One of the interesting things about his experience is that he's found (after an amusing run in with an Overwatch white knight) that his opinion and those of his colleagues in competitive OW actually seem to matter to the direction of the game. A huge novelty for a competitive TF2 player obviously, but a reason why the level of OW bashing has died back, as well as the $$$ on offer obviously.

I've noticed that if you're a second tier player (no offense meant Redzzz et al but you know...) you can come from TF2 or another game, but if you're one of the best players/important to a country or demographic like Shadowburn or Zebbo then you're an Overwatch original who has played "other games".

It's like they want to tread a narrow line between acknowledging the wider gaming ecosystem but need to protect some notion of their major competitive assets being untainted by association with other games.

Your view of history is facile. The great depression wasn't just something that happened in John Steinbeck novels. If you think the rise of the Nazis had nothing to do with the results of free markets left alone to do their good work think again.

If you think markets are stable or related to social freedom, or produce any kind of natural justice, you are a fool. The larger and freer the market the greater the instability - markets aren't rational, they don't adjust logically, they aren't politically neutral, they do not contain truth. Everything we observe through the study of economics tells us that.

The rational actor that dominates applied economics is the product of a sick mind, literally, and in any truly scientific subject would have been discredited decades ago because it's a total failure experimentally. After we've shot all the politicians, the economists are next.

Is that why Muselk was on Lucio?

This is hopelessly naive

Capitalising on popular anger and desperation is the art of the demagogue. People believe it because they want and need to believe that somebody can do something. They know that the existing political system is incapable of reforming itself, they know that nobody has any credible plan for restoring their living standards, voting for Trump is a huge fuck you to the existing system whether he does what he has claimed he will or not.

Keep it in context though, there are a huge range of motivations and a lot of people just hate Clinton. There are plenty that would vote Republican if the candidate was a pig with the right colour hat. Trump is trying to aim his rhetoric now as part of a narrative to reinforce an image of Clinton's perceived corruption - he just wants the fuck-you-Washington vote and he wants her name attached to it.

At the same time you should understand he is not the outsider he portrays himself as, he has always used political upheaval to make money. This is just an extension of that, he's not on a mission for his beliefs. He is the ultimate insider, born into tremendous wealth, elite schools, has courted presidents and politicians for decades. He's as much a part of the system as anyone else.

If he gets in there will be surprisingly little change, not because he will be shackled by the indestructible behemoth of government machinery, but because he has no real desire to change anything of significance.

Fond of a crown and portcullis on his graphs isn't he? They must be right then

Coincidence that the troll volume has risen with election day getting closer?

You're not the only person in the thread

The responses to the medieval warming period points raised are slightly disappointing, just to make it clear in case anybody actually doesn't know

• There was a period in the middle ages during which there was some localised warming and cooling that took place over a period of several hundred years
  
• Research into things like tree ring data, coral, ice cores, etc indicates that this wasn't a global phenomena
  
• The difference now is that the warming is global, the rate is much much faster, the change is already much greater, and it coincides precisely with industrialisation

The idea that the medieval warming period is remotely analogous or relevant to the current state of the global climate is completely debunked. To believe it's relevant you have to believe in a conspiracy so vast that scientific method itself is fundamentally invalid. Good luck with that.

1. Massively expand military spending
2. Destroy anything you have a deficit with
3. What deficit?

You must surely realise that almost nobody voting for him is doing so on the basis of a sober policy analysis right? I doubt many voting against him are either.

My youtube recommendations are going to take a while to recover from this

It was almost certainly scrimmed in a test group at least briefly, making this kind of assumption has been the inevitable direction of your arguments though so I'm not really surprised you've done it.

Even if it's never been play tested the unlock is blatantly the antithesis of a competitive item. No skill required to receive the benefit, lowers the skill difference between strong players and weak, doesn't add any possibility of new ways to play the class or for exciting plays to be made and so powerful it overrides all other saws regardless of their upside eliminating all of their potential skill based plays as well, warping the meta into a low skill anti-competitive direction. It's not difficult to work out and I wouldn't expect strong players to even need to equip it to realise that.

The effect needs to be weak enough to make skill based items that allow big plays to be preferable, it's possible that the consistency of the VitaSaw is so high that not only should the percentage be tiny, maybe 5%, but it shouldn't be passive either. You have to be holding it when you die, or maybe a flip side of the Ubersaw - you get charge on hit that you collect when you die so Medics go down fighting. Incentivising some dumb play potentially, but also creating some skillful moments and encourages a different play style. These are just ideas which may be shit, there are lots of other possibilities but clearly there are solutions to it's anti-competitive design.

Total actual reaction from Valve to it's banning from competitive: none.

I think it's relevant in that it shows what you can achieve if you engage with your competitive players actively and work with them to balance your product. Overwatch still has broad casual appeal, it has randomness, it makes sure that mechanical skill only goes so far, but because they've listened and acted on the advice of their competitive players it's also balanced to make the competitive experience acceptable without resorting to radically changing the game.

I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard knew about and was careful to avoid the specific types of mistake that have hounded comp TF2.

This is indeed weak bait, but the points have already been made elsewhere numerous times.

Publisher support fixes everything. That's it.

There are loads of games that have no obvious competitive merit yet they are well supported and popular. TF2 has had an unusually large and healthy competitive community for many years given the publisher has taken no interest whatsoever, it's only recently with the release of a well resourced competitor that it's under threat.

The obvious conclusion is that the core of the game contains an excellent competitive title but the shit the publisher layers over it obscures this fact. There's never been any logic to Valve's insistence of putting competitive modes behind ridiculous barriers to entry, and since esports became big on Twitch they've been hopelessly exposed by not exploiting it.

Finally a competitor has attacked them on this front and made obvious headway. They might still act, but pissing around with the competitive map pool and other meaningless fiddling is irrelevant.

Infowars says President Trump has won