Snakewater
Viaduct
Process
Gullywash
Badlands
Sunshine
Metalworks
Granary

gg to Sales Associates, sorry about your scout ping troubles.

Hang in there dude. Last season my team only won one match, and by then most of the other low open teams in our conference were also dead so we were playing playoffs teams again. I know it's tough but you guys will learn a lot if you stick it out, just remember to take it slow and set realistic goals (like, we're going to push out of last once, we're going to take a round, etc.) Schedule some easier scrims for your team so you don't always have to get pounded so you can retain a little bit of a winner's/aggressive attitude.

It's tough but you will find that you guys are miles ahead of anyone who started at roughly your skill level and decided to play UGC instead.

gg to Checkmate E-Sports, was a really fun match.

I studied at McGill my first year (Bio) before transferring somewhere else. The campus is crammed into a mountain-side right up against downtown Montreal so it's really heavily intertwined with the city itself. The uni is trying to expand so you end up with funny things like research labs in old residential houses or having classes/student residences in hotels. Most of Montreal around McGill is pretty heavily English-speaking (there's also Concordia on the other side of the mountain which is also an English-speaking college, so the whole surrounding area is kinda under that influence). I think it's a pretty awesome place and I'd recommend it to people, like it's really gorgeous and old so if you like things with history and culture it's definitely a good place to be. I was having some unaddressed health issues when I studied there so my personal experience is kind of unfairly influenced by that.

a) I have no idea why Sidular continued to bring UGC into this when ever since the new 6s admin team took over a year ago, we've all gone to great lengths to move teams into divisions that are appropriate for them. Last season the placing teams in steel were also low/low-mid open teams in ESEA and generally had a very appropriate level of experience for a steel team. The mentality of UGC is (for better or for worse) a coddling one.

b) Due to the nature of the league being pay-to-play, ESEA has never been run as a league that separates people by skill in any direction but up. You earn your right to play in the higher divisions, but the lower divisions are not some safe haven for low-experience players. You can't seriously expect it to be run that way either, because then they'd literally be instating a rule that demands that some people have to pay more just to play with the people they enjoy playing with. I personally don't LIKE the sandbagging mentality, I don't think it's compatible with the notion of "competitive" and I think it has some serious potential to kill the whole scene because it creates stagnation, but I can't get behind the idea of ESEA enforcing roster rules the same way UGC does just because of the payment structure.

c) I know a little bit about playing against dumb off-classes thanks to my team last season being, eh, not particularly experienced (I've seen it all, you name it), and all you do is you just continue to play your game normally and figure out how to change the way you play to be more successful. A lot of players with low experience actually have no idea how to adapt to something unfamiliar, so the easiest and most beneficial thing to do is to remember how the off-classes work, why they're not usually run full-time and adapt to play against them. Is it fun 6s time? Not even a little bit. But if you're only talking about educational value, then yeah, you can still absolutely learn a ton as a team out of a situation like that.

It's not exactly the most polite thing to do on the part of the other team because they are wasting your time rather than just taking their W and going your separate ways, but what kind of experience you get out of it is entirely up to your team.

So I actually have severe clinical depression and thus know a little bit about being sad.

Set a goal for yourself and work towards it. It can be literally anything like "read a book for one hour a day" or something else equally easy to achieve, but being able to look back and see that you've accomplished what you set out for yourself makes you feel like your life actually has meaning, and that you have control over it, which in turn makes you feel more happy (which you can then use towards doing things you like a bit less in your life). Start small and work your way up to something bigger. Like I said it could be something as simple as, IDK, "listen to music I like and go for a 30-minute walk every day".

The important thing here is that no matter how easy the goal is, if you do suffer from the sad you will immediately begin to find reasons not to accomplish your goals. A lot of people will then proceed to beat themselves up mentally for being bad and not meeting their goals, but this is also wrong, because all you're doing is satisfying your need for continuing to be sad by making yourself feel like shit (not because you make yourself depressed or whatever, but because this is now your normal/habitual state and going outside of it is new/uncomfortable). So when you don't accomplish your goal, you just need to own it, be like "yeah, I didn't do this today and that's ok", figure out what really stopped you from doing it, and then pay attention and don't let the same thing (hint: it's usually yourself) stop you the day after.

