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Clefairy

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Posts posted by Clefairy

  1. Holy sensationalist fearmongering, Batman!

    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.

  2. arena_saw, arena_2fort, arena_balloonrace, arena_pacman.

    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.

    Which ones should we keep in the random-maps-that-appear-without-nominating list?

    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.

  3. Is it possible we could delete Dustbowl off the server? Dustbowl is where fun goes to die in TF2.

    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.

  4. 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.

  5. i wanted to come back and play this game but i don't want to come back to play pokemon all this hat stuff is pretty off putting to me

    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.

  6. This is not some "innovative experiment" by the "wunderkids" at Valve. It's a calculated business move.

    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.

    It produces that PC at a loss, and only retains profitability by paying people to have that PC connect to the internet.

    Xbox Live both carries a subscription fee, and is glutted with ads. I assume you meant 'charging people'. /pedant

    Valve assuming that they have a shot at siphoning off a portion of Microsoft's users

    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.

    Consumers will look at this and ask "Why not just buy a PC?"

    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."

  7. Valve for a long time now has wanted a piece of the console pie, but I don't think this will make as big a splash as they'd like.

    I'll direct you to this article.

    The relevant chunk:

    Well, if we have to sell hardware we will. We have no reason to believe we’re any good at it, it’s more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that’s what we’ll do. It’s definitely not the first thought that crosses our mind; we’d rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do that. We think it’s important enough that if that’s what we end up having to do then that’s what we end up having to do.

    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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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?

  10. 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.

  11. Hey, has anyone here ever played an Orange Map?

    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?

  12. *sigh*....Steam refuses to connect for me, so I can't play TF2. Or Portal. Or Most of my other games.

    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.

  13. 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.

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