Sniping for those who hate scopes, part two!

He still haven't gotten over his fears...
He still haven’t gotten over his fears…

Since my last article, I still haven’t recovered from Vlepsophobia, the fear of scopes. It’s just so dark and scary, like a tunnel of light when someone dies! It’s horrible! Thankfully, the nice people behind all our weapons made loads of alternatives to these scopes, one of which allows you to remain as a Sniper. But silly me, I forgot a couple of weapons…

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Why do you hate Snipers so much?

This question was brought to you by Medics’s siblings. I finally did this for you, now shut up. ————————– Aabicus: Snipers can be teeth-gnashingly annoying, but in all honesty they don’t bug me as much as they could. I’ve since learned to be very careful before crossing into territory where a sniper could see me, and unlike most classes, I’ve got a way to turn myself invincible against all damage, for when I finally poke my head out. That’s not to say that sniper’s niche of “deals lethal damage from the other side of the map” isn’t incredibly difficult to… [Continue Reading]

Sniping for those who hate scopes…

Vlepsophobia, the fear of scopes.
Vlepsophobia, the fear of scopes.

I never told anyone this, but I have a phobia. Vlepsophobia. The fear of scopes. Actually, that’s a lie, although the word I used is theoretically correct. But ever since I started playing First Person Shooters, staring with Left 4 Dead at 5 frames per second, moving onto Garry’s Mod and settling down in Team Fortress 2, I have always been troubled by using the scopes provided on certain weapons. It’s the tunnel vision, I think, that puts me off. Anyway, today, we’re discussing what to do if you want to snipe but hate peering down a scope.

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Trade Maps

Trading servers are a dime a dozen. They’re dime-a-dozen back-stabbing scumbags… No, wait, sorry, I was thinking of Spies. But there are lots of trade servers, from trade_plaza to trade_minecraft to trade_rawr to trade_achievement_idle_noglass, and so on and so forth. While some of these maps, like trade_minecraft_realms, are wonderfully made, with all sorts of pretty things, randomized spawns, health kits in convenient places  and stuff, most trade servers are incredibly simple. Two spawn rooms and a room in the middle connecting them.

Boring, eh? Well, let’s go deeper…

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Sniper melees and you!

Sniping’s a good job indeed, but there are people who really want to avoid all that polite and efficient bussiness and bludgeon you to death with a golf trophy. Wankers. Then you have to sigh, take your favourite oversized knife and stick it to their bodies until they are no more. Here we are again, 3rd attempt to jam all the useful melee information in your brains. This time we’ll cover Sniper’s melees. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) there aren’t many Sniper melees… Let’s check them anyways. Your stock kukri is geniously named Kukri. As always, its reskins are Frying Pan, Conscientious Objector, Freedom Staff,… [Continue Reading]

Some Quick Fixes To Make The MvM Experience More Fun

Ever since the Two Cities Update, the face of Mann Versus Machine has been invariably altered. With the obscene buffs the Medic and Soldier received from this update (I’ll complain less about the Medic, because he really needed some love, and now he’s basically indispensable), MvM, for some, has come to an irritating middle-ground, where the older missions, namely Operation Steel Trap (and, to some extent, Gear Grinder. Yeah, remember them? Me neither) have become laughably easy, or something you run through with your friends as six Demoknights for a chuckle, and the newest missions are hair-pullingly difficult. To me, and hopefully at least one of you, this is bogus.

 

"Ahaha! He thinks he can plant the bomb!" "Dude, that's enough. He's only Intermediate, after all."
“Ahaha! He thinks he can plant the bomb!” “Dude, that’s enough. He’s only Intermediate, after all.” Picture by Noble Atomic.

As someone who has sunk a considerable part of their TF2 experience into MvM, I remember the soul-crushing agony of trying to find a match on the night the update dropped, those encounters with blokes who had been on the same Expert Mission server for three hours trying to find a winning team, being a bloke who has been on the same Expert Mission server for three hours, and screaming in unison with the Announcer when an Engineer bot showed up (more on them later). And now, after slaving away at Empire Escalation for as many hours as I once had at Mannslaughter, I realized that, with all these updates to the Medic and Soldier, going back to those missions and still expecting a challenge would be impossible.

That being said, there are things that are positively infuriating about the way MvM currently works that could also make the experience more enjoyable. So, I’m going to propose some changes Valve could make to the way MvM works in order to keep MvM (all MvM) exciting for players at all levels, as well as improve the experience over all.

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Sniper Versus Machine: The Post Dualcity

"Help?"
“Help?”

Valve have recently rolled out an awesome MvM update – Two Cities. For most part it’s great – Medic and Soldier buffs, killstreak weapons (that don’t look too good in most occasions but some are really awesome), Rottenburg. On the downside there is Empire Escalation Wave 4. But that’s later.

Since it’s a blog, it’s kinda logical for someone to get their opinion here, or maybe a story, if they have anything to share, so I’ll do exactly this thing.

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My favorite TF2 Glitches

As we all know, TF2 is a perfect game with absolutely no flaws. As a matter of fact, not only is it completely flawless now, but it’s actually remained a perfect game since the day it came out, with a grand total of zero glitches for the past seven years. That’s pretty impressive.
But every so often Valve feels the need to remove legitimate gameplay strategies such as “Taunt with Amputator, disconnect from server, your team regnerates health indefinitely until the server crashes or changes maps.” Here are the ones I miss the most.

1. The Level 2 Mini-Sentry

Is a regular sentry gun cute? Maybe a little, but not really. Is the mini-sentry cute? It would be if it wasn’t one of the most annoying things in the game currently. But this gun? It’s adorable. I want a plush.

Who's a cute derpy sentry gun? You are! Picture by AWSmith11.
Who’s a cute derpy sentry gun? You are! Picture by AWSmith11.

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Why 300 Ping Is Horrible Except When You’re A Sniper

I don’t know why I’m really writing about this, but after having played on the SPUF standard server (which you really ought to visit because it’s fun and all that) with ping that fluctuated between 270 and 400, I feel like I should. Normally, I’m okay with high ping. It depends mostly on where the server is, but I get more issues with American servers than, say Asian servers. Probably because there’s more sea between me and the physical location of said server.

So, the first thing I ought to mention is that the game isn’t really laggy. I do get random lag spikes and such, but game play is normally fairly fluid. My frame rate is almost always steady unless a Sentry Buster just blew up next to me. The problem is with the details.

Picture by Medic.
Picture by Medic.

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