Video Games Made Quarantine Better

Video games have made quarantine better. Like way, way, way, better. In the world of 2020, where covid-19 is running amok across every nation, every state, and every city, the world of video games has not only become more open and welcoming, but it's made life and quarantine better. 

I'm a pretty busy guy. I have a job, I read lots of books, I write a lot, I have friends and family to attend to, and I play guitar, bass, and piano. So I'm usually short on time most work days. However, the quarantine has really given us all a lot more time. Time to ourselves. In some of these moments I immerse myself in the world of PC video games, and the results are almost therapeutic. 

I only play team based competitive games. I'm a big fan of Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. In addition, I've played some 200 hours on Steam of Valve's Team Fortress 2. I always play the role of support healer, the character that stands back, avoids damage, and doesn't die often, healing the team and keeping them alive. This element of support [they call me Dr. Love] gives me a sense of cooperation, teamwork, and accomplishment that single player games can never provide. Because, as they say, we are all in this together. The best way to win a team-based competitive game [no matter what title it is] is through teamwork, experience, information, communication, and awareness. Ironically, these things are also needed to combat covid.  

The fantasy realities that these games provide gives the player an outlet. An outlet for their frustration, an outlet to escape from their work from home jobs or on site jobs, an outlet away from their friends, families, and coworkers. Aside from the occasional gamer trolls, it's a safe house. It's a happy place. And when I'm just chilling at home at the crib, that's where I want to be. 

How To Be A Great Healer in Competitive Video Games, An Essential Guide

 
Hello, ladies and gents. I've been doing a lot of writing exercises, mostly of a somewhat serious nature. Here I thought I'd lighten the mood up and write about how to be a great healer in competitive video games. 

This guide adheres to any kind of healing in any competitive video game but in this specific context I'm referring to healing in Heroes of the Storm [a Blizzard moba], Team Fortress 2 [class based shooter from 2007], and Overwatch [Blizzard's first-person shooter]. 

First, why would you want to play healers? Well, the reason I play healers is that I just prefer to be the backline of the team, not doing damage, not tanking damage [absorbing damage, and mitigating it], and healing the team, ensuring our victory by making sure that every player gets to survive fights more easily, making the entire team more durable, stronger. 

The other reason is that healers are naturally the playmakers of the team. If you're playing the healer you have the most important job, ensuring everybody's survival, mostly the tanks [the big brutes of games, that can take damage but can't dish it out as much as the DPS], but also the DPS [damage per second, the assassins of the team, getting the kills]. So if you're naturally a leader you'll gravitate towards being a tank or a healer, or if you're not naturally a leader but want to play a leadership role, then you'll gravitate towards being a healer. This is mostly of a personal nature for me, but it applies to other people as well. 

Or, you could want to be a healer because it just fits your personality. I don't have fun playing tanks and assassins, it's not my cup of joe. Girls gravitate more towards tanks and healers in online games, I've noticed, but other times they're on the frontlines getting the kills, so you can never judge a book by its cover. 

Second, it's all about positioning. As a healer, you're supposed to be in the backline of the team, making sure you don't get hit too much, or die very often, if at all. For example, the best thing you can do as a Mercy player in Overwatch is simply to not die very often and keep on healing as much as you can, and damage boosting if need be [don't worry about that for now]. The longer Mercy is alive and keeps healing, the better job she is doing. 

As a Mercy main myself, I've found that the best way for me to maximize my healing with the cadeuous staff is to simply not die. This is harder than hell, as most enemy players will be looking for you, Mercy, throughout the entire round to kill you, so that you can't keep healing. 

The trick is to be ninja-like. The less time the enemy team sees you, the easier it will be for you to survive. In fact, I know that the enemy Mercy is a really good player if I hardly ever see her throughout the entire round. The best way to do this is by using all obstacles in the map to your advantage; walls, monuments, buildings, ally players, and your abilities like your flight L-shift button. It should also be mentioned that you must know how to super jump to be an effective Mercy. To super jump, simply press L-shift and crouch at the same time while flying to an ally, and right before you reach the ally hit the space bar. This will give you a super jump, making it harder for enemies to hit you and making it easier for you to get to places where you can be ninja-like; hide, heal behind walls or around corners, or get to the high ground on maps so you can avoid fire on the ground level. 

