use buff banner or the conch

my only input to this thread is FUCK SNAKEWATER LAST

I guess different people have different ways to play the same game. Happens in every sport/game, not everyone plays the same way.

I've seen several teams that like to play the aggro role, not letting the other team take a break for a moment and constantly pushing on small advantages or creating ones outta nowhere. I've seen less teams doing the "let's piss them off strat" (or counter-attacking). How's that? you get the advantage, for that you need to be the aggressive team, then you piss the other team off. Eventually the other team will get impatient and attack, make a mistake, and they counter-attack on that, and thus winning the round or at least some ground. (I think that's what Kaneco tried to explain with the Chelsea and Mourinho analogy, his teams always play this way)

Is it annoying for defending team? Yes. Is it boring to watch? Yup, probably not a lot of people would like to see that. Is it a valid strategy? If it gives you results you can't really say it's not.

Basketball forces you to attack due to the shot clock, in tf2 there's no such thing as that. If I’m 2-0 up, and in control of the middle point, do I really have to push and take 2nd? Depending on how you see the game, how comfortable you feel taking certain role or what's your playstyle and general strategy, the answer will be either yes or no.

From what I got from that video is that you just don't like stalemates Slin, because in your 4 years of tf2 experience at a comp level you learnt how to play the game a certain way that encourages you to NOT create those situations, and when you find someone that has a different way to play the same game we all love it conflicts with your knowledge, creating this frustration you had at that moment.

i love how we're talking about stalemates and the video thumbnail is Snakewater 2nd. That's exactly what I think of when I hear about stalemates.

^
I personally found quick fix fun to play with, dunno about you guys. But the map idea also requires a lot of rethinking. Pretty much all last points are hard to bomb in, and changing that would require a lot of redesigning and new strats. I think the most effect solution would be to find a balance between 30 minutes, in which the winning team can run the clock, and 60 minutes, in which time is effectively not a factor and there is no incentive to push regardless of who is winning.
Test out different time lengths in off-season perhaps?
#newmeta

he's suggesting that we change the rules to force the 'attacking' team to push. I agree with that, and am in favor of a shortened round timer to effect that change. Honestly, I don't know who would actually be opposed to this rule change, unless there's a contingent of TF2 viewers out there who hate midfights.

If you think of stalemating as a strategy, in the same way running full time kritz or always having a heavy and engie when defending last are strategies, then you'd have to come up with a counter. Teams have come up with strategies to counter kritz or to push a heavily defended last, some more successful than others, but not many teams come up with strategies to break stalemates. Part of the issue is assuming you can never push because you are on the defensive end and it is on the other team to push.

There's so much shit you could've tried looking at that YouTube video. For example they gave you a lot of room in saw, maybe send a sniper up to woodbridge and try for a lucky shot on the medic. If you got it then stalemate broken. If sniper died and they pushed, stalemate broken. If sniper died and they didn't push, employ a different strategy to counter their stalemate strategy and try again. Don't just wait for the other team to make a move because that's how you're used to playing; that's what they want you to do. Either team can break a stalemate situation, but the only team with the incentive to do it there was yours since you guys were a point behind. If you took risks and lost the round then fuck it, at least you got a new round. Wasting time by waiting was just as much of a risk as going for a play.

Quickfix is awful.

There is no choice, you run quickfix to mid or you lose because you can only hide in choke with kritz so many times - nobody is so stupid to fall for it 5 times.

A. Overlong stalemates exist not particularly because it's overly difficult to push in this game - they exist for 2 broad categorical reasons.

1.) Ineptness on the part of the attacking team: inability to utilize advantages properly, inability to position themselves properly during attacking transition fights resulting in a low success/failure ratio (encouraging more passive play), and/or poor communication (people tend to back up if they don't know what's going on or not join in pushes they don't know are happening).

2.) Overly defensive setups and holds - many teams hold *way* too passively on a lot of maps when it is inappropriate to do so, so even if the other team *does* attack (which they may not do instantly) they won't be able to push themselves forward fast enough to actually gain the subsequent point. You see this a lot on last holds where teams run 2 or more utils - if you run 2 or more utility classes it's going to be *very* difficult to get off of your own last no matter what map you're playing simply because 1/3rd or more of your team have to walk back into spawn. Furthermore, when the attacking team lacks experience and organization, extremely passive holds can pay dividends (just look at how a heavy can effect a pug (low organization) vs. how a heavy can effect an invite or Main match).

Aim is important, but the majority of this game is about coordination and organization - for teams that lack a high level of organization, passive play is *generally* favored. Or another thing you see, especially in open and lower levels, is going all in at mid (hoping you wipe the other team at mid by playing crazily aggressive so as to avoid having to push points). I'm not specifically trying to knock players, but the general rule of thumb is that the lower on the totem pole you are, the less organized and experienced you are, thus, rampant aggression is more difficult to deal with so it has a higher payoff (when we're talking about mids).

