Not again...

Why is my Team Fortress 2 playing always overshadowed with continuous raging?

Although this time it's more of a Steam woe than anything else, but last night I broke a record I had deemed impossible for me to break, based on research done during the 37.5 hours of time played as an Engineer.



I chimed in 16 sentry kills, with one sentry, during one life. Three dominations. 22 points total, with all the assists and teleports and one wrench-whacked Spy, and several minutes of pretty decent defending. Would've gotten more, but apparently half of the enemy team went Spy at that point (I can stand up to Spies myself if they're not very good), and it was kinda impossible trying to keep myself OR my buildings alive when I had Spies coming out of my ass and a Demoman got close enough to blow everything into oblivion while I was busy with sappers.
And I thought it would be impossible to get that many sentry kills in one life, because I always get only twelve. Whenever the counter hits twelve kills, my sentry's goners. Always. And I get twelve kills pretty often, it's very usual on Dustbowl where sentries tend to live longer.
So I was kinda expecting to get twelve kills, and then get backstabbed, but for once it didn't happen.

So where's all the rage? I broke a record, I should be celebrating, not raging, right?

Yeah, sure, if Steam had only registered the new record. My Engineer records remain as they were, max kills 14, max sentry kills 12, max points 18. No sign of the should-be record of max kills 17, max sentry kills 16, max points 22.
So, RAGE. At least I got the screenshot to show you that I indeed got 16 sentry kills.

I also went back to the Soldier like I told you I would, and had some great times last night. Dammit, Easy Mode, I missed your slow-as-hell ass and your ridiculous crit streaks.
It took a while getting used to it again, since I've been playing so much as a Demo lately. But at least Demo has taught me something: as a Soldier I was used to shooting at enemies' feet rather than bothering trying to get straight hits, but with Demo's bombs that's not very effective unless the target is standing still (and I'm still not that good at taking movement into account and calculating trajectories accordingly), so as a Demo I'm trying to actually hit people in the face with the regular bombs. Especially since they explode at contact and with weaker classes that's an instakill. And I'm getting gradually better and better at that (if I hit you in the face with a bomb, most of the time it's indeed because I aimed, not because you just happened to be there. And that's why bad Scouts who run right at me are dead. They are so fast that their movements are very easy to anticipate, if they run in straight line). So now that's seeping through to my Soldier tactics and I'm actually starting to aim rather than always trying to just rely on splash damage and juggling.
Also, I am suddenly the master at rocket jumping, because it took me this long to realise to crouch-jump. Now there isn't a place I can't get to, I kept camping on top of point B on Gravel Pit, and I did couple of pretty impressive defenses by jumping on top of C and raining doom on enemies standing on it. O ho ho.
And I finally learned to sticky jump as a Demoman! Whenever I jumped before, I just went straight up, and I don't know what I do differently now, but I actually go forward as well. I just don't like doing sticky jumps unless I'm backed by a Medic (which never happens because Medics hate me. Except yesterday I was apparently a good-enough Soldier to get a Medic sticking to me. Too bad I'm a horrible Medic buddy and get them killed. Their own fault for not knowing better and following me on my one-man suicide missions!) because they eat up so much health and I'm still not very accurate with them, so I might spring into any given direction and miss my target by a mile.

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.