analysis – Page 11 – The Daily SPUF

Less and Less Sure about 4v4

March 13, 2015 Medic 0 Comments 4v4, analysis, comparison, criticism, game mode, weapon

So, the more I play 4v4, the less and less sure I feel about it. This isn’t because of my two recent losses, no. I played a random 4v4 lobby and did really well. It’s the game mode. It really is. There is something off about 4v4 that 6v6 and Highlander both seem to have. And the pressure… The pressure… 4v4 has always been a much more deathmatch-centric game mode. It’s all about keeping yourself alive and the enemy dead for as long as possible. But you have to keep everyone alive. Losing one person, even just a Scout, is… [Continue Reading]

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Respawn Theories

March 11, 2015 Medic 0 Comments analysis, lore, mercenary, story, theory, tin foil

In Team Fortress 2, unless you’re playing Arena mode, you respawn when you die. Respawning is a common thing in video games. Often it’s hand-waved as part of the game, you just do. It’s either that or having a limited number of lives, showing a Game Over screen when you lose them all. Some games manage to explain respawning after death pretty well – the first and second Bioshock games have vita-chambers from which you can respawn and can be turned off for Super Hard Mode; and Borderlands basically charges you money, the whole thing being a paid service to… [Continue Reading]

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The Dominationing

February 26, 2015April 6, 2017 Medic 0 Comments analysis, criticism, domination, glitches, opinion, request, unfun

There’s been a couple of posts on SPUF recently about Dominations and I think now is a good time to make a post about them, both as a recently dominated Medic and a Medic who got a bunch of dominations, but also as an average TF2 player and someone who sees other people getting dominated or dominating. Let’s start with a recap on how dominations work. Simply put, you get 4 kills or assists on someone without them killing or assisting in killing you, you dominate them. A notification appears on the scoreboard, showing that you have a domination and/or… [Continue Reading]

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Being the I in Team

February 22, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, comparison, l4d, non-tf2

One of my favorite series on YouTube is Titsonabullsteam’s Realism Expert Solo runs for Left 4 Dead 2, where he beats every campaign in the game without bots, allies, or exploits. Recently I’ve been communicating with him because I’ve gotten into L4D2 modding and wanted to help him finish the last video in the series. After watching his entire run again and reliving the amazement I felt the first time I saw it back in college, I was inspired to look into other YouTube series where enterprising players solo Valve co-op titles on the hardest difficulties. As it turns out, there are two… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Medic’s Third Ever Competitive Match – Communication and Experience, I have none.

February 21, 2015 Medic 0 Comments 4v4, analysis, competitive, medic, overview, soldier, Ultiduo, weapon

So Friday the 20th. My third ever official match. This was by far our hardest match, because the enemy team had SO MUCH experience. They’ve been playing 6v6 and 4v4 together for a loooong time. Season 12 or something like that. We knew from the start that we had little chance of winning, but that didn’t stop us from trying our best. So I don’t bore you, I’m not going to do a commentary of the whole match. It was quite long and involved us dying a lot. You don’t really want to hear how I died 16 times, 4 times… [Continue Reading]

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Why Scout is Awful and Underpowered

February 17, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments a week of Love and Hate, analysis, comparison, criticism, hate, love, scout, TFC

I don’t dislike any of the classes in TF2. You’d think Engineer, but honestly as a Demoman/Medic main, it’s my job to destroy their nests, and without them I’d have significantly less to do at any given moment. Sniper likewise I’ve never really cared about because I can always seem to find routes that let me avoid them. Not to mention that my favorite weapon, the Sticky Jumper, turns them into my favorite prey. So this article is kinda tough for me to write, because I don’t really hate anyone in TFC either. Pyro, maybe, but he’s too pitiful to… [Continue Reading]

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Medic weapons are all strangely overpowered…

February 13, 2015 Medic 0 Comments analysis, medic, overpowered, theory, weapon

When someone says ‘ balanced weapons’, people always have the habit of turning to us Medics and our rather small inventory. Four Medi Guns, four syringe-shooting weapons and five limb-destroying melee weapons. People say to us that our weapons are all fine and dandy, the only bad syringe gun is the Blutsauger, since it promotes Battle-Medicing, and the Bonesaw, which is useless. But hang on a second. The most useless Medic weapon is the stock melee one? I thought we were supposed to be balanced? This thought made me look deeper into Medic weaponry. And deeper, and deeper. I quickly… [Continue Reading]

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Put Me In, Coach!

February 2, 2015 delirious biznasty 2 Comments analysis, Coach, Coaching, criticism, Features, guide, help, New Players

I was surprised the other day, when I was futzing around with my HUD, that the coaching button still exists. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use this to any sort of effect ever. Has anyone else? Share your coaching stories in the comments, won’t you? Now, we’ll get into the real nitty-gritty here. What did this coaching function ever actually do? It’s a fairly straightforward concept, actually. To be a part of this system, you need to sign up using the megaphone icon on the homepage. There, it will prompt you to sign up as a coach, and… [Continue Reading]

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What happens on cp_orange…

January 29, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, balance, maps

cp_orange_x3 might just be my favorite custom map in all of TF2, for entirely the wrong reasons. It was there for me, man. From the beginning. And it’s always been there for me. cp_orange_3’s immortal popularity is no surprise to me; it’s a memory featherwight. You can play it on anything. For two months after graduating college I lived in a 125-square foot apartment with two roommates in San Francisco. I didn’t even have room for a desktop, I could only use my laptop on my bed and steal internet from the hotel next door. The only map I could play… [Continue Reading]

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Passive abilities

January 25, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, demoman, engineer, heavy, loadout, medic, pyro, scout, sniper, soldier, spy, weapon

TF2 doesn’t feel like a game with a lot of passive abilities. There are few obvious ones, such as the scout’s double-jump and the Pyro’s afterburn immunity, but when you look into things, it turns out that almost every class has at least one. First of all, its debatable whether “more than 125 health” counts as a passive ability. Even though its pretty clearly the baseline for TF2, some people might consider speed and health a form of statistics instead of abilities. It’s also debatable whether any ability that requires equipping a weapon would count, like “can remove sappers” or… [Continue Reading]