Positioning by itself is a very simple concept. But, like playing healers or maining [I only play healers, maining is a term referred to when you only play healing characters as oppsed to tanks or DPS] it's easy to learn but hard to master. Steep learning curve. As a healer this is something you'll work on all the time, always improving upon. You'll never be a grandmaster of positioning as even grandmasters die out of position. 

Third, know your character. This is a given but you'll be surprised to see how many players out there will play their character the wrong way [their own way or just being clueless, which can be misguided and cause more losses in pug {pick up group} games].

There are so many players that think they've got their character down. They have hundreds of hours in the game, they keep perpetually playing the same healer characters, and then they wonder why they keep losing games all the time. Obviously, it's inevitable that sometimes you're going to lose games, but you can mitigate some of the percentages of losses if you simply know your character, so well, that you understand the mechanics of the character better than most of the other healers in your rank. 

How well do you know your character? Well, you simply play a lot of that one character. But that's only the beginning. The flip side is that you have to study up on your character; look up videos on how to play the character better, read forums where lots of different people give insight on how to play the character better, and lastly, learn from your deaths. If you know what keeps killing you and you utilize that knowledge to your benefit, you can lessen the number of deaths that keep happening the same way, and then start to learn more from the more random elements that kill you. Again, a very simple concept. But the meta for knowing your character is steep. 

Lastly, have fun. The whole point of competitive video games is to have fun. Yes, there will always be toxic players [people who can't restrain themselves, take their anger out on the team, cuss people out, are childish and stupid], and throwers [people who purposefully lose games because they're either not good players, or they want to make a point to the team that they're especially toxic] but for the most part, most players play for fun, and they play to win. Keep that in mind. Fun AND winning. Not just winning, not just having fun. The correlation between the two is strong as heck, but it should be noted yet again that if you aren't having fun you should simply log off the game and do something else. Fun is the one thing money can't buy and if you aren't having fun playing healer then you should definitely play a different class [tank/assassins] or take a break from gaming; perhaps go for a nice walk, or enjoy a nice novel. As a healer, your job is the most important to you and the team. With great power comes great responsibility. Use it wisely. 

Medic [from Team Fortress 2 w/ German accent]: Get on the cart dummkopfs!

So you want to form your own esports team

So I've had this idea of going to this nearby pc cafe to play games with friends. Well, I've finally made the plans and I'm having a small meetup with friends (just three confirmed at the moment) at Planet Cyber in Woodland Hills. The initial goal of this was to hang out with my best friends, play pc games, and enjoy each others' company. But this idea has since grown into a bigger idea-what if I could create my own amateur esports and/or competitive team?

This seems super difficult but it is feasible. At the time currently I have two friends who would definitely be down for sure. Four more and we have a competitive Overwatch team to work with. I'm also interested in playing Team Fortress competitively as well, although that game is pretty dead in that aspect. There's other games to think about too, like Heroes of the Storm. I'm pretty good at all these games but we'd probably end up focusing on Overwatch and playing Team Fortress for fun. So the focus would be on those two games.

For the Overwatch team I would main Ana, Mercy, Lucio, and Zenyatta. For Team Fortress I'd play medic but have secondary scout, pyro, and soldier. One of my friends plays a mean Soldier 76. And the other one is a great Winston and Roadhog. These three confirmed friends are all pretty good Team Fortress players. One of them even has like 8000 hours on the game. Wowza!

This is an idea I'll talk about to the guys and see if they would be interested. If not, I can always place an ad on Meetup and find some serious gamers who would be down for this. I think in the long run I will have to end up doing this but because this idea is just in the blueprint stage I will ask the people I know first.

Sounds super fun but it won't be easy finding the right people with the skills and synchronicity for frags and team based fps's. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

See ya later space cowboys

Evolve, Left 4 Dead Studio working on new co-op fps

Evolve was a bit of a failure of a co-op multiplayer experience. Support for Evolve officially ended earlier this year and Turtle Rock studios has moved on to a new IP. It's going to have a dark fantasy vibe.

