I guess the unfortunate truth about the "match fixing" rule is unless there's literal text proof of planning the throw, punishments put in place will be a judgement call.

With that said, whoever made the judgement call that this was a thrown match is either severely ignorant, or severely biased.

- Sandblast said in interviews prior that week they were unable to scrim hardly at all. This is shown in their logs.
- Phlps is new to the team, and is offclassing
- Kev likely had no idea he was going to need to play a match
- Sandblast, their carry player, is forced to offclass on medic

No fucking wonder they lost in 7 minutes. Can you see throwing teams run an excess of sniper? Yes, but excess sniper doesn't inherently mean they're throwing, whether it's last or mid. I casted the damn thing and at no point did I think to myself "they're trying to lose as quickly as possible", even if given the circumstances they expect to lose.

Aren't these types of things supposed to be greenlit by exa? Or whoever? I refuse to believe more than 1 person are responsible for decisions like these.

Most/all of these "whoever holds mid" and timer ideas blow because for every punishment you give a team for promoting a stalemate, you give incentive for the other team to force said punishment upon them by continuing the stalemate. There's not really a way to force 5cp to play faster fundamentally without practically morphing it into KOTH.

Half of the deal is teams aren't going to play super fast and reckless in certain situations when stakes are high, and your opponents are really good/can punish your tiny little mistakes. The other half is pretty much what grape juice said; if both teams suck at breaking stalemates the games not gonna go anywhere.

Sure, but there's still a ratio of reward received vs skill required, which is definitely skewed way higher for the cow mangler charge shot than the iron bomber hit box, so one being banned and the other untouched is not bizarre.

The cowmangler doesn't "break" the game like some of the other banned unlocks, but the outcry has always been the charge shot at it's core, with the ammo as the cherry on top (your demo has many more pipes to spam if your pocket is running it, as well).

It's one of those bans that gets put in because, while sometimes you can hear the shot, taking a mini-crit charge shot across the map, from a spot you can't hear it from, the second you decide to peek through a door to get info, feels like the most random, unskilled, and unenjoyable thing. Burning your clip hardly means anything at certain distances; you have plenty of time to reload and the risk is worth the reward since your 140dmg laser beam can hard stall/kill pushes instantly.

A lot of weapon ban arguments come down to the philosophy. Do you allow it because it doesn't disrupt the flow of 6s past a certain threshold? Or do you disallow it because the mechanic of an unskilled cross map death laser isn't something people want to play with/against?

For reference, The Cow Mangler 5000 was allowed once from ESEA 22-26, and then a second time during ESEA 29-30; addition due to the first philosophy, removal due to the latter.

I feel like so many of these unlock threads and silly polls over the years stem from people just straight up not remembering/experiencing why the hell some of these things aren't allowed in the first place.

Some things are whatever, like the solemn vow eventually being unbanned, but cleaver/base jumper/quickfix? Right, let's double check if giving scouts another spam tool/letting soldiers live in the skybox/letting medics fly with their soldiers to mid gives us a positive experience.

Like come on, the cow mangler was allowed just 2 years ago and has technically only gotten stronger since then. Do we have that many new, ignorant people that we have to go through a ~testing process~ once again, or are specific unlock praisers just hoping enough people who voted the opposite way have left over the years?

Point being, you'd think that with how little tf2 gets updated, we wouldnt have as many testing phases/dumb weapon pollings as we actually do over the years.

this dudes actually sick, deserves to play another season of invite for sure from what I've seen ringing for HRTeam

Try this link instead.

I also lied and forgot Dreamhack 2016 happened a month before the change as well, woops. Hopefully some of these work instead.

The speed change was July 2016, so you're looking for anything from ESEA S22/ETF2L S24 and prior.

For reference, the 2nd to last LAN to happen before the change was i55, so maybe an old archive of those demos might be able to help you.

https://youtu.be/cpIr742RK2o?t=17

I'm running into hardware issues with my current build from 2013, so since the parts are 6 years old I figure I better start from scratch. I have a soft $1000 budget and would rather buy parts now (within this month) than later so my team can actually scrim.

The worst frames I ever get in TF2 are 90 in some pubs so I'd prefer if this new PC had any form of FPS boost in comparison at all so I can always have 3 digit FPS. I'm very used to not being able to stream without dropping a lot of frames, and only really getting to play games like GTA/Rust/Borderlands/Deus Ex/Witcher ect on all low settings without seeing serious performance issues. If any of this got to change for the better with a new build that'd be great, but if my budget only allows for this to remain the status quo then I can live with that. The most stressful thing that the PC will probably have to take is Cyberpunk I would imagine. I can play that on low too if needed but something higher would be nice. I prefer not to overclock but will if deemed necessary

I had a friend make a partial build. (missing GPU/harddrive/windows) but anyone that's helping me feel free to build your own thing if you see something better.

Edit: I forgot to mention I can reuse the harddrive/PSU/case short term if it fits with the build and softens the budget, and replace the old parts sometime in 2020 when I have more money. Bear also has an old GTX 760 he can send me at break if using that for a GPU to save extra money (in general or to put towards other parts) is the play.

...we're asked to buy flights to prove attendance and then this happens.

The lessened throwing and greater incentive to play came with more stalemates and an increased amount of killed drafts. Also pugs usually get harder later into the evening, so depending on when you play it's very easy to obtain an inaccurate ELO.

This will prob be the most important thing. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think a lot of people will care about "I feel x about y because of z" unless they have a unique or interesting perspective on the information stated. If it's just a random opinion from someone who happens to be a writer, then more people will just not read it. Which is fine I guess, but obviously not the goal.

Chaos Esports Club will probably get a lot of praise just because people will want to see Matumbaman do well after getting kicked from Liquid so close to the tournament. Not expected to go very far though.

Past that, you'd be hoping for Fnatic/NiP/TNC squeezing their way into top 6 and beyond I guess.

If anyone thought the Chinese fans were harsh on their teams when they don't happen to win in TI grands, imagine how bad its gonna be if that happens on home soil. Worse if they miss finals completely this year (decent chance VG or maybe LGD get there though).