Nice. I've always loved Christmas raves :)

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

As an inanimate object I don't need a santa hat, but if someone could figure out at least something Christmasy that'd be nice.

How dare you question mashed potato/penis rock? Who do you think you are?

On a serious note, I'm not really sure about rock's comments on lobby and second one way or the other, but I don't really agree with getting rid of the house/cave entrance. I think it allows a team to rotate and push the far side of the bridge without being punished. It gives more cover for roamers and makes the cave push at least semi viable in both directions.

The one thing I do agree with is rock's comment about the size of choke now. At the very least, you can move that new structure to match up with the corner of the wood. I think cutting off even double of that distance (from where it is now to lining up with the wood corner) would create a good balance between the purposes of choke and that cave house.

Okay for all the casted premier matches that I got a chance to watch I did a quick overview of how the middles turned out, because that seems to be the biggest problem with the map for a lot of people. I've listed what time on the youtube vods the mid starts (with the start of a new round), the team that won, and a quick sentence or two on what seems to happen. There's little consistency on how much I wrote but it gives the basic idea. WALL OF TEXT INCOMING!
*also disclaimer, I've spent very little time actually playing on this map, so if anyone with more experience on the map thinks I'm horribly wrong, please feel free to explain why.

LBC vs 4-25
1st mid (3:59) lbc
-goes across bridge
2nd mid 6:36 lbc
- more flank action by caves
- combo still crosses bridge
3d mid (9:18) 4-25
- combo crosses bridge
4th mid (12:31) lbc
- waits around house for a while,
-combo crosses bridge
5th mid (14:04) lbc
- pushes across bridge

Maincall.tf vs BK
1st mid (6:44) BK
- fairly aggressive jumping by maincall
-lots of players fall under bridge, slightly more dynamic
2nd mid (10:20) BK
- BK goes under bridge, got there way faster
-maincall backs out, rotates with heals
-bk comes back again
3d mid (14:20) maincall.tf
-maincall bombs house early
-get flanked? idk
-neither combo really got into mid intact
4th mid (16:55) BK?
-baits agression
-pushes across bridge
- maincall.tf kritzes right back in
5th mid 23:23 BK
-war can't rollout (Kappa)
- nothing else to say
6th mid (26:43) Maincall.tf
- hung around choke until maincall had clear advantage
7th mid (28:26) maincall.tf
- hard to tell, looked like bk tried to go under?
-maincall stayed choke
8th mid (30:08) BK
- maincall flank pushes caves hard w/flank
- bk crosses point
9th mid (32:37) BK
- bk combo just crosses bridge
10th mid (35:13) BK
-crosses bridge

eshock vs bk
1st mid (2:24) eshock
- hung around choke
-crossed bridge
2nd mid (5:58) BK
- pushes across point
3d mid (18:06) eshock
- hangs around choke,
- eshock pushes across bridge
4th mid (28:22) eshock
- bk tries to go valley, gets destroyed by eshock

cool clan vs lbc
1st mid (4:25) cool clan
- absorbs aggression
-pushes across mid
2nd mid (10:01) lbc
- lbc pushes across mid early
3rd mid (22:21) lbc
- cool clan tries to push valley
- very slow mid
4th mid (30:19) cool clan
- cool clan pushes caves side

cool clan vs planet express
1st mid 2:43 plex
- cool clan rotates cave, gets shut down
2nd mid 4:41 plex
- cool can rotates cave/valley, destroyed again
3rd mid 7:29 plex
- planet express rotates valley, comes up far side
- cool clan to far back to contest them
4th mid 12:50 cool clan
- passive mid by cool clan, ran sniper
-moved across bridge

ubersexuals (maincall) vs planet express
1st mid (3:56) us
- us send flank behind, sandwhiches plex
-pushes across bridge
2nd mid 5:19 plex
- us move across bridge 1st, plex jumps them
-moves across bridge
3d mid 15:30 plex
- straight fight, push across bridge
4th mid 12:56 plex
- plushes across

One thing I noticed throughout these matches was that demo rollouts meant nothing. You could walk there with the combo and probably still be just as effective. I don't really know what the solution for this would be, but as the mid works right now, the demo can't really do any early damage and is only opening himself up to speedy roamer rollouts by getting there first. The bigger problem I feel is a lack of options on mid. As the combo you can come up through choke or through the ramp on rollout building, but the only real difference is which side of the shack/house? (idk map calls) you come up on. From there, the combo's job is to hang around and spam until they gain a clear advantage or disadvantage to move across the bridge. If teams wanted to jump aggressively they could do that. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes the other team would just back into choke and kill all the jumpers. The problem is this is a huge part of the mid that isn't used successfully. If the combo tried to go into the valley, caves area the other team could just step forward onto the bridge and absolutely destroy them. This I think is the big problem with the actual architecture of mid. The bridge is the fastest route to the other team, and it also offers the most direct sightlines, spam angles, and height advantages. Generally the two most famous cp mids are badlands and process. Both of these mids have lots of options for the combo, which is something logjam is missing at this moment. I think the biggest thing you could do to fix this is encourage teams to push the far side of the ramp, over by the forward spawn. It could be as simple as changing the orientation of the ramp or providing more cover to help them cross, but something should be done.

