where's kalkin?

so what was the reason for the stalemates?

...the quick fix?
...the map?
...the HWG?
...the fact that there was a ton of real money on the line?

or was it potentially a combination of all of the above?

instead of considering the last point, many people (including ESEA evidently) blamed the QF and determined that was THE reason there were so many stalemates.

breaking news, everyone: gullywash is not suddenly going to become a fast map without ever having another stalemate simply because the quick fix is now banned in ESEA.

It's pretty disappointing to see an item being banned when tactics are evolving and in their absolute infancy regarding it. If you look at any competitive game at any point in it's lifetime there are tactics that are considered overpowered or the most effective one year that are no longer even used in a different year because something better was found- and this is without any changes to the items. Rather than embracing this process which hasn't even really begun, ESEA is nipping it in the bud because of a momentary negative experience. IMO that's robbing the game of some life.

Change is painful, but at some point you need a willingness to see where things evolve, even if there are bumps in the road. Otherwise you can just retreat to what you are comfortable with like every other dying competitive community.

Agree with you 100%.

The last few lans I've been around to see, all of which were "a high stakes environment compounded by a map that's defined by chokepoints and an incredibly easy-to-defend last point" none of those lans were this boring and painful to watch.

People just keep forgetting that. Maybe it's hard for the invite players to put themselves in the seat of the poeple on the outside looking in, watching the LAN from home. Let me just say it again, it was really, really not fun to watch. Like viewer ship was much lower this LAN. But, ya know, enigma makes a thread saying it had nothing to do with the quick fix. So, gg on that.

I know that it isn't necessarily a teams job to make the people watching happy. But I think it's important. Maybe if the quick fix were allowed to stay around and we got better at using it, teams wouldn't look so desperate and derpy while using it. But as of now, even the best players in NA make this game look like a fucking joke while using it. That sounds harsh but the entire Saturday I spent trying to watch, that is honestly what I kept saying to myself--what a fucking joke.

your LAN watching experience was def the same as everyone elses

no way people can have different opinions

I'm glad it's banned but the way going about banning it was kind of dumb.

People were constantly asking whether they should practice with/without it so I can understand killing in posting it early instead of waiting forever to get an invite vote which he could already do at lan.

Although I do agree it got blown out of the water. I know I may have blew it out of proportion in my posts, partly due to me being mad at how the lan turned out, and partly due to such a drastic change to a game I've spent so much time trying to understand.

Be facetious all you want but the numbers don't lie. Viewership was considerably lower than Season 13 Lan. Especially/at least on Saturday.

No it wasn't. Our peak reached 4800.

Was that on Sunday or Saturday? I remember the average number of viewers on Saturday to be around 2300.

Also what numbers are you talking about? Do you have any data? you're just going off what you think the numbers were. I pay attention to viewer numbers as much as anyone and this LAN had more viewers than previous ones. At the very least it was on par.

Let's just have John settle this.

So wait, you allow a weapon to be used this after a massive change; contrary to previous experience with the exclusion of the Equalizer, and then ban the weapon immediately after LAN, despite the numerous season that Invite captains have picked the banned weapons to little or no complaints from the player base.
Makes sense.

Put it to the invite captains to pick.

The casters were saying this. S13 I thought there 3k + for almost the whole lan. Saturday I saw it go up to 2700 but for most of that dayit was around 2100-2300

If we take out the quickfix for one season, with everything else being constant (i.e., same amount of prize money, same maps...) then we can determine whether or not it was the quickfix's fault for the stalemates. Taking away one variable and keeping everything else as a controlled variable to run a "experiment" has always been the proper (scientific) approach to determine how one variable affects another.

If S15 LAN turns out to be as stalematey as it was this LAN without the quickfix then why not let it back in? However, if it's absence does seem to improve the pacing of the game then I don't see why it should be unbanned (unless there is a proper nerf that is...).

the addition of one variable (QF) to the puzzle is not what made stalemates occur...in part it is the situation (money on the line), the map (gully), the teams (mix^ + HRG) and the location of the game in the bracket (win = in finals, lose = have to play tri hards)

the addition of QF did not suddenly make gullywash stalemate-y --

from here

removing QF will not suddenly make that single map less of a stalemate -- it is inherently stalemate-y by nature -- nor will it solve the issue of "the sometimes slow and boring nature of high-level, high-stakes tf2"

Because the QF meta isn't going to change if it isn't used. So you'd have another season of uber/kritz, but then the development phase again.

the bandwagon...
it hurts.

You're late to the battle

Go back to the middle of thread, your questions have been answered at least 20 times

common factor: americans

ETF2L S15 Gullywash
infs (3rd) 7 - 2 broder (2nd) [playoffs]
broder 4 - 3 infs [season]

ETF2L S14
crack clan 3 - 6 broder [playoffs]

plus a handful of 5-0s

americans for ban s15

well to be fair the other LAN results on gullywash:
mix^ 5, trihards 2
tri hards 5, AG 1
HRG 3, mix^ 2
mix^ 5, trihards 1

The ETF2L games were with a timelimit of 30 minutes, likewise the i46 games enigma mentioned.

Highest I noticed view count ever hitting on esea orange stream was low 3k during upper bracket finals.

