Last night a friend invited me to play a Mann vs Machine Expert game. Sure thing, but by the time I had jumped from my laptop to my computer, the lobby was already full of six players. So the six of them went in to fight robots without me. Oh well, I didn’t need that mission anyway. I do it for the team and because the game is fun while relaxing.
Instead I decided to jump into a pub game, which is a public server, but everyone still payed a dollar to be there. The only thing that makes a public server is the unknown. Instead of your friends that you know and trust, you have a random bunch of players. Most of the time these players are awful. Other times, you get a legend that rolls in to lead the team to victory.
I fell into a Mannworks mission, with four other players that didn’t look experienced, judging from how many tours they have. I was stuck as heavy, since the important classes had been taken already. Then a legendary player with 200 tours fell in with us. He is legendary for his mouth and the anger he spews at new or awful players. Some of my friends opt not to play with him because of his mouth. After not playing on his team for a year, he sounded quite pleasant, I didn’t even think it was him at first. Perhaps some imposter living off the legendary name…
He was stuck as another heavy, because the demo was unwilling to switch, especially when they were on the third wave. He had no tours, but whatever, the 200 tour legend let him stay as a demo. I noticed the first problem, the demo wanted the engineer to setup a teleporter exit at some strange midpoint on the map. A midpoint that I barely even recognized its so obscure. He wanted us to line up there for whatever reason, but we ditched him and did the normal method.
After getting wiped once and losing the round, we were forced to setup on the other side of the map. The engineer began showing his flaws. He wouldn’t do what we told him to. We that have been through it so many more times than he has. We that are only trying to help the entire team. Well the engineer suffered, we got rolled. He made excuses, but the excuses were irrelevant and if he did what we told him to in the first place it wouldn’t have happened. To boil it down, when you tell a kid stay at the side of the road, the cars will hit you. Then you see the kid play in the center of the road with a car coming and when they get hit they says uh I didn’t dodge it. That’s when you tell them, that’s exactly why we told to stand on the side of the road.
The engineer failed a few more of life’s lessons and had excuses. The legendary truck politely yelled at him and the engineer flipped out before he quit without ending the wave. That’s okay I would have kicked him anyway. So then I took over as engineer, which seems pretty common.
Then as engineer it was the demo that failed. Giant heavies with uber medics to make them invulnerable unless you take out the medics first. That’s what the demo is for, to be the first guy the giant heavies get to. He failed, and the legendary truck bluntly said he’ll start popping the medics, and take out the giant heavies himself. So that’s what he did, shooting the giant heavies makes them invincible thanks to the uber medics. Then when it wore off, the team could just destroy the giant heavy. As engineer, I became his backpack, feeding him ammo. I still tried to give the rest of the team ammunition, but the most valuable player was a one man team.
After that we kicked the demo for his failure, and found a hilariously bad replacement. I only say hilariously bad, because he was so clueless. He came in as medic when we needed more guns, less heals. He at least listened when we told him to switch to heavy, which he did. From there he brought out the Natasha gun, which slows down enemies, but doesn’t really hurt them. Its best to kill enemies instead of slowing them down.
It worked, he listened and we breezed through it. We also taught a new player willing to listen. Then I continued playing a long night of Expert Mann vs Machine, but since this blog is already 800 words, I think that I’ll cut it off here. I’ll see you out there!
Games That I Play 