The Tough Break Update – New TF2 Update – 17/12/15

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A new TF2 update has been released. I assume this is the winter update we’ve all been expecting, although there is a distinct lack of genuine wintery things apart from the end of the article. Anyway, here’s the Tough Break Update. As of publishing, it hasn’t been released yet, but that ain’t stopping me from giving you a vague lowdown of all this stuff. Looks like standard stuff at first. It’s a new contract thing, just like Gun Mettle, costing $5.99 and introducing 26 new contracts, which I hope have been integrated with the old ones so we’ve got some… [Continue Reading]

Mind of a Very Mad Man (And an Analysis of Learning)

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In the last twenty minutes or so I’ve ragequit four separate servers, died a grand total of four times and, to top it all off, closed TF2 once (thus far.) It’s probably apparent that I do not deal well with anger, even more so without an outlet. It’s probably why each death resulted in a ragequit, culminating in closing the game, while the last fifteen minutes during which I’ve written about three sentences of this draft have been me running 11 headshots to 6 deaths on Borneo defense, which while mediocre at best by most standards (especially for a Valve… [Continue Reading]

Why the Tomislav is good

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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]

A late look at pass_pinewood

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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]

Gift Tips

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It’s that time of year where a bunch of people go out and buy each other gifts to celebrate a gigantic mishmash of religious traditions all rolled up into one and loosely related to the birth of some kid 2000 years ago. Of course, as people get older and technology gets better, the circle of people we end up getting gifts for has gotten larger and larger. Looking at you, all you online friends! So, here’s a bunch of ideas to make people happy. Why am I doing this early? Well, you’re going to want to get this stuff ready… [Continue Reading]

Shotgun heavy is an odd beast

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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]

Trade Restrictions

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I recently got a new debit card. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence, everyone’s debit and credit cards expire every two to three years, so they need to be replaced. Like Paypal, I’ll have to re-verify my card. Having online banking makes sorting out Paypal easy (although you couldn’t tell, considering some of my clients!) and that’s sorted out nice and fast. Steam is a bit slower. Since it doesn’t have a card verification system like Paypal, you have to wait a couple of days to be able to trade. I can somewhat understand this, it’s a new payment method, something… [Continue Reading]

A couple of little tips for all you budding article writers

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Fun fact: I used to run a website called Budding Writers, back in 2011-13. A small bunch of people, mostly friends and family and people stolen from BZPower, came together and wrote a bunch of random things. The site is still online (with registration disabled), and should anything ever happen to SPUF, I actually made a skin mimicking the SPUF style, so we can just head over to there or whatever. It’s either that or the bat cave. I still go there occasionally for nostalgic reasons, and to delete the spam posts advertising kitchens. What does this have to do… [Continue Reading]

Killcams and Comp TF2

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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]

“Just a girl with a fucking huge hammer!”

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Poppy as a League of Legends champion has been a pain in the ass for years. She had very little voice lines, a horrible model and a selection of abilities that either made her automatically lose the game or automatically win the game depending on the last time she got buffed, often leaning towards the former, because the latter was fucking terrifying. Poppy’s ultimate ability, for example, allowed her to become invulnerable to almost all damage from everyone except her target. The idea was that she and her target would fight to the death, but most Poppys used their ultimate… [Continue Reading]