tempest in a teacup

I’ve been getting my ass kicked (with friends) in the first campaign, and I love it. It’s the first real FPS I’ve played that relies on co-op so much, and it does co-op really well.

We reached the finale of the first campaign a few times today, but never managed to hold out until the rescue chopper arrived. A truly ridiculous number of zombies assails you at that point, coupled with numerous boss zombie spawns (at one point we had a Tank, a Boomer and a Smoker all running around). At one point the Tank climbed up to the vantage point where I had been sniping from and basically punched me off the building.

Good times.

And now, it’s time for some screenshots from the full game!

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One of the things I do to pass the time when I’m bored is read the official Team Fortress 2 forums on Steam. A lot of different types of players post there, but the most interesting posts are the ones from the people who play the game competitively. Particularly since when you try to hold TF2 up to competitive standards, it starts to show some flaws.

There are a few issues that tend to come up again and again - I’ll try and go over the most important ones.

Damage Calculation

TF2 is different from a lot of other shooters in that weapons don’t do a fixed amount of damage. Instead, the damage a weapon does is a number within a range. The damage ranges are different depending on the distance between the shooter and the target. For instance, the Scout’s scattergun does 85-105 damage at close range, 10-40 at medium range and 3-10 at long range. In most cases this isn’t an issue, but it is rather an issue for certain characters. One example typically brought up is the Demoman - his sticky bombs have a very wide damage variation (actual numbers can be viewed here). This isn’t an issue for Demomen who use their stickies to trap choke points since they typically use multiple stickies in such a situation. However, at high levels of play Demomen tend to rely on tactics like midair sticky detonation, and this is where the unpredictability of the damage starts to bite. Arguably, medium range direct combat should be the Soldier’s forte rather than the Demoman’s, but I see a lot more Demomen being used in this capacity than Soldiers, probably because they can get similar results without being hobbled by the Soldier’s small clip size and long reload time.

Another argument that also comes up fairly often is that the use of damage ranges rather than fixed numbers also makes the outcomes of fights more unpredictable and lessens the impact of individual skill (a point which comes up fairly often).

Hit Detection

This mainly has to do with hitscan weapons (like pistols and shotguns). Apparently visual indications of damage (like blood) don’t always correspond to actual damage being done. So a Scout who’s hopping around like mad firing his scattergun can see the blood particles, but it doesn’t mean he actually hit him. This, needless to say, is pretty silly. I’ve only seen one thread on the topic (and it’s dropped off the front page of the TF2 forums) so it’s hard to say how common this issue is. I certainly haven’t seen it affect me all that much, with the exception of long-range shotgun blasts and maybe Engineer/Scout pistol spam.

Lag Compensation

This is somewhat related to the point on hit detection. Unlike its predecessors Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, Valve’s Source engine netcode has extensive lag compensation. In games like UT, the player sees his action execute with a delay that represents the lag he’s experiencing. In other words, if a player clicks his fire button, the game actually fires the weapon only after the server has been notified and has acknowledged this action. Under high-ping situations this results in a noticeable delay for every one of the player’s actions.

The Source engine does away with this by keeping track of state on the server and then ‘rewinding’ the state when an action notification arrives. It then checks to see where the target was when the command was given and then updates its state accordingly. This has the effect of being more charitable to people with laggy connections, but it can result in some odd results for people not handicapped in such a manner. For instance, a laggy Sniper can headshot someone who appears out in the open to them, but by the time the server figures out the person has been headshot, that person has retreated behind a wall - yet dies anyway.

Competitive players seem to argue that it’s easier to deal with the lag by adjusting your timing than the unpredictability of lag compensation - this is arguable. In any case, it sounds like they just want an option to turn off lag compensation at the server level, which is a reasonable option that doesn’t affect the game for regular players.

Critical Hits

This is probably the biggest thing that the competitive community has complained about (and already addressed). Critical hits are high damage attacks that for the most part occur randomly (with a few exceptions - all Sniper headshots are criticals, all Spy backstabs are criticals, and any attack while being charged by a Kritzkrieg are criticals). It’s possible to increase your chance of getting a critical hit by racking up kills, subject to a cap of 25% (which gets reset after you die).

