I probably will soon enough but I originally got the Orange Box for the other games; the TF2 thing is just a spur of the moment lark and I’m not sure I’ll be out and about today.
That said, for general conversation, the text input works perfectly well, and is superior for a really busy conversation where a lot of people want to chatter on but don’t want to squash each other on the voice line.
The mic would be the go-to for gameplay related stuff like “Hey Beef, you’re about to get backstabbed” but the SDMB server is very much on the casual side of things so it tends to be more along the lines of “So hey Beef, how about that other game you mentioned, oh by the way you’re about to – nevermind”.
As it turns out, I was looking for an excuse to get out of the house for a bit today and relax and so I made a stop by Best Buy and got a snazzy new mic/headset.
I got on the SDMB server for a couple rounds tonight. What is the SOP with picking your team at the beginning, I usually just pick random. Is that frowned upon?
I’ve been sort of looking at this for a little while, so I’m starting the download process and I’ll probably be around in the future. What’s the game schedule? Are there particular nights that people are playing, or should I just check in every so often?
Not at all frowned upon.
Personally, I try and choose BLU whenever possible, but if it’s not available RED it is.
@SenorBeef/Admins: If we’re going to have a higher influx of newer players what do you guys think of doing a critvote type mod at the beginning of each map?
Random critical shots are calculated based on how much damage you’ve done in the last 20 seconds and this obviously favors more experienced players (especially if they’re on an explosive class) and can make it just feel like a new player is never going to make any headway.
I ask about a critvote mod/plugin partially because I feel guilty for killing people tonight with random critical sticky bombs when I was a demoman. He just racks up damage so absurdly quickly that you can easily have two critical stickies every 20 sticky shots or so.
The flip side of that is that a really good player on a power class is generally not going to die to a newer player except during random crits. It swings both ways.
I’m pretty much a total failure. I intended to play yesterday and even logged in early in the day to make sure I still had all the correct server information.
Totally forgot and went to bed. So out of the 4 or so times I meant to join in I’ve only successfully done so once. :smack:
Games these days are on Tuesday and Saturday @ 8 pm Eastern. There’s often a pickup game on Friday at the same time. If you befriend SenorBeef on Steam, he’ll let you know when a game is starting up.
Random is fine and generally the way I prefer people to do it. The only time it’d be useful for people to really pay attention to their team is when we have 2-3 of the our regulars who are really really good - it’d be better to make sure they didn’t end up all on the same team or the game wouldn’t be very balanced.
I’m generally resistant to crit mods because I don’t think crits are really a problem generally - they add randomness but we’re not exactly competing at super high levels where the outcome of a match can be determined that way - and there are a decent few weapons that are balanced around crits. They give up their ability to do random crits in order to gain some other power, and if you turn off the crits then you remove their downside, unbalancing them.
If other people want to change the crits though I’ll take suggestions.
Yes that’s true, but it would be far less discouraging for newer players if they felt like they actually had a chance as opposed to already being dominated by a more experienced player, nevermind having to die to random criticals every other time they spawn.
Plus, the less experienced player will not be as likely to have built up a good damage count in the rolling 20 seconds to increase your chances of “random” critical shots. Whereas an experienced player, like I said, on demoman/soldier can have an absurdly high frequency of random critical shots.
Also, a more experienced player might be more able to avoid dying to random critical shots through sheer experience of dodging and the less experienced player would need to have the aim to actually make their critical shot count.
I just personally never see a reason to have random criticals on. Yes, a random critical rocket from a less experienced player will end his 20+ kill streak, but what did that actually accomplish? As opposed to an experienced player getting them every 20 shots and completely locking down a whole team.
EDIT:
This why I suggested a crit vote type mod. At the beginning of each map a little vote thingy would come up and people would vote if they want random criticals to be on or off. Seems like a perfectly fair choice.
Taking away the downside on no random crit weapons isn’t a reason to you? It makes several weapons straight upgrades because you’ve removed their tradeoffs.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new pure melee demo set. I had a 14 kill run when we were playing on our server this morning. I wouldn’t call it a highlight really since I spend so much of the video kind of bumbling around - I’m playing fairly incompetantly but still managed to rack up the kills.
Around 1:53 is the coolest part - it happens so fast that it’s hard to see but I charged in there killing the first guy with the shield bash while simultaneously swinging at the guy next to him, killing them both pretty much at the same instant.
So how often are people on our server anyway? I’ve been mostly playing on random servers; should I be making it a point to play on the SDMB server instead?
I played on it yesterday but it was all weirdos I didn’t recognize with names like {~.~}Ch40sG0dZ{~.~} … (the server was unlocked at the time).
The server has been unusually busy - TF2 about tripled to quadroupled in average population, yet not a ton of new servers have gone up, so many of them are running at capacity all the time. Our server has been full most of the time since it went F2P. If we’re playing an SDMB game (like we will be tomorrow at 8pm) I’ll lock it so it’s just us - otherwise it’s either pubs or a few SDMBers and the rest pubs.
All else being equal, you may as well play on the SDMB server when there’s a pub game going. Your stats will be tracked, when SDMBers do play you’ll be amongst them, the server setup in general is pretty good - it has stats and replay and a good amount of players (lots of players are 32 player servers but the game isn’t balanced around that many people so it becomes spammy), etc.
You can play wherever you want, but I’d recommend favoriting the SDMB server and using it as a home base.
You also may be playing with a few SDMBers that you don’t recognize yet because their game name doesn’t match their board names - after a few private SDMB games like tomorrow’s you’ll recognize more people.
No weapon is more useful than the default if it has a no random critical chance in part of its description.
The new scout gun has no random critical hits, but you still have to land both of its two shots and kill the enemy with them or they’ll be alerted to your presence. If you had the scattergun, landing both shots, even if it doesn’t kill them doesn’t matter because you’ll not have to wait for reload time to land the third and hopefully final shot.
The Eyelander isn’t better or more useful than the sticky launcher. If you want to a ctually contribute, you use stickies to lock down whole sections of a map.
And so on.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. When they come out with a new version of a weapon, there’s typically an upside and a downside. One of those downsides is often no random criticals. When you turn off random criticals on the server, those weapons cease having a downside, so whatever upside they have is a pure upgrade over the weapon they replace.
If a weapon has 20% more damage over the default weapon but as a downside cannot randomly crit, if you remove random crits so that nothing crits, then compared to the default weapon it just has 20% more damage. There’s no downside anymore. It’s a pure upgrade, and unbalanced.
The Eyelander isn’t a replacement for the sticky launcher, it’s a replacement for the bottle. And it has obvious upsides - bigger melee range and the head count mechanic - and it has downsides to go with it, -25 health and no random criticals.
This is true, but no weapon has only a lack of random of critical hits as the downside. If there is, you’ve not offered any examples where a weapon is a strict upgrade over the default. Even high level competitive players use the default weapons in more cases than not and they play with random criticals off.
Yeah I got it for some reason confused that it’s a melee weapon. Still, with random criticals turned off it’s exactly like I said in my above paragraph. A lack of random criticals isn’t ever the only downside to a weapon. The Eyelander has that health downside as well.