Clefairy

You know, a few years ago I'd have agreed with you. Then the PSN attack happened, and we found out, among other things, that Sony had been storing its customers' passwords as plaintext. Microsoft has a long history of boneheaded decisions and poor implementation. They eventually get things right, but it usually takes them at least a year to do so. The privacy angle is a legitimate concern.

Genuine Keymaster's Lament Level 100 Mechanical Halo "You listened to the instructions of a crazed, half-robot time traveller! Nice work, soldier!"

Gentlemen, Robo-Keys are upon us! Sadly, there are no new weapons or fixes. But this whole revenue-sharing thing Valve is doing gets more and more rad all the time. Also, read the comic. I don't care if you're not a big reader, just do it. You won't be disappointed.

Having played koth_saw, 2Fort arena edition isn't bad, I remember liking it back in the day. But all the pacman maps are horrifically optimized in my experience. Balloonrace I don't care either way. In my opinion, all the 'arena editions' of regular maps should go. Arena is a unique experience as compared to all the other game modes, and the maps created specifically for it tend to be the most interesting.

9PM Eastern is when Baha usually hops on to kickstart the server. Sometimes one of us has the itch and does it a little earlier. Assuming you're still in Japan, that'll be... 10AM for you. It generally runs for at least two hours, longer if the crowd is into it that night.

I wasn't aware you were back on that wagon, what with the hardly-ever-playing-anymore shtick you've got going. Do you get invites from Wes?

Fixed. Here's the thing. Nobody's fun is less valid than anybody else's. Personally, I think arena is high-stakes play that punishes you for being sloppy. The long wait between rounds can be a problem, especially with the 8v8 limit and sit-out mechanic. But I'm willing to accept that for the change of pace it offers. If you really find arena so odious, don't play it. The larger community has indicated what they like and don't like; take it for what it is and ditch the bits that don't do anything for you.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=10307 Needless to say, I lol'ed. But then I found this. Update imminent? Or overly elaborate prank?

Harvest is actually pretty popular on the server generally. But, when someone (usually Baha) announces they're leaving right at the end of the map, it cascades and a bunch more people leave in response. Normally it survives that first desertion for a couple of maps, but several of us wanted to do an MVM so we also left. Sorry about your luck, mate.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/13/many-questions-system-shock-2-comes-to-gog/ I never thought this day would actually come. I confess, I'd given up hope. Assuming GOG's servers don't melt, I know what I'm doing tomorrow.

Oh, you were serious about this the other night? Excellent. TURN THEM OFF Yeah, the server gets more traffic with them on, but that traffic is a complete crap shoot. Some pubbies are pretty good, some are totally useless, most are just okay, but you never know which is which beforehand. More importantly, the retention rate is abysmal; once in a while somebody will decide to stay, Pika for example, but that seems to be the exception and not the rule. Don't even get me started on the teamstackers and outright trolls. And as others have said, it sucks to get the jump on your opponent and have the RNG decide you should die instead. I get that TF2 is kind of the Smash Brothers of FPS, meant to be more light-hearted and capricious, but there's a limit. As for the other bits, I like damage spread. Same idea as the crit mechanic, but not such a crazy damage spike, and no winners-win-more problems with scaling. Waffleshots I could go either way on; my inner physics nerd wails about realism, but this is a game where rocketjumping is a thing, so he doesn't have much to stand on.

You should. The core game is still fun, and all this wacky hat business is pretty easy to ignore(Though, if you're of a mind, there are graphical mods out there that disable all cosmetic items). The only reason it's still a hot topic is because the stuff that matters is pretty ossified. Hydro still sucks, Badwater is still a classic, and the balance of new unlocks is still dodgy. It's pretty clear that none of that is going anywhere, the game is 6 years old now. So conversation defaults to hats.

Nooo, Soldier's spoiled mayonnaise! D: I'm alright with this. The first batch of hats are incredibly common, and most of them I never actually liked. Now if they'd just retire Ritzy Rick/Baseball Bill/Texas Slim we'd be golden.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. Valve is ridiculously, absurdly profitable. They make more money per employee than Google. And being privately owned, essentially all of it stays in the company. The notion that they would do something 'because it makes more money' is ludicrous. That's a great fringe benefit, sure. But it is not the primary motivator. Xbox Live both carries a subscription fee, and is glutted with ads. I assume you meant 'charging people'. /pedant Yeah, because nobody owns multiple consoles, right? We're still picking our tribe and sticking with it, throwing rocks at the other guys wherever they might appear? Big Picture mode is the current full-speed-ahead project at Valve right now. They haven't released stats from what I can tell, but they're cranking out updates and adding features week over week. People are obviously using this thing, and it has value for them. If Valve can take that tech and expertise, and put out something that shakes up the deeply entrenched and dysfunctional console market, more power to them. If it flops, well, you gave it the old college try. No real harm done. And Valve will actually say "A PC is big, clunky, and not really portable. Plus you have to finangle drivers and antivirus and so on and so forth. This is just Steam on a console, optimized for controllers, and small enough to take to your friend's house."

