Insert a witty title here

Well, there's always the first time for everything, I guess. I was just playing a match of L4D with a bunch of my Esa friends, when some random guy playing with us asked if we were up for a friendly clan match after the game.
Well, I, for one, couldn't stop laughing at that, although it's understandable to mistake us for a clan. We do wear a tag after all.
So we told him that we're not actually a clan, but if they really want to, we might be up for a game. Too bad only Cedox, Slaverstrike and I were actually online and willing to play, so in he end we had mixed teams with the guys from the other clan.
And I have to say it was one of best, if not THE best game of L4D I've ever played with complete strangers. No one did anything stupid (and no one whined about anything!), the teamwork was excellent on both teams, and the teams were evenly matched (my team won with a hundred points or so in the end). I had lots of fun! Now I'm hoping they would like to play another game some other time, so that we may even get a full Esa team going. Which shouldn't be difficult since there are at least nine or ten Esas at the moment (dammit we could even START a clan, we definitely have enough players, and I don't think we're even that bad. Well, we still can't seem to finish campaigns on expert, so we do fail a bit, haha).
So much for my slight prejudice for clan players, haha.

So, Esas played an unofficial friendly clan match. That's pretty ... far out.

Left 4 Dead is still awesome, although I'm starting to have a serious beef with the melee defense in versus. It needs to be nerfed in one way or the other, I think it would be enough to make it so that it doesn't do damage. Because I'm really fucking sick of trying to jump people as a Hunter, and just getting shoved around a few times and dying FROM IT. And I think it's a perfectly good defensive measure, I mean, it doesn't piss me off to get shoved off, since it's my own damn fault for being obvious enough trying to jump someone when they see me coming, but dying from it? That's too much.
Not even mentioning the infamous corner defenses. Making the melee NOT do damage would reduce the shoving to a mere temporary solution, for clearing way or fending off attacks, which I think it's supposed to be. Now it's the perfect attack against hordes and special infected since they take damage and eventually die if they're being pushed around long enough. I know, we just did it in No Mercy's fourth chapter, during the elevator faceoff. It's lame, I felt bad for doing it, but at least now I know how fucking impossible such defense it is to break, and I know not to do it anymore. It takes the fun out of the game (since I don't really care about winning as much as I care about playing a fair game and having fun). Slaver was cursing at me from his room after we did it, telling me we're complete fucking assholes for doing that shit. Yeah, I know.
Another problem I think should be addressed at some point, is the spawning of Tanks in versus. Because it's fucking unfair when one team gets the tank right at the beginning of the map, and the other team by the end of it. And since Tank IS such a huge tideturner (though it naturally depends on player skills and teamwork too), and if the teams are evenly matched, or the other team is clearly steamrolling, it's very, very unfair if the other team gets the Tank right away. So maybe synchronize the spawning in some way? I don't know. And no, they shouldn't come in the very same place for both teams, because that's unfair too since the other team can then expect it, but ... I don't know. I just think something must be done. I'm tired of hearing the whining it causes, and I'm tired of feeling cheated on by it.

I haven't been writing here for a while, I don't exactly know why. I've been playing lots of Fallout (clocked over 100 hours with Gabrielle, and still there's so much to do! Also started another game with another character, who strives to be good instead of ending up as the Scourge of Humanity). Then I had this irresistible urge to play Kingdom Hearts 2 (I know!) and spent 30 hours with a PS2 controller glued to my hands. And say what you want, but I like that game! It's fun to play.
I also bought Bioshock from the Steam Christmas sale (only five euros for a game like that was almost ridiculous! I had to get it), and I should play that one too.

And I'm finally getting back to playing Team Fortress 2 after a few months of hardly playing it at all. And I've been playing as a Sniper. Which is pretty ... yeah. I'm pretty bad at it, but at least I've gotten a lot better! I came very close to breaking the damage record my little brother did back in the day, and I was even an MVP the other day! That was pretty unbelievable, but you'll understand once I tell you that the enemy team had about four Snipers, and all of them were amusingly bad. I had three of them aiming at me in a nice line, and I headshot all of them one by one, so yeah. They were horrible. And thanks to them, I got enough points in one round to be an MVP. I often get owned by enemy Snipers, but every now and then there's a Sniper who's even worse than I am, and I can usually get a domination on them.