The term stalemate also needs to be defined. We've got temporary pauses in the overall play - but that's not so bad as long as they don't last over a minute - hell plenty of people watch e-sports where virtually nothing happens for 5-10 minutes at a time, not to mention physical sports (such as football where out of a 3 hour block you actually only see 60 minutes of actual game being played).

If you take for example the "stalemates" from last night's AG vs Rent, those were timely and well played out, great to watch, and while caps didn't always go down (in the first half) we saw an exciting back and forth with plenty of drama - there have been numerous LAN matches of this type as well.

What we don't want are stalemates like we saw at the last ESEA LAN where literally nothing happens for entire rounds because neither team feels comfortable pushing (more of a symptom of quickfix usage). You also sometimes see these things happening in lower divisions (I remember being able to hold lasts for 6-7 minutes at a time due to inability to push out without losing). It's part of the territory there.

Specifically to slin:

In part parking the bus is *rather* rare - again, this is primarily anecdotal on my part, but in general I think a 3-5 minute timer wouldn't really have the effect that it's intended to have because it would be *very* possible for teams to time out rounds pushing last (wait to get uber, wait to get pick, push, fail, other team can't push out, round times out - disaster). So it would encourage rampantly defensive play on the part of teams holding last because there is *no* incentive to push off of your own last with such a small timer - so long as the pushing team obliges you by taking a few minutes to actually push.

The 10 minute timer is ultimately fine and here is why.

I'll use your video as an example. This isn't specifically addressed to Slin because I assume he's already aware of this, but I'm gonna do it for the benefit of reading populations.

The team holding mid has shorter respawn waves and an absolute respawn advantage relative to the middle point. This does give them a definitive advantage in regards to holding the middle point. Thus Slin is correct in saying it does incentivize them to push second, but I should carefully point out that the reason it incentivizes pushing second is because that respawn advantage to mid makes mid relatively easier to defend should the push go awry. On the flip side, Slin's team has a disincentive to push mid because the opposition respawns more quickly relatively to mid.

That particular disincentive for Slin's team ONLY comes into play in a few situations:

A. those situations where Slin's team loses too many players and doesn't cap quickly enough to deny a rapid repush of mid (from the aforementioned faster forward spawns).

B. Those situations where the team that formerly held mid obtains (somehow) a significant uber advantage and has enough players present to repush without using uber to obtain mid.

The same factors apply, defensively for Slin's team. His team has a relative spawn advantage to second. That's why we often see pushes but no movement because neither team can organize itself for offensive actions on forward points as various spawn waves come in. They have the spawn advantage to second. Thus, it's not *impossible* to push mid, take small loses, back up, and hold second effectively on the weight of incoming respawns (however their wave timer is relatively longer, so if deaths occur in a spread out fashion it would doom a potential second hold in some cases).

Slin's team unfortunately fails to take this into account - they *wanted* the other team to push into second because they knew that was the area where they had the most advantageous position (because of their respawn advantage to second, and their preparation of the second point - establishing a hold and so forth). However, having the lead, the team on mid refuses to push because they're afraid of that advantage, and they have the lead so they've got no incentive to push a point laden with defenses. Ultimately Slin's team is left with 2 options.

1. Let the round time out and refight mid (boring + bad).

2. Never stop attempting to push - In the entire 7 minutes of second --) mid stalemate did I see an attempt to stack a side and overwhelm a singular defender. Surely *somebody* on that team could have been dealt with presented with overwhelming force (which would open a window to push). Again, this isn't suicidal for Slin's team so long as they effectively manage their deaths and respawn waves. They're a victim of their own tactic and an active party in the stalemate - both teams essentially chose the same strategy. They both assumed pushing was too risky so they refused to do so and made no *real* attempt to push - except in the most hamfisted way (cycling ubers in saw - or as I like to call it - playing the I bet my pocket is better than your pocket game). Off classes were certainly an option as well, but I'm not a particular fan of utility usage outside of last points so I understand why they didn't utilize that option.

tl;dr it's not necessary to modify round timers or add a shot clock. What needs to be altered are the assumption teams/players make about holding second and the approaches they take to defense (active as opposed to static defense - or if you want to use military theory, Elastic as opposed to Static Defense). If a stalemate lasts 5+ minutes with no real pushing both teams are at fault for choosing a weak strategy.

I should also point out that I'm not specifically attacking Slin or his play - he's only one of 6 players so there's only so much he can do.

