ParanoidDrone

Supply and demand. Yay economics.

Do I really want to know why a bloody kill counter is so expensive in terms of the ingame economy? *Is perfectly happy with his Strange Knife*

I loathe Turbine with a passion. Ugh.

This is true. It's very difficult to do much as long as there's a Pyro around dedicated to flushing out Spies. The hardest thing for a Spy to take down is a Sentry nest with an attentive Engineer and a pet Homewrecker Pyro. That's when I say "fuck it" and switch to Demoman.

Spy thrives on inexperience. And most pubs are full of inexperienced players. Also, bugfix update. Lengthy changelog but nothing fancy.

I heard that the update broke Sourcemod, or perhaps it was just a warning that like most major updates, it had the potential to break Sourcemod. I'm not sure. Either way, apparently the server crashes on map nomination of all things, so it's disabled for now.

Pyromania Update is now live, and the server is updating...scratch that, we are currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by. (It's working now.) Edited for pretty formatting.

Umm...WTF did I just watch? (This totally supports the theory that each team member suffers from a different mental illness.) Wait, does this mean that the rainbow flamethrower skins are canon?

I agree, unless the Scorch Shot has a stupidly high knockback value I'm not seeing the appeal. I wonder if it can still crit/minicrit on flaming targets. Someone brought up a good point: The Scout pistol negates all fall damage. Mantreads work by transferring fall damage. Mantreading a Scout with the new pistol = ?

I haven't seen them personally, and TBH I'm struggling to work up the energy to care enough to fight Kai Leng and the Banshee Squad all over again, but from what I've read, a few things stick out. (Spoilers, obviously.) Shooting the Starchild results in a new "Rejection" ending where Starchild suddenly starts ranting in Harbinger's voice, followed by Liara's hologram explaining about the Reapers, and a final cutscene similar to the Stargazer's that implies that we lost but the next cycle was able to win. --- The relays are now "merely" damaged and inoperational for now, instead of gone completely kablooey. (Possibly EMS dependent.) --- EDI was reported to survive during the Destruction ending, despite it supposedly wiping out all synthetic life. No word on the Geth.

Well, it's a good thing I didn't bet money, since TF2maps.net is now holding a KOTH contest, of all things. Although it is sponsored by a third non-Valve party so it's probably been in the works for a while.

The new map looks cool, but it's fairly obvious that it exhibits reflective symmetry a la KOTH and PLR. Which is fine but I'll admit I was hoping for an asymmetrical game mode. Regardless, I'd bet money that the next TF2 mapping contest will involve Doomsday, assuming that's the name of the game mode and not the map. With any luck, tomorrow we'll get some new weapon information.

I think this is the part where we break out the tinfoil hats and popcorn.

Uber, Kritzkrieg, or Quick Fix?

There have been times I'll join a game halfway through the allotted map time and within a round or two I'll be topping the scoreboard. It's almost scary and usually makes me feel bad.

Not my fault they're easy to find. <.<

The winners of TF2maps.net's latest contest have been announced. Linky. The contest was Dynamic PL. In other words, payload with a dynamic element, such as the bridge in Thunder Mountain's first stage or the turntable on Barnblitz. I haven't played on any of the winners, but the fact that they won should say something about their quality.

Sweet. That also reminded me of a 2Fort custom, ctf_2fort_revamp, currently Beta 3 and probably stuck in development hell. It has several modifications over the stock map designed to make it harder to turtle and spawncamp.

Is that Ghetsis? I guess his involvement isn't a huge surprise, but I was expecting a new villain. (I still can't get over the protagonist's hairstyle. It just seems so...wild.)

To be fair, the number of times I've actually enjoyed a balanced round of Dustbowl/Badwater/etc. to the point where I wanted to continue after the map time ran out can be counted on one hand. Alternately, you could add an option to extend the current map time to the map vote. Have the vote start at the beginning of the last round if possible, as well. (By "round" I mean a segment of gameplay that can't be interrupted by a map change. So for Dustbowl it would be the start of Stage 1, but for Pipeline it could be at the start of any stage, for example. Single stage maps don't have to worry about this for obvious reasons.) I'd also like to put in my blanket disapproval for all flavors of Orange maps, but IDK if any are on the list.

A friend of mine summed up the problem well. The game didn't end so much as it just...stopped. There's very little closure to any of the various major choices you make, not even text. Not to mention the relays blow up no matter what you do, which has its own set of horrifying implications. (Stranding a major chunk of galactic society in the Sol system for an indeterminate amount of time, for starters.) You could argue that you see the result of your actions ingame for the most part, but I want more than the abstract knowledge of "You cured the Genophage, here's some numbers and a pissed off Dalatrass." What are the implications when the war is over? Ditto for the Geth, the Rachni, hell even Javik's mere existence. It's silly to expect a sunshine and rainbows ending where everyone lives happily ever after given the sheer scale of the conflict, but I don't think getting to see the end result of 3 games' worth of effort is too much to ask for. Put it this way: Majora's Mask was released on the N64 in 2000 -- 12 years ago. It had an asston of sidequests with wide ranging effects on the various minor characters, everything from teaching the Rosa sisters a dance to the huge Anju and Kafei subplot. Every single one of these sidequests that you completed got their own little 3-5 second clip during the credits showing the result of your efforts. If a relatively ancient, 12 year old game can do this, why can't ME3?

Today I learned that Medic trains and Uberchaining are perfectly viable ways of annoying Gamemaster.

I can't say I noticed, to be honest. Then again, the same basic recycled plot for 4 generations + remakes conditioned me to gloss over any exposition.

I was going to write my own post, but it could basically be summed up in a single sentence: What Sombrero said.

I'm not sure what to make of Brycen making an appearance. On the one hand, I'd expect the Gym Leaders to either be all the same or all different. On the other, the Kanto lineup changed between RBY and GSC. Yet I struggle to figure out which leaders would be replaced by Punk Girl and Shirtless Dude. Best I can figure is that you won't fight the Striation Trio, since I doubt they'd leave you to possibly face two leaders that use the same type. I really want to know how Cheren and Bianca figure into the plot. N's no doubt involved with the legendaries du jour.