I've also gone from Chrome to being Kromi, which is basically the same thing. Since kromi means chrome in Finnish. And at least there are not that many Kromis running around (not that anyone can mistake me for someone else anymore since I wear a tag these days. Dammit, and it wasn't even a long ago I ranted about not wanting to wear a tag. Oh how fickle I am).
Also it's pretty funny when people pronounce it in English.
Where does the nick Chrome come from anyhow? You see, back in last January when I was considering starting to play TF2, I was actually horrified of playing with strangers, and embarrassed because I had never played an online FPS before. So instead of using the nick I usually go by (Katastrophe), I wanted a new nick so that no one would know it's actually me. Yeah, lol. Zeromancer's Chrome Bitch was one of my favourite songs back then, so I figured that it was a good as name as any (and for the first few days I went by the whole title, dropping the Bitch at some point). And I was planning to go back to Katastrophe once I got comfortable enough with the game. Well, I never did, since Chrome kinda grew on me.

Oh yeah, I'm an obsessive-compulsive screenshot-taker in Fallout 3, so in case you're interested about the first part of Gabrielle's great journey in the Capitol Wasteland, you can read it here. I have another part coming up, since that just basically covers the main quest, and I've had many silly adventures after that.

Wb, me!

Guess who's back in the game.



And as you can see, the new PC handles L4D pretty nicely, the resolution alone is pretty insane (yes, I am playing with 1280x1024 and near-highest graphics settings, and it runs as smoothly as it possibly can). For now I'd say getting this PC was worth the while.
L4D seems to be pretty light either way, back when I played the Demo on my old PC, the game actually ran pretty nicely. I mean, I wasn't even playing on the lowest graphics settings - at least texture detail was high - but my resolution was 640 x 480 (this is how it looked, yay PSOne graphics ftw!), and I got all the lighting effects, and actually a pretty decent FPS. And I had been quite sure that the computer would refuse to run it in the first place.

So how about Team Fortress 2?
FPS stays on green almost in every situation (saw it flicker in yellow when there was dozens of stuff on the screen at once), and I get about the same graphics as I did playing on little brother's computer last summer.
So all in all? I'm pretty much extremely satisfied.

I have much to do, organizing files, installing stuff and so forth, so I'll leave a more in-depth entry about Left 4 Dead for later, for now I'll just say that I love versus. I got to play some bits of the co-op campaign on a friend's PC last week after the game came out, so I was somewhat familiar with it, and last night the first thing we did after I got the game, was to find a server and play some versus. I had played it once before, and the game whined to me about needing to play the campaign first, but I didn't really care.
And yes yes the best part about versus is getting to play as the Infected. The best part about playing as the Infected is spawning as the Tank. Okay, yeah, I can't really say since I was a Tank for about ten seconds last night. I spawned at the end of No Mercy just as the Survivors were stumbling to the evac helicopter. I managed to incap one of them, though, so job well done, and only one escaped alive, as rest of my Infected buddies managed to pin the others down. (Yeah, I'm the Tank in the screenshot I posted.)
I like being other Infected as well, Smoker's probably my favourite since you don't have to go get so intimate with the Survivors as the Smoker. I like lurking about rooftops. Hunter's fun as well, although I seem to be just horrible at aiming my jumps, haha. But I've had my best ownage moments as a Hunter pinning down a lone Survivor while others are being harrassed by a Boomer and subsequently a horde. Oh, love. Boomer's surprisingly fun as well.