CSGO had 20k viewers. MUGEN had 6k.

Bush League Shit

WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT FUCKING LAN!?
We're talking about a ban that SHOULD have happened during the season, but didn't and NOW they change their minds about it.

Brad said it in . . . I forgot who's stream, but we're like Open level with the quick-fix.

How about ESEA bans anybody that stays on heavy for more than 3 minutes in a ma- WAIT it's on the attacking team to push last. How about we get rid of gul- not enough good maps to play. AH YES WE'LL GET RID OF THE MOBILITY OF TF2, THAT WILL BE SPECTATOR FRIENDLY.

It got picked up because of how strong it was with a strong pocket. Not because it's strong with heavy (Uber/kritz heavy>QF heavy btw; .9 seconds until the heavy dies at literally on top of each other and all bullets hit with uber, .7 with the QF) but because mobility is the only reason we run soldier pockets. LAN was definitely boring, and Gully was a terrible pick by whoever the fuck picked it. But listening to babies cry about how it's OP is just pandering to idiots.

http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/11455-an-explanation

If it is so clearly not broken can you please refute my points made.

It was a combonation of the above.

Gullywash has always favored the heavy during last pushes, on both sides. You could push last without one, or hold last without one, but having a heavy helped you a lot! You saw this in previous LANs, teams want to win when there is money on the table, so they will play in the way most likely to be successful. It might not be enjoyable, but so what?

What the quickfix does is make the heavy viable outside of last. One of the few real counters to quickfix is... Get this, the heavy (a class that is slow, boring and borderline broken itself), AND the Heavy is one of the best QF "uber" targets. The massive amount of health the heavy has to begin with, when you add overheal and the rapid healing of the QF "uber" makes the heavy quite the force to be reckoned with.

So of course, when there is something on the line, the strongest lineup to have includes a qf and heavy. The opposing team then has to run heavy as well, and likely quickfix.

Now why is this bad? Robin Walker just scolded you comp guys for not being flexible enough? Because TF2 should be a fast game in any competitive setting. Those of you who actually play 6 v 6 probably know just how boring it is stalemating at one point for long periods of time. The heavy is likely the class that slows the game down the most, possibly behind the engie. To use a heavy means that it takes longer to get from Point A to Point B, which leads to people waiting for extreme adventages before pushing (to ensure that they all can push out without getting split up). A weapon that seems to encourage the use of heavy outside situational plays slows the game down, plain and simple.

The way I see it, there are 2 ways to fix this problem: ban heavy as a class, or ban the quickfix. I don't care which one we go for, but something had to be done.

What we have is a weapon that is fun and interesting, that sadly was overbuffed and favors the use of the heavy, which slows down the game. It's not just one game, its the entire lan, minus maybe 1 or 2 maps. The game seemed slower then past LANs, and just did not seem enjoyable to the spectator, or most of the players. It got to the point where I refused to watch the final live, it wasn't worth my time. Since then, I went back and watched the VOD, and it s comparably better. Part of that might be because Viaduct was in it (which is less stalematy then most 5 cp), and part might be because it seemed there was less use of the QF/heavy strat.

I would also like to see Gully replaced, but that is another story...

I think the inherent problem here is that we're looking to ready-made solutions like new items to change our game when we should instead be expending more effort into fostering in new maps and map makers. Just the inclusion of CP_Process changed the way some teams play in regards to pushing off of last, the ramp rollouts, and so on that are nice subtle changes that don't obliterate the entire history of comp tf2, while providing us with something fresh and new.

But that requires actual work on the part of somebody (besides whichever guy made the random items valve releases) so it's not a particularly popular option. Especially given that we don't have any particular system for testing new maps - and our selection of new maps tends to be incredibly biased.

If we really want change that badly (CS has been playing on the same maps with only 3 new weapons for over 10 years, quake gets a new map every now and again) we should look into coming up with a system that will encourage people to become map makers, and to test those maps with like weekend pug tournaments or something. If we were in a place where we had so many good new maps that cp_badlands was the map we were talking about cutting as opposed to relative stinkers like GPIT and/or metalworks we'd be a much healthier scene imo (of course, I doubt we'll ever see the end of badlands but I use it here for effect ;) ).

For the most part, I agree. But the problem isn't really the quickfix, like you said. It's definitely strong, but so are invulnerability and crits. Since both of those run on a different methodology, it's difficult to balance them with the QF.

Quickfix's strength is fast heals and mobility. This enables more offensive strength, which is good for the game since, at the moment, we run 2 soldiers and 2 scouts on a team. Perhaps a demo/heavy/engie nerf would be nice, but they're meant to be strong damage classes so you can push out after a solid defense. Perhaps something as simple as swapping demo and roamer for flanks is the right solution, I have no clue in all honesty, but I do know that offensive classes get a little more love with this medigun.

Roamer is usually a crapshoot with those kinds of bombs. Since a solid bomb is more timing than trying to 1v1 a pocket. Meds have always been able to surf rockets, and nobody minded that. The option of a med just getting out of the way because of a mis-timed bomb has always been there.

Maybe I'm an idiot, but it seems like 99% of the fallout comes from a boring finals match. We all seemed to love viaduct. Nobody minded any of the other matches, up until lan.