This is the mentality that kills the scene for good by the way. There needs to be systems or platforms in place that accommodates PUGs at all levels of skill for a smaller playerbase, not to just "accept that the game is dying". As a very washed up middie at best, finding regular ways of playing but still getting a proper 6s experience is something I have wanted for years now. I understand and agree that pugging at the top level is tough nowadays, but the Fresh-Mid experience is all but non-existent outside of in-houses, and its that level of play that needs support as a strong and vibrant community at that level will trickle upwards to provide a more robust community at the top flight.

Unless you know where mixes are happening, its really hard to regularly play non-league 6s, and as someone who does not really have the time to commit to a season anymore it makes it difficult to try and play this game as often as I'd like.

I do not like Map Advantage, period. Some of the greatest series we have ever seen would have ended at like map 2 in a Bo5 w/ map and it ruins comebacks. Ban advantage is a much better option as it allows UBF winners to go into a series on their strongest maps, increasing their likelihood of winning.

Now it's clear from this mini season that they kinda boxed in their options by having a small map pool. But even running bo3 finals and letting UBF ban two maps from the start would have been better. You grand finals should be long, they are supposed to be the pinnacle of the tournament. For that to end in a single map would be ridiculous.

That all aside, Short seasons like this are great opportunities to test formats. We should be trying things even if they dont work out. But I think it's clear at this point that very few people like Map Ad.

I lie about my damage numbers so my team pushes and to hide the fact that I'm not good at the game.

cu@

https://doi.org/10.1123/jege.2024-0047

After three long years and MANY rewrites and edits, I'm happy to say that this study has officially been published in the Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports. I would like to thank greatly all of the participants who volunteered all that time ago. Its currently available on Free Access until the end of 2025 from what I understand, but if you want an unofficial copy of the document please let me know.

Happy to answer any questions you might have.

+1 to the idea of making Spawns a little more like Granary, its way too easy at the moment to abuse resup binds.

I'm not too sure on #3 or #4 as they are much more wide sweeping changes which would require a lot more effort. If we want to increase viewability and improve the quality of matches I would be looking more into iterating the ruleset than revamping maps.

I think it would be useful to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the current 5cp ruleset and continuous overtime. I have seen a more positive reception to CO since the Unity Cup, but some of the glaring faults still remain. Namely the indefinite timepool being a significant disruption to tournament schedules, which creates difficult discussions around either having less matches or risk overrunning. Additionally from a viewing experience (based on the Global Clan vs Froyo 76 minute Sultry match) it can get very tedious watching two teams play super passive for 30+ minutes after overtime begins, and I know that it can be exhausting from the players to come off a marathon BO3 and then only have 15 minutes before the next series, and CO was a key contributor to some of this at Physgun Denver.

Again, I think that matches ending on a round win is nice and the comeback potential creates interesting matches. But as an organiser, without significant changes to that ruleset I simply do not see myself choosing Overtime over Golden Cap currently for Weekend Cups/LANs. League play is a different ball entirely.

Now I am not a developer by any means, and not the most technically minded individual. But I really do not see your logic in not only making this public, but providing a step by step guide and posting it on TFTV and two TF2 subreddits.

You claim that this is to "raise awareness and hopefully prioritize creating a fix, and / or make it easier to come up with a community fix in the meantime". Yet, I don't see how making a laymans guide for replicating it public helps Valve in any way. You even disclose to Valve that you intend on making this public in your report with a fixed date, which isnt exactly blackmail but definitely in that ballpark.

I know that you have been communicating with community leaders / admins about this and that is the way it should have been. Reaching out to only Server Owners and League Operators with these issues and allowing them to share it in their circles is a much safer way of communicating these issues and would allow people do develop countermeasures in some level of secrecy. What you have done in doing this is made AC's already tough job even harder.

So until Valve fix it in an indeterminate amount of time, you've made a VAC-safe exploit that has been known for around 6 years, to my understanding, much more widely known. In my view this is incredibly irresponsible.

Edit: I've taken out part of my argument in light of people correcting me, many thanks. My overall point still stands however. Valve have public channels not commonly used by the general player base that are more appropriate than TFTV and Reddit, and this is known since you put up the issue on GitHub. I still think providing a step-by-step guide and sharing that with these forums was the wrong step.

cu@

- Shoutouts to all of the Fireside Casts crew for their incredible work not just with this LAN but for the years of effort they have poured into the organisation. It is a pleasure to work with them everytime.

- Shoutout to Lacy for giving me the opportunity to be one of the Tournament Admins and taking the reins on a project of this scale on site, I am honored that you invited me to take part in this event.

- Shoutout to Plinko for being a great admin partner for the weekend, a steady presence throughout which gave me a huge reassurance that the event was in good hands.

- Shoutouts to all the talent for their hype casting, insights, and storytelling.

- Shoutouts to those working on photos and videos, both on and off site, for the great content that has been developed for this LAN.

- Shoutouts to all those who worked production for keeping a level head and working around the clock to ensure the best possible livestream and in-person experience.

- Shoutouts to the venue staff at Localhost Denver for being super accommodating and flexible to our...dynamic schedule.

- Shoutouts to all those who worked on the B-Stream, excellent work for casts that took place at some very inconvienient times.

- Shoutout to Witness for supporting both the EU and AU teams for so long leading up to this event.

- Shoutouts to all the players who turned up, spectated in person or watched online. Especially those who came up and thanked myself and the others. I'm still quite awkward with getting praise, but this kind of thing does go a long way of making the months of prep and stress worth it.

- I've probably forgotten some others but just know that if I've spoken to you about this event, in the lead up or during, I appreciate every single one of you. It is, and always will be, the TF2 community that is at the heart of everything I and others do. Much love.

