I get it, I really do.

It sounds like you are trying to invent prolander again which is probably the most failed competitive format in this game and is not currently being run because nobody wants to play it. So pragmatically at least I imagine most ppl will dismiss this because it's already a time proven way of killing the game. Nonetheless though I think these discussions are important (as long as ppl argue in good faith) so I'll engage and offer my opinion as somebody who mains a dogshit class (pyro) and has way more hl experience than 6s.

This is... a strange view to say the least. The need to learn or adapt should be correlated with competitiveness but it's not the end goal. I can make 100 dogshit changes to any format that will definitely force players to adapt and change but I think most people would agree that that makes things less competitive, not more. For FPS games and a lot of esports in general execution (or skill expression) is just as important for the competitive aspect and is the reason why a lot of people watch or play it. Your ability to adapt and change is conditional on your execution skills and both are needed.

I assume you're EU because pyro unlocks aren't banned in NA. But I think you're mistaken here, people really want to play 5cp so they would not have banned it, just ban the stuff that makes it awful for 5cp. The highlander solution is to ban 5cp (again in NA I don't follow EU HL) because as you alluded to it is so awful once you have full time defensive classes.

Over-centralization is not the core reason that stacking meds would be bad though. No matter what tf2 competitive format you play you already play in an incredibly medic-centralized metagame. It's bad for direct gameplay reasons (you need to be able to kill medics to allow the game to flow), not some higher level metagaming reasons. You can argue that in theory it would be nice to not have the game so centralized around one class and that's a perfectly fine argument, but how the platonic ideal of a game should look like doesn't really have much bearing on how it actually plays out unfortunately and should not be the primary reason of how you balance the actual game.

I've already talked about why that's a weird definition of competitiveness but I also want to make a point here; oftentimes it's also just not fun for the people maining the dogshit classes like pyro. This is actually a very common highlander phenomenon; people who main stuff like pyro/engineer want to play comp for the first time and naturally gravitate toward HL cause you can't play it in 6's without throwing. But then they quit highlander because the gameplay on those classes is and will never be anywhere near pubs. Going from doing random shit in pubs on engie and then forced to sit on your sniper in HL is quite jarring. Yes the format of 6s makes certain classes unviable full time, but the formats that do allow for those classes to be played are still not even close to pubs. No amount of format trickery can save a class that is just inherently bad. So really when pubbers claim that 6s sucks because they can't play their favorite class, the reality is that sorry, the version of the class that you want to play doesn't really exist in any competitive format.

Weird way of phrasing it, it's not really a mistake by the soldier player then if they have an escape option. Similar to how on pyro you can linger against uber longer than many classes because you have airblast, that's not a mistake of the pyro player. What constitutes a mistake is a function of the tools your class has, who cares about the fact that you would be dead if you were playing a different class.

Spy is not the weakest class in HL, probably around 6th (med demo sniper scout soldier higher, some people might actually swap spy and soldier or say heavy better than spy).

7*2*24 = 336

Assume you sleep 8 hours a day, 8*7*2 = 112, 336 - 112 = 224.

Over half your waking hours spent with the game open.

https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-zZMLrCRy0qu0AQsk-973FSw-t500x500.jpg

I played a tryout with a player who got arrested the next week (?) for drug dealing or possession (?) (been a while, details murky) never underestimate tf2 players.

Also I have a sneaking suspicion that average age of the lower divs might be younger than the game itself lol.

mb bro kicking 3/6 players instead of 4/6 players i miscounted ur right that is totally reasonable now, FUCK uberheights dumbass TL

It's no longer 4 years cause ppl complained exactly for that reason, forgot what it is now but I think 2 years off top my head.

I'm not saying that the people on the team are not fucking stupid, they definitely are, but there's no way ur suggesting that what the TL should've done is kick 2/3 of his team lmao.

Demo check failures for people randomly selected (i.e. no suspicion of cheating) need to be strictly punished in a system where the goal is to not let cheaters know they are suspected of cheating, at least until the second time they get demo requested lol (not impossible of course for people who aren't cheating but if you are a cheater and u get demo requested again surely you think more likely than not they're on to you).

I'm sure most ppl complaining about this issue don't think that cheaters should be able to go "xd forgot my demos again" and get off for free it's more that we go through this shit to make it so cheaters can't just lay low to make it hard for A/C and yet ppl have had to threaten to boycott playoffs twice cause of cheaters lmao.

Might be unpopular but I would rather a system where only suspected cheaters get demo requested but in exchange there is no amnesty, if you don't have it even on first offense you get banned for x length. Shit man would even save some admin time so they don't have to open a randomly requested demo to see if it's legit and not just some troll that ppl submitted.

Also, are we even sure that the in game demo shit has reasonable reliability? This game is filled with fucking spaghetti code in all parts feel like the demo recorder shouldn't be exempt. I tried opening a scrim demo recently and it was just randomly corrupted lmao and afaik there's basically no way of diagnosing why. Like what can I reasonably do here except cross my fingers and pray that this doesn't happen same week I get demo requested lol.