Same

We've got almost 64 ultiduo teams for a double eliminations bracket. There is no way we are coming out of this thing with out at least someone hitting a quad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di2M-qvAVTI

I remember a few seasons ago there was a stream where they were playing this game. I forget who was streaming but the players were b4nny, indust, shrugger, and I think dummy. They were playing on a server set up for dm on gpit B. It was three meds with needles and ubersaws. The meds had to try to survive long enough to get uber from ubersaws on the soldier only using crossbows to heal each other. The soldier was working to try to reach a certain number of kills on the meds. I don't know if this is a thing because I haven't seen it before or since but it was actually pretty fun to watch and seemed fun to play.

I love this as a tournament things, but I feel like it might end up a bit repetitive for the returning viewers. If it was a canned video that they showed before the casters got talking it would be fine, but having casters going over the callouts and explaining map dynamics before every single match would get old to both us and them pretty fast.

And I really don't like these types of people. I am fine with saying that. It's like those "prank" videos where it's actually just people being complete assholes. Walking up to some random person on the street and insulting them isn't a prank whether you are filming it or not. I dislike that some people are trying to excuse this behavior.

Some quick thoughts on the map

Overall I really like it. The areas are all really nice, but some of the transitions seem really clunky to move between for pushes, especially for the med. I have absolutely no qualifications for critiquing maps, so please feel free to disagree with any of my thoughts. It'd be nice to know why you disagree though. Good luck with your map!

It seems like for adding in maps there is

Bringing back established maps

cp_yukon
cp_warmerfront
koth_ashville/coalplant
cp_gpit
cp_freight
cp_fastlane
ctf_turbine_pro
koth_arctic

Adding in new

cp_logjam
koth_sandstone
Koth_highpass
cp_glassworks (interesting ideas but pretty clearly meant for HL and/or pubs)
koth_ramjam (same as above)

Note: These lists ARE NOT my personal opinion. This is just a list of maps that have had decent reception or interest. A lot of the old maps are only put on there because of the whole talk with Yukon for GXL. My honest opinion would be against any of those maps coming back, but the arguments that people used for Yukon applies to all of those so hey, what do I know. Also, for new maps I only listed ones that are in fairly finished states and seem to be still receiving support from the map creators. There are a lot of cool ideas sitting there in the maps section of the forums that just never got traction. RIP cp_convolve and koth_grizzly.

Lego Movie and Elf. Other than that I'm pretty much in agreement.

Went to see Cowboys and Aliens. I was expecting a silly, over the top movie that doesn't take itself seriously. Somehow, even after naming the movie Cowboys and Aliens and having freaking cowboys and aliens in the movie together, the producers thought they could make a serious action film. They actually wanted you to care about the characters, but all the dramatic sacrifices get from the audience is a slight chuckle or maybe a yawn.

The aliens are also some of the dumbest I've ever seen. Their reason for abducting people is so they can experiment on them and find their weaknesses. Why they choose to do this when they are faster, stronger, smarter, and better armed than all the humans is never explained. Their reason for coming to earth in the first place is gold.

TLDR: Cowboys Versus Aliens is a bad movie

I'm still not completely sure what I want to do as a career yet, but I do know I have a strong interest in engineering, and would like to major in some form of it in College. My school has some great engineering electives as well as awesome math teachers, so that kinda stuff is fun for me.

Probably my biggest activity outside of school is robotics. I'm an officer in our club as well as a captain of a team, and for the stupid amount of work it is, it's a ton of fun. Our club does a lot of fun projects as well as competing in VRC tournaments every year. It's a great way to learn hard work, important engineering skills, and how to be part of a team. There's something really cool about having people that are just as passionate about something as you. One of my favorite memories will still be going to Worlds and getting to interact with over 400 high school teams of people with similar interests and hobbies. The fact that going about five days with zero sleep, working the entire time, is one of my favorite memories shows how much fun it was.

I also volunteer at my local wildlife museum on the weekends. I used to play sports more often, but these days all I have time for is running and the occasional bit of tennis with friends.