An Ancient Post on TF2’s Community Competitive Play

Now, there’s been some talk on the forums as of late regarding “comp elitists”.  Now, coming from someone who’s been on the forum’s UGC 4s team for both seasons, I have a bit to say, but I won’t be the most valid or most trusted compared to seasoned veterans (see what I did there? Anyone? No? Okay…) First off, let’s- … You find yourself hearing muffled sounds. Timmy is no longer here. Wherever he is now, you have no idea. He has been placed by a deranged German lunatic. One who seems somewhat angry. It seems that, after SIX YEARS… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Role Queue is Finally Coming to Overwatch!

Rejoice! (Or doomsay, if you’re on the other side of the fence.) A special edition of the Overwatch League tie-in show Watchpoint just happened, and they’ve formally announced the worst-kept open secret in Overwatch: role queue is finally coming to our favorite Blizzard shooter. Since the early days of Overwatch, players have been able to pick whatever character they want, and the game simply trusts all 6 to pick things that contribute to the team comp as a whole. If your team wants to go 6 supports, you could. No tank? No problem! However, this has led to some problems that… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Friday Forzebreak tournament, with prizes!

Hi everybody! Remember that Major League Magic tournament we had a few weeks back? Another student project wants in on the action, and tomorrow will be streaming a “teams of two” elimination tournament from aabicus’ Twitch stream! Forzebreak is “a Vehicle Battle Arena game where Rocket League meets Super Smash Brothers in a Mad Max style world.” Players will be choosing their different cars and attempting to knock each other off the arena while collecting powerups. There are 5 different cars and over a dozen different powerups, and I’ll once again be shoutcasting the tournament! Tournament begins Friday, May 18th at 3:00 PST. Hope to see you… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Team Fortress 2 now has Real Competitive Rankings

Out of the blue, a wild Team Fortress 2 update has appeared! A Team Fortress 2 update that actually has some substance, that is more than just the release of a new cosmetic set. Okay, that was still a big part of the update, and ironically the new collection is called the Blue Moon Case, but still, we got changes! Balance ones! The biggest thing though is the change to the competitive system. The much needed changes. The changes we should have had ages ago. Before the update, everyone, from b4nny to a guy who literally just started the game… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Friday Major League Magic Tournament, With Prizes!

You’ve heard a lot about Medical Necessity in my weekly dev diaries, but it’s not the only game being developed in my college Masters’ course! A large team led by Ahmet Terzioglu has been developing a competitive multiplayer game tentatively called Major League Magic, and at 3pm PST the first Major League Magic tournament will be streaming on Twitch! This is the first public opportunity to see the most ambitious project in our class, don’t miss it! Major League Magic is a 3v3 online brawler where both teams select their spells from over a dozen options and fight for three rounds. These… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Competitive Overwatch: Going For Gold

If you were to check out the videos on my YouTube channel, the GIFs on my Gfycat account, or my screenshots in various Daily SPUF articles, you would notice that I’ve been stuck squarely in gold for the entirety of my competitive Overwatch career. On occasion I’m able to pull things together and drag myself into low platinum, especially back in Season 2 where Blizzard’s misbegotten bell curve strategy ensured that 70% of players were in plat, but it’s not long before I either settle back down or a new season starts and subtracts 500 SR for reasons I understand but intensely… [Continue Reading]

Read more

The Differences Between Watching Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 Competitive

I’ll be honest, I’m not great at games. But I do enjoy watching games being played skillfully. So does aabicus. And so do a lot of people, enough for people to buy into weird schemes and build multi-million dollar prize pools for video game competitions. While Dota 2 and League of Legends aren’t my cup of tea to watch, I’ll always enjoy a bit of pro TF2. Now, top tier Team Fortress 2 is pretty fun. It’s strategic and fast-paced. You know what’s also fun? Pro Overwatch. But there’s something about them that, I don’t know, feels off. Most of… [Continue Reading]

Read more

6 Reasons Why I won’t play Competitive ever again

I was talking to my Overwatch-Competitive-playing sister who goes by the edgy name Skully. She’s totally not a Reaper main, can’t aim those guns for shit. She mostly plays… well, anything BUT Reaper. Mercy, Junkrat, D.Va mostly. That’s beside the point. We were talking about how competitive game modes just… aren’t that fun if you take them seriously. Which spurred me to write this article. It’s Too Serious Team Fortress 2 is a stupidly goofy game. On the flip side, competitive 6v6 is serious. Super serious business. It’s pretty hard to take the game seriously when you’ve got a Heavy… [Continue Reading]

Read more

The Pros and Cons of Class Limits

We’ve all seen it before, the four Snipers on a team of twelve, taking up a third of the team, all being useless. People, especially newbies, drift towards Sniper because he is just like the characters you see in other shooters. Cool, collected, headshooters with powerful rifles. It’s familiarity in a world where giant Russians shoot down gas-masked lunatics for killing their friendly German doctors. But anyone with TF2 experience knows how useless Snipers are the more of them you have. They see these stupid team compositions and scream things like “F2PERS MUST BE SEPARATED FROM PREMIUM PLAYERS!” and “WE… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Things about Team Fortress 2 I refuse to believe

While making ice cream that I pretend has way less calories than it actually does, I realized there a quite a few things about Team Fortress 2 that I refuse to believe. So here’s my list. Random crits Guys, if you solely clicked on this article hoping to find me complain about random crits, you’re welcome. I made this one easy for you. Now go on with your “MAGGOT”-life. I’m not sure why TF2 has random crits in the first place. Their controversial nature is controversial in itself. You find yourself liking them each time you get a random crit… [Continue Reading]

Read more