Cosmetics we should have had by now

There are a lot of hats in Team Fortress 2. A lot. That’s an understatement. There are so many hats that the Mann Co. catalogue is buckling underneath the weight of all the pages in it, describing every hat. Crafting your three refined can get you pretty much anything from a baseball cap to a mask to a rose on your chest to a cat in your pocket to, amazingly, nothing at all. Never really made sense that you can craft the hatless Scout, Sniper and Engineer hats. That being said, there’s always room for more hats. Well, I say… [Continue Reading]

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TF2 update, 12/03/15

So, we’ve actually had a TF2 update. First off… THE CRIT GUNSLINGER BUG HAS BEEN PATCHED. Yeah. Only took them since the Gunslinger was made to fix that. In other news, the Strange Kritzkrieg was re-released, but the chance of unboxing one is the same as the chance of unboxing an unusual. We also got a Strange Buff Banner, Strange Cloak and Dagger and Strange Bison. Interesting. A couple of bug fixes here and there too. This update announces the start of the Taunt Workshop, so people can finally submit all their taunts, the same way they do hats. Three… [Continue Reading]

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Cosmetic Items, and why I love them

If there is anything Team Fortress 2 is known for, aside from it’s wacky cartoony graphics and colorful cast of characters, it’s Hats. The amount of cosmetic items in this game is somewhat ridiculous: It’s easily in the hundreds, maybe soon approaching thousands, which is why hats are a common subject of jokes when it comes to TF2. And a lot of people have gotten sick of hats as of late: It seems every even slightly major update includes dozens of hats, but only like 3 new weapons and maybe 1 or 2 new maps. Where do I stand in… [Continue Reading]

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Why the Gibus died

The Ghastly Gibus is the hat of the new player. The newbie. The n00b if you’re feeling cruel. For many people, whether they played before the Uber Update or after, the Ghastly Gibus was often their first hat, or at least one of their early ones. Yet the Ghastly Gibus has become a much rarer sight these days. Odd. Being an achievement hat, you can assume that almost everyone but the newest players has a Gibus, whether it’s the classic first level Gibus or the Ghostly Gibus or the Ghastliest Gibus. The Gibus is unique in being one of the… [Continue Reading]

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Holiday Shopping: Steam Gifts For All

It’s that time of the year again, and you know what that means! That’s right; unfavorable weather, repetitive songs on the radio, and a solid financial hit just waiting to happen. Let me tell you: I am broke. I’m so broke, I could no longer afford to pay for the moth that used to hang out in my wallet and comically float out every time I opened it to show people just how broke I was. Hell, I had to cut my weekly trip to buy groceries so I could pay for Christmas presents. But through it all, being completely… [Continue Reading]

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Unusuals – a Thought, Part 3…

I’ve discussed this before. Not once, but twice actually, which is why this is part 3. Last time round, I was discussing how I quite liked unusuals but felt they weren’t worth the effort and my main point was that unusuals were a small step on the wealth ladder. Have my opinions changed? Um, I’m not sure. Let’s get this out of the way, I still haven’t unboxed an unusual. I probably never will. I do one or two crates whenever there’s a TF2 event thingy going on and that’s about it. I struck lucky this Halloween, buying one crate… [Continue Reading]

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An Attempt to Explain Metal

Keys risen up to eleven refined metal!  Oh Noes!  The price of keys relative to metal has risen rather steadily over the past couple of years or so.  Apparently every time the price goes up by a refined, someone has to make some sort of thread about it.  Honestly, I don’t really care that much, dealing with the traders is too much of a pain for me anyway.  Nonetheless, I will make an attempt to theorize what is going on in the market of metal as a currency. In standard macroeconomics there are a couple formulas used to estimate the… [Continue Reading]

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Haunted items no longer make sense!

Haunted is one of the many item qualities in Team Fortress 2. Its hexadecimal colour (or web colour if you prefer) is #38F3AB or R:56 G:243 B:171 if RGB colours are more of your thing. If you prefer CMYK, the values are C:77 M:0 Y:29.6 K:4.7. No, I will not go and find you a closest Pantone colour. Anyway, no matter what colour numbers Haunted has, its reason to exist has lost its way. Originally, the Haunted quality was used on a bunch of cosmetic items, from the 2011 Very Scary Halloween event on Eye-a-duct. Most gifts that spawned appeared on the main… [Continue Reading]

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Making new players stick around a bit more

Team Fortress 2 isn’t as popular as it used to be. For the longest of times, it sat happily at the top of the most played games right now list on Steam, grinning like a lunatic. Now? Not so much. Both Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have overtaken Team Fortress 2. They basically tripped it up and kicked it in the bollocks. Dota 2 is strong because of the HUGE fan base that already existed, plus cosmetics plus a competitive environment. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive builds off the popularity of the previous games and is a more modern shooter that… [Continue Reading]

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Team Fortress 2 update, 17/09/14

Oh hey, another update! Nothing major, really. I mean, it’s not a big update and all. First off, the actual changes: Added Alien: Isolation promo items and enabled Full Moon holiday for one week Added Limited Quantity Item attribute on items that can no longer be crafted or purchased through the Mann Co. Store Limited Quantity Items can be placed on the Steam Community Market Removed Audition Reel from crate drop list Added Director’s Cut Reel to crate drop list Added Limited Late Summer Crate to crate drop list Fixed the Festive Bat using the lowest LOD for the first… [Continue Reading]

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