Same old story, again and again and again

Okay.
I'm getting a new computer.

Played two nights on my little brother's brand new computer (turns out he was pulling my leg: Crysis didn't run on the highest graphics settings possible. It was only on high. Same difference, if you ask me), and my framerate was over 60 nearly all the time, even in crazy-ass firefights it mostly stayed on green. I wasn't running the game on highest graphics settings, but it was still looking so much better than on my computer. I'll post a screenshot in a minute, so you can see for yourselves.
Anyway, naturally I felt the difference. And indeed I was doing better: I owned everyone even as much as trying to circlestrafe when I played as Heavy, aiming wasn't a complete pain in the ass when I was a Soldier and botching rocketjumps was history, circlestrafing was easier as a Pyro, and as a Medic I was able to switch between targets so fast I was almost surprised (do I even need to say that I got Second Opinion immediately when I tried it?), and keeping an eye on my surroundings was so much easier.
All of these are naturally worth a good old "WELL, DUH."



I was keeping that team together, for real. We didn't need another Medic. Look at that amount of healing, fifty-freaking-thousand, just what the hell. There were times I was keeping two Demomen, three Soldiers and one Heavy going, and healing all the Snipers and Scouts whenever they fell back screaming for Medic. I was having a ball, for real. And seven kills? As a Medic? Pretty hardcore for me.
I also had another epic long match in Gold Rush, when I was most of the time playing as Heavy. Result? 177 points. Insanity.

I honestly want to cry thinking about going back to playing the game on my own computer and its shitty framerate and ugly graphics... this is serious business. So I might buy myself a new computer, come autumn. Until then I'm still forced to play with the crazy handicap of 20 fps. I mean, I've been doing pretty well until now, surely I can continue playing like I always have. It's just... now I know what it feels like to have it better. And it's sweet.

Anyway, since I've been playing a lot as Medic, I finally have something to report about the status of my Medic achievements.
Mostly, RAGE.
If you've been reading this blog, you probably remember how Head of the Class was a serious thorn in my side, the progress count going back to zero or not including classes even though I played full rounds as them.
Now I'm having the same thing. All the Medic achievements that had any progress went back to zero. Family Practice, Peer Review, Doctor Assisted Homicide... all of them. Back to square one with each and every one of them. Thank GOD I hadn't been killing Scouts or Medics religiously, I would've gone postal. It should be easy as hell to start again on Family Practice (especially since I made a new friend last night), but I was already 13/20 through Doctor Assisted Homicide and I'm kinda pissed off about that.
I was thinking that it must be because I switched computers, but WHAT THE FUCK, STEAM. Also, I've been trying to read Steam's forums but I haven't yet seen anyone having the same problem.
Shit sucks.

But in the end losing some of my achievement progress isn't that big of a deal: after all I got two new achievements. I already told you I got Second Opinion: Dustbowl stage one, first point, juggled the charge between a Soldier and a Heavy, mainly because I was being attacked from both sides and they were there.
And tonight I got one of the achievements I was not trying to get, at all. One of the ones I thought would be impossible to get in normal gameplay or without acting like a complete idiot. Dare to wager a guess?



I admit we were kinda being total dicks there, but hey, no harm done! Actually the scoreboard screenshot earlier is from this very game, now that I think about it, and this was the last round, we were defending on Gold Rush's first stage. I was the only Medic, healing everyone near the last checkpoint. I got über, glued myself to this Heavy, and he started towards the building that the BLU had already invaded. Great, I thought, he's thinking the same that I am: we need to clean that building, and so we went. But he ran out of minigun ammo immediately, shooting at some Pyro in the distance, before we even got inside the building (we were still on the cart tracks, I think). And instead of turning around and going to get more ammo he drew out his fists and continued towards the building. I went AHAHA OKAY THEN and followed him.
So I was totally thinking that right, the building is swarming with BLU people, I might even get the achievement out of it, and the outlook of the match is looking good, we're probably not risking too much and hey! We might even clean up the building. Maybe they don't have any sentries up yet!
Positive thinking!
The Heavy was probably thinking the same (we didn't communicate at all: I'm still chickening out of using my mic), so we rush in, I über him and watch, nearly frozen solid, as the Heavy starts punching people. Of course there was a goddamn Soldier on his way and those bitches take million hits until they die, but somehow he really GOT the two kills and I got the achievement. Unfortunately the charge ran out immediately after the second kill, I saw that there were still people there (incidentally I didn't even see the sentry: went all OH GOD I HAD NO IDEA when I looked at the screenshots after the match. I just thought there were still too many people around), so I did what every self-respecting Medic does in a situation like that, and hightailed out of there (just jumped down over the railing).
Okay, so I totally hate leaving my healing targets to die like that (especially when the said healing target was nice enough to do something completely silly probably just for me), but since I know that I'm the only Medic in my team and BLU has control of that building (which often means that they will win), I know that if I die our chances of winning the match become slim to none. I don't do suicide attacks.
I thanked the Heavy for helping me with the achievement, of course, and I hope he doesn't hate me forever because I ditched him. I am sorry, Kyle, don't hate me! You were awesome.

I also came really close to getting Sawbones! I was defending on Dustbowl, healing people on first point when I saw a Medic/Soldier combo disappearing behind the building on the left side of the first point, apparently trying to get behind our players, or sneak to second point. And because it's easy to follow people there and shoot them in the back, and I wasn't doing anything too important, I jumped down, drew my bonesaw and followed them. I killed the wonderfully oblivious Medic (took three hits) and then proceeded to bonesawing the Soldier, and missed after my fourth hit. DAMN. So close. I've been overlooking Sawbones completely as one of the achievements I might get to get closer to the Kritzkrieg, but now that I think of it, all I need is one tunnel Heavy and it's in the bag.
I think I've given two Medics their Sawbones, because most of the time I'm truly very oblivious to what's happening behind my back when I'm Heavy.

