ubercharged.net

Team Fortress 2’s most recent update came and went with a host of changes, some obvious and some unfathomable to the average code-illiterate gamer. Among these was the removal of the backburner’s bonus health, a move that’ll surely be the source of much praise and condemnation in the future.

Personally, I approve of this. I loved playing the Pyro a long time before all those fancy achievements, before the airblasts and crits from behind. The only reason I really needed to play that class was its unique ability to swiftly turn the opposing team into delightful screaming bonfires. True, the Pyro is fragile but his speed compensates, allowing him in and out of confrontations with more ease than the slower classes. As a matter of fact, the Pyro’s relative flimsiness is part of the excitement. Can I maneuver my way through enemy fire and light them up like marshmallows on a stick, or will I be ignobly ground into a greasy red paste?

But this is all besides the point. Whether or not the masses that play TF2 approve or otherwise, the health bonus is gone with only a single line marking its departure.

“Removed health bonus from the Backburner”

Nevermind the fact that gamers have been constantly arguing over how the Pyro is over/under-powered, from the way that line sounds, it’s as if Valve did nothing more than tidy up the living room and left a note on the mirror about getting more juice from the store. On reflection, perhaps it is like that. How much of a difference does 50 health here or there make? Maybe you’ll survive a little longer, or maybe you’ll explode into wet chunks five seconds sooner. But whatever happens, you’re still back in action after another few seconds.

So the next time you take a rocket to the face, just suck it in. Pick that flamethrower back up because, health bonus or not, the earth won’t scorch itself.

Here at Ubercharged we all eat, sleep and breathe Team Fortress 2 on a daily basis. We love the game so much we’ll gladly digest any new maps or tactics that come our way, until we can reach the level where a whole team of enemy Pyros doesn’t even scare us when we’re playing spy. And, to perhaps inflate my own ego and those of a few others slightly, the Ubercharged contributor is perhaps the pinnacle of all that. We hunt round for the best videos and tips, nitpick the slightest bit of the game because we love it and want to make it better, and read anything and everything that could help up. With this knowledge and power, you’d think having a contributor on your team would be awesome, right?

WRONG.

You may wonder why, but there’s many a reason, and perhaps the main one is this – We’re insane. You’ve already seen hilariously odd articles on the site about annoying Taxi rides, and you’ve also seen attempts to rewrite rock classics. Yet it’s not just what we write, it’s also what we look like and how we act. Take a look at these two crazy characters…

Ugh! The inherent fanboyism! The odd behavior! That first guy even has a look of madness in his eyes, so much so I wouldn’t want to meet him down a dark alley… Or a particularly light one, to be honest. What this all means is that if you meet us in a game, there’s a high chance we’re going to start spouting random nonsense or inherent rants down the microphone, until you reach for the mute button and hope to god we leave you alone. A terrifying thought.

But already I can hear you shrugging your shoulders and going “Meh”, because you can put up with these oddities in return for our skills being used for your team gain. That’s all well and good, but there’s a flaw to this train of logic – Our awesomeness in any situation is going to make you look bad. Seriously, by the time you leave the attacking spawn on Dustbowl, an Ubercharged contributor has already killed the whole enemy team, capped both points, and then killed the enemy team AGAIN in humiliation time. That’s because we know more than you do via our encyclopedic knowledge, discussing stuff in the super secret contributor forum and using what we learn without the aid of a single glitch or exploit. Well, maybe one or two glitches and exploits. But we only use them rarely. As in, twice per game.

Indeed, the only time our skills might be hindered is if the team we’re on is rubbish, but that brings me to the final reason why you really don’t want us on your team, and don’t want to be awful if we are – We can write about it. Oh yes, every stupid mistake you make or every stupid plan that’s devised can be shaped by us into another epic rant, belittling you and telling you to stop being such a blithering idiot at the same time. If you see an Ubercharged contributor, you’d better be on the top of your game, never switching classes to try and match them or acting like a crab for fear of being attacked about it. Even if you manage to pull off some skill and make the team into a epic mass of destruction, don’t expert to read about it here, because honestly… Who’s going to read an article that’s praising something? That’s just crazy talk.

