Rest assured you had clearly the best heal adjusted net kills per minute of any demoman.

Yes I live in my own world

Someone interview this man in mumble and we can make a fan edit along with djc's input

The chess study resulted in players spending more time thinking about their moves, they got into time trouble more often. Obviously it's not really much like a video game and the study I saw didn't go into the effect on perception, just the measurable results like an improvement in playing strength (which is measurable by rating results) and things like time to move and game length.

I agree that it seemed counter intuitive to what I would expect, but the results were pretty clear. It was a reasonable sized study as well.

I guess an interpretation is that it cuts down on impulsive decisions making and makes it easier for a player to keep looking at a position to make sure their moves are good.

Edit: I forgot to clarify that the study was into the effect of ADD medicine, caffeine, etc on players who don't need it and don't have a prescription, not on people with a prescription (although obviously not for caffeine) who played on and off it

Completely irrelevant for TF2 but if you're in a game or sport covered by Wada (like Chess is an example that's vaguely similar) then you have much tighter rules governing what you get, simple medical need isn't the same threshold, there has to be more than one doctor agreeing, etc.

ADD medicine has recently been shown to improve Chess performance by about 15%, but caffeine also improves it by about 10%. The effect manifests itself in slowing players down, not sure how beneficial that is in TF2, but maybe the new meta is really defined by everyone trying to get that Adderall edge.

Yes, I've posted about their lack of leadership in competitive before, but I really think their focus will be MM because it's an environment they control and can experiment in. That's why I think b4nny's points about providing feedback for Valve are a bit pointless really, partly because the feedback being provided really is just rehashing the same old reasons those unlocks were already banned (which have been ignored for long enough to tell us something), and partly because if MM leads them in a conflicting direction they will take that as a priority.

With MM I guess they'll develop it along normal Valve lines, iterate changes based on data. That's their objective - they just want to get into a feedback loop where they can iterate changes over time based on player behaviour and improve the game around that. The chances that it leads to the 6v6 we run now are pretty miniscule but there it is. I guess it's possible that b4nny was told this at Valve and has interpreted it in a way that makes sense to his frame of reference hence his pushing for this. I would expect that they probably use far more empirical methods to make judgements though.

The site is up to 288 training resources now and still growing, I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to submit something

What they really want is for the items they release into the game to be used by competitive players so that they can see what they do with them, what strategies emerge, etc, and then use that to decide on the next set of changes. Most similar games have a moving metagame stimulated by dev/player interaction in this way that can result in very big changes in the modes played. Look at Overwatch, the Tank meta lasted for a few months there, that was like multiple Heavies in a 6v6 TF2 game. There's not a lot in it for the devs to see players ignoring new items en masse, but it's their fault (well, Valve's fault - I doubt the dev's are the same now as then)

If they hadn't introduced whitelisting then we wouldn't have the situation we have now, but at the same time that was a tacit admission that they had no intention of listening to competitive feedback. It said: we'll let you play the game you want and stay stuck in a rut, but we're doing our own thing.

I honestly don't think they have much focus on what happens in the existing competitive scene at all. I'm sure they're much more interested in what goes on in their MM games and how they can improve that mode over time. The thing to bear in mind is that their timescale is completely different to ours. They have all the time in the world and surely they intend to use it.

Remember when Sal made this thread? Highlander lobbies??

Well we've got 6v6 in game lobbies and we didn't do shit. Stubbornness works. Stick to our guns and unlocks will eventually come into line. Just another 3 years....

That hurts

Oh of course ctf is 2fort, wtf was I thinking. Editing OP

Please this is serious

The graphic showing game mode server usage among the whole community is horribly, tragically real

Passtime has less than 1%, we wouldn't be appealing to enough players. I'm assuming the "other" category are bizarre mods and weirdo formats (like tournament mode maybe) so unpopular that they don't even get an entry.

I've also realised that things like ctf weeks will probably take place on a 24/7 pub server. The challenge will be to do a 24 hour streamathon on pubs, with the winning team being ones to score the most points. The community interaction will be great.

I recently saw this graphic illustrating data about community server activity among the vast majority of the TF2 player base harvested from the game coordinator

http://i.imgur.com/1OSJUFM.png

As a result of this I've developed this proposal for a new 7 week seasonal format that will broaden competitive TF2's appeal and bring us closer to the wider community

• Week 1: cp_orange
  
• Week 2: ctf_2fort
  
• Week 3: trade challenge - players have 30 minutes to join a trade server and turn their refined into the maximum value - sponsored by marketplace.tf
  
• Week 4: Saxton Hale Mode
  
• Week 5: Competitive MvM
  
• Week 6: Payload Swiftwater (it's in matchmaking!)
  
• Week 7: Achievement challenge. Players get a fresh account and have to get as many achievements as possible as fast as possible on an achievement server of their choice

Playoff format: pick/ban of the above formats, best of 3

Here's cbear