Would Highlander really work in Matchmaking?

In our beloved little competitive matchmaking beta, we currently only have access to 6v6 matchmaking. While it doesn’t really look like the much stricter, more organized community competitive leagues, it feels similar. 5CP maps, the odd King of the Hill map, optimal teams including Medics, Demomen, Scouts and Soldiers, 6 players per team (obviously)… You get the point. There’s also plans to have a Highlander matchmaking thingy, but it’s been greyed out since the beginning. But I’m wondering, will Highlander really work? In terms of getting people to play classes, it can happen. Highlander has been the other staple of… [Continue Reading]

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A Match-Made Future?

You’ll probably have noticed that, while the rest of the TF2 community is going mad for matchmaking, here at the Daily SPUF, we’ve been rather quiet about it. Really, we should have been all over competitive matchmaking like a rash, what with being a TF2 blog and all, but there’s reasons why we’ve not been that keen, the main reason being that not a whole lot is actually going on with the beta. Yes, I know, we’ve had patch notes every few days. Which is a good thing because some bugs are being fixed. But there’s no actual changes. The… [Continue Reading]

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Advanced Options – Some tips before you press the big Play Multiplayer button

Now, before we continue, I have written an article about newbie tips before, but the tips were slightly more generic. This just covers the Advanced Options menu, which many people seem to overlook. Weirdly, it’s actually easier to use than the normal Options menu, but contains TF2-specific options. The newbie really does struggle when it comes to Team Fortress 2. While it looks like a standard first person shooter at first glance (ignoring the cartoony art style), it doesn’t exactly play like one. There’s lots of tiny hints and tricks you should know before you even click the big Play… [Continue Reading]

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Medic’s First Tiny Steps into Official TF2 Competitive

This article was brought to you by Puffs, the Number 1 Medic-Calmer. Puffs – pink, round, puffy and opinionated, get yours now! Alright, a million years later than everyone else, I’ve finally had a go at TF2 matchmaking, during the 6th Stress Test. (Note: this article is a bit late – I held off publishing it due to a week of love and hate) I was finally around when that delightful Stress Test button appeared on my screen, and I was actually in a good enough mood to play. But, coward that I am, I didn’t want to go it… [Continue Reading]

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So, that TF2 update…

I said I would write about the February 29th update, so I am. Luckily there was also a March 1st update which I can also write about, although most of that was bug fixes and the un-fucking-up of CP_Foundry. The important matchmaking stuff that you’re all interested in is available in video form here. Go on, watch the video! The biggest thing to point out was a very random Matchmaking Stress Test that happened late on the 1st of March. People of all sorts of flavours could suddenly go and play matchmaking. Unfortunately (and typically) I managed to miss it,… [Continue Reading]

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An Opinionated Opinion on Official Matchmaking

I’ve been holding off on writing an actual article on official matchmaking for a while, not sure whether it’s been the right time or not. It turns out there’s never a good time, so here’s a heavily opinionated article on the matter. First off, whether I’d actually play matchmaking or not, I’ve always wanted ranked matchmaking in TF2. It’s that sort of thing that probably wouldn’t have fitted in early on, but as competitive leagues began to get bigger and bigger, Valve should have properly jumped on it and done something with it. All these years later and we’re only… [Continue Reading]

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Sniper and The Stealth Buff Nobody Spoke Of

Recently-ish on SPUF, having no more need to complain about the now bus-sized mini sentry, and arguing random crits to the death, we’ve come back to one of the classes that has been complained about throughout the ages, from the earliest days of first person shooting, all the way through the rail pad on q3dm17 (also known as the longest yard) to these modern days, where one will instant kill you with a quickscope, often through 8 walls: The marmite-like sniper. You either play sniper, or you hate them, and even if you’re in the first category, they’re still annoying.… [Continue Reading]

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Team Fortress 2 Competitive Beta Sign-Up

Well, who’d have thought it? There’s actually matchmaking things going on for reals! No more will B4nny (bless him) be the only reliable and constant source of information about Team Fortress 2’s official matchmaking. Nope, yesterday, a Valve employee popped by and announced that there is now an official Steam group, as seen here. It’s almost definitely official, since the admins are three Valve employees, and the group also has a selection of Steam Community moderators. The main admin of the group, someone called Jill, has got nearly 4000 hours on Team Fortress 2, which is a sign of, um,… [Continue Reading]

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Why Does Valve Keep Buffing Medic?

Do not buff Medic! No, seriously, don’t. That seems like an insane thing to say, considering I’ve been calling myself Medic, The Medic, BLU Medic and many other variations of the word for the past three or four years now, not to mention the fact that out of my 1700 hours of TF2, about 900 of them are as Medic. But hear me out for a moment. Medic is the most powerful class in the game. No one else has the pushing power capable of taking down sentries harmlessly. No one can stand in the way of an Ubercharged power… [Continue Reading]

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Why the Tomislav is good

Whenever I see people using the Tomislav I ask myself, “why are they using it?” I’m not asking this in a demeaning way, but honestly just want to know which of its “many” upsides they are utilizing. I ask myself this even more in MvM but we’ll cover that later.   Some people actually use the silent killer attribute, I guess. Honestly in all my time being the pocket medic to a heavy that uses almost exclusively the Tomislav, we’ve only ever used the Silent attribute once or twice. He might use it while playing by himself but I doubt… [Continue Reading]

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