aabicus – Page 53 – The Daily SPUF

TF2Kart – Racing Madness!

November 5, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments announcement, event, game mode

Did Scream Fortress’ bumper cars get you yearning for more Team Fortress karting madness? InstantMuffin from GotSticed, the developer of PropHunt TNG we interviewed a few months ago, has announced his newest TF2 mod, which is all about racing up to 15 other players in frantic laps around a custom track. There are pickups which allow you to fire rockets, drop bananas or give yourself a speed boost. I like to time my speed boost right before a huge jump and see how much air time I can clock. The server fills up quick, but that’s all the more reason to try it out! 16 bumper cars… [Continue Reading]

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How to Fight the Short Circuit as an Explosive Class

November 3, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments demoman, engineer, strategy

Initial disclaimer: As you probably already know, there’s not a hell of a lot you can do as an explosive class against an intelligent (or even a braindead) Short Circuit engineer. He’s basically got the love child of the flamethrower and the deflector and it was hand-crafted at birth to screw you and only you. But as a diehard Demoman main I can do little except attempt to adapt to this new challenge, and I’ve slowly found what I believe to be the best possible strategy to use against a turtling level 3 sentry nest guarded by the Short Circuit.… [Continue Reading]

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Bumper Cars and You!

November 1, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments fun, glitches, halloween, strategy

The new Halloween map has decidedly one of the funnest post-game grudge-matches ever. Learning from their mistakes with hell from last year, Valve has taken the concepts and turned them into two very fun mini-games and one which will probably get more fun once Valve finds a way to stop perpetual stalemates on the 9-Square grid. The Doomsday_event bumper cars are not exactly the most strategy-laden game modes TF2 has to offer but there are still some strategies quick-witted players can use to give themselves the edge. To wit: 1) Bind a key to suicide. The second you’re about to… [Continue Reading]

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There Once Was a Caber from Ullapool

October 28, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, demoknight, demoman, melee

Whose explosion was quite unbelievable With a loud angry bang It’d throw off Sniper’s aim By removing his head from his clavicles Now that Valve has, in their infinite wisdom, removed the ability of the stock bottle to shatter on a critical hit, the Ullapool Caber remains the only TF2 melee that is actually a bottomless supply of identical melee weapons as opposed to a unique item. It’s also a point of contention among the sub genre of TF2 players who enjoy going on SPUf and criticizing the game’s balance. For some reason they aren’t too hot on a melee weapon that deals… [Continue Reading]

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The Plight of These Pestilential Pumpkin Presents

October 26, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments cosmetics, criticism, event, glitches, halloween

Halloween is back! As Valve recently announced, all five of the previous Halloween events are playable! (I’m not sure why that’s news, they always make the old Halloweens playable, but it’s still appreciated.) However, as much as I want to get into the Halloween spirit, the one thought plaguing my mind is, “Are those darn presents going to screw me over again?” Most of the old Halloween maps come with presents that grant the player who picks it up some sort of event-restricted cosmetic reward. And that’s about all that’s remained consistent over the years, except for the number of… [Continue Reading]

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TF2 receives first new Normal Quality item since 2007

October 22, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments halloween, history, loadout, update

I can’t be the only one who thinks there’s something elegantly ground-breaking in that simple, simple change during today’s double-update. To quote directly from the update notes: “Made the Spellbook Magazine a base action slot item for players to equip and use when playing on a server that uses Halloween Spells” For gameplay, this means that if you join a server that has spells enabled (which can be any server thanks to a new cvar, but also plr_hightower_event by default) and your action slot is empty, it’s autofilled with this: A very minor change, at the moment almost inconsequential. Valve clearly… [Continue Reading]

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Straight Downgrades? In my TF2?

October 18, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, cosmetics

Weapons that are just worse than their stock counterparts. Not strictly worse like the Big Earner, where the upsides aren’t worth the cost to equip, but literally worse, as in there aren’t any upsides to begin with. Once in a blue moon somebody on SPUF asks for these, and it’s always seen as a bit odd. There are two main flavors to the argument for adding these; the first is that they’d serve as a sort of handicap in situations where a player wants to limit themselves, either for training purposes or when playing with friends who are of a considerably lower… [Continue Reading]

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Straight Upgrades? In my TF2?

October 16, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, medic, melee, pyro

Weapons with literally no downside. I’m not talking weapons like the Wrangler, where the downsides exist but are negligible in comparison to the upsides (indeed, sometimes the only downside is “you don’t have the stock weapon it replaces.”) I’m talking weapons that literally just don’t have downsides and are just better then their stock equivalent. Not counting ones caused by bugs or bad coding, there have only ever been three straight upgrades added to TF2, and one has since been rebalanced. The Amputator on release granted the healing taunt for free before being changed (for the better in my opinion)… [Continue Reading]

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How to Get Random Critical posts on SPUF

October 14, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments fun, random crits, SPUF

Are you one of those TF2 SPUFers who discuss TF2 despite not actually playing the game anymore? Or perhaps you still play TF2, but you miss the wonder of random criticals when on SPUF and not playing the game. Well, does SPUFer Thorisoka have the plugin for you! If you install this, then whenever you read SPUF threads, you’ll occasionally come across flashy CRITICAL POSTS. These posts are red-bordered and you’re not allowed to disagree with them. The downside is you’re literally not allowed to rep critical posts, because they’re shameful and the poster should feel bad (but if you really, really want to,… [Continue Reading]

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Simple ways Valve could improve offline mode

October 10, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments advice, request, suggestion

The offline bots will always make me smile. They have an earnest determination that really makes it seem like they’re trying their hardest to be the best teammates possible. Not that they’ll ever realize that dream, but good on them for trying. However, as numerous people throughout the years have noted, Valve has restricted them to stock-only for the duration of their existence, and any justifications for this restriction have slowly eroded as TF2 has evolved. Itemtest lets you equip a puppet bot with a number of working unlocks like Bonk! and Mann Vs. Machine bots use unlocks all the time.… [Continue Reading]