So, there you go – The Ubercharged contributor. Mad, bad, and infinitely better than you. Maybe. Or maybe not.

I posted a while back about Nerf Now, and the cool stuff that was going on comic strip wise with TF2.

It veered off onto a Starcraft tangent for a while, but it’s firmly back in Team Fortress 2 land with a story arc about the Pyro doing some “achievement grinding”…

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Which brings interesting new perspectives to the whole “is Pyro male or female?” debate. Go read the comics, you’ll get what I mean.

And no, if you don’t get it. DO NOT ask here for an explanation. Go talk to your parents or something.

“Last night while I was sleeping my little brother was mad at me so he logged on to my steam and used cheats or sumthin and now when i logged on is say i was banned or something i’m so mad becuz i knew he’d do this and now he used hacks and i get banned i didn’t use chets he did so unban me plz VAC”.

I can’t even begin to count how many posts like this I’ve seen on the Steam forums. I’ve seen everything from little brothers installing hacks to parents downloading viruses with hacks. My favorite “unban plz” post began with its author denying having used cheats to saying “ill never hack again im sry and i’ve learned mylesson just please unban me VAC”.

Judging by these posts, a lot of people seem to think that VAC is a person or company (spoiler alert: it’s not). For those of you who don’t know, VAC is a program designed to detect cheats and dish out bans. Valve very rarely updates VAC, so one could be forgiven for thinking that there are lots of undetected cheats (you’d be wrong; never overestimate the skill of a bunch of twitchy aimbot programmers).

Lots of people don’t like the fact that VAC uses delayed bans, meaning that you could be banned weeks after you first cheated. Delayed bans are ultimately the best way to hand out bans because they keep hackers guessing as to what cheats are detected and which are not.

Now, you might be thinking “clubtheseals, you shining example of all that is good in this world, what about people whose accounts are hijacked and then get banned?”. It’s quite simple actually, had those people not made themselves vulnerable in the first place, their accounts would probably not have been hijacked. I estimate that 90% of people whose accounts are hijacked gave their information away in some form; a problem easily solved with a little common sense. In the EULA for Steam it says that Valve will never ask for usernames or passwords, yet I’ve read of so many cases where people have responded to emails that say things like “Valve will need your username and password to verify that you own this Stem account” or “To verify that your account was not hijacked, please respond to this email with your username and password”. As long as you’re careful with your information, nothing should happen to your account.

Plain and simple, if you’ve been VAC banned, YOU DESERVED IT. And no, I don’t care if “you accidentaly installed cheats” or if “your account was hacked”.

Engineers are the original zergling plague. Before the medics and pyros were defiling the world with their mass rushes, Engineers have been the haven of clueless n00bs everywhere. (note – n00bs as opposed to newbies. n00bs are idiots. Newbies are still just learning. If this statement annoys you, then YOU are a n00b.)

They are still the secret scourge that no one wants to mention. On any given 24/7, instaspawn, dustbowl or goldrush server that n00bs love to frequent. You will find at least half a million engineers camping it up behind their silly toys. Bunch of stupid, inbred rednecks. Drawling on with their hillbilly accent. To do what? I mean, do they think that they are gonna strike oil with their dispenser and pack up the family and move to Beverley Hills?

NO

Down In Fraggle Rock

You know what the all remind me of? Anyone remember Fraggle Rock? That Muppet kids TV show from the 80s. Well if you don’t, you’re some snotty nosed punk who isn’t worth addressing anyway. Go play some emo crap on your iPod and cut yourself while you’re crying or something. Stupid emo kid…

Anyway, for the rest of you still with me, and not bleeding out to the tune of My Chemical Romance’s greatest hits, you may remember that there were 3 main species in Fraggle Rock: The Gorgs. Big f**kers who thought that they ruled the universe. They lived in a farm house and farmed radishes. The Fraggles themselves – 2 foot high hyper freaks cut in the traditional Muppet style – happy go lucky, fun loving, the usual drill. Annoying as hell now that I look back on it, but they were cool on a Saturday morning when I was seven. Then then were the Doozers…

The Doozers were a sad bunch. Bottom of the food chain. 6 inches tall, toiling day and night to build elaborate structures out of radish sugar. And for what purpose? SO THE FRAGGLES COULD EAT THEM (the structures, not the Doozers). Why the hell would you spend all your time and energy building stuff out of edible, tasty sugar when you share a cave network with a bunch of Fraggles four times you size that loved to chew on them for their afternoon snack?

