http://i.imgur.com/0FugaHt.png

delicious, Shakespearean levels of irony.

Everyone feels strongly about their opinions. The problem with your opinion is that its stupid. You admit that the intentions were good and that it accomplished its task: teaching new players to jump into MvM. Then you say that it wasn't enough of a game changer?

Please, tell me, in what way would you have liked the course to change the game? It wasn't meant to change the game. None of our courses (with the possible exception of the maincalling, teambuilding, and pro panel) were meant to do anything but attract new players to the various gamemodes and give people the boost in confidence they needed to make the plunge into MvM/6s/HL/Bball etc.

I really, really suggest that you obtain some basic reading comprehension skills. The objectives for the course, though written by Kevinisartsy, state their objectives, requirements and intentions pretty clearly.

Its not that we don't like you, its that you are being a (wrong) opinionated asshole, shitting on people who did a really good thing for this community, all the while having contributed absolutely nothing, not even constructive, relevant feedback. Also, pepsi max is gross.

This. The title "MvM Basics" heavily suggests that this course is designed to take you from fresh tf2 install to not being completely lost in your first, low level, pub MvM game. Ceejaey did that nicely, especially considering he only had an hour to do it.

If you think you know more, or think you could have done better at the class, it wasn't for you. The class had basic goals, the lesson plan submitted by Ceejaey met those goals, he is well known, a good instructor, and, most importantly, a trustworthy individual who we could count on to make this happen if he said he would do it.

A LOT more than how good someone is at the game goes into choosing instructors, coaches etc.

This sentence demonstrates clearly the ignorance you have for even the basics of how to put one of these events on. Public announcement for coaches? Do you want to sit there and vet them all? Take applications, read through them all? That is a full time job at companies big enough (sometimes a dedicated department/sub-department!). Reading applications, vetting people, looking up references, testing knowledge, asking for example lesson plans and organizing all of that would have set back this event months, especially if we had to do it for every class. No one on the staff team had anywhere near that kind of time for this shit. We all have jobs/school obligations and most of us actually play this game competitively.

With Ceejaey, and with all of the coaches, we knew we were getting someone who a. isnt a troll, b. is knowledgeable enough to teach newbies (which is why you have some things like emkay being the medic class teacher. Emkay isn't the best medic in NA, he isn't even invite. But he is a good teacher, has enough knowledge and experience in the game to teach brand new players and is personally trusted by several staff members) and c. can be relied upon to actually deliver. None of those qualities can be known about someone we just pick up off the forums without some sort of intensive vetting process that I have neither the time, knowledge, or patience to do.

And Jesus FUCK guys. It's MvM, its not that serious.

Bump as teams start to break up/look for players.

Is anyone putting a pug of this together tonight? If so hmu, I'll medic.

I like the way it looks initially, though I have some feedback.

Primarily, the map seems really big. It is hard to get a sense of scale because of the sharp differences in highground everywhere. So I feel very small on mid. Part of that is that, in going through the grassy area onto mid, there is a part where it chokes back up, then opens up again into the mid. The whole middle seems enormous, Yukon style big, and just on gut reaction I don't like that. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I suspect it will involve compressing the long distances between chokes and the area where the mid fights actually happen. Botmode's point about the room attached to mid with the larger healthpack feels right to me. Move that healthpack out to middle somewhere (talk about that in a second) and get rid of the room, foreshorten the grassy part and compressing the middle that way may be the best option.

Healthpack wise: middle is a bit of a pain. Half of the healthpacks can only be reached by scouts (on the crates) without damaging themselves. In addition medics straight up can't even get up there. Please don't put important areas out of the medic's reach. Half of the available health at a midfight can't be inaccessible to a medic, and I want to be able to get up there. Even if I never ever use them, all of our mids (except gullywash) are 100% completely medic accessible. For demomen, right now the only real option is to go into that chamber at middle to grab the health there. I don't know how many jumps the rollout will require, but I dont like forcing the demoman to disengage to grab health. Badlands does this, and retreating to house can absolutely be a mid killing move akin to losing your demoman for 10 seconds.

Picture time!

http://i.imgur.com/XNsUZea.jpg

This sightline is absolutely ridiculous. From that door, you can see SUPER far away, far enough that I suspect the sniper might even be hard to see if he is hiding his dot. In addition, from the offsensive (upper side) this is your view.

http://i.imgur.com/IWyGZbX.png

You have control over three separate doors from this one sightline, with the advantage of having a big health and ammo, and a place for your medic to hide around the corner and tank you/soldier to bait you. Any repush against that spot is GOING to bleed minimum one player. Badlands at least you can hug a wall and not get seen until you are basically on the point (and sniper is still REALLY good on 4th holds). This seems super excessive.

http://i.imgur.com/FJMRhDF.jpg

This is a potential solution to the issue. The issue with this is that it exacerbates the issue of players contesting 4th point (so red team on blue second) having a location with relative safe height advantage over the point. Pushing, this is a strong spot to spam onto point from, and will basically allow a demoman to lord over the lower exit and point with relative ease and defending, it is a highground past point that you basically have to contest before you can even think about capping. I think it should just be removed, or at least that door should be smaller or blocked in the same way that IT is on process. Another option is to move it to an angle looking at hut, away from the point.