A studio rep told gamesindustry.biz that they're collaborating with free to play publisher Perfect World Entertainment. Their works include Star Trek Online and Black Light Retribution. He went on to say:

"We are developing a new franchise set in an all new universe that leverages the style of gameplay our community loves and expects from Turtle Rock Studios," according to Phil Robb, the studio's co-founder. "We're focusing on what we do best - heart-pounding moment-to-moment online co-op FPS action, and with Perfect World as our partner, we will always make sure that our players come first by listening to them and growing the game based on how they play and interact over what we hope are many years to come."

Sounds pretty sweet, right?  The President of the company Steve Goldstein also said the game will be focused on co-op play and that it will have a strong dark fantasy element. There will be no zombies nor will it be apocalyptic.

Evolve wasn't a bad game. But it died hard. These are great gaming developers. They created one of the best co-op experiences in gaming-Left 4 Dead. I think this new IP will be pretty great especially since it will be in a fantasy universe. I'm hoping that there's magic and elves and stuff. This new game will be out in 2018 at the earliest. 

Team Fortress vs Overwatch

This has been a big debate even before Overwatch came out. While still in beta tons of people were talking about how Overwatch was going to kill Team Fortress. The truth of the matter is that Tf2 (team fortress 2) is still alive and well-especially with its latest competitive mode update. Blizzard could never deny the fact that Overwatch is heavily influenced by Team Fortress 2. Here I'll talk about what makes the games similar and different, as well as my thoughts on which is the better game.

First, the similarities. Both Tf2 and Overwatch are team-based objective shooters. None have team deathmatch or free for all deathmatch modes. Instead, you play objectives as a team. For instance, you could be delivering a payload, capturing points, or defending points. Tf2 does have a bunch of extra game modes that Overwatch doesn't have. Tf2 has a capture the flag mode as well as this great soccer-like game where you pass a ball to your teammates and throw it into a goal.

Both games feature characters with unique class types and different play-styles. Team Fortess 2 features classes that you would expect in an army: Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, and Spy. They all play like you'd expect them to. The Scout runs fast and shoots a shotgun and uses a bat as a melee weapon. The medic heals. The Sniper snipes.

Overwatch features 22 heroes that are all special snowflakes. Some of them do crazy things that you would never think of on your own. Mercy heals people in the same fashion as the Medic from Tf2. Tracer runs around super fast and shoots fast like the Scout. The tanks which include Zarya, Winston, Reinhardt, and Roadhog are almost like the heavy from Tf2 because of the role they're supposed to fill-take damage and stay alive while the rest of the team takes out the squishes (low health enemies).

Also, both games feature this cartoon-like graphics engine. At first I didn't like the cartoon graphics in either Tf2 or Overwatch. But it's grown on me. I'm now a big fan of that cell-shaded art style. It's a breath of fresh air compared to Call of Duty or Counter Strike. This is where the similarities end.

Now for the differences. Tf2 is a f2p (free to play) game whereas Overwatch has a $40 price tag on pc and a $60 price tag for console. Even though there are more benefits to buying items in Tf2, the thing is you can buy just one 99 cent item and make your account premium just from buying that one item. Then you get all the benefits that come with a premium account which includes a bigger backpack space-really important because you get a lot of items as you continue playing the game. You find items for free just by playing.

Overwatch forces more money on the player and even has a money system where you can buy lootcrates. This gives you random things like skins, voice lines, and sprays for all characters. Not gonna lie, I have bought a couple loot crates but its been worth it. I have some really cool skins that most players don't have. However, you don't have to buy anything because when you level up in the game (a leveling system similar to ranking up in Call of Duty) you get one free loot crate. But as you get higher in levels (I'm level 88) it gets harder to rank up because it takes so many games and xp.

The fact that Tf2 is free definitely made it super popular when it came out. But at the same time last month Blizzard reported that there was more than ten million players on Overwatch. So there's that.

