I wouldn't mind a return of KOTH_ashville or Standin, Koth_granary was pretty fun when I pugged on it, or even warmfront. If I were master of the universe we'd still be playing warmfront - especially if an upgraded version has been made.

Follower is a nonstarter because it's simply massive and suffers from the same problems as cp_ash. CP_Freight is fucking terrible because of the forward spawn placements. It's literally impossible to escape your own last unless you wipe the enemy team, retain uber and 4-5 players. Yukon could be interesting, but it's certainly not a favorite.

I always felt cp_ash would have been more successful if parts of each point (excluding last) had been lopped off, just cut everything by a third and make each point (besides last) a 2 door point with a secondary access (a la the window in snake, the "new" door on gran second).

Hey there, we're looking for an IM ready pocket, as well as other things that may come along. Essentially the only things we *don't* need are a medic and a demo. We have a full roster, but are looking to make improvements where they are available - especially a pocket. Team is primarily East Coast, scrims often.

TLR hit the nail on the head. It's a much smoother transition for highlander, especially since all of the major pub (Engee, heavy, sniper, spy, demoman) classes are played whereas 6v6 demands scouts and soldiers.

Furthermore, I would say one of the major checks on the growth of 6v6, just as far as the raw number of teams, is the time commitment that's required. Most 6v6 teams scrim 3-5 (or more) nights a week, whereas many highlander teams only play their Monday matches or scrim only once. It's just a lot easier to ask people for 1-2 nights a week, the same time every week, than 3+ with constantly changing match dates.

There's also a lot of space in the highlander scene. Any random pub player could get 8 buddies and make a team, and play teams of equivalent skill level, whereas if the same were done for 6v6 they would have a very difficult time finding productive scrims.

Here's the system I went with for mentoring and it seemed alright.

50/50.

Play Pocket/Medic (if I got stuck on my main (medic) I'd be sure and *not* to do most of the things I'd do when playing medic so as to equip said new player for when they have to play with somebody who is learning). I'd focus on the Demo, Pocket and/or Medic, as well as the other 3 whenever they needed to have interactions with the medic bubble.

Then the rest of the time I'd play scout - mostly passive in nature. That way I could design plays or instruct the roamer and scout on their roles - while providing general guideline tips to the medic bubble.

Most of the newbies play multiple pugs obviously so "oh no they missed something critical" isn't a big deal.

Then I wrap it up by providing a general synopsis of what just happened followed by asking for questions. I also didn't teach them any "plays" for mid or last pushes, and instead encourage them to come up with their own plays on the fly - and will explain why said thing would be a bad idea if it's something that isn't that great.

The main thing is fostering a culture where people aren't afraid to try playing or ask questions, while giving players with generalized experience and above the ability to give those opening tips that somebody invariably gave most of us in the community.

Greed gave a great little speech to the people that were queued up that ought to be part of any guide to players just starting out. I gave a new medic player my "medic swag" speech and it was generally a great time.

Good guy to talk to - more knowledgeable about the game than he lets on methinks.

It'd mostly be up to the streamers to get it to happen by listing highlights or maybe some really bored viewers.

If you're trying to find ways to keep a video game fun you should just cut back. Unless some miracle occurs you won't ever make a substantial sum of money from playing this game - it's just not worth it to play it like a job.

Just do something else. If you like your team and want to stay on it, just only play when your team scrims or periodically after if you feel the need.

If anything spend less time playing MGE and *more* time watching streams while doing other shit. Even just listening to the better streamers will get you thinking on a higher level.

I cant really argue with it. We haven't gotten valve support from the start, so obviously, we have to be community driven, and the community has some great bright spots, but not enough for us to grow extensively.

The most exciting development, atm, is the rapid, consistent growth of the highlander scene. Almost every player that I pubbed with a year and a half ago consistently, the "regulars" so to speak have *all* gotten into UGC highlander.

While I don't happen to think that highlander is the future of competitive format du jour, I think it's doing a lot to bridge the gap between pub and comp. players and mingle the general community of tf2 players and those who play it competitively - in an organic way. You certainly have a much greater awareness in the pub community of what's going on in invite and more awareness of the various personalities.

I got into tf2 for many of the same reasons that DJC said he did. I played it casually off and on for years after it came out, and would go months without playing. Then I lost my longtime college girlfriend, started drinking myself to death, fell into drinking related legal problems, and then decided playing video games at night was the better alternative to shaming myself and trying to have a real social life, being as a condition of my probation was that I would essentially become under 21. It's been good therapy.