What sucks about versus is the crazy console-reminiscent lobby system that absolutely sucks because you don't know what kind of ping you'll have until you're actually in game. So it's mostly just jumping from one server to another until one with not-as-crazy latency comes along.
Or since I usually have at least three buddies to play with at any given time, we make a server of our own and then search for a dedicated one, which seems to work pretty well. We get nice ping, and the server usually fills up quickly.
And then we get our fair share of idiots: one of my buddies was playing versus for the first time last night, so of course one of our team-mates started whining at him that he sucks, but. Me and Slaver kindly told him to stfu, and he still had the nerve to start a votekick against my friend. Which backfired royally, because after that there was a vote to kick the whiner, which - needless to say - passed 3 to 1.
I can only imagine how much he must've been raging, hee hee.
But just what the fucking hell, you choose a random public server and then start whining about the noobs? Besides, dear idiot, you weren't doing too hot either (I was kicking your ass in scores and I was playing for the second time), so please do take a look in the mirror before mouthing off a "noob."
Yeah yeah, I know, the whole teamwork thing, of course it sucks if someone on your team seems to be lost, but ffs you can still treat the player nicely and try to understand that the game's been out for a week and not everyone can be fucking brilliant at it already.

But yeah, it's like fighting windmills, fighting these idiots in online multiplayer communities.

L4D and Fallout 3

I'm dying with this lack of a gaming computer.

So, Left 4 Dead's demo came out some time ago, and I had to start my broken computer just in case it runs, and I could spend a few hours on L4D with friends. I had already tested the game out on Slaver's computer, since he bought the game in advance and thus got the demo beforehand, and needless to say, I wanted more.
So my graphics card stayed alive so that I managed to play 1,7 hours of Left 4 Dead with PlayStation graphics. And then it screamed in agony and promptly died. So much for L4D demo then.
I have a new computer underway, finally, and it should arrive this week if everything goes well. Intel's quad core processor, ATI Radeon HD 4670 (I wanted a GeForce, but the Radeon was much cheaper), 2 Gb RAM, I should be getting nice graphics and a constant high FPS in TF2 and other games.
And I can't fucking wait to get to play TF2. The first thing I do when I get the new computer, I'll install TF2 and play. For hours. Everything else be damned, I need it.

But Left 4 Dead? Is simply awesome. The AI Director is, apart from being a complete fucking sadist (it always spawned a goddamn Tank when half of my team was dead and the rest had like 1 HP left - yes, we kept playing on Expert, because that's where the true L4D experience lies) a marvellous invention, it really does make the game feel fresh even if you do play the same two maps over and over and over again.

I love the soundscape, I love the true feeling of panic the game causes (I still get a chill every time I hear the "horde's coming!" soundcue, and automatically look for a wall to press my back against), I love the atmosphere, I love the hordes of running zombies, I love it how it almost feels like slow-motion when you fall down and there are zombies everywhere screaming and clawing at you and you shoot and shoot and it's completely in vain and you're on the verge of dying, heartbeat deafening you and eyesight going and then there's a friend blasting through the wall of zombies with a shotgun and helping you up.
It'a fucking brilliant.



Then everyone's a team-killing fucktard, everyone shoots at cars, giggling while they're at it; you throw a molotov when a friend is getting pinned by a Hunter and there's a horde coming and after that you beeline straight towards the safe room and lock everyone out; you always refuse to put out your flashlight when you hear crying and you HAVE to shoot at the Witch, and it's all fun and games even if everyone gets completely slaughtered by the Tank when half of the team is dead and the rest have 1 HP left. Seriously, having done all of that, or been in the receiving end of the molotov and being locked out of safe room, it's always a blast. Maybe not playing with strangers, but with friends shits and giggles is always a good thing.

And almost all the guys on my class got totally hooked on the game, so at least I'm bound to have company to play with whenever a need arises. I don't know when I'll be getting the full game, probably at 21st when Europe gets it. Providing that I have the new computer at my disposal.

