TF2 Spreadsheet Steam Group

We just want to give a shout-out to our friends ZombieK and Beverage at the TF2 Spreadsheet Steam Group.  They maintain the group of over 800 gamers and are all around good people.  They also successfully worked around last summer's "ponies" and "trolls" take-over of the old steam group (when someone gave admin privileges to all gaming group members - a real mess, don't try it at home).  Drop them a comment or thanks over at the Steam group here.

Crate unboxing values

Every once in a while we see sites and tools in the TF2 community that we think are cool.  The Crate Unboxing spreadsheet is one of them.  It gives actual values (in scrap) of the average unboxed item and even factors in the cost of the key to unbox.  Very nice.

As of today (it gets updated once per week) the best crates to unbox look to be Salvaged Crate #30 (which is a no-brainer) and crates #13 and 14.  Also the current crate #37 is near the top of the realized value but that is more a function of it being new.  The coveted #19 crate is also up there.

Overall a smart little tool.  Link here.  FAQ is here.

PSA: steam phishing sites

We've known people to be burned by these sites.  No matter how obvious a scam entering your email username and password may seem like, there will be people who fall for it.  When a site looks like the one you trust it's sometimes easy to be fooled.  That said, always check the URL before putting in your steam information.  This goes for logging into Steam, signing into your bank accounts, email websites, whatever.

Here's the latest one making the front page on Reddit.

New update released...

Team Fortress 2

• Added the Alladin's Private Reserve for the Demo
• Fixed a bug where the Medic would lose his healing target's speed when deploying his ÜberCharge while using the Quick-Fix
• Fixed a bug that would cause some Team Spirit painted hats to show as black-painted in the Steam Community
• Localized the team goal strings for cp_steel and pl_frontier
• Added missing level_data strings to kill_eater_score_type elements in the GetSchema WebAPI response
• Updated pl_frontier with author-submitted fixes:
  • small prop adjustments
  • several unsewn/gappy displacements fixed up
  • func_push altered below final capture point
• Undocumented changes:^[1] Updated all localization files

TF2 on a laptop

It probably is a pipe-dream to get Team Fortress 2 on a smartphone (and a pain to play so its better left that way) but TF2 on a laptop is an everyday occurrence now.  The specs that came out for the Half-Life 2 engine are easy to beat with almost all current notebooks and laptops.  After all, the HL2 specs were written when the resource-hog Windows Vista was still Microsoft's pinnacle OS.  But now there's a mature Windows 7 and Direct X far beyond the version 9 that TF2 makes use of.  Hardware-wise any Intel i3-i7 processors have more than enough horsepower.  AMD processors we haven't tested but anything made within the last year or two is probably more than adequate.  Touchpads are unusable in our experience, as our Dell test laptop couldn't even take commands simultaneously from the keyboard and pad.  We recommend a mini wireless laptop mouse (Logitech and Microsoft make adequate ones).  Standard graphics on our Latitude were more than adequate as well, same with HP middle-of-the-road laptops.

PC World has a new article on desktop replacement laptops here.  Good read and recommendations.   Cnet is another favorite of ours, and they have their own guide here.

Ellis' Cap value change effect

An interesting idea just came to us.  As Valve just had basically a huge giveaway to the TF2 community.  When they made Ellis' Cap craftable, the ensuing trading frenzy and price inflation gave back quite a bit to everyone who had one of these formerly useless hats in their backpack.

As of today, TF2Stats.net has approximately 74,019 backpacks with Ellis' Cap.  That is not a perfect # of course.  There are likely more Ellis' Caps out there due to hoarding and Valve only gives Tf2stats.net a portion of the total outstanding backpacks.  But it's the best # we have so let's go with it.

Prior to the update, Ellis was worth a scrap or two maximum.  At today's current price of refined metal, around $0.55 each.  2 scrap are valued at 0.22 refined.  Once they were changed to craftable they jumped to between a refined and 1.33 refined in value.  Let's say 1.22 refined to keep it simple.  That's 1 refined in value for 74,000 (at least) Ellis' Caps.  Thus, Valve gave back over $40,000 to the community.  Thanks Gabe!

edit: thanks Wolverine and BaconCat for catching our math error!

PC Gaming: stronger than ever

The game we all have in common here is Team Fortress 2 of course.  Most of us play it on a PC (some on a Mac or console) but the overwhelming majority use a PC be that a desktop, laptop or a notebook.  We care about video cards, processors, cooling, memory and good monitors.  The mouse and keyboard is something I wish I could use on my own Xbox, rather than the slower and less natural controller.  Here is a great article with a good chart that shows that PC gaming is not dead.  In fact it is anything but.

New Poll: tell us your favorite Badge/Pin

We were bored here at TF2 Spreadsheet HQ and wanted to come up with a new poll.  We're always curious about those little badges and pins that keep coming out steadily.  We're mainly curious which one people like the most so tell us!  There's a new one of course, the Bolgan Family Crest however it hasn't been unlocked for trading so we didn't include it.

There's the requisite snark answer too, we'll let you guess which one it is.