Clefairy

That was a bad description and I apologize for posting it. Oval-strafing would be more accurate; the goal is to get out of the pyro's field of vision. The quickest path to that position is often forward at a slight angle, which is basically what I was getting at. It's the exact opposite of what he expects to happen, which gives you a momentary advantage. Depending on the situation, such as your health, teammates in the area, what they're doing, etc., that can be enough. I'm just not a fan of doing things the same way every time. A culture of "situation A elicits response B", as online games tend to develop, makes the experience stale in my opinion. Case in point; Engineers on a stock map. Buildings go in the same handful of places, almost without fail. New ideas and approaches, even if they don't work, are essential to progress. -- I disagree, Bleck. Seeing every single medic with the same guns is what bores me; I won't deny, they seem rather plain in comparison, and with any luck they'll address that someday. A suggestion I once heard and liked was the needlegun increasing charge speed slightly. Also, the game was a weird place at release. Fire was actually disorienting, nobody spychecked, the list goes on. There's so much crap you can't get away with now, just because everyone's wised up.

There are two ways to get better at something. One, practice, preferably with people who are better at it than you. Given the relatively static nature of the community, you might have trouble pursuing this route. Two, self-imposed limits. Let's use the medic as an example; imagine the level of skill required to succeed with, and then without the extra regen of the blut. Obviously without is higher, right? So if you obtain that level of skill, then add on the advantage of the regen, you come out way ahead. This assumes, of course, that you actually want to get better. I like to see people improving, whether it's me or someone else. I'm simply describing what seems to me like a logical way to go about that. As I said in the original Vanilla Day post however many pages ago, it's just a way to shake things up. Like playing custom maps. I understand some people don't want their game experience to change; that's their loss.

Circle-strafe. Try it sometime. Not gaining health is the entire point. It's a self-imposed challenge, and while you will die more often at the outset, eventually you'll get better and it won't be a problem. Then you'll go back to the blut and find out you're godly. It's like the FaN versus the normal scattergun, but that's another subject entirely. What you call tactics, I call opportunism. It's semantics, really, unless you're a truly dedicated battle medic(Hi Steve!). The limits you speak of are entirely self-imposed, based on what you consider 'good play'. In general you're correct, but this game rewards aggression to a ridiculous degree. Being bold can and does pay off. Except now, every single medic in the game uses the unlocks. Kritz excepted of course, that's a legitimate toss-up. Boring-as-fuck wise, we're back to square one.

Practice doesn't have to be a means to an end, ie, to get ready for a competition. You can think of it as a way to avoid those particularly frustrating deaths. Consider the common scenario of being bumrushed by a pyro. Currently the standard response for a medic is to backpedal and fill his face with blut needles. That's not really an option with the default gun. You're forced to engage him, which I can assure you is something your average pyro is not accustomed to. Do this often enough, and you'll start to learn where and how to move to avoid being set on fire. I don't think I need to explain the usefulness of such a skill to someone who mains spy. Even if my argument does nothing for you, there's always playing it up for laughs. A full string of crit needles will kill an overhealed heavy; I've got one or two of those under my belt, and they're easily highlights of my 200-odd hours of play.

Signed. I'm sure bonzai is plenty capable. In seriousness, it's good practice. Not getting hurt at all is a big step up in difficulty from getting hurt and leeching back to stay alive.

A few months ago the Steam network went down for maintenance, and everyone lost their unlocks for several hours. Those were good times; I proposed 'Vanilla Day' as a bi-weekly event, but it never gained traction and was forgotten about. So it goes.

Friday works for me. Hm.... pl_frontier is always a winner in my book. And ctp_epsilon is a novel concept I'd like to try with a decent group of people.

So, pub TF2 is pretty much unplayable now in my opinion. Runs of all the popular maps (Goldbowl, Badwater, 2fort) of late bear that out pretty consistently. The 2 or 3 people (on average) on each side that talk are left to co-ordinate the team, more often than not weighed down by deathmatchers who blindly charge the objective or hang out in midfield collecting kills. Sacrifices to the Cult of the Engineer are at an all-time high. It's just not fun, and to that end I'm out. If something different develops (like Rambo's scrim plans, or a password day(What the hell happened to event days, anyway?)) I'll be back; otherwise, see you all next update.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198011572685 Please remove this user from the group.

Team thing sounds good. Ideally I'd like to get a nice sampler of all the accepted formats; last I checked into it, those were 6v6, 8v8 and HIghlander.

Wasn't sure which thread to necro, settled on this one. http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii

As I understand it, he was a random pub player who showed up one day, enjoyed himself, and started coming back pretty often. At some point(prior to when I started to play here, which was in early March), he turned into a troll who would start arguments just to rile everyone up. Not even good arguments; the stupid 'my opinion is fact, if you disagree with me you are an idiot' kind. He was trying his hand at mapping around this time as well, and turned out a little number called cp_downtown. I've heard the original was pretty good, though it had some minor technical problems. All the versions I've played were meh or awful. We still have 2 of them on the server, though I can't remember which ones just now.

At long last, Dr. Tiddlywink has been banned. He was cussing Yahoo out pretty nastily, and while that offense in itself is relatively small, he's been a thorn in our collective side for some time. I won't miss him one iota. He did nothing but complain and troll, and make progressively more terrible versions of downtown. Good riddance.

