Please I swear dempsey is responsible for everything wrong about this article

Same actually

Shout out to Lena, Tanning Bed and Phong for being a very cool airbnb crew for the second LAN in a row, watching cool stuff with me while I lay on the floor and listen to me rant about British food.
Double shout out to phong and Tanning for being one of the most hilarious drunk duo I've seen so far.
Shout out to dempsey for shit talking teams in the open preview group article that we both wrote but only I signed, leading to at least 4 different players coming up to me and asking why I was such an ass. Also for the flamboyant outbursts when drunk and the online harrassement of bleghfarec.
Shout out to Subway Overload for letting me call in this slightly chaotic team ("we'll distract them by feeding our demo this mid"), getting 2 points !!! and being great blokes.
Shout out to Nevo, amarok, mulaa, dwo and Smirre for giving long, in-depth answers to questions such as "why did you lose lel" "how did you get into prem I don't know you" and "What is confidence ?".
Double shout out to all the prem frenchies for all agreeing that Reckoner was a lit map, and to amarok and mulaa in particular for saying that my mousepadless, arrowkeys-using setup didn't matter as long as it worked for me. It took me 3 LANS for that to happen.
Shout out to Ironhawk for giving me her disease and the creepiest snap I've ever seen, and to the rest of PoundLAN black for putting up with Dempsey
Angry shout out to Heny for mocking my setup multiple times, and to DigyB for dodging the MGE game we planned.
Shout out to domiq, ondkaja and Mike Rotch for being really nice and chill gamers, Mike Rotch also lent me his PC to play Apex, and bought a can of beans to eat cold. Not a shout out but I needed to get that out of my system.
Shout out to uberchain for being the coolest boss (fuck u blegh), and helping me retell the Starkie furry porn story to Se7en players.
Shout to the OG Porg eSports players Cosmo, Dowel and Eve for coming back this year, Dowel even came back twice because I was lost in Coventry the first time.
Shout out to the one dude who said I had nice pants.
Shout out to Rahmed for bossing it at his first ever LAN, kid will go far.
Shout out to everyone else I've spoken to : Storm, Pitts, gilga, dBubble, tiia, LoveTF, Prawn, nicco, Mia, hobnobs, Haunter, Lukas, Amik, Dying Tom, Nhaaj who helped me buy shit, Whip who looks like Captain Crunch, Ascend, Fenrir, Acecle, Munky, Frysk, CeeJaey, Cloudy, Dying Tom, Demos, twiikuu, jun0, Thaigrr, Deox, Aidelos, Yohn, HOI, Austin, Aoshi, Thomson (or Thompson am still unsure) and everyone else that I forgot.

I want to make it clear that my much superior title was refused and then re-instated only because people don't like the influence I have in the news-na channel.

Mike will always be the tallest in my heart.

Agree that with i65 coming up, this needs to be addressed. The second option seems simpler to me, although at the cost of some extra work for the admins.
What do you think of the ETF2L system used in Highlander where a 3-2 game counts as a golden cap, basically you get 2 points if you win and one point if you lose. I like the idea of representing partial victories in a map that does not allow ties by design, and also it feels nice to have some points from a close game, but then again you don't necessarily get points from a close 4-3 5cp game so idk.

Of course most people do a mesh of all 3 and can even categories such as versatility, numbers of airshots and so on. Like others said, comparing people who play different classes is tricky at best, and let's not forget that we are all making lists without being able to hear the comms of a team, and that is a very important part of the game but we simply can't reach it. I think making teams rankings (both active and retired) would be easier in terms of evidence and stuff.

To conclude, I would say that while extremely subjective, I think that discussing who is the best is like doing a list of the best movies ever. Everyone is going to have a different opinion, and I think that's cool that we can all interpret the same game differently and that it really shows the depth of TF2.

I'll maybe do a list in the night

Okay now we enter part 2 of my "top tf2 players" theories. The concept of best TF2 player is flawed because we can't even agree as to what does being the best means. Is the best based on :

• Placement ? If you think that is the case then just go see who won the last seasons and compile the list to see if which names pops up the most. The issues with that are : What if a player on a very good team isn't as good as the rest of them, and is getting "carried" in a way ? What if a player is simply really good at making good teams ? What about players that stopped playing for personal reasons while being at their peak, like adamracek or Puoskari ?
  
• Potential ? Generally I feel like people agree on my points about placements, so they include players that potentially are as good as the players on the podium, but simply don't have better team mates, or lack consistency, or any other reasons. The issues with that are : you are basing yourself on a lot of speculations, also there are very few players that would not be improved by playing with better teammates. In a way, potential as hard to define as "best". Should you base it on performances against much stronger teams rewarding players like utka or Aliensmiley ? Or on performances in more even matches, and seeing players like Azunis or krafty instead ?
  