What else? I've been actually playing quite a lot of Fallout 3 at a (boy)friend's place, and I'm loving it as well. I'm playing as a woman named Steve, she's a greedy and impatient wannabe bad guy specialised in all kinds of thievery and bullshitting. Deep inside she's a real doll who fights for the good. I blame it on the fact how devastated she was when she learned the truth about her father and the whole Vault 101 dealio: she wants revenge, but she doesn't know how to pull it off, thus she's lost and trying to do mean things, only to fail gloriously and end up doing ... nice things.
I mean, I was supposed to blow up Megaton. I talked to Burke (and ew ew EW the most disgusting conversation EVER, stupid Black Widow perk and my greediness!), and got the thingamajig to rig the bomb with, and I wanted to kill Moriarty because he was a complete fucking ass for being right about my dad.
But I couldn't do it, because I liked Gob too much (I love ghouls, and Gob made my day by always having his day made by me. I couldn't just blow him up, not when every time I talk to him he's relieved and genuinely happy to see me, calling me a friendly face. And while I want to steal something from Moriarty, anything, fuck I just want to see him suffer, I CAN'T because Gob would probably get mad at me or worse, Moriarty would blame it on Gob and make his life even more of a hell. Yeah, I should probably stop from getting attached to NPCs), and I also took some really weird sort of liking to Moira of the supplies. Who's batshit insane and cheerful to the point of being so obnoxious I just want to hit her. So I'm helping her to write her book, and this far I have been blown up my mines, sniped by a sniper, raided a Raider-infested ancient supermarket, walked into a grenade - twice, jumped from a roof and drank lots and lots of radioactive water, just for her.
I seriously don't know who's more insane in the end: she, or I.
So in the end I couldn't blow Megaton up. So I didn't. I disarmed the bomb, got hooked on Mentats in the process (cheers, Megaton, you fucking owe me) and settled down with my creepy robotic butler.
But at least I could finally empty my pockets. I'm a compulsive junk-gatherer, I take everything cool with me and carry it around until I can't anymore, and then with heavy heart I part with my teddybears and toy cars and all other cool stuff I had found. Sigh.

And I might have to kill Moriarty anyhow, I might have to put a grenade in his pocket. I want the stupid asshole dead. And I don't want to have some Jesus-level karma, geez! I'm a bad person, bad, grr.

Well, yeah, my badness is strictly tied to how I feel about a person. The "mayor" of Arefu, you know the guy, I hated him. He was an idiot, and a complete wuss for not doing anything about the Family, and taking care of the citizens of his crappy little village (and Jesus Christ that one woman in Arefu, she is SO OUT THERE you wouldn't believe!). So I broke into his house and stole everything I wanted. That oughta teach him.
Or this one sad little village full of idiots who were completely pussywhipped by Super Mutants. There was this girl, though, who tried to hit on me, that was fun. But anyway, I left their stupid village just to run straight into some minigun-wielding Muties, and because I'm a total coward when it comes to fighting (I'm a thief! I'm sneaky, I sneak behind people's backs and stab them, I don't engage in firefights with ugly giants with miniguns! At least not when there are two of them! I even try to avoid Raiders), I of course ran away. And lead the mutants right into this idiot village, and left them fight them off. Sorry, idiot villagers!
Or the Family, goddamn I wanted to kill Vance. And his wife. And all the idiot vampire brothers of his. One day, one day I'll sneak there and steal all their stuff and kill them when they sleep. I just don't get the logic, oh no we can't be cannibals that's barbaric, let's just drink blood instead. Absolute bullshit.

So if I don't like an NPC I break into their house and steal their stuff. Or plan to put a grenade in their pants. And if I do like an NPC I'm a total angel to them. But even to people I like I act impatient and I always ask for more money or whatever for my services. Adventuring's not free, you know. I need money to buy stuff for my house. But it's got me some really nice deals, so at least it pays off.
And to ghouls? I'm always an angel. They have hard time anyhow, if there's anything I can do to make them feel better, I'll do it. I'm planning to go visit Underworld as soon as I have a good excuse to enter DC. Gob wanted me to say hi to Carol for him.

