This is going to be slow and painful…

Well, I’m really not having fun. Not at all. One of the most fun things I’ve had today is adding endless categories on a free classifieds site for a client I’m building. And that was boring as fuck. I think only one thing has really made me smile tonight.

What problems am I having? Tons.

I have a contract for Carnival of Doom. It wants me to burn people to death. Alright, let’s look for a server running the map. I refuse to use Quickplay, but the Server Browser keeps on throwing me a Server Not Responding error on most of the Luxembourg maps. Great, there goes decent ping. I’ve also lost connection to the item server. Great.

Alright, alright, I know, it’s First Day Blues. Things always go to shit on the first day. The item server always breaks. That’s honestly to be expected. But it’s been slightly longer than the first day and I’m tired of it.

Carnival of Doom crashes every time I try to load the map, so I have to turn my settings UP in order to fix it. It’s a recurring problem that happens on most of the maps that have water on them. It happened on 2fort_invasion, it’s happened on lakeside_event and sd_doomsday_event before. Turning settings up means I can load the map, but it doesn’t help my frames per second. On top of great ping, this is going to hurt.

And that’s assuming I get onto Carnival of Doom. It’s probably the least popular of the Scream Fortress maps, so half the time, assuming I’ve remembered to turn my video settings up before loading the server menu, because failure to do so will crash my game, the map will have changed. I’ve ended up on Hellstone, Sinshine and Mann Manor. Thankfully I had a Mann Manor contract and completed it with ease, but I got the crappy Scout chicken feet as my reward.

Finally, I do get to Carnival of Doom, and either the server is empty, I have 400 ping (because the only servers that work are the Washington ones… don’t ask…) or… my game crashes again. One attempt at getting on a server randomly crashed because I happened to click on the Continue button too quickly.

So I start doing my contract. Everyone’s a bloody Scout, which is a pain in the backside for my slow, Pyro-y self. Oh yes, that reminds me. The contract in question is a Pyro one. I currently have my MvM loadout on Pyro, which consists of Phlogistinator, Scorch Shot, Powerjack. Only one of this is my normal Pyro loadout, so I decide to change weapons. I want my green-flamed flamethrower (RIP spells) and my shotgun. Go to the menu to change my loadout? Game crashes.

Sigh, we’ll try again. This time round, I get lucky on a Stockholm server. 120 ping, alright. FPS? Not great. Everyone’s still a Scout. Someone goes Gunslinger Engineer but I bashed him in the face with my Powerjack and he went back to Scout. There were a couple of other Pyros too. The ping isn’t helping me in securing kills. Bumper cars at high ping mean you get thrown out of the map with ease.

I get to the point where I am actually getting points. I’m not a bad Pyro, a bit W+M1y, but I can hold my own. I manage to win a round. Oh look, we delivered the tickets. It’s time for a cart game, and we’ve got Elimination. Bumper cart wins count towards my contract. Someone has glitched the Elimination game so he’s not in a cart, thus making it never end. And the fucker has the gall to name himself after me. His team threatens to kick him if he doesn’t suicide after the entirety of RED refuses to die. We win, I get 91 points and… the map changes server again. I spend 5 minutes looking for a new server to get the last few points.

Another five minutes later, and I get the last 9 points and disconnect from yet another Scoutfest. Time to hand my contract in. If it’s anything like my first contract, I’ll have to restart my game. Thankfully though this one works.

What do I get? Hopefully something good!

…

Great.

Well, guess it could have been worse.

 

On the flip side, at least I had fun on a community Sinshine server.