are going to be integrated into so many Scream Fortress maps and determine the outcome of several fights throughout the match, it would be convienent to both know the locations of inactive ones and when they will respawn so that you don't fall victim to them - and instead can use them to your advantage!

Crumpkins will now spawn when the dead player had scored at least one kill that life, instead of being a 1/3 chance for any death.

Crumpkins now grant mini-crits instead of full crits.

Crumpkins spawned from killing a player (or finishing them off) will now be team-colored to the team opposite of the dead player. Neutral deaths will still produce normal crumpkins that can be picked up by either team.

Reasons For Changes

One of the unspoken horrors of Scream Fortress, crumpkins are a rather unbalanced mechanic baked into nearly every Scream Fortress map that results in wildly unfair kills, arguably being a mechanic just as flawed as random critical hits! However, being as Scream Fortress is inherently a less serious way to play (plus many of the contracts for the season having one of their bonus objectives be to pick them up), I didn't feel outright removing them was the way to go over making them... well, less extreme and more fair. The first change removes the randomness factor and makes it guaranteed whether or not a given player's death will drop a crumpkin, and makes it so that players who aren't doing so well aren't punishing the rest of their team by giving them free damage boosts. The second change addresses the extremity part of it and tones down the sheer power they grant to a much more managable mini-crit boost. Lastly, I made them now be team-colored for kills done by a player so that they can properly reward the team that got the kill instead of potentially making the team that lost the member stronger in their absence.