I don't think the system has to be 100% reliable for random demo checks to be reasonable but there is at least a threshold where past it you just end up banning too many people for things outside of their control.

TBH I have so little trust in AC at this point to determine people are cheating before a season is ruined I would almost rather them just scrap the random demo shit altogether and only demo request ppl who are suspected of cheating.

Personally I think you can understand why RGL does random demo checks and also simultaneously think that the proposed benefits have not stopped cheaters from ruining seasons and accept the alternative of giving cheaters a tip off so ppl don't get rando banned for being dumb. Especially since most ppl getting banned are lower div/newer players by the looks of it, I'd rather there be as little barrier to entry as possible. Entirely reasonable viewpoint to hold IMO and one I find gradually more appealing the more OMG threads pop up lol.

Did you read OP? They literally cut a player, I have no idea if they did it because of not having demos but like...what else do you expect them to do lol. TL can't hack your teammates computers; the only way this could've been avoided is if they cut untamed as well after failing the first demo check and you can't seriously tell me that's a reasonable thing to do as a TL lol.

didn't lansky and TLR only get jacked/strong after they got good at tf2? seems like the only reasonable conclusion is that higher dpm is purely anabolic but not the other way around.

BBL DRIZZY!!

wtf is op even saying am i going insane

Apologies for long post ahead:

I think overall this seems like more of a communication/PR problem than anything else.

There are lots of people who are misinformed (or deliberately acting in bad faith) when talking about this topic, but the poster of this video in the yt comments seems to at least be somewhat reasonable and open to change, and I think if they were to have a genuine respectful dialogue with prem-level players they would at least understand things more.

People keep saying that they are spreading bad faith takes on purpose but I actually disagree with this. Having been in the fucking trenches for too long on tf2 reddits and youtube comments because I want to kill myself or something, I think comp players can be somewhat myopic when they consider how obvious the reasoning behind many changes in competitive are.

The video is an example of this issue but I'll provide an example of my own (because I'm more familiar with it); loch was recently banned in NA highlander. If you're not in an invite highlander circlejerk, or you have no connection to invite players (which I would hazard to guess is actually most people playing), what are your avenues to actually learning the reasoning behind wanting such a ban?

- Weapon was barely used at all during the season until the end (and probably even less so in lower divs I would guess), so it's not like you would see firsthand its problems
- Lower divs are worse at the game and thus worse at exploiting the weapon
- RGL forums are giga fucking dead so who knows what ppl are thinking (save the thread on loch, I'll come back to this)
- It's come up a couple of times in the main channel of the league discord, the channel that is dead like half the time and the other half the time it's talking about random shit, so very easy to miss.
- You can watch like maybe 2 casted matches last season that used it primarily, and with POV cam's + the cam not always being on the demo it's hard to get a sense of just how much the weapon is warping how ppl play. Plus how would you be able to tell between this weapon is changing how ppl play vs. this is just how invite teams play?

Now all of a sudden you get a survey question about whether or not to ban the loch. You have no reference point for why people want it gone, but obviously something must have happened, some meta shift. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to assume that people are just being mad because they fail to adapt. Here's an example of such a post, and you can see the replies and that they later change their mind after hearing the reasoning. Is it annoying that people default to "comp players want thing banned = they are bad and salty cause they lost to it"? Sure, but in the absence of information available to these players I don't think it's a crazy conclusion to reach.

Ironically I think some comp players need to touch grass and take a step back for a second. It's really quite difficult for ppl who don't go out of their way to interact with good players to get a sense of what they're thinking. So ETF2L cringing it up by putting the wrong ban reasons (2 shotting sentries lol) actually can have a pretty significant impact on things. Proper articulation of why things are unfun or broken goes a long way; I know because I've been around that "unfun" roughly translates to either "rewards excessively defensive gameplay" or "incredibly rng and luck based" or "why are we giving the best class in the game something that makes it even better" or whatever, but others may not and that's perfectly reasonable.

PLEASE
OH BABY

Third person fps is objectively garbage and only exists because seeing your character incentivizes people to buy skins to play as peter griffin or goon to chun-li or some shit change my mind

Just looking at the ICLR 2024 outstanding papers I would say only one is math-heavy (generalization of diffusion models). The vision transformers need registers in particular is nice and has basically nothing. Somewhat ironically the more math heavy papers were relegated to the honorable mentions lol.

Obv every paper is gonna require you to latex something I'm not saying that, but in my experience the way you approach a theory/math paper vs the other types of papers is just so different with the math being extremely secondary (means to an end type deal). Compare the protein discovery paper vs the robust agents paper.

Also (and if you're familiar I'm sure you've seen this as well) these conferences are usually flooded with garbage like "we changed some model marginally in pytorch and got some small non-generalizable improvements" and sometimes that stuff gets published so.