http://i.imgur.com/wDv9v7B.jpg

Another absurdly strong sniper sightline. I'm not sure how much of grass you have vision over, but I suspect it to be a significant amount. In addition, having control over the main door, exit onto point (kindof) and half of the healthpack room is super strong.This spot is also so far away from all of those doors that there is no real defense except a counter sniper. I mentioned foreshortening this area anyway, and I think that would take away a lot of the issues of the area in general.

http://i.imgur.com/d9dqLHg.png

I can see this getting hella abused, and would probably be better off not accessible (i.e. cafe on sunshine). I agree with botmode though, it would be nice to playtest a version with and without this area, perhaps later on in the process so that other issues with the map don't detract from focusing on this particular change.

Overall, very strong early alpha. It seems like it will be a fun map to playtest and I would love to play in some high open+ pugs with smart players to determine what does and doesn't work.

I'll download and take a look.

What kinds of feedback are you looking for? Usually I go around and find the annoying clipping issues, but that seems premature here. Would you say this is ready to play a pug or two on?

So, ive got a strange one.

When I scope in with a sniper rifle, but don't shoot and unscope, then, later on, go to scope and shoot, it teleports me back to where I was when I scoped the first time. It happens maybe 40% of the time I recreate those conditions. It seems to reset whenever I load an area, so I have never been knocked out of bounds by it.

And then there's the guy who think's he's too good/righteous/moral/humble to comment. Discussion among the people is the single most important way to change minds, free thoughts, and propagate tolerance and democracy. Willingness to engage in at least some level of discourse is sign of a healthy mind that thinks about the issues of the world, at least on some level.

What is the alternative? Never talk about these things? Talk about these things with our own self-selected insular family/friends group that is far more likely to be homogeneous than the small group of people we have here?

Jesus fuck what a conceited comment. Of course none of us are experts. I am not a philosopher of religion, Sheepy is not the world's foremost expert on Islamophobia, and none of our resident Muslims are Doctors of religious philosophy or world leading Muslim scholarship. And that's just fine. You come to a forum, you get forum-goer level talks about issues. This public level democracy/open forum discussion on current events is completely fucking revolutionary. No longer do we get heavily filtered (yes, even in America) cherry picked information about world events and ideas. Our new internet lets us do a lot of things, but I would argue that in terms of a free and democratic society, the ability to do what we are doing RIGHT IN THIS THREAD is by far the most important.

23 years ago, when I was born, I was destined to live in a world where I might never get to know a Muslim, and probably never read a word of the Quran. I was destined to live in a world where I would be lucky to know 2-3 other gay teens. We now live in a world where a super conservative religious Muslim young adult from Syria can connect with the transsexual long haired liberal antitheist child of American hippies who expatriated to Canada 'cause Bush. This has propelled us into a new enlightenment, a global enlightening of morals and compassion for those who are different. Exposure to these new and different people makes us more compassionate and accepting people.

Its funny how differently that could be written.

A full 25% of Turkish Muslims think that, if anyone cheats on their spouse, they should be put to death. This isnt "25% of Turkish Muslims support the death penalty for murder". We are talking about a crime that... isn't a crime. At all.

Of course, this is also interesting. Until you realize it isn't at all. In surveys, everything is literally about the question and how you ask it. Simply changing the wording on the question could yield exactly opposite results. Think about how you would respond to the question that was asked in that survey:

"All in all, Do you think the CIA's treatment of suspected terrorists was justified or unjustified."

Torture was not mentioned in the question. If you want to know if American's think torture is justified, you have to ask a different question. It took me a REALLY long time to come up with something that might be able to get that answer, and I think I have it: "Do you think torture is justified?". This pseudojournalistic media shitshow fuckery completely washes away all meaning of anything they try and talk about.

Philosophically, there are situations in which torturing a human being can be justified. Have all of our tortures been that way? No. Is that a problem? Yes. Does that even put us on the same plane of existence as firmly believing that apostasy, (consensual) sodomy, or adultery (all non-crimes) should be punishable by death? I surely fucking think not.

best part of this video is none of that stupid overediting crap. Just you being a fucking beast.

Most specifically, the ability to back out of B on defense, reform and recommit to defend the point with a well organized push is made obsolete by the speed with which B caps.

Additionally, the Iron Man defense (defending both A and B with a quick rotating defense, sometimes involving heavy), which I understand was never really done in EU, experienced a brief amount of popularity towards the end of gravelpit's lifespan. It was strong if your team was coordinated and able to move fast, and is also made obsolete by the speed at which the points cap.

In what universe has indust not played in IM or higher?

I would like to give a HUGE shoutout to Pie Hero who kindly last second (literally 12 minutes of warning) took over teaching the demoman class in the absence of giraffe.