Clefairy

So, since the server is full and I can't remember the IPs of the ZUZ or Fireslash's server, I went out into the wild and woollies of my Internet tab. Oh my god. It's like release day in reverse out there. Soooo many failspies. Haven't unlocked anything yet, but I don't care. This is glorious

Oh hey, my bandwidth unchoked. It'll be nice to play before midnight after all. ... On that note, hey Sensai, do you make backups from home when there's a big update? If the unthinkable were to happen, I can't imagine the agony of re-downloading everything they've added since release on your college connection.

Nothing stopping my hypothetical Demoman from trapping the roof all game. It'll be less effective, because respawn waves make the flow of people erratic, but he will still get an impressive number of kills. Also, there are two entrances to the point. The central gateway you mention, and a small side tunnel on the right side. Well, left if you're coming out of spawn. Just go backwards from the medium healthpack. Anyway. Toy Fort is a bad example of a custom map; the theme is well-executed, but you're right, it doesn't play well. There are no forward spawns, making Soldiers and Heavies significantly less viable. The mapspace is either very cramped or very open; there's no middle ground to speak of at all, unless you count the pencil-fenced area around each side's door.

Dustbowl, stage two. Red Demoman stickies the roof of the dip just outside blue spawn. The red side, obviously. Dumps pipes into the dip itself, detonates whenever a big group comes through. Profit.

Please don't. I'll... I'll beg if I have to.

Here's the thing about that. The only maps that a straight majority of our players actually enjoy are Dustbowl and Goldrush. Even if another stock map comes up, there's bitching and moaning regardless. Just about different things, most often teams. I'll skirt the issue here, because I've already said what I had to say on it a couple of pages ago. My argument is, essentially, 'If you play a map once and decide it's dumb, especially if you rtv halfway through, you're making a poor judgement. Play it through to completion, at least twice, then your argument will have some weight.'

You know, it occurs to me that this update has sort of a theme, in that the Spy and Sniper perform similar tasks, with most of the difference in execution. The Soldier and Demoman are similarly related, so it stands to reason that their updates might be bundled together as well. Assuming half the content takes half the time, we can therefore expect the Engie Update in 4 and a half months at the absolute earliest.

Most likely. At least for the first while, it'll be to get people to play Sawmill, just like First Blood 1 & 2 were put in to get people into Arena. Most of them are pretty decipherable. The only ones giving me a lot of trouble are Is It Safe and May I Cut In.

Update out. Ambassador is looking good. Pinpoint accurate, kills on headshot. Can't spam it, though, there's a cooldown between shots. Between this and the Razorback, Vale is creating some very interesting new class dynamics.

Hm... You know, watching Meet the Spy again, Heavy busts out a shoulder charge to break down the door to the intel room. There's a first-person shot immediately after that which makes it pretty obvious he's spun up. Yeah, yeah I know. Rule of Cool. But still. A temporary speed boost with the ability to spin up while you're running could definitely allow him to close the distance and apply himself optimally. It would also require a new keybind and could very well make the number of Heavies or Heavy/Medic pairs a given team can field the deciding factor in any match. Still, interesting to consider. Edit: hahaha, thanks Derrit.

Fair enough. The problem I take with that scenario is that to any competent player, it will be obvious what you are doing. And if they know you're already hurt or tactically vulnerable, they will push forward and kill you. Of course, we're discussing this in a vacuum without any regard for how well, or how poorly, our hypothetical Heavy and his opponent are being supported by their respective teams. However, in my experience with the pub-hoppers we get, support/teamwork is badly lacking all around.

Spinning down to re-locate is somewhat impractical while there are people still alive and shooting at you at mid-range, in my opinion. Long range is fine; the falloff makes most weapons do insignificant damage, and if it's a sniper you're probably dead anyway without support. Close-up combat resolves itself expediently enough, again making the issue irrelevant. Mid-range is where the problem lies. Being a Heavy, you can at best find cover and try to escape from there, because your fat behind isn't outrunning anybody. And my point about the class spam stands. Your team, being both imperfect and unaccustomed to this new form of opposition, cannot and will not get all the snipers/spies. You will die. You will die more often, possibly significantly more often. It is mathematically inevitable.

So let's see. To date, two of the classes the Heavy is ostensibly supposed to counter have received weapons to deal with him. The FaN rather viciously exploits your lack of maneuverability while spun up; similarly, turning around in combat to check for Backburner pyros generally puts you on the business end of a critical rocket. Come Thursday, the Heavy's two direct counter classes will receive their updates, with all the flooding and new tactics that implies. From where I sit, playing the fat man is going to be an excersize in futility for at least six weeks. I'm still holding out hope for a massive buff to help him deal with the current metagame, but it's looking less and less likely. RIP, Heavy: looks like babies win.

