Leaves - qf originally wanted to play main or at least IM, we made that well known. Our goal was never to sandbag open. We even actively looked for a dead roster we could hijack from someone (which is the only way to sort of break the current system). Even if you can find a roster, i believe there is still a certain amount of players and matches that the current roster has to play in before you can start the people you actually want to play. Since we couldn't find a dead team to take over, we literally had no other choice than to play in open if we wanted stay together.

It's no secret that tic is our carry - anyone on our team will tell you that. chriz, cringe, and i have been mostly inactive/backup for the past few seasons so we wanted another shot to come back and give it one last go. cringe and i haven't even started in invite since seasons 9 & 5, and are way past our prime. Neither of us are "invite" caliber anymore and we have no problem admitting that. Still, I understand why people gave us shit for this and i can't blame anyone for having that opinion...but we were at least up front with everyone and said we were going to be playing our mains. Our goal was/is to stick together and move up the ranks. As far as i know we plan on playing together still except sal, who is making a team with some of his other close friends for next season.

Personally i wanted meat to win mainly because both our matches with them had roster issues. We had 2 backups the first time we played them, and they had switched 2 positions due to a backup the 2nd time. I honestly thought they were the best team in open all season and i wanted one final match with both teams having their starting 6. Regardless, they will be successful wherever they go from here and i really hope they stick it out. This is an open team that literally came out of nowhere and was scrimming/beating main teams all season, went 16-0, and came within inches of beating budsquad on their mains while playing with 2 backups. That speaks volumes as to what they have accomplished in just 3 months together as a team.

i guess hivemind was the weak link after all

I think squid said it best...

When you're losing, especially in an elimination type situation you're going to want to do your best -- even if it means going and playing your main.

I would have liked to see meat market win finals, but it was a good game.

This is all I'm going to say on the matter because all of you have made up your minds on the matter and this will be minusfragged away but...

We did initially want to be put in IM but the esea system wouldn't allow it, no we did not want to play in main because auzzie/whisker/star are playing their first seasons and we were fairly committed to letting powah snipe to his heart's content and I never touched any class but scout

seanbud was suffering packetloss and a fairly high ping which was making soldier unenjoyable for him, i encouraged him to play whatever class he wanted, we ran a class lineup of 2 scouts, sniper, roamer, demo, medic which is very away from the norm but not really an excuse I suppose
We ran very similar lineups and have lost a few times this season so I'm not sure why it's such a big deal now, I also tend to do better with the pocket soldier there being able to protect me from things as well but that's neither here nor there. The client screwed them over more and we never rushed them or forced them to play.
However, I'm quite sorry if our actions weren't expected or are genuinely despised, we weren't hiding what we were doing and we're not intending to win at any costs, we're just trying to have fun as a team as hard as that may be to believe.

Competitive Team Fortress 2© the video game is a serious thing. No fun should be allowed.

Bullshit we all watched the stream. Right after halftime seanbud was like fuck this I'm switching to scout. Maybe the packetloss is real since his rocket aim was strangely off target, but that's not the real reason and everyone knows it

If he wants to tryhard it's his perogative, but if you try to feed us bullshit you're going to get shit back in return

So you're admiting that my rocket aim was strangely off target, but I should still be having fun while we're getting destroyed and I biff 2 rocket jumps during ubers because who knows where the fuck my rocket went? I play this game competitively for fun. The same as everyone else in this godforsaken league. I pay to play in it, same as everyone else. I don't think what class I play in my matches makes me a good/bad person, it makes me a competitor. Please stop with all this bullshit. Yes the switch to scout is also in part because my team is just better with me on scout, but losing fights because of laggy rockets is more frustrating than just losing fights. Even with me on scout, Meat Market still took a round off of us and nearly won, with 1 or 2 backups. I don't think we're sandbagging, I think the competition warrants trying pretty fucking hard since it's ESEA playoffs and I paid to play in this league.

Jesus.

from the thread link above:

if people are going to be angry, be angry at the fact that ESEA's system allows this to happen...

What happened to you seanbud? You were everyone's favorite invite player. Is being forced to play in open so caustic?

#71 Because once upon a time, seanbud was my hero. I want that seanbud back.

did people miss earlier in playoffs where you went full time heavy for a few rounds due to shitty ping?

why are you being such an asshole about this?

I think he's being an asshole because the honest truth is that BUDSQUAD simply was not good enough to win that match on their offclasses, and bad ping or not, they won a match that they should not have because seanbud went scout.

Everyone deals with bad ping on esea servers, and I understand that it's really fucking frustrating to have ping affect your performance. Hell, there are a lot of players who would switch classes mid-match if their ping was that bad, but those players didn't make LAN two seasons ago on the class they're switching to.

