Youtube

Have you heard of this website called Youtube? I've been putting some TF2 videos up there. You can find them on my channel. Here's one for those of you too lazy to click a link:

Price Drop Illogic

Apparently many people are unfamiliar with the idea of buying things. It's a simple system: A person pays money for goods or services, and the recipients of that money delivers that good or service.

The furor over the price cuts of the 3DS and Team Fortress 2 imply some new philosophy of shopping. The thought seems to be, "If I buy something, and someone else gets that same thing for a lower price, I'm getting screwed."

You still got a product in return for your money. You thought it was worth ten dollars, or two hundred fifty dollars, and you got it for that price. Once that transaction is complete, the relation between you and the seller is complete. You may have been ripped off*, or you may have won a great deal**. Either way, the price in the future has nothing to do with the value of your purchase in the past.

Where have these people come from, anyway? Almost every consumer product's price goes down over time, except survival commodities like Petrol and Food. When did this completely ordinary process become an outrage?

I suppose I shouldn't bother; people will complain about anything nowadays.

*If you got a 3DS
**If you got TF2

TF2 Sanvich fakeout

I just love this vid

TF2 Tourney DDOS

TF2 tournament matches keep getting attacked by hackers. Is there a particular reason for this, or are they just going with the mafia "protection" idea? Anyone know?

TF2 Uber Update Thoughts

I'm waiting for the Uber Update to come out, so I'm going to write my thoughts about what they've previewed so far.

Soldier
Liberty Launcher
Faster Rocket Launcher, I don't really care about items that just tweak percentages a bit.

Reserve Shooter
Mini-Crits on airborne targets. Sounds great to me.

Market Gardener
Getting Crits seems pretty good, but it's impossibly difficult to get consistent melee hits when you're flying by them.

Mantreads
If anything is harder than meleeing someone in midair, it's landing on their head. From some test jumping around, it seems like the treads would do ~100 damage, tops.

Disciplinary Action
This seems to be great. Going faster is always good, and getting a Heavy to go fast is fantastic. Also, you get to whip your allies.

Pyro
Detonator
Presumably, this'll be the Detonator from the Beta, so sign me up.

Scout
Atomizer
Third jump. Sweet.

Winger
Not that exciting, just tweaking percentages. I may use it for finishing people off.

Soda Popper
Charge up Mini-Crits by running around? I guess it could be good, depends on how fast it charges up.

Sniper
Bazaar Bargain    
I'm a terrible shot, so I'm not going to use it, unless there's something we don't know about it, like it has iron sights or something.

Shahanshah
booooooooooooooooring

Demoman
Splendid Screen
Doesn't seem that great. I'd rather have more damage resistance from the regular shield than better collision damage, which I rarely get.

Persian Persuader
Weird weapon. If ammo becomes health, then you can't pick up any ammo, which means you'll run out pretty quickly. It's for a pure melee build, but I think doing it with the Grenade Launcher would be legit, if you use it sparingly.

Ali Baba's Wee Booties
Is there some thought in Valve HQ that Demomen aren't annoying enough?

Heavy
Tomislav
The "no-sound" business seems good, but no one listens to things anyway. See Spy frag vids for evidence.

Family Business
Tweaking percentages, I don't care.

Eviction Notice
Tweaking percentages, but the wrong way. Surely a set of spiked brass knuckles would do more damage. I'd have it do bleed damage too.

Spy
Enforcer
I use the revolver/L'etrange to kill people already, doing even more damage is awesome. The increased cloak length seems like it wouldn't effect the Dead Ringer at all. This thing could two-shot a low HP enemy at close range.

Big Earner
I don't think this will be that great. 100 HP max is very rough.

Made Man
Maybe it'll do something?

The Saxxys

I've been spending quite a bit of time voting on The Saxxys, and I have this feeling that not many other people are.

When I start voting in a category, it is thick with ineligible videos. As I proceed, the number of videos that have nothing to do with TF2 thin out as I flag them.*  If my work is making a significant change in the proportion of ineligible videos, days after the beginning of the contest, there must be very few voters indeed.

I can't blame the people that don't vote, why bother voting between two videos which obviously aren't going to win anything? This is by far the most common pairing of videos, and it's a waste of time.

I'd guess about half the videos are ineligible. Half the remaining videos are so terrible there's no chance of winning.** Only about one percent of the videos are good enough I would suggest anyone watch them. If I were running the contest, I would change two things: I would allow the voter to flag both videos as ineligible, and I would have a button that would indicate a vote against a video. An average voter can recognize that a video's general crumminess means it's not going to win anything, even if it's technically appropriate for the category.  If a video got enough of these anti-votes, it'd be moved off the list of eligible nominees.

