There's a lot of strategy in sniper vs sniper play, but in a match scenario, both snipers rarely have the time to sit there fake scoping each other. Usually one sniper will attempt the fast shot (high risk high reward) and if they miss the other sniper will kill them.

It's basically up to you which one you choose. If you're confident you just shoot the guy in the head, since it's a hitscan weapon and technically the other sniper has no control over if you hit or miss your shot (players can dodge projectiles but if a hitscan is on his head there's nothing he can do regardless of how much he mashes his strafe and crouch keys).

Still, in a match scenario, overheals play a bit part. Snipers sometimes have to charge their shots, otherwise the enemy sniper can receive a 150 damage headshot and go get another overheal. This kind of eliminates a lot of the sniper dueling strategies as they are all about getting that instant headshot, although it doesn't completely eliminate it as if you can quick HS your opposing sniper, you can move forward or shoot a different target as it takes time for him to get a fresh overheal.

It is generally a lot different to a 1v1 sniper duel in some server, but some of those skills can still be utilized in matches at the right moments.

Firstly you need to realise that a negative mentality has probably cost your team a number of losses. It only takes one person with a negative attitude to bring the whole team down, even slightly, which could cause a couple of missed shots or a bad decision, cause a round loss which loses you a game.

Secondly you need to realise that while you play this game competitively, you also play for fun. Stop taking things so seriously! People make mistakes and while it's frustrating for you and your team members, you need to let people make mistakes.

I used to play on a team with a guy called Boomting (otherwise known as Josh / Joske). He was one of the biggest ragers / trolls in the European scene. Playing with him was a nightmare but he was such a skilled demoman that we had no choice but to continue with him in our team. After years of putting up with shit we decided we had to change his mentality.

I asked him to try something. When he got killed, I wanted him to credit his opponent rather than blame himself or his team. He gave it a go. I remember the difference this made. He would get killed and instead of, "WHAT THE FUCK? SOMEONE FUCKING PROTECT ME?!?", it turned into, "Omg, this guy just got an absolutely amazing meatshot on me... that was amazing!".

It kind of put a positive spin on moments that would have been shit for us. Hearing our team mate struggle puts us in a bad mind state, but crediting the opponents instead of blaming himself / us didn't effect us in a negative way. If anything, it added a few 'lulz' to our mumble during games. Our matches became less stressful, and we started to perform a lot stronger.

Now it sounds like you're also kind of causing arguments or rage in comms, so I'd suggest trying that methods yourself. Even if your team are raging, just laugh about it in your head, and never say a bad thing on your comms, only credit people. If a scout jumps in, kills your medic around 4 of your team, then it was the scout who was amazing... not your team who were shit. Adopt that mentality and the game can become a LOT more enjoyable. It's all about being the bigger man. Sometimes you will want to shit talk, but you just have to hold it back and try to keep your team's positive mentality.

Honestly, people underestimate mentality in gaming, but notice how a sniper who misses 6 shots in a row will also miss the 7th, but the sniper that just hit 3 headshots in a row will hit the next 5 and destroy the whole team. It's simply because they KNOW they are going to hit the next shot, whereas the previous guy is trying too hard to hit because they missed so much.

On a different note. At my last job a new apprentice kid started. While digging around in the cupboards in the office I found this copy of Windows 95. Brand new and unopened copy in its box. I put it on his desk and said, "So do you remember using this?".

He replied, "I was born in 1995".

It blew my mind and that was the day I realized I'm old.

Age: 28
WON ID: 5061
Steam ID: 0:1:65739

I've been doing this gaming thing for quite a while now ;o

- Game runs faster (less demanding on hardware so more FPS).

- Possibility of higher refresh rates (on CRT monitors and even some LCD) making game smoother.

- Old school preference (some people like the stretched view playing with 4:3 on a widescreen monitor).

I don't use a low resolution anymore as it just looks horrible on the larger monitors we have today, but having ridiculously high FPS is one of my priorities in a gaming setup. Luckily TF2 is quite old so my average hardware is always around the 300fps mark anyway, but playing other games like Battlefield, I'm very tempted to drop the res to get the smoothness.

Having limited champions available to you is actually a benefit, not a drawback.

If you had access to every champion, you would be rubbish at almost all of them. By having to save up points, it means you get more playtime with each champ you own and gradually build up you knowledge of champions one by one as you buy them. There's just too much to take in at once if you have access to all of them.

I'd hate to be playing a ranked game with a dude who's just paid real money for all of the champions.

The business model is good tbh. You _can_ play the game completely for free, but there is a decent advantage in paying a small amount of real money. For example, buying a set of rune pages is almost essential and you will probably want to buy a couple of extra champions at some point. This still doesn't add up to much money, not more than you would pay for a game in the store.

So it means people can either play completely for free, and be a bit behind.
Or you can pay around the same that you would pay for a game in the store.

More importantly, it means that I could try the game first for free and if I didn't like it, I didn't lose anything.

Scouts are the best and most effective death match class, and soldiers are a counter to the scout.