And now I'm three achievements away from the Kritzkrieg and yay! I have no idea what those three achievements will be, what with all my progress for Family Practice and Doctor Assisted Homicide reverting back to zero, but we'll see. Sawbones, I'm thinking.
SPECIALIST, FFFFF.

And, uh, if you're looking at my stats, I'll just have to come clean and tell you that the Sniper stats are actually not mine. I don't mind, really, because I don't play as Sniper, and probably never will, but I don't want anyone thinking that I could be a good Sniper. Too bad that everyone who was playing on server tonight probably thinks that I am. Some of them probably hate me now. FFFF CHROME YOU FUCKER NEVER PLAY AS SNIPER AGAIN SERIOUSLY. The 19 Sniper points are not mine! They are my little brother's.
So, I let my brother play. He asked if he could try Sniper out, and of course I let him. He was on top of the scoreboard all the time (except on Badlands: he was confused about the layout of the map, and never really got to take part in any action. On Hydro and Gravel Pit he was owning), and probably one of THOSE Snipers (the ones I hate). He was really good, I give him that, he also outplayed enemy Snipers most of the time (and because he's a "newbie" he didn't really know any of the usual Sniper positions, so I suppose some of the more experienced Snipers didn't even see him coming when he kept sniping from pretty obscure locations). And yeah, because he has some FPS experience (like 10 years of Action Quake...), he was pretty good at shooting the goddamn rifle from the hip. Which is annoying as heck. He had some epic runs on Gravel Pit, like getting two damn kills within few seconds with the rifle while running.
And then 2fort came up. And I told him he doesn't want to be Sniper on 2fort, that he would be spending the entire match glued on battlements and shooting at enemy Snipers, battling over who has the bigger Sniper penis, and he said that screw that, he's going to be an attack Sniper, he's going to go get the intel. Well good luck with that, I told him.
He did end up in the enemy base at first, he even got to the basement, where an enemy Medic bonesawed him in the back. Then he tried sniping from the bridge and all that, and after that, about ten minutes into the game, he was on the battlements, shooting at enemy Snipers and forming a serious rivalry with them. It was pretty humorous to watch, I admit: he was fuming whenever the enemy Sniper actually managed to shoot him, and cheering intensely whenever he owned him right back. And when the enemy Sniper took longer than usual to drag his ass out of respawn, he was getting worried that maybe he switched classes or quit, he can't do that. And then he left the battlements, jumped down and headed to the enemy base, and once he had got over the bridge he glanced up at the battlements, saw the enemy Sniper, went completely ":D!" and promptly headshot him into oblivion. I figure the enemy Sniper was pretty pissed at that point, damn, at least I would be: getting headshot from the bridge would be unnervingly annoying.
Anyway, their rivalry was horribly cute.
And I was thrilled to get my brother to play TF2.
Too bad he won't probably ever actually get the game: he says he's just interested in playing the Sniper. I loved watching him play (I've never watched anyone play TF2 before!), and as you probably know, I also love talking about this game and I like it when people know what I'm talking about. So I could babble about the game and my brother could actually contribute to the conversation. And my little bro is totally cool and I love having things in common with him, this being just one of them.

Like, he just got me to play Frets on Fire, which, if you didn't know, is a freeware rhythm game for PC that pays its homage to Guitar Hero itself. Instead of a plastic guitar, you just use the keyboard. I've been watching my brother play it for a few years but I never got around to playing it myself, but as I finally got my Guitar Hero virginity taken away last week, I decided to get Frets on Fire because it's the next best thing and I don't have money to get Guitar Hero right now.
I still suck gloriously at it: I can play some songs on Easy mode (Medium in Guitar Hero), but mostly I'm just sticking with Supaeasy (Guitar Hero's Easy). FOR THE TIME BEING. I'm pretty good in rhythm games (I play StepMania/DDR/Dancing Stage/what-have-you on expert) and I play guitar irl, so it's probably only a matter of time.

What else? I still need to post the pros and cons list, but it's still not done yet. And if I post it with this monster of an entry, no one's going to read this. Haha.

You don't see this every day...

OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK.

You probably remember how I've been fighting with Heavy, how I suck as one, how I can't kill absolutely anyone as Heavy, how I just spend most of my time waiting for respawn while I'm playing as Heavy and so and so on.

WELL TAKE A LOOK AT THIS, SUCKERS:



Okay, yeah, that isn't quite as astounding once I tell you from WHAT that score came from, but that's still one crazyass score. And yes, it's one life (my Heavy stats don't look quite as pathetic anymore! Sixteen is pretty good! You can go check it out if you don't believe me). I didn't die even ONCE. And yeah, we were steamrolling.
But that score? Seven captures, two kills. One assist, but it doesn't count. Damn Gold Rush is crazy, and I was basically hugging the cart the whole time. It's perfect, because the cart moves at the exactly same pace as the Heavy does while spinning Sasha, which makes Heavy a nice mobile cart-defending turret. The kills came from a very lucky crit streak while plowing through the narrow hallway after the first checkpoint. Heh, gotta love those crits.
But anyway, my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when the round ended and I saw I was a goddamn MVP. Number one, no less! (And I robbed a Medic from his First Do No Harm, sorry about that.)
I was an MVP on second stage too, but we didn't blow up the base in the third stage, but I was third on the scoreboard, with 59 points (which breaks down to 13 kills, 8 assists, 4 destructions and 19 captures). And I even dominated someone, WTF.

