Hee hee.

HA! This ain't so hard:



And I didn't even have a Medic stick to me, they all ditched me right after setup (Medics really hate me, even when I'm doing well they hate me. Then again, I do better without Medics because I get so nervous when I have one and if they über me... well, I start failing in epic proportions) so I plowed my way through the stage all by myself.
And that Dustbowl match ended in 54 kills, 32 assist and dominating half of the other team, so all in all I'm suddenly doing pretty well as a Heavy. I have no idea what happened.
But the most surprising round was another match in Dustbowl. I joined the server in the middle of stage two, after the first point had been capped, and still ended up as an MVP. That was kinda cool.

I'm also surprisingly good at reserving ammo. I've played a LOT as Heavy last night, and only ran out of ammo once. And that was right after an über (thank god not in the middle of it). It's probably because I've got so used to playing Soldier, and I'm nearly neurotic about keeping my reserve rockets over 10 at all times.
But yeah, I was quite sure I'd end up chewing through my ammo in a matter of seconds and not realising to scavenge dropped weapons, but luckily that was not the case.

And playing as Heavy makes me hate Snipers even more. Like I told you, I have this intense fear of (good) Snipers, I choke whenever I see a Sniper dot or the tall figure in the distance and I send a suppressive rocket their way and I try to run and jump and be unpredictable and "D:" and hoping they wouldn't hit me but I know that I'm dead and yes, they always hit me.
And because I'm often playing with such a high ping, I often think that HA I MADE IT after I make it behind something, and half a second later I get hit. Damn lag. Same thing with Heavies: I think I managed to dodge their hail of bullets with 20 or so HP left and damn, still they hit me when I'm already behind the corner. Well at least I know it's my ping, and don't go accusing anyone of HAXORZ. Same thing with facestabs.
But anyway, I hated Snipers as a Soldier because I'm slow and everything, so I'm pretty easy to hit, but at least firing rockets at them makes them retreat instead of continuing to take aim (unless they're already aimed to my giant head, and one click away from a fully charged headshot of doom), and I can escape unscathed (or at least with a few HP left from a failed headshot), but with Heavy? Shooting at them from the other side of the goddamn map does nothing and is hardly an effective way to make them retreat, so most of the time the dispute ends in me being quite dead. I had one goddamn Sniper dominate me on Dustbowl's third stage last night. Whenever I as much as peeked around the last corner - BOOM! Headshot. And there was no way to kill him, goddamn, before I saw which side he was on and proceeded to shoot at him in vain, he would just calmly take aim and dispose of me. And the Heavy is slow as heck, especially when spinning Sasha, so there is no way to get out of harm's way when I'm shooting. Damn Snipers. And of course my team had no Snipers to draw his attention, so I was pretty much screwed.
And I hate Snipers on Gold Rush, oh god I hate them so much.

What does kinda ruin playing Heavy for me is my lousy framerate (I'm getting a constant 20 - yes, I can't WAIT to buy a new goddamn graphics card). Low framerate and lag make it sure that circle-strafers kill me so thoroughly it's not even funny (and I should probably adjust my mouse sensitivity whenever I'm playing as Heavy). I hate getting bonked to death. Damn Spies fail a backstab and then just easily circle around me to try it again. And Pyros? Oh god. I just flail and shoot and try to turn and close but no cigar.

And a funny story of WHY Medics shouldn't EVER über me: I'm Heavy, Slaverstrike's Medic, and he's sticking to me during some Gold Rush setup. I tell him that übering me isn't a really good idea, you should know, I'll waste it anyway, go find someone else to give it to, but he insists on giving it to me. So, the setup ends, the gates open, we rush out and he übers me.
And a second after the charge hits me, the game freezes. It goes completely dead. I literally LOL, and I laugh while waiting for my computer to restart (yeah, it was one of those wonderful little crashes when nothing but restarting works) and oh god, it was priceless. Had to tell Slaverstrike "TOLD YOU SO!" (and apologise for actually wasting his über) and hahahaha oh wow.
We only make a good team when I'M the Medic and HE'S the Heavy. Haha. Other way around it's just something simply atrocious.

Oh yeah, I got complimented as a Medic! The whole thing was pretty far out considering how rotten I am at staying alive, so my Heavy wasn't the only one surprised. We were playing in Hydro, I was following this Heavy around, and I was taking quite a lot of damage. At one point I was in flames, HP dropping dangerously close to zero and we were closing in on the enemy's cap point. And we had another Medic, who of course ignored me completely (I was expecting better out of her, damn it, she's a really good player and I don't think I've ever been as bitter about not getting a heal as I was back then), so the only thing I could do was to follow my Heavy in, with six or so HP left. Ha. He was really worried, telling me to go get some health, but damn it I was THIS close to getting an über, and we were so close to the cap point and I wasn't going to give up, so I kept healing him, almost died of fright when a goddamn Pyro tried to charge us - luckily not from behind - and I got my charge and we hit it and capped the point.
And when the next round started the Heavy told everyone how I had stayed alive for the longest time ever with so little health left and I was going ":3" by myself. That was totally reckless. And awesome as hell. I have a little bit of badass in me.
And damn that Heavy was probably the most polite player I've ever played with. He apologised when he accidentally took the health kit from me (it's hard to not take it when you're trying to get the ammo right next to it) or when he failed to kill the Pyro charging us from behind and killing us, and he fell back when I was taking damage, saying we should wait for a moment so I could regenerate some health and awww. Why can't everyone be like that?
Also damn I love every player who communicates with me when they're running out of ammo and I have a full charge. Not everyone can take sentries down with a goddamn shotgun (I've übered Slaverstrike so many times when he's out of rockets, and he charges a sentry nest with a shotgun and actually takes stuff down with it, but if it was anyone else but him I would probably be pissed), so people, if I'm sticking to you with a full charge, please please please indicate in some way or the other that you're out of ammo if that is the case. Switch to your secondary weapon! Fall back! Use the voicechat! Anything! I hate nothing more than übering a Heavy and all I get is CLICK CLICK CLICK.

So, last night

I was looking through my TF2 screenshots and was pretty surprised to see that actually I've become quite a better Soldier during these few months. Of course it would be kinda sad if I hadn't learned anything (apart from rocketjumping), having those 54 hours of playtime as Soldier, but I couldn't actually remember being much worse Soldier than I am now. Not until I saw some scoreboard screenshots taken in the end of January, and remembering that oh yeah, I was the worst Soldier ever before I started getting hang of it in February.

And god did I lol.

Here, this is me as Soldier in 28th of January:


And this is me as Soldier last week:


See any difference? Haha. At least I compensate my (still pretty) insane amount of deaths with actually getting some kills.
That's a pathetic amount of destructions for me, btw, I usually have more than ten when I'm Soldier. I really like to kill them sentries.
Also, I have no idea are those stats any good at all, but I think they're pretty good for me (I'd like to NOT get killed so much, but it would seem that every freaking class crits whenever they fire at me. Especially Scouts and Heavies. Pyros don't have to crit, since they kill me either way, but umm. And I'm suicidal and still making stupid mistakes which get me killed, and that's what proves that I'm not that good a Soldier). And look at it this way: I COULD BE DOING SO MUCH WORSE.

(Oh wow crappy JPEG compression.)

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).