Team Fortress 2

Probably not.

Surprised you get more then one drop for those Cauldron Gifts though. Maybe I can get the Beep Man without buying it on the store!

So, uh, I got a Strange Haunted hat from my goody bag. Is that supposed to happen, or did I just luck out?

And are all the Haunted cosmetics Strange now as well? Or was it double-lucky?

Bah, my Internet's too slow and laggy lately to play. Hopefully it'll be fixed before the event is over.

Somehow, some way, the new map managed to crash the game so hard, it reset my desktop background.

Also, the charge meter on the DR is really tiny now.

One in every freebie pack is. Unfortunately it's non-tradeable.

Had to get two gift wrappings for cosmetics I don't want. The price for gift wrapping (in metal) is insane. They're worth a Key, aka 9 Refined. How did it get so high?

Gift Wrap is roughly 50 cents cheaper than Keys in the Mann Co. Store, so the price gets inflated by traders to make a small profit. Plus, for a long time they were the only way of trading valuable cosmetics like Summer Shades, and still get used to trade really new cosmetics that haven't been made tradable yet. And sometimes famous people use them to leave signatures.

Oh, and that at one time people could use them to preserve Strange weapons' rankings so everyone could think you grinded that Hale's Own yourself. That's been patched, though.

edited 29th Oct '14 7:44:28 PM by Tuckerscreator

I really want the Hunter set for my scout, would be especially nice for zombie mod servers.

I finally got the loot on loot island. Good for me.

edited 29th Oct '14 8:48:22 PM by Spirit

I got Haunted chicken arms too. :(

It stinks that they aren't tradeable and that you can't get more then six for free (three initially and three from an achievement). Although at least we can still get stuff from the other maps...

• tries really, really hard to not buy the Ghost of 'Spencers Past*

This was... much more silly and much more fun then I expected.

It's been mentioned before that the Soldier possesses fervent loyalty to his teammates, but I haven't seen a whole lot of discussion on WHY that is. So I decided to do so.

Based on the evidence provided by the supplementary movies and comics, I can state with almost complete certainty that, prior to his employment with RED and/or BLU, the Soldier led an extremely lonely life. Indeed, it would not surprise me to learn that, before his teammates, he had NEVER had ANY friends at ANY point in his life, for the simple reason that he is BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY.

It may seem obvious, but think about it. This is a man who is paranoid, delusional, and psychotic. His grasp of reality fluctuates, and even during the good times his behavior is erratic and disruptive. There's a good chance that even his own parents wanted as little to do with him as possible, and his peers most likely possessed open contempt of him. His deep understanding of living without a home almost certainly comes from years, if not DECADES, of first-hand experience. Without family, friends, or a societal safety net, his life could best be summed up as 'eternally lost, confused, afraid, and ALONE.'

But when he got hired by TF Industries, he gained something he never had: Connections. Here were eight men (OK, seven men, a Pyro, and Ms. Pauling) capable not only of reaching him deep within his defective mind, but could understand him when he was trying to reach BACK. Not only could THEY communicate with him, HE could communicate with THEM in turn. Look at how Merasmus responds to his aberrant behavior: with shocked indignation and open hostility. Soldier taking it in stride is evidence that, by now, he is USED to people reacting negatively to his actions; he probably long ago accepted it as a given that other people would get upset with him no matter what it was he was TRYING to do. It's unlikely that he is being deliberately antagonistic in his actions, he simply doesn't know how to behave in the manner expected of most people.

His desire to join the military and fight for his nation most likely stems from a deep-seated desire for acceptance. As he drifted through life, he'd seen public displays of admiration and gratitude towards war veterans, and saw it as a way gaining the inclusion he'd never had. He fears being labeled a 'Civilian' because it means he was never a soldier, and he was never a soldier he was never a HERO. Someone to admire, someone others wanted around, someone others LIKED. Someone who ISN'T just a crazy idiot jabbering nonsense to nobody in an alleyway.

For one reason or another, the other Mercs ACCEPT him. They take the time to make sure to say things so he'll understand them. They don't get upest for no reason (that he can perceive), and they make sure to include him, no matter how difficult it is. They don't humor him to his face and then go behind his back, they truly consider him a part of the group. In multiple instances they can be shown either predicting his delusional episodes, or are very good at adapting to them when they occur. They don't confront him when he suddenly believes that everyone on the team is American, they simply allow it to play out without upsetting him. When he and Demo are 'in disguise' in Teufort, Demo calmly and expertly reassured him and said what he needed to hear. And maybe it's just me, but I was surprised by how Spy was able to anticipate Soldier wanting the bucket in "Expiration Date." Also, note how rapidly Soldier's life fell apart when Grey Mann fired them all.

Is it truly any wonder that Soldier is so loyal to his teammates, when it's likely that they were the first people in his life to connect with him? If you had spent your life without ANY personal experience of things like FRIENDSHIP, ACCEPTANCE, TOGETHERNESS and BELONGING, wouldn't the person or persons responsible for finally showing you those things matter to you?

