Lazytown; Lazyday, Lazynite: Team Fortress

Think of a map, a 5cp map.

Ensure it consists almost entirely of chokes between each point, ideal for spamming. Now set it to 32-man. Now make it insta-spawn. Make sure crits are allowed.

Congratulations, you may have thought of Lazytown on the GFTO server.

Spamtastic!!!!!!

This map is one of the most chaotic, spam-filled, manic maps out there, I’m sure. Yet I play it all the time. It has a daytime version, Lazyday, and a night time version, Lazynite.

Most of the time I play Demoman. The map is made for Demomen. We can sticky trap the choke points and spam our grenades through them. With an uber we can wipe out an engie nest and with a kritz, well just go for it. It’s a good map for Engineers too, if they’re fine about constant building destruction. Engineers are vital, two is really the bare minimum, unusual – normally two is the maximum that any team needs on a map. But this map is so spammy, dispensers are essential to dispense ammo and due to the instaspawn, teams need to be teleported to the front line at top speed to hold positions. The only class which really has difficulty is the Scout. Flanking opportunites are a problem and they are easily taken out by the large number of sentry guns and spamming Demomen and Soldiers.

The extreme ebb and flow of the game is marked too. I suspect here, that the server I play on benefits from the majority of players having got many hours of TF2 play under their belts, much gained on the Lazytown map. Without the co-ordinated attacks that you can get with experienced players, the map would just end in a defensive stalemate. As it is, one moment you can be about to cap final point, the next a couple of well-timed ubers from the opposition could find you driven back to defend your last. Games can go on for a long time.

I’m not sure if it’s improving my game much. I do think I’m getting better at dodging because of all the flying grenades and rockets. Also at bouncing grenades round corners.  And at timing detonating sticky traps; just as ubers wear off for instance. And at spamming. Always spamming. It’s a map where no-one is annoying because everyone is.

A TF2 Grand Finale and a LoTRO Christmas Party.

Had a fully fun packed evening yesterday.

It started with my kinship’s online Yule Party. We have one every year (obviously). To mitigate our geeky sadness, we actually have a real life one too, or at least those local to London. We meet in a pub in for an afternoon drinking session; this year, finishing off in a local Indian restaurant. Pleasant.

Anyhow, to allow the spreading of Yuletide cheer amongst all the kinship, we have our online party, hosted by the Officers in our kinhouse; the Stoop in the hobbit homestead in the Shire. This year one of the kin would be performing a poem, a quiz was planned then two raffles with fireworks afterwards. And, as is traditional we,the Officers, would be wearing identical and ridiculous outfits, this year a white cloak, an unflattering green trouser suit effort and a rather peculiar red and white checked tassled hat (Turbine cannot design hats).

Hats.

This conveniently and coincidentally leads me to the other part of my evening, TF2. Originally the evening had been free and I’d been looking forward to an evening of just LoTRO frolics.

But no, Thursday evening turned out to be the date of the Season 10 ETF2L Grand Finale between Infused.Tt and Epsilon eSports. The readership may recall, assuming they’ve been reading that long and that their memories have held out sufficiently, that these were the same two teams that met in the final at i43 in August. This is because there are only two teams that play TF2 in the Premiere Division. No. I lie. I am funny. Really there are eight(ish), counting drops. It just turned out that, again, these were the teams that made it through.

Anyhow, this was happening, and it was a fair bet that with these teams and at this level, there’d be some excellent play plus the game Casters were known to be good. So, both laptops came out. The VanillaTV Stream went on one plus the chat channel, on the other I booted up LoTRO and partied.

And the party was good; and as for TF2, three maps were played. On the first, cp_Badlands, it initially looked as if Infused were heading for a steamrolling, but they managed to pull themselves back in a fantastic comeback (simultaneous to the Stream crashing and the screen going black for everyone) and eventually won 4-3 with a Golden Cap. Game-on. Epsilon took the next map, cp_snakewater 0-5, so it was on to the third, cp_gullywash. Again this was tightly fought,…until, until, until during the dying moments of the last match, Epsilon brought on two Heavies, or so I’m told. My Internet chose this moment to disconnect. When I returned, the TF2 world was in turmoil. Only one Heavy is allowed in comp play. So was it cheating? Was it all part of a desperate plot (not sure by whom)? Did Heavy no.2 have chance move or shoot; if he didn’t he sort of didn’t count. How much damage did Heavy no.1 do/take; if it was the same as a scout, well he sort of was one then. It was obvious the League admins couldn’t make an immediate decision, tapes would have to be scrutinised and either the final result upheld or an additional Golden Cap played.

Edit: at time of posting, it looks like the result has been upheld and Epsilon are the winners. Whatever, there was good play from both sides and either team would have been a worthy winner.

Trying League of Legends

I quote: A good ratio is 150 creeps by 20-25 minutes, If I get a good lane when I play AD carry (MF <3), I have around 175-200 by that time, which equals around 220 AD from full AD builds. If you get the metagame rolling (meaning an actual good toplaner like Garen) everyone should have that farm, even the mid, theres no excuse. Jungle gets a freebie, Support will get a /ignore when he exceeds the 30 J

It’s an extraction from a thread on the WDG  forum about playing League of Legends.

And it’s incomprehensible (sorry Karthus).

So it was obvious that I had to give it a go.

LoL is f2p, and the nearest thing to my current playing experience, is PvP in LOTRO or Rift. Basically you control a Champion with various skills/spells/attributes/items. And you fight, on your own or with others, either other player-controlled Champions or bots; you can fight with bots as well.  The Champions are reinforced by a number of NPC minions who carry out most of the basic fighting. Your goal is destroy enemy turrets placed in paths, called lanes, and eventually the enemies Nexus, all the while gathering gold and experience points.

But of course there is more to it than that.

I worked my way through the two tutorials. Then decided to try a co-op game with all bots. Except I didn’t. I first cottoned that they might be real people alongside me, when they seemed to be in discussion, and only the opposing Champions were called Something-bot. I was playing something called Fiddlesticks that appeared to be a kind of undead thing, chosen at random and in slight panic in the few seconds we were given to prepare at the start. And I seemed to be in the wrong lane. Fortunately, having done the tutorial, I knew what one of the others meant when he said

‘Berathe, you need to go to the top lane’

I might be clueless, but I was obedient too. So I went.

After that, things happened but it seemed to go. I was with another Champion; we sort of managed with the help of the first player, who ever so often left his lane to wade in. I clicked buttons, bought random items at the shop and died a lot.

Two champions, one turret, lots of minions

We finished victorious (I suspect this is usually the case against bots). My associates gg’d (good gamed) each other, so it seemed my total ineptitude hadn’t ruined the game.

Anyhow, for the next few games, it’s been all bots. I played one co-op with WDG people which gave an indicationof what the game’s potential and one where we went against other players; we lost but it wasn’t particularly well-matched, our levels were all over the place. I’m still working out my playstyle; in MMOs I’ve tended towards tanks. So far, it seems to be tank/heal/support.