Ultimately, the best option they had, being as it was Uber Vs. Uber was to attempt to heal shift (if you've seen my video about pushing in 6v6 you have a few broad categories of pushes - the ideal one to use in Uber Vs. Uber stalemates is the utilization of "heal shifting" that is to pass buffs around (by putting your medic in motion) to various chokes and see if you can create enough space to push OR obtain a pick using a relative health advantage while non-buffed players utilize choke points to ablate their own potential relative health disadvantage. Of course the other Uber vs. Uber option is to utilize a utility class, but I personally don't love that option, and I especially don't like it for second --) mid pushes on snake). Heal shifting is the best and safest strategy for uber vs. uber defensive situations because it generally prevents precipitous losses (dooming your second defense) because it doesn't over laden chokes with players to be ubered in to (again likely dooming your second hold) and it's rather easy for 1 player to hold a choke from an ideal position without heals for a short period of time. So, not only is it better than a static defense in so far as it gives us something to watch (as players feel each other out and poke around), but a death from the team holding second isn't the end of the world because of their capability to hold second utilizing their relative spawn advantage there.

Active (elastic) defense is inherently superior to static defense because A.) it utilizes your relative spawn advantage on second (and against a team truly parking the bus they won't push anyways) and creates more opportunities for you to push out of defensive situations.

Most games with symmetrical objectives force the turtling team to lose due to lack of map control (losing resources etc.). Most games with an attacking and defending team force the attacking team to fight on a clock so there is always action. 5cp has neither.

In my opinion tense stalemates are only boring in hour long matches, 30 min matches plz.

I concur. I enjoyed watching all of the Multiplay Insomnia Gaming Festival. Never a dull moment.

Marxist with the only real post thus far. GJ friend.

Stalemates are part of almost every competitive game - they're part of TF2 and they aren't always interesting to watch but when you play to win, they're necessary. They will always be there in TF2, you won't eradicate it without drastically changing the rules. I also think the way NA is played (first to 5 over 60 minutes) really encourages teams to turtle or take low risk pushes as well, I don't find them boring but if you do, you should probably change the rule set.

Exactly, even if you try to stalemate in a 30 minute match, it wont be as effective as on a 1 hour match because it will pressure one of the teams to do something with the timer ticking down.

Not mentioning the biggest downside for me which is the NA ruleset is a pain to run any amateur or community-run league or tournament (speaking from experience) compared to the EU ruleset where all you need is 1 single config.

Well you can use only one config for an NA type rule set you just have to execute it twice and have a win limit of 4 as opposed to 3 as ESEA does (since one team winning 4, then the other winning 4 would result in an automatic golden cap in such circumstances, slightly different from ESEA but essentially the same).

Unless you want it to be *exactly* like esea then indeed you would need 2 different win limits per half :(.

That depends entirely on how important you consider winning the midfight to be. If you know you're going to be slower to mid every time, you can put less emphasis on winning mid, run another medigun and run your strategy from that point. You have to protect your weakness and exploit your strengths, otherwise it will be an exercise in futility.

Yeah I agree encouraging teams not to go to mid is a great idea.

This isn't a common thing even in high-level official matches in europe because nobody really cares enough to sit there and wait forever - their desire to do something fun is more than their desire to win tbh.

The only way to solve this for really tryhard teams (who won't even push on a huge advantage) is to literally force them to push. So you need some kind of a rule which forces an attacking team to push without being awful for the defending team. Apart from the round timer, can anyone suggest a rule that would do this? And if you did shorten the round timer, what would you shorten it to?

The game can't be action packed and perfect 100% of the time, stalemates do happen and there are slowdowns sometimes. Changing the entire format of the game because of something that doesn't even happen that often would be a mistake in my opinion

If anything, the map layout is one of the biggest factors in stalemates

I've been paying more attention to the Euro scene than before and I've honestly got to agree that a 30-minute timer seems more beneficial than two 30-minute halves. I just can't see why people say that 30 minutes would lead to less stalling out when halves literally mean you can say "we'll turtle the last 7 minutes of the half and reset to have a chance at winning mid and not being stuck at last", while the attackers can deal with resetting because they also have an equal chance at winning mid, even if they are trailing. Without halves, the losing defenders have more incentive to push out, the losing attackers more have incentive to break a hold, and the winning attackers have more incentive to push and finish early. The only ones who stand to gain are winning defenders, and even then I would only turtle the fuck out of last if the opponents were finally picking up and made it a 1-round difference - otherwise you still have rounds to spare. Perhaps it's time to stop acting stuck-up and try out a thing or two from the Euro book.

