Clefairy

AFAIK Valve started it. If you go to their steam group, a bunch of their employees use them. I guess it's sort of a meme now?

This seems like a fortuitous time to announce my hiatus. I just feel my TF2 phase winding down, that's all. I've played enough Goldbowl/Badwater/2fort to last me several years now, and the other maps are certainly getting up there. I guess I could join a customs community like Axel's, but I like it right here. However, on the off-chance that anyone is interested in this challenge, I will generally be one of the following: The Scout with the Batter's Helmet, shooting your peeps in the kidneys The Demoman who stickyjumps everywhere The C&D spy who does nothing but stab-sap your engies The Soldier with the pot who taunts after every kill The Engineer with teleports in bizarre, obvious places (It's Clefairy's patented Alarm-o-Porter 3000! Enemies cannot resist alerting you to their presence!) The Pyro who tries to airblast and fails miserably The sole Medic on a reasonably competent team(post-beta patch thing, you'll be able to pick me out by the absence of a blut. Crit needles are comin' back, baby!) That is all. Keep your eyes peeled; I should make for elusive prey in the forseeable future.

The way I look at it, all stuns are disables. But not all disables are stuns. And yes, while Puppet Master technically doesn't have a spell that prevents the enemy from doing anything, you get a lot of utility in return. Hold is a snare with snapback; if your positioning is favorable, you can use the new tablet of command with that. Crazy is a silence but also a mind control; it's tricky to pull off, but the extra damage you get by forcing an enemy to hit one of his allies can be a table-turner. Also, forcing them to attack their own puppet, possibly even killing them that way is hilarious and causes them to rage in chat. Moments like that are the validation I need to avoid despair and subsequent uninstallation. EDIT: I hate repeating myself, but I suppose this bears repeating. I know it seems like I take this whole thing very seriously, but it isn't like that. I'm clinically depressed; overwhelming feelings of failure are just part of my daily life. This game, its death mechanism in particular, really doesn't help at times. That's a large part of why I act as I do, and I'm sorry to anyone who's annoyed by that.

It's in the developer commentary. Give me a minute to find the exact one. EDIT: Here we are. I disagree about KOTH. The idea is to take the middle point and hold it; once that's accomplished, you have to stop the other team, who's going to try to do the same to you. It starts out as push-style, then morphs into attack/defend. -- ohai, bleck! It's been a while, how's things. Anyway, yes. Crits were intended to be a pacing element to enable players to occasionally go on hilarious killing sprees; in practice, they just let players get kills they didn't really earn. Oops. Crits= the hydro of game mechanics.

If I come across as ignorant, it's only through experience. I have never personally met anyone with that type of inclination(with the possible exception of Don Newman; I've not looked at his steam stats, so I can't be sure). I've heard of Jening and the like, but those people are in the far-off realm of internet celebrity. The odds of them showing up on our door are pretty low. Not having any data on how many such people exist, I inserted the word hypothetical. In hindsight, that makes me come off as arrogant and arbitrary, which was not my intention at all. Live and learn. Anyway, Trianine. The discussion arises out of the implicit question 'what can we do about this?' As you say, class limits would treat the symptom, not the condition itself. However, influencing the intentions of every single player who joins up is well beyond any of our abilities. Restricting certain classes with a server-side setting is not. And as the alternative is to sit around and do nothing, here we are talking about doing something. It was added to bring CTF more in line with their design philosophy, ie, playing well and playing aggressively. TF2 was made with the idea of avoiding those tug-of-war matches where one side can't gain the advantage long enough to win. I don't necessarily agree with that, since I like to feel the ebb and flow of a match over time. But it's their game, and their design, so I can't argue with making it more consistent.

