you greatly overrate your own intelligence compared to others reading this thread by even bothering to list the UK and US as allied forces. you are at best a colleague in these discussions, not an elementary school teacher.

I do not understand how the topic sentence of your first paragraph is remotely related to the rest of it. There is an overwhelming amount of new talent in this roster, with autimatic, sick, and vice; the two veterans are semphis and fns. If anything, this roster is a perfect example of a risk. There are 3 players who have never competed at major level, and amongst the veterans that are teamless, semphis is probably the best you could get. And teams need players who actually know how to play and have experience, otherwise you wind up like kinguin (you mean G2 I guess?) who now suck dick after they lost dennis, who in his own right has considerable counter-strike knowledge and experience.

You make these claims that seem to have no consistency to them. Teams should feel compelled to pick up new talent; shaping newer players into better ones is a proven method to improve as a team. But your examples are either exactly what the team is doing, with FNS and 3 new players, or it's not an example of a "risk," like cutting shoxie and smithzz for apex and kennys. Honestly, without shox I don't think the team will be able to get over their current lackluster performance, because despite their added firepower, there lacks a clutch factor and levelheadedness. But if you're going to cut shox and smithhz, who are the best players you can get to replace them? Quite literally the players they got. That's not a risk, it's something you have to do. Shox doesn't like the way the team is being run, cut him, pick up the players closest to his level in skill.

Every region has stagnancy. You literally need it for teams to actually work. Look at the players who have been at the top of the European scene for so long. You will not find an actual top team without a considerable amount of veteran talent, with new talent mixed in. That's exactly what the NA teams are trying to do with stewie in for c9 and liquid with nitro and elige. Even CLG has considerable new talent; none of their players are really CS veterans (shocker, they suck). So, I dunno man. Even NiP is trying new talent with pyth, friberg is the only one you'd potentially want to cut, but even then his role and playstyle within the team seems off, rather than his actual talent. If you actually watch the game and keep biases out of the equation, friberg is a sick player. But the way NiP uses him has obviously been proven to work less and less. The rest of them you're going to obviously keep on the team. GTR, f0rest, and even xizt are pretty sick.

You can find all these examples in TF2 as well. What you type seems to be regurgitated shit from thorin or even lurppis, but it's not even used in the right context.

that picture of shade and me is from 2014

yeah it's crazy xizt and gtr are like pullin these crazy strats outta the stratbook and theyre like alright guys here's the pl-- and friberg dies! and theyre like god DAMN IT ADAM!!!! then sometimes theyre like friberg go IN ALREADY DUDE UR OUR ENTRY FRAGGER! and fribergs like "no!" like wtF?

personally if you ask me the reason they keep friberg is he doesnt cheat (he is bad every game and dies at the same time while also baiting his teammates as entry fragger) and they use his urine/blood for cheat tests when at majors (the rest of the team continues to cheat and pyth will be introduced to these cheats soon enough). sad how the greats like f0rest and gtr have sunk so low

but also fuck fribger he sucks

This isn't intended to be rude but I don't understand how this addresses the actual issues of squandering the opportunity matchmaking presents. I don't know much about CoD 4, but the counter-strike example is a very poor choice for a comparison. If the sg were legal in matchmaking, but not in leagues, it would not only be an inconsistency that bothers new players, but people who use the sg in matchmaking would be annoyed that they can't play their first season of ESEA with the sg. I tried picking a weapon that is "on the fence" on its usefulness, like the vaccinator. There are so many people who would want to use a weapon like the aug (maybe this is a better choice since it's worse than the sg) in their first season of competitive, who couldn't because the community doesn't like the weapon. And the aug is pretty stupid. It's a bad weapon, but the style with which you use it makes it seem like it's straight out of CoD. A simple bomb timer difference (especially at the level at which most people who are matchmaking-only players play) is more akin to all cap points taking an extra second or two to cap. It's not as significant as banning weapons.