Another major differentiation is the fact that in Overwatch your characters have unlimited ammo. This is almost unheard of in any fps (first person shooter) game. I think this is the first fps I've played that has unlimited ammo. It's amazing but it makes the game a lot less technical than Tf2-which has ammo that you can run out of. Tf2 makes you use your ammo cautiously instead of spamming. You can pick up ammo packs around the map when you run out. This forces the player to learn the ins and outs of every map because you're going to run out of ammo eventually-no matter how good you are. In Overwatch if your healer is doing his job right he can heal the whole team. So you don't need to run to health packs unless your being chased down and need it to survive. 

In addition, Tf2 is more violent. Albeit only a little violent. Sometimes when you take a rocket to the face your body will blow up into little bloody bits. The blood is very mild. This isn't like Doom or GtaV or anything like that. Sometimes the death animations are hilarious. Tf2 is still rated M for mature though. You're going to find a more adult crowd playing this game. Good riddance to all the Cod (Call of Duty) babies. Because the game is so old (2007) the players are all veterans with 7,000 hours of playtime. So nobody's a noob and everybody knows what they're doing. This sometimes isn't the case in Overwatch. 

On the other hand, Overwatch has no blood at all. It's not violent at all other than the idea of shooting guns. It's only rated T for teen. Like that's gonna stop the five year old squeakers though. You're going to find a lot of young kids playing Overwatch-especially during the day.

Now that you know the similarities and differences let me tell you who wins in this death-battle. Despite the fact that I only have 40 hours in Tf2 and 70 hours in Overwatch I think of Tf2 as the better game. It's more technical, has a cooler player-base, and the characters' play-styles are more fun to play-at least for me. Although I jumped on the Overwatch bandwagon hard just like all the other content creators out there in Internetland the main reason I got into competitive fps's is because of Tf2. When Overwatch was still in beta I couldn't play it unless I was at my friends house so I resorted to playing Tf2 because I had heard the games were similar. So I thought if I got really good at Tf2 that I would be able to segue into Overwatch. Which I did. It was a difficult transition at first but I got into the flow of improvement quickly.

You also have to consider the fact that the developers of Overwatch were heavily influenced by Tf2. Some of them were still playing Tf2 during development of Overwatch. In a way you could say that without Tf2 there couldn't be an Overwatch. Or a Battleborn, Paladins, Dirty Bomb, Lead and Gold, etc. It all started with Tf2 back in 2007. At the same time though we have to appreciate what has been given to us by these developers. They've created a great gaming experience that can keep us entertained for years to come. Although Overwatch has taken over the gaming zeitgeist and left Tf2 in the dust they are both excellent games that I will continue to play. You should try them out sometime if you haven't already. These are what great games are made of.

Team Fortress 2 Matchmaking and Competitive Mode Update

Team Fortress 2's latest update launched earlier this month and I finally got around to playing it. Here I'll go into the details of the changes. The update is called Meet Your Match, presumably because you'll be playing up against players of even skills in the new Competitive and Matchmaking modes. The update brings the long anticipated Competitive Mode and replaces Quickplay with an Unranked Casual Mode. Before this update the only way to play Competitive Mode was to get a beta pass from a friend, which thankfully my friend gave me. It was a blast playing that before all these sweeping changes. 

The update also brings us three new community maps-Sunshine, Metalworks, and Swiftwater. There's also four new taunts-three community taunts for Pyro, Spy, and Soldier, and an official taunt for the Scout. There's a lot of general changes-improved UI, replaced sounds, and bug fixes. These can all be found on the Team Fortress 2 website.

Competitive Mode requires a premium TF2 Account. So you'll have to buy at least one item to become a premium member. You can even buy a 99 cent item and you'll be eligible. There's 18 ranks ranging from 'Fresh Meat' to 'death Merchant', and post-match medals.

Now for my personal thoughts on the matter. I feel like Valve made this update because Overwatch is the new hit team-based objective shooter and they feel the need to compete with them. That's a healthy attitude for big gaming companies to be fighting for our attention and wanting us to play their games. However, I feel like this update is too little, too late. TF2 is ten years old at this point and they should've done this update a long time ago. Why did they wait so long? Releasing the update right when Overwatch is still in the eye of the gaming zeigeist seems like a cry for help. However, that being said I do believe TF2 is the better game.