Maybe it's unfair or whatever, but it's still really unfortunate that it worked out that way because I don't think the better team won that match.

budsquad getting baited into this thread LOL
edit: I just realized that there hasn't been a DDOS in Open Playoffs this season.

way to jinx it

I would say, having watched the match, that budsquad's winning had a lot less to do with seanbud going scout, and a lot more to do with how poorly meat market played, in general, in the last several rounds. Some of it was inability to deal with Powah, some of it was poor positioning and management in general, and, I'd assume, a lot of it had to do with extraneous circumstances (killemdeader coming in cold basically and hivemind having to watch because of computer/client problems). Shout out to hivemind also - I finally remembered your name.

I'm not gonna call anybody out or provide any deep analysis, but to suggest that seanbud singlehandedly over powered meat market who was playing as best as they possibly could is laughable.

*

Open finals haven't started yet

I kinda shit the bed after coming in without a single scrim or playing medic in weeks. #excuses

better to play one or two games of onclass and make someone mad then have to play in open again.
but i was unaware budsquad wanted to win, whatever floats their boat.

Quick predict that finals will get DDOS'd so that it won't happen!

Guys its only open

i don't think the roster switch at halftime is what's being looked down upon. Like any smart team, you knew you needed to make a change to have a chance to make a comeback....so that's exactly what you did. It's the perception you guys made of yourselves before the season started that has some people pissed off. When you guys said "playing for fun" it was the impression that you were going to offclass, joke around, and who cares about what our record is, we don't care if we win etc etc. I know you probably don't believe this, but we knew exactly what was going to happen in the viaduct match before it even happened. As soon as we were up 2-0 you went on scout and went bananas. We totally expected that, partly because deep down we knew you guys are competitive, and partly because there was some bad blood between blink & powah. Neither team wanted to lose and it was a great close game...no different than last night.

Let me be the first to say i have no issues with anyone on budsquad, nor the outcome of the match last night. I think what you guys do with your streams to promote the community and raise money is great. At the end of the day though, you guys are competitive players and will always have competitive pride. Your team is honestly no different than any other team...most of the guys on our team have known each other for years too. You guys simply have a larger fanbase that knows of your friendship due to your popularity in the community & stream. Everyone wants to play with their friends and "have fun"...but of course everyone has more fun when they win. That's exactly why we came straight out and said we were playing serious from the start - to avoid this exact type of backlash (and we still got shit for being honest, don't worry). That's exactly what you guys are getting in this thread, and i'm sure you know that.

Ya just wait...anyone remember the shit show open finals was last season??

If I end up being the one selected to cast open finals, I'd really like to not have to talk to myself for 45 minutes straight again. plz.

budsquad shouldn't have played
good players shouldn't be allowed to play tf2
i like when a team can just go straight to a high division
i lov e having half the teams in im and main be dead
spay an d neuter ur cats

None of this is new or unexpected

People complain about sandbagging every season

Im sad to see Meat Market not making the finals.

GG to BudSquad tho, they captured the 5 points when using 6 players and the ESEA ruleset.

Nerf Drama.

after watching seanbud's stream, all i still end up coming back to is esea client/servers. they had to switch servers at the beginning and for some reason budsquad was allowed to have 3 soldiers on one rollout, powah had jarate half the time, and hivemind still couldn't join

man i can't wait for next season...

oh I forgot about this

It only counts against them if he uses it, right? Because I'm pretty sure he just had it equipped. If he used it, then I guess Meat Market won and everyone's happy.

Still, the blame is really on the ESEA ruleset for forcing Budsquad and QF into Open. None of this would have happened otherwise.

powah cheats ban him

I was not aware that washed up meant "in invite on their main in the previous season."

see now i don't understand your logic at all. that would make sense if it weren't for the fact that apparently your team is dead now anyway?

Here are my thoughts (if anyone cares):

What BUDSQUAD did is no problem at all. This is open playoffs and apparently top Open teams get moved to Main at the end of the season...so a team doing their best to compete, whatever the cost, is just fine. How could anyone argue against that? Top Open has changed quite a bit, and the best team in Open could easily be top 3 in Main, so what type of competition do Open players expect? Sorry that the Broncos are in your division, Raiders, but you're going to have to beat them at some point if you want to win big (lol sports).

Also, people need to stop with this "invite players in Open" shit. Have you seen who's played in invite so far in our 15 seasons? If you have a pulse and $50 dollars in your pocket, you can play invite. So, seeing "invite capable players" in lower divisions is inevitable. The game is flooded with ex-invite talent.

Having said that, I do hope some iteration of BUDSQUAD continues on next season. I really hate seeing good players play in Open/IM/Main "for fun", and then everyone leaves to join other rosters. That hurts the game and community as a whole. Right now, our competitive scene lacks good teams who stick together, but props to Rent-a-Homies, Street Hoops, and other teams like them!

So yeah, I hope seanbud or lange or cyzer keep some part of the roster alive in whatever division they play in next season because that is okay in my book. Same goes to Quantum Flux and AG Main and whoever else falls in that category.