*this could be a psychological effect, which would mean that none of this is significant.
** A particularly annoying kind of video is a demoman sticky jumping to the enemy, and hitting them with the Ullapool Caber (see below). If it had never been done before, I could see the attraction. Instead of a novelty, it's become the most common thing in the contest.

TF2 Hat Update

Man, all these new hats, I need to get my butt in gear and update my old hat list.

Valve Lies, My Trust Dies

Back during the Golden Wrench Update, Valve said that TF2 players could unlock any number of golden wrenches at any time; it was all dependent on how much crafting they did. Within a day, people had discovered that this was a lie, that the wrench drops were pre-scheduled, with only who got the wrenches determined by the time.

Now Valve is telling us we can buy a set of games, and Portal 2 will come out sooner if you play the games. I hope no one blames me if I don't rush to my credit card.

TF2 Beta Update

Pretty Sweet Beta update for TF2. Oddly, Valve seems to be more interested in showing their hands instead of actually implementing things, the reverse of their regular policy.

Finally bringing in a system to produce a recording of your previous life. One million points. I'm eagerly awaiting its actual implementation. Same thing for KOTH Badlands, which is supposedly available, but none of the servers can go to it with the new voting system. Other than a lack of Badlands, the new voting system is exactly what TF2 has needed for the past three years. Surprising it took this long to make, since it's the same as L4D's voting system.

I'm hoping they introduce the Detonator to regular TF2, it brings the Pyro closer to the good classes. Personally, I'd just make the detonation ability a pure buff to the Flare Gun, it's not like Pyro is overpowered. 20% explosive vulnerability is brutal.

TF2 Tips: Settings and Configurations

 This guide is for those TF2 players who don't want to mess around with editing files deep in TF2.

Open TF2. Click on "Options".

In the "Keyboard" tab, click on "advanced", and check both "Enable Developer Console" and "Fast Weapon Switch"

In the "Mouse" tab, make sure "Mouse Acceleration" is unchecked. Mouse sensitivity is a personal thing, adjust it until it works for you (That may take some time).

For the "Video" tab, just make sure your video settings are low enough that you have a decent framerate. In the "advanced" button, make sure your Field of View is at 90.

The "Multiplayer" tab is the big one. A custom cross hair is good, I use Crosshair3 with Red and Green maxed out, and no Blue. This makes for a nice yellow colour that doesn't appear anywhere during the game. Unless you like obnoxious sounds, make sure to set the download options to not download custom sounds.

The "Advanced" button brings up a large checklist. Make sure you have the following things Enabled:

• Enable Minimal Hud
• Automatically Respawn after loadout changes in respawn zone
• Automatically reload weapons when not firing
• Remember active weapon between lives
• Remember lastweapon between lives
• Turn on Colorblind mode
• Until you're extremely familiar with the game, I'd leave viewmodels on.
• Display Damage Done as text over target
• Medic: display marker over player you're healing
• "Medic: Injured teammates automatically call out" is a tricky one. It's very useful for a medic, but it can be annoying if you don't like the sound it makes.
• "Play a hit sound every time you injure an enemy" also makes an annoying sound, but it's so valuable that it's worth going into the work of changing it.

Let's look at changing the hit sound. First, you'll need a new sound. TF2dingalings is where I found my sound, but any brief .wav would do the trick. My personal preference is the sound of kicking a shell in Mario games, found Here.

Once you have a .wav file, you'll need to do some work.

First, go to

Program Files\Steam\steamapps\[Your Steam Account]\team fortress 2\tf\sound\ui

Replacing [Your Steam Account] with the name of your steam account.

Then put your .wav file into that folder. Rename the file to "hitsound.wav", and you're done.

I may do a post about installing a custom HUD later.

Pro TF2 5 Point Maps

There's a lot of talk in Competitive TF2 about the speed of play. They don't want multiple medics because it would slow the game down. They don't want multiple heavies because it would slow the game down.

You know what slows the game down? 5 point maps. They don't punish waiting, since neither team is losing anything while time goes on. In Payload and Attack/Defend maps, one team is always on the clock, so there's always an incentive for action.

Payload and Attack/Defend also make the less used classes more legitimate as well.

Brief Thoughts

Just a few quick snippets:

• I'm against editing Mark Twain, America's greatest author. The worst part of the current edit is that it changes meaning. The N-Word is not synonymous with "slave". If you insisted on changing the word, I'd have changed it to "Negro".
• There are so many extra crates in TF2, Valve must be aware. They cut down with the entire free Xmas keys, but there's still many more crates than anyone wants. I suspect that Valve will have a brief Key sale.
• I got a Kindle. They're pretty amazing. Anyone know how to get currently copyrighted books for free?

