analysis – Page 13 – The Daily SPUF

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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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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Four Things You Can’t Do With the Syringe Gun

September 29, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, glitches, medic

Recently I wrote an article on Four Things You Can’t do With The Crusader’s Crossbow, because the crossbow is amazing and complicated and lends itself well to causing exploits and that sort of thing. But the design of the Syringe Gun is no slouch in that regard either. Face it; we Medics have a pretty complicated and unique primary with those rapid-fire hitscan projectiles, and that’s caused some trouble for Valve in the past. Here are some things that have been deemed Too Awesome for the poor syringe gun: 1. You can’t boost teammates on a sea of needles. The most… [Continue Reading]

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Guide on… walking out of spawn in TFC

September 21, 2014 eugensiman 0 Comments advice, analysis, comparison, design, guide, TFC

Hello, my name is eugensiman and I’m a passionate newcomer into the world of Team Fortress games (400+ hours overall). I quickly found out that I’m more of a theorist than a practicalist in these shooters. I can acknowledge the importance and strategical advantages of various rocket jumps, however sometimes I can’t even do some of the simplest wall jumps on Badwater. But we’re here not to talk about walls. As I’ve said, I’m a newcomer not only into TF2, but into all the Team Fortress games. That means that I also like to spam some grenades around, make sentries… [Continue Reading]

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On Stealth

September 20, 2014January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, history, On Shooters, spy

Stealth and Shooters have always been strange bedfellows ever since they first met. On one hand the genres don’t appear to mesh well, what with your standard FPS starring a one-man army who plows through hundreds of mooks with an ever-increasing assortment of deadly weapons, and stealth involving slow, laborious sneaking past individual guards and relying on not making sound or setting off alarms. On the other hand, that’s exactly why stealth games have a dedicated niche fanbase, exactly because it goes against the conventions of the genre and uses the core elements of an FPS in a creative new… [Continue Reading]

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Battle of the Firespitters: Pyro vs Toa Vakama

September 14, 2014January 25, 2017 Dekky 2 Comments analysis, fun, matchup, pyro

Hello again. Are we all sitting comfortably? Good. You might want to stand up again, because your chair has just burst into flames. Along with the floor. Grab your computer and run, because two of the most hotheaded combatants in the universe are duelling just across the street. On one side is our masked, gloved and asbestos-clad Pyro. He/she is a very familiar being to us SPUFers. Specializing in ambush and close-range combat, the Pyro is a formidable beastie that skulks in the shadows. We don’t know very much about Pyro and probably never will. What we do know is… [Continue Reading]

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On Melee

August 1, 2014January 15, 2017 aabicus 1 Comment analysis, history, melee, On Shooters

First-person shooters have always loved the melee weapon, even as they render it essentially obsolete. No amount of situationality can prevent the visceral joy of beating something to death (especially something wielding real guns) with the bludgeoning instrument of the dev’s choice. Melee hasn’t changed very much since the early years of Doom and Wolfenstein. It often has the following upsides: · First or second weapon found in the game, if not just equipped from the beginning · no ammunition required to use · sometimes makes less noise than other weapons, or other unique combat advantages (usability underwater for example) · sometimes… [Continue Reading]

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What Use Are Friendly Disguises?

July 13, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments 6v6, analysis, Highlander, spy, strategy

That above question has bugged me for years. Why would you disguise as something that does nothing but inspire the enemy to shoot you? I knew there must be a reason to it, else Valve wouldn’t have added it, but serious thought only produced “trigger Dead Ringer while looking like something else, so they don’t keep spychecking after that.” Which is a decent use (and clearly intended by Valve, as the fallen corpse will remain that of a non-spy enemy) but were there any more? Turns out that, after speaking to some spy friends of mine, the answer is yes.… [Continue Reading]

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Why moving turning to the booties would be a terrible idea

July 5, 2014 reima 0 Comments analysis, criticism, demoknight, weapon

By Reima As a confirmed enthusiast of the knight, I want to put my official opinion piece on the pseudo-controversy that is the turncharge and the potential use of booties all together. Although turning has been recently recently green lighted, it currently remains under a conditional equip. I believe it’s a fair compromise, albeit a temporary fix. Still a step in the right direction. The public gets the equivalent of Vjoy being injected into the coding, and Knights are universally nerfed as they make that trade for maximum control. Turning knights are stripped of their heavy resistances and super shield… [Continue Reading]