Professionals Have Standards

In case anyone's wondering why I haven't streamed any gaming lately, it's because I've been busy with a few subbing projects and also because I've been playing Team Fortress 2 again. But don't worry, I'll get back to streaming eventually.

Harassing me in chat about it may or may not influence when I stream. Sending me cookies will definitely have an influence.

Speaking of Team Fortress 2, it's now free to play on Steam. I'd recommend that anyone who likes FPSs check it out as it's the best multiplayer shooter I've played. Just go download Steam, create an account, and you'll be able to download and play the game completely free.

I've been having mixed feelings about the game going free, though. On one hand, it's nice having more players since that makes it easier to find a populated server with the game type I want. But on the other hand, there's been a marked increase in the number of players who have no clue what they're doing. And they have no excuse for this as there's an offline training mode. In particular, the number of people playing medic and instead of healing, they try to kill people with their crappy needle gun, has gone way up.

One thing that made me facepalm especially hard was a capture point match in the Gravelpit map where I was on the Blu team. Now, the Blu spawn point for this map is back down two long tunnels, the entrances to which are raised so that only scouts, soldiers, and demomen can even get into them. And then at the end are the gates to the spawn area, which the Red team can't go through. Blu team is supposed to go through these tunnels, drop into the main map, and try to capture the points while Red defends them.

So I start the match, and what do I see? Two engineers immediately run out and start building turrets and dispensers right outside the spawn room door. This is completely useless because the turrets don't have long enough range to shoot someone even if they're pressed up against the spawn area gates and inside the spawn room is a supply cabinet that instantly refills all health and ammo. I don't even...

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