TF2 Tips: Scout

I thought I'd write some simple tips for people that still have stuff to learn about TF2. My initial plan of attack is to write some thoughts about each class, in order.

The Scout
The Scout is not actually a scout. If you use him to find out what's going on ahead of the team, you will probably die pretty fast (Unless you're using Bonk). With only 125 HP, the Scout is only two good shots of most weapons away from death.

Like most classes, the Scout's actual role is to do a lot of damage very rapidly. The Scout's Scattergun can do more than 100 damage in a single shot, which means he can kill almost every class in two shots. The important thing to remember is that this damage is only possible at extreme close-range.

Damage Falloff is a poorly understood concept in TF2. Almost every weapon in the game does less damage the farther away you are from the target. This is obvious with the Scattergun, since fewer of the pellets hit the target, but many people don't realize that the individual pellets do less damage at a distance too. For the Scout, the Scattergun is pretty useless once you get out of close range. If you know the target is near death, then it may be worth it to stick with the Scattergun, but it's generally a good idea to use your secondary gun if the target leaves close range. The pistol also has damage falloff, but it's going to do more damage than a Scattergun at a distance.

Every class's primary target is the Medic. Scouts can be excellent at targeting Medics since they can come from unusual directions thanks to double jumping, and they can move quickly in and out of combat. The perfect Scout suddenly arrives, kills the Medic with two close-range shots, then jumps out of sight. If there's no Medic to kill, then a Scout is best used as a cleanup force. While enemies at low health attempt to flee the scene of combat, the Scout pursues or blocks their exit.

Writing this makes me think there's a lot more basic things to talk about before getting to individual class tactics. I don't know what I'll write about next. Coordination with the rest of the team is the most subtle and important of skills in most FPS's, but it's even more important in TF2. That'll probably be my next subject.

TF2 Beta: Double Health

The TF2 Beta now has doubled health for every class, along with (effectively) extra health for Engineer buildings and Spy Sappers.

The primary effect of this change is longer fight duration. Basically any two classes can stand out in the open shooting at each other freely without either being in too much danger. Since fights last longer, you can afford to make more stupid mistakes. If you get into a fight you can't win, you can always just run away; even a Spy can take three mid-range rockets and survive.

Speaking of Spies, this mode makes them vastly more powerful. Only the Spy has the ability to instantly kill any class and instantly nullify any building. With double health, a Spy can loiter under enemy fire until he sees a backstab opportunity. In fact, a Spy can run up to a level two Sentry while it shoots him in the face, Sap it, and walk away with a decent amount of health remaining.

Spy is King of Team!

TF2 Australian Xmas Update

The new TF2 update is great. I'm going to have to re-rank all the hats, with the new hats added into the list. But first, the new items!

Scout:
Boston Basher seems like an interesting idea. Slightly more damage with the bleed effect, balanced by bleeding yourself if you miss a swing.

Candy Cane is a good example of something Valve has been trying to encourage: using melee attacks as a means of finishing a fight. I think the theory is that both fighters will run out of ammo, get close, then go to melee. I don't think Candy Cane is worth it, 25% increased explosion damage is crazy bananas. Basically any explosion will bring you down so low that any more damage will kill you.

Pyro
Back Scratcher would be good under two conditions: You have a bad team/bad medic, and you don't use the Axetinguisher. Generally, I think Axetinguisher is way to go, but health packs are really good.



Demo Set seems pretty legit, but the fire resistance seems like an unnecessary insult to the Pyro, especially since the Demo can already have fire resistance with the Shield

Loch-n-Load seems to be basically a Rocket Launcher that fires faster, does more damage, and has a smaller clip. I'd use it with the Demoknight build, since it'd be a way to Rocket Jump easily. Other than that, it seems Overpowered, but that's because everything the Demo has is OP.

Ullapool Caber is as awesome as it is ridiculous, which is to say, very. Massive damage in exchange for basically dying automatically.  TF2 wiki says it does about 150 damage to enemies with the explosion, then does 100 to you, which sends you flying into the air, causing fall damage too. Just another way for the demoman to kill a whole team all by himself: stickyjump in with grenade in hand.

Claidhaemohmor just seems irrelevant. The sword for people who can't go the whole way. Decent, but uninteresting.

Heavy Set is just nuts. It completely changes the way Heavy is played. The critical resistance is just odd. Does that affect Sniper Rifle headshots? Being able to survive a fully charged Sniper would be pretty cool. (Although you probably wouldn't survive, even with the resistance you'd be down to ~22 health.)

