Loading...

Just another Sites At Penn State site

Browsing monthly archives: August 2021

Review: Valorant’s New Map: Fracture

Hi, all! Welcome to my first passion post, in which I am going to be starting off by reviewing Valorant’s new map, Fracture.

To start off, Valorant is a widely popular 5v5 tactical first-person shooter game in which there are two sides, attacking and defending. The map is usually split into an attackers side and defenders side, corresponding to where each team would spawn.

The attackers spawn with a spike (a bomb) and they need to take it to one of the sites and plant it, then they must try to win the round by either eliminating the enemy team or defending the spike until it detonates. On the contrary, the defenders must defend the sites and stop the attackers from either planting the spike, or defusing the spike before it is detonated.

Typical gameplay: Loading into the game you are assigned to either the attacking or defending team, you are on that side for 12 rounds, then you and your four teammates switch to the other side. The end goal is to score thirteen rounds. If the game plays on and ends up 12-12, then usually the teams will play to win by two rounds. (For example, 12-14 or 13-15)

Playing the game, there are a selection of fifteen agents to choose from which all have different abilities: Astra, Breach, Brimstone, Cypher, Jett, Killjoy, Omen, Phoenix, Raze, Reyna, Sage, Skye, Sova, Viper, and Yoru. Each agent has their own role in team play, and they use their abilities to allow for advantages over the enemy team.

Likewise, there are also seven maps which are randomly chosen upon entering an online game: Bind, Split, Haven, Ascent, Icebox, Breeze, and newly-added, Fracture. Each map has its own little gimmick!

Bind has teleporters, Split has ascending ropes, Haven has three bomb-sites, Ascent has mechanical doors, Icebox has ziplines and different levels of elevation, Breeze has doors and ropes, and lastly, Fracture has everyone spawn in an H-formation in which the defenders spawn in the middle and the attackers can choose which side they want to attack from.

Hearing this news from the Valorant team, the large player base had extremely mixed feelings. Every single map before Fracture, the map was split into the two different spawns, but now attackers are able to take a rope connecting from each side in order to be able to attack a site from two different sides, cornering defenders.

Here is an image of the defenders’ positions prior to the start of the round. All five defenders spawn in the middle and choose a bomb-site to defend for the beginning of the round. Many players are led to believe that this will be problematic due to the multitude of different angles that a defender could be cornered on.

On any other map, the game-play is almost linear as attackers are usually expected to come out of two different entrances. However, on Fracture, there are four entrances on A and five entrances on B.

I solo-queued into a Fracture game to see how attacking vs. defending would be on this map, and I found that defending on A was much simpler than defending on B and vise versa for attacking.

I went into a custom Fracture lobby alone, testing out all the different angles and observing the different sites. Depicted above is A-site, a desert-themed site filled with sand.

The area outlined in blue is where the attackers are able to plant the spike, and I came to notice that it is very defense-sided and the attackers have a hard time defusing without being exposed to the defenders hiding spots. The lower area is a very closed off section of the site where it is very easy for defenders to hide and wait for the enemy team to come push them, making this site very defense sided.

On A-site, it is easy to isolate the angles and fight the attackers one by one, meanwhile on B-site it is definitely more difficult to do that. A-site is definitely defense-sided.

Above: B-site, an overgrown laboratory.

Opposed to A-site, B-site definitely is more of a dangerous site for defenders than attackers. For this map, two defenders would be on one site and three defenders would be on another. Even if B site has more defenders on site, they are quickly outnumbered by the five opposing players coming in from possibly five different entrances on the map! The amount of angles that the defenders have to constantly be aware of definitely makes B-site attack-sided.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this map. I was watching Shroud (widely-known FPS player) on Twitch on the first day of Fracture’s release, and I agreed with him when he predicted that this map would not do well in a competitive scene and the player base would not like it.

Simply, this would be because this map’s odd spawning points contradict the previous linear game-play that Valorant has had on every other map. It is much easier to get snuck up on from behind on Fracture than other maps, which is a cause for concern for many players because of the amount of angles that need to be watched.

I’m definitely looking forward to learning this map more as I play and I want to see what everyone thinks of Fracture once it hits the competitive map pool in two weeks.

RCL 1 – Commonplaces and Ideologies in Penn State

A commonplace that holds truth in Penn State among the students definitely includes partying on weekends and drinking. In This American Life podcast, the main focus of the episode was to highlight the ideologies of the #1 party school in America as chosen by the Princeton Review. Penn State fits the criteria for a large party school: a large undergraduate population, a nationally known football team, and a large fraternity system. Hosts of This American Life podcast went around Penn State to football games and fraternities, highlighting the ideas among the population at State College.

Fraternity parties are common among younger students, since they aren’t old enough to purchase alcohol themselves or go to bars downtown. Underage drinking is a commonplace among Penn State students, as walking down E Fairmount Ave has endless frat parties that could give easy alcohol access to students. Especially freshmen, they are looking for that “college experience” that everyone who went to college in America loves to talk about.

LSU frat parties become coronavirus 'superspreader events' - Washington Times

(Students having their “college experience” at a frat party)

“Niche,” a common website students use for comparing possible options for college, has a specific section for party scenes, in which Penn State is rated an A+. Incoming students are always informed about the typical “college experience” through social media, TV shows, and even family members. This would definitely cause an incentive for students to lean more toward picking more “fun” colleges instead of others simply because they’re looking for that experience of binge drinking, going out late with friends, and messing around the streets late at night.

 

This American Life podcast mentions how much Penn State students usually drink when they’re out, and it comes to about over 30,000 students drinking an average of four and a half drinks per person. About 75% of the undergraduate population drinks every Friday and Saturday night, which definitely makes binge drinking a common ideology among Penn State students. 

 

Kids just wanna have fun, right? While drinking and going out to parties can definitely make college nights memorable, these students can get loud and rowdy during the late weekend nights. Workers at Canyon Pizza definitely suffer from Penn State students messing around in front of their property waiting for pizza, as a delivery worker was telling the host of This American Life about the constant harassment and destruction of property outside the pizzeria. These intoxicated students definitely mess around Canyon Pizza for shits and giggles, but the workers suffer as their cars get beat in and they get physically assaulted by the students. 

Canyon Pizza - State College, PA

(Line outside Penn State’s Canyon Pizza late at night)

Another commonplace at Penn State that goes hand in hand with binge drinking is attending football games. The football season is among the most exciting at Penn State, with huge parties every football weekend and the lively student section who pre-gamed a few hours before in preparation of the game. Sales in State College skyrocket during a winning streak, since business and the students’ drinking rely on the success of the Nittany Lions. Lions win, sales rise and drinking goes up. Thousands of students adore Penn State’s football spirit and the student section, which makes a common ideology among Penn Staters.

Student football section sells out | Penn State University

(Lively student section at Penn State White Out game)

Penn State commonplaces and ideologies in State College definitely include good characteristics of being determined to learn and make a difference in their community, however, when else would they get the chance to drink and party every weekend? These students want to create the best possible college experience while they’re here, and they want to have memories to brag about for a lifetime. Binge drinking is definitely the most infamous commonplace at State College, as students and alumni will talk about their experiences for the rest of their lives. 

Skip to toolbar