Concepts

Valve doesn’t like adding new concepts to the game, which is why there are so many +/- weapons, even the ones that don’t look like they are. The Airstrike for instance, is entirely +/- but the description doesn’t show it as such. Anyways Valve occasionally figures out they can change around a concept for new weapons and balancing, and then do it to a bunch of weapons (cough, switch speeds in tough break getting added to like 30% of melee weapons, cough). This seems like a new thing but switch speed has been around for ages in the Degreaser and… [Continue Reading]

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Why is Competitive Matchmaking coming out of beta?

After 11 mediocre stress tests, TF2 Competitive Matchmaking is coming out of beta. And tons of little things that we’ve complained about don’t seem to have been addressed. The game doesn’t run much better on DX9, so those needing DX8 (some of whom may be on plenty strong enough computers that just don’t play nice with TF2) are locked out of competitive. Other graphical settings, mostly ones only accessible via console commands, are also turned off. Matchmaking seems to have trouble matchmaking people of varied ranks. The issue of class limits and class composition is still… an issue. Those ‘small’… [Continue Reading]

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The League of Legends 6.9 Patch

Hey, look! It’s the League of Legends 6.9 patch! Hahaha, 6.9, get it? Sixty Nine? Right? Yeah. Bad joke, I know. But it seems like Riot have taken the fucking around thing and have REALLY messed things up this update. Patch 6.9, also known as the Mid year Mage update and the time that Ziggs destroyed every tower ever, went and shook up the mages, giving some of them some unique boosts, others some unneeded buffs and others some nerfs for no real reason. Unlike the other updates, the Juggernaut and Marksman updates, the Mage update has worked me up… [Continue Reading]

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Hydro Servers are back!

Valve has added Hydro servers back into Quickplay! You can find them under the new “Alternative” tab, where it shares space with Special Delivery and Player Destruction. tc_hydro has always been the least-loved of the original 6 maps, completely ignored by everybody everywhere, even on console where there are ONLY 6 maps to choose from! Whenever I play (indeed, when I went on and played it today) I found myself turning my brain off and just farming defensive Kritzkrieg Ubers because any serious attempt to end the round is going to be met with frustrating and repetitive failure. I would LOVE if… [Continue Reading]

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On Community Updates

Community updates have always had some sort of sparkle to them. You get a ton of great content-creators gathering and making something as a team. Right now, we have two communities working together on two very different but rather complimentary updates – the Iron Gauntlet, which features Mann VS Machine maps and robotic cosmetics, and the Mayann Project, which is more of an Indiana Jones themed update. Both look very promising and some cool themes behind them. And of course, more Mann VS Machine stuff is always good for me. Thing is though, despite the fact that community updates bring… [Continue Reading]

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Tiny Little Arena_Byre

Byre. It’s a little map. A forgotten map. A lonely map. An Arena map. It’s actually a map I had completely and utterly forgotten about for a loooooong time. Unfortunately for the people behind the Invasion update, the whole thing was forgotten about since it was released just before Halloween, had very little going for it and had most of its items left unadded. There was also controversy in various payments and stuff but that was sorted out apparently. But yes, for some insane reason, an Arena map was made and added to the game officially, in a time where… [Continue Reading]

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The Righteous Pomson

I’d been meaning to talk about this for a while, but back when Tough Break came out, there was an unintended side effect caused by the Flamethrower tweaks, and it doesn’t even refer to the Pyro. Tough Break’s patch notes mentioned that “The base Flamethrower’s damage fall off over distance has been decreased, resulting in higher damage output at range” and I could write a whole article about how all of these stock flamethrower buffs have elevated the weapon back to a surprising level of viability. But this affected more than just the flamethrowers; the Righteous Bison and Pomson 6000 mimic ‘lasers’… [Continue Reading]

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So, that TF2 update…

I said I would write about the February 29th update, so I am. Luckily there was also a March 1st update which I can also write about, although most of that was bug fixes and the un-fucking-up of CP_Foundry. The important matchmaking stuff that you’re all interested in is available in video form here. Go on, watch the video! The biggest thing to point out was a very random Matchmaking Stress Test that happened late on the 1st of March. People of all sorts of flavours could suddenly go and play matchmaking. Unfortunately (and typically) I managed to miss it,… [Continue Reading]

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I know I was supposed to make an article about yesterday’s update but…

I know, I know. I’m supposed to keep up with updates and things like that. Yesterday’s update was actually quite a big one in terms of number of things changed. Some for the better, some for the worse. Everyone’s all excited because it was an update in the early months of the year that wasn’t a couple of small lines and updating the localization files and all that, and because there’s matchmaking stuff hidden away in it all. The changes I do like? The map fixes are always good and the ability to trade the Steam Treasure Hunt hats is… [Continue Reading]

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New CS:GO! New Nuke!

UPDATE: Going to video settings and dropping everything to low/disabled makes it possible to play on AMD graphics cards! Whatever the problem is, it must be the same one that was plaguing ctf_2fort_invasion when it first came out. Please ignore how salty I was in this article.  Operation Wildfire just went live for Counter Strike: Global Offensive! The new Wildfire campaign comes with single and two-player missions, as well as bonus Blitz missions “for performing specific actions during global windows of opportunity”. Whatever that means. I’d love to tell you but apparently people with AMD graphics cards crash immediately upon joining… [Continue Reading]

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