As an early note to anyone curious, these stats were pulled right off of the TF2 stats website at 6 PM PST on 8/29/08, making them current for the week of 8/22/08 through 8/29/08. Right.

First, let’s take a look at the global percentage of time played for the remaining six classes without Packs. Remember, the first few classes to get Packs were seemingly chosen by their popularity (or rather, lack thereof) in-game.

PERCENT OF GLOBAL TIME PLAYED
All percents are approximate, just so’s you know.

Engineer (14%)
Sniper (10.5%)
Demoman (10%)
Soldier (10%)
Spy (7%)
Scout (5%)

So, Spy and Scout are clearly in the basement here. What about for points?

POINTS

Sniper (110)
Spy (100)
Demoman (90)
Soldier (90)
Scout (70)
Engineer (60)

Scout is still scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but Spy looks significantly brighter. Remember, now, that a Spy gets 2 points for most of their kills: one for the kill itself, and a second point for the backstab. Let’s check the kill stats.

KILLS

Demoman (67)
Soldier (64)
Sniper (62)
Scout (45)
Spy (45)
Engineer (42)

Spy and Scout tie here, meaning that the Spy is only getting 10 non-kill points on average, compared to the Scout’s 25. Now, this isn’t quite as damning as it might first seem, as recall that Scouts are likely getting most non-kill points from captures, which are worth 2 points apiece. Taking a look at the average # of captures per hour, however, paints a different story. The Scout is currently managing 5.5 captures an hour, a full 3 captures more than his closest competition. Coupled with his average of 16 kill assists an hour, this is a reasonable mix of point-earning methods.

The Spy, on the other hand, appears to average a dismal 3 kill assists an hour, meaning that his other 7 non-kill points are likely from destruction, at a rate of one building every eight minutes or so. Note that this number may be slightly higher, depending on how many non-backstab kills Spies are averaging globally. Since we don’t have access to those sorts of numbers, we can only dream.

All that said, as a first pass, I’m willing to put the odds of the recipient of the next Pack into the following three general groups.

———-

Spy – 1 to 1
Scout – 6 to 5

The Scout and Spy are clearly suffering on the stats page, and I would wager that this is primarily due to their high learning curves and the novel skillsets required to play them well (pure twitch in the Scout’s case, and strategic/stealth skills for the Spy). Going purely by the numbers, I think the Spy update is slightly more likely than the Scout’s, and the odds I’ve assigned reflect as much. Also in the Spy’s favor is the fact that he could have his own Meet The Team video released alongside his namesake Pack; Meet The Scout, of course, is already old news.

Engineer – 3 to 2
Demoman – 2 to 1

The Engineer and Demoman are the only classes that Valve has publicly acknowledged still have balance issues: the Engineer for his bipolar sentry guns, either stalemating a crappy team or barely fazing a skilled one, and the Demoman for his entirely-too-offensive defensive sticky grenades. Rolling a fix for these issues out with a Pack would be an elegant solution, so the question is simply whether Valve intends to do this sooner rather than later. I’m willing to bet that, at least for this next Pack, the answer will be ‘later’. Note, as well, the relative popularity of the Engineer class. Discounting the elevated totals for classes who have just received an update, the Engineer is consistently the most played class. Though the first Packs were certainly targeted at the unpopular classes, if the Engineer is being perceived as boring or problematic, it would likely behoove Valve to get out a fix to those players, which is why I’ve booked the Engineer Pack at being slightly more likely than the dark horse Demo Pack.

Soldier – 4 to 1
Sniper – 5 to 1

As shown by the numbers and my own personal experience with these classes, they’re not having any problems functioning as part of a team at this time. In fact, Sniper might even be a bit *too* popular, especially in the wake of the Heavy Pack. I don’t think we’ll see Packs for these guys until sometime next year.

———-

So there we have it. The odds may be a little off, but for the most part, I think my analysis is accurate. If you have any interesting counter-points, dear readers, please share. If I can find time in the coming days, I’d also like to do an analysis of what exactly we should be hoping for in a Spy or Scout Pack. Regardless, however, I’m fairly confident that Valve won’t disappoint us.