Needless to say, the competitive community balked at this randomness being introduced into the game, and as a result pretty much all competitive games are played with crits turned off. However, as far as I know most competitive leagues still allow the Medic’s Kritzkrieg as it is deterministic (100% crits no matter what), and can be a game-changer under certain situations.

Again, much like the use of damage calculation, crits have the effect of lessening the impact of individual skill - a good Scout can still be taken down by a mediocre Soldier if he gets a lucky crit. Having been the beneficiary (and target) of several lucky crit rockets, I’m pretty sure that removing crits was the only way to go for competitive play.

All that said, Valve has catered to the competitive crowd in their numerous updates - Arena mode in the Heavy update was targeted at them (the characteristics of this mode make it ideal for competitive play), and more recently they removed the setup time from Granary, one of the most favoured competitive maps, which was a change that the competitive community had been asking for for a long time. On top of that, in spite of all the flaws I’ve mentioned (and doubtless a few others that I’ve missed), TF2 is still pretty successful as a competitive game (although not nearly to the extent of the old faithfuls Counter-Strike and Quake III Arena).

I’ve only recently gotten back into first-person shooters after a long absence from the genre (before I got my current desktop the newest one I had played was probably the original Half-Life), so reading about what makes high-level FPS play tick is pretty damn interesting to me. I hope this little overview was at least slightly interesting to you as well.

On an unrelated note, in spite of my misgivings I’ve gone ahead and preordered Sonic Unleashed for the Wii. I intend to use it as a gauge of whether the PS3 version will be worth my cash come December, although of course the $10 discount coupon I got from Amazon for my next video game purchase didn’t hurt either.

So yeah, Left 4 Dead is pretty damn fun.

There aren’t nearly enough dedicated servers to meet demand, though. I spent more time trying to connect to games yesterday than I did actually playing. And doing peer-to-peer hosting puts all the AI load on the host’s computer.

A scoreboard shot after my most recent round as Heavy in Team Fortress 2. I think that’s the most dominations I’ve ever had in a game :D

Also, Natascha is now in my possession! I hear it’s not particularly useful, though…

Been a while since I last wrote anything…I’ve been spending a lot of time playing Team Fortress 2. For some reason, since the Heavy update hit I’ve been playing the game a lot more. I’ve also been reading the official TF2 forums from time to time to gauge what the state of the game is, and figured I would record my thoughts here.

Arena Mode

I must say, I rather like this mode - since every player only has a single life and health pickups are limited, having Medics on your team becomes a lot more important, and Spies become incredibly lethal when played correctly. It’s a mode that rewards skill. On the other hand, I could do without the random shuffling of teams - it makes it hard to plan strategy when all you have are 5 seconds at the start of the round to decide on class makeup.

Badwater Basin

This is probably my new favourite map. It’s a payload map much in the vein of Goldrush, but much more open - there are tons of alternate routes making it great for ambushing while both attacking and defending. There aren’t too many chokepoints, so BLU tends to have an easier time than it does on other maps like Dustbowl and Goldrush.

Class-specific stuff

The Pyro is still my most-played class (although how much of that is because of achievement farming, I’m not sure), but these days I’ve been trying to avoid picking it, if only because it’s starting to seem to me that Pyros have a fairly low skill ceiling. Adding the air blast to the regular Pyro has added some new capabilities (in particular the ability to blow attackers or defenders off a control point, and reflect projectiles), but his combat strategy is still entirely limited to ambushing - head-on encounters rarely seem to go well. So I’ve been trying some other classes.

I’m having a lot of success playing Heavy, which is a lot harder than trailers would have one believe - you need to be completely aware of your surroundings at all times, pick targets carefully and know when to pull back (before you take too much damage or before your ammo runs out). I’ve only earned one of the unlocks so far (the Sandvich) and it can be useful if the team’s Medic is busy somewhere else and I need to heal up after retreating from an attack. However, the shotgun is arguably the more useful weapon in most circumstances.

