You can compare Valve's negligence to Blizzard's Overwatch competitive matchmaking rules, but lest we all forget, TF2 in its current, competitive 6s format has been played for nearly a decade now. To ignore the majority of the rules and maps that made the 6s format successful for as long as it has been without any developer support is an enormous oversight. I tried matchmaking for the first time 2 nights ago, to play 6 maps, 3 of which were cp_gorge/swiftwater, and the rest but 1 taking place on a Stockholm server. 1/6 maps I played felt "legit," as all the players had normal ping, but then again it only lasted a total of 3 minutes.

It's honestly shocking.

we need valve to run VAC on his computer

Let's all chip in and buy sideshow a house so he can work on TF2 from home

Last night in a very tight game of matchmaking, between "FROYOSTACK" and "random pubbers," Muma was feeding the enemy medic Uber by eating his sandwich in front of his face. This placed everyone's ELO in jeopardy, and young Freestate was ordered to take the dive and abandon the game to save everyone's ranking. Muma is now in dire straits.

SEMANTICS
noun
informal definition: a method by which someone will argue an irrelevant point for the sake of arguing.
alternatively: a method by which someone will try to fulfill their posting requirements for 1 full nerd star.
in a conversation:
Todd: Someone used semantics to argue that Sideshow's disappearance from TF2 due to real-life commitments was voluntarily, rather than involuntary.
Jim: Why the fuck does that matter?

sideshow's stream ends and so does my life FeelsBadMan ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿̿ ̿'̿'\̵͇̿̿\.

it's possible that the popular opinions are more common than the unpopular ones

a thread with this many responses exhausts the unpopular opinions

still haven't watched the video, don't really care to

i've noticed trends of backlash from statements/philosophies like mine, and they're either:

a.) people think it's good to have overwhelmingly easy mechanics, because games are for "fun," and continue to drive this point home despite it being entirely irrelevant

or b.) dunning-kruger; everyone thinks they can will themselves into being an expert in a certain subject despite their overwhelming lack of knowledge and skill

the reality is that if I had the power to will myself into being a master in any field, I'd have built a spaceship and left for a distant planet so I could ensure that I no longer have any exposure to people like this

a 4th place finish in 6s ESEA is 100x more impressive than even 3 HL wins; statistics comparing apples to oranges

Asking people to entirely stop playing Highlander is wishful thinking; there are always going to be people who want to play alternate game types. However, advertising it as a stepping stone to 6s is ridiculous and counter-intuitive. And to respond to Hildreth's post, it's counter-intuitive regardless of the amount of people who can admit to the fact that they started in Highlander. 25% of the EU prem players starting in HL before playing 6s is not a substantial statistic. What does that mean? The other 75% started in 6s? Why should we be led to believe that the other 25% wouldn't have wound up playing 6s if they hadn't played Highlander first? Was HL the only way they'd have started their 6s endeavor? It's just anecdotal evidence. They happened to play HL first, and that's it. Play what you want to play, but introducing something like HL to someone in order to kickstart his/her 6s career just blurs lines unnecessarily.

What an absolutely abysmal argument... TF2 is considered a "joke," because it was never pushed by Valve and as a result, the spotlight is shone onto the hat traders and the "casual community." It's completely irrelevant to 6s as a format. No one ever said "TF2 is a joke because of highlander." That's a gross, mindless, blanket statement that you used because you're trying to twist the argument and turn it away from highlander being the elephant in the room that everyone ignores. Using highlander as a stepping stone to an entirely different format, one on which Valve will base its matchmaking system, is entirely useless and likely detrimental. The more you split time and resources between highlander and 6s, the less opportunity you give to newer players who will happen to find highlander first, instead of 6s.

Highlander isn't "banned" or "taboo." But, obviously, for a community site trying to grow the premier version of playing the game, confusing players and splitting resources between 2 "competitive" game modes, instead of concentrating on the one that could actually go somewhere is a waste of time.

If you're going to supply little substance in your question, you can expect little substance in the answers. You aren't our philosophy professor and the majority of people won't start defining words and social behaviors for you.

Luckily the English language is lenient enough to construct a hard-hitting, effort-inducing tweet such as:

Currently taking a look at items such as the Vita Saw, Darwin's Danger Shield, and the Caber to see if changes are necessary.

Then, people reply to the tweet with a mess of good and bad ideas. You sift through the bullshit and find someone who makes a good point, you potentially test their suggestions, and they bring a lot of good fixes when you mix your own expertise as a game designer into the equation. Perhaps their suggestion is bad and you don't change any of those items (unlikely, they're all fucking terrible). It doesn't matter, because 0 promises were made.

It's astonishing watching the frags fluctuate in this thread from negative to positive. I read the initial post in this thread and I was confused as to what the point was. I scrolled down and saw that one guy getting -fragged into oblivion and I just assumed it was due to like a hundred or so b4nny subs. It's nice to finally see some rational arguments. Even following the argument recently I don't really see the point of the valve sympathizing. You are aware it's not good to have literally all of the update information and matchmaking information go through one person, yes? b4nny is not the community hivemind (in this sense, a collection of uniform opinions across all competitive players). And not to insult anyone's intelligence, but assuming he knows more than every other player on every aspect of how to improve TF2 and make everyone happy is ridiculously biased. It seems he's used as a singular point of hype for the update, while also being a constant reminder that he's the only existing bridge between Valve and the community, which achieves nothing but to marginalize the amount of work, effort, and time other competitive players and especially content producers/TFTV production have put into the game.

It's absurd that even the majority of those with knowledge and influence in the community cannot have an engaging back-and-forth with Valve about what's needed, what we should prepare for, even tentatively. We as a community have offered FREE SUGGESTIONS and free labor to keep the competitive community afloat for like literally 7 years. It's very understandable that anyone would be annoyed about the lack of information that's available. Signing NDA's and discussing closely with the company who holds the fate of the competitive game you love in its hands would be more than welcome. A valve tweet or blog post about the future update doesn't have to be a binding, pinky-sworn promise. It has to be a fucking update on the status of the update and potentially a few specifics that they're focusing on. Leaving the entire community sans one person in the dark is really annoying, especially when the only things I'm left with are hype-garnering tweets that could be placed on a motivational poster in a high school.

we esports now