Not ETF2L's fault, they could do a few little things better but ultimately Chessclub were a mess in terms of organization and scheduling. Kaja's rant is pathetic and I lost respect for him because Strong Opinions were in the same position and travelling as some of us were in Chess. I think we went like 4 weeks straight in Jan without a full roster, that is our fault.

My biggest regret is how a team so disorgaized like Chess with so many people who did not give a shit make it to the LAN final. People do not care as there is nothing to play for beyond the idea of competing.

If you get to a stage where Grand Finals can't be played it reflects poorly on the league but it is mostly about Chessclub not being organised.

Get more Koth maps

Probably because their league is a masse of crying children who get their way.

Best part was when we won a round and my team pauses to do the Darts song loudly to a hall of confused Americans.

Got rolled but had a blast.

La Quinta Inn is terrible, first room not cleaned, everything is filthy, bathroom is tiny and poorly designed. Half of the halls are flooding. Not sort of Hotel I would pay 100 USD a night for. But we got to meet Bear so thats good.

Seriously why was this recommended.

At La Quinta any other TF2 players here? Please help Maxi is snoring...

Fixed it for you.

I mean that is fine, he's at least tried to explain it - However he opens a can of worms, if you follow this definition strictly, then the crossbow should be banned, but if that is the case everyone will be in uproar because Medics love the crossbow and in general teams like it because it makes heals/ubers and everything more efficient. But it's vastly superior to any alternatives. The gunboats is a similar proposition, but I don't think should be in the same category because sometimes teams used battalions backup or shotgun to add an extra dynamic to their play.

But therein lies the problems with whitelists - You made your own definition of what an unbalanced weapon is yet don't have the balls to enforce it being banned because it ruins the "subjective" fun of the gamemode. That's the issue, the inconsistencies of whitelists - Some weapons are deemed banned because of this definition (Vitasaw for example) whilst others that fit it perfectly (Crossbow) remain unbanned because it's subjectively seen as "More fun" by people, even though the argument is "Fun is subjective so should not matter".

Either ban all of the unlocks that fit this definition or allow them, no middle ground because it's inconsistent and turns the whitelist into what it is today - A muddle of unlocks decided by a rabble of people wanting to enforce their own views on game balance onto a stagnating, hybrid and chaotic version of TF2 that is different from anything seen elsewhere including the Matchmaking mod - The very thing the developers tried to introduce to support the competitive community.

And the idea that MR Slin knows his shit more than any other person is laughable, he's a person with views and opinions like everyone else, difference is he uses his social media platform to launch it and has spread his ideas to a point where leagues listen to him. Don't get me wrong I'd rather they listened to him over some of these idiots I see posting here, but nobody is special - He just has more a direction he wants to take the game - Good for him.

In your opinion....

Your first two lines proves you didn't read or understand the points I was raising therefore I will not read the rest of your post, no point in discussing it further.

Don't get me wrong I agree with you on some points you make but the highlighted bit I can't understand - If you want to balance towards new players, why are you asking League Admins and Premiership/Invite players to lead the discussion? We don't know what a new player wants from the game in terms of unlocks.Only thing a new to competitive player wants that we 100% know about is organised competition.

Why don't you do some research into what new players want, not just browse Reddit or TF2center forums, actually put some effort and collect data, least this way there is a logical approach to base decisions on.

Also you say the scene is in its worse place and it can't get any worse - Yet we've had nearly a decade to address issues, tried multiple scenerios and you want to recycle the same failed ideas. Hell you even pushed for this global ruleset last season and the trend is signups are declining (I don't think for a second anything you did had a massive impact on signups) but if you're saying things are as bad as they have ever been, it's just admitting how we are approaching rulesets is wrong and has always been wrong (I don't think it matters much in the big picture).

I mean you and others here pushed so hard to try and make TF2 more of an eSport - Numbers a going down and all you wanna do is keep recycling your terrible ideals and push them on the community. I give you respect for actually being here and not fucking off to OW like a lot of people did when they pushed so hard to change this game into something a lot of people don't like (Especially HL players) and realised their efforts are pointless and went somewhere else their talents deserved rewards, but seriously, come on.