I would like to invite all of these hypothetical players to tear up their contracts of exclusivity and log some time filling another role. Change is good; I know you have 700+ hours as your preferred class. That's great, I'm happy for you all. Ever occur to you that you might be stuck in a rut? I'll counter your player problem with another; frequently, nobody talks. For entire rounds, sometimes! Often as a result, the map becomes a group of skilled individuals against a real team. What's the difference? Communication and planning. Good players will run around willy-nilly, doing as the tenets of their class bid them to do. That's perfectly acceptable, except when it runs up against another group of players with a coherent strategy. A great example is Turbine with Vahn/Ubel around. Almost inevitably, there are 2 or 3 sentries up in the midfield, with matching kit soon to follow if it hasn't already. A spy might get one, but no one says anything, and the window of opportunity is lost. 20 seconds later the engie respawns, teleports/walks back and rebuilds. I've seen this happen time and again, and frankly it's depressing. Meanwhile, heavier classes pile in through the main gate, usually with a medic or two. Very soon it becomes impossible to do much of anything, as this clump of players takes up residence in their enemies' intel room. This team proceeds to steamroll their individual opponents for 25 minutes, usually causing the server to take a big hit in population. It's not fun, but again, because nobody says anything in-game, it continues. I suppose it would be fun for the "lol pwned" crowd, but they can crawl back under a rock in my presently caustic opinion.

Thanks. Also, if you can't play your class of choice, play a different one! I personally recommend the FLYING DEMOMAN; crit-bottling snipers in the face is tons of fun. Also, if you're at least decent with the huntsman, you will annihilate with pipes. The trajectory is very similar at short to medium range, but the hitboxes are even more retarded. Re: options. Pubs will do what they want to do about 60-70% of the time, depending on who you ask. If you aren't tactful about it(and let's face it, tact is just about a lost art on the internet), they will quickly come to see you as one of those domineering, hyper-competitive types who ruin the fun for everyone else. I don't want to play somewhere else. I like this server, playing with this community. The random drifters, I could take them or leave them. But, for reasons I honestly find impenetrable, people prefer a full game to goofing off with their friends. Okay, not friends. Internet acquaintances. Everyone draws the line somewhere different. Switching teams... ehh, I guess. But sometimes that's not an option, it makes me personally feel like a turncoat, and I guess I've just become accustomed to leading one team into the abyss of humiliation. Nothing perks up your day like "YOU FAILED!!" do-do, do do do do, do..... EDIT: Damn. Just.... yeah. Damn.

I imagine this will annoy me from time to time, but it's for the greater good. To be honest, I'd be okay with instituting a global limit of 2, if it could be turned off per-map by vote. Keeps regular play minimally lame, still allows for shenanigans.

Donut only stands out because he is, bar none, the best of us overall. Other people can and have done well, but he still stands a rung or two over them. Incidentally, the game EZ alluded to was the first in which I haven't felt like a failure or a cripple. It's taken me the better part of a week to get to that point, even with a small bit of prior Dota experience. This is not an effective way to draw new players in. I really hope practice mode gets buffed up with more features, right now the only practice you can get is laning in an ideal situation(no harass).

A bit out of left field, but how does everyone feel about the sound design in this game? I was always a fan of the menu theme from Savage, so I'm very pleased they've brought it back and expanded on it. The theme that plays during an actual match is nice too, though I'm not as fond of it. The way it flows as the game progresses doesn't always work, but there's usually something intense going on by the time it really ramps up. As some have said, voice acting is hit-or-miss. When they get it, they really get it (Madman <3), but when they don't, they really don't (Keeper </3). Personally I rather like having some heroes without dialog at all; it's a change of pace, and can help you focus a little better. Hopefully at least a few of them remain silent at release.

The thing about that is, all the players I listed have, at best, a rudimentary understanding of those mechanics. The question I'm posing in this hypothetical matchup is "To what degree does player skill affect the game?" Ideally, every loss of his would decrease our team's numbers by one, while every win increases it. We would then play enough games to find an equilibrium, ie, what number of people Donut can win against consistently(my money's on 3). Of course, as our players are people and not lab rats, this would take quite a long time to complete, and keeping it scientifically rigorous would be a big stumbling block. So I fully expect this to remain in the realm of 'thought experiment'.

You have no idea. Anyway. It's not so much him as a player or how badly he's able to crush the rest of us, it's more about what he represents. This game is inherently competitive, and the learning curve predisposes it to the hardcore. I can only imagine the amount of time he sunk into it to get where he is. If that's all that awaits me at the top of the skill ladder, then I want no part of it. EDIT: I have to say, this would be an intriguing experiment. I think the ideal team would be something like you, me, Anso, Halt and Harmonious. Spork for sub. Hellborne side, since their creeps are better at focus-firing and consistently push towers first, when left to their own devices.

Playing against Donut makes me want to uninstall and never look back. End quote.

