Vivi22

To be fair, we're never going to get to the point that mature and thought provoking topics are acceptable if we don't stop underestimating the audience. Are there plenty of people who wouldn't get the message behind a game like Six Days in Fallujah and not see past the gameplay? Yeah, there are a ton. There are also a ton of people who could watch a film trying to convey a similarly mature message, miss it entirely and either hate it outright or still enjoy it on other levels completely oblivious to any deeper meaning. It's easy to say that we have a long way to go before the audience matures enough to catch up to what developers want to do, but I don't think that will happen at all if we don't start giving the audience more credit and tackle sensitive topics. I think we really need to start giving gamers more credit and also realize that even if the message only reaches 5% of the game's audience, it's a success. Those who got it might just be able to explain to others what they got from it and have them realize there was more to the game, and that there can be more layers to other games as well. Just because a lot of people might not get it is no reason to shy away from this stuff.

Also in for scrims. I'll try to be on earlier this time around, say, 7-9. If that changes I'll let you know ahead of time. EDIT: In other news, last night was the first chance I really had to play on server 1. Apparently my favourite weapon is now world suicide. Must have been from airblasting some people off of point E on Steel.

Agreed. I had no problem with most of Nicole's comments because they were simply about how the game felt to her and whether she liked it. You can say the controls feel too fluid or the guns feel like toys and I'm not going to argue with you since it's how you feel about them and that's totally subjective. Like BGC said though, we just had problems with some of the comments by NJ because they were totally off base. You can't say things like all of the weapons handle the same or the new infected are just slightly different variations of the old when neither is true.

Speaking of finales, can I just say that I like the change to the formula they made with the tower and the maze. Every single event like that in the first game pretty much consisted of let's hunker down, set off whatever loud thing we're supposed to set off and wait for the two waves to finish before moving on. I thought forcing you to run through the horde to stop the noise calling them was pretty brilliant, and a nice change on a somewhat tired formula. I can't wait to see what other new scenarios pop up in the full game.

Yeah, I wish I had been able to get in on the 4 pack earlier, but I wasn't sure I'd even have the money until this past weekend so I just went and spent the $10 extra rather than spend forever trying to find anyone who wanted to go in on it with me (I don't have any friends here who are getting it so I would have had to scour the internet). And like I said about the melee weapons not seeming different to me, I hadn't used many of them. I figured I was probably mistaken since they differentiated every other weapon in the game. I'll be sure to try them all some more as I play through the demo a few more times. I just remembered something though and I'm wondering if I'm the only one bothered by it; does anyone else not like the pistols firing sound? It sounds a little harsh to me and starts grating my nerves after a while. EDIT: It also just occurred to me that we still have more weapons to see in the game since we know there are chainsaws, and the in game tips make mention of a grenade launcher and different types of ammo. So there's a lot more depth to the weapons we haven't even discovered yet.

I'm not trying to pick on you specifically, but you made some arguments that I actually had at first and figured I would add my thoughts too. To start with the weapons, I actually thought the same thing at first, but after several playthroughs I've realized I was wrong and they don't all play the same. In fact, each assault rifle feels different than the others. The AK for example is incredibly inaccurate, but seemed more powerful than the others. When I had a large number of zombies running straight at me in a group I probably mowed down a dozen of them in half a clip before they got to me, but it would be terrible for shooting a jockey off of someone. The green assault rifle also seems weaker, has a bit of a burst fire, but is a lot more accurate. I only saw the M4 once so I can't really say much about it, but I'd assume it differentiates itself as well. Each weapon is more than just a different skin for the most part. No argument from me that the melee weapons seem to all play the same. Maybe I'm wrong because I just don't use many of them except the machete, but still, with the one hit kills I've actually found it easier to fend off a horde that's right in my face than pistols, even with the pistol melee because I only need to hit them once and can stop worrying about them with a machete. I still have to shoot them after the pistol melee and with the cool down on that after you use it several times it could mean I'm being attacked from all sides with little recourse beyond trying to shoot them all to death. The downside to the melee weapons is of course giving up a pretty accurate ranged attack with unlimited ammo, and having to actually let the horde get to you to be effective. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and are balanced quite well if you ask me. I disagree that it's just a mish mash of the other two Being able to use the horde to your advantage can be great when you're facing a tank. A molotov won't slow him down, and he totally ignores pipe bombs, but it's hard to ignore a horde of zombies attacking him. It buys you time to get to a safe distance, and takes care of the horde and some of the tanks health. I'm sure others will find similar good uses for it over time. I've also found that the charger can't take a lot of punishment, but he's fast and when he actually hits you he sends everyone else flying forcing them to take a bit to recover then grabs one person and does damage a lot faster than the Hunter. On the other hand, the Hunter pretty much relies on taking you by surprise, is harder to kill (if only because he can jump around so freely), but he doesn't do as much damage to the player when they're pinned. They both behave very differently, and have different damage potentials requiring that you handle them very differently. The Spitter has much longer range though. In fact, it's really the only thing that can attack you at a distance except the Smoker (or the Tank if it throws something at you), and even then, it's attack is a lot different from the smokers. It could easily trap a team by blocking an exit with spit, or really mess up someone trapped by a charger or a smoker. The concept of spitting something at you may not be new, but you don't react to a Spitter the same way you would a Boomer. I haven't found it that difficult. If all I had was a shotgun and a frying pan maybe, but they clearly highlight both character so you can differentiate them at a distance. Pull out a pistol and aim high, or melee if you're close enough. I'm not really going to say anything except that I'm betting it was tweaked for the demo. I mean it is incredibly short meaning if they didn't throw enemies at you almost constantly it would be a pretty uneventful demo at times. To be fair though, I have gone through several times and found areas where there were only one or two infected, usually right before the horde came running after us. This is one of those things where you have to remember it is just a demo and things will probably play differently in the final game. Valve pretty much consider giving breaks and building tension a science if you ever listened to their developer commentary on other games. That said, I do have some problems with what I've seen. I'm not a fan of the character models for the most part. It's not that there's anything wrong with them, but you could pretty much look at the characters in L4D and know all you needed to know about them, plus they were pretty varied and unique. In this one we have three people wearing regular old street clothes. I'm sure I'll like the characters as I get to listen to all the banter in the final game, but visually they're not that interesting and it can even be tough to distinguish some of them from the zombies at times. I also wasn't overly taken with the level design in the demo. I won't condemn it until I see all of the levels in the final game. It wasn't like it was terrible or anything, but I felt the original game did a better job of focusing the player on where they need to go next, even if it was your first time through. My first time through in this I actually managed to get lost for a minute or two. I'm going to hope you just don't have a great computer and couldn't buy it on anything but the 360 because there is no other acceptable excuse for getting a Valve game on a console. Especially when I only paid $45 for the PC version on Steam.