I mean, you spend ALL your time. EVERY SINGLE SECOND making these elaborate, complex, and large structures. There were even cool trains, and water wheels, and all sorts of cool gizmos. Then they just get eaten by the first Fraggle that comes along?

It actually did get explained in one episode. Basically the Doozers are masochists. They actually WANT the Fraggles to destroy their hard work. Why? So they can build MORE crap. See, they would eventually fill the entire cave with radish sugar modern architecture before long. They NEEDED the Fraggles to clear things out once in a while so they could go on with their lame ass construction efforts.

Any of this starting to sound familiar?

Yes. That is correct. Engineers are all a bunch of sad, lame ass Doozer wannabes. Everyone else in the game is a god damn Fraggle. You know what Fraggles did to Dozer constructions? THEY EAT THEM AS SNACKS. That’s how pathetic you are. (I don’t know where the Gorgs fit in, maybe the analogy is stretching a little thin here. Possibly the Heavy is a Gorg. There was also a dog that chased Fraggles as well, I’m not sure how that works either).

Building away. BANG BANG BANG with your stupid little wrench. Then some half-talent light weight spy comes along and you’re all like “Spay sapping ma sentry!” and falling all over yourself to whack the thing off before the spy (obviously) knifes you in the back. But in secret, you WANT that spy to break your toys. You CRAVE the destruction. Why? So you can just go ahead and build MORE CRAP. If the Spies and demomen and soldiers and ubered pyros weren’t cleaning up your garbage, you’d have nothing to do.

So please, either you want to be a silly little Doozer, or you are one of those pathetic emos I was talking about earlier. You need to get schooled up on the realities of Fraggle Rock, and how they apply to TF2.

Be a Fraggle. Don’t be a Doozer
(Let me know if you figure out how to be a Gorg – that would be pretty cool. Even Uncle Travelling Matt would be fun as well)

It’s amazing what a good dose of timing, a great deal of fire, and a bucketload of kick-ass rock and roll can do.

Love it.

Props to Fragalishus for being awesome.

Some people review video games, some people review movies, I am reviewing this site. First, I’d like to start off with a review of this site’s contributors.

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madlep: Our lord and savior. Without him there would be no ubercharged.net. He’s a superb ranter, I might add.

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clubtheseals: A maniacal prick who just won’t stop releasing his particular brand of TF2 hate. clubtheseals seems like he doesn’t give a damn about your opinion; oh wait, it’s because he doesn’t.

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Ryebread: A quite skilled writer with a knack for TF2 narratives. Ryebread>clubtheseals.

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Josh60502: A skilled writer who appears to form the middle ground between psychotics (*cough* clubtheseals *cough*) and people on “happy pills and hippie meditation” (apparently madlep).

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Spooner: A promising ranter with aspirations to garner the most hate (he wishes).

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theminipanda: A newer writer who has an interesting take on the mental state of the TF2 characters.

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supremesonic: A great writer, but he plays TF2 on Xbox (what a poor, poor soul). He has some really great articles, particularly his guide to playing the scout.

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General Balls: A masterful writer with great ideas on playing the soldier among other things.

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TPMX: Not much to say but he is a good writer. A very good writer.

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[NerdBomb]: An apparent fan of the sniper who writes much better than clubtheseals.

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/D/irection: A wonderful writer who easily surpasses clubtheseals in terms of writing ability.

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luke: A legend (or he deserves to be) on ubercharged. He is responsible for the ubercharged server.

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And now for a review of the site itself. ubercharged.net is roughly the greatest thing to happen to the internet in recent memory. Were it not for ubercharged.net, the world would be a much different place; people would mope through life, knowing that there was nothing of meaning. Until one fateful day, out of the blue, ubercharged.net was created, giving purpose to a world that had given up on itself.

