July 2015 – The Daily SPUF

Plagued by Chromas

July 31, 2015 Garen 0 Comments colour, DEMACIA, garen, league of legends, non-tf2, reskin, trading

While all you Team Fortress mercenaries complain about the appearance of your so-called Decorated Weapons, which appear to come in a billion randomized styles based on weapon collection, weapon rarity, weapon pattern and weapon rare, with a smaller chance of being strange or unusual for two out of four collections, us champions have been plagued by something far, far worse. I am talking about Chroma Packs, the newest paid for feature to pester the League of Legends with its presence. The idea of a Chroma Pack is incredibly simple, especially compared to the Weapon Retexture Project that appears to be… [Continue Reading]

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A Trip to Edge of Reality

July 30, 2015January 2, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments dead, loadout, mourning, non-tf2, real life

Loadout is an amazing game that you should still totally go try out if you haven’t played it already. I’ve written about it twice before, and when I recently moved to Austin one of the secondary reasons was a desire to meet the developers. Edge of Reality is a company that has developed both original games and console ports since 1999, and as a huge fan of their self-published shooter I drove to Edge of Reality’s studio this Tuesday in the hopes of meeting them. I had obtained their address from Google: 6500 River Place Blvd. River Place is a… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements Featured

Holy shit this is the 800th article.

July 29, 2015 Medic 0 Comments 800, community, happy, love, milestone, yay

Bloody hell. The time has flown! Seriously it feels like a few weeks ago that we celebrated our 700th article. And I spent most of that article writing about how much I love you all and how I can’t live without you all and all that sort of stuff. I guess I kinda have to do the same for this article, but eh… Thing is, lately, it’s been pretty rough for both me and aabicus. Dear old Aaby has had spouse-based health issues, job-issues and house issues, while I’ve been taking on all the responsibility of running the family… [Continue Reading]

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How Weapon Dropping Improved My Favorite TF2 Loadout

July 28, 2015 aabicus 1 Comment demoknight, demoman, sticky jumper, strategy

Let’s ignore the Ubercharge bit for a moment. The weapon-dropping mechanic on its own is surprisingly ineffectual considering what everyone started worrying about when they first heard it was going to become a thing. The weapons aren’t that easy to actually pick up, the presence of nothing but sidegrades and the fact that you have to drop a weapon you actually chose to equip means that in the grand scheme of things it’s just a fun new ability that opens up rare moments of awesome, aids in allowing players to try out skins they otherwise don’t own, and causes relatively… [Continue Reading]

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The Addicting Tyranny of Idle Games

July 27, 2015November 14, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, Exploit, Not TF2

It wasn’t until this gif popped up on my Steam Community overview page that I had even heard of the thriving genre of idle games. Games designed to not be played, instead to play in the background while you go about your life. Getting work done, sleeping…in the best examples you don’t even need the game running, it’ll automatically update itself when you next crank it up. This goes beyond games that incorporate being AFK into its design, like the skill-leveling system of EVE Online, or games like Animal Crossing that guilt you with spoiled crops and sad villagers if… [Continue Reading]

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My Left 4 Dead 3 Wishlist

July 26, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments Left 4 Dead 2, Not TF2, opinion, suggestion

There have been many rumors of a possible Left 4 Dead 3 in development, but I’m not going to link to any because I think they’re all druid pocky. I’ll believe there’s a new L4D game when Valve says so, and beyond that you’re just taking the running Half-Life 3 gag and switching franchises. But that doesn’t mean I’m not excited to think of ways I’d love to see Valve evolve the gameplay and come up with ways to improve it in a sequel. I doubt they’d go as balls-out crazy as Payday 2 did in expanding upon its prequel, but there are definitely some… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

4v4 – Fun but not serious, sadly

July 25, 2015 Medic 0 Comments 4v4, competitive, fun

Week 8 of the UGC 4v4 season has come to a close, and we all breathe a sigh of relief as we thank some Deity that we don’t need to play against platinum and gold players any more. It was a lot of fun. Team SPUF (Special Party of Underrated Failures) finished the season 3-4, winning 3 rounds by forfeit and getting kinda rolled in the 4 matches we lost. And by kinda, I mean completely. But I can’t blame us for losing. We had to play against genuinely hard teams. Every single team we actually played against was UGC… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

6v6 – I might as well play Highlander…

July 24, 2015 Medic 0 Comments 6v6, boring, comparison, competitive, criticism, meta, strategy, unfun

Well, my first ever 6v6 season is finally over, and good fucking riddance. We won a single match, and that was at the beginning of the season, on Viaduct_pro, a really easy map. Every other match was either a forfeit or a complete steam roll. It really is not much fun, unless everyone’s dedicated on improving and is willing to scrim a billion times a week. Sixes is far too meta-y for my liking. “But Medic, what do you mean by it being meta-y?” I hear all three of you ask. Simple. If you don’t go along with the two… [Continue Reading]

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The Short End of the Stick

July 23, 2015 Medic 0 Comments engineer, gun mettle, medic, nerf, spy, update, weapon

Gun Mettle came, Gun Mettle saw, Gun Mettle conquered and then got you to spend a ton of money on crap. At least, that’s the case if you have been playing Medic throughout this update. Medics got the short end of the stick, almost as much as Engineers. But unlike Engineers, Medics didn’t really see it coming. I’ll be blunt, Engineers have had it coming for a very long time. The Short Circuit, the Wrangler, the Gunslinger. All weapons that were hated almost everywhere by competent players. Engineer has always been a speed bump of sorts, but before Gun Mettle… [Continue Reading]

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Why I’m Not Bothered By The New Medigun-Dropping Mechanic

July 22, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, competitive, medic, theory, update

The reaction to the new Gun Mettle Update has been refreshingly positive. Sure, a lot of people think the new skins look stupid and dislike how they’re blatantly ripped from another game, but the day I lose sleep over a cosmetic mini-game is the day I re-evaluate my life. The part of the update that mattered was all those delicious weapon tweaks. Pretty much every commonly-complained about weapon got hit with at least a minor adjustment, and a few new weapons are now seeing use in new and unheard-of ways. Two other points of contention involve what this contract system… [Continue Reading]

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