I am not so sure about this given the number of unusuals, killstreak and australium items floating around the community, not to mention how many gift wraps have been sold so that top players can sign stuff for people. I am guessing the average 6s player has a much larger than average investment in TF2 than the typical pubber, we just make up a relatively small % of the customers.

Came from TheVille. They're fairly anti-comp so it took me forever to get around to 6s.

Holy shit, mach4 sighting.

This is an important point.
Typically, elite sports leagues have salary/roster churn built in that forces teams to keep developing and taking risks.
No one's going to pay up big money to create a dream team to beat Froyo, or for some folks to defect from Froyo and play for other teams with LAN drams.
Age/injury in physical team sports mean the very best players decline and make opportunities for new talent to rise to the top. It's going to be many years before age takes a toll on anyone's skill in TF2. So, it's basically up to them losing interest in playing as much or in playing together for them to decline, making it really hard to exceed them for any teams that aren't there yet.

With no payoff besides the acclaim of this community and pleasing yourselves, why not just cycle out through teams in high open/IM with your friends and have a good time?

Something is needed, to be sure. I don't see how CEVO or ESEA would cater to this if they wanted to, though. It's hard enough to fill in the paid teams now, imagine if there was a non-shit free option for teams.

Boston would be great. Would love to go if logistics/dates permit.

Anything with toast in it is definitely the worst.

Been following it loosely. I travel to Hong Kong occasionally and it's certainly changed over the 10 years I've been going there.

Given there's a lot of perception that it's mainly/partly fueled by resentment of mainlanders - it makes it difficult for them to win a lot of sympathy from mainlanders which would probably be the best way to get Beijing to loosen the grip a bit.
I am not sure how much they can win or what they should do, but I hope they're successful.

Coolest dudes. They will be p. good, too.

Bump.

Had some tryouts, not sure if any will work out but glad to take more in the meantime.

Sep. 18, 2007, I have no excuse for being this shitty at the game.

Bump!

Go out of town for a couple weeks and down to page 4.

I'm not sure what exactly what y'all are doing in terms of segregating newbies by skill - but it seems like there's still a lot of mixing true newbies with folks with a lot of UGC/pug/low-Open experience - I understand why but it probably is a little frustrating for a lot of coaches when a lot of players have really, really different needs for learning.

Some newbies don't know the names of locations or the utter basics of rollouts and advantages while others have the basics down but need to improve their gamesense or other aspects of the meta.

It might be good to segregate more stringently and have coaches take full groups of similar levels so everyone is equally engaged and make the coaching itself more rewarding - basically have coaches take all newbies or all advanced players.

Lots of times I played the coach wouldn't have much for half the team because they were so busy working on the utter basics with a player or two that they couldn't really offer much to the intermediate or advanced newbies.

I am looking to play videogames next season. Medic would be preferred. I wouldn't mind going back to scout in the right situation, either.

I played on No Homer's (7-9) last season, had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Unfortunately, it looks like everyone is going their separate ways.
I played med with No Sweat the season before (CEVO).
In S16 I played a bit of demo with a team that died rather quickly. I played a few seasons of UGC 6s as well.

http://play.esea.net/users/646338
http://cevo.com/member/118581/

I think my dodging and comms are improving. I would prefer to not do the maincalling for pushes and such.

You should know I am old, I have a 5-year-old kid and I work long hours.
I am almost always online by 9EST and am free just about every night, though.

Last I heard, the Atlanta LANfest had stopped supporting TF2, is there anything in the Southeastern US that does?

5'11"