Once I went to an Irish pub with some people from college when I was about 11 hours away on a random road trip. It turned out the waiters and waitresses were actually Irish, and were deeply offended when one of the people that went with me asked for an "Irish Car Bomb" (Guinness, with Baily's, drop in a Shot of whiskey). We all got our drinks first despite his having ordered much earlier. Then the waitress came up with two flaming double shots of 151 and said "Here's the Twin Towers you ordered" and promptly left.

I drank them.

Really, when it comes to this game there are some major factors that bear onto your success in it that aren't related to work or talent necessarily.

1. You have to be sociable and people have to like being around you (same mumble 3+ nights a week).

2. You have to be mildly to moderately intelligent, at least as regards to situations in the game. Some of this can be made up with raw experience, but in generally thinking things through tends to have better outcomes - this is why some players who have godly DM, and decent personalities, still can't secure LAN wins or even LAN placement.

In general, work is the primary. A good example, even in physical sports, is the training regimen that people like Tiger Woods or Ichiro Suzuki undertook starting from a very young age. Given, some sports demand a certain body type (some positions in American football, basketball, etc) but not all of them - hard work is the primary there.

I assume we'll see more iron man as time goes on because the rewards are definitely there because a traditional B hold basically lets the attacker just figure out what to do, and all you can really do to give them different looks is relocate the sentry.

The main thing you have to be careful about with iron man, is that the attacker doesn't wise up, send a player or two (roamer scout?) through b and out onto C because typically the medic will be open to attack from behind - just be aware that 1-2 players are missing from A and expect for them to end up behind you shortly.

Sad day for Ducks and LG - good day for whales.

The more practice you do the better you'll be. You can practice less, but you won't progress as quickly.

This pyro swapping thing was done a lot more in the past. You can find even old eXtv demos where med players would off to pyro. I do it sometimes and have had decent results with it - last ESEA season I had a short stint as the top pyro in esea lol.

I don't switch pyro for the outset of the hold - it's mainly only useful when you're at both uber and player disadvantage. Say you try to take second, fail to do so, and you lose a bunch of people, one of which isn't the med, and they for whatever reason still have uber. Thus, it's essentially a desperation move. If there's no hope that you'll be able to get your spawns before they push, and there's 0 chance you can get yourself an uber (sawing people who didn't notice you) you may as well.

Worst case scenario, you blow the enemy off of the point and delay the cap for several seconds (perhaps long enough for spawns), or, best cast scenario, you get SUPER lucky and somebody gets crazy stupid and shoots a projectile at you, and you get an immediate 4-6 k and make a frag video.

At least when I do it, I just hold down mouse 2 until I run out of ammo as soon as anybody is in air-blast range. Then hope for axe and flare cheese kills, then run back into spawn and get back on med ASAP, unless I die valiantly.

The switch mostly depends on what % I'm sitting at uber wise. If it's 50%+ I'm staying med because 2 swipes gets me an uber and I'll take that over hoping that the other team doesn't understand pyro play.

Another tricky thing you can do, if you're feeling like taking big risks, is if you know you're at an uber disadvantage that's so great that the other team will just have to push (example: you die, their med doesn't pop to take your second and lives). You can run kritz. You're not going to get uber during the push anyways, but you *may* get kritz if you dip, duck, dive, and dodge, and then you can hope you get really lucky with that x4 damage.

As for Enigma. UGC teams, historically, prior to their knowledge of the IRC will typically just play whichever teams they've previously played in the league - or they'll research other teams in the league since the profiles page links directly to steam profiles it's not hard to try and set stuff up. Eventually, most go to the IRC. In previous seasons we put a lot more emphasis on getting preseason stuff set up so teams would, perhaps, get to know each other, but now the IRC is pretty well known even in the lowest rungs of the ladder + I made a video on how to use it that I distribute lol. (I've been a UGC 6v6 admin for... this would be my third season coming up).

:D My team started the same time that last season of CEVO (which really was awful) and UGC. We won UGC - and Ray's team Ask4 were our go to scrim partners lol. I think we played each other several times every week - and their roster is more or less the same. I think, of that UGC/CEVO crop of new teams, we're the last 2 that survive? Pretty sure anyways.

I was worried for them at the end of last season, but it looks like it turned out :D

Good luck guys.