Nice guy. He has improved a lot every time I've seen him. Give him a shot!

Beast scout. Easily IM material. Also a fun and friendly guy. :]

I've known him forever. Great guy. Love this guy. Good attitude and lots of fun. Also good. (He's not even 12 anymore, though he's always 12 to me forever)

Ok, how about we make two teams of 6 dudes on each team for gladiator style combat. Obviously if you just give a guy a sword and a big shield he will be the most well rounded, attack-capable, defense-capable, etc. But that wouldn't necessarily be fun or interesting. That would just be two small squads of footmen in a skirmish. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's make it a bit more interesting. Let's allow only one guy on the team to have a big shield (you wouldn't want too many demomen, it slows the game and it's too defensive and turtley). Now let's have each team have a dude with a net and a trident. Also one dude on each team will have a war hammer (big heavy ass hammer that's obviously deadly but hard to use effectivley). Also one dude will have a spear and one dude will have two normal swords, one in each hand. Suddenly, Team Fortress! Ok, so obviously some of those dudes are more well rounded than others, but how your team utilizes those dudes and just how much they bring to the table and how many creative plays then can make absolutley makes a huge impact on the fight. Not to mention it's hella fun to play and watch. Net and trident guy has some pretty wacky tools at his disposal, but please don't tell me that you wouldn't have fun being that guy and figuring out ways to be effective. Ok, well, fighting to the bloody death is probably not that fun but you get my point.

Let's see how a "weak" class can be extremely influential in the course of the game. Let's take the spy. Spy can be very tough to play in HL when competent players are playing on both teams. You have very little room for error and overall the enemy knows that there is definitely a spy in play at all times. You can look at this as a negative thing but it is not. It's just part of the game with the current rules (HL). This is why I think the finest spies are forged at the highest levels of highlander (and not running around stabbing pubs). When a good spy is tormenting your team everything is different. Your team is forced to spy check more aggressivly, to be paranoid all the time, to wonder if the spy is really dead (gotta swap watches to cause maximum paranoia and frustration). You are literally trolling the other team with frustration and dividing their attention (a basic Art of War principle: Divide and Conquer). So even if your team ramps up their anti spy efforts and the spy can't get as many kills outright then he has still made a large impact on the battlefield and is in some form or another doing his job. He weakens your team's efforts as a whole and slows you down. If your team's spy isn't as adept and isn't having nearly the same level of impact then the work that the enemy spy is doing against your team is even more noticeable. So there you go... an example of a "weaker" class having profound impact on the game. Would a scout in his place be better? 80% of the time yes, but what does any of this have to do with balance or competitiveness? The rules are what the rules are in the given format: 1 of each dude. Each spot needs filled and each spot can be played to a pretty high standard, with lots of subtle details that can make an overall impact.

Ok you guys are kinda blowing my mind. Mustard is now trying to drill home the point that he think HL is not balanced. I think what he means by this is that every class is not as outright powerful as some others... Okay...?!? Vanilla is not wrong for applying this same logic to 6s. Some classes are still more powerful in the grand scheme of things. 4 demos and 2 medics would probably indeed be the most powerful way to form your team without class limits. But the class limits are in place now, developed over years by the community at large, to keep the game from becoming shit, such as it becomes with 2 demomen (or more lol), and it also allows all of the cookie cutter classes opportunities to shine and be used well. This is the balance in 6s. But 1 of each in HL is not balanced? Why? Again, because some players are weaker than others in head to head combat? N/A, my friends. Not Applicable. You were talking about replacing a spy with a 2nd scout. Ok, so let's say we did that. Sure, you have more killing power and less of a high-risk-high-reward thing going on, but is that more balanced? Why would you ever say yes? It's completely n/a, irrelevant. I understand that you are arguing your opinion but I just don't see the merits. I guess my question to you would be "what would it take to fix highlander?" but I foresee your answer being a series of steps that would basically turn it into 6s.