While 2fort suffers from a lot of the same problems, we don't play it all the freaking time. Fairly often, yeah, but not every-other-map often like we do with Goldbowl. Small steps, Sensai.

This reminds me a lot of when people whine about teams being uneven in terms of skill. My response is, almost invariably, "The teams are fine. The strategy is not." Which is basically true. While there are times when one team very clearly outmatches the other, most of our steamrolls, red or blue, happen because one side has a plan and works together to achieve it; the other side, naturally, consists of a bunch of soloists who seem to think they're playing with bots. They go off and do their own thing, not even acknowledging their teammates exist, much less working with them. If there are people dedicated to actually using teamwork, they're severely handicapped by the soloists, and their team gets rolled over. I believe the same issue is present here. Map quality isn't so much the problem that leads to frustration.

I would like to make a case for removing Dustbowl and/or Goldrush from the rotation. Yes, I know. They're great maps. Too great, in my opinion, which is why I feel they should be culled. Goldbowl, as is the common term, does not attract what I would call 'quality players'. I have no empirical data on this, which is unfortunate; just the vague feelings I've gotten as a result of playing on the server a while. Do these maps fill the place to capacity? Absolutely. Are the players filling the slots well-mannered, gracious in victory and defeat, and just fun to play with and be around? In my experience, no. I know the people who can't or don't play every night enjoy these maps, which is a big part of why we play them so often. If they want to rtv, that's a great idea and I absolutely support their decision to do it. Under such a system, I can see us still playing the two maps once or twice a day; every other day at the absolute least. They really are that popular, and I'd be okay with that. I'm just concerned, getting right down to it. Perhaps this is only me, but I'm sensing the tf2 experience growing rather stale lately. We play the same maps over and over, and it seems the strategies we employ are nearly set in stone. I've seen many a new engineer get berated by his team for not knowing the 'correct' spot to place his sentry. For me, at least, there's a huge rush to be had in loading up a new map and exploring it alongside a bunch of people I know and get along with, mostly anyway. Sure, sometimes you get a dud (like cp_cyberpunk, which should be scoured from the Internet, but that's another post), but more often than not the maps are at least playable. And sometimes we find one that absolutely nails it, like Cashworks does for a lot of people. That simply wouldn't happen if we stuck to Goldbowl all the time. Thanks for reading.

In a rare community sighting, the esteemed Mr. Baranowski joined us for a few rounds of Well/Badwater tonight. He was in good spirits, and it sounds as though he's doing well for himself. He slipped in a mention of Super Meat Boy, which I had completely forgotten about. I'd wager he'll be back from time to time. He asked about who plays that he would know; he seemed disappointed you weren't inundating us with phat beats over micspam, DarkeSword.

That's true. I'll be very interested in what the devs have to say about it, in either case.

It occurs to me that the Dead Ringer could be rendered useless on a Hlstatsx server. Killed a spy, got no points for it? Busted.

I can think of three people who play on the server at least semi-frequently who could do that. One of them is garian, who would just as soon pull out the kukri. Let's assume my memory is broken and there are nine such people. If this happens reliably, you as a spy should learn to simply avoid them.

Eventually all the non-rageonly spies will figure out the revolver is a safer choice. Until then, though... Bzzt

There are no words. Just wow. Also: http://www.teamfortress.com/sniperupdate/ EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I will miss the ubersaw, I'll grant you that. As for the blut, I think a lot of people use it as a crutch. I know I do. And that's really what I want Vanilla Day to be about; challenging yourself by not relying on your unlocks.

Make this one Team Talk Day, for simplicity's sake. And I agree. The unlocks do mix things up, which is a good thing. But for those of us who use them, it's a unique challenge to go back to the default weapons, especially if we've stuck with the unlock for a long time. That's mostly why I suggested alternating Thursdays; both events sound fun, but I think people would get tired of dealing with them every week. Also, we play a lot of stock maps already. Doing it like that would be a little redundant in my opinion.

Sick burn, bro. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that it's good to shake things up on a semi-regular basis. Team Talk Day would allow us a little more brass-tacks style of TF2, as it were, which would be a big change of pace. I'm for it. In a similar vein, I personally had a lot of fun on those couple of days when the server lost connection to Steam, robbing us of our unlocks. Vanilla Day, for lack of a better term, has the potential to be a great server event as well. I propose we alternate between Team Talk and Vanilla Day on Thursdays. Failing that, Sundays/Mondays respectively.