However...

The only reason why soldier's are a counter to the scout is because of their max HP when combined with a medic.

In an unhealed scout vs soldier fight, a scout should probably win it (not all the time, but let's say in a best of 100, the scout would probably win slightly more fights). Stripping 200 HP off a soldier is quite easy while stripping 125 health off a scout is still pretty much just as difficult as killing an overhealed scout.

When both classes are overhealed, the advantage swings in the soldier's favor as he gains more HP from the overheal. It is extremely difficult for a scout to take down a 300 HP soldier before a soldier can take down a 185 HP scout.

You can kind of apply the same logic to the Heavy. An unhealed Heavy is weak as shit but pump him up to 450 HP and suddenly he's a huge threat on the battlefield.

Thanks for the link! I had a whale of a time!

Subscribed.

Casting from STV ensures absolutely no interference from spectators. Even casters could potentially ghost for a friend or team. Needs to be eliminated especially when money is involved. A fair game is a good game.

Not only that, but you actually have a much more complicated setup. You have to delay mumble comms for a mumble cast (if people don't want to watch the stream but want to listen to the cast and watch from STV).

Matches can't be played on 12-14 man servers as many casting teams use 3 people. This could cause delays. Also more players on the servers potentially cause additional lag, even if it's fractional. Probably more importantly, what happens if 5 different commentating organisations wish to commentate the same match, each with three man crews. It simply wouldn't be possible so some teams would have to go onto STV anyway.

There are advantages as you've mentioned and many more, such as being able to move directly to specific players with that go to command, however I don't think they are such a big deal and it's good for the scene to have consistency in the casting, whether it's the big casting organisations, or just some random casting on their own stream.

gravelpit is a great map. The problem is it is completely different to the rest of the map pool. Every other map is about long term consistently over the course of the map to determine the winner, where as Gpit is usually about a single play. There can often be no recovery after a mistake.

One could look at that and say that is a huge test of skill to be the team that never makes a mistake, while you can also look at it and say it's a bit of a lottery because mistakes are common in TF2. Medic drops uber on granary? You might lose a couple of capture points but be able to claw it back. If your medic drops uber and you lose that fight on gpit, you have something like an 85% chance of losing that round within the next minute (random figures are fun).

This changes the emphasis of a match from the winner being a consistent and smart team over a period of 30 minutes or 5 rounds, to being the team than can make a single play on two rounds. I think it's good, it's just a different type of skill. Should it be in the map pool? Depends. Gpit can provide a lot of upsets, but are they for the right reasons?

Competitive BF3 died the day it was released. There is no spectator mode, so it couldn't be a proper eSport title. Not only that, but different game modes were being played in a competitive setting. 5vs5 infantry, 8vs8 conquest, 4v4 rush, 16vs16 conquest. The whole community was divided, no standard mode was set for a long time and still isn't.

Multiplay supported it at i45 and then they realized they had to commentate it by utilizing capture cards in the player's PCs. It was way more hassle than it should have been and while they did have a tournament at i46, they didn't have a grand final on the main stage.

Battlefield 4 does contain a spectator mode. EA / Dice have listened to the flaws in Battlefield 3 but they simply couldn't code a spectator mode into their game retrospectively. However, Battlefield 4 will probably suffer from a lot of the competitive woes of BF3. There will be no standard competitive mode for a long time after the game is released. Top teams like to play an infantry style but then... why wouldn't you just go play CoD or CS:GO?

BF4 should be fun, but competitive BF3 at the moment is just a group of people attempted to stay fresh at the game ready for BF4's release (in hope that it becomes a popular eSport). It does have the potential to do so but it depends on a lot of factors.

Haha thanks guys.

There is a version on our YouTube channel (one on Ruwin's stream was better), but again it was only a quick jam of the song after one of our casts. That was the first time and this was the second time I've done it live on a stream. It's nearly as hard to sing as Slin's ... *ahem*

http://www.youtube.com/arxandbeta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_EtjMZAABw

Sometime in the near future I plan on refining it and recording it properly, but I might just be too lazy!

We would love that to be the case but unfortunately it's not going to happen, not for this LAN anyway.

There would be other cheaper options to consider first, such as making gamers play with 'in ear' headphones and then using military helicopter pilot sound mufflers (or whatever they are called). Basically they block outside sounds, but even that wouldn't work as commentator sounds could still be picked up through a player's microphone (if they wanted to set it up like that). Would still need an element of trust.

I mean technically, we could try and provide them to the players as a community, taking the matters into our own hands. Of course that would require us funding 12 sets of high quality 'in ear' headsets and the sound blockers on top. There's no reason for Multiplay to deny us using them as gamers bring their own headsets to the stage anyway.

However until then, commentators simply need to be careful about what they say and concentrate on post action analysis. Sure it means the cast might not be as technically interesting, but the live audience usually make up for it with their passion and enthusiasm providing us with a great show.

http://www.youtube.com/user/arxandbeta

Or a personal account (has other games on there)

http://www.youtube.com/user/acidrenix1