We as a competitive community "can" do whatever we want to do. That's never been an issue. But deciding to not try to facilitate the matchmaking flux and provide an easy transition for newer players from matchmaking to ESEA (for instance) would be a great way to throw everything for which the community has waited directly into the garbage can. There's no reason to at least try to allow everything for some time, expose some issues, and wait for rebalancing. Competitive TF2 does not have the popularity to afford this kind of stubborn thinking. Players interested in matchmaking aren't look up to ESEA-invite players, dreaming of a time when they're in invite. They're not going to be interested in playing TF2 for the sake of what current invite players deem is acceptable. They want to play their own game. They want to play the game they like to play, the one they're familiar with from pubs and whatever else. And maintaining a consistency between what new competitive players and veteran competitive players play is key.

i'm waiting for the community-wide realization that when matchmaking is released, the competitive scene can't impose arbitrary weapon bans on the system or expect those who play in a whitelist-free environment to then be subsequently interested in a competitive game mode with arbitrary bans

eventually the game will have to move toward allowing any and all items and let their usefulness and consequential buffing/nerfing be the reason to use or not use them

Well, the major problem with this is Valve didn't even go halfway with this when they first encountered matchfixing with the Dota 2 player Solo. They made an announcement at TI after a 12 month ban (maybe? might be off) that future endeavors related to matchfixing would result in a permanent ban, but they didn't make a blog post or an announcement of any kind outside the realm of Dota 2, implying that this rule was created to exist solely within Dota 2 and relate to the International. Rather than the precedent of matchfixing punishment now resting on the shoulders of 9 or so permabanned CSGO players, it should be set properly, like it could have been with Solo.

Honestly an awful decision and definitely a shitty, shitty day for those involved. The fact that some of them can't pursue this game to the potential they could have is life-changing, and it's because of one bad decision that a few of them were likely only involved in and hardly driving forces behind. I think a lot of people who have either competed or can form their own opinions via critical thinking believe there should be some way for them to right wrongs. But Valve probably shot themselves in the foot early into this situation, when they banned them "indefinitely" (permanently). You really can't come back from something like that in the eyes of the community when the company driving the competitive aspect of the game can't forgive you; valve's opinion on the matter was likely projected onto those who decided not to think for themselves. For Valve to go back and unban them would infuriate a lot of people. Just sad to see.

[*]

if daylight savings didn't exist it would still be 1973 (and i'd finally be living in the right decade #listeningtoledzepin2016)

I'm sorry but trying to create a versatile class out of a situational one just because "you want it to be" is not valid. It's not even the players' fault, these classes were created to perform in a 24-man pub environment. Obviously, when you reduce the players, the classes without movement bonuses and reliable DPS are left to be used only when the situation arises.

I read a post on reddit that was actually making me seethe. It was a response to someone who commented about b4nny winning the middle against 3 phlog pyros on his stream, and it said, "We're not ALL b4nny, if you guys argued religion you'd be westboro baptist!" Like, first of all, horrible analogy. But he's essentially arguing that he should forgo improving in the game and have the phlog pyro be balanced around him, I guess? It's insane. INSANE. Improve your aim, map awareness, and overall skills, and then if something still seems awry, argue for a change. A competitive game shouldn't cater to unskilled players who only play pyro in pubs and expect their lackluster class not to be exploited by good players on high skill ceiling classes.

Either Valve changes the classes to make them better, which would take a shit ton of balance that I'm sure not even the pubber pyros want to take the time to test, or they just have to realize they can't make something out of nothing, just because they want it that way.

EDIT: and it should be said this shit exists in dota AND in cs. In CS, there's probably a lot of players who first started with shotguns or negevs. But they either just stopped playing, or they realized if they want to get better, they have to master something with depth and efficacy. It all stems from having a competitive mindset. You want to win? You do what it takes to win. You don't conga-line out of spawn, or expect your engineer to be as useful as a soldier. AND you have to realize, there are still competitive CS players who use a shotgun when the time is right. It's not good enough to be run full-time, but it's good for certain situations, and it's actually VERY akin to a pyro stuffing an uber.

yes torrit this is a very stimulating post. clearly, if people in the community do not want to take the time to set up their irc, they shouldn't even think about living life in any measurable way. don't want to set up irc? do not even attempt to get a job in anything. especially because as technology grows, things get harder to set up and have more hoops to jump through, right? in fact I think that's exactly how design works. remember guys, if you don't want to take the time to set up irc, do not even think about living life, because the real pioneers of the technology sector are making programs for users harder and harder to understand to punish the world for their ridiculous expectations of hassle-free setup and use. you are a steeple of knowledge and a shining light in our dark, scary teamfortress.tv

thank you lord torrit for being there for us!

how in the world could anyone say irc is one of the most straight-forward things they've used? and it doesn't matter how hard the set-up is; the fact that there are any hoops you have to jump through before actually asking for scrims is ludicrous when there are free programs like discord available to everyone. even though some of us might have irc set up or remember how to set it up because we've played tf2 for so long, doesn't mean the newer players care enough to google irc commands and set the client up just to type "mid- looking for scrim" into a text box. unless the community already uses this system (like eu tf2), it's probably pointless to push an outdated system onto newer players, especially if the game gets bigger during matchmaking

