Yeah, I've lurked here long enough that I vaguely remember that. Thing is I didn't care, at all, at the time. I knew it was a dumb inside joke, but I still don't care.

Also, apparently a lot of people would like to play on the worst team in open. And none of them are Demomen.

Thanks, I'd like to. It's just a matter of finding 6 players and some subs willing to get stomped on ;). I can cover the fees for people for whom that is the barrier, as long as they are serious about playing.

I'm absolutely nobody in this community, but I have played with Scar in PUGs recently, and he was fun to play with. He was named "MemphisVon" at the time, but I figured it was a tribute... I'm pretty sure nobody was going to think Memphis had decided to come play Newbie PUGs.

Well let's form a team then- I'm pretty sure I've played with/against you in DM servers and in at least one PUG. My impression was that we were in the same ballpark in terms of DM, though I do sometimes overrate myself ;).

I do think going straight to Open would be the best thing, assuming our egos could take it. But I'd be open to discussion on that.

Thanks for the offer- I think we'd be trying to play as if we were better than we were though, and running the normal 6s meta. A good Scout who could off-class to Pyro when needed would be great, but I think I am missing an inside joke here... I've lurked on these forums for a while, and I do vaguely remember Cole. Anyway, thanks for the bump.

I've been playing TF2 for a while now, mostly pubs. I'm interested in playing better players in a more serious format, so I've been starting to play a bit in PUGs, Newbie Mixes, and Lobbies. I like the 6s format, but if I'm honest I have to admit that I'm terrible at 6s- I haven't played it enough to have a very good idea of what to do. What I hear from people better than me is consistently "Your DM isn't terrible, but you should be playing on a team in order to get better at 6s."

I'm interested in forming a team of people at around my level to play in the next season of Open. We'd be the worst team in Open. We'd probably start off at a UGC Steel level. But I imagine that we would improve more playing against Open teams than we would playing against Steel teams.

So I'm looking for people who are in that intermediate zone between stomping pubs and playing 6s competently, are willing to commit to an Open team for one season, and who want to get better. You must have a thick skin, and be OK with the fact that we will get stomped, over and over, before we get better.

If you're interested and broke I can likely cover some of the league fees.

My mother died three years ago this June. It was kind of sudden. She was in great health one day, diagnosed with cancer the next, and dead not much more than two months later. We were really close.

I guess for me the only thing that helped much was spending time with people I really cared about. A lot of people came out of the woodwork to offer their condolences, and to be honest I found that pretty tiring, though I know they meant well. I didn't want condolences, and I didn't really want to talk about it. I just wanted to be around people I loved, doing normal things I enjoyed.

And I guess that's the thing I'd add to what people have already said. Try to do things that give you pleasure. It can be hard to do that- life lost some of its savor for me for a while after my Mom died. But if there is one thing I did learn from her death it is that life is short and you ought to get as much from it as you can. One of the things she said to me when she was dying was "I want you to know that I had a great life." I hope I can say the same, as sincerely as she did, on my deathbed.

OK. So you think a Scout should be able to Bonk through them, and that Ruwin is arguing the same? Or the other way around? If the first, do you think fixing that aspect of chokes is worth everything else Bonk does?

OK, fair enough. I'm not arguing that nothing should ever change. I guess I am arguing that after looking at the unlocks Valve has put out I am not sure I trust them to understand how new unlocks are going to affect the game, 6s or otherwise. And I'm not sure any format of the game people played seriously would benefit by being totally disrupted by a new game-changing unlock every few months.

Well if you take something that is hard but useful and make it so hard that it can't be reliably done, to such a degree that no one tries to do it, you have lowered the skill ceiling, in practice.

If you make something only reward people who do it really well you haven't lowered the skill ceiling, but you have removed something skillful from the game at levels where people don't have the skill to do it. So if you make it harder to get real rewards from co-ordination you haven't lowered the skill ceiling but you have removed some incentive to co-ordinate from less skilled teams.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. You obviously understand 6s a lot better than I do, but I'm not sure what you're saying.

If there's a problem with the way certain maps play competitively it might be best to fix the maps. If there's a problem with the way most maps play because of the allowed set of items in comp it might be best to add some unlocks, or even design some new ones, carefully. But I'm not sure that 6s would be better if a whole bunch of radically different unlocks were added to each ESEA season and the season were used to figure out which were terribly broken.

What it sounds like is that Valve is interested in trying to offer better pubs, rather than a real competitive environment. And I'd like to see that, actually. I've been interested in comp mainly because pubs are so bad. But pubs are a lot more convenient for me.

But there are a lot of competitive games in which "sick new strategies" aren't introduced by way of drastic rule changes every few months, but which remain interesting. Basketball and Chess come to mind. I think Valve has made TF2 a lot less interesting in any format by introducing so many unlocks. Strategy evolves subtly, and developing a strategy requires having some idea of what to expect- after a certain point more options mean less interesting play.

I used to have a pro account. I actually paid 50 dollars a year for it. All I can say is that I felt like they treated me badly, and I didn't renew.

I should really be quiet here, because I am old. Good luck.

Apparently I used the wrong tense. I meant to say: "I bet this guy gets back to Earth and has a hard time getting any from his wife within three weeks." Better?