am i crazy or does this change how the models in the loadout screen work, i can move them in all sorts of directions now

getting airblasted against anything has the same effect as being juggled straight up by a rocket, you can strafe all you want but you're not really going anywhere

2ft pir

what a responsible guy paying up before the season starts

valve's method of balancing weapons is to give large buffs to perennially underused weapons, see what happens, and then change things further or keep them the same. that's what they've been doing since the great summer rebalance, and i don't think there is any reason that it is a bad thing. seriously, i'm pretty sure they just look at what percentage of players have X weapon equipped and then give that weapon a boost, or, in some cases, a nerf.

the consensus here seems to be that valve has no idea what they are doing with tf2 balance, but sending them an angry email about what we think of tf2 isn't going to change their minds or affect their decision at all. especially in a world where all of the weapons we are talking about are banned in our leagues. i think that part of the way they balance is through looking at how the players use the buffed/nerfed weapon, and when your only metrics come from 24/7 shitfest pubs you probably aren't going to get the greatest feedback.

it doesn't really affect league play (i don't know how ugc deals with mid-season weapon changes) and pubs don't matter enough to argue about weapon balance over. and besides, the real issue with the short circuit wasn't that it was necessarily bad - it just Wasn't The Wrangler.

i think that's what he was trying to get at. it's way easier for valve to totally re-invent a weapon that already exists in the game instead of adding something totally new (that is probably terribly unbalanced and not worth using/only worth using) and having a new broken weapon along with the dozens of totally useless items.

this sort of hit the nail on the head for me here - i don't think there is any inherent problem to the discussion we're having, the issue is just all of the angry condescension that turns up in all of the posts, which sucks and is not really conducive to having interesting debates.

i mean, regardless of whether or not shocka, or really anyone, is right here, there is still a whole bunch of pointless hostility that makes the whole conversation sound like nerds fighting over the internet instead of something that actually matters and is relevant to our lives.

if you are on the side of truth shocka, which, personally i think you probably are, then just say what you believe is true and don't be flippant and dismissive about the things that are contentious to your argument.

the brightest flames burn the shortest

in order, just going down your post because tediously quoting quoted things would look like a bigger mess than this.

this statistic is hilariously impossible to find, literally saw a site called "infidels.org." it's probably true that most atheists turn over from religion, rather than being born into it, i guess? china is actually the largest irreligious state in the whole word, with like ~80% of their population being atheist or essentially equivalent.

either way i think what you're saying here is a generalization. what i'm saying is that there are internal motivations for becoming atheist, and that while the majority of the time the outward response of those motivations is denying the bible or god or whatever, it's probably always more complex than that for the majority of people. because, you know, people aren't really very simple in their choices like that.

this is a clarification that you didn't do a very good job of making the first time - my point was the way that your post described "religious people" so uniformly causes shitty generalizations that, like i said, make these discussions really stupid. (as evidenced by the last page of this thread!) also, faith isn't really exclusive to religion, every branch of science has to begin with a few assumptions about how the world works, and those assumptions are faith-based. even if that faith is informed by not yet being proven wrong about those assumptions.

the implication in your previous posts was that the mere act of becoming an atheist somehow, like, leveled you up as a human being, giving you more intelligence. my point there is that not every atheist gains knowledge by becoming one, and that someone can question their faith while still remaining religious and gain a separate kind of knowledge. i am also shit at cars, so if this doesn't make sense just say so - but what i'm trying to say is that at that point you described, where the mechanic informs you of the better oil choice, that isn't as obvious as you're making it out to be. it's closer to someone, who isn't necessarily smarter or better at cars than you, offering you a change in oil type, doing the research, informing your decision, and then choosing between the two. this metaphor is kind of stupid though, and it's a lot easier just to talk about it directly.

finally, how someone questions their faith is not my business to know, as i don't deign to have a faith to question. if faith is religion, the opposite of that would be skepticism. it may be a large part of science (just as faith is a large part of religion,) but it isn't the complete picture, so to speak.

what proportion of atheists are formerly religious people?

both groups of people in this discussion are huge and varied, and your post makes the assumption that, say, all atheists made the decision to be that because they read the bible and decided that god doesn't exist. i mean, you say "religious people" as if they are all carbon copies of each other, acting and living the same lives with the same principles outside of religion - making those kinds of assumptions about either group doesn't get this discussion anywhere, it just leads to the generalizations that fuel political and religious divides everywhere.

mind, i don't mean to disparage atheists or theists at all, there are merits to both ways of thinking. the problem is that these types of discussions almost inevitably fall into the "all religious people are incapable free-thought" and "atheists are all godless, immoral heathens" territory, which nobody here wants, i'd hope.

Edit: also, this is sort of pedantic, but

"And when people stop believing in god, that does not mean they got "smarter". No, not at all. They simply have gained knowledge and have a better understanding regarding the value of skepticism and critical thinking."

is literally what i meant when i said that you implied that becoming an atheist makes someone inherently smarter, maybe my definition of smart is out of date, but i think that someone "gaining knowledge" probably also constitutes them getting smarter. like i said before, not all atheists question theism in the name of science or rationalism.

this is all correct in the abstract world where all atheists are 'true' (or people who truly only deny theism, like you said) and adhere to the principles that make an atheist 'true.' or, i guess, a lack of principles. the world is not like that and most people still like to hold their beliefs close to themselves and defend them in stupid ways, regardless of what those beliefs are.

you are right about what an atheist is, and i'm not sure if that was every really in contention, but in practice what marxist said tends to be pretty accurate. most people, regardless of whether or not they're religious, make a choice at some point in their lives to change what they learned and accepted as a child. i think it's a little presumptuous to make the claim that all atheists are somehow inherently smarter and more well informed than people who believe in whatever, plenty of very smart people believed in a god and have still managed to further humanity in some significant way.

it would probably be better for your argument if you actually contextualized it to tf2 instead of linking to the wikipedia page

yonder days of sitting on the same map in maplestory for five hours and getting 20% of one level on a 2x exp day

this isn't invite drama god damnit guys

i want the adventures of bernice the badass and her well meaning but a little bumbling sidekick dave