The last major update (MyM) contained several item rebalances that improved weapon balance in a competitive context and I believe the next major update will follow suit. By unbanning a few items this past season we have gathered some experience with more items which goes a long way towards giving our evaluations of the items any credibility in Valve's eyes. If these two trends continue, I think every weapon could reach a point where a banlist is not required, which would be huge for the approachability of competitive TF2. Even those first couple days where BASE Jumper and Atomizer were legal were an extremely valuable part of the whole global whitelist project so far because they gave us experience with those items. One of the big problems with testing anything in TF2 has been that people don't play normally/seriously when new factors are introduced, so having teams give them a fair shake was actually huge.

I don't think there is too much change that can be made to the global whitelist at this point, and I certainly don't feel that any of the items that are currently legal have proven to be game breaking or requiring a ban. It might have taken some adjusting to things like Rescue Ranger or Jarate, but they have become fairly inconsequential in the bigger picture of things. Now that we have this very small pool of banned items, the best thing to do from this point forward, besides waiting for the next major update to see how it affects current items, would be to systematically experiment with some of the unlocks that have either never been tested in a competitive setting, have recently been rebalanced but remain untested, or are considered borderline balanced. I think we should start with the Quick-Fix.

We represent the best interest of the TF2 world at large. The flag is appropriate.

About 90% of the time I get pretty bad routing from SoCal to their Chicago servers, but then 10% of the time I get better ping than I ever have to a Chicago server. It's really odd. Apparently TF2 server lag issues are quite common and can potentially be remedied by following through with this process with the server host: https://support.faceit.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544724-TF2-Server-Lag-Issues Has anyone who was experiencing lag ever had success with that method?

Actually Esports Arena's concerns are pretty much the only ones that mattered. I'm sure you were deeply concerned about making sure Shadowrun and Halo were on stage lol. If this was a TF2 only LAN it would have been the originally agreed upon ruleset. Next time.

The match ruleset has been revised to 30 min timelimit due to the Esports Arena's concerns over tournament scheduling. 5 winlimit for 5cp and 4 winlimit for koth, as well as the two 120 second tactical pauses are still in place. Tournament format will be included in an official news post soon.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/5l6tin/sideshow_is_confirmed_to_be_going_to_rewind/dbtve1h/
Unsurprisingly he's already begun implying he's all-important and just "bothering" to show up to bless us with his presence because hes being paid to

:o

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=24805

It was announced around the time of the Halloween update that there would be smaller holiday updates so that the dev team could focus on building "an all-new Pyro Pack, improvements to Comp Mode, and a big new update and campaign." While many, including me, assumed the Pyro update would be dropped shortly after the voting in the Meet your Match update concluded, it is now clear that these major updates will more likely be arriving in early-mid 2017.

Correct, the invite bracket is now full with the 6 teams being Froyotech, Meat Market, Se7en, EVL Gaming, Jasmine Tea and Street Hoops Esports! While there are a couple team specific fundraisers going on, don't forget you can support all the teams by contributing to the prizepool campaign plus you can add a free $1 with your contribution and claim some nice Esports Arena perks. Every little bit counts!

Campaign page: https://youstake.com/projects?PID=1845
Tutorial: https://youtu.be/S9dR2RwCqYo

Check-in is now open and will remain open for the next hour. Queue up!

That's honestly a good question and I have no idea what would happen. Though like any tournament, you should only sign up after considering the estimated time commitment. For this event, half of the people participating will be done after one game, so I'm hoping it doesn't prove to be that big of a deal.

I've gone ahead and posted about this event on reddit as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/5jlllr/faceit_solo_queue_cup_on_december_22_play_with/

Be gentle.

Checkin is an hour long. You have until 6EST to sign up. I made the window for checkin longer because of the nature of this cup. If most people think it should be pushed back an hour, that can be done. Just was trying to schedule it so that it didn't interfere with the standard evening team scrim times.

Pretty much exactly what I suspected. I don't think it's fair to have issue with lack of communication when you are neither listening to nor contributing to team comms.

FACEIT Solo Queue Cup (Weekly Cup #3)
Thursday December 22, 2016
Approximate schedule: 6pm EST - 9pm EST
Check-in begins at 5pm EST
Registration: https://www.faceit.com/en/tf2/tournament/001bc862-91b6-41e0-9a62-643dca6ac459

Rules:
6v6 With Standard ESEA Class Limits and Whitelist
16 Teams, Single Elimination, BO1
Chicago Servers
120 Second Map Pick/Ban Voting Period
Map Pool: cp_badlands, cp_sunshine, cp_snakewater_final1, cp_gullywash_final1, cp_metalworks, cp_granary, cp_process_final

Prizes:
FACEIT Points Prize Distribution
1st - 1300 FACEIT Points
2nd - 700 FACEIT Points
3rd/4th - 400 FACEIT Points
5th-8th - 300 FACEIT Points

FACEIT Shop: https://www.faceit.com/en/shop
FACEIT Shop TF2 Items: https://www.faceit.com/en/shop/tf-2

I’m framing this as a “solo queue” tournament where people are encouraged to solo queue into the cup and get paired with other solo queuers. Alongside myself, I’ve got several of my teammates on board including blaze, paddie and Nursey all planning to solo queue. So queue up and you might have a chance to play with some of your favorite players! We’ll be added with the intention of just having fun and bringing positive attitudes, so hopefully you all will do the same. If you are looking to try out FACEIT specifically or are just looking for some more competitive TF2 to play, this is definitely the cup for you. People of all regions are more than welcome to participate as well. If circumstances permit (my solo queue team gets eliminated), I will be casting some of the remaining cup matches on my stream. Should be fun!

With the holidays coming up this weekend, I thought it would be best to avoid a team centric tournament, which is why this one is going to be a little different. Of course, if you do have a team/party that would like to play you are more than welcome to. Keep in mind that only if your team makes the grand finals will you have to stick around the whole time, so for most people the time commitment here will only be about 1 hour or less. As always the goal is to get 16 teams worth of players, and your participation goes a long way towards building a bigger and better relationship between FACEIT and our competitive TF2 scene. If you have any questions feel free to ask here or hit me up on Twitch. I hope to see you there.