Slice is keen and knows how to use his head. Not afraid to talk about whatever and contribute to comms. Good attitude and definitely dedicated.

Classic, stylish design and durable quality. Heats very evenly and the charcoal really enhances food with smokey flavor. Great for any and all occasions. Full of excellent features and a real great value (especially this time of year). Overall quite excellent.

Very good scout who should play IM. I don't know him much personally but since I know Differ and the type of team she ran he's undoubtedly a pleasant, dedicated and obviously loyal dude.

Screwb's super duper experienced, very smart, and good at everything with a superhuman level of focus when he's trying his hardest. I consider Screwball a friend but I don't think I would want to play a full season with him, which is something I've done a couple times. He is friendly and he is nice it's just that, as he himself said earlier, his motivations are very self-centered. And there's generally nothing wrong with that--when you're good and you want to push yourself to play your best you need to be on the lookout and make use of opportunities when they come your way. Ultimately what Screwb wants almost always comes first and rarely will virtures like loyalty override that.

Kevin's experience isn't anything unique. Screwb ended up on Kevin's team at the last moment when he realized the team he and I were building wasn't looking too great (and there was one day left in registration which then put me in a real pinch). He was courteous and apologetic about it but it still is what it is. Part of the reason tryouts went the way they did and people were picked or rejected is because of Screwb and his input so it blew ass when he left last minute. Before that he got on my team when idiot goldfish (and then idiot tambo) left mid season and Screwb ditched whatever team(s) he was on at the time to come play with us, effectively dooming them in the process (I think). Obviously I appreciate that he was there to bail us out but I'm trying to show here that there's a definite pattern to this behavior. I run my teams very democratically and try to mediate and appease everyone as much as possible. When Screwb was on my teams he was always just very particular about things and bossy and instead of falling in fairly as one of six he seemed to slowly assume the lead in things and try to take over even if not fully consciously. It would always feel like he was a political enemy and he was successful numerous times in charisma-ing a majority of the team and turning them against my ideas (and these decisions always played out badly in the long run). I don't think Screwb's a very good leader, despite posessing some positive leadership qualities, or maybe, at the very least, our styles are incompatible as I tend to place the most emphasis on loyalty and a friendly atmosphere.

TL;DR - He's really good and dedicated despite being a difficult personality at times. Also his porn is weird, to say the least.

ShadeSteel is an experienced med and a super nice and friendly dude. He does all of the medic things pretty well and I've seen him do decent in pugs on other classes... sometimes. He can be a bit meme-heavy at times and rather slaphappy (and a bit inebriated). I know that overall he's sharp and understands what's going on in any given moment and could even main call but when playing with my team he seems to sort of struggle to keep up with the pace at times and things can get rough (though that's partly our fault too). Overall high open / low IM is fair and you should try this sweet gentleman out.

If tiny giraffes were real there's a good chance he'd have one.

I've pugged with him and maybe scrimmed a bit against. He seems like a cool guy and he really crushes at scout.

Nice guy and a smart player. Good at multiple classes. Always good to scrim against and pug with. Try him out!

Good, smart, fun and nice. Die homo!

Skytl is very smart and nice and will brighten the atmosphere of your mumble. She's rapidly improving all around which is due to her great attitude and work ethic. She's definitely dedicated and always fun to play with. Get her a serious team that scrims regularly, often and isn't just little childs.

His dm is large and can hang with most of IM. His calls and gamesense are pretty good WHEN you consider how little 'serious' team experience he has. He needs a good, stable team so he can further develop these things and reach his massive potential.

Disclaimer: I have hardly interacted with Antlers in over a season.

But yes, Antlers was a really solid med. He had decent mechanics and awareness and often had good uber tracking calls that really helped his team out. He's also a really nice guy... like very agreeable and quiet and demure. This isn't a bad thing of course but there were times I wished he were more confident and assertive and bossed people around loudly when needed. Let's say his team is down uber but they forget that and hold close to a choke. He might just trust and follow his team's bad positioning and not want to interrupt busy comms when he should be confidently and loudly telling them "WE NEED TO GET BACK - THEY WILL HAVE UBER SOON AND WE WON'T". Maybe he's improved on that aspect. In any case try him out he's a good player and a nice dude. Gl man.

Yeaahhh.... I don't believe that one bit unless Milan has some serious bipolar disorder shit that he keeps very well hidden. I hung out with Milan every day for weeks and he is consistently nice and chill. He doesn't go out of his way to shit talk people (like perhaps he used to?). I could totally see it reversed with viper actually saying this stuff or him coming on here just to make up random shit. Also odb has many, many years under his belt of being a horrible asshole. I would suggest to anyone that, when reading a controversial person's lft thread, to take all posts with a grain of salt. Some people love to sling shit and farm plus frags.

I'll say again that this dude is cool and good and you should not pass up the chance to try him out and learn that for yourself.

