It's ultimately your decision, I just think bringing in "projects" isn't something that should be done in Invite. If your entire roster survives into next season that would be wonderful. But as it stands, bringing in a player who takes the entire season to "shake off the rust" is a poor standard for invite competition. The TF2 community has tons of players that improve season after season and strive to be invite and it's disappointing that they will not be picked over players who have decided to get back into the scene on a whim after 5 seasons.

I'm not saying "winning open on medic a million years ago" got him into invite. In this case, I'm saying his connections did. My earlier post described the "roster hijacking" in invite and how it makes a player being "invite caliber" irrelevant to the decision of picking them up.

Platinum is describing instances of players, like himself, who have showed constant progression throughout the game through dedication and are given an opportunity to play in invite. This is what I believe invite should behave as. Lansky himself said that he picked up Craig because they were friends and he would rather play with friends than good players who were assholes.

EDIT: There should be a balance of course. Players with asshole personalities can definitely kill a team just as quick as a 0-16 record.

These comparisons are awful.

S On My Chest was picked up by chess club after dominating IM the previous season on That's So Rando. How is this "taking a chance"? They saw a talented player and picked him up.

Mesr showed improvement and played in every single season since S3.

YZ50 played a fuck ton of DM and still played in open S5 on a losing team before being picked up for invite in S6.

Clockwork played on flame_idiot the season before playing for eMg and was already established as a good relevant player - and a good soldier before that.

Absolutely none of your examples are comparable to Craig coming back from s7 to s12 to get a spot in Invite. All of your examples are ones that show how invite SHOULD be. Players that have proven themselves to be up and coming and given their chance to shine in invite. Not players that played 5 seasons ago and are friends with the team leader.

This community is truly a joke if this is the response to "don't pick up players that haven't played the game in years or don't take it seriously". The point is there isn't many established teams in this game - at all. Vector has probably the most in-tact roster in IM over 3 seasons and they still have a few switched positions. Xensity changed half their roster. There are plenty of players that are currently in the scene because literally half the IM teams die after the season.Are you honestly proposing that there is zero alternative to picking up has-been players out of their year long retirement? You're admitting to a dead TF2 scene if you believe this.

I never said not to pick up Free Agents. I said these Free Agents should be people who actually play the game. Is that so hard to ask? Is it impossible to pick up a player who has been in the scene for a while and still takes it seriously? Apparently so.

EDIT: There's already 6 (Whazzle, Big Boys, New Map Thugs, Nexzil, HRG, Schicken) dead teams in IM halfway through the season. Are you to tell me there is absolutely no available players from IM without taking them from Vector or Xensity?

My post wasn't solely targeting Craig, but I'm still firm in my belief that "scouting for new (or in this case someone who hasn't played in 2 years) talent" is not something that should be invite mentality. People who are regarded as "upcoming" players are ones that start at the bottom and are shown recognition. They don't start at invite and get their chance to prove themselves there.

The "team of friends" is a great mentality - but it's also one that should earn it's place in invite through progressing up from IM. What is happening right now is essentially roster hijacking. You give a player an invite roster and he's free to choose whoever he wants on his team. Invite should be an earned title, and despite Craig's improvements over the season he should not have started his first invite season after 5 seasons of not playing competitive. It doesn't make any logical sense and it promotes circle jerk connections over dedication to the game.

double post

A thousand times this. Invite is about connections in this game rather than talent. It's fucking ridiculous how a gap in the roster is given to the first person they know rather than someone who is relevant in the high IM scene. Look at tehoreoz, I don't mean to pick on him - but he hasn't been relevant since fucking season 7. Getting into invite 5 seasons later simply by connections is fucking ridiculous.

I'm not singling him out, this game is full of glorified ringers who took the game seriously at one point and then come back years later. Players who don't care about improving and don't touch the game until a scrim or match rolls around. If you comprise a team solely of fickle players who are not actively in the scene and just lean on past talent to get them guaranteed roster spots then you're going to have a shit division.

UPDATE - Even with installing a working fan, Game Booster still says my CPU is running at 81 degrees or 178 farenheit. The temp never seems to change from playing and idling so I'm questioning how accurate it is compared to the Everest temp that fluctuates from 38-50 or so. I find it hard to believe it's running at 81 Celsius when there's a fan and liquid cooling just for the CPU. The exterior of the PC feels cool as well and there is no signs of overheating outside of TF2. Still having the same bugs.

Also, running Game Booster has caused my computer to crash in the same way as described in enigma's thread. I haven't had this issue in a year with TF2 so I'm pretty sure it's directly related with Game Booster.

WELL, THE HUNT CONTINUES. I think I've narrowed it down though:

TF2 hates my processor or graphics card. I've read threads saying that TF2 hates AMD processors and others on this board saying TF2 hates 8800/9800/other NVIDIA cards. Luckily, I have both!

Alright, I just had the same problem as enigma after using Game Booster. If you're using it, I recommend turning it off because it seems to prioritize the game to the point where it takes up a ton more resources than it would normally.

This used to happen to me and I researched for weeks to get to the root of the issue. First off, there's a few possible causes:

1.) It's the monitor or the wiring between the two. This can easily be tested by plugging in a different monitor and seeing if you get the same result. It's worth trying, but it wasn't personally the issue for me.

2.) Your PSU is dying and your power supply is insufficient for taxing games or playing for long periods of time. This was the issue for me after I got a new graphics card and tried to play with an old PSU. The computer was drawing too much power and would randomly sound loop and then shut off and the only way to get visuals again was to restart the computer. It sounds exactly like the problem you're currently having.

3.) Your graphics card itself is experiencing issues. Overheating, driver issues, etc. Worth checking out for sure.

4.) Overheating. Just install something like Everest or another PC temp monitor. Make sure nothing is running inexplicably hot and make sure your PC is well ventilated and all the fans are working properly. Open up your PC and dust it and see if that helps as well.

I think I found the issue. Apparently Everest was giving me false temps on the CPU cores. While playing, Everest said my CPU was running at about 50 degrees. The outside of my desktop felt cool so it seemed reasonable and I didn't doubt it. When launching Game Booster the temps at the bottom when running TF2 for a while measured 80 degrees (Celsius).

Needless to say, that's wayyyy hotter than it should be and it was worth investigating. I found out that one of the main fans had a bent blade and was getting stuck from rotating the majority of the time. Hopefully replacing the fan and cleaning all the dust out of my pc fixes the issue.

#12

Thanks, this link is pretty interesting. Most of it is basic system compatibility check but there's some stuff here worth trying. I'll post the fix if one of these ends up working for me.

#13

Nope, however I have some mouse drivers that are worth cleaning out if that fixes the problem.

It's hl2.exe taking up absurd amounts of cpu at random times, but it only happens with TF2. The CPU spikes up - but it's only for TF2. Like I said, the affinity shows both cores and the priority is normal so I don't know what the cause is.

pls halp im running out of ideas

Yes. I just tested it out and it will stay at 131 and then dip to yellow every 5-10 seconds. I was just looking at a wall in spawn (offline) while I was testing.

Drivers are updated and I don't have this issue with other games. I don't think I've ever lost a frame playing Quake Live.