But just because TF2's better than Overwatch doesn't mean that Valve does a better job keeping the game relevant, new, or exciting. Overwatch released its own Competitive Mode and they're already talking about releasing a new hero-Ana.  I feel like Blizzard's dev team for Overwatch is doing more exciting things than Valve is.

The interesting thing about all of this for me is that TF2 is what got me into competitive first person shooters. Before Overwatch was released it was in beta and I never got an invite from Blizzard. My friend is a huge TF2 veteran with some 7,000 total hours played. He showed me the game and I decided to start playing it. I loved the cartoon graphics and the comical death animations. I was hooked. I played TF2 a lot before Overwatch was released. I still do. My exceptional Mercy skills in Overwatch are due to my Medic skills from TF2. When playing Medic and Mercy you have to know the ins and outs of combat positioning. It isn't easy at first and not everyone can master it. But that's the fun of it for me. I also sometimes like to play Soldier, Sniper, and Spy but Medic is my main role. I have tons of fun playing Sniper using the bow and arrow, aka the Huntsman.

I got around to playing the new update today and I gotta say that TF2 is still great. However, I don't think this update is revolutionary for the game and I don't think it will bring in new players. I do think the Competitive Mode is a great idea though. I feel like Valve did the Competitive thing because of the success of competitive modes from CS: GO and Overwatch.

My favorite change is that the medic can now move as fast as the characters he's healing. So I can now move as fast as the Scout when I'm healing him. Pretty sick. I like to play a fairly offensive Medic so this is a change that buffs the heck outta the Medic. 

Lastly, the update is awesome. If you play TF2 I'm sure you've already been playing the new Competitive Mode. If you want to try out a great f2p (free to play) team-based objective shooter that predates Overwatch then this is the game for you. This game was doing what Overwatch does back in the day when I was still a teeny bopper. Now, if you excuse me I have a team to heal.

"Medic!"-My teammates 

Gaming plans

I have some plans for gaming that I'm working on.

Getting on a semi-professional and/or rookie gaming teams
I'm interested on getting on semi-professional gaming teams. Right now I'm in the process of trying out for a smash 4 team. But I'm also interested in joining a team fortress and an overwatch team. I play games so much competitively and I want to get better and keep moving forward with my skills. I know a lot about a plethora of games. Now I want to put my skills to the test and keep improving. It will be great working together with teams and having coordination. Up until now I've mostly been a solo queue type of gamer. I wrote all about what that's like here. As a solo queue player I must say that these are.....trying times. But in all seriousness once I get on a team things will be more difficult because I'll have to play better but I will most likely enjoy it more. Although it seems like a lot of pressure I can handle it. In the past I was on a Starcraft II team called Team Peace and we did scrims twice a week and I even played in a tournament style setting. Good times.

Getting more Twitch viewers
So my Twitch account can be viewed here. While my total views has skyrocketed when I stream I hardly get 2 or 3 viewers. I'm not sure what to do. I post when I'm live on a Facebook twitch streamers group and also on my Twitter but the viewers don't seem to be coming in. I know that streaming is a tough gig and that it might take a long time to get more viewers but I've had moments where I've had like 16 viewers in the past. That was when I was playing Starcraft II. So one thing I'll do is play more Starcraft. And try to find other games that seem to attract viewers. Because right now Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm isn't bringing the noise. An important factor that I've worked hard to improve upon is my demeanor and commentary.  

Making more YouTube videos
My first YouTube video can be viewed here. Although it wasn't that great I think it was a good first attempt at a YouTube vid. I plan on making more. My friend suggested that I make guides for Overwatch. That sounds like a great idea but I'm also interested in making comedy gaming videos as well. My stand-up and general banter is pretty hilarious and I think it would be great to expand on that through viral media. The problem I've run into right now is that my friend doesn't want to help me out with making more videos. Its mostly the fact that he's not good at editing videos himself that's the problem. So I'm going to have to learn something-like in school! My next step is to download Blender and look up some tutorials and learn it myself. Good luck to me!

So yeah hopefully once I get things crackin' on this stuff things will be more interesting. I'm already having fun and enjoying everything but I'm at the point now where I want to work harder and produce better and more content. I've got a whole 'lotta work to do. Rip my free time.