I'm not going to take a side on this, but I think that to have a flamethrower equal the effect of a tazer, you would have to have some sort of animation that the spy would go through that the spy himself would have no control over and then immediately pass out like the tazer would allow him to do. In terms of animation, a tazer would be shorter and simpler.
In response to the pictoral example, I'm pretty sure a merc in that position would skip the tazer altogether and just blast the hell out of that spy...
Another thing about the flamethrower is that it would have to be a lot more interactive with the map, like setting blackmarks or even burning through certain textures, which would run up to so many instances it would probably be very difficult to write them all.
I don't really have any knowledge about scripting, but that's what I think it would take...
In response to the pictoral example, I'm pretty sure a merc in that position would skip the tazer altogether and just blast the hell out of that spy...
Another thing about the flamethrower is that it would have to be a lot more interactive with the map, like setting blackmarks or even burning through certain textures, which would run up to so many instances it would probably be very difficult to write them all.
I don't really have any knowledge about scripting, but that's what I think it would take...