And having a Medic makes such a difference, I completely owned the enemy team at the start of the match once the teams changed and it was my team's time to defend, and the Medic who had been sticking to me went all "lol, nice one, Chrome." To which I replied that I'm actually a really horrible Heavy, but somehow I'm suddenly doing pretty good. Have a wild guess did he stick to me after that? Haha. Way to shoot yourself in the leg there, missy. But I didn't want him to stick to me too much, I would've probably wasted many of his übers.
But yeah, we weren't steamrolling anymore, so I was standing on a more even ground as a Heavy, plus I couldn't mooch all my points out of captures anymore, so I was quite sure I'd end up spending all my time in respawn, as usual. Also my deaths would skyrocket, while my killcount would stay ridiculously small.
Well I'm glad I was wrong: I was actually doing pretty good! Got a new kills record (five!), dominated some other guy, got the most awesome crit streak EVER after sneaking behind the enemy team in the hallways after the first checkpoint on stage two and MOWED THEM DOWN WITHOUT MERCY. Kept chuckling to myself as I emerged from the hallways, only a few hitpoints left and screaming for Medic.
And here's a screenshot of the final scoreboard, so you can see that I'm not making this shit up:



It's really not that great, I have just barely more kills than deaths (but thirty kills it pretty good! For me! That's like... more kills than I've got as a Heavy before this! No, seriously) and most of my points did come from those captures, but still I'm GODDAMN PROUD of myself! I'm glad I didn't give into my fear of sucking and being a drag to my team.
And with this successful Gold Rush match in mind I think I might have the guts to actually play more as the Heavy. I definitely will find myself going Heavy on Gold Rush from now on, it was so much fun - especially when attacking (besides, I was already getting really bored of playing Soldier on Gold Rush). Damn that cart is awesome.

No new Medic achievements, I haven't been really playing as Medic (except last night, uh, I was once again going on a killing spree with an awesome Demoman. We were steamrolling, just the two of us, it was kinda amusing to look at the scoreboard at the end of the match when we were there on the top, sporting twice as much points as the rest of our team. Our team was the sorriest excuse for a team ever, though, and I suppose the enemy team was too).

I've been Engineering on Dustbowl a lot, for a change. Almost broke my sentry kills record. AND got killed TWICE by my sentry today, so apparently that happens even when I'm sober. Damn newbie Spies uncloaking behind my goddamn back and then getting shot by my sentry THROUGH MY BODY.
And I know I'm being a horrible thorn in enemy team's side when half of the team goes Spy to either a) get a revenge on me after getting dominated, or b) finally take me down after having wasted several übers and failed gloriously every single time. Tee hee.
I love it.

And I love noobish Spies, they're so CUTE when they freeze completely. Seriously, I find myself going "aww" at them and not wanting to kill them when they're so adorably clueless. Today I watched this Spy just STAND next to me for god knows how long. I saw him uncloak as I turned to repair my dispenser, so I proceeded to shotgun him in the face. And then I stopped because I was kinda curious to see what he would do. I mean, a good Spy would've got the hell outta there when I saw him uncloak, but this little newbie Spy didn't even MOVE while I shot him: he just stood there, disguised as a Demo. So he stood there for a while, staring, and then he cloaked and ran away. Poor scared little Spy.
I think he actually went to sap my teleporter entrance after that (this was Dustbowl Stage two, I was defending). Yeah, newbie Spy, those were the easy points to get. I should've probably killed you, but damn, you kinda melted my cold Spy-loathing Engineer heart back there.
I killed him the next time I saw him, though.
And I don't remember if it was the same Spy (or some other newbie, damn the server was full of those tonight) who just STOOD STILL while trying to sap my things a little bit later. Needless to say, he got so wrenched. Aww.
Or the one who sapped my sentry and desperately tried to stab me in the face (I was back against a wall) while I just calmly whacked the sapper off. Awww.
I really didn't see any good Spies today, I dominated all the ones that tried to bring me down. Good Spies... I don't exactly know what makes a good Spy (because bad Spies do the exact same things the good Spies do, it's just that... they're not as good at it. I'd probably know the difference if I played more as a Spy), but a good Spy makes me want to ragequit. A good Spy makes it sure that I don't see him coming. A good Spy makes it sure that while I'm alive, I do nothing but beat sappers off of my buildings. A good Spy makes it sure that I spend most of my time in respawn, watching as my buildings get sapped. I don't understand what they do different from bad Spies: sometimes I see a Spy coming, and sometimes I don't.
Okay, yeah, good Spies backstab me first and then sap my stuff, and goddamn I hate it when they do that. With a third level sentry that requires some insane weapon-changing skill, I believe.

Those pesky newbie Spies did get a bit unnerving later on stage three, because there were at least two of them, and my team was full of equally as noobish Medics (there were at least four running around) healing EVERYONE in the vicinity, and I always watched with growing dread as one of the very inconspicuous Spies (I don't know what it is with bad Spies and being able to tell they're Spies from miles away - except that these ones liked to disguise as Engineers, which meant that they were either me, or the team's other Engie who was tanking his sentries on the other side, or waiting for respawn. For some reason he succumbed to the Spies and their sapping antics quite often) beelined straight towards me and my little nest with three spastic Medics in tow. OH GOD THE HORROR.
I should probably use the mic in those situations, but I didn't have my headset plugged in. Plus I'm still afraid to use it, I always get so nervous that I start stammering when I try to say something.
But yeah, I had to tell the Medics to be a bit more careful after I lost my buildings once (go ahead and try to kill a Spy with two Medics glued to his disguised ass!), but yeah, considering how chaotic and spammy that first point area gets... it's no wonder we lost.

Well, that was easy

Look!


That was ridiculously easy.

Heh, I'm once again playing drunk.

I went Medic a few times, just to see if I could get any of the achievements. And it would seem that the Blutsauger is ridiculously easy to get. I got those twelve achievements without even trying. This far I have First Do No Harm (I had three other Medics in my team, but luckily they all sucked, so I got it pretty damn easily on Dustbowl), Quadruple Bypass, Group Health (without coordinating: like I told you, it would be easy to get, what with all servers being full of Medics), Surgical Prep, Trauma Queen (I have no idea how I got this, I don't even remember staying alive for three consecutive übers - yeah, I AM drunk), Double Blind Trial (easy as heck), Play Doctor (sheer luck, I changed to Medic in the middle of a match in Goldrush and got it just like that), Triage, Autoclave (apparently you don't have to kill five people, it's enough to just light them on fire, at least that's how I got it), Midwife Crisis (the first one I got, very easy), Bedside Manner (I was sneaky: I kept healing a Medic who just joined the server during the setup: he got Surgical Prep, I got this) and Chief of Staff.

