That was the great season of the anti-quickfix mafia in IM, probably my favorite season of tf2.

I still remember watching the cast of the IM finals that season where I believe it was Seanbud queried as to why we didn't use it - and his co-caster said that we were weirdos who had blackballed the item and we were also accused of "being afraid of changing the meta" if only we had been listened to! lol.

When Killing announced it would be legal, John Milter was the first person I contacted with the idea of blackballing it and it grew from there to include every team in the division for the most part :D Although apparently nobody told Mangachu's team - they still didn't use it out of the interest of keeping TF2 good. It helped that most of us had been playing with or against each other (and rays pugs and norcal/Milk pugs!) for years. The crusade wouldn't have been possible without the Rent-a-Homies, Chill2good ratio, Dragonball Jav, Meat Market, -=eGO=-, HURRICANE, 6cuties, Playground Tactics, and Sal's Canal's support.

We nicknamed Servo the "chaos pocket" because he constantly showed up at times and places you never expected.

This is my best memory of s14 though lol https://imgur.com/a/KGjSF

I also tried to find that cast and couldn't, but I did find one I did over the July 4th break of Sal's Canal vs. Rent-a-Homies ... Unfortunately our friend Sal does not appear :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbe88nic8xE

Collected s14 stories:

That was also the season where we had to cut Sinner (our pocket) because an old lady blew through a red light and ran over him with her car and broke his arm in two places, but that hero STILL showed up for scrims that night after getting out of the hospital and demanded to attempt to play because it was just his keyboard arm that he couldn't use. We ended up stealing Kermit (of HRG and Pandemic fame) from Mason's team - and he was easily one of the funniest people I've ever met.

We also had to cut our original roamer (SkaBOSS) because he went out to a club on a Friday night, and in a freak case of mistaken identity, was arrested on suspicion of being a cocaine dealer named Sanchez, and despite his protests to the contrary, and his identification stating he was another person, he was beaten by police and refused medical care while waiting in jail. The Air Force, for whom he worked, eventually intervened and got him out, and he ended up suing the bar owner and the police department, and bought his own bar with the settlement money. But he couldn't play due to his injuries (concussion and stitches in his head) and legal needs. So we got Frio, who had twice won IM only to be cut at the end of each season :D

That was also the season where my house flooded completely at the start of the off season and resulted in me not performing over well in my tryouts to try to get on Rick_ and Marmaduke's invite team (due to having to completely gut my house all day for weeks) - although they did take my ol' buddy Sezco, who conspired to get me on the team anyways. After a poor start, so the story goes, Marmaduke confided in Sezco that changes were going to have to be made if they didn't improve, so Sezco decided to start throwing to get me on the team, but instead, his plan back fired because he threw so hard that Marmaduke cut both their original medic AND Sezco! Sezco would go on to play with me for the remainder of the season lol.

Also this: https://youtu.be/RlHvKvwNPgM and Chriz's frag show from that season: https://youtu.be/SqsTRVbdgs8

I miss those days it was my favorite time in TF2 :(

RTJ are great - I envy you lol. They are one of the few that I've actually bought the albums of.

It's your Mwheel - sometimes they get loose on the inside, and even though the wheel on the outside isn't moving, the sensor on the inside is registering movement - you can fix it by cleaning up your mouse a bit or by gently pressing the contacts on the inside (around the actual wheel sensor) together with pliers to make it somewhat tighter, and thus less likely to move inadvertantly.

Basically the way shotgun roamer worked was you had a "pocket" who tended to hang around in the combo during holds - a lot like a "combo scout" does now, and build, but once you pushed he was more like a scout than a true pocket soldier in many cases. Because the roaming soldier would usually set in on a double bomb with the pocket or hold/go on a flank route - and then they would make a decision on "rotating" basically whichever soldier had less health would drop back to the combo, and the one with the most would behave as the roamer does now. Then you would keep bouncing your soldiers back and forth until somebody died or you took the point, with the pocket tending to "rest" near the medic when in doubt as to where to be.

Jumping isn't so bad taking the extra 30 damage, but it does effect your ability to do mullti-jumps. That's partially why decent teams used to go to jump servers to recruit their roamers - because health was at a premium lol. If you ever want to humor yourself, track down some old LAN demos with early ww- (wonderwall) playing for the first time with gunboats lol. He would just chain completely useless jumps together purely because he could. It would also lead to more scout-based suicide plays in stalemates, which I think could, theoretically, be superior to soldier (tagg) bombs on some maps.

I do my best :D I don't blame Ty for what's going on with the Cavs - their roster is a trainwreck and they *still* don't have a reliable bench to relieve the old men. They literally put Delly in the hospital, and then watched him go to the Bucks lol.

The Pacers beat the Cavs - always a pleasure to see... and then we lost to the 6ers and knicks so....

(note that I don't *hate* the cavs per se, purely because of the magic that is Austin Carr)

Good with the bad?

Also fun fact, the Indianapolis media, always ready for the jibe, is now exclusively referring to the Paul George trade as the Victor Oladipo trade. Mainly because Victor is playing out of his mind atm.

Most sports thrive on rules *not* changing over much. Things change as players change.

For example, I can remember a time when scout was considered an all around not so great class. In fact, usually day 1 of "learn how to play tf2" included a sermon on why healing scouts is a bad use of the medic's time. Which would get one labelled as an idiot today.

Now, scout has received quite a number of buffs as a class on the whole since then (medic speed boost, boston basher allowing scouts to build), and inadvertent buffs through changes to other classes (demo sticky nerf, equalizer nerf, gunboats). But the dominance of scouts in 6s began a LONG time before any of the changes I mentioned above became a factor.