I’m bringing the crazy back to ubercharged.net -clubtheseals

Spy

Zee Spy seems to eexhibet severe narcissism and is constantly smoking. I would suggest putting him on a Nicotine patch so that he eez also not so ovbious when he changes his deesguise. Also wheen he came een my office he said he borrowed some of zee Scout’s cigarettes and tested positive for Marijuana.

Sniper

Zee Sniper is a tricky case. He seems to still beeleve he eez still een zee wilderness and has abnormal habets such as urinating een jars, refusing human contact, and on some cold nights, sleeping in the corpses of dead Heavies.

Engineer

Za Engineer zeems to hav a very extreem case of paranoia and in some instances seems to know eexactley when a spy eez “sappin’ his sentry” (on a side note thees eez very funny to watch). More experiments are needed.

Heavy

Zee Heavy’s problem eez more obvious then zee others. Eet is een his name. He refuses to eat a proper diet and also seems to theenk hees gun eez alive. I am in development of a medi-gun that weil convert zee Heavy’s cellulite eento Ubercharge.

Demoman

He Zeems to have a severe drinking problem and constantly has a whisky bottle close by. He sometimes weil start screaming profanities at inaminate objects when very intoxicated and when tested had a blood alchohol level of .25 and said he was “A wee bit tipsy”

Pyro

Zee Pyro could not get heez mask off or talk legibly so I could not give him a proper diagnosis. He also could not zee very well with heez mask on so he could not write it down either. all he deed was draw pictures of heem hitting people weith a eenstrument of some kind.

Soldier

Zee Soldier said he would not be examined because I was a “Crazy Nazi Doctor” and would brainwash him. So I did zee diagnosis weith a sock puppet.

Scout

Zee Scout is very tweetchy and zeems to suddenly yell out “Need a dispenser here” at regular intervals. He will sometimes start running een place and check an eenvisible watch. I would suggest putting him on some steroids to help him grow bigger and give him sleeping pills every few meenutes.

And another welcome to theminipanda. A kick ass effort detailing the physical and mental health related shortcomings of the TF2 crew – especially so seeing as he’s only 13. Man, I wish I could come up with this kind of stuff at that age. I have trouble at 30 – madlep

Balakirev’s Volga Boatmen, it is tune of deep sea currents. When I listen, it moves through me like mighty vessel on foggy seas. Then, there is Khachaturian and his Sabre Dance, light and fast like duelling bumblebees. For my ears, it is like spring rain on young grass, melting snow and turning lands green again.

But in this whole world, there is no song like yours. When your barrels spin and hum that single high note, it goes straight past my ears and into my soul. Then, I feel bliss, like my heart is lifted into clouds. That is not your full song though, oh no, and it is not for me alone to hear. You are minigun, Sascha, a weapon that weak men cannot carry. Among all other guns, You are like star singer of opera, and it would be tragedy not to share your voice.

That is why I am here. I am an expert of weapons only the mightiest may wield, and I bring my skills and strengths to make you shine. Only I can make your barrels turn; only I can hold you as you should be held. When gates open and men are called to battle, I am the one who can bring you to my foes. They will be your audience.

I am not quick man, in mind or body, so I am not always first to fight or perform graceful leaps. But that is okay, is fine. It is like in music, every note doesn’t come at same time. First, there is beginning with little pistol tunes. Then come the other sounds, the pows of rifles and booms of rockets; wrenches clank and fire sizzles. After all that, it is time for climax; it is time to enter, you and I.

Begin! Start your song and let cowards know what comes! Let angels hear and come to pick up those who fall! Let bullets be your drums and punch out your rhythm! Send forth your notes, and we see who lives or dies!

And through all this, I am behind you, lifting you and pointing you to where cowards be, so you may test them with bullet notes. On my own, I am not much, just big man with big fists and heavy feet. But together, we turn paths of lesser men. Together, we go only where we want to go. When we move, none can sway us; when we stop, none can shift us. Alone, we are just heavy things, but together, we are strong! Together, we are killers!

Together, we are alive!

I am Heavy Weapons Guy. This is what we do.

While we all love the fact that Valve releases updates for TF2, almost none of us love the resulting mob of achievement grinders. I can see why you would want to go on a server and do nothing but quickly earn these achievements – after all, getting all of them the legitimate way would take too long, and you want to try these new weapons now. Perfectly understandable.