So yeah, I really like Fallout 3. It's tons of fun, there's so much to do, the NPC's are compelling (even when I don't like them, and hey, it takes character to be obnoxious!) and I've really taken liking to my character. I really don't know what I'm set out to do, I guess I'll keep thieving and trying to do bad things, and helping out ghouls as much as I can and whenever possible. I guess I'll just go where adventure takes me.
Can't wait to buy the game for myself and make a male character with a girls' name and be total fucking antichrist and blow Megaton to high heaven. I won't even talk to Gob, if I never knew him, I can't feel sorry for him. And who knows, maybe the-guy-with-a-girls'-name really hates ghouls.

I guess that's all I wanted to say. For now.

Omg.

Yeah, I haven't been around a lot.

I don't think I've played TF2 for a month. First there was the school project from hell, then I didn't feel like playing, then Slaver got Xbox360 and there was shameless Halo 2 co-opping going on for a few nights, then I went to my parents' place for a week, then I got a cat, and then my desktop broke, and now I've been on my laptop for a week. So that's why I haven't been on Steam for quite a while, and you haven't caught me in-game for even longer while.

Planning to finally buy a new computer, since Fallout 3 comes out, like, tomorrow, and Left 4 Dead is supposed to come out next month (although I'm not holding my breath, because of Valve Time and everything...), and if I do manage to get things sorted out with Blizzard, I have 30 days to spend on World of Warcraft. Which I finally succumbed into after a friend practically begged me to play with her. So I have a level 15 Undead Warlock there, on a banned account. I don't know WHY I was banned, all I know is that the payment for the full version (I played the 10-day trial first) didn't register, and I was banned right out of the blue. It's been a week since I sent a support request to Blizzard asking all kinds of whys and whats, but haven't received a word since. Getting pretty impatient, because I haven't even gotten my money back.
So yeah, WoW would probably be pretty addictive if only getting to play it in the first place wasn't motherfucking impossible. Yeah, the 3,3 Gb patch came out right in the middle of my trial and I spent a whole day downloading and installing THAT instead of actually playing the goddamned game. Then there's been server downtime and maintenance and whatnot, and now the banning right out of the blue. Yeah, fuck you, Blizzard, fuck you.

And yeah, I'm dying to play TF2, but what can I do. I'm stuck with a sucky laptop (which incidentally can run WoW, but that's about it), watching Slaver play Dead Space, and reading fuckloads of comics.

I was also starting to seriosly consider making a TF2 map, since I have a good idea, and I can actually use Hammer to some extent. Slaver's probably going to help me.
It's going to be a three CP map, much like Gravel Pit. I'm probably gonna post concepts and screens and run some ideas through you once I actually get to it.
But that'll also have to wait until I get a new computer and Fallouts and Left 4 Deads are out of the way, so don't hold your breath.

This is madness!

Oh my god I'm about to write about other games than Team Fortress 2!

Haven't even been playing lots of TF2 lately. I'm getting really fed up with my poor framerate because playing Heavy is nigh impossible with fps that sometimes drops close to 10 in intense firefights. I have no chance against circlestrafers. And because I'm really liking playing as Heavy now since I finally learned how to, I find it extremely annoying to always get my butt handed to me by a freaking Scout running circles around me or even an average circlestrafe-attempting Pyro. The framerate's never bothered me this much before, but I've never before played as Heavy, so. And maybe that's why Pyros kill me so thoroughly when I'm Soldier! That could be it!
And as it turns out my computer doesn't have a PCI-E port, and I had to kiss goodbye to that GeForce 8800 I've been making grabby hands at. So I have to either buy a new goddamn computer or suffer the poor framerate. And since I got my computer only year and a half ago I'm not too thrilled to get a new one already. If I had known I'd actually start gaming on PC more than casually (DAMMIT VALVE), I would've never gotten the computer I have now. Too bad I can't tell the future.
So after I found out that a new graphics card is out of question, I did everything I could to get even a bit better framerate: I downloaded the newest drivers for my current graphics card, updated DirectX9 and even got a Dual Core Optimizer which should help with some low framerate problems that AMD dual core processors can apparently cause.
No change whatsoever, I'm still getting the constant 20.
So then I lowered almost all my video options (except for Model Detail, which I refuse to put lower than medium, because otherwise it will eliminate all facial animations, and I really enjoy the funky expressions in deathcam shots), and got a massive 5 fps more! Whoopdie-fucking-do!
So apparently I'm stuck with lousy framerate, stuck with getting killed by circlestrafers and never able to gib enemies in mid-air because framerate fucks up all the shots I thought were extremely well-timed and aimed.
And I will never know how much better player I would be if my framerate was tolerable. I mean, if I'm doing pretty well with 20... who knows.
(Except that I will definitely try out playing with my little brother's new computer, which, I hear, can run Crysis with highest graphic options possible. Bro's probably pulling my leg.)