I might as well jump in. While I find the chant wav he's got amusing, and his library of stuff passable, if predictable, SpectreShot is a drama queen, and a bit of a baby when things don't go his way. I know he's become a regular, occasionally does great things for the community (meatspin), and he's gotten pretty cozy with Brushfire. Despite all that, I still think we'd be better off if the antics were reined in somewhat. If that proves impossible, then I guess it's time to drop the hammer. Count me in. Assuming standard format, I'm comfortable with scout or medic. Soldier... Ehhh, if you need it, but it's really not my forte.

I was hoping to get a chance to tell this story. We were on Dustbowl today, stage 2. I was a blue spy, and made it my business to sap red's teleporters. The... second time, I think, Rambo got annoyed and rolled pyro(he was sniper at the time). We spent a good two and a half minutes dancing around the second cap area. That was stupidly tense, but it was so funny to see him wasting so much time just for me. There were lots of great moments from tonight, actually. "It's raining, I shouldn't be on fire!" is my personal favorite.

Can't be any worse than cp_badwater, and we've got that on there. Downloading a2 now.

I meant to post this last night, but my login expired and it ate what I wrote D: Anyway. Initial impressions of cp_clash (the map Kiyobi linked to): First off, aesthetics. I actually like the generic texture work and spartan layout; feels like TF2 in Gmod. YMMV. The cap points are interesting. Being almost totally enclosed like that will require some re-thinking of defense in general, I think; the preponderance of cover walls and long sight lines mean sentries are significantly less effective, and significantly more vulnerable. Those areas are a bit like junction in that players with splash damage (pyro, soldier, demo) have the opportunity to cause a lot more havoc than normal. Personally, I like this aspect as well; the sentry gimping in particular means that teams will need to adopt a more dynamic strategy for defending their points. A lot of people will hate it, because they're babies and can't adapt; their loss, in my opinion. Onto space. The map feels huge; maybe too much, but I don't have any particular suggestions on how to dial it back. I used to main scout, so it doesn't really bother me; the central area makes it kind of a problem, though. Running around out there, I felt very exposed. Given that you have to cross the map to cap your points, that's probably going to lead to unpleasant experiences for players. All in all, I like it. The concept is solid, if a bit advanced for TF2, but we got used to Steel, I'm sure we could get used to this. Just needs playtesting, tweaking for balance and player enjoyment, and you're good to go.

In the spirit of last night's hilarious round of Badlands, I would like to propose a new unofficial rule. Henceforth, upon achieving victory by steamroll, the winning team shall be obliged to challenge the losing team to a round of melee only, melee/taunt, or taunt only kills. If sufficient positive response is received, 40% and up I would say, the server is polled and the round proceeds accordingly. The griefing potential is high, obviously; nothing ruins a melee duel like a third man wandering in with his gun of choice drawn. Still, I think it would be a pretty good way to blow off steam after failing miserably.

We need some plr_hydro up in this thing. Or a regular PL map; sort of waste-style, where the bomb can take different routes depending on who's pushing it at certain checkpoints. No blocked paths, everything open. Also, garian, if you happen to read this, check your damn PMs.

You'll do alright. We're pubs and scrubs, mostly; just watch out for anyone with [ZUZ] in front of their name.

I think it's worth considering if those complaints have merit. Personally, I think people bitch about it just because it's different. I wouldn't mind it at all. Server events increase the feeling of community, and I was very sad to see them disappear. Now we're right back to doing Goldbowl every night, with a little Badwater and Pipeline on the side. I honestly can't think of a way to properly express my annoyance over this. Additionally, despite our professions toward being a casual server, a substantive portion of the regulars are, for lack of a better term, in it to win it. I'm all for fun and games, but there comes a point where getting stomped into the ground because your team has 3 spies/snipers and their team has 2, as well as a mysterious ability to ACTUALLY CO-ORDINATE, the game stops being fun. Suffice to say, I just want a little teamwork from my team. Suspending alltalk occasionally would do a lot toward that end.

I may have gotten the server first arrow reflect kill. Stats haven't updated yet, so can't be sure. Anyway, it was on goldrush stage 2. I charged into the side tunnel at start, lit a bunch of people up, AB'ed on a hunch. Got meatball with his own arrow EDIT: Indirectly, yes. Crits for all weapons are based on how much damage you've recently done (20 seconds as I recall), and now you're doing 10% more damage per shot flat out. Toss in a decent amount of luck, and it makes sense to see your crit rate spike.

Oh damn, I forgot about that. One for me, Brushfire, assuming nobody got missed. Speaking of things forgotten, I do hope everyone is hard at work getting those pictures together for the Family Album Project.

Explain to me with a straight face why this needs to be complained about. They know the problem exists. They keep tabs on their product like any diligent company would. Also, get another hobby. Gardening, maybe. I'd bet good money on you feeling like less of an asshole after planting some flowers and watching them grow.

The negativity in the world today astounds me. I mean, really; is your life so miserable that you have to invest yourself in complaining about every little misstep a developer makes? I also feel obligated to point out that if this were any other company, we'd be shafted for at least another two months before these issues were addressed. On-topic, Pipeline seems to have been very favorably received. That got me thinking back to Goldrush and Dustbowl, oddly enough; and a theory regarding the popularity of those maps came to me. Simply put, they were first. Not first as in stock, obviously, but the first of their type. 2fort fits into that as well with ctf, and even Hydro to an extent; 5-point cp breaks the mold on account of having two maps at release, and as such it seems to be less popular than the other modes. I could be wrong, I'm only speculating. But the reasoning strikes me as solid.