But then there’s the other group – the haters of achievement grinders. The people who mercilessly bash on those who farm for achievements yet ignore the fact that Valve is the one who put them in a situation that would make them want to farm instead of earn. However, I can also understand these people to some degree because if, by chance, they did earn the achievements the right and fair way, they feel their accomplishments aren’t taken seriously by fellow players. I’ll explain: imagine if you trained for years and years and put huge amounts of effort into working out, but got beaten in a race by the guy who started taking steroids a couple weeks ago. What happened to all your hard work? Doesn’t it count for anything? It’s the same thing, more or less, when people who earned achievements legitimately see others carrying new weapons obtained through farming.

Either way, the point we can clearly see here is that there are some serious flaws with the way Valve wants us to earn new weapons. But now what – do we sit here and whine about it like we have been? No, today I’d like to brainstorm ideas with you that could potentially fix this problem. Are they all perfect? As you’ll see, no. But it’s the fact that we’re trying to find ways to improve the updates that’s important. Comment about them all you want – and feel free to offer your own solutions as well.

Solution 1.

Screw earning the weapons. Just give them to us from the get-go.

What about the achievements? They’re still there for the added replay value, but earning them is for fun only – they have no game-changing impact.

Pros of this solution: The number of achievement grinders will be greatly reduced, since there isn’t a very big reason to get them anymore.

Cons of this solution: Hardcore players want something to work towards. The satisfying feeling of earning the achievements through time and effort is gone if they’re just handed to you. If the new weapons are stronger than the old ones, then there won’t be any reason at all to go back to the old weapons (however, this can be fixed by some good weapon balancing on Valve’s part).

Solution 2.

The achievements can only be earned on selected servers run by Valve workers (or at least people Valve gives the rights to).

What about the achievements? They’re still the way you unlock new weapons, but can only be earned on the selected servers, so there might not be as many achievements to earn in the hope that people will quickly cycle through the servers.

Pros of this solution: Achievements can’t be earned on private servers that do nothing but farm for them. Valve workers will make sure that games run smoothly on the selected servers, so the achievements will almost always be earned through fair play.

Cons of this solution: Valve will have a hard time setting up these servers and finding people trustworthy enough to manage them (after all, the administrators can’t all be employees). Eventually someone will find a hack that allows any server to earn achievements. The selected servers will always be packed.

Solution 3.

Same idea as Solution 2, but instead of achievements only being able to be earned on certain servers, they can only be earned on the official maps.

What about the achievements? They remain the way to earn new weapons, but they’ll be harder to obtain on the official maps.

Pros of this solution: Maps like “Achievement Box” will be rendered useless. Valve won’t have to worry about finding people to run selected servers. Many more people will have access to earning achievements, but they won’t have access to an extremely cheap environment to do so.

Cons of this solution: The maps may be different, but the grinding won’t be. People will still set up servers that do nothing but farm achievements, only now they’ll be limited to a few maps – not something that will stop them. The achievement grinding epidemic will only be prolonged due to the official map’s unfriendly layout for the grinders’ purposes.

Solution 4.

Weapons can only be earned in unique single-player stages Valve creates. Think something like “win the bot battle”, or “take out the target”.

What about the achievements? Only for fun and replay value – the new weapons are earned through completing these levels.

Pros of this solution: Achievement grinders will almost disappear completely since weapons aren’t earned in multiplayer at all. Hardcore players will feel satisfied since they need to earn the weapons. TF2 will get a single-player mode!

Cons of this solution: Yeah right. As if Valve wants to spend time developing these stages, or an AI system for the computer-controlled players. You think they take too long with the updates now? It’ll be years before they finish them if this is the course they take.

Solution 5.

Leave everything the way it is. I mean, people still have fun with the game, right?

What about the achievements? Fully grindable.

Pros of this solution: Valve doesn’t have any extra work to do. Yay for them! Maybe now they’ll have time to finish Episode 3…

Cons of this solution: Achievement farming becomes a new favorite pastime, annoying everyone. The structure of TF2 wobbles every time a new update comes around.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is plenty of room for more potential solutions. Please leave a comment with your opinions and ideas.