So.... about that wrangler...

I gave my vintage wrangler to rr when I was playing MVM last night. I don't really want it back.

Please don't ban wrangler that's our only chance to do respectively well in plat this seasonnnn :(

top comment. Wrangler provides a 2nd varation of defense, turning the sentry from a last last defense, into a first defense. Also, you DON'T need it, it's just a variable that is useful for certain game types(payload, and attack/defend)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWrZVybyiU4

I don't see what the big deal is about the wrangler. A wrangling engie is an easy pick for a sniper or spy most of the time; otherwise you just need to focus the engie instead of the gun and then take it down. If you're ubering into a wrangler, if the gun is in a position where the engie can hide behind it then pack a demo to sticky the engie. Just pick the engie somehow and get on with your game. :P

Alternatively, coordinate with a spy sap or a cow mangler charge (it ain't banned in UGC, lol).

Wrangler is literally retarded, any halfway decent engineer can be pretty unkillable with it and it makes mini-sentries that much more annoying and level 3s potentially devastating. And any halfway idiot engineer can use it to some beneficial extent because the damn thing has auto-aim and you can just hide behind its shield and never take damage if the team isn't being properly aggressive.

It's absolutely 100% my least favorite thing about Highlander, though a lot of the rest of the whitelist can be almost as annoying or manages to make the game unfun. Hell, it's not even fun to deal with in pubs.

I'd like to know why people like it or think that it is actually fun to play with other than suggesting some magical improvement to engineer quality of life. Cause yeah, a weapon with auto-aim just makes the experience so much more magical and all. It typically doesn't even change the fact that an uber is going to take out the gun, unless positioning or airblast spam is the key there. It's just... ugh.

Its time the UGC admins stopped using ESEA 6s small team pool as evidence that there is inherently something wrong with the the game mode and that we are too prohibitive with our bans on weapons and classes. Including more weapons or "allowing" more classes to be played will never improve the number of teams competing in ESEA 6s.

The fact is, it actually takes work to be even moderately competitive in any division of ESEA, along with no small amount of skill. This might be an alien idea to the UGC admins -infinite in particular- but the real barrier to ESEA gaining larger numbers of 6s teams is in fact this skill and work barrier.

Teams/players that have the skills and desire to put in the necessary amount of work play in ESEA. New/bad players who may or may not want to commit to scrimming hard to improve play in UGC. There's nothing wrong with this! These players need a place to start. When I was bad I myself played in like TWL Div 8 and Cevo-A.

The real kicker however is that UGC admins now look at these growing amounts of teams/players as some sort of justification that they are doing something right, where other leagues are doing something wrong, when in fact the only reason their league "prospers" is because of the much lower skill level and work required. People dont join UGC because wrangler is allowed, they join because its easy.

"hey guys more people play x than y so x must be the better game"

looks like WoW/cod/LoL are the best games of all time ever

also wrangler is lame and is for lame-o's

People don't join UGC just because the wrangler is allowed; but because they can play a class they actually like instead of being forced to play scout or soldier. I used the wrangler as an example of one of the many weapons currently banned in 6s that limit the viability of all the other classes aside from the cookie cutter norm.

It's also not just the work that keeps teams away from ESEA. There are lots of HL teams who play 3,4, sometimes 6 or 7 scrims every couple of days. Ask many of our HL teams, they take things just as seriously as anyone.

To be a good 6s team in ESEA you have to play 3 scrims a night, 5 days a week, over the period of a year or more. To be a good highlander team in UGC you have to play 3-4 scrims about 2 times a week. I'm sure that things are the same for UGC 6s as well. Thanks for helping me make my point. And if thats the upper limit on what it takes, many teams put in much less effort. You must know that this limited commitment helps both UGC highlander and 6s to amass a greater player base than is realistic for ESEA. Obviously highlander is a bit different what with people who play pyro, spy, heavy, etc feeling somehow alienated because the class they like is actually really shitty.

The point though is that people look at ESEA and see a league that takes effort, skill, and resolve to get anywhere. UGC 6s and highlander both are much more forgiving and as I said, easy. People dont take it as seriously, which lets more people get into the game for their first time.

UGC prospers at gaining lots of teams/players, meanwhile ESEA prospers at having the best TF2 in the world being played on a regular basis.

The only point i was ever trying to make was to point out that comparisons between the leagues accomplishments are nonsensical. UGC gets more players because most players are bad/new players. Most players are pyros, heavies, snipers, spies, engineers. Most players dont want to commit to 6s in a way that makes playing in ESEA enjoyable. ESEA's small numbers have never been about unlocks, only about the number of people willing to commit to taking tf2 seriously at any given time.

As a 6's player who has ESEA experience, I agree with infinite wholeheartedly.

