gg RONIN and gl in playoffs EVL. Hopefully some of us on -bird noises- can play next season and we can have somewhat more of a stable start/mindset throughout the season. Pretty fun season despite disappointments.

Hey man, throw my team a bone...

We changed our name back after a bit of a team discussion. The change to in Theory in the first place was more of a decision made because half the team wanted something different and the other half of the team not caring apparently, so it was a bit of a mistake and we had to wait 30 days to change it.

We changed our name back after a bit of a team discussion. The change to in Theory in the first place was more of a decision made because half the team wanted something different and the other half of the team not caring apparently, so it was a bit of a mistake and we had to wait 30 days to change it.

Also, the name -bird noises- itself has never lost a golden cap while in Theory somehow has lost all three golden caps it has played in close matches (pretty much the same players minus having a different medic and a role change between soldiers). I expect to play two golden caps this week on Sunshine and hopefully win both of them because of the name change.

From numerous personal experiences or scrimming with/against:

boomer/purple_penguin, Linkuser, Phaser, PYYYOUR, REP, rooks the CANADIAN SCOUT GOD, Rigel, ricky/ZOMBIE PUNISHER, tooth, miwo, shrugger, Freestate, yomps, purpleshirt, Evil MrMuffinz, Nursey, tri, TechDude, indust, YouMustMike most of the time, seymour, foster, pheLoN, smaka, pie_hero, kent, oobi/saelot, CheesyMacgyver, yeeegz, jodd, bloodsire, Avast, BUICK, nonis, fox peace and blaze (only ever really played a bit of highlander with him and against him in invite this season).

Probably missing a few people from a long time ago.

Sorry for the shitfest of a match. It definitely was really exciting up until the pause, but unfortunately sigh disconnected and could not really contact Comcast or anything of that sort to try and fix things outside of just resetting his modem.

RONIN apparently couldn't play any other night (hopefully that's true), which is why they just gave us the W. GGs to them for the three rounds that were actually played and hopefully tomorrow night is smooth and sigh is actually prepared to deal with lame network problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yieE8T_Zg8Y

Pretty much can play any class (off-classes included) at the tip-of-the-top IM level. Easily an invite soldier in most if not all respects as well.

Seems like a pretty level-headed guy while being pretty damn good from what I've seen - the former especially being a rarity these days.

He'll be awesome in high IM with the right team.

Heads up, mae is going to sub in as demoman for sigh this upcoming week since he will be away at camp for the entire week.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZX1oN5UMAATtqy.png

Though this applies in a bunch of places (other games, work life, academic life and so on), it's kind of crazy how some people are held back (in terms of improving skill or applying said skill) by being emotional in a negative way in TF2 specifically.

From what I know of talking to a decent number of players in 6s especially over the years, as well as getting to know pretty much anyone who has been on a team with me pretty well, it seems there always seem to be those cases (whether consistent or people that just have ups and downs) where someone can be seemingly amazing but obviously do not have their life in control/something like that and therefore just drown themselves in unhelpful sadness when things go wrong (beefing matches, getting cut from a team, etc).

I swear there are some ridiculous players in this game throughout various divisions that could benefit from just sorting out real life things first in order for them to focus more smoothly on improving at TF2/things like that if they care.

Really? That's a weird way to somehow swing yourself into the mix of "acceptable invite players" just because you played S16. You must have noticed a really big difference going from a spectator of invite who played IM to a 2-14 record invite player that particular season.

It's definitely true invite has gone downhill, though I'd say in regards to top four talent and true closeness of matches rather than "good attempts" that pretty much started with the end of S11 LAN when Mihaly's Flow played with shrugger, if anything. I feel especially after S18 LAN talent became a lot more questionable because of no LAN that pretty much promotes potentially unfair online play (due to pings, technical issues, etc) while demotivating people that I'm almost certain would be trying a lot harder if there was something like LAN and not just some $$$ at the end of the road.

Definitely.

Though, I hope that's more because we expected phorofor to be here last night after communicating with him earlier in the day and he simply did not show up. Instead, we had to use train, who did not even know we would be needing him again until twenty minutes before scrims despite us having him play the AEONIC match as well/me paying $84.95 for it, and pretty much has under five hours in the last two weeks in TF2 because he does not actively play this game anymore.

Not to take anything away from 8K's victory since they did offer to reschedule to Sunday and I would've taken them up on that offer if I had truly known phorofor was going to skip out with zero communication and not show up to scrims on the dot like he usually. 8K played well and we played pretty piss poor, but the fact is we got screwed and put in the dark after scrimming Metalworks with someone else for most of the earlier week while forcing train to play for us on very, very short notice.

gg to 8K for sure though, just want to make things crystal clear.

I'm not going to act like I truly know anything about the whole situation between rando and phorofor/judge RONIN or Nursey for their decisions, but regarding -bird noises- now being down a medic, there surely must be some understanding that this all happening now (literally the weekend before matches start) is pretty fucking lame.

I know it's hard for some people to grasp the concept that teams that aren't RONIN or froyotech try really, really hard to make the right decisions for their own rosters and increase how competitive they are with the top two teams while keeping things in balance such as having fun while practicing hard. Perhaps people just assume if a team isn't sponsored or has b4nny on it they probably don't care as much as the "immovable" top two teams we seem to have in TF2. Very wrong though from my experience, and in all honesty, super lame that there was ZERO firm communication to really warn of this being in the cards/screwing us.

I pretty much cut an incredible medic, indust, for Nursey (after talking to indust very firmly about playing the game more or being out of the picture two weeks before that) and thought my off-season worries of people just not wanting to play TF2 would be over, but boy was I taken for a turn. I understand this decision actually does extend to i58 (despite being a couple months away), so by no means do I really hold any ill feeling towards Nursey or anyone on the "benefited" side of this whole situation. I know one of Nursey's big ambitions in this game is to go to LAN and show up big, and regarding that I wish nothing but the best for her.

Again, I won't judge the decisions themselves, but the manner in which this was all handled and the timing of it relative to the start of matches is really, really fucking lame for the team that is now down a medic and is scrambling to solve that.

I believe the last time Invite had 8 teams was S13, with S14 afterwards having 10 teams in Invite for whatever reason. I'd imagine returning to 8 teams would pose problematic unless there could be some solution to maintaining fairness for schedules.

Since there are 8 maps, they'd have to cut a map and shorten the season by a week to make it 14 matches in a season (a team facing the other 7 twice throughout the season with two matches per a week). That, or they'd not cut a map and somehow make the extra week for 8 teams fair so the people facing each-other more than twice throughout the season aren't disadvantaged by having to play a team three times while another team only plays them twice. Hopefully Dagger's team or another team just steps up and the schedule for the past couple seasons can be maintained.