ANYWAY.

I've been on a traditional point-and-click adventure game high lately. I've apparently lost my The Curse of Monkey Island CDs (the game in question is my favourite of the series, shut up, I know. It was the first one I played, so it remains the most important to me. Just like The Cure's Bloodflowers is more important to me than Disintegration, which without a doubt is way superior an album than Bloodflowers and I freely admit it, but I digress...), but I found Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic, which is one of my all-time favourites, so I've been spending time small-talking with the Bots and trying to remember how to do the puzzles. It's been ages since the last time I played, so I've forgotten a lot of things.
I also remembered some disturbing things while trying to recall all the point-and-click adventure games that I've played. I played Leisure Suit Larry 6 when I was in fourth grade. What the hell. My uncle gave it to me, and now I can't stop thinking about how fucked-up that was: what kind of an uncle gives a very adult-themed adventure game to his 10-year-old niece?! (Well at least he didn't give it to my little brother. He was only seven back then...) I don't even know if my parents knew about it. Haha.
And now that I think about it, it's no wonder that I turned out swinging both ways, I really liked all the cheesy, busty girls in that game...
The same uncle gave me the Monkey Island a little later, though, so maybe he just liked adventure games and wanted to share.

Also, I have Ace Attorneys Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice (damn I hate to call the series "Ace Attorney," I'm so used to calling it Phoenix Wright...) on the way from Play-Asia (the goddamn games are already in Finland, but I have no idea did the customs catch the package or did it slip through. And it's been three freaking days since the package arrived. Pull yourself together, Itella!), so once they're here I'll probably be glued to my DS for quite some time.
Yeah, I'm pretty late to the game especially with Trials and Tribulations that came out ages ago, but I was waiting for it to come out in Europe, and as it turns out it still doesn't have a release date (whereas Apollo Justice does). So I decided to import it and get Apollo Justice too since it was so ridiculously cheap in Play-Asia.
And now I can still retain the symmetry with my DS games. Incidentally, none of my DS games are European versions, all of them are either American or Japanese. And I hate how European versions have fuck-ugly cases, while American and Japanese cases are very pretty and slim. I don't think I'll ever buy a European version of a DS game if I only can avoid it. Besides, if I can get a friend to order with me from Play-Asia and split the postage and possible taxes (like I am doing with those Ace Attorneys), it's usually cheaper to import. Because DS games are ridiculously expensive here.

And I'm sad I didn't realise to buy the Professor Layton game too. Well, there's always the next time...

And I'm finally starting to get really excited about Metal Gear Solid 4. Only a few weeks left until it comes out!
And as it turns out, I don't even have to buy the goddamn PS3! My friend got one for herself and promised me I could borrow it to play MGS4. So all I have to do is buy the game and spend a few days at her place to play through it.
I am probably getting my own PS3 in time, but there's no way I can shit out the ridiculous amount of money to get one before MGS4 comes out. And I have to play it instantly, I'm so scared of getting spoiled.
So all's well that ends well, I don't have to get PS3 just yet and I can still experience what finally happens to Snake and how the saga ends. YES.

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).