So. I have a Blutsauger.

AWESOME.

And now I'll jump on a server for a moment to test my brand new pretty Blutsauger. <3 Didn't have time to actually test it, I'm keeping a cigarette break from playing. I'll try to get the rest of the achievements later. I really want to get the Kritzkrieg (got Kritzkrieged a few times today, again, and it was so GODDAMN AWESOME every single time. Fucking hell...). Slaverstrike already promised to help me to get it, so I'm looking forward to it.

BLUTSAUGER FUCK YEAH.

EDIT: I just got Ubi concordia, ibi victoria. WUT. I was sure that's one of the achievements that I wouldn't be getting in quite some time, but well, whaddaya know. I was steamrolling in Granary again (...why am I this good when I'm drunk, seriously?), got the achievement when I was capping the last point with a kickass Demoman. And I'm apparently already 50/200 through Grand Rounds.
Also, Second Opinion is indeed impossible to get. It's apparently very buggy, I've been trying to juggle my übers the whole night, but I still don't have the achievement.

Goldrush!

So. Right.

Goldrush?

Is love.

I'm absolutely loving the map. I'm still pretty lost on it, I haven't even been to every hallway or used every route, and more often than not I find myself going the wrong damn way. Huge map is huge. The first time I was defending on third stage I ran in circles for the entire setup. I left the respawn, had a Medic stick to me, and a few seconds later I found myself BACK in the final checkpoint area and went completely WTF (I suppose there's a shortcut, just like in Dustbowl's stage three? I followed everyone there, but then turned the wrong way and ended up back in our respawn). And the poor Medic was clinging to me the entire time, haha. I was sure he was going wtf is that goddamn Soldier doing, is he lost or what. Didn't leave me, though. (That Medic was a mystery: he kept sticking to me although I was lost half the time and I wasted a few of his übers, and yet he STILL kept giving them to me). Then I followed the tracks (thank GOD for the tracks) and found my way to the cart after BLU had already capped it, heh.
But yeah, I've only played like four games on Goldrush, and most of the time haven't gotten through second stage. And I've never seen BLU actually win, the third stage's final checkpoint favours defense immensely. It was IMPOSSIBLE to get around the last corner after our offense broke. And it was very easy not to let BLU get through when we were defending, although we won with the cart being inches away from the final checkpoint, heh.
Also I don't understand how captures work on Goldrush. Are the stats broken or something, or do you REALLY get a capture each time you get to the cart and make it move? Not only on checkpoints? I was suddenly getting like five captures/life and was pretty surprised because of it.
The map also seems to be buggy as hell. I don't know if it was the map or what, but I got pretty disoriented at one point when the teams changed and my HUD remained RED even though I was in BLU. And when I got übered, I was glowing red. My crits were red. So most of the time I was firing at my own teammates and getting killed because I kept ignoring the REDs. And I was also pretty drunk at that point, which naturally added to the confusion. Ouch.

And, oh, one of the best parts about the map? The way the announcer goes totally fucking insane on third stage when the bomb is nearing the final checkpoint. Her laugh is priceless. I couldn't stop laughing the first time I heard it.

I was playing Soldier like I said I would be, changed to Medic only once to get the Chief of Staff achievement (I have over 1,5 million healed, so all I had to do was to change to Medic, get the medigun out, and I got the achievement), and so I can't really talk about the unlockables or achievements yet.
I can talk about them from an outsiders' point of view, though, so here we go: there were actually not that many Medics running around. Four was a constant amount, sometimes there were more and sometimes less (I was on a 24 player server), but I didn't even once have TOO MANY Medics in my team.
And goddamn, yes, I had a harem at times. Hee.
I saw quite a lot of Blutsaugers already. They're not really terrifying, but damn it if I don't want one. There were a few Kritzkriegs (of which I will talk about in a moment), and I even got killed by an Übersaw at one point. I also saw people use the damn console command. A player enters, we get announcements of the said player getting the three milestone achievements, and then he was running around with the Übersaw. Thank god Valve already removed the commands, and I'm seriously hoping they'd find a way to roll back the achievements/weapons that people have got by cheating. I believe it's easier to root out those who have the weapons but don't have any other achievements but the milestones. I'm not bitter, I just think that cheating like that is pretty damn low.

But yes. The Kritzkrieg.
As a Soldier? The Kritzkrieg's THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER FUCK YES. I was defending in Dustbowl stage three when I had a Medic with the Kritzkrieg stick to me, and in mere moments: CRIT ROCKETS. EVERYWHERE. Holy fuck I almost came, that's how awesome it was. I saw enemies starting to scatter in panic once they saw the crits, but there was nothing they could do, because even the splash damage was killing people, and oh god it was A THING OF BEAUTY.
After that, whenever there was a Medic with the Kritzkrieg healing me, I actually started paying attention to them and trying to keep them safe, because yeah, I will do anything to get the charge given to me. I'm a total crit junkie, yes, but dammit, you've got a streak a lucky crits before, right? You know how great it feels? How about ten fucking seconds worth of crits?
YEAH.
IT'S THAT GOOD.
Also, the Kritzkrieg is the most terrible thing ever in the hands of your enemies. A Kritzkrieged Pyro charging right at you? I literally panicked. A skillful Soldier with a ten second crit streak? Fucking terrifying. A Heavy? Even from a significant distance that's gonna HURT. A DEMOMAN? FUCKING EVER-LASTING CRIT STICKIES FGSFDS. A melée combat Medic way too close for comfort? Fuck this shit I'm outta here. As in, goodbye cruel world.
The horror of being face to face with a Kritzkrieged enemy is enough to make you forget that they're not in fact immortal. I didn't even once fire at them, I just RAN and tried to hide, resulting in getting killed.

