Urblog thread 2: The Revenge was the next in a duology of wildly successful blog threads on SPUF, both started by Zekrom3112, who must have some sort of voodoo magic for getting away with it twice. It once again has been locked, and unlike last time I’m not sure why. I was surprised when I went to the last page of itsurblog 2 and noticed that every post was TF2-related. The mods didn’t even put it out of its misery like the dongers/neontext/Lenny-faced ending of itsurblog 1. It was calm, rational, and conversational TF2 to the last post. I really… [Continue Reading]
Dying is almost always a bad thing in TF2 (indeed, most shooters). You aren’t helping your team while dead, you aren’t having fun while dead, and a good many unlocks are dedicated to keeping the player or his teammates alive. Trying not to die is, for the most part, a pretty good strategy and you’ll go far with it.
So why would you ever want to die? And I don’t mean “Divebomb the enemy medic, caber them, and then who cares if the enemy mows you down”, I’m talking “bind a key to ‘explode’ then press it and explode for no reason.” Here are a few situations:
And no, being on plr_pipeline is not in itself a valid reason.
Scorched earth is a tactic used by militaries where the main goal is to destroy everything useful for the enemy while retreating or advancing (destroying their manufactories, farms, oil fields and stuff like that). If you have participated in kindergarten gang wars, you will spot the similarity with the real thing – if you managed to win a small tackle-fight against your little enemies in their own lair built of wooden bricks, chairs and clothing – you totally wrecked their camp afterwards, victoriously, so they would have to build everything from scratch. You were also a terrible person, but whatever. Scorched Earth is also a fun little game with artillery tanks shooting at each other, but most importantly, it shares a similar name with one of the weapons in TF2 – the Scorch Shot.
Just before the holiday season, Valve shipped some new crates. There is a particular one I’ve looked forward to the most. Crate #77. Not only do you get a chance to unbox the strange Grenade Launcher again (hardcore traders fainting, poor people throwing hands in the air and praising the Lord), you can also get the strange Scorch Shot! I also had the joy of unboxing it right away with my first crate drop, just like I wanted. I could finally use Scorch Shot and force other people to see my kill counter on it when I kill them to death!
Why don’t people use the Scorch Shot more? Because they hate having fun! Well, it deals 50% less damage. Instead of regular flare’s 30 damage, you deal 15 damage. Yes, I know, people want to kill their enemies faster? Pfffft. It is way funnier to watch your enemies burn slow if you’re a Pyro. Things people do when on fire… ehhhh… It also won’t critically wound people on fire like Flare Gun does, but honestly, who cares? I can bounce people all over the map!
Well, as I said in my column last week, it is the end of the season for most… or is it? Apparently not, as ETF2L Highlander will wrap up their regular season next week, and ESEA has decided to give us all a wonderful winter break and decided to start playoffs the first week of January. But enough of that. It’s time to cover our latest results. First of all is the TeamFortress.TV ZOWIE Invitational conducted this past Sunday. The first tournament conducted of its kind by TeamFortress.TV, it comprised top teams of North American 6v6 in a competition for… [Continue Reading]
Yeah, I know, I can see you all scowling and wanting to hurt me. But let’s face it, the Quick-Fix is in a funny place right now. It’s not underpowered, it’s (dare I say it) overpowered. But instead of just screaming NERF NOW! or IT’S BROKEN KILL IT or all that nonsense, I’m going to take a calm, quiet look at what the issues are, and how we might fix them.
Do you own a Community Weapon? Chances are, probably not. There are only two ways to get one: Be rich and buy a sparkly Lugermorph, or become a respectful upstanding member of the TF2 Community who leaves the game a little better than when he arrived, and wait for Valve to contact you and give you one.
The system is as old as the concept of weapon qualities. Back in the day that Vintage weapons outnumbered Unique weapons, Valve implemented this method of rewarding specific members of the community. But I’m starting to think this procedure could use an update.
The first reason? Strange Weapons. A few days ago I passed time with a fun question: If I could get any Community weapon, what would I get? The first thing that came to mind was my beloved Crusader’s Crossbow, but wait, I have a strange crossbow! I wouldn’t want to stop tracking my kills. As a matter of fact, almost every weapon I love is already in strange form in my backpack. I’d have to pick some nonstrangeable weapon I enjoyed, like Gunboats. But this extreme restrictiveness seemed to dilute the fact that the Community weapon was supposed to be a reward. It should be a 100% Awesome thing to get a Community weapon; I shouldn’t have to bittersweetly choose which of my stranges to retire.
Unless you’re a Pomson fan; they have a strangifier for you, you lucky bastard. Picture by FeelGoodInc.
Aabicus: When I first started playing TF2, I didn’t have the patience for regular Pyro, and I was well aware that I sucked at the airblast. So when the Pyro Grordbort set came out, I had my first experience trying to craft with tokens, as they didn’t have proper blueprints and I thought they never would. Several refined metals worth of drops later, and I had enough flare guns and backburners to equip an angry mob. I finally got my Phlogistinator and Manmelter once the normal blueprint came out, and rocked it with my Homewrecker, because I never got melee… [Continue Reading]
Yeah, another article about a Medic weapon. I write what I know, and I know a lot about Medic weapons. The Amputator is one of them. And like its counterpart, the Crusader’s Crossbow, it’s been messed around a lot lately. But despite what I and a lot of others felt, after using it, I don’t think the new Amputator is as bad as everyone makes out. Let’s have a lookee…
For those of you who don’t know this game mode, Jailbreak is a psychological experiment disguised as a TF2 game. There are no respawns, and it requires custom specialized maps designed for the mode. Most of the server plays as RED, and begins the round drained of all ammo and clip. The BLU team consists of a few guards and a Warden, who have allcrits. The Warden must order the prisoners around, using his guards’ superior firepower to enforce control, and get them to participate in mini-games, where the players who lose the mini-games often die. When a single RED player is left, they are considered to have won the round, and are granted a “last request”, which carries over to the next round (for example, “next round we play the Soccer mini-game,” “next round I want the freedom to run around and ignore this song and dance,” or “right now I want all the guards to play Nine Square until they’re dead.” That’s it, there’s not much to the game.
UNLESS the prisoners decide to rebel. If anyone can survive long enough to reach the armory, they can refill their ammunition and get working weapons again. If the rebelling RED players can kill all the BLU players, they win in a much more satisfying way.
After a decent amount of playing this mode a few months ago, I’ve found some strategies that work pretty well.
2010 and 2011 were the big years this week. In 2010, Valve took efforts to fix some problems with players bypassing restrictions on building construction and destruction using the console. Until now, Engineers could immediately destruct sapped buildings and spies could destroy their sappers, as encapsulated in this great video: Fun fact: This happens because the game considers the sapper a building. This is why it’s immune to critical hits (a crit wrench does not remove it in one hit) and why the Homewrecker deals double damage to sappers (and does remove it in one hit) In 2011 Valve added… [Continue Reading]
