I am certainly glad both leagues can work a little closer together because regardless of whether folks agree with my view on rules or not, we all share the same goal of keeping competitive TF2 alive. UGC has certainly helped supplying new teams to ESEA by providing a free to play atmosphere initially and those who want a more intense pay-to-play model can move to ESEA. It would be nice to see some ESEA teams move over to UGC and help us out as well. Maybe both leagues can benefit from working together.

Inter league consistency is definitely a good thing, as well as the standardization of rule sets. While I do not agree with all the bans, I do acknowledge that ESEA 6s has been around longer and is the "established" way to play 6v6 TF2. Though I still believe (personal opinion) that the class limits and weapon bans have hampered its potential growth over the years. It would be nice if some of the weapons/items which make off classes more viable could be tried in an "experimental" cup or something.

lol don't get so mad man, it's just an unpopular opinion don't take it personal. I've always been one to challenge the establishment to look at itself objectively.

OK I grant you that there are some seasons bigger than others, UGC experiences that as well but a 38% decline between this season and last is huge. But what about the overall size? Last season was the largest season yet and you barely crested 100 teams. That's probably a little over 800-1000 players. An extremely small percentage. You can make all the lobbies, newbie mixes, pugs, and youtube videos you want. IF the format itself alienates a huge percentage of people who play the game then that hard work does not have nearly the affect it should. All the full time spies, heavies, engineers, snipers, pyros basically have to learn to play scout or soldier if they want to play 6v6. That's all I'm saying. The decisions made over the years have made 6s very difficult for the average pub player to get into. They have to sacrifice a lot to even start.

Hildreth: I could easily go back over the past two years and quote numerous rude and arrogant posts you've made on our forums and your own leagues' forums but theres really no point. What you call arrogance is me conveying my PERSONAL opinion about how competitive TF2 has evolved over time. If you want to get your feelings hurt and blow things out of proportion, and say my opinions are somehow related to UGC's official policy thats your deal. We've got 19 admins who all have different opinions on how things should be run and ask any one of them, all their voices are heard on things like weapon bans, maps, cheaters, etc.

My opinion, no matter how unpopular, of how competitive TF2 has evolved over time directly relates to the wrangler ban because it is just one example of the numerous game content bans (weapons, items, classes) exhibited in 6v6 which I PERSONALLY believe has limited it's potential. While people are crying foul and telling me I make the league look bad for expressing my opinions they still ignore my simple questions. Why are things the way they are? Why does the majority of TF2 players feel 6v6 is unapproachable? Why has there been a huge decline in ESEA 6v6 teams?

As someone mentioned before, our 6v6 league has accepted ESEA's ban list even though it was my PERSONAL opinion not to copy everything ESEA does. The majority of our 6s admins wanted to do it and it was done. I believe inter-league consistency is a good thing though UGC still has to maintain it's individuality. Thus, to imply UGC is some dictatorship is so completely false it makes me laugh and realize haters are going to hate no matter what is done.

Hildreth, I don't think your in the position of calling anyone arrogant.

2 soldiers, 2 scouts, 1 medic, 1 demo 90% of the time?
38% decline in # of esea teams between this and last season?
50,000 people all over the world play TF2 and only a small handful actively play 6s?
cevo HL league tried using esea weapon ban list and 5 teams joined

its easy for folks to criticize ugc but they don't also ask the tough questions about why 6s never really took off

???

Not insulting, just egotistical. If anything, allowing only the "good" players to define rules of the game means they will simply try and preserve the state of the game they are good at. Why allow new items into the game when they change the pace and make other classes more viable? Maybe that's one of the reasons 6s is being played with the same dominant classes since 2007 and is having a difficult time getting new players interested.

Thank you for actually posting something tangible to discuss. Couple points about the "evidence" though.

1. Last points on all Payload maps are notoriously difficult to push.
2. Borneo was a custom map being tested and based upon feedback after games on it, the map author is changing the map to make the last point a little easier to push.
3. The pyro stopped way more ubers than the wrangler. Certainly in the time frame you posted the pyro stopped more of your progress than the wrangler.
4. While it took a coordinated push and a great play by the blue spy, the gun was taken down not only once, but twice during the 8 minute "wrangler" problem.
5. The other team ended up rolling you guys all the way to the spawn and capped the cart. Game was not "ruined" and the best team ended up winning the map.
6. You could not reproduce the same effect in R2 because the other team adjusted.

Douglass:

Could you please provide a demo or video of actual highlander match play that illustrates your concern with the wrangler? Let's see some real examples of how it ruins the game because it's pretty easy to write opinionated paragraphs w/o any evidence to support your claim.

Heres a video from two of our top teams which shows the wrangler, while an obstacle, can easily be taken down by coordinated pushes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=estgiicATLc

Welcome to the circlejerk hein :)

I've been waiting over a year for any substantial proof the wrangler is overpowered and ruins competitive HL. Lots of opinions, but very little actual evidence. If someone could provide demos/videos of actual highlander match play illustrating these opinions that would be one thing. Please, someone who wants wrangler banned show me the video or demo with the actual moments wrangler ruins the game because i'd love to see it and debate it.