I have the same problem. Not only does it cut off but it also echoes from side to side for me. I would honestly rather have someone shove a giant banana (with a very pointy, scratchy end) in both of my ears than have to deal to that again.

My sound is fine in the rest of the game and in the Digital Aim DM server so I feel like it is a server-side issue.

I've honestly been kind of in a slog since last season ended, avoiding a lot of team leader responsibilities and not really even playing TF2. Especially since my roster kept falling apart :c

But! I think I found my feet again,and our roster was finally figured out a few days ago. I'm looking forward to scrims and maybe not being the worst demo in Open now (fat chance I know). :D Though now I am sick and can only hear things from one side of my face so we'll see how the rest of this week goes.

It doesn't penetrate players anymore and the uber drain scales with distance so the argument is basically if an engie runs into a medic close enough to drain a few % of uber a) your team really fucked up and b) if he had a regular shotgun that medic would've dropped or forced instead.

It definitely was tri.

I got 6 paid-up players why does it say my team is still pending minimum player payments? Is it lying? ETA: It was lying, all is good now.

Our decision was made while we were in communication with admins from other leagues, which is why the whitelists are basically the same except for that one difference.

I think if you have previous experience playing on an actual team, be it other vidya games or maybe even something else, then I think going straight into Open is fine. If you don't quite have the grasp on how you mesh with people and how you deal with losing and having to face teams better than yours, then I would say taking your first season more relaxed and making sure you can learn to win and lose gracefully should probably be a priority.

Most UGC steel teams do take the game seriously, so they do try to scrim low open teams and do demo reviews and whatever, that's not the reason why people say that you improve faster in Open. The actual reason is that playing in Open as a relatively new player is a do or die situation. You're going up against players with 3x your experience (if not more), you are going to take a massive beating and an ego bruising, and if you survive that, then you learn a lot. The problem is that it's massive amounts of pressure and people often underestimate how well they can handle it.

I was asked to make a quick note about it on tf.tv and this seemed like the most recent thread on the topic.

Because the UGC season continued on schedule despite the ESEA season being postponed, we were unable to wait for the results of the second whitelist meeting and had to come up with our own to give to our players. We are sticking with the whitelist from the previous season, with the addition of a rescue ranger ban and a dalokohs bar unban. The status of the other unlocks discussed in the whitelist meeting will remain unchanged due to the split views the community has regarding their use. All of our 6s admins always appreciate player input and we look forward to continuing to participate in the global whitelist in future seasons.

Thanks a lot Slin for organizing the meeting. I know how much work it is to prepare to get a bunch of people into a single mumble at one time.

When does the season start, I can't find it on the website, unless I'm blind?

At this point since both ESEA and UGC are established leagues with 8-week seasons, you might want to consider doing your seasons a little differently from UGC and ESEA. Maybe try short condensed ones or something (8 matches over 4 weeks), that don't start at the same time as the ESEA/UGC season is running. I think that might be up a lot of people's alley, and you'll be able to pick up a lot of teams that couldn't make the UGC/ESEA deadline or people who can't for various reasons commit to 3+ months of stuff. You might also be able to draw in some of the "retired" players who got burned out of long seasons but would want to play with friends for fun while it lasts.

Because while I think you're a cool guy and you're earnestly trying to make this work, I think a lot of people just get enough TF2 between scrims and UGC and ESEA matches (both leagues with established history and competition so players are reluctant to leave them) that they don't necessarily feel like they want to play a third league with the same exact set-up as well. At least that's the boat I'm in, between playing for a friend's UGC team and leading a team in ESEA.

I'm an assistant librarian person at the children's library. Basically I don't get to do the fun bit where you recommend books to people, I get to do the boring bits in the work room and keeping the library organized even if a small toddler decides to build a castle out of the books. I still love it though, my colleagues are awesome and I hope I can get into the mends department because repairing books seems like a lot of fun.

I volunteer at an animal shelter with abandoned cats. They are very cute.

I draw and do commissioned illustrations sometimes, but most of the time I just draw for myself. I'm working on a sci-fi novel and a short comic.

I love different food and spices and my boyfriend and I go out for dinners a lot instead of cooking.