aabicus – Page 41 – The Daily SPUF

The New Vaccinator

January 3, 2016 aabicus 1 Comment complaint, criticism, medic, update, Vaccinator, weapon

During Tough Break, Valve reworked the Vaccinator again. As a Medic main, I felt it was my duty to try the thing out so I can see for myself if the poor thing has finally reached the lofty echelons of the other mediguns, or if it still sucked. I first tried it out on King of The Hill, a game mode that lets me quickly switch from offense to defense. I found that it served its job decently well in both categories. If I were taking on a single enemy with my pocket, I could easily switch to the correct… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements

A Solution to SPUF’s Gateway Errors

December 31, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments announcement, glitches, SPUF

For the last few days, SPUFers have noticed that it’s almost impossible to view SPUF threads. The main page loads slowly enough, as do miscellaneous pages like User CP, but clicking on actual threads often just leads to this after ten minutes of loading: SPUFers, not letting something silly like a lack of actual threads stop them, proceeded to carry on conversations via thread previews and puzzling out why new threads occasionally work for a little bit before succumbing to the 503s. Gyoku was the first to sum up the problem in a way the rest of us could read: As soon… [Continue Reading]

Featured

aabicus tries to CS:GO Part 2

December 28, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments counter-strike, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, CSGO

(Technically there’s a chance Sham1 himself is going to make a Part II to this article, but it’s been 10 months since he wrote it so I’m going ahead and assuming the slot’s open.) D4mo bought me Counter-Strike:Global Offensive for Christmas! I’m super excited, not only because it’s the largest hole in my Valve collection and I’ve always wanted to try it, but also because I’m currently visiting my parents for Christmas and the only computers they own are Apple. Since Apple TF2 is currently experiencing a bug causing a crash to desktop within seconds of joining a server, I’ve had… [Continue Reading]

Featured

TF2 and Competition

December 24, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments comparison, loadout, overwatch, tf2 is ded

The title’s a double entendre; I plan to discuss two different aspects of Competition in TF2. The first is competition as a league. We had a very interesting conversation on SPUF recently where we discussed the definition of an e-sport and whether TF2 even qualifies. Fundamental aspects like random crits need to be turned off, classes and maps and weapons need to be restricted, even certain cosmetics and sprays need to be blocked in order to balance the playing field. Can TF2 really count as a competitive game when it needs to be so heavily adjusted that it’s almost a different game?… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Tough Break and its Signs of Things to Come

December 21, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, competitive, demoknight, matchmaking, medic, pyro, tough break, update

The Tough Break update rolled out an extremely healthy list of balance changes to Team Fortress 2. Spanning the entirety of its class roster and with a general trend of making each class’ stock role more defined, it provides some very clear insights regarding the direction Valve is hoping to take TF2 in the coming months. SPUF is ablaze right now with questions attempting to make sense of some of the more extreme alterations, and since I’m stuck on a five-hour plane ride without internet I thought I’d take the time to comment on some things I’ve noticed and make… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Persian Persuader’s Not Looking too Peachy…

December 19, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, demoman, melee, nerf, persian, weapon

The Tough Break update was amazing. I love almost all of the balance changes, especially because pretty much every class was buffed in cool ways. Especially my Medic! Holy crap! Ubercharge on Crossbow and Amputator? I’m so excited, except that part of me that fears a complimentary nerf now that those wholly-unneeded buffs were added. Thank god for the alt-fire addition to the Amputator, by the way, now I don’t have to juggle stupidly around with the taunt menus to use my AoE heals. But this article isn’t about Medic. As great as the majority of changes were, the only… [Continue Reading]

Featured

A late look at pass_pinewood

December 15, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments engineer, maps, pass, pass time, scout

I have had a hell of a time finding a decent game of PASS Time recently. There’s currently a bug that allows a single player to crash a Pass Time server, and Valve’s tardiness at fixing this bug is causing the playerbase for this game mode to wither and die. The few times I’ve succeeded, the map either changed immediately to pass_warehouse or somehow was already on pass_warehouse despite what the server browser would have you believe. It is genuinely possible that people just can’t wrap their head around pinewood, because it’s a more advanced map for sure. It takes… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Shotgun heavy is an odd beast

December 13, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, heavy, shotgun

Shotgun heavy is an odd beast. While he’s a valid and viable subclass, he’s also decidedly a joke because he’s forgoing his ultra-powerful minigun. Not to mention his signature weapon, the Family Business, is completely unremarkable, serving only as another basic shotgun with one of the few examples in TF2 of boring stat alterations. But really, because of this Valve is free to do more of the same just because it couldn’t possibly hurt. No heavy shotgun’s coming anywhere near the Sandvich in terms of viability, even if it were a Widowmaker that also healed Heavy for the amount of… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Killcams and Comp TF2

December 10, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments competitive, death, mechanics, sniper

Killcams are a masterfully-designed element in TF2. As the developer commentary states, killcams were added due to many Team Fortress Classic players having trouble determining who killed them and what they themselves did to get into that lethal situation. By showing you a quick screenshot of your attacker with some subtle “swoosh” effects showing you his rough location, Valve turned every death into a learning experience while simultaneously lessening the chance the killer can keep farming kills from the same location. But I’m wondering if that behavior becomes slightly unbalanced in a competitive setting. When you’ve reached the point that all the… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Secrets and Hidden Content in Left 4 Dead 2

December 4, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments fun, Left 4 Dead 2, Not TF2

Left 4 Dead 2, like any game, has loads of code/assets that ultimately went completely unused. But some of them are accessible via use of console commands (often in conjunction with sv_cheats 1), letting you see and play with cool beta content! 1. Hidden reload for the Hunting rifle. At one point, the hunting rifle had a much more complicated reload before Valve changed it to something shorter and simpler. But you can still accidentally access the older reload by holding a non-inventory item (like a gas can), throwing it with m1 and immediately shoving with m2. No, I have… [Continue Reading]