I wouldn't mind seeing the wrangler and minisentry combination being banned. That's pretty dumb. It completely destroys a lot of midfights like granary where it's basically a race to see which team can wrangle a minisentry on catwalk first. I mean granary is already an awkward mid for HL. Throw in wrangled minis and it's just not fun.

as I've said a billion times

it's not about how hard it is to take down the wrangler, it's about how easy it is to defend when the entire enemy team is focused on one class + an inanimate object, leaving you 8 guys with perfect health and ammo to destroy their team at the end of the fight

Just as many HL teams don't scrim more than once a week. My team has played 4 games now, and only one has been against a team that appears to be very committed to the league. People don't play ESEA as much because of money, srs bsns, and skill. If you're looking for a free, light-hearted, easy-to-get-into league, UGC is unfortunately your only option. Far more high-pub-level players like scout and soldier than pyro or heavy, so that's definitely not the reason either. Just look at what classes take the longest to fill in pugs or HL. Medic, Heavy, and Engy are the hardest to find there, in my experience.

Have I read any post except for the OP?
-No.

Do I even play Highlander?
-Nope.

Should a sentry be able to go invincible?
No.

is he still blathering about ESEA small numbers?

Posts like this make you seem ignorant.

no one's forced to play soldier or scout in 6's (it's just the better decision)
if you think these bans are limiting the viability of "other classes", why are they banned in your 6's league?

mmmm i would say that while its a popular belief that there are more weapon bans in 6s because of how strong the items are in the hands of a skilled player, the biggest reason why some of these things are banned is because it can halt the pace of a format that is trying to keep things fast paced. with that said, if you look at how long an average HL match goes on say cp_granary (to use pudding's example) to varied lengths of time of a 6s match on the same map, HL typically will take longer.

the pace of HL is slower. part of this is due to the fact that a lot of the items like the wrangler are not banned, but its also the maps played (ie payload), the number of players (which really just makes number advantages obsolete), and the way the meta has developed over the last couple seasons.

and lets not kid ourselves, a big reason why people initially joined UGC HL was to get those medals, at least at first. the rest of it came later.

http://i.imgur.com/qnkbU.jpg

I happen to enjoy both 6's and HL. If someone wants to organize a night of payload with 2 rounds (one with wrangler, one without), I wonder what the time difference would be? For certain teams, the wrangler doesn't slow them down, others its a great factor.

UGC is here for the populace to play and have fun. Some take it extremely serious. I had a guy asking me what he should do about 6's and I told him to start out with UGC, since its free, get a team together that played a lot. And once he was able to get top 3 in UGC Plat 6's, then they should consider bumping up to ESEA-Open. This is a known fact that the players in UGC 6's are new to the game. I dont think that is something they should feel ashamed for. Its a natural progression to me. pub->lobby->pug->UGC 6's low->UGC 6's high->paid. Otherwise its just a waste of money.

When you start bringing Highlander into it, you are talking about a different mode of play. Its like watching invite players that are just now getting into MVM. They are enjoying themselves, having a shit ton of fun, but they really dont get it....until they play more. Such is the same with Highlander. A lot of invites are joining in HL and are enjoying it. Lets not belittle what we have. Very few are, but some are pointing fingers as if its a disgrace. Just let people have their fun. Highlander can be extremely competitive, if you dont play it then you probably dont understand. My team, the syndicate, is pretty solid and we generally practice maybe twice a week. This week its much higher because of the SNSD show match (#1 Eu HL team). So yea there is a lot of stress and pressure on it to show up and do well. If your HL team prepares and has a strong caller, it can be like a well oiled machine. It'll never be the same as 6's, but if you watch the top teams on 5cp, you can see that a lot of the same concepts are used.

Just enjoy it for what it is.

if only infinite could actually understand all of this...

ITT: highlander elitism and backwards logic vs real culture.

Every class is useful in 6v6, the only reason 6v6 exists the way it does is because the community wanted a faster paced game, with more coordination, teamwork, and skill, opposed the alternative 8v8s and super early 12v12s that existed. Every weapon ban in ESEA (with a few exceptions due to power) is because of slowing the game down or encouraging "gay play" (where unskilled things totally change the flow of the game; like the wrangler!). Reasons like "You can counter it!" or "It's normal!" are bullshit for justifying gay, slow, and OP things.

People dislike Heavy and Engie already, in 6s, because they slow the game down and give one team an absolute health advantage over the other, Just Because the Thing is There. Pyro is annoying too, because he counters most of the spam in the game, but he's not as much of a threat as a wrangled sentry and you have a choice whether to engage with them - they have less mobility than every other deathmatch class in the game.

This isn't a debate about people doing whatever they want - there are pubs for that - this is about restricting people and changing the game to make it better. Every strictly-PVP competitive game in the world has changed with competition. Quake 3 CPMA, Starcraft II, ARTSs and other strategy games too, they all have different styles and focuses that make them what they are.

TF2 happens to be an ARENA FPS with some STRATEGIC GAMEMODES.