Average Pieces of Eight earned per hour of Puzzle Pirates voyaging: ~1,000*
Exchange rate in Pieces of Eight for Doubloons on our newest Ocean, Malachite, as of 8:12 PM, June 26th: 832
Average hourly ‘wage’ of a Puzzle Pirates player: USD$0.30
Minimum hourly wage, San Francisco, CA: USD$9.36
Amount of time required to earn the equivalent of one hour of San Francisco minimum wage playing Puzzle Pirates: 31.2 hours
California Lottery Mega Millions jackpot for 6/27/2008: $34,000,000
Number of new Mounted Tigershark items winning the Mega Millions jackpot could get you: 2,045,728**

Percentage of all players’ total playtime spent as Pyro class in Team Fortress 2 since Pyro Pack update on 6/19/2008: 26.4%
Percentage of all players’ total playtime spent as extraordinarily flammable Spy class in Team Fortress 2 since Pyro Pack update on 6/19/2008: 5.2%***

Total number of downloadable Rock Band songs available as of June 24th: 152
Total cost to download all available Rock Band songs as of June 24th onto your Xbox 360: $268.50****

More sources and explanation after the break.

* — Your average pillage can mow through 4 battles an hour, making 100-500 Pieces of Eight per pirate per win. Four battles at 300 PoE minus a 15% restocking cut is equal to 1,020 PoE, or ~1,000 PoE for an average hour of ‘work’.

** — Best current price found on Viridian Ocean for a Mounted Tigershark at 8:33 PM, June 26th was 68,462. Combined with the Doubloon delivery fee of 25 and the exchange rate of 1,178 Pieces of Eight per Doubloon, we get 83.12 Doubloons per shark. Why 83.12? So we can multiply it out by the bulk discount Doubloon cost: USD$0.20. This gets us our answer: $16.62 per shark!

*** — Source

**** — Complete breakdown is 1 free song, 7 $1 songs, 55 $2 songs, 15 $5.50 packs, 2 $10 long packs, 2 $15 albums and 1 $19 album.

The ‘minigame shop’ in which Link gets the opportunity to fling bombs or shoot arrows at targets or race across a course for fabulous prizes is a staple of the Zelda series. However, in past games, it could be assumed that the proprietors of such shops were purely philanthropists. After all, no shop could be expected to turn a decent profit by giving customers the chance to win a priceless artifact which increases your lifespan in exchange for a mere 20 Rupees.

However, in Phantom Hourglass, we get concrete evidence that this is not the case. After speaking to the owners of both the ‘minigame shops’ I encountered, they expressed that they were only in the minigame business to help make ends meet. Make ends meet? If the Goron racetrack I encountered is any indication as to how most Gorons try to make their living, there must be many a Goron child out there right now going without their RDA of rocks.

This particular minigame had a 50 Rupee entrance fee. Fifty Rupees! I can’t begin to express how many Octoroks I had to force Link to obsessively slay before coming up with that kind of scratch. However, since it was for the Goron children, I ponied up the fee. The minigame itself I will not describe here, suffice to say that on my first try I achieved a time five seconds below the one they were looking for. Huzzah! The Goron owner congratulated me heartily and offered me the choice of several boxes, ostensibly containing the aforementioned fabulous prizes that tend to permeate these types of places.

My choice ended up being a functional item with a value of 1,000 Rupees.

1,000. Three zeroes.

Any thoughts of charity immediately flew from my mind. I now had only one goal: to take this stupid granite-backed bastard for everything he had. My greedy hands immediately forked over a second entry fee, and soon I had bested the record time by nine seconds.

My prize this time was a valuable treasure worth 1,500 Rupees.

I immediately felt guilty. Several Goron children frolicked nearby, blissfully unaware of the fact that their father had just signed away their right to solid food for the next six months. I looked away, taking the first opportunity to politely scamper back to my ship. In an effort to redeem myself, I tried to think of ways that this was a viable business plan. Maybe the prizes were stolen? This seemed unlikely, as you would think the Hero of Time would be well aware of any organized crime going on in His sphere of influence, and I hadn’t heard of any. Maybe there were a lot of rather slow customers with deep pockets in the area? This was unlikely, given that the track was situated in the middle of nowhere.

Come to think of it, the track was situated on an island that had previously been uncharted. Who the hell starts a business on an uncharted island?! This was the last straw. As I sailed away from that God forsaken place, I knew I had to do something. The world must know of this nation’s plight. And so, I beseech you, dear reader… If you have an MBA, millions of dollars of venture capital to spend or a good business plan with the time and drive to get it off the ground, please, come to Hyrule. They need you more than you know.

And please, please, bring a fucking Starbucks or something.