And then some interesting little observations from yesterday.
So, I am usually playing on "Newbies Only" servers. Not because I'm a noob (the regulars over there are seriously not noobs on any scale), but because I've got to used to playing there. The atmosphere is accommodating, there are no horrible assholes, and all the regulars are pretty nice. Plus they're vanilla servers with only the official maps in rotation. And truth to be told, the skill level of other players is on par with mine, that is to say that I don't get my ass completely kicked all the time, and when I have a good day I'm often topping the scoreboard. The lack of teamwork every now and then pisses me off, of course, but that's what you get from playing on a public server. And I can live with that. I rage, but I can live with it. Heh. The only downside is that I've always played with a ~150 ping, but I've got used to it and I'm doing pretty fine with a high latency like that, so I'm not complaining. At least 150 isn't completely insane.
Anyway, yesterday I was playing on a totally random server. I just randomly picked one from the list, requirements being "vanilla," "24/7 Goldrush," and "an agreeable latency (ie. under 200)." Ended up on a 24/7 Dustbowl/Goldrush server (because you know how much I love Dustbowl), with a latency of 20 or so.
I was quite sure I'd end up being steamrolled because I've been playing with "noobs," and I have NO IDEA how my playing skills match with people who supposedly are not newbies. But I steeled myself and thought that I'd just change servers if that ends up being the case. Or suck it up and try my best.

So as it happens, I'm not being steamrolled at all. Quite the opposite. After the first game in Goldrush I was there in the middle of the scoreboard. But after that, Dustbowl, and I'm topping the scoreboard. For the entire goddamn game.
And I was drinking. So I was at least a bit tipsy, if not outright drunk.
Sure, part of it could be the latency, maybe the other players weren't that great (but I, uh, was dominating all the team-stacking clan players in the enemy team...) or whatever, but it doesn't change the fact that I was fucking owning.
After that round I was on top of the scoreboard even in Goldrush (and I wasn't even familiar with the map yet!), and kept wondering what kind of super Soldier do I turn out to be whenever I've been drinking. Haha.
And like I told you, every other player was NOT a Medic. And I had Medics stick to me, but not all the time.
Here, have a scoreboard screenshot, so you can see I'm not making this shit up:


Yeah.

Anyway. I'm going to play some more Goldrush now. I still have a bottle of wine, so I'll probably find myself going fatty at some point (Medic harem, I want one). Or maybe I'll go Medic and aim to übering Scouts and getting the "assist in bonking three enemies" achievement. Hehee.

I can't stop blogging!

Okay, so I'm apparently going to blog like a nutcase about the upcoming update, but fucking hell I can't help it! News, pictures, videos! In a steady stream! And I'm getting more and more excited with each new thing that I stumble upon!
I think I'm in trouble if Valve Time comes into play and the update won't see daylight in Sunday...

My new favourite thing is this video. (Embeddan gaems! Let's see how this goes...)



First of all, Critskrieg in action! I'm quite disturbed by the un-shinyness of the actual charge. No one's even going to notice there's a critzkrieging going on until they start seeing some Soldier critting nonstop. And that's gonna be horrible with Heavies and Pyros when you can't actually see the crits. All you're going to see is your teammates mowed down. That's going to be nasty.
But yeah, that seemed pretty devastating. Even with the Soldier backing away and reloading at some point, they still killed pretty much everyone there.
(...I'm changing my mind about the Critskrieg again, I might wanna get it after all. If I only could.)

And second of all, and the real reason I can't stop watching the video: Goldrush. I can't WAIT to actually get to play it. That really narrow tunnel after the first checkpoint? Going to be hell. Imagine some critzkrieged Pyro charging the entire escorting BLU team there... and oh man, that map's going to be a real challenge for BLU Engineers. I figure teleporters can make a world of difference after the first checkpoint is cleared. And you'd have to move them up all the time. I wonder how much chaos can one well-placed offensive sentry cause... if an Engie can slip past the defenses... I really wanna see what offensive Engineers can cook up on that map.

Anyway, I just know I'll love Goldrush.

Seriously, people. Christmas.

And Meet the Scout in nine hours on Gametrailers, apparently. I'm actually thinking of staying up to watch it when it comes out. Or then I'll go to bed, have the alarm go off when the video comes out, watch it, and go back to sleep.

Yes, I am that much of a geek.

Also there was an article (which I've seem to lost... no, wait, here it is), where they mentioned that Engineer would be getting some updates too, apparently additional levels to teleporters (shorter recharge time) and dispenser (faster healing).

And uh, I'm going to break my own rules again, but once Goldrush comes out, I'm going to play it first as Soldier. Sorry, me! Because Soldier's safe class, and it's easier for me to get to know the map when I can go where I want to and explore places (I'm a tunnel-vision Medic, I just follow people. I'll never get to know the map that way). Scout would be perfect, but I don't do Scout. I could go Pyro, though, but Soldier's still more reliable for me.

Of teamwork

I've been slipping. Ie. I still seem to babble about games in my other blog, and then don't feel the need to write the same things here as well. I need to be more strict with my own rules, dammit.

