TF2 Game Update for March 19th, 2010

As seems to always happen, TF2 got an update the very day after a major update. Following the first Community Contributions Update, we have a small update based around crafting. It focuses on two points;

• Updated the new community-built hats so they can be crafted
• Updated the Camera Beard and Medic Mask so they can be crafted as hats

So the first one is an obvious fix that I’m surprised wasn’t immediately implemented, I mean, so that means that the people who tried to craft the new hats yesterday (and there would be a few) had no chance of getting them even though they should of. But either way.

The second point is something we’ve been hoping for. Camera Beards, being changed from a hat to a “misc” item, now drops like a normal item. As such I have two of them, others will have more (some claim to have ten). So, being able to craft two of them into an actual hat is an awesome win for the people who bitch constantly.

Now we just need to be able to craft medals, and that might satisfy people. Are you going to craft your camera beards?

TF2’s First “Community Update”

Today, Team Fortress 2 released it’s first update fuelled by the Contribute! site they set up a few months ago. In that update was a new melee weapon for the Pyro and Demoman, and a new secondary for the Heavy, and of course a variety of new hats.

Seeing the attributes the new weapons have, it’s clear they’re very situational, and to me more of a novelty than anything. The Homewrecker (Pyro melee weapon) for example, is able to destroy buildings relatively quickly, but has a 25% damage decrease against other players. As a primarily pyro player, I don’t run into a lot of cases where I’m able to get that close to a building to deal out melee hits, and if I can then I’m obviously being ubercharged. If I’m that close to a building though, it’s far easier to just destroy it with flames.

The update serves it’s purpose though, and shows that despite some pessimism, the quality of ideas being contributed by the community is actually pretty good. And as an added thought, Valve said that prior to the Engineer update, there would be one more non-bugfix update. Is this that update, and does that mean the Engineer update is next? I hate having to guess.

What do you think of the new items? If you haven’t seen them yet, Ubercharged.net has made a nice post today detailing all the items, with pictures!

TF2 Game Update for February 23rd, 2010

The past couple of updates have been almost worthless one line updates, and there hasn’t been much point in reporting them at all. Today a new update came out that actually has one or two interesting elements; the best one for me being that they “fixed the Pyro not being able to deflect enemy flares”. As an avid pyro player, this is awesome for me. I always just figured that we weren’t meant to be able to reflect flares. Now that I know we can, games are going to be a lot more interesting when it’s pyro vs pyro.

Other changes were a bit more vague with the update simply saying “updated CTF_2Fort” and “updated CTF_Doublecross”. I’d really like to know just what they did to CTF_2Fort?

You can review all the changes here. What do you think was updated on the maps?

Update: A follow up update for the game was released today, and is too short to merit a whole new post. You can view these change(s) by clicking this particular link.

L4D2 Game Update For February 5th 2010

While we wait for The Passing to come out, the minor updates continue rolling out. This is my first update since purchasing the game (which shows how recently I bought the game), and it’s good to see Valve doesn’t just look after Team Fortress 2.

This update mainly concerned map fixes and the AI/Bots of both the Survivors and the Player Zombies (in Survival and related modes). There’s not really much in here that interested me or that I could really go into, apart from a minor buff the Tank received. Melee weapons have been reduced against the Tank to about half of it’s original effectiveness. I’m hoping this doesn’t make earning the achievement too hard.

You can see the rest of the changes here.

Healthy competition in TF2

Team Fortress 2 has released a teaser update prior to the it’s next set of class upgrades. Only three classes haven’t had an update complete with unlockables yet, and now Valve are rolling out two of them; Soldier and Demoman.

To do this, they’ve set up a story about the RED team’s demoman and the BLU soldier forming a strong bond of friendship, and the admin behind the scenes of the war don’t like it. To separate them, some healthy competition is unveiled.

The storyline directly impacts gameplay, as how soldiers and demomen perform in game will decide how the update pans out. As a soldier, the more demomen you kill, the more likely the soldier update will be better (and vice versa). There’ll be more achievements, weapons and sounds for both classes, but in the end the one with the most kills will get an extra weapons.

Now, I’ve never played much of either class, if any (seriously, only about 5 minutes for the demoman, but hours and hours on other classes), but I’d been thinking that I should try getting better at either of them and this update gives me that final shove.

I can’t wait until the final update comes out; I’d love to see what comes of this.

Update: Ok I just gave the game an hour of my time, and well, it is interesting. As I should of realized, now that this is out; everyone is spamming as these classes. Going onto my usual servers, teams were made up almost completely of soldiers and demomen, with maybe one or two medics. The gameplay is a flurry of grenade and rocket spam, and no-one cares about the actual objectives. “Get the briefcase? FUCK OFF, throwing random grenades over this wall in hopes of killing a soldier is much more invigorating.”

Kind of sucks, but it’s a little funny at the same time. If you play Team Fortress 2, what do YOU think of the new updates that are rolling out? Good or bad?

Blah

So, not much to say. Unfortunately while I wanted to work on my NaNoWriMo story this month, work commitments (in that I never get to do anything important because I’m too tired after work to focus) have taken over, and I haven’t even cleared the first 1000 words. It’s horrible, but happens.
The story I want to write though has the potential for something else I want to do. It needs a lot of refinement, but I hope if I can work out the problems I can totally do it, which would be awesome.

In other news, I’m still finding it difficult to apply myself to a regular exercise program. I’ve committed myself to using the stairs instead of the elevator at work, but I’m finding it next to impossible to find the drive to do sit-ups every day. I’m headed for nightshift starting next week too, so it’s going to be even harder. All I can say is blah to that.

I get to see Brittany on Saturday, which I’ve been looking forward to since a fortnight ago; we rarely get to see each other, so when we do it’s the highlight of my week. She’s an amazing girl and it’s a real inconvenience I rarely get to see her. Like NaNoWriMo, work conflicts with that. However, that’s life.

Update on 10CC

I haven’t been blogging lately, focussing more on trying to get attention on my 150th post, 10 Cent Charity. I’ve been tweeting about it roughly once daily, and posting about it on forums and the like to try and get more people to see it and comment it.

Today the post hit 50 comments, which works out to a five dollar donation so far. This is excellent, but I’m really eager to hit as high as possible so if you’re reading this and haven’t commented that post yet, or even if you have, think about spending a whole five to thirty seconds commenting for charity.

Also, a thank you is in order for Brittany, who whipped up the above banner (and coincidently the coolest dA stamp ever). Girl’s got talent.
Thank you to everyone who has commented so far, and a massive thank you to those who retweeted 10 Cent Charity. You’re all absolute legends.