EDIT: The Warrior's Pride gives -20 health, which should mean that the Sniper Rifle can still one-shot the Heavy.

Brass Beast has a really cool model and sound, but the ludicrously slow speed of movement probably makes it too impractical for serious play.

Buffalo Steak Sandvich is crazy good right now, you can drop it like a normal Sandvich and it still heals for half HP. That's the way I generally use the Sandvich anyway, so it's like having both sandviches at once. The actual effect is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. The Heavy running across the map chasing people down with fists is something I didn't think could be that funny. It increases speed to 311, which makes heavy second fastest class in the game; you still don't have much of a chance of catching a Scout.

It's only really practical when you are in an ambush situation, since you take minicrits. This makes it almost irrelevant since I'd rather use a Minigun for 99% of ambush situations. Regardless, it's tons of fun.

Warrior's Spirit may as well say "Increases Steak Sandvich damage to ~118."

Fists of Steel would be great if they hadn't already released the GRU. As it is, they're certainly better than the other melee weapons, but the GRU's extra speed is far superior.

Engineer
Jag is my new default Engie wrench, replacing the Southern Hospitality. Increased build rate is exactly what I need as a ninja-neer. The reduced damage will be a pain against Spies, but as El_Dawg points out, the 146 Crit damage is still enough to kill a spy, and Engie has roughly a 100% crit rate with Wrench.

Medic Set
The Medic Set is exactly what I've been asking for. The extra health regeneration is just gravy.

Crusader's Crossbow is still a question to me. You're basically trading extra healing ability in exchange for losing any real chance of defending yourself. The healing function does two cool things: It's a ranged heal, and it gives you a small "spike" of healing, since you can quickly switch to it, shoot it for 75 healing minimum, then switch back to Medigun without reloading.

The Reload is the primary weakness of the Crossbow, since it takes about 5 years. It makes the gamble of using it from extreme distances too risky, if you ask me. Unless you're targeting a heavy, (on either team), you're probably going to miss, and you can't just fire again really quickly like with the Huntsman. Also, you should be using that time to build uber, not reloading a stupid Crossbow. I think the Crossbow would actually be a more practical gun if you couldn't reload it.

Amputator is fantastic. The Medigun heals 24 HP a second to one person at a time, while the Amputator heals 75 HP a second for everyone around you. With only two people around you, it heals more than five times as fast as the Medigun. I'm not going to say it's a perfect weapon; it doesn't build Uber, and you're incredibly vulnerable while you're taunting. Despite those faults, this is my pick for Medic Melee slot now.

Second Medic Update, Please

I think the next thing Valve needs to do, after making this mysterious new game mode, is a new Medic update of some kind. If you compare the Medic of today to the Medic of the release, he's almost the same. Sure, he has access to the Kritzkrieg, but that's it.

No wonder people get bored playing the medic, it's been the same thing for over two years now.

I also find it frustrating because it's so reliant on others' abilities. If your team is bad at fragging, the best healing in the world isn't going to win the game.

TF2 Halloween Update

The TF2 Halloween update is pretty cool. The Horseless Headless Horseman is a great new game idea. Running in terror from a giant killer ghost isn't something I had expected to see in TF2, but it's lots of fun.

What I've really been enjoying is the new Art Pass Map. It is great for Engineers. Since the spawn doesn't move for either team, teleporters win the game. I don't like when the final control point is inches from RED team's spawn, it makes it far to easy for Demomen to hide in their spawn while maintaining stickies on the point.

I've never even seen the randomly spawning gift. The rewards aren't that great, so I don't really mind. There's no way I'd be able to summon up the 4 refined metal to craft any of the new Halloween items, so I'm not bothering to get any Haunted Metal.

Ranking The Best Hats in TF2

Let's rank the best hats in TF2, using science! (Note, I'm not including items that can't be traded.)

In a purely scientific sense, the hats that give an in-game bonus must be the most valuable. This means we have to start with the Polycount hats.

Polycount Hats (Rank 1)
Familiar Fez
Milkman
The Attendant
Ol' Snaggletooth
Grenadier's Cap

After the Polycount hats, things become more subjective. Market forces make it clear that one hat stands above the rest in value, though.

Event Hats (Rank 2)
Max's Severed Head
The Lumbricus Lid

It seems like not many people bought the Sam and Max games, so there aren't many of the severed heads to go around. After Max's Severed Head, it's even more subjective what hats have what value. There are some good statistics at TF2stats.net.

A special category of "Hat" are the second slot items. These have a high value because there are so few of them. Only three classes have their own. Where each medic may want a different hat, every medic wants the Physician's Procedure Mask, which makes it roughly 5 times as valuable as a given medic hat.