• Statistical outliers ? This is when you see someone having much stronger logs than the rest of their team. A lot of players that rapidly rose through the ranks, like credu or toemas have had very strong logs performances, but everyone knows that logs are a perfectly accurate representation of the game, so medic players or more selfless players like Drackk and Dr.Phil are left out of it

Officiers I stole your bees and Shuffles played Good cop, Bad cop with our answers :

Could you describe your team ? Who's playing what ?
Bees : Well the team was made 3 years ago by myself and Extrasolar, it started out as a fun team where we'd play with extrasolar as a flex like how lowpander played. We just kind of stayed together and got more serious over time and shuffles took over leading the team about a year and half ago. This season started out with a core of me roamer, celreo pocket and shuffles on demo but we had to adjust after restriction being places on higher div highlander players. The roster we settled with is kren flank scout, me pocket scout, lersu (Princess Luna) roamer, Celreo Pocket, Shuffles Demo and Donuskus medic

Going into the finals what do you think are your strong points ? In terms of playstyle, maps...
Bees :Things are a bit shaky going in to finals after our main roamer got hit with a 2 week ETF2L ban after playing with an edgy alias, so for finals we're bringing extrasolar back in to play roamer. We're still confident we can win even with the last minute roster change. Our biggest strengths are shuffles being a DM monster on demo, and our ability to capitalize fully off of number advantages.

Going into the season, were you expecting to make it to the final ? If not, how far did you expect to go ?
Shuffles : Yes, we expected to make final.

And what do you think of the opposing team ?
Shuffles : Opposing team are slow and uncoordinated.

Any closing words/shoutouts?

Bees : Shoutouts to the Cool crew, the tri-force and to Chester.
Shuffles : I'd like to thank all officers that have been a part of the squad and Jim Vickers for mentoring.

We got in touch with eevv from smiling, who offered some in-depth answers.

Could you describe your team ? Who's playing what ?
Only half of the players in this team have played in low. Our medic had around 1k hours when he started playing in smiling, but we saw potential in him -- we had a tough time finding medics, especially those who would keep track of ubers.
Our common lineup is:
oben - pocket scout
rag! - flank scout
ryan - pocket soldier
dave - roamer
eevv - demo
froggy - medic

Going into the finals what do you think are your strong points ? In terms of playstyle, maps...
Our strongest side always seemed to be chaos -- the ability to somehow get momentum from even ubers, to turn the tide, et cetera. But, of course, as we had to fight the better teams in low that doesn't work as well. Some teams have forced us to play their game; to play passively. Examples of those teams are Monkeys With Attitude where they were able to slow or crush our momentum. Winning against them felt like an accident, because of the absurdity of caps, but we won against them in playoffs again showing us that we might be more stable than otherwise thought. In other words, it used to be raw DM/agression but better teams forced us to use strategies and play passively.

Going into the season, did you expect to make it to the final ? If not, how far did you expect to go ?
Preseason we had no expectation as there were many issues. However we did well in the first minor tournament which was the preseason one; we got 2nd place only to lose to Russian mid sandbaggers, classic. The more games played we had stacked, the more confidence we were gaining as apparently we were doing better than we thought. We just wanted to get into playoffs, but somehow we overshot into the finals.

And what do you think of the opposing team ?
Seems like they have few players that played in mid, even fewer after a recent ban. Underestimating a team in finals would be naive, as both teams had to go through approximate troubles to get here. They have a lot more experience from looking at match histories, but majority of it comes from highlander. It would be foolish to think that highlander is completely useless for 6v6, because a lot mechanics do carry over. I imagine the games being very close as the grand finals mentality will be prevalent.

Any closing words/shoutouts ?
Shoutouts to ikidu the psuedogerman, shoutouts to the furry j_, shoutouts to my soyboy Tamir, shoutouts to CBT.

I always thought that due to the lack of intercontinental events, any "top x players" list that don't want to speculate too much should restrict itself to a single region.

interviews are out you can stop downfragging my placeholders now pls

We also reached out to Avogadro, who opted to answer to all of our questions in a single, very personal paragraph.

Avogadro :Hello, we are the team of penises dominators, uuu is playing overwatch, chemical and lightclaw are playing csgo, i am playing apex and others are playing with their penis, our strong point is brain - we are braindead, we easily made it to the finals as we expected even playing 1 pcw a week, an opposing team is a bunch of scared girls and clowns, thank you

We reached out to ETF2L admin Austin to talk about his team KNOPPERS

Could you describe your team ? Who's playing what... ?
My team is Wild_Piggie on medic, Kaper on pocket scout, proky on flank scout, Khalistan Zindabad jeven on roamer, ZYKAZ on pocket and myself on demoman. We've had a wild_middie journey coming into mid from a 2nd place low finish last season. Myself, jeven and Kaper stayed on the same roles while proky moved to scout allowing ZYKAZ to come in on pocket. In a need of a cool gamer to play the medic role, piggie ascended to mid.

Going into the final, what do you think are your strong points ? In term of playstyle, maps…
For the final; what can you not love about playing russian dm’ers :)

Going into the season, were you expecting to make it to the final ? If not, how far did you expect to go ?
Going into the season our best hopes were to make playoffs having just come from low, turns out all you need is one 15 year old to dm all day and a mega keen Jatt Punjabi Sikh for mid to get slammed

And what do you think about the opposing team ?
The opposing team has players with just as much experience as some of us but unlike myself, zykaz and piggie, they are mainclassing in mid :)

Any closing words/shoutouts ?
Austin : Shoutout have to go to MONKEY MODE, Kaper’s mother with “last minute” holidays, Hereford farm & Sainsburys.
jeven : shout out kn
Wild_piggie : Shoutout to mischka

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/LatenightEUMGE

I got too many adds for me to all play with them in one night, so I made this group to help people find other nerds that don't sleep.