Funny, I remember you being on for a lot longer than 5 minutes after that happened, but then I may be mistaken. It was getting late and I was feeling pretty tired.

I'm good for the same time next week. I'll try to get on earlier just in case the server empties towards the end like last night. I realize there was that update in the middle, but I would expect the player count to dwindle a bit towards the end anyway. And atmuh, when I was on towards the end of the night I saw both teams ask for people spectating to sub in at various points. I mostly let people who were there before me sub in in case they hadn't really played much up until then, but at no time did I see you even try to join a team when they were asking for someone to sub.

I'm still good for tonight. Not totally sure when just now. I'll probably have a choice of either playing at 7EST for an hour then coming back later, or getting on a little later at about 9 for the last two hours. If I'm not on the server around 7 then just assume I'll be there around 9.

Or, you know, you could learn that maybe you should try staying outside the scouts effective range and learn to maneuver better while tracking a target that moves as fast as the scout. Even in a crit death there's often a lot you could learn from it. The Scout may get lucky and get a crit that kills you instantly, but before that they likely got themselves up close and effectively dodged what you were throwing at them.

I have to agree with this, not in the not ever playing no crits sense. If a lot of people from the community played there I'd probably go for the team speak when I don't feel like playing with alltalk, but seriously? No crits?

If you can find the spot to change your name and have the manual dexterity to type in [OCR] then you just tripped over the bar for joining the OCR clan. Go ahead and slap it in there.

It's ok, we can still be friends. The second is fine with me. If we do one earlier it'll have to be Thursday night or earlier. Turns out my wife has the weekend off (for the first time in months) so I'll be visiting family Friday through Sunday. Any other day should be fine though.

*cough* As long as we work out the time several days in advance I shouldn't have any problems.

That time frame works for me. Any day that isn't a weekend would be ideal since the wife occasionally demands I spend time with her on weekends, but I can probably swing one of them for an hour or two if I had to.

This. If we took every map that gets rolled fairly often out of the rotation we wouldn't have much left to play.

Since I'm currently jobless I have plenty of time to play. I'll throw my name in.

I'd say the second one is my favourite by far. Partly because it would look better on a flag, but it also just screams classy nerd to me. Put me down for one too. It may be the most unusual Christmas present I get, but damn it I want one now.

That's gotta be even more embarrassing than being Huntsman sniped while aiming for someone else. I've actually never seen that happen to be honest.

I have seen a lot of ugly ass custom drumsets in my time, but that Mega Man theme makes it all alright. The bass drum resonant head is without a doubt the coolest resonant head I've ever seen. Did SJC do that or did the head come from another company? EDIT: Never mind, I'll assume they made the head or had it made since it's on the kit in their website gallery.

So garian has to tell you when someone wants you to stop blinding them because it's not fun? Do I even have to point out how that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Doing it once might just be in good fun, but if someone says stop you stop. Just like if someone complains about mic spam people should shut the hell up.

Odd; my machine has no trouble with them and it's about equal to your machine (roughly any way). I still agree with losing the plugin though just because other people do have trouble playing with the weather effects. If there's some way to keep the skybox changes but ditch the weather effects I'd be cool with that.

What do you know, my name made it into a picture in this thread. That's almost as good as actually showing up in a picture in this thread. At least there was a scramble shortly after that, but from what little I saw when I joined I'm guessing there was a little more rolling going on than there should have been before something was done. In fact, I seem to be seeing teams get rolled more and more frequently when I'm on lately for multiple rounds to boot.

I wish I had seen that. Did it still kill people if you ran into it? Just wondering because that would also be awesome.

I'm not trying to really get on your case here, but seriously, even if it wasn't your intention to sound like you were making excuses, that's certainly how it sounds when you say something like posting the rules in the MOTD not being enough because you and others never bother to read them. And even server messages that pop-up explaining the rules might go unread given the number of messages that pop-up frequently in a busy game, and some people might just ignore all the messages anyway, so what exactly is enough? It's not the responsibility of the server admins to make sure every player who ever joins the server knows the rules. They're posted in the MOTD for all to see, and anyone who's played TF2 for more than a week is probably going to realize that servers post their rules there. If you want to play and stay out of trouble it's the players responsibility to read and follow them since they are readily available every single time they join the game. And even if they do choose to skip reading them, they'll still generally get the benefit of a warning before any action is taken. So not to say that server messages displaying the rules aren't a good idea, but I fail to see how the MOTD and warnings aren't good enough because some people can't be bothered to read. I brought up the reserved slot system waaaayy back when the server started. I agree that not hiding the 25th slot is stupid and should be changed.