Sdogg: Remember when a couple of our top teams challenged you to a round where you showed them how overpowered and unstoppable the wrangler is? Last I heard you sorta disappeared around then and never took up the challenge. I'd love to see it if you are still up for it!

I play NS2 beta a couple times per week. The experience is a mix between frustration/rage and intensely gratifying teamplay. The frustration for me comes with trying to kill upgraded aliens who know what they are doing. The netcode/FPS issues make it extremely difficult to track aliens (fades especially). The hit registration needs some work as well. With that being said, there are moments of awesomeness when you have a team who knows what they are doing stick together and take over a map.

Hopefully if they fix some of the major issues this will be a great team-based multiplayer.

Good stuff. I will most certainly try and give teams as much notice as possible when I know eXtv or others are going to cast games. Hopefully we can get some games on Sunday's or Tuesday's to get lots of viewers who are normally busy playing on Monday.

Aww you are making me tear up! :>

Ah, I see. Same thing still stands though, most of the people in our league have gotten used to the Monday evening deadline. If anything, since only 1-2 games are being casted per Monday it would make more sense to move those games to a different night to increase viewership. But like I said before, I've tried this and always end up being told the teams cant get their entire roster ready for a day other than monday.

Yea, hosting company got bought out by a bunch of russians, then disappeared and left us high and dry. www.ugcleague.net is the current place holder. We can't do any redirects yet because we do not want to move the domain until we have most recent databases.

Thanks for the suggestions. We've toyed around with both of your ideas quite a bit actually.

1. We will certainly be limiting the # of teams in Platinum this season but we are not going to have an incredibly small limit such as 6 or 8 teams like ESEA invite. It really depends on how many teams sign up for the league but we are going to be more careful of who gets in this season.

2. It's funny you mention having our big games on a day other than Mondays because this is something I have personally struggled with for two seasons now. I can't count how many times I have tried to get players from our bigger teams to play on either sunday or tuesday, but the reality is 9 times out of 10 both teams can only end up playing on Mondays. We are pretty flexible about match nights. Teams can play any day in between when schedules are released on Wednesdays and Tuesday night. It just turns out that Monday's work better for most players. I am still going to try and get our casted games played on a different night its just history has proved this to be a bit more difficult than you would think.

INF

Seagull,

I appreciate the polite, constructive post.

I feel that if we want TF2 to persist competitively whether it be 6s or HL, we all should all be attempting to design our competitive environments to be easily accessible to new players. Otherwise competition will eventually exhibit the "living dead syndrome" where there are mostly older, highly skilled veterans playing and very little new players getting into the game. In highlander this is easy because all the classes have an important role to play and only a small percentage of the weapons/items are banned.

The simple fact that you think classes other than the traditional 6s classes are "fucking awful" illustrates the bias I speak of which has persisted since the early days. Back in 2007, a lot of the other classes were "fucking awful" i'll admit. This meant that players who have been around a while like yourself have gotten used to the traditional 6s setup. The difference though is valve has slowly added items/abilities into the game over the years that have made them less awful. For instance: GRU, Sandwich, Wrangler, Degreaser, DR, etc. While most of the 6s community thinks these weapons are horribly unbalanced I contend that they in fact, re-balance the game to make the other classes more viable. With that being said, UGC still bans about 10 weapons which are either broken/completely unbalanced in the game so it's not like we allow everything.

I'd be interested in what some on this forum feel about the following little "thought exercise" I've mulled over quite a bit lately.

Let's say, hypothetically, TF2 was released in it's current 2012 state back in 2007. All the current weapons/items were in the game at the point of release. Be honest.. do you think ESEA/ETF2L (6s) would come up with the same exact ban lists? Probably not.. I am sure some of the major things 6s players don't like would carry over but I believe many of the weapons would be allowed and accepted as "part of the game". What does this say about the banlists today?

Yes, strategies and tactics have changed quite a bit but the overall way the game is played and especially the classes which are used are still the same. 2 soldiers, 2 scouts, 1 demo, 1 medic like 90% of the time. Regarding the invite limit, it was absolutely necessary back when ugc highlander first really started because we only had 1-2 troll teams treating the league like garbage. It helped us build a strong core group of about 150-250 teams of medium to low skill level. This was when UGC only had 1 division. Now that the league has exploded and we have multiple divisions, it made perfect sense to remove the limit for our top division (which we were planning on doing anyways). Now that it's been removed we see great things to come for UGC HL.

Lastly, I see a lot of criticism for our league but why are people not asking the same tough questions about ESEA? Even with all of eXtv's great work promoting the game and i46 you've seen a 38% drop in the number of teams this season. Why is that? Is it just some unique season 12 drop which will pop back up again in season 13 or is there a larger trend going on?