I went to my control panel and my rcon server command input thingie and I put in these commands.

changelevel cp_metalworks_rc7

(waited 30 sec)

sm plugis unload_all

... note that if you changelevel again it should refresh all your plugins and you will crash again, so avoid that

I see, they aren't sure of how many players to put on a team. Ok so how about next week we get a patch where they try 7v7 and then two weeks later we can do 5v5 and so on until they get a good feel for this and collect data. Seems like they could do that pretty easily, right? I'll ignore the fact that this is the shit that should have been done in beta ages ago. Maybe they are about to do that or it's in the works but they aren't saying anything so it looks like they're doing nothing. There's no reason for me to think that they are doing anything. My understanding, Slin, is that it's your determination and speculation that the next step is team sizes and not that you're communicating info from the source, right? I just don't think they're in any hurry to do anything. I don't believe pub tf2 is in much decline and that's what matters and that's where the money is coming in from so there's no incentive to do anything. Our comp community is who has the most to lose through inaction but we don't matter. I don't really care if they're not in a hurry if they at least communicated that in some way.

edit: http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=24805 I only now realized that they did post this last night. It's very typically minimal but still has some concrete plans promised. This is definitely appreciated though it would obviously be nice to get slightly more detailed plans about competitive.

Ok so you're saying to support Valve we should be open minded to their ideas, give serious consideration to the rules they're making in their version of the game and generally play their MM system to give them feedback or whatever. But they're not doing anything! Why would I use my precious time tonight to play MM? I've already played it a bunch and have made my conclusions. In fact big threads have been made where people outlined all of the many issues. To Vavle's credit some of the technical ones have been fixed or are worked on, like massive queue times, but what about the gameplay itself? Who cares if I can quickly play the game if it's a bad game? It's seriously way more fun most of the time to queue for casual and most people, pub and comp, have realized this. And why do they think our years of experience don't amount to us having a great sense of what works and doesn't? I've pubbed since 2008 and played comp since 2010. I've played with all the classes and weapons. I've seen games with 3 heavy med combos, with 5 engies defending, with tons of demomen stacked, etc. Thousands of hours--God damned years. Seen it all. I'm not saying we dont have our biases, we all do, but our experience is objectively massive and it is relevant. Ok, well, if they actually changed stuff and worked on it then I'd keep playing MM to assess the changes and keep up my support. Don't get me wrong, I do care, and I wish my favorite game of TF2 to succeed in all ways and on all levels. But it just doesn't looks like they're doing anything. Or maybe they're working at sloth speed. Maybe if they communicated with us and told us "Hey folks, we are working on roughly [these] things, but it is going to take a long time and there's no real ETA on that" that would be very reassuring. Well it certainly seems like they aren't doing anything at all. Do you want me to go play MM right now? Why? I've already done it enough. It's crappy and not too fun. The only thing worse imo is Mannpower. I'd rather play pass time or tc_hydro in most cases than MM. Are they really gathering data right now? They could say "hey for the next 6-8 months we'll be gathering data on played games. It may look like we're doing nothing but we are indeed on course with our little developmental roadmap". That would be very reassuring! Meanwhile MM is in a shit state and is turning off x amount of people per day from the idea of a competitive 6v6 since they can only know what they have experienced while using it which is usually a trash experience. So as was mentioned earlier in the thread, with the way things are right now, the current state of MM is inadvertantly hurting TF2 overall. It would have been better if matchmaking wasn't released in this garbage beta form but instead later when it was more refined, even if it was still not out today.

But now to get to the really sad part which was mentioned a few times in this thread already. We all know FPS games are on the decline, especially arena shooters. I really recommend everyone who seriously cares about the issues in this thread to watch Thorin's video ( https://youtu.be/f2to9Pb0DOM ) where he talks about why Quake can't be #1, or big at all, ever again. It's moderately relevant to TF2 at large and extremely relevant to our competitive TF2. TF2 has Quake as its heart and soul so the links are undeniable. I'll summarize his main points here but I implore you to listen to his speech. It's long but worth it. First, Quake was a big esport back in its day not because it did something right but because of time-and-place circumstances and how it happened to work out. It was a pioneer of some of the esports concepts and it was more or less the only choice. Secondly, and most important, is that these games are really fucking hard. They have an immense skill ceiling and that means it takes a ton of time and effort and dedication to work on it and improve and most people are not looking for that when they want to videogame... so our breed of extra-obsessive, objective oriented and frag-oriented gamers is a minority and becoming more and more so - both on a mentality/philosophical level as well as the environment of games today and how it doesn't do much to foster new blood into becoming the types of gamers that we are. People want easy-to-get-into and casual experiences and all the newer games do that well and are designed to do it well-- somtimes at the cost of the high level gameplay being less nuanced and "hardcore" (OW). The good thing is that we have a strong casual player base which is something other arena-FPS based games often don't. But the way of playing at the bottom (pubs) is obviously different and at odds with how we play at the top. TF2 is this weird halvsie thing if you consider both pubs and comp. I wish there was a great way to reconcile these halves and I guess that's what is in theory being worked on but I'm not sure that it's possible without ruining either the top or the bottom or winding up with something that doesn't appeal to either end. I wish badly that large amounts of people would come around to enjoying intense competitive FPS gaming but it seems that, at least for now, that's not likely to happen. Not with mobas, fps-mobas, and much simpler games like COD and CS available for people to consume. But yeah, listen to Thorin explain it.