You don't make a good arena FPS by making it slow and deliberate. This has been proven time and time again, it's a lesson well-learned in game design. You need to reward precision, cohesion, timing, positioning, knowledge, and adaptability. "Vanilla" TF2, and especially 6s, do all of this. When you start mandating people run heavy, pyro, engie, and you let them use things like the Fists of Steel and the Wrangler, you bog down the game by rewarding these things less - and it's not like the "other" team has to do any of them to make the negatively affected team suffer.

Okay, the wrangler takes a /little/ positioning and knowledge, and protecting against an invuln push takes its own cohesion, but what do the pushers have to do? They need to spend a lot of time setting down 5+ stickies to kill a single wrangled lv sentry - any less and you're screwed, and that's assuming you don't get airblasted away by a pyro, blocked by a heavy, and your stickies don't get blown away, and you need a lot of hard work on all fronts to get the combo up to the sentry if it's in a good position and a lot of . If the engie has even the littlest understanding of what they're doing, they're going to hide behind their sentry, and a team with half a brain and not even a little bit of focus or training will be able to protect them too.

The worst thing is, with a little more understanding of positioning and teamwork, the engie can make life ten times harder for whoever's pushing into them. It stacks the game in favor of defense in absolutely every way. It's like having a pseudo-uber heavy with absurdly tight spread and no falloff on his minigun, plus rockets, and they can't be airblasted or knocked around. I once saw a strategy where the defense ubers the /engie/ so that the sentry can't possibly die or get forcibly unwrangled. It can be borderline impossible and 100% up to good luck to push into a very high level HL engie/pyro combo when you're of the same level. I know I'm giving far-out example and putting things very roughly, but this is absolutely the case.

(continued)

EDIT: typos

When you take the "let's let people play how they want" attitude and /force/ the game to allow it, that's like letting people make One Kind of unit in Starcraft II and rewarding it. That doesn't develop meta, that doesn't encourage skillplay, that's just bad design rewarding people for being faggots. Here's a better example: Imagine if units in Chess didn't have the same movement restrictions. What if the Knight could move anywhere within their radius, or the King could instantly move to any edge of the board? You're destroying a sacred, stable metagame. What makes you think it hasn't been tried before? It doesn't work well, if you do either of these things the game would be completely broken. Everything changes, and the game doesn't reward the same things.

So, you don't reward the player for doing things they like doing. You reward them for doing things that go with the focus of the game and make it stronger. That's the key word here: F o c u s. I'm gonna say it again, because it's so important. Focus! What's the focus of God of War? Gruesome buttonmashing. Myst? Ambience, exploration, and puzzlesolving.

Let's go further into familiar territory - What's Quake focusing on, as a game? Obviously, it has pickups, and maps, and a heavy "vertical" element. And it has guns. The goal is to kill the other person, more than they kill you. But most importantly, it has zoning. The entire Quake meta revolves around zoning - it's the major player in which player (sorry for the weird pun) has the advantage over their other. The player with better aim doesn't always win - if the other has an absolute advantage, like their health/armor stack or a tactical advantage on the map, they can still win.

Even in high level Quake you see "aim players" and "brain players", and both deathmatching and understanding are very, very important to zoning, engagement, and timing. You need to know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, and you need to be able to pull it off too. You can get lucky - you can divebomb in with nothing against a person who's completely better than you and totally shine in every way. But that's mechanical skillplay, and you getting in over them, somehow, even though they're more skilled than you. In Quake, these kinds of plays are rare, not just in a single match but across them too. In tf2, they happen every 10 minutes.

Even though tf2 seems slow and weak compared to quake, it has something special over it. Its absurdity. In TF2, almost every match that's not a roll you see something great happen - That Awesome Medpick, even though it was worthless, That Huge Airshot, even though you got cleaned up by a scout, That Crazy 1v3, even though you failed the push, and that ABSURD time when you just KNEW what the enemy team was going to do and EXACTLY how to counter it, you DO it right and you win the round off of it too. Clearly I'm making a point in a horrible way here, where I give three horrible situations with a highlight that couldn't save them and then something that just totally wins.

I'm not being vain or weird here, either, this is important - In TF2, the team that overall performs better in the things that make TF2 what it is than their opponent (sorry for the wording) should win. What I gave is a good example of that. In simpler terms, Good Play Over Bad Play. What kind of play is the wrangler? You sit with it and it's a virtually indestructible Mowing Wall until you're dumb or dead. You're basically playing heavy, but stationary and a lot more powerful. And the enemy team has to use an uber on it and do a very good push at that - that is, wasting their main resources and betting on a lot of some kind of luck All On Top Of being "better" than the engie and whatever's protecting them at the moment, where to counter pushing into this sentry, it's not nearly as hard. This is just outright a buff to defense, which very easily allows Bad Play to ruin Good Play. And that's Bad.