Author: aabicus

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Planetside 2 Breaks Its Own World Record

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Last week Planetside 2 made a bold announcement. On November 5th, they invited everyone to connect to the Public Test Server and break their own record for “Most Players in a Single FPS Battle.” The current record, 1158, was already held by them and achieved in 2015. For anyone who missed that milestone, this was an exciting opportunity to play a part in Planetside 2 history. Now, despite playing Planetside 2 since 2013, I’d skipped the previous world record attempt and knew I didn’t want to miss this one. So I preloaded the test client and generated a PTS character in advance.… [Continue Reading]

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CTF_Crasher, the Most Interesting New TF2 Map in Years

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I’ve found myself occasionally leaping back into TF2 these days. I’m not sure why, maybe I just miss the mixture of arena shooter mechanics and incredible character design/writing. But anyway, with Scream Fortress 2022 in full swing, I’ve had a chance to play all the new maps, and I really really like ctf_crasher. Overview For those who haven’t tried it, ctf_crasher is the first ‘new’ game mode we’ve received in years. While nominally Capture the Flag, it’s actually ‘reverse CTF’ in that both teams are trying to deliver their bomb to the enemy camp. And whichever character carries their team’s… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: A Guide to Playing Level 0 Characters

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Did you know D&D 5e actually has an official method for generating 0th-level characters? The Adventurer’s League module “What’s Past is Prologue” stars classless characters, and you can view the rules for generating your own in the free preview. I was pretty excited to learn this, as the ‘level 0 session’ is a popular unofficial method for playing underpowered ‘commoner runs.’ Today I wanted to talk about this niche ruleset, its pros and cons, and whether you should use it. Should you use Level 0 characters? My first caveat is that you should not run level 0 characters for beginning… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: How to Build an Effective Naked Character

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Okay, you don’t literally have to be naked, but this article is about unarmored builds and how to craft one that doesn’t sacrifice effectiveness or survivability. I always find myself gravitating to unarmored characters because it fits my personal fantasy of a heroic protagonist. From shirtless barbarians to suit-wearing badasses to unlucky everyman survivors… Fiction is filled with characters who take on the world without a shred of protection beyond their skills and smarts. But unfortunately, D&D’s primary form of AC is equipping armor (heck, the acronym literally means ‘Armor Class.’) Which means you need to keep some things in mind… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: Why You Should Play a Dex Paladin

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Paladin is an incredible class, possibly the most reliable all-rounder in D&D. Between their tankiness, damage output, healing output, magic steed, and sky-high Charisma, they’re an incredible choice for new and old players. When I GMed a solo adventure to introduce the system to my boyfriend, I knew Paladin was the best class to let him experience everything D&D has to offer. But there’s one Paladin playstyle I don’t hear talked about often, and that’s the Dex Paladin. Normally, Paladins are the iconic Strength class, thanks to their heavy armor and predilection for melee combat. But I happen to believe… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: 5 Good Feats For Monks

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Monks have a problem when it comes to grabbing feats in that they are highly dependant on ability score improvements (ASIs) to function. They need good Dexterity, Wisdom, and Constitution to function, and if you don’t improve those numbers, you’ll quickly fall behind. That means the only time I can really recommend taking a feat on Monk is as a 1st level Variant Human/Custom Lineage. (Or if you have an odd-numbered Dex or Wis and take a feat that boosts either stat by +1). With that being said, there are several stellar feat options if you go ahead and do… [Continue Reading]

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How to Easily Obtain the Hardest Achievement in Quake

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“The Painless Maze” is one of the rarest achievements in Quake, requiring you to beat E4M6 “The Pain Maze” on Nightmare difficulty without taking damage. As one of the longest and toughest maps in the game, few people have done this. But today’s guide details how you can earn it without premade saves, cheats, or Nightmare-level skills required! A Note on In-Game Cheats As this guide notes, right now you can just use sv_cheats 1, toggle “god”, and get the achievement that way. But in case the devs ever patch this (or you want to earn it more legitly), this guide will detail… [Continue Reading]

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A Brief History of Glass in Team Fortress

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It may seem odd that I’m devoting a whole article to glass, an incredibly common and straightforward building material. Some games let you break it, others let you shoot through it, and many don’t. Within a few minutes of playtime, you’ll probably notice Team Fortress 2 is decidedly in the latter category. Case closed? Not quite, because glass actually has a more checkered history than you’d first expect. It first came to my attention when I started playing Team Fortress Classic and noticed that only one map had glass: Rock2, letting the flag-scoring player watch their pursuers die to toxic gas.… [Continue Reading]

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Quake II RTX – Review

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Having recently finished Quake’s expansion packs, I was curious to see where id Software went from there. Imagine inventing the FPS genre, codifying it, and then propelling it into the third dimension within a mere 4-year span. Even more impressively, they’ve gone back and updated Doom and Quake to run perfectly on modern systems. At first, I didn’t think they’d given Quake II the same treatment, before remembering an experimental tech demo I encountered at GDC 2019: Quake II RTX is a “remastering” of the original game that ray traces every single asset. Ray tracing is a unique way of… [Continue Reading]

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A Review of Quake’s Expansion Packs (Part 2)

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I wasn’t sure whether to write this article. You see, I wasn’t quite as enamored with the concept of the new expansion packs as I was the old. Sure, it’s nice to have more Quake, but I was bummed that they only used the base-game content. Plus they ignored all the new assets/weapons/enemies from the expansion packs. But I wanted to complete the entire set, and was curious to see what sort of gameplay updates developers had figured out in the many years since the originals released. Dimension of the Past This first expansion pack was released in 2018, to… [Continue Reading]

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