I'll direct you to this article. The relevant chunk: Valve loves test beds. Particularly going forward, their strategy is going to be "try things, see if they work. Be nimble." This is just the next phase of that idea. Maybe it'll take off, maybe it won't. That's the point of an experiment.

Check your inventory.

So tonight we got kicked out of Dustbowl after the first stage, then Upward/Barnblitz after the second cap. Badwater was fine, so it's not A/D settings in general. Those map-specific cfgs need a little work.

What an odd question. Resetting the counter would be an interesting tradition to start. See how many kills you can rack up in a year, then try to break that record next year. If that sounds appealing, and you don't care about rank, then go for it. As for adding a third part, none of the current ones seem really "you". Killcams taunted in would be a good fit, but there isn't a part for that.

Alright, since it keeps coming up, what is the general opinion on random crits? These are the arguments as I understand them. Pro -Crits are part of the game and have been from day one. They randomize combat to a certain extent, helping to ensure no one match ever plays out the same as another. -Crits are one of the settings necessary for high quickplay rating. Without them enabled, the server will receive much less matchmaking traffic, and the community pool will expand much slower. -Crits occasionally allow a newer player to score a kill they would not have otherwise, giving a much-needed feeling of accomplishment at an important point in their game experience. -Certain weapons are balanced around having crits enabled. Without them, these weapons become underpowered. Con -Crits are an unfair mechanic to both sides. A critical kill is not 'earned' through player skill or tactics, but awarded via the random number generator. This is frustrating to the victim and robs the victor of their accomplishment. -Crits are based on total damage done within the last several seconds. As such, better players will crit more, only serving to increase the gap between teams performing well and teams that are not. -Assuming that the extra randomization crits provide is not desirable, turning them off provides a better experience for everyone. Having an established pool of regulars negates the effect of less matchmaking traffic, if enough of them show up to play consistently. -The metagame is no better or worse with crits disabled, just different. For example, minicrit/critboost effects become stronger by comparison, and 'no random crits' ceases to be a negative attribute. What say you?

Captain Punch is a beast. That is all.

For anyone who can't get on right away, here are the weapon stats. The Loose Cannon fires small cannonball grenades with a fixed timer of two seconds; you can prime the grenade similar to the Beggar's Bazooka by holding down the fire button. They do not explode on impact, but do push players back, and will do half damage if they hit any surface. The Rescue Ranger has a clip size of 4 and half ammo capacity. In exchange, it fires bolts that can heal buildings from a distance. In addition you can use alt-fire to pick up a building at range; this costs metal to do, and marks you for death. The Vaccinator builds uber at double speed(!), but overheals at 1/3 speed. However, while healing a target, you and that target gain 10% resistance to a specific damage type. This can be cycled with +attack3, which now defaults to the middle mouse button. The ubercharge provides 75% resistance to the specified damage type, and you are healed for 25% of that incoming damage on your heal target.

I'll just leave these here.

I used to, back when I was a much angrier player. The random insanity and nearly impossible caps made for a good way to vent frustration when your team utterly failed at working together in a more normal game. And the visual style, while decidedly lazy, is a nice change of pace sometimes. I get a little tired of the shades of Nevada a lot of the popular maps have going, after a while. Why do you ask?

Try purging your client files. To do that, make sure it isn't running, then find the folder where you have it installed. Delete everything except steam.exe and the Steamapps folder. It says you should restart, but I don't remember ever having to. Anyway, launch it again from that same .exe, and you should be good to go after it re-downloads all the missing bits. Best of luck.

What's all this, then. Oh, I see. Neat idea, but needs work in the implementation. For example, I'm fairly confident there's a few decent crates hidden in there, but there's no way to search by series, so good luck finding them. Obviously the kind of thing a beta is for. I look forward to seeing where this goes. The idea of some dodgy little scamp supporting his gaming habit by shrewdly buying and selling hats is rather novel.