H&S isn't really an endgame item, as you would be looking for on an AGI carry. It's a solid mid-game item that gives new players an obvious goal to shoot for. That's my perspective on it, at least. Also, zircon, Keeper's ward ability lasts forever(assuming they don't eat the tree, which I have never seen happen). That's potentially a lot of money saved watching runes. Given time you can have the entire map covered; just think of it, "mia mid" a thing of the past. Camo plus his ultimate makes him the best initiator around, doubly so with a restoration stone. The tree-weapon thing is for last-hitting and pretty much nothing else. Puppet Master has the best single-use snare in the game, in my opinion, a solid crowd-control spell, and if you can get your team to actually hit the puppet, his ultimate is one of the fastest ways to gank a single high-level threat. EDIT: Seen on the beta forum: I kind of want to do this now.DOUBLE EDIT: Aw, it doesn't work.

I have nothing in particular to contribute to the debate, I just wanted to pop on and say I agree with all the moderates out there. If people want to melee, let them. If they want to incessantly challenge everyone else to do the same, let everyone else mute them. For people that this solution does not satisfy, such as those whose names start with at and end with uh, allow me to quote the MST3k mantra: "It's just a show. I really should relax." Swap show for game and bam! Instant applicable wisdom.

I think I'm starting to get my feet on the ground. I quite like Armadon, you just need the tiniest bit of mana regen to keep him going. Once he gets his ultimate to level 2, he's basically an engine of significant AoE damage. 40% less damage from behind is nothing to sneeze at, either. Took a crack at Nymphora in 1v1 after the bulk of people left; pretty nuts. Her support potential is obscene, and she's a perfectly servicable int carry on her own. We'll see how she fares in larger games soon enough.

This is not terribly helpful advice, because as far as I can tell all of you are way, way out of my league. If you want to kill me, regardless of my actions, odds are good that you will. That's the biggest problem I have so far with it. There's not really any place to practice with people who are on your level; even the few noob-only pubs I've played have been stacked with Dota-heads on fresh accounts.

Now seems like a good time to mention I have three keys to pass out, should anyone else want to get in on this. I would sum up my experience with it so far as 'unforgiving'. That's not necessarily bad; playing with people well out of your league is a real challenge, and winning in that circumstance feels like an accomplishment. But, as Sporknight said a few pages back, if the other team gets an advantage over yours, it tends to stay that way. Does anyone have advice for using practice mode? Laning with no enemy heroes doesn't strike me as terribly good practice.

Why yes, I am out of touch with reality. Why do you ask? At any rate, I have received the go-ahead from relevant parties. So I got on late last night, as things were winding down and the server was emptying. Bonzai had been drinking (screwdrivers, 1/2 vodka was the report I got), which progressed in more or less the manner you would expect. Rambo wasn't far behind, it turns out. We won two stages of Goldrush doing nothing but uberchaining. And we weren't even that good at it. At some point Bonzai gave up demoman, obviously the best class to play while drunk, for sniper. Naturally I insinuated she was into giving Rambo the old golden shower. She laughed and answered "Well, you never know..." We had a couple of semi-normal games after that. Pav popped in for Steel, seeming amused at our antics; Aeronaut made an appearance, mostly sticking to spectator and providing pokebattle-styled commentary. Apparently I can't call BS now, since I deleted that move for... Hacksaw? I don't remember, exactly; I had most of a glass of 50/50 screwdriver into me as well by that point. By the time Turbine rolled around it was down to me, Pav, and 2-3 others whose names escape me. Suprisingly we stuck it out the full 25 minutes, letting the mapchange to Hydro finish it off.

Everyone who went to bed early missed something great. No, I won't tell you what it was. If certain other people want to make disclosures, though, that's their business.

We had a guy... last night? earlier today? I don't remember exactly, but he was doing just that. Anyway. Obviously this has been bothering a lot of people for a long time; sucks to be in the middle of it, but at some point the ruckus will die down.

Allow me to dig something up for you. In their eyes, the idler and the unlocker are on even footing. It's all about precedent.

This is my situation, minus the idling. Neutrality suits me, so I'm not too fussed. We took a crack at koth_lighthouse tonight; much, much better than oilfield. It's a rework of a custom arena map I used to play on another server, and it's looking pretty good. ZUZ ruined the teams with their usual antics, but that's hardly the map's fault.