i havent cared to play invite in years but definitely am not jealous of medics these days who have to deal with both loch n load and market gardener lol (and 60+ minute halfs with no pause for halftime / golden cap, so much endurance just to slip up once and take -195 or catch a hitscan pipe then it's gg)

goofy ass video from 8 years ago but pretty lucky edgebug and sync kill lol https://youtu.be/O0Pdy1_iRqA

also pretty sure that’s a surf not an edgebug but very impressive (snake is good for that you can do it on last too https://youtu.be/WdKjaaIDOp0)

unrelated but cant lie its pretty depressing that we just permanently removed half times / golden cap, some of the best games had teams adjust in half time or for golden cap, having it all be a marathon is much less interesting for viewers as well as harder on the players (I played a 70 minute match on lan lol), you can say 'just tac pause!' but that's not the same.

for viewers it's nice to look at stats and discuss after a halftime or before golden cap, and IMO the extra pressure for a team to adjust and discuss before readying up again makes it much more interesting (obviously more maps have a similar effect, but the current format just feels like a glorified pug lol)

the ability for losing team to always come back is great, but we can still have that win condition, but have a half time once the 30 mins runs out (it also means you have actual incentives and hype last second pushes--everyone remembers the granary match at iseries where it was capped at the literal last second)

just feels weird that this was slipped in along with the other format changes without much thought or discussion, are there any other esports or sports that do this type of no halfitme format? i think the concept of giving players a break at half time or before overtime should apply in esports as well, even though it's not as important as say football, where you can't expect them to play for 3 hours straight

Lucky for you guys pretty much all of the things mentioned here are still possible with tf2classic… not to mention ctf_4fort or 4 team hydro

people have posted this before but why limit koth to 2 maps, including viaduct for 3 total wouldn’t be a huge difference (im also just sad that via was gone in the last 2 or 3 seasons I’ve played in, such a classic map but i guess ppl don’t like the sniper angles or prefer clearcut somehow)

another idea is what about trying to swap metalworks for granary for a season, they’re both chokey soldier maps but (besides invite) we haven’t gotten to play gran in eons, at least as far as i know

seems like they’re likely going to just continue to do it by the raw numbers based on post-season polls though, but we did get them to do a 6 week season so maybe it’s possible to try other new things

mangachu was doing meme spoon shit way back in the day i feel like before dd5f, also known for hiding in corners/wacky plays (Pete known for corners too lol sneaky pete)

ima give it up to indust for being the first med to be widely known for having sick mechanics, seeing him play def inspired me and im sure plenty of other ppl to actually practice mge and jump maps/surfs and shit to get better at med

not really influential cuz nobody else does it but u could say that sigh running shotgun pocket in current era is 'pioneering' to some extent just in that its totally different from what everyone else does

feel like the real test is empirically how often people mention their names, like when people say things like a "banny scout", "sandblast uber", "ma3la bomb" (metalworks), "lolguy milk", "that was some clockwork shit", etc. it at least means they have a well known / distinct playstyle, or some really important clutch plays that everyone remembers (e.g., harbleu snakewater clutch)

spamming this thread sry but plz make an option to only make noise when you need to ready up, even changing the annoying ass gottfried voice (which shouldn't be the default LOL) you still get spammed with unnecessary info like what team and class you got picked on, i muted it cuz it was too many alerts but then missed a game i added up for

other pug sites (tf2center, tf2lobby, pugchamp, pugme) all had this figured out, really don't understand why so many things are done differently / made overcomplicated

should have a pre ready option as well (tf2center has 2.5 mins i think, pugchamp had a 5 minute pre ready)

also why does the discord channel for the pug go away a few minutes afterwards lol what if people want to just hang out after a pug

should make a general lounge voice chat or something (and having no chat for the website is pretty silly too)

hold on why do pugs not have a hard stop at 30 mins, i get the banny config for matches but no pug website or inhouse group ever has done 30+ min long pugs (same thing for LANs, having games that can take an indefinite amount of time is Not ideal if there is any sort of time constraint), if you add up before scrims you should be able to know 100% that it will end by a certain time

edit: oh i see the timer counts down from when the pug was picked? just do it like pugchamp and do the in-game time left

delpo except he's the best player regardless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj6oqR_BPl0

Even if your team gets demoralized from the pregame, I found it was still much more useful to play better teams. Pre-game getting shit stomped by froyo two maps in a row is Very Unfun but it means you can't get caught with your pants down and you're ready for the worst, and we would always play better after it. But if the skill gap is too large of course it's not beneficial at a certain point.

Hate to say it but in terms of LAN planning, as far as I've heard and seen, photos are kind of an afterthought--the event can't be run without casters, producers/cameramen, tournament organizers, etc. and there's not usually much money to go around anyways, so if something has to be neglected it's usually the photo/video stuff. Not to say this was necessarily what happened here, but it doesn't surprise me given the i69 photos took over a year as well (which afaik was mainly due to people being overburdened with regular work, and the fact that they were all on a single hard drive that nobody else had access to--I would've happily volunteered to help edit them since I shot a good chunk of them)

I've shot a good number of lans officially and unofficially and haven't gotten paid for anything (which I'm fine with, was just volunteering to give back and gain some experience, but it's hard to justify compared with regular photo gigs which are typically $50/hr at least), i know nyxia and i both considered doing this one and past resup lans but iirc there wasn't a huge amount of money available for compensation, and it's usually just more fun to play instead.

Since the community clearly cares a lot about this photo stuff, maybe we could petition for more resources to be allocated towards it for the next big tournament (or raise money if need be, like the prize pool donations), or at the very least have a pay structure that incentivizes actually delivering the photos promptly. Maybe it's worth actually paying for a dedicated editor or giving multiple people access to the files, or figuring out how things were handled at previous lans (e.g., Rewind 1 with uberchain/jas/moof iirc)

If you’re having this many difficulties you should probably just do something that’s more natural to you, there’s plenty of other things to do with friends that aren’t as fast-paced and demanding as competitive tf2 lol

I don’t get any of the things you describe but playing the game especially at a high level late before bed makes it difficult for me to sleep, lately I’ve had a lot more enjoyment casually playing pubs or other (non-fps) games with friends at earlier hours in the evening. On the topic of overstimulation it’s often hard to realize when you are actually overstimulated, I was having a lot of stress from work but it turned out that cutting tf2 out made it improve dramatically

tomato_tom and hedgehob_hero carrying sam and my stupid ass aliases

ok now somebody tally it up for all the teams we need to see which teams have the best and worst Alias Ranking

In fairness they did definitely do the right thing and find another team that actually wanted to play in the qualifiers because goblin zone decidedly did not want to be in it (granted, we only learned this two hours before the game was supposed to be played, but better late than never)