But yeah, teamwork. Because I played a game today in Hydro with RED being extremely stacked, which naturally resulted in BLU being steamrolled round after round. I was playing in BLU, because I always play in BLU in Hydro (I still play Pyro in Hydro almost always and I've got used to using all the routes from BLU's perspective). I wasn't too pissed off about the stacking (less so than usually) because I was doing fairly well and I got rather lot of defenses and revenges. And I actually felt like I was for once actually contributing something to my team, as hard as it was when we got mowed down continuously. But at least I was helping to fight them off.
But yeah, spent quite a lot of time dead (you know, kamikaze Pyro), and started to get pissed off at my own team by watching them play.
At one point I was watching how a group of RED people were storming the point, and my team mates were just STANDING there, away from the point. Some of them were shooting (Snipers with their pea shooters...), and some just simply stood. I wanted to grab my mic and scream my head off at them, "GET ON THE FUCKING POINT!" but it really wouldn't have helped, you know, me being dead and all. Jesus Christ. I can understand Soldiers and Demos standing away from the point and spamming their 'nades and rockets at the people standing on the point, but even that won't help as much as actually getting on the point. I always try to get on the point and fire my rockets there, even suiciding to kill them off and stop the capture.
After a while I witnessed another display of wonderful teamwork: I'm spectating a Pyro chasing down a Soldier. Nothing unusual there, except that at the same time there were two RED people standing on our point. Good going there, Pyro, nice to know that frags are apparently all you care about. I can't be the only one to stop whatever it is that I'm doing and turn on my heels if there are people standing on our point. Especially if I'm Pyro: I don't HAVE to chase anyone down, if they're on flames, they usually retreat and won't chase me down if I turn tail.
And lastly I saw people running away when there were people standing on our point. WHAT THE FUCK. I watch the point being capped and my team mates just turning away from it and running. They see people on the point, they hightail. Seriously guys, if they cap the point, it's humiliation time and you're gonna die either way.
We also had three Engineers, and at the start of each round ALL OF THEM placed down their sentries. Then they fought for the metal while oncoming enemies just promptly disposed of the three measly level one sentries and proceeded to capping the point. Jesus Christ, guys, would you think TEAM for once, put down one sentry, build it into a level three one all together in a matter of seconds, and THEN start putting down the other sentries? How fucking hard can it be? But noooo, I need it to be MY sentry, they need to be MY kills, I don't get anything for helping other Engies!
I want to change teams, go Spy and rape them and all their sentries, goddamn.
And how stupid can they be for not to realise that their little level one sentries won't hold? If they won't hold and enemies can push continuously, they won't ever get a chance to put the sentries back up again, and so we have three useless Engineers running around shotguns in hand, and then the point is capped. And they will not get any kills whatsoever. Goddamn.

But yeah, I'm the one to talk, I've been sucking a lot once again. Or that's how I feel, I can be on top of the scoreboard and still feel like I'm doing horrible. I should probably lay off playing as Soldier (I've clocked 54 hours as Soldier, which is kinda creepy. I'm not supposed to play it so much! It's by far my "MPC," Medic coming in second with measly 38 hours).
I found it ironic how a few days ago I was playing Engineer on Dustbowl, we were in Stage Three and defending the last cap. And I was doing horrible. I had a sneaky sentry up (after I had tried to get it up on my usual spot on the ledge on the right side of the cap point and ending up with tiny little sentry pieces flying into every direction every fucking time I tried to put it up. People were screaming at us Engies to get sentries up, but what the fuck I can't get my sentry up if you don't give me some suppressive fire! If that fucking Soldier keeps shooting rockets at me freely from the other side of the bleeding map, I can't get the sentry up! I should've yelled at THEM to keep them suppressed for the ten seconds that I need for getting the sentry up, but I'm a jovial player, and I don't yell at people. But once again: TEAMWORK, PEOPLE!), which went nicely unnoticed by the übered people storming the point. So I get killed by something, and as I'm waiting to respawn, I watch in awe as I completely own the people who just stormed past and tried to get the point. Five kills and two defenses. While I'm DEAD.
That's just about how useful I was that day.

And while we're still somewhat on the topic of teamwork, I have one more example to tell you.
I was playing in Gravel Pit one day. I was attacking, playing as Medic, had a nice Heavy buddy to cling to. We got A, but B was preeetty heavily guarded. Not much sentries, just so much people. There might've been some stacking involved, but anyway. So we're camping in the respawn hallways with the Heavy, waiting for my über, and the Heavy informs everyone that we have an über soon, that everyone should come with us and attack B when the charge is ready. I get the charge, he tells everyone that okay, we're going in, and then we go in.
And there's no one there.
Except for the entire RED team.
You can probably guess how well that ended. (Hint: not very well.)
After a while some guy on my team whines that his team sucks. I check the scoreboard and the guy is there on the bottom half, playing a Scout. Playing a Scout when we're trying to get a point that has incredibly strong defense, yeah, no wonder our team sucks.
But yeah, those who whine the most are usually the ones with the least skill.

This blog undoubtedly proves my point.

We never got B, surprise surprise.

And my computer caused me some serious grief yesterday. I was playing in Dustbowl, and for a change I was doing well, and then the game suddenly crashed, proclaiming some sort of engine error about failing to lock vertex buffer. I connected again, played a game in Gravel Pit and then it was back to Dustbowl, and the game crashed again. Then I went to check Steam's troubleshooting guides and verified my game cache files like they suggested. No defragmentation. I deleted my game folder just in case and then checked how much paged pool memory I was using, just in case. That turned out to be not the problem, as I was using only 80. So I was hoping the verifying would do the trick, and later connected to the server to play some more.
And the game crashed in Dustbowl again.
That's when I simply gave up and went to bed, pissed off as hell. I had no idea what the problem was, I've never gotten any game crashes before this, the GCFs were alright, it's not paged pool memory, and I'm not running any of the anti virus programs that supposedly meddle with Steam (I'm using F-Secure).
And today I started playing, just to see if the problem was still there before starting to send angry emails to Steam's support, and played two hours without any crashes. The problem was gone.
I have NO IDEA what the hell caused the problem, maybe the game was just having a bad day, or something.

And now my friend is playing, so I'll just jump in for a moment and hope for not-stacked teams.

Yes, I'm counting days for Goldrush. Must not get excited yet. Remember Valve Time, Chrome, remember Valve Time.

Oh it's April already. Goldrush month!

Anyway. Haven't been around, and my misadventures in TF2 can be easily summarised as "lots of sucking." I had a few pretty cool moments, like the epic Engineer cappan gaemz when we were playing in 2fort after a server crash and it was basically four against three, and we had three Engineers (I, and two of my friends). I got my sentry up in ramp room, and then I noticed that one of my friends had just gone and taken the intel.
I thought "I wanna do that too!" and so I started out towards the enemy base. My friend passed me by on the bridge, carrying the briefcase, all "'ello, old chap!" and I continued my perilous journey to the depths of the enemy base.
Well long story short, I also capped the intel, and we regarded it as a THING OF BEAUTY, doing two consecutive captures as Engineers. And then we got our asses properly kicked before we realised to change classes and start taking the game a bit more seriously. It was fun, though, as long as it lasted.

