how many people are projected to participate this season?
and will there ever be a f2p league?

(sorry if they've already been asked, i just skimmed through.)

As of this moment there are 15 completely "ready" teams and 76 teams registered in total. There are still 6 days remaining in the registration period, so it's unclear at this point how many teams are going to play.

Demo uploads are coming soon, should hopefully be in place before the start of the regular season.

Updated rules, configs, and whitelists coming no later than Sunday!

Many teams such as ours for example are just trying to finalize payments so I hope that around half of those 76 teams would also finish paying up.

Do they update during the game?

Also, having the columns be sortable would be nice.

It was broken when we played, but should be fixed for tonight's matches.

And sorting is being added sometime today as well.

Source: http://cevo.com/forums/topic/6009/team-fortress-2/s4-suggestions-site-server/

They update on the website during the match at the end of each round. The column sorting will be live later this afternoon.

very nice, and very exciting. I like how the stats look right now

Ignore me I'm wrong.

See this for the facts and not a non-finalized whitelist
http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/16054-cevo-registration-reminder

Question, why in general is the lib launcher and cow mangler banned? I don't see them as really overpowered (underpowered if anything). Not arguing against it, just curious.

Also, I personally I like the idea of the rescue ranger being legal. Might make sentries on last stay up longer then a couple of seconds, maybe even zap it away and quickly reposition it. Could end up being more of an issue then its worth but then it can just be banned next season.

the booties are banned and the rescue ranger is LEGAL...
valentine's day ruined.

isnt the cow mangler the gun where u right click and get a tactical nuclear strike

i dont think i want that gun in matches

Kind of, you slow down to Heavy-firing-brass-beast speeds for a couple of seconds when you fire it though, and I don't think its too much stronger then any direct rocket, it just sets people on fire too. Not something you can bomb a medic with or anything.

EDIT: I'm mistaken, the charged shot is a minicrit, the wiki list it as a 122-151 direct shot. Downside to the gun is its absolutely useless against sentries, 18 damage per shot to buildings.

Cow manglers secondary effect isn't what matters, it's the fact that it has infinite ammo and they got rid of the damage nerf.

Are people happy with the quickfix? This was voted in by the community or was it just decided by admins?

Sorry if this was answered before

bl4nk and slin decided on the quickfix

AFAIK, Quick Fix has always been allowed in CEVO.

I don't see any harm in keeping it unless teams insist on running cheesy off-classes out of spite of it being allowed.

I think the thing with the Quick-Fix is by now people are a little more used to it, and will now have a whole season to figure it out. It got a super bad showing at ESEA LAN by being allowed in mid season, giving people no time to figure it out. Now with offseason time, and an entire season to use and play with it, we'll get a real example on if its shit, overpowered or completely viable.

S'what I'm hoping anyway.

That's how teams dealt with it. there was no spite. if you want to win then you run whatever gives you the best opportunity.

Teams had spent weeks before lan scrimming with quickfix, to the point where every team ran it full time in scrims and the lan matches themselves.

The showing you saw at esea lan is what it is. there isn't a magical metagame shift that would have made quickfix not boring to follow/watch.

You misunderstand, I'm saying if they cheese during the CEVO season with the Quick Fix it's out of spite for the medigun and not the ESEA LAN Instance of "We didn't think our strats through all the way".

The lesson I took from that LAN is that teams will play safe when the stakes are high and confidence isn't. "Magical" meta shifts only occur on innovation and there was nothing innovative really showcased outside of a few "What the hell why not?" plays (see: The Mixup Engie/Conch).

Quick fix was a cool idea. To be properly balanced, it needs to have a more useful ubercharge but simultaneously less healing power when not ubered. The problem with quick fix in its current state is that it dishes out heals so fast that when two evenly matched teams are playing, a team running it to middle will beat a team not running it to middle just on sheer healing points. This is obviously negated if you focus fire targets or manage to pick the medic early in the fight, but all four invite teams figured out that it's incredibly strong for mids, but very mediocre beyond that.

I don't think anyone thought it was overpowered in a general sense--it was just so incredibly strong for mids that anyone not running it was instantly at a disadvantage, which introduced the whole "do we push with quick fix into last and hope we can take down a sentry and a heavy before getting stickied to death, or do we waste a bunch of time and walk back to spawn to switch mediguns, giving the enemy uber when they wouldn't have had a chance at having uber otherwise" debacle.

While I think most teams will reserve it for last holds, I do very much think it should be banned to prevent a CEVO occurrence of fixgate.

can we fuck with how long it takes mediguns to charge

i know we could mess with all kinds of tank/infected related cvars in l4d

maybe make qf take like 90% of the time of uber instead of having it just as fast as kritz fulltime

that still doesnt really solve the problem of mids, though

Teams did think it through. What you saw were the best options to deal with quickfix.

The only strat I don't recall seeing is opting to not go to mid and charging kritz in yard (w/a heavy for added effect). real entertaining and wacky!

How is running an engineer an innovative and entertaining solution to quickfix? lmao

Also the concheror will probably be banned next season.

On that topic, I'm happy to see the Conch is whitelisted. I'm really hoping to see pockets start using it more often. Harder to protect the medic without a shotgun, but perhaps keep a scout around the combo. That may give up some flank, but would give them the ability to bust through chokepoints/holds with a popped conch. /theorycraft

As for the Quick-fix, I feel like its in a real limbo as a weapon itself. I feel like any nerf to it (remove the half overheal for example) would instantly put it in the same category as the Vaccinator (Side note, Valve please fix this gun, its too much fun to suck) and no one would even think about using it.

There is no reason why the conch should be allowed with its current stats.

I think its an interesting option, at least. Can you explain why it shouldn't be allowed?

+2hp per second for wearer
+25% speed for scouts in range, above 30% for other classes
35% damage dealt received as health
480 damage to charge

I think it should be banned because its charge can be obtained by sitting back and spamming rockets over the course of 20 seconds (or less) and everyone on your team not only moves super fast, but also gains 35% of damage dealt back as health. That's like having two black box soldiers with four rockets each--and that's without counting the demo and scouts. The only real counter to the conch is the conch or some form of uber, and the conch charges way too easily for that to have any kind of semblance of balance unless you call "conch vs conch" balanced. The problem with that is that it goes back to the "it's so good that both teams are essentially forced to run it" conundrum.

Considering teams attempted to treat the QF no differently than Uber or Kritz, I suppose you'd be correct.

However, a more empirical method would be to throw out the old meta and start over with the Four Mediguns, choose different class selections, create new default and alternate unlocks, choose different reactions for various outcomes, so on and so forth. In other words, nothing of the old meta would be above changing or eliminating in favor of obtaining subtle but distinct advantages.

Why would we redo everything for the sake of scientific method?

Not for the sake of, but an acknowledgment that the game is indeed different with Four Mediguns instead of Two. So to me it makes sense to go back and revisit every concept in an effort to find a new advantage, operating under the presumption that if my team doesn't do it, another team will.

I just want to see a metagame that rewards innovation and creativity, and not have the attitude of "Here's your play order, use it or GTFO".

whitelist is not official.

http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/15727-cevo-community-meeting-2/3#post-69