Day: November 28, 2013

Updates to User Policy

by

Listen up, maggots! It’s your friendly no-fun tech admin Commander here. Recently we switched to a brand new blog theme, complete with author boxes letting you know whether or not the guy who’s writing is qualified to write on whatever they’re blabbering about. Of course, we already had a way to display the authors on each article, so we had to go and do complicated things in order to make sure we only display the info we need to. Unfortunately, that caused even more complications with adding descriptions for those of you who submit articles via a staff member. In… [Continue Reading]

The Simmering Over of Long-Held Dislike

by

If you’ve been keeping in touch with more exotic TF2 news recently (or e-sports news in general), you might have heard of the recent settlement of a case brought by the New Jersey attorney general against E-Sports Entertainment Association, or ESEA for short, a gaming league with major divisions in Counter-Strike: Global Offense and Team Fortress 2.

Obviously, if you’re involved in competitive, you’re probably monitoring the situation and seeing what comes of it. If you aren’t, and are wondering why this is such a huge story, consider this analogy: say the owner of a very well-known price guide for TF2 items was accused of price manipulation and then agreed to give up hundreds of buds without admitting whether they did it or not? That event would certainly lead to a major switch to another pricing guide which the community would place its trust in and primarily use. In both cases, the community is at a critical juncture, where a major decision affecting the entire future of the community lies in the balance. In the trading case, the community successfully rallied behind the new community-based alternative, although not without some regrets being voiced with its current state today.

Read more

Why all Melee Unlocks should be Balanced like the Demoman’s

by

SPUF enjoys arguing about TF2’s balance. A lot. One of the most common issues to sprout up involves TF2 melee weapons. It’s no secret the vast majority of stock melees are underpowered, except those with utility like knife and wrench. If their only job is to deal damage, then they’re gonna suck because every class has a plethora of primary or secondary weapons that deal more damage at longer ranges more effectively.

So when most competetive TF2 players agree that the bottle is the best Demoman melee weapon, this may seem unusual. How can it really be the best choice for its slot when it has no gimmicks beside emergency damage?

In my opinion, it has to do with the way Valve has handled the unlocks in that slot. Using demoman as an example, here is what I think the golden rules should be for designing melee unlocks.

Read more