Finally got SOME reason to write, because today I played on some custom maps. I've been sticking to official Valve maps all this time (I have my misgivings about custom maps: no matter what people say, I will think that they suck, without exception), I think CP_Labor is the only custom map I've ever played (and I hate it, stupid linear map). But I've been getting SO tired of both Wells and 2fort, and I honestly would rather play any shitty custom map than the billionth round in Well or 2fort. I'd even play duel_duel2.

So the first map I played on, was called CTF_Impact2. Seemed like a pretty basic CTF map, and I generally dislike CTF. Well, okay, I don't dislike CTF, I just prefer control point maps over it. Or maybe it's because there's only two official CTF maps and I hate them both? Anyway.
Couldn't really experience the map to the fullest, because we were basically playing two on two at that point, and I just concentrated on being a serious thorn in one poor Engineer's flesh, and dominating another equally as poor Soldier.

The second was called Shock, and it was a control point map with two capture points. The second one's locked until the first one's capped, you know the drill. I actually quite liked it, but I'd like to play it with more people. We were going three on three, which was kinda amusing, since the first point is so close to attacking team's respawn, and the second point is VERY close to the defending team's respawn. So the match consisted mostly of lots of standing around doing nothing. :D
I was playing Soldier, because it's the one class I don't have to know the terrain as well as with some other classes (the thing I hate about new maps is that I'm SO LOST at first), and it's kinda pointless being a Medic when you have only two team mates and one of them is an Engineer stuck in defending the last point, so. Apart from the Engineer we had a Heavy.
And the enemies had gone with a Demo-Engineer-Spy line-up, and I had my friend (the Demo) cursing at me through Steam's chat that WE'RE ATTACKING THREE ON THREE AND WTF WE HAVE AN ENGINEER AND A SPY, and I was like yeah, especially the Spy's kinda cute. How the hell did he think he will get away with ANY disguise when we have three people in a team? Oh lawdy. He did backstab me once (and I saw him get the Heavy a couple of times, just before I gibbed him), but I don't have eyes in the back of my head, so.
But yeah, a huge CP map is huge, and three on three got pretty boring after a while, so me and my friend decided to go MELEE ONLY. Too bad our team mates didn't appreciate, and I had the Engineer trying to shotgun me when I ran at my Demo friend with the shovel in hand, and he nailed me with the bottle when I was down to 40 HP. And the next time my team's Heavy kept ruining our nice shovel vs. bottle deathmatch. Phooie.
Well, our teams probably hated us, because BLUs were just trying to cap the last point and would've probably appreciated the help of their very capable Demoman, and RED was trying to defend and while I'm not really good player, a trigger-happy suicidal Soldier on the point wouldn't have hurt, but instead we were just frolicking somewhere in the happy melée land.
Well, I had fun.
But yeah, I want to play on that map again, preferably with more people.

Third map was Ataraxia, another CTF map, and I hated it. With burning passion. So cramped and confusing! And it was somehow ugly. I don't want to talk about it, it was horrible. I totally loved the air vents, and managed to sneak into the enemy's intel room a few times from there, completely unnoticed (and then they started building millions of sentries in there, bastards).

The fourth was Badlands Classic b3e, which is naturally a CTF map. I've never played TFC, so I have no idea how similar it is to the old Badlands, but can I just say this? I'm SO glad the new Badlands is NOTHING like this one. D: The map is SO confusing! It looks very pretty, though. But yeah, it took me several minutes to find to the enemy base (I thought I found it a couple of times, only to realise that it was still my own damn base), and finding the intel was preeetty tricky, even with all the huge signs on the walls. I basically used just one route during the entire game, thankfully enemies never found out, I would've been pretty easy prey.
And then I managed to actually get the intel. I was running towards our base (I was a Pyro), following the "intelligence" signs and ending up where our intel is.
But it won't cap. I'm standing there like wtf why doesn't it cap, and my team's screaming at me "CAP IT! WHAT'S GOING ON, CAP IT ALREADY!" and I'm like oh god what the fuck am I broken. And then one Scout stumbles by and is like FFS CHROME FOLLOW ME, and then leads me out of the pit and back to our respawn and a goddamn different capture area. Facepalm.jpg.
HOW COULD'VE I KNOWN? D: I don't know if it went like that in TFC Badlands!
I was pretty embarrassed, but it was a winning capture, so there was no harm done.

And now I know. And knowing's half the battle.

So, it wasn't that bad a first touch at custom maps, but I'm still looking forward to playing on a TRULY good custom map. We'll see, and I'll keep you up to date.

And now one of my Steam friends is asking me to play with her, so I guess I'll jump in for a moment. I should be sleeping, but I can't say no to her.

Back again!

Had to take almost a week off from my regular gaming routine since I was visiting my parents for Easter, and my little brother managed to break his computer (on which I did my gaming the previous times I was there). So no TF2 for me for a few days. And after that I actually took bull by the horns and continued on where I had previously stopped with PS2's Okami, and spent couple of days with a controller glued to my hands. I wasn't supposed to, I told myself that I would play couple of hours of Okami and then couple of hours of TF2, see, I have plenty of time to do both.
But if you've ever played Okami and liked it, you probably know how it's bleeding hard to stop once you've started.

So after that I noticed how my Steam rating had gone down to four point something and that's unacceptable (I've been EAGLES SCREAM! ever since January), so last night I finally hopped on a server and played for six hours straight.

And I sucked.

I was on top of scoreboard on many maps, my team's number one on Hydro as Pyro, on Gravel Pit as Soldier/Medic (one round top MVP as Medic), on CTF_Well as Soldier and so on, and statistics were telling me I wasn't THAT bad, but it surely felt like it! My kills/deaths ratio was worse than usually and I was getting really frustrated because I kept getting killed by stupid mistakes I made, or because of my poor judgment. And I was getting seriously ANGRY at Pyros who just kept killing me when I was Soldier.
Maybe I just had a bad day, because I know I'm weak against Pyros as Soldier and it's not unusual of me to get killed by them.