Do regular gifts spawn in the other maps anymore?

Pretty sure Helltower presents still spawn.

I never liked that map, but the mode is still fun.

VROOM VROOM.

Regular gifts still spawn on the other maps. It would be impossible to get some of the other achievements and items otherwise (craft Saxton Hale mask, spell pages). Which is a good thing for me as I don't mind grinding for certain items (where are you Quoth?).

x4 That is a brilliant character study of Soldier.

In the bumper car game with the falling platforms, if the game isn't over before the center platform falls, the Horseless Headless Horsemann is summoned. He has all the attacks that the normal one does including the petrifying taunt. And yes, you are still in car form. It turns out that if you have his head equipped before the bumper car game starts it makes you immune to the taunt just like it normally does. I was the only one who had it equipped in one game and spent a lot of time bumping petrified cars off the platforms...

Also, Merasmus' lines at the round start are hilarious. Most of them are him lampshading everything he's done in the previous Scream Fortresses and wondering why the team even agreed to work for him in the first place. He especially likes calling out Soldier and Demo for it...

edited 30th Oct '14 8:23:09 AM by ObsidianFire

I ran into the Jarate Bumper Cars glitch too, though during soccer instead of elimination. It was hilarious.

Got really lucky with the drops- I got a Beep Man, Guano, a Ghost of Spies Checked Past, and a Strange Haunted Soul of 'Spensers Past.

What is the Jarate glitch? I so want that strange... and you got really, really lucky.

How's the new Halloween stuff so far? I just got a new PC and my old HDD inserting into it...has problems.

On the other hand I could enjoy 144Hz TF 2 after it's fixed!

The only time I can recall his teammates being openly upset with him was when he admitted to having spent the last three days teleporting bread nonstop, and since they had just explained what a bad thing that would be he's able to understand their anger. He had unknowingly done a BAD THING, and when you do BAD THINGS people get angry with you, because it was a THING which was BAD.

Contrast that with Merasmus, the Director, and those little old ladies. To Soldier, his actions make perfect sense, and he can't comprehend why something so obvious and innocuous could instil such a negative reaction. It'd be like if you did the dishes, only for the people around you react with shock and horror as though you had committed some heinous act.

Soldier latching on to the military as a way to gain acceptance as opposed to, say, firefighting, probably stems from his inherently violent and psychopathic nature. Soldiers are HEROES and LIKED BY PEOPLE because they go and kill BAD GUYS, whereas he had killed people and had been declared 'dangerous' and 'unfit for civilized society.' Therefore, he was NOT LIKED BY PEOPLE because he had been killing the WRONG PEOPLE, instead of killing BAD GUYS like a LIKED person should. His insanity most likely latched on to the jingoistic propaganda of the time to construct his memetic basis for reality. Thus, he conflates everything GOOD with the concept of AMERICA. AMERICA is the GOOD PLACE, and AMERICANS are the GOOD PEOPLE. SOLDIERS are the HEROES of the GOOD PEOPLE, who go out and KILL the NOT-GOOD PEOPLE who live in the NOT-GOOD PLACES, and for this are LIKED and ACCEPTED by their fellow GOOD PEOPLE AMERICANS. Depending on what phase of his disorder he's in, that basic mental logic-state can apply more literally to his thought processes and his perception of reality. During the Mecha Update, he perceived his teammates as Americans because he saw them as GOOD PEOPLE FRIEND HEROES, and therefore AMERICAN. By the time they've gone to Russia to find Heavy, he's back to being (comparatively) lucid, and able to accept Heavy as being both a GOODGUYHEROFRIEND and EVILFOREIGNCOMMIEBADGUY, hence his polite refusal to eat Heavy's Mom's soup. She may have been EVILCOMMIEBAD, but that's only because she was born EVILCOMMIEBAD, she didn't choose to be it anymore than he chose to be AMERICANHEROGOODGUY. He probably saw Heavy's family deciding to leave Russia, the EVILCOMMIEBADPLACE, as them rejecting their EVILCOMMIEBA Dness and becoming AMERICANGOODGUYS instead. His suggestion that they go to America instead of New York City is simply him not knowing that NYC is in America, mixed with him confusing 'America, the scientifically confirmable nation-state with a fixed geographic location' with his 'AMERICAGOODGUYPLACEWHEREPEOPLELIKEYOU mental reference point thought paradigm thingy.'

That's... actually, not too hard to accept.

Am I only able to collect one holiday gift every 3 hours, or can I jump to another event map and collect one there after getting one somewhere else?

Probably more thought than the creators ever put into it, but those are the best headcanons.

It's one gift every three hours regardless of the map. So no, you can't map hop and get one gift from each map in the same hour.

Well, I've idled in Lakeside for over ten minutes. No gift.

Edit: No wait, it looks like I just got one.

edited 30th Oct '14 4:13:52 PM by RainingMetal

For the troper who was in a bumper car just as everybody got drowned...One of the clips in this NISLT video shows exactly that happening.

I guess this map was buggy for everybody.