Proto:Team Fortress 2/2009 Closed Beta

This is a sub-page of Proto:Team Fortress 2.

In 2009, Valve ran a closed beta with competitive players. In addition to testing general gameplay changes that went live in the Classless Update and subsequent updates to the game, several new weapon concepts were featured in the beta.

Weapons

Some weapon changes and brand-new weapons were tested, some of which did not make the cut.

Gloves of Running Urgently

The GRU was the only new weapon from the closed beta to be implemented in the actual game. Three variations were tested, all of which increased the Heavy's run speed by 30% while they were drawn, but did half damage along with another downside. The first reduced the Heavy's maximum health by 100 when the weapon was equipped. The "Beta 2" variant cut the amount of health Medics could heal to the Heavy in half when the weapon was equipped. The "Beta 3" variant is what was originally implemented in the full game, with the Heavy taking 6 damage per second when the Gloves were drawn. This has also since been reworked, with the GRU now draining the player's max health down to 100 health while the weapon is active, along with taking 50% longer to holster. What a great change.

P.D.Q.

The P.D.Q. was a Wrench replacement for the Engineer that used the stock Wrench model in-game. It couldn't upgrade buildings, but could speed up their construction by 150% while whacking them. The P.D.Q. directly evolved into the Jag, as the Jag's animations begin with the prefix pdq_, and it retains the ability to significantly speed up building construction at 1.95× the normal speed (2.95× normal speed if re-hauling) of the regular wrench.

Overhealer

A Medi Gun alternative that looks like the stock Medi Gun with two nozzles. This would have allowed the Medic to overheal players to 200% of their normal health, instead of 150%, and this overheal would not decay over time. To offset this, its ÜberCharge build rate was reduced compared to the stock Medi Gun, and Valve even toyed around with the idea of removing its ability to ÜberCharge altogether. It was ultimately shelved due to how hard it was to balance. Something of note is that the Kritzkrieg model and materials use overhealer in their filenames.

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  The Overhealer.

Medi Gun Beta 1

This was basically a rework of the scrapped Overhealer concept. It could overheal players to 150% of their maximum health like the stock Medi Gun, and like the Overhealer this would never decay, but it healed at half the normal rate. Unlike the Overhealer, it simply used the same model as the Medi Gun.

Fire Retardant Suit

A replacement for the Spy's Revolver. Two variants of this weapon were tested: One made the Spy resist direct fire damage by 90%, while the other "Beta 2" variant made him completely immune to afterburn. The downside to these effects was, of course, that the Spy no longer had a ranged weapon. While the suit lacked an inventory icon in the beta (it used the Engineer's Wrench icon as a placeholder), one was later added to the game's files, which is still present to this day.

The properties of both Suit variants were later inherited by the Spy-cicle, a knife replacement, so it's doubtful this useless "weapon" will ever be implemented.

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  Fire Retardant Suit bucket icon.