Fair, but when things like match hud, player outlines and heal target's ammo count were added to the game, they were seen as welcome quality of life updates, and not as some crutches for bad players. Medics have been using chat binds with uber info for years, and this uber on hud thing kind of accomplishes the same thing.

I agree that using your "gut feeling" to anticipate enemy health and ubers is a part of the game's skill ceiling, but I don't think that in a serious comp setting people should ever rely on this feeling to figure out what their medic's uber is. Making a call that you have uber once you get it doesn't exactly take a lot of game mastery either, and to me it seems more like busywork, rather than good game sense.

This is great, time to ditch the tf2 stars extension.

I'm glad that comp community is capable of keeping TF2 playable without relying on Valve to do anything. Not sure why some people still prefer casual over community servers, is leveling up your menu badge really that appealing?

• dqz
  
• russia
  
• https://www.twitch.tv/dqz_
  
• https://etf2l.org/forum/user/25221/

6s + hl + chess

1. Arrows heal for the same amount of hp, but over time (< 1 sec) instead of instantly
   
2. Sniper's zoom charge gets reduced by a bit whenever he takes damage
   
3. Reflected projectiles do normal damage instead of mini-crit
   
4. Some kind of nerf / fix to resup bind (e.g., overwatch healing zone in spawn?), so that it doesn't feel like a gimmick to use or play against

I also was trying to figure it out in the past as this timer has always bothered me. These animations are controlled by "event TeamStatus_PlayerDead" and "event TeamStatus_PlayerAlive" in hudanimations_tf.txt (https://github.com/Hypnootize/TF2-Default-Hud/blob/master/scripts/hudanimations_tf.txt#L1591). Changing "ypos" to the same value in lines with "respawntime" in both events will make respawn timer appear in the same location every time iirc.

2014 Crimea events did boost putin's approval rating amongst his core electorate, mainly because it was quick and bloodless, but right now the situation is completely different. The excuses that russian propaganda came up with (denazification of Ukraine) were so terrible that even zombified by tv putin fans have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.

The worrying part is that putin knows about the negative effects of waging war (lower ratings, hit on economy), and he invades anyway, without a care for any repercussions. The only conclusion seems to be that he acts out of pure imperial ambitions, pretending to be a 'unifier of russian lands', and nobody can tell where these ambitions will end. I hope that people of Ukraine stay safe and that putin forgets where he put the nuclear briefcase.

Pretty sure that random div 2 players also take part in deciding what map pool and whitelist should be in all divs, and that admins are capable of taking separate feedback from prem players into account. But I agree that it's better to balance the game around the highest level of competition, even if something doesn't seemingly appeal to the majority of playerbase.

This is actually the reason why I prefer plugins to weapon bans, to keep as many vanilla mechanics in the game as possible. The plugin precisely removes one problematic upside of IB, but the ban cuts out both of its mechanics (hitbox + rollers) from the game, so I don't see how bans make the game more "vanilla" (unless by vanilla you mean 2011 tf2 without unlocks or something). Of course, I don't want to see etf2l turn into creators.tf with 100 new custom weapons, but if a plugin simply refines the game that we're already playing, then I can only welcome it.

How can changing one stat on a weapon be more massive than banning the weapon entirely? Plugin just makes IB hitbox same as stock, but the ban removes slow rollers mechanic as well, and I don't see as many people having problems with that as with the hitbox. If anything, seeing every demo switch to stock because of IB ban would make the game feel less like tf2.

Winger plugin was used on etf2l for however many seasons now, it doesn't fix any bugs, nobody made any petitions asking for it to be added, it's literally a balance patch for one weapon. There was zero controversy, I didn't hear a single person say that it's bad for the game somehow. A plugin made the game ever so slightly better, so I don't see how "whitelists are fine, but using plugins is a bit too far" argument has any ground. And at this point I trust twiikuu (and comp community as a whole) to make balance changes for tf2 many times more than anyone sitting at valve right now.

There was a similar discussion of IB ban about a year ago and nothing came out of it (no bans or plugins adopted). I hope this time admins take initiative to actually figure out what solution is better instead of sweeping the problem under the rug for another year.

This ban looks like a joke the expense of league rules. Would middle still get a ban if admins saw the evidence of what happened but didn't get any reports from his teammates? If there is "other stuff", why isn't it mentioned in the ban reason? How long do you get banned for if you decide to eat sandvich in spawn instead of defending your last?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBu7SsybUA4

If there was a plugin that removed mangler's right click, then most people wouldn't have a problem with it. Making its projectile more visually distinctive would also be nice, not sure if it's possible to implement though.

• I played about the same amount of soldier and medic with and without plugins. Scout speed was used for both offensive and defensive purposes, so I don't think removing it drastically changes the flow of the game or leads to more/less stalemates. It has the most effect when soldier is trying to force medic during a stalemate, because with scout speed medic could "just heal scout lol" and easily survive 2 rockets, but without it medic actually has to surf a rocket if soldier did a good jump.
  
• Another problem is that medic is not an attractive class to main for newer players, nerfing the class directly will only make this situation worse. I wouldn't mind settling for a compromise if, for example, scout speed didn't work only when medic has 100% uber.
  
• Gunboats plugin on its own is a reasonable buff to soldier, but with no scout speed plugin it allows soldier to get away with bad jumps and survive for no reason quite often, so I don't think that both plugins should stay together.
  
• Winger deploy plugin is great, it was smart to use the same design principle as atomizer.
  
• Solemn vow is a good sidegrade, gives medic more presence in calls during fights, and looking at the other medic to check uber is not free when you also have to arrow people and look around for bombers.

Overall, gameplay plugins are a great idea, I see it as the only prominent direction for this game and I hope it will eventually replace whitelists by fixing the issues of banned weapons (iron bomber hitbox and whatnot). Quality of life changes are a must-have and I believe that this game has potential to be something more than "default tf2" and the community can decide what gameplay changes and rulesets are better on the international level (like it was done before with global whitelist).

aren't we at a point where most gameplay issues can be solved by tweaking it with plugins instead of banning?

https://github.com/irodionr/dqz_hud/tree/2012

Recreated most of the original features like charge meters, fonts, HP, ammo, disguise and uber positions. Hitmarker can be enabled optionally.