tempest in a teacup

Of course, it’s the Monk. Why, do you ask? Well, that’s relatively simple to answer.

http://www.diablowiki.net/Exploding_Palm

Using innate knowledge of internal parts of humanoids, the Monk sets off organ damage that potentially can have very exploding effects.

This skill causes the target to take damage over a seven second period, at which point if it reaches 0 HP it explodes.

Sound familiar?

:D

I can only hope that this skill is followed by moves such as the ridiculous and awesome ZANKAI SEKIHO KEN.

Why is everyone fawning over Batman: Arkham Asylum as if it were some sort of game of the year contender? I played the demo, and while I thought the stealth sections were decent-ish (it’s way too easy to hide from enemies), the combat was bland as hell – the game literally has you mashing the same button repeatedly and a counter button occasionally (whose timing is telegraphed), which is even less complexity than Assassin’s Creed, let alone a quality action game like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry. On top of that ‘detective mode’ completely ruins any sense of challenge you might experience in figuring out puzzles by highlighting everything of interest in the room for you.

Am I missing something here?

Well, not really…I just haven’t had much to write about. But now I do! And guess what, it’s about TF2 again. Namely this.

In this update we can see the results of some of the playtesting that league players have been involved in. Well, sort of. Since I’m lazy I’ll just C&P some stuff I wrote about the update at the Orochinagi forums, and add a bit more for clarity.

Sandman nerf

Stuns are still annoying, but at least they can’t take out ubers now. Although I will lol the next time a Sandman scout tries to tag me and gets one-shotted by my rocket. Although chances are I’ll end up getting critstunned by some jackass who decided that it was a good idea to switch his loadout now that the Sandman doesn’t take away his double jump.

Critboost on intel cap

Pretty stupid idea if you ask me. If you want people to attack more on CTF maps, then make turtling harder/less rewarding than it is now – don’t give a team that happens to cap once the ability to shit out instant death for ten seconds.

Every time I play ctf_turbine I inevitably imagine how much more fun the game would be if there were no engineers on either team.

KOTH mode

Fun. I like it more than arena since it emphasises the best part of the game (capturing and holding territory). Maps like koth_nucleus don’t really have any unassailable sentry spots either so defense depends more on how good your other classes are. I think koth_viaduct is way too small for 24 players though – my box has trouble keeping 60fps on that map and the point turns into a spamfest very quickly.

ctf_sawmill

Haven’t actually played it in a real match yet, but I like how 1) your spawn is BEHIND the intel room, making it easier to attack and 2) the intel room is tiny, making it hard to maintain a sentry down there. Kind of sad that they cut off the paths that go by the waterfall though.

Autoreload

Handy for certain classes (Soldier, Demoman, Scout) not so much for others (Spy). Thankfully there’s a cvar to turn it on and off so you can make it class-specific.

I haven’t tried cp_yukon yet mainly because the players on the servers I tend to play on seem to have a vendetta against 5CP maps, even though I think Granary and Badlands are probably among the best maps the game has to offer. Every time RTV comes up everyone votes for Goldrush, Dustbowl or (on particularly bad days) Pipeline :(

Another somewhat depressing thing this update has taught me is how so incredibly few people actually know how to play Soldier effectively. Valve inadvertently broke rocket jumps for a full weekend when they tried to undo some self-damage changes they had made to the Demoman. The ability wasn’t taken away, but the damage received by the Soldier was reduced, thereby reducing the distance he could propel himself. Normally simple jumps like going straight up to Well’s third floor from the second point, or jumping onto Gravelpit C from the ground level, or flick jumping from the battlements on Badlands to the spire all became difficult or impossible to do.

And yet I saw SO MANY supposed ‘career Soldiers’ adamantly insisting that RJing wasn’t broken. I mean, I’m not awesome at Soldier, yet the fact that RJs were broken was blatantly obvious to me from the moment I booted up the game after the patch to fool around in the new maps.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s wrong to expect the same level of interest in advanced techniques from everyone I end up on a server with (in a game whose skill ceiling is rather low for a multiplayer FPS to begin with). But TF2 pubs are starting to push all the wrong buttons for me – I’m getting tired of having to deal with teams consisting of 4 W+M1 Pyros, 3 Huntsman Snipers and 4 sticky spamming Demomen. What’s worse is when those people are on my team. No, PyroFan23423562, you can’t W+M1 into that sentry and destroy it. Sorry.

I’d start playing PUGs or something but I don’t know anyone else who does it…

Oh, and for some perspective, I’ve been playing Soldier almost exclusively for quite some time now (I occasionally switch off to Medic, Demoman, Spy or Sniper as needed, or if I think I can get away with it). Mainly thanks to this awesome Soldier tutorial:

SNKP, you clowns :(

I don’t think this has been confirmed to be a console-only bug yet, but seriously, with all the crap you left out of this game you still managed to let moronic infinites like this through your playtesting process?!

This game is starting to resemble KOF2003 in more ways than one. Oh well, I guess I needed a coaster for my coffee mug.

Apparently there’s a big TF2 update coming up…and Valve is soliciting input from high-level players (i.e. league players) on how to balance it

This is probably the most exciting TF2 news I’ve read in ages.

More to come.