The addition of new content has obviously been a major factor in keeping Team Fortress 2 fresh. This article aims to analyze the balance of the newest weapons: the Crit-a-Cola, the Scotsman's Skullcutter, and the Tribalman's Shiv.

Crit-a-Cola

The Crit-a-Cola, a replacement for the Scout's secondary slot, give the user mini-crits for 6 seconds, like a miniature, localized Buff Banner. It also turns all damage taken by the user into mini-crits for the six-second duration.

Why use this weapon? Well it certainly provides an advantage when attempting a suicidal Medic takedown, as well as during general combat if you happen to sneak up on someone. But is it worth it?

The maximum damage of the default Scattergun when under the Crit-a-Cola's effects is roughly 80, 20 more than a meatshot without any critical effects. This means it only takes 2 shots to kill a Medic, something that can absolutely matter in fast-paced games. However, a direct hit from a rocket will nearly wipe out the Scout (122 damage), as well as two shots from a shotgun (or some combination thereof). So if the Scout fails to kill anyone, it's absolutely useless... but is there any difference between that and how the Scout normally plays?

The inability to use the pistol certainly is a change, as it removes any ability to harass low-health enemies at any sort of range. However, this situation isn't going to happen in every single match, and if it does, you can attempt to close the distance with the Scout's 133% move speed. Medics will be present in every game and killing at close range as a Scout will also be present in every game.

So to conclude this section of the article, the Crit-a-Cola, while it removes the Pistol, is a balanced unlock, especially in the smaller games of the competitive format.

Updated Main Menu is AWESOME! And thanks to training mode I am now Mid/High... j/k but it's fricken awesome and will be very helpful for the new players.

Edit #2: zOmg new Engie shotgun teased. Watch till the end...

Team Fortress 2
•    Added Mac support.
•    Overhauled the main menu, and added help to Loadout, Backpack, and Crafting screens.
•    Added Training, with support for General gameplay & Soldier class training for now.
•    Added Offline Practice mode, with support for KOTH maps and Dustbowl.
•    The "Open Character Loadout" key will now go to your future class if you’ve requested a class change, but haven’t respawned yet.
•    Added community submitted gameplay tips
•    Community Requests:
•    Added "mp_forceautoteam", a server convar that forces all joining players to autoteam.
•    Added "mp_stalemate_meleeonly", a server convar that allows melee weapons only during stalemates.
•    Added "ExtinguishPlayer" input to tf_player for map makers.

Firstly, thank you all who voted for their favorite maps. There was a couple of surprises in the vote as you will see below.

As a quick reminder, teams have until June 18th to have their teams registered with the minimum of 6 players with Steam IDs entered to be eligible for the season. So get your teams registered ASAP.

Regular Season:

• Week 1: June 20th thru June 24th
  • Map A: cp_badlands
  • Map B: cp_follower

• Week 2: June 27th thru July 1st
  • Map A: cp_granary
  • Map B: cp_freight

• Week 3: July 4th - July 8th
  • Map A: cp_gullywash
  • Map B: koth_viaduct

• Week 4: July 11th - July 15th
  • Map A: cp_freight_final1
  • Map B: cp_gravelpit

• Week 5: July 18th - July 22nd
  • Map A: cp_yukon_final
  • Map B: cp_well

• Week 6: July 25th - July 29th
  • Map A: cp_obscure
  • Map B: cp_freight

• Week 7: August 1st - August 5th
  • Map A: cp_mainline
  • Map B: cp_granary

• Week 8: August 8th - August 12th
  • Map A: cp_gullywash
  • Map B: cp_badlands

Before I dig into this a bit more, let me cover how I evaluated the votes. Players were asked to rank the maps top to bottom of a pool of 21 maps that have been played in the various leagues over the past couple of years. These rankings were collect on a map by map basis, so for example Badlands vote would look something like 1,2,5,3,2,7,1,10,5 and so forth. What we did was simply add the ranks up and the lowest point scores won (think golf). This gave me a ranking of maps top to bottom, the top 12 are within the map rotation with the top four being repeated.

The surprises!! What was most surprising was Gullywash made the top four and was included twice. Both versions of freight made the top 12 (solidly) so cp_freight will show up twice being the third place rank, and cp_freight_final1 was pretty up there also.

The one time I looked at the vote very closely, cp_coldfront technically was the bottom ranked map and cp_mainline was 13 (just missing the rotation). However, when I looked at the votes themselves, cp_coldfront before the week in ESEA was seeing 3-5 average, while after everyone played it it was averaging 18-21 in rank. That being said, it skewed the numbers and mainline was a much more consistent map. The total points different between the two maps was 6 (148-154 or something in there) so based on the trending of the votes, I put mainline over coldfront for the season.

The formal map versions used in XPL will be posted shortly (read: when I stops the whole making money, providing food for the family and such and get them downloaded and packaged). Details will appear in Match Comms with the download locations and so forth when the times comes as a reminder.

One last thing, the Playoffs will take the top six from the rotation: Badlands, Granary, Freight, Gullywash, Viaduct, Gravelpit. More info the the playoffs will be forthcoming in a bit.

Good luck everyone who is participating.

In this exclusive CommFT interview, decap gets us answers to the questions we've all been asking. ENJOY :)
________________________________________
9:45 p.m. - decap: whos gonna do extremer 4
9:45 p.m. - Extremer: no one
9:45 p.m. - Extremer: not happening!
9:45 p.m. - Extremer: cba with getting fucking insane frags
9:45 p.m. - decap: lol
9:45 p.m. - Extremer: and then the guy who makes the movie losing half of them
9:46 p.m. - Extremer: like it happened with the 2nd and 3rd ones
9:46 p.m. - Extremer: especially the third

Well we all hear it, twl is the underdog league, the bottom fragers, the low/mid teams all bundled up into one big ball of joy. I’ve come to understand that if you look through the cracks in twl you’ll find not only that some great teams exist within the walls of rosters but decent teams from other leagues are also spotted amongst them. Hopefully with the further publication of twl and it’s events we can help to bring the shine back into that rusty old piece of metal.

eXtv is BACK! We're proud to present eMazing Gaming versus Complexity from ESEA-Invite's week 6 action on CP_Gullywash. An exciting match with plenty of action on a fantastic new addition to the map rotations.

eXtv had been MIA for a little bit there, with some real life issues slowing down production, but we're continuing to look towards the future. As part of that, we are considering distribution alternatives. As a test run of sorts, Downloadable here or here is a BitTorrent file that contains all of the eXtv episodes up to todays date. While web hosting is a possibility, posting uncut 60FPS HQ versions up for download will sap a ton of bandwidth. So, Torrents look like a great way to get these episodes out there looking their best. Another perk is that you don't have to download the complete pack! The more full seeds the better, but if you just want to D/L the uncut version of this latest episode, hop on there it get it going!

The eXtelevision website will be going up soon, alongside the expansion of our Uniform project. eXtv is in need of assistance, whether it be volunteer videographers, uniform makers, or people simply pointing out which matches we should cover next! The problem with Hour long matches is they take 3 hrs to record, if I or other videographers knew which rounds were most important, and what First Person POV shots should be included, production time would be greatly reduced. Without further ado, enjoy our latest:

Click Read More for Pts. 2 + 3...

Since the AI vs Finesse match ended up getting postponed, TGBF is going to cast the eMg vs AG CEVO-P first round playoff match. It's live NOW at 11:30 EST, 10:30 CST. Check it out for some quality action between the fourth and fifth seeds on cp_yukon and cp_gravelpit.

Read More for results...