Side note- as someone who defended the Quick Fix right after the buff, y'all need to stop. Running it doesn't create a pure rock-paper-scissors situation as you have to run it to mid or the entire enemy team will be there before you, can easily do an aggressive mid by immediately having heals with them, and the only way to really beat it is to give them mid and wait to kritz them in choke - and who the hell wants to see a midfight with no fight? Not to mention how the quick heals and charge allow for more mistakes by not only the med, but the entire team (take damage and still get crit heals immediately? Sounds like a fantastic idea!)

edited since apparently I forgot the "out" in "without"

i just wanted to make the distinction that slin is upset about parking the bus and not stalemates. in the video he shows a couple 7-8 minute "stalemates" where no player in the server takes any risks and no attempts are made from either team to push a point. this is bus parking and not stalemating. essentially he would like to eliminate "stalemating as a strategy" and not stalemating in general.

parking the bus and stalemates are 100% different. i also disagree with your assessment that a defending team has no control over stalemate situations. in the situation that you are referencing, both your scouts sit back on the fence and your roamer sits on heavy in forward spawn for an appreciable amount of time. while the opposing team is no doubt parking the bus, your team is actually doing the same, and taking no calculated risks to progress the game in your favor. the other team is doing the same and you end up with what you showed in the video.

implementing a "shot clock", as you describe it, encourages the team with the upper hand to push (as you say) however it discourages the defending team to push and to simply park the bus to force a new midfight. Unlike in basketball, the defending tf2 team can essentially force the shot clock to expire by not taking possession of the ball (not pushing / parking the bus) at which point a new midfight will occur. this gives the defending team no incentive to push off of last points in particular as it gives them a better chance at attaining middle directly, rather than having to capture the 2nd point on their way to middle.

i think people just need to realize that "offense" and "defense" in tf2 are not distinct. each team's goal is to simultaneously take the next point and to defend the points that they have control of. just because it is accepted strategy to park the bus when the enemy team has middle doesnt make it any less your fault when a stalemate lasts 7-8 minutes.

Yeah, that is the major problem with lowering the cap timer - once there have been 2 failed pushes into last and you're defending, there's 2 minutes left on the clock. If you push you might lose the round, if you turtle you will reset the timer and have another chance at mid. Frankly I'd rather stick with what we have now.

^^^^exactly right.

If you encourage offence it forces the other team to play more defensively to compensate, and that sucks too. A shot clock works in basketball because you can't turn your players into giant walls that block the hoop whenever you're on d, in tf2 you have a lot of ways to turtle hard if you really want to.

imo the problem here is that maps give one team an advantage. If the defending team /wasn't/ at a disadvantage they would be just as responsible for making plays/trying to break the hold, instead of being too scared to try since they're already at behind. You could try things like equal spawn times, cap times, spawn to cap distances + map design that allows a lot of peeking and trading damage, and encourages holding close so there's lots of opportunities to make plays.

The problem with removing all advantages though is that obviously the winning team can't win as fast. The reason we have short spawn times on offense, forward spawns, decreasing captimes etc in the first place is so that teams can get momentum and keep the game flowing. idk, it's a tough problem

That's why if a shotclock was implemented heavy and engineer would have to be banned to prevent turtling. Engineer is entirely defense based and shouldn't be in 6s. Engineer doesnt "add dynamic" as most people would argue, i think it slows the game and its a crutch. Why not plop down a level 3 in stalemate at your last to force the other team to waste resources to destroy then you swap back to scout/soldier immediately. It takes no skill or practice to accomplish wasting the other teams resources because of offclassing(engineer specifically) The part of the game I dislike most is pushing gully/metal last against a team with 3 offclasses that are completely relying on you to wipe in a push to even have a chance of pushing out, and if shotclock and class bans were implemented that would never happen. I think if heavy/engi were banned pushing last on maps notorious for easily defended last points(gully/metalworks) would be more exciting and involve more actual "strategy" than sitting around.

Then what is the point of 5cp, if capping mid doesnt give you an advantage? If you remove advantages you get when mid is capped, 5cp would just be koth with 2 extra points and stalemates would probably even still be around.

So, the goal in competitive tf2 is to win.
If you don't push as the attacking team, you stalemate, which isn't winning.

The defending team, if they push unsuccessfully, lose the point they were defending and thus are one step closer to losing. The attacking team, if they push unsuccessfully, will be in the situation the defending team is. So the attacking team has less to lose, thus putting the push on them.

Am I getting this right? Not 100% sure what the issue here is. Less time doesn't make a team more aggressive, it just promotes a stronger turtle.

I feel like if there were to be a 3-5 minute timer, it'd have to reward the team that has a disadvantage with only one control point win. If you're holding last, why take the risk of pushing out possibly getting 2 or possibly getting backcapped, when you could turtle out for ~4 more minutes and start fresh on mid?

Because turtling without heavy/engi (if they were banned)is difficult and a competent team will take your last in the first few attempts, unless you outplay them. I think shot-clock and offclass bans reward a team for aggression instead of rewarding a team for having a sentry. Taking back second point resets the timer and you are still at risk of losing the round, but turtling without sentries and heavies put you at an even greater risk of losing the round imo.