Or maybe it's because first couple of hours of playing the other team was so stacked I almost thought of quitting or changing servers.

So, rant time. Stacked teams. I hate team stacking almost as much as I hate all kinds of griefing (which can be fun sometimes, I admit. And almost always when it's not happening to me. Sure I've been laughing at Team Roomba's antics, but I would probably ragequit if it happened to me :D).

Why is it that all the most skilled (not necessarily even clan) players always, deliberately stack in one team map after map after map? Is their sportsmanship so poor? Are they in it just for easy points? Are they griefing?
I could take it as coincidence once, but when the same players go into same team when the next map loads, even go Spectator until there's a free slot in the team, I'm forced to think that they're perfectly aware of their team choice.
And please take notice that this is a public server.
What makes me seriously wonder about those players' motives, is that even I'M not having fun if I'm in a stacked team and we're completely steamrolling the other team and winning CP maps in under two minutes. :< I'm not having fun. I don't consider getting ridiculously easy frags fun (in a game like Team Fortress, that is). If I thought that is fun, I'd be playing some deathmatch game.
It's fun for few minutes, then it gets boring when there's absolutely no resistance from the other team. I start considering changing teams, but I know I wouldn't make any difference, and then I would get pissed off at being steamrolled over and over again.

Because I seriously have less fun in the losing team, that's for sure. :D Last night I got so fucking pissed off at being mowed down again and again that I started going melée only. I know I wasn't contributing anything to my team at that point (because I couldn't kill anyone. Then again, I could kill hardly anyone even when I was playing seriously, so), but if I was going to get killed ten seconds after getting out of my spawn, I wanted to at least make those ten seconds somewhat tolerable and fun. And that was to go at enemies with axe in hand instead of the flame thrower. And there was always the chance that the player I was attacking wouldn't take it too seriously and actually get his melée weapon out and we could duke it out one-on-one, but that only happened once (I ran at a Demo waving my axe and he got his bottle out, and then I was hit by a rocket or something). And so I was getting burned to death by enemy Pyros. Good for them!

I was seriously thinking of quitting, but eventually some of the stackers left and the teams evened out a bit.
And I was seriously laughing with GLEE when we played in Hydro, RED was stacked and we were fighting them off at our control point. And doing very fucking good job considering how superior the other team was (it was probably the best teamwork I've done in a while, everyone was equally pissed off about the stacking). And what happens sometimes in those kind of situations, is that the attacking team sometimes completely ignores their own control point since they're so deep in our territory.
So what happened is that a lonely Spy slipped by the VERY WEAK enemy defense, and went to cap their point. They couldn't do ANYTHING because there was no one even near the point. It was glorious! In the next round the exact same thing was happening, but someone slipped through their offensive sentries again, went to cap their point and they fell back in panic (apparently afraid that the last round would happen again), which provided us a perfect chance to turn the tide completely, and rest of the round they were fighting for their lives close to THEIR point. :3 Those were the most awesome Hydro matches I've had in a while. Just because the enemy was seriously underestimating us and ignoring their defense completely (apparently relying too much on the fact that they were so stacked and had completely kicked our asses before), and it was a perfect example of what a sudden turn of tides does to team morale.
The same happened later in Dustbowl. The teams weren't THAT stacked, but we were still getting our asses properly kicked on Stage Two. RED had pushed us back to first cap point area and time was running out and we were losing. RED had apparently NO defense whatsoever on their point, so a lone Spy capped it before anyone could realise what was happening and it was AWESOME. We totally lost on Stage Three without even capping the first point, but everyone bowed down to the awesome Spy.

And I was always near the top of the scoreboard when I was in the losing team (and still had only like third of the points of the enemy team top scorer), which was, uh, all the time (I go team random every map if none of my friends are playing: in that case I try to get in the same team), so I guess I'm not that bad. :P In the Hydro matches I was my team's top scorer. My deaths/kills ratio was ridiculous, though, but I was playing as Pyro and because of almost nonexistant respawn times (there is sometimes instant respawn in Hydro and I have no idea what it's based on, because I've gotten it when I'm defending and attacking. And this is vanilla server, so there is a respawn timer) I strongly relied of suicide attacks.

That's about it.

And like a good blogger, I'll now address some TF2 related news.

First of all, the recent update -

"Updated CTF mode to remember the player who stole the intelligence from the enemy base and reward that player if the flag is captured by someone else"

- made me SO happy. I'm very often the one who steals the intel and gets it out in the open (I die very often while carrying intel, because more often than not I'm Soldier and I'm slow as fuck, and nervous to boot) where it's easier for a Scout or someone to take it and get it to our base, and I've always been happy that YAY WE WON, but couldn't have helped to feel a bit bitter because I had to go through hell to get the briefcase and then some Scout just takes it and gets all the points.
And I remember once in 2fort I was playing as Pyro and I went to get the intel THREE TIMES. Every time I died (because as a lonely Pyro there's not much you can do when Soldiers and Demos start firing at you from distance) and left the intel to be picked up by someone else. So it was thanks to me we won with a shutout, and I had basically no points whatsoever. :D
And I think it was kind of horrible that one time I capped as Engineer. Someone had gone through all kinds of hardships (presumably) to get the intel just to have some useless Engineer cap it and get all the points. I felt bad for them, I really did. :/ So from now on they get points too, so everyone's happy!

And Goldrush, Medic achievements and Meet the Scout in April!
Then again it's Valve, so I'm not going to trust them. :D The update doesn't exist until my Steam says so. They already nearly broke my heart on Valentine's Day (the whole Badlands thing, if you remember, and my first personal experience on how Valve Time works in practice).
But I'd be lying if I told you I'm not looking forward to that update. Christmas is coming early this year, baby!
I'm just afraid that every server will turn into a Medic only deathmatch because of the achievements (I know I'll be playing lots of Medic).