Second Slot Items (Rank 3)
Physician's Procedure Mask
The Whiskered Gentleman

Since the Camera Beard was being dropped at the rate of a regular item for so long, and it's kinda stupid looking, I'm putting it much lower on the list. Earbuds too.

The next set of hats are the hats that all the classes can wear. These have more value to those poor and Irish people who don't have a specific hat for each class.

All Class Hats (Rank 4)
Towering Pillar of Hats
Modest Pile of Hat
Noble Amassment of Hats

The bulk of hats don't fit into any particular category. Their ranking is purely aesthetic. I've grouped them by class.

Regular Hats (Rank 5)


Scout
Troublemaker's Tossle Cap
Bombing Run
Ye Olde Baker Boy
Whoopee Cap
Batter's Helmet
Bonk Helm
   
Soldier
Stout Shako
Chieftain's Challenge
Dr's Dapper Topper
Killer's Kabuto
Sergeant's Drill Hat
Tyrant's Helm
Stainless Pot

Pyro
Brigade Helm
Vintage Merryweather
Old Guadalajara
Napper's Respite
Triboniophorus Tyrannus
Respectless Rubber Glove
Pyro's Beanie
   
Demo
Tippler's Tricorne
Hustler's Hallmark
Demoman's Fro
Glengarry Bonnet
Carouser's Capotain
Sober Stuntman
Rimmed Raincatcher
   
Heavy
Hound Dog
Pugilist's Protector
Heavy Duty Rag
Officer's Ushanka
Tough Guy's Toque

Engie
Hotrod
Texas Ten Gallon
Engineer's Cap
Safe'n'Sound

Medic
Otolaryngologist's Mirror
Ze Goggles
Vintage Tyrolean
Gentleman's Gatsby
Prussian Pickelhaube
   
Sniper
Professional's Panama
Master's Yellow Belt
Shooter's Sola Topi
Bloke's Bucket Hat

Spy   
Fancy Fedora
Backbiter's Billycock
Magistrate's Mullet
Frenchman's Beret

I've included a special category for hats that don't look like you have a hat at all. Also stupid looking hats.

Stupid Hats (Rank 6)
Scotsman's Stovepipe (Looks like the Gibus)
Soldier's Stash
Mining Helmet
Trophy Belt
Handyman's Handle
Hard Counter
Football Helmet

The second to last category is the "Hatless" hats

Hatless (Rank 7)
Hatless Sniper
Hatless Engineer
Hatless Scout

The last category is hats that basically everyone has.

The Common Hats (Rank 8)
Bill's Hat
Ellis' Hat

Earbuds
Camera Beard
Alien Swarm Parasite

The Best TF2 Hats, Part II

EDIT: Since this post, I've made a more comprehensive post, where I rank every tradable hat in TF2. You can check it out here!

I looked at my website statistics, and discovered that my ancient article calling the Scotsman's Stove Pipe the best hat in TF2 is the most popular thing I've ever written. This is rather depressing, since it's not a particularly meaningful article, and I don't even think it's true anymore.

The coolest hat in TF2 is the Stout Shako. Look at its majesty!

Picture courtesy of the TF2wiki.

In fact, if you're going to craft a hat, I'd highly suggest crafting a Soldier hat, even if you don't want a soldier hat. Yes, it costs an extra Refined Metal and a Soldier Token, but the Soldier has 4 new hats in the Polycount update, and they're all sweet. You have a 4/9 chance of getting a hat that someone would gladly trade two hats for. Only one of the Soldier hats, the Soldier's Stash, is truly bad. This leaves a 8/9 chance of getting a good hat, far better odds than any other class!

The Familiar Fez is my new favorite Spy hat, but really, all Spy hats are good.

The best thing with Medic is the Otolaryngologist's Mirror plus the Physician's Procedure Mask. It really plays up the medical side.

PS. Does anyone have a Shako to trade?

Why Vita-Saw is Bad

The popular logic seems to be that the Vita-Saw may be alright. The benefit is obvious, you get to keep your uber at 20% when you die, saving yourself 10 or so seconds for your next uber.

The disadvantage is the point of debate. Most people seem to think that -10 HP isn't very significant. After all, people say, how many times do you survive with 10 HP or less?

I think this argument is self-evidently false.  It essentially claims that 10 HP or less is equal to death. In other words, once you taken the first 140 damage, the last 10 damage is inevitable. However, this same logic can be applied to the Vita-Saw. If 10 HP inevitably results in death, then you're dead after taking only 130 damage.

In the end, -10 HP is significant, regardless of armchair generalizations.