The game didn't change - the players did. People figured out how to play scout better than they did before, or at least, the number of exceptionally good scouts increased. The untethering of the roaming soldier also helped him a bit because you used to have a combo that could include two shotgun soldiers lol.

Given enough time, other players on other classes will figure out how to come up to speed with scouts and will change the way the game is played again. Zany unlocks are not required. All they succeed in doing is making the game more frustrating to play and harder to learn for the uninitiated. Methinks it'll swing back to the demo class, at least in NA, because we've got some demos that are just nutty good lol.

It's also possible to just buck the meta and see what happens. Back when I played, before arrows ruined the mechanic, I really put a lot of emphasis on pushing as quickly as possible (I know a lot of other players did the same). You could really shake up a game if you knew how to push on extremely marginal uber advantages. We're talking like 15% advantage. Now most teams lag until 25% or sometimes even 30% because they've been conditioned to not trust their counting of ubers.

I should also point out that I personally would like to see a return to shotgun roamer experimentally (not by banning gunboats, just by not using them and seeing how it goes as a team thing) lol.

I got to watch the Colts win via one of the luckiest plays I've ever seen. So, that was nice. TY Hilton has seemed deeply confused the last few weeks, so it's good to see he remembers how to play football, and it was probably just the chaos of the offense getting to him.

In other news no Andrew Luck at all this season, so wooohooo draft picks! Maybe we'll get a defense, or an offensive line. One can dream.

I too would prefer windows 7, but am on windows 10 which I've modified to be as much like win7 as is feasibly possible.

Do a tracert and look up the IPs - it sounds like something wacky is happening to your routing. It happens sometimes where certain hubs are down or damaged and you get routed to some crazy place.

My favorite one i ever had happen was with NFO servers, wherein I was being routed from Indiana, to Washington D.C. and THEN to Chicago - giving me 150 ping to a server I could feasibly walk to in a few days. It should clear up eventually.

Yeah that is true he stunk up the place that game in pretty epic fashion too lol. I'm not as familiar with his past playoff performances, so that prolly did come into play.

I grew up with a completely different mentality (and era) to where the Ace pitcher, especially a Cy Young winner, NEVER came out and *always* pitched the big games unless they've majorly screwed up or are obviously unable to stand up properly and they just threw until their body physically gave out or they got destroyed by the opposing team. Of course, that's why only a few legends survived the 90s intact. I'll still never forget Randy Johnson coming in with only 2 days rest to pitch 3 innings and the crowd going fucking nuts as "Welcome to the Jungle" played. But that was a relief appearance to be fair. Or Kirk "I can't even walk" Gibson in game 1 of 88' as a hitter lol.

I do get the argument for using Yu Darvish in 7 as planned especially since he was a hired gun, but just watching him in his previous appearance showed me somebody who didn't have themselves together mentally and as a result was unable to function. It happens to pitchers all the time, especially a guy like Darvish who had to be aware that his performance would directly impact what sort of deals he would get this off season.

It was a really great Series. Never knew what the hell was going to happen and it was nice to see the 'Stros finally reach the top - their teams in the 90s were so fun to watch (Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Billy Wagner, Shane Reynolds), but always fell just short :( Their long period of time in the dumpster was hard to countenance.

I was deeply confused by the Dodgers last night though lol.
If you've got Clayton Kershaw available to pitch, you have the man start game 7. Period - it's literally game 7. Especially when the guy you're about to put on the mound imploded once already. Then they had Cody Bellinger as a giant gaping hole batting at all. I understand if they had to play him for defensive reasons, and he had a great season, but you stick him at 8th and cut your losses, because he was mind-fucked. So that when, the best hitters on your team get on base, he doesn't just record a K for one of your hottest hitters in Joc Pederson lol.

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 still has a competitive scene. That game is 18 years old. It's just not huge.

Most of the points regarding OW are on point at least as far as I go seeing that game.

The big struggle for comp tf2 over the last 2-3 years, is that the upper, but not quite highest skill bracket, has had a lot of attrition in player numbers. In part, it's because once East-Texas_boopidy your reasonably good [insert class here] quits, it's really hard to find a replacement of equivalent skill without taking a risk on a player you may not know very well, and people are pretty loath to do that because the old circle jerks don't exist like they used to where upper level teams had 2-3 lower level teams that hung out with them all the time that the higher level team could feed off of when needed.

That and it's really hard for new teams to get scrims if they don't have somebody who knows the present team leaders of their skill bracket.

@grit he's playing in Arizona now - I hardly ever see them play because of the market here, and Arizona isn't particularly known for their D.

I have sooooo many browns videos. I remember being a Colts fan before Peyton. It was *very* similar to what the Browns are going through now. It's funny, but at the time, people FLIPPED OUT when they let Marshall Faulk go. He and Jim Harbaugh were all we had - and they could sometimes barely squeek out wins, and then it all fell apart - culminating in a loss to the Steelers precipitated by a blown call in their only real playoff appearance. Then Peyton's first season was terrible, and it looked like the cycle was about to start all over again. Unfortunately, the internet wasn't nearly as vibrant then as it is now, so there are no funny videos or memes regarding that time.

I watched the Steelers game where Joe Haden got his first pick for them - it made me sad for the Browns :( Don't even have Joe Thomas to watch now. They'll be good some day. https://youtu.be/4ymsgHI5phM

But to be honest, the best thing to come out of this dark time for the Browns, is this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8SsCqpa-Lk