we are grossly understaffed again this week, please find it in your heart to help 6 helpless newbies tonight. You're weekly contribution of 1-1.5 hours can save these newbies.

really gg to No Johns, wish we could have closed out at least one of those rounds.

we are called System 2 now because bowflex was a stupid meme name

Also you guys played really really well and should be proud.

Hopefully with better internet, which is a very real problem every single year.

Keep Talking and No One Explodes is one of the most fun party games ever, especially while intoxicated

Guys, I know we do this every week, but I really am on emergency mode here with coaches.

I have about 70 newbies added up waiting for coaches right now and 4 brave souls who decided to do their civic duty and coach.

You too can be a hero to 6 newbies tonight.

Pls.

I work with a ton of newbies, almost certainly more than anyone else who has posted in this thread. I talk to ~75-100 newbies per week in newbie mixes and have a lot of outreach in the form of mentee/demo review teams that range from low/mid open all the way to a steel team. I can honestly say that it is not more common for the new players to tell me they started with HL, and many of them ask for advice on which gamemode to choose and whether they should start in UGC. That isn't to say that none of them tried HL first or spent some time there before moving over to 6s, but to call that a large feeder into the 6s scene is at least disingenuous and at worst intentionally misleading. In fact, many of the people I talk to who did move on from HL say they wish they had switched to 6s faster.

My sample group is skewed towards people who aim to improve and play better (which is why they show up to Newbie Mixes every week), but I think it is at least semi-representative of the actual situation.

But the reason I think HL has been most detrimental to TF2, especially in North America, is that its acceptance as a format really solidified and legitimized UGC as a free league for TF2, as THE league to start out in if you were new to TF2. I don't want to get into whether or not it is better for a new team to play UGC for a while vs starting in ESEA, it is not relevant to my point. Instead, by driving teams to start and stay in UGC, it has deprived ESEA from newer talent/teams and the potentially huge amount of revenue that could bring into the game.

There are what, 80 teams total this season in ESEA? Not awful numbers but we've done better. I just looked around at UGC and there are at least 500 rosters, a really huge chunk of those either ready to go or close to it in terms of having the proper amount of players ready. That extra order of magnitude must contain at least a sizeable chunk of teams that could be playing in ESEA if only they knew that opportunity was out there and didn't become sucked into the implicit idea that teams should play in UGC at first. Many people develop a certain amount of inertia there, staying where they are because they view not getting to the top of gold as not being sufficiently skilled to take on a season of Open.

I am not naive enough to think that every one of those 500 teams would be playing in ESEA if UGC weren't there, but perhaps enough of them that we could have Main back, perhaps enough that we wouldn't have lost LAN support, certainly enough to make there be some more money for Invite to produce, entice and retain good talent.

You guys played super well, we never really got into our groove. GL against No Johns and the rest of the season. CU@playoffs

That is not an official Newbie Mix project. We have no website front end and can only be accessed via mumble, Fridays at 9pm EST

mumble info:
chi4.tragicservers.com
64737

yall were already 2 down and were going to be forced with no scouts.

gg tho, our best game of the season and one of the more intense badlands matches I've ever had.

Screwb, brimstone and least of all Leaky cannot be considered underrated/under the radar.

I have the Anova Wifi, though I don't use the app so I don't know how good the actual wifi settings are.

Making pork with it tonight.

Not the dev, and no clue what dominance score might measure, but predicted quality is usually a metric of how close the combined ELO of the two teams are. Because the goal is fun, close games, the closer the two teams are, the higher the predicted quality.

sous vide to 120-130 with a super hot sear in a cast iron after. Just got my immersion circulator and its the best kitchen utility I've ever purchased.

You don't even have to go through that much effort smh.