I’ve also been playing Soldier a lot more. This class gets a reputation as one based on spam and luck (lol critrawkets, etc) but if you ask me the distance between an expert Soldier and a novice Soldier is greater than that between an expert Pyro and a novice Pyro. Good Soldiers know to aim ahead of their opponents and take advantage of juggles, use the mobility afforded by their rocket jumping to attack from unexpected angles and retreat from battles, and most importantly to make their shots count (given that their reload time is so long compared to most other classes). I can’t say I’ve mastered any of these skills, but I have been trying.

On a final note, the Spy. Playing Spy is amazingly fun when you get it right (like in Arena matches like I mentioned earlier) but when you get it wrong it can be amazingly discouraging. I’m alright with getting discovered by a nosy Pyro who suddenly appeared around the corner, but when your primary weapon - the instant-kill backstab - fails to register half the time there’s clearly a problem. Sometimes it’s because the stab doesn’t register as a backstab, but most often it’s because of the laggy backstab animation you get if you’re too close to the enemy. I know the Spy is arguably the class with the highest skill ceiling, but this stuff even bites players who have far more Spy experience than I do.

The other thing I’ve been doing recently is keeping track of King of Fighters XII news - but that’s a topic for another post.

I spent most of the day at PAX today, since I’d never been to a gaming convention and there were a few games I wanted to check out. I actually didn’t get to play too many of them (the lines were way too long for me to be standing around) but I did get a reasonable idea of how some of the games I’m looking forward to are shaping up.

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…of why I play the airblast Pyro in Team Fortress 2.

The backburner can be great fun in pure ambush play, but the ability to just run up to a control point and BLOW PEOPLE OFF IT is just too awesome. Bonus points if said point is suspended over an instant death pit :D

Valve is holding its third Team Fortress 2 free weekend this upcoming weekend - I would strongly encourage anyone with a decent PC to check it out. It’s easily become my favourite multiplayer pastime.

On top of that, it looks like they’ve been giving out guest passes for the game, and I have one that entitles the recipient to three days of free TF2. I’m putting it up for grabs here, so if anyone wants it, let me know!

(If you want to know what I mean by “decent PC,” the system requirements for TF2 are located here: http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=440&cc=US)

Meet the Sandvich!

(No, that is not a typo)

The Heavy update has finally arrived, and I took the opportunity to put a few hours into the game to see what had changed. I’ve already seen Heavies running around with all three unlocked weapons, so the achievements are definitely quite reasonable this time around.

I haven’t tried Arena Mode yet, although I will eventually. I did get to play a few rounds on Badwater Basin, the new payload map. I like the fact that there are now several side passages and back alleys that I can rely on for my Pyro ambushing. On the other hand, it seemed like the last cap was just as entrenched as the last cap on Goldrush tends to get on full servers. Time will tell, I suppose.

I didn’t see any servers running cp_steel, which was a little surprising, given that it was a community map that was overwhelmingly recommended to Valve for inclusion in the update. I did, however, see my TF2 client either crash or boot me out of the server I was playing in for no apparent reason. Others seem to be having similar problems - a patch will be needed.

Still, the abundance of Heavies means ample opportunities to get those Medic achievements - or improve my Spy skills.

On an unrelated note, I nabbed the PC version of Bionic Commando: Rearmed off Capcom’s digital store last week, and so far I have to say it was worth the money. I never played the original NES Bionic Commando, but this seems to be a decent recreation (although by comparing footage of the NES version to the remake it looks like some of the physics might be different). On top of that, the developers have taken a page out of Portal’s book and added challenge rooms for people to prove their mastery of the bionic arm.

Also, because I turned on my Wii for the first time in weeks and noticed that Mega Man was available on the Virtual Console, I bought it, and played it for a few minutes. First impressions: this game is just as challenging as the Internet says it is.

The next TF2 update is inbound!

The inclusion of cp_steel is very welcome, but I’m wondering what this ‘new game mode’ and ‘five new arenas’ are all about. Hopefully it’s not something retarded like a deathmatch mode.

Then again, that would filter out all the idiots who pick Sniper and hang out on the 2fort balcony all the time…tough choice.

As for the Heavy unlocks, hopefully they won’t be something as overpowering as the Pyro’s backburner. I’m more or less resigned to the fact that there will be class spam until people get their unlocked weapons, but that gives me an incentive to play some of the Heavy’s counter-classes until it dies down :)