I've finished my Master's and some of my PhD remotely during COVID, and have done over 2 years of my PhD remotely & part time - some of which has included full-time employment. Hopefully finishing by Christmas, or soon after that. Theres a couple of lessons or tips I would share:

1) It can be lonely, be sure to give yourself a break
I don't think the online resources prepare people for how isolated self-directed study (especially remotely) can be. Most of the time only you and your teachers will care or know about your field of study so trying to connect with others can be difficult. Make sure you give yourself some time to socialise and disconnect from both your studies and your employment.

2) Set short, achieveable, deadlines
Modules, courses, or projects that have deadlines over months can be incredibly easy to procrastinate, doubly so remotely. I've found it really effective to either set your own short-term deadlines, or better yet negotiate them with your teachers/staff. 1-2 week blocks for either a short report, session notes, or any kind of deliverable are really good ways to keep yourself engaged.

3) Keep meetings efficient
If you have the opportunity to meet with teachers/staff, get into the habit of making agendas with them or at least have an idea of what you want to talk about before you get into the meeting. When you wrap up the meeting set tasks for yourself and maybe them that needs to be actioned (linking to point 2).

4) Get your 'virtual desk' in order
So much time can be wasted finding a way of working that is optimal for you. Spend some time at the start of your studies to find the software or tools that you will use to do things like manage notes, write reports, manage your reading/literature, whatever.

5) Do a little bit every day, and give yourself credit for doing so
Long duration studies like degrees can be a draining experience and it can be so easy to let the days pass by without a lot of progress made on your work. Even doing the smallest amount of work (like a draft structure of a section of your thesis, just bullet points), every day (or at least the days you plan to work on your studies) can go a long way to making that mad rush before the assessment deadlines. Focus not on avoiding that deadline rush, but instead on tasks you can do to make that rush easier like structuring your essay, annotating reading and linking it with other literature, etc.

I feel like the Market Gardener was a fairly divisive pick which is a key reason for its inclusion. The other two are weapons that have not been tested for years, in which time metas have changed, and unlike some more solid bans the justifications on them were fairly loose.

The Gas Passer was banned on release per standard ETF2L rules on new weapons, and once the throwing-through-wall bug was found it has never been unbanned. So there was no real period of time where the weapon saw active competition, and given that as a weapon its pretty bad the reasoning is not really strong in the grand scheme of things. We can say all day that the bug is more than enough reason to keep it banned, but for the upside of being able to apply a brief period of afterburn which is canceled by healing - its not really a huge upside even when the exploit is abused.

The BASE Jumper is definitely got a bit more of a reason to remain banned, given the ability to spam from height free from any real threat. But this is a weapon that has one strong use case and thats about it, you take far more damage with rockets and damage falloff hurts when you are that high up. Again, you can make a case about it but this is a weapon that has not been considered for a long time.

I think solely looking at weapons that are divisive 'right now' is a short-sighted approach to weapon bans. Of course discussions around those weapons take priority, but that is not a reason to re-look at some older bans and see if A) those weapons are a better fit in the current meta/skill level and B) if those weapons are really as impactful on the flow of play as they were seen to be.

We had a fairly open whitelist back in 2017-18 when the last real balance changes occurred, with around 80% of all weapons unbanned and I believe we should only be banning weapons that have a direct negative impact on the flow or fun of the game. Re-looking at these older bans in combination with more modern ones allows people to figure out what kind of game they want to play now, even if that means a more restrictive whitelist. Ultimately the point of Experimentals is to provide opportunities to test and discuss the way that we play the game, so even discussing whether we should only look at "divisive weapons" is a good thing.

A quick reminder for teams that signups will be closing tonight, so please get your registrations in ASAP.

Currently with the number of teams we may push the start time of the tournament forward to be more in line with normal match/scrim schedules, but will confirm this as registrations near close.

This is a feature hard built into Toornament and is not done by choice. It is designed this way so that when your registration is accepted it sends a email updating you.

We do not check or use these emails in any capacity, and I believe you can just use any filler email here.
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Quick Tournament Update, the Whitelist link has been posted on this page. You should be able to exec this whitelist with the command rcon tftrue_whitelist_id 14719

I won't give specifics, but basically some of the casual people that were going to take part saw this thread and a lot of the negativity put them off having the conversation.

Was a bit surprised to see my name mentioned here, lmao. But in all honesty, I think what Wild_Rumpus said is pretty much where I stand on the whole thing. The key reason that this negative sentiment has festered for so long is that there have been very few attempts to actually communicate to a casual audience as to why we made the rules the way that they are and dispelling some of those myths that have been developing over time. I remember WoolenSleevelet did a lengthy video that went over each of the weapon bans and provided the justifications as to why they were banned, and while he did a great job ensuring that his information is correct it ultimately did little to sway the minds of people who already were convinced that competitive 'killed' the game.

Honestly, Wild_Rumpus has been doing a really good job at explaining various aspects of competitive play and to challenge some of those pubber nonsense that we see whilst making clear the number of challenges and issues with competitive play. If we had more people doing that and making genuine attempts at showcasing competitive play and explaining it, then perhaps we might see sentiment change.

I think that any 'debate' around this could really go one of two ways, it could be a great way of directly challenging these talking points to the audience that most needs to hear it. However, I have seen a number of YouTubers try to explain that competitive isn't bad or is in fact a positive thing for the game and get shut down HARD, so I don't know that the most vocal 'anti-competitive' names in the space will be willing to have an authentic and productive discussion here. If I'm proven wrong and those creators would actually be interested, I wouldn't mind having a conversation but I'm sure there are others that could do a better job than I.