I just don't think Valve is going to make massive changes to this class. I'd welcome it; let pyro have a fire LG, with higher movement speed. It's a cool idea. But pyro is and has always been an entry class; it's like tf2 101. You play pyro when you're new to the game because it's fun to burn helpless pubbers and even posthumously kill them. It's easy to aim, has low depth, and lets you learn other aspects of the game, like map awareness and the capabilities of the other classes. However, as I got better at the game, my mindset changed, as many others' do as well. There's a distinct difference in what is "rewarding" as you progressively improve your aim and start to control more aspects of the game. For most people interested in an FPS game, they might realize the flamethrower has very low depth to it, as it's easy to aim and you can't even use it unless you're very close range. With the airblast, you're a little more viable, in that you can protect yourself more easily, but you still fail to be as useful as soldier, scout, demo in a normal 6s environment. That being said, it still has its place, and there's some measurable amount of skill attributed to how well a pyro can stuff an uber.

I thought that mechanic was perfectly fine, because the other aspects of pyro are just not good enough to warrant it being run full-time. Just like engineer. How are you going to run an engineer full-time? The mechanics of the class itself argue that it should be run sparingly, when required. A sentry gun without much longevity that takes a while to build implies that it should be used when you can predict you'll be on a chokey point and you'll need it for more defense. And for 6s maps, this is almost exclusively last cp. Pyro is useful in the same locations.

It seems like I'm just spouting the same bullshit, but this is something we've talked about many times as a community. It might have been on the old forums, where we listed changes to classes like pyro that would deepen its skill pool. I don't remember what they were, but it should include an airblast that's always strafeable, with a fire lg with low damage but damage-over-time and longer range, and probably faster movement speed. But it's been this long and valve has never dabbled with the class' primary weapon. It's always the same low-skill bullshit. It makes me think that it's how they want the class to be. And it seems like people want to create depth out of a class without depth. Even without any of the changes of this past update, pyro is not a viable class for almost any situation. In pubs, maybe, with 12 players on each team and a clusterfuck of information and RNG, pyro was useful. But thinking that environment is something we should ever prioritize is ridiculous. Pyro doesn't suck because they nerfed the degreaser, it's not good because they buffed the phlogistinator - it's BAD because the class has no depth. There's no movement or aim that can help you survive situations that medic, scout, demo, soldier, and even sniper have at their disposal. If anyone is a "pyro main" and wants its class to actually have an impact outside of 24 man dustbowl or that map where you can airblast people off the side, huge fundamental changes to the class need to be made.

I honestly don't think there was anything wrong with pyro, at all. The only thing I would have changed about pyro was the way the airblast affected you; you should be able to airstrafe and use the momentum of the airblast, instead of freezing in the air. It's different in pubs and highlander, but you barely need any crit weapons to make pyro effective, prior to the nerf. I never understood why pyros in 6s even ran the flaregun. The only strength of the pyro was closerange combat, and its weapon slots argue that point. The primary weapon is a closerange weapon. The primary weapon. The best complement to pyro in a competitive setting was an airblast to shotgun combo, and the ability to kill scouts or demomen from mid-range with good shotgun aim. The ability to flare someone across the map is almost useless damage, and the inconsistency of "puff and sting" combos compared to puff and meatshot were the reason the shotgun was a better option.

The problem with pyro and the reaction to the class is that its mechanics aren't versatile enough to be run under as many situations as scout, demo, or soldier. You can't have a versatile class that has slow movement speed and a primary weapon that only does damage at close range. And I think that's absolutely fine. It's so hard to balance 9 different classes to be run whenever in an FPS game. Your example of running behind the enemy team in a 6s lobby to backburn your opponents is lost when you consider people eventually learn flank routes and are more responsive to calls.

Newer players who only play pyro, or spy, or engineer (or one of the very shallow, aim-unimportant classes) will have to learn that aim-dependent classes, with incredible depth and versatility are the key to success in an arena-style FPS game (if you consider every control point to be its own arena, which they are, in a sense). The primary benefit of pyro has always been its airblast. It's a way to stuff pushes through area denial and spam reflection. And that's all the class will ever be, and should ever be. There are 4-5 primary combat classes who require so much attention and practice to master their versatility - concentrate on those.

^ a better place a better time was like the longest song i'd never skip in a playlist

streetlight has gems for sure