Because I obviously enjoy writing long, meandering paragraphs, I'm going to make some absurd, far fetched analogies and see how they relate to our issue at hand. I'll try to come up with something better than driving busses in the Air Force. Alright so let's assume we're going to hold 1v1 melee fights, gladiator style, in a colliseum thingamabob. Now we'll set up some rules for these particular fights. Each dude gets a medium sized sword in his right hand and also a small dagger in his left hand. So the dudes here represent teams and the weapons represent players or elements of those teams. Now I can see you arguing your heart out that those daggers aren't useful, and are underpowered, and this whole thing isn't balanced and isn't competitive, and, hey, if you had the chance to take a medium sword in each hand then of course you would since that's more powerful, etc etc. That's nice, but that isn't what the game is. We determined what the game was when we layed out the rules. Obviously you have a problem with those rules and think that this is a shallow, limited, degenerate game mode. But it doesn't have to be viewed that way. You seem to not appreciate just how much difference that dagger can have on the outcome of the fight. Yes, you can rarely go in head on with it and try to stab because you'll get your arm hacked off by the sword. But who knows what kind of interesting and creative ways you can come up with to utilize your utilities? Maybe I can just throw that dagger at my opponent's face and while he flinches and reacts to it I can move in and take a big slice at his torso or thigh with the regular sword. Or maybe in a close exchange I am able to get right up on my opponent, drop my big sword so that I can free my hand to grab his dagger hand (to keep it from stabbing me, meanwhile I'm too close to him for him to use his longer sword effectively, at least in the moment) and then inflict the finishing blow with my dagger.

Mustard made his core point here:

"I am just discussing the inherent limitations of hl as a competitive format, being as how some people on a team are forced to play a less important role than others, something that I think is poor for a competitive game (although perhaps that's just my feeling)"

But I don't get your feeling at all. The whole point of competitive anything is that you set up some rules, both sides have an equal start, or access to the same resources, and then you see which person or team of people can utilize it better. So in 6s we say "Hey let's have a game where you must have no more than 6 people on your team and there can be only 2 of each class, save for demo, medic, and heavy." Awesome! Enjoy the game! Now another format, HL, comes along and says "Ok you can have no more than 9 dudes on your team and no more than one of each class." Great! Enjoy that now too! Both are interesting and unique formats that have many subtleties that are unique to them.

Wait so... let me get this straight... support and specialist classes are less critical than the main fragging classes? Fascinating! Who cares? In HL you still need to fill your roster and have all positions manned. And doing a good job at those positions DOES make a difference in the grand scheme of things, even if it's not quite as critical 100% of the time as the fraggers. How in the hell is this "poor for a competitive game"? Why don't we play where we're all the same dudes and use AK47s and M4s. That'd be exciting and maximumly competitive, right? Or why don't we play Quake and all have a rocket launcher, lightning gun, and rail gun. Because this is Team Fortress... with classes that are inherently different and have different strengths and weaknesses. That is part of the fun.

I know a dude who was in the Air Force. Do you know what he did there? You're probably thinking fighter pilot, but no. His job was to drive a bus. That's right. Now I'm not saying driving a bus is fun (though it does sound pretty fun right now actually--I've never done it) but him doing his job well was important. Ok that was a terrible analogy. Playing any class in TF2 is more fun that driving a bus for the Air Force. Hopefully I was able to make my point that all of this "You have missed my point. What I am trying to say is that [pointless and needless explanation of why some classes are generalists]..." is just that. Hypothetical pointlessness.

http://i.imgur.com/XB0BV.jpg

I don't usually wear hats like this, but I forgot my baseball cap at home and there was a lot of sun that day so I bought it. Interestingly it inspired a similar hat that I have in the game.

http://i.imgur.com/TtJke.jpg

Another pic from visiting my friend adaman8000 in Maryland. That's not my setup, but it is my old keyboard, and same mouse/mousemat.

It has nothing to do with playing "seriously". Getting killed by something that really shouldn't have just feels bad, just like killing someone with a half assed shot that shouldn't have killed them gives you a guilty feeling. This is all with no regard to the setting.

You do have a good point about potentially driving traffic to the site, though.

Honestly I'd prefer to have random crits and spread turned off. We don't need quick play and tons of random noobie pubbers populating the server at all times. In fact, they can and will often get discouraged by constantly getting destroyed by really good players and then will rage and leave. TF2. Forever.

But seriously we have a sizable enough community here to keep the server moderately populated and spread word of it manually, like plenty of other servers already successfully do.

Ok, so you're pubbing, relaxing, smiling, having a good time. You're at full health as you come around a corner... then your cat steps on your power strip and turns off your rig. This is not much different than getting killed by random crits. They are there for noobies. Valve says that they are there to break stalemates and reward good play and stuff but that's 99% horseshit. They are actually a (clever) marketing tool. No matter how bad you are, especially as a beginner, you will at some point draw a random crit and kill some dude(s) and possibly change the outcome of the game or at least the moment. That is positive feedback and incentivises you to keep playing the game and therefore to recommend it to your friends (except that it's f2p now) and then you and your friends are more likely to keep playing it and spend money (item shop).

But I'd like to think that the majority of us are beyond that point.

Vortex is a cool guy. I give 3 thumbs up for Vortex.

Nice person. Good medic.

Super nice guy. Real strong DM, good comms (though poop mic), can main call. Knows exactly what he should be doing and kills everything.