Just use the Coaching function built into the game. Thing's incredible.

All that being said, I think there is something about all this we need to pay attention to: 6v6 TF2 is really boring - but don't hit that - button just yet.

This is going to seem like a really dumb way to do this and probably not work at all, but try it: take away all of your knowledge about 6v6 TF2, and just leave in the basics; how each class works, the skill it takes to accomplish certain tasks, those are fine, but don't assume things like uber advantage, or choke positioning, or buff control and crit-heals.

Now try to imagine the last game you watched: it was a team of 6 people, half hanging out in one part of the map, and the other half in another. Nothing's happening; a scout is hurting himself with the boston basher, which is making the medic heal him. There are a bunch of stickies on a wall, and nobody has switched to pyro to blow them away. There's a team holding the last point, but they haven't switched to two engineers and a heavy to make sure they can hold them off until time runs out.

What I'm getting at is, this is how the average player would probably see our games. They're not as dynamic or exciting (to them) as a pub player; nobody is trying anything crazy, until a soldier rocket jumps in and kill himself, and they're just sitting on the same 6 classes, waiting until who knows what to actually do something. Then they fight for a few seconds, and then it starts over.

So how do we fix that, how do we engage more people without bending over backwards and erasing years and years of tweaks? I think we've had the answer floating around for a bit, but it's never really been fully realized: king of the hill. This is a game mode that, generally speaking, has the most dynamic play and potential for change. This is where the most regular off-classing happens, and where there's almost always something new popping up every season. Most importantly, this style of play most closely resonates with pub players', because there's less holding chokes and more rallying to push in a group, with random, wild plays here and there.

I'm not proposing we shed all of our 5cp maps and turn TF2 into a KOTH game, but it would be nice to see some growth on this aspect. I think there should be some discussion, mostly from higher level players, about how to create new KOTH maps that aren't just Viaduct-a-likes. I think there can be some interesting features added to KOTH maps that could tweak the way that particular one is played, without completely breaking existing strategies. Different point configurations, built-in ways to off-class, maybe even a dual-point type of thing (please don't bring up standin) - as I've said, there's a lot of room to grow in this regard.

This is... really silly to me. I'll try to keep this at a medium length, to strike that balance between "important enough to read" and "too long to not vote on halfway through."

Most people here aren't looking at the right problem, and I've been pretty vocal about this in the past. The common consensus seems to be that "Vale doesn't like 6v6, and wants us to change." If you really believe this, you need to open your eyes a bit. The truth goes something like this:

"The average TF2 player doesn't like 6v6, and doesn't want to change."

All of this talk about creating a lobby system and getting Valve to support our game mode is, again as I've mentioned before, a hugely misplaced effort. It would be amazing if Valve gave us what we've wanted, and don't misread my intentions as "stop wanted Valve to help", it's more complicated than that.

As others