God damn dashner sucks

Jumpers basically plan their event every year and it's always bonkers. It aint going anywhere.

Surf will also be in this year's event.

Dota fortress is a logistical nightmare but it's a pretty great way to include a lot of people and wrap up the event so it'll be the "finale" again.

ETF2L has their actual aliases

welp cool. Just needs enforced then?

I just tuned into the tftv cast of ChampGG vs LEGO. I'm pretty out of touch with the EU scene and hearing casters call players by aliases that they aren't actually using can sometimes be confusing. I think I pieced it together after a couple rounds(91 = Dmoule and cmd = condom?).

Anyways it's just an observation that a good percentage of viewers probably have a similar level of familiarity with player aliases. They also might not be able to translate the what the casters are saying and work out who they are talking about as easily as I was.

I know ESEA forces aliases and team tags and some players still get around this by using other random aliases(why???). I think it should be written into league rules that casted games will require team tags and normal aliases. It would help newer viewers follow the action, and personally I don't understand why teams and players wouldn't want to stick with consistent names anyways. I think it helps develop a following and new viewers who tune in seeing airshots by 91 are gonna be like "man I can't wait to see 91's next game!"

Thoughts?

poor phrasing on my part. I mostly meant that Valve needs to take more steps than us towards a successful competitive format.

seems like for most people their patience has run out, understandably. we've tried for years to hold ourselves up, but we haven't seen the growth needed to make anything resembling a real esport.

last year Valve finally acknowledged our existence, but I'd argue that it's too late and that like clockwork said, they've pushed us back 6 years by being very out of touch with what makes 6s tf2 doable.

the map pool, lack of class limits, and lack of much needed weapon changes that came with the mym update is concerning.

I think any invite player can look at a map pool and pick out those that don't belong.(we moved on from old viaduct 4 years ago but here it is with matchmaking). That same invite player can look at a weapon and say why it's "downside" is not actually a downside(hello atomizer). class limits are going to be something that might require experimentation, but again it's concerning that valve still thinks they are unnecessary for a competitive format.

I think what it comes down to is that Valve needs to move quicker. The proposed "I take a step, you take a step" and meeting in the middle seems like a nice idea, if it had started 6 years ago. Now, since Valve has thrown out a lot of our ideas, Valve needs to take 3 steps. We need to see that changes are happening.

BUT I think that at this point, maybe hope and patience are all we have left. let's face it if we're still playing tf2 competitive in 2016 we love it enough that clinging to it and hoping for changes are probably what we were going to do anyways.

You are right that such a drastic change based on an assumption would probably be a bad idea. Maybe one of these Valve visits or some response from Jill or whoever would give us a better idea what would need to happen for them to back a tournament.

Probably an unpopular opinion but here it is: 6's Matchmaking was a massive fucking bone for Valve to throw us. We need to keep trying to play it and give feedback so they can continue to update it. One of the most important feedback issues is weapon balancing. I think one major thing stopping Valve from backing current 6's stuff is the long list of banned weapons. The new global whitelist is a good start, allowing a few of the more toned down unlocks. But we need to just drop that shit entirely. It'll probably be a really frustrating couple of months or whatever, but I'd consider this "growing pains." I think they're using game data to adjust weapons, and not looking at whitelists posted in competitive website forums, and reading through league admins justifications on why certain things are banned. My primary reasoning behind this assumption is the Sydney Sleeper. We've had that shit banned for YEARS and it gets buffed? I think it was so underused that they assumed it was bad, or maybe banning it mid season 5 years ago was a kneejerk reaction and the gun actually isn't THAT incredible, it's just frustrating to play against when a team plays around it well.

Another major issue is class limits. I don't honestly know if the current league limits are a good idea anymore. I personally think current 6's is fun to watch. If we remove class limits and unban all weapons, it probably won't be very fun to watch... At least in the short term. Again, I would hope that there would be a reaction from Valve to add a class limit 2(didn't Blizzard do this for OW?) We may in fact just have to put up with playing "their" format of 6's, until they realize how flawed it is, and adjust it into something more enjoyable.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, who knows what their actual decision making process is. My current thoughts however are that if people want competitive to grow and want developer support, then our community leagues and websites that support competitive shouldn't remain so different from the competitive mode they've given us.

Current timeline of potential ESEA Open player:
Be pubstomper.
Try competitive matchmaking.
Make friends, Make a team.
Look for league to join.
Only leagues are VASTLY different from matchmaking.
Team disbands because 3/6 players are Heavy, Spy, and Engi mains. Unwelcome and innefective in current ESEA format.

Tired ramblings but probably fairly accurate.

TL;DR: If Valve hasn't embraced ESEA 6's and sponsored LANS like iSeries after like 5 years, they won't. Unless the format changes.

"Yaaaaaooooo" - eXtine

xD

congrats, your new medic might bump you up a spot or two in the final standings, but you'll probably just get vincented either way.

all you've done is birthed a new meme. your replacement will be under a microscope. and as soon as he fucks up, twitch chat is going to have a field day.

Slin was right
saam was left

you get the idea

what the fuck why does this exist on the internet? I've been back tf2ing for like 3 weeks there's no possible way anyone could already be butthurt enough to warrant this being created/posted.

Faked image but I guess a twitch password change and two-factor auth were long overdue anyways. whatever.

You can also donate the unusuals to our "giveaways" as anything worth at least 1 key that's not included in the main fundraiser can be donated there, and will be given away throughout the stream.

https://scrap.tf/tothgiveaways

Voting 3rd party is the same as not voting. Be realistic.

I feel like I can't vote for Hillary on principal cuz of the DNC shenanigans. Doesn't feel like a democratic election after that shit got leaked. So now my options are to not vote, or vote for Trump. I'm leaning heavily towards not voting, but maybe Trump can convince me by November that he's not going to be a disaster.