You never, ever will satisfy everybody in this community - This is the same solution to an issue we've had in the game since the first unlocks were released. I appreciate your willingness to act and try to keep these things being discussed and going on, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Asking Premiership / Invite players of today to feedback and discuss weapons will just see an array of opinions thrown around - My team is very pro-unlock, other teams are very anti-unlocks - Other teams will wish to ban a lot of weapons we use because they don't use them and banning them will only benefit their team and not ours.

It's more to do with tactics than opinion. We saw it in Highlander with certain unlock bans being decided by a vote between Prem/Top High leaders, a couple of items were banned then overturned after a backlash by a vocal minority that "lost" the vote - Teams banned the Dead Ringer tactically because a certain player was by far the best player on his class using it and nobody could compete with him. The main reason this has happened is there is simply no clearly defined purpose for the whitelist.

Revisit the actual reasons why you need a whitelist and it is still nearly impossible to reach a coherent definition - To balance the game? In who's opinion will this balance the game? The players? Valve's? Prem Players? Everybody has different ideas behind class balance. If I Scout, I will hate playing versus a Natascha Heavy, because it counters on of the scouts biggest advantages - Speed but if I liked to play Heavy, I would want this weapon to help the class become more powerful as its the least mobile class and effective only over short/medium range and because of these limits, effective in less situations whilst scouts effectiveness is much more varied. Who's side do you take? You can't comprimise - You ban weapons for the Heavy or Engineer to make the Scouts life easier, you're effecting your own version of balancing the game - Which in turn is it really a game balance or is it a balance designed to help the Scout?

This is one scenerio - We all have varying opinions on game balance. Thre are so many questions to ask which we clearly don't have yes or no answers because criteria has not been defined - For example:

Why are you banning a weapon? It is Overpowered. How do you define Overpowered? Because it's an upgrade on Weapon B. Why is weapon A overpowered but weapon B not? Why is Weapon B overpowered for Engineer but not Overpowered for Heavy?

Simply put there are far too many components with differing definitions that make up the purpose of a whitelist and to reach an agreement is nigh on impossible. I think blabbing on about it for 2 hours will achieve little - Answer these questions before:

- Tell me the purpose of the whitelist?
- How do you define an "Overpowered" weapon?
- How do you define a "Broken weapon".
- Agree on the purpose and definitions.
- Get the unlocks to meet the criteria.

If it meets the agreed criteria, then it's banned.

Example: "Natascha is banned because is meets the agreed definition of an OP weapon as it's penalty in damage is only -blahblah% and it's slowdown is +blahblah% compared to the stock weapon, this gives it too powerful an advantage" or some shit like this, I dunno, you work it out.

Hard to play test when you play 5 or 6 of the same maps, mainly with 5cp, mainly with 4 or 5 classes, with classlimits designed to cater for a hybrid gamemode that developed over many years in a comparatively small game where 95% of the players do not play for the competitive aspect.

Of course you're the raucous minority. Deal with it.

Enjoyed the write up - Can't see it being anything other than a Sev7n vs Froyotech final, but the underdog in me will be supporting the Aussies, I just feel they are due some LAN success.

People actually think anything that is done will matter:

Nothing will make a difference, this game is on a backwards spiral, we've lost our best contributors, in a community that depended on volunteers they're going. They've all given up for one reason or another or because their talents deserve financial rewards.

It depends how you measure success of TF2 :
- If it's amount of teams competing - it's losing appeal.
- If it's amount of LANs - it's improving.
- If it's the amount of prizemoney - it's going down.
- If it's amount of coverage and viewership - still going nowhere.

Unlock debates are as old as the first unlocks were made for Medic, you will always have a battle between people who want more things unbanned versus those who want more banned because people enjoy different aspects of the game. Keep discussing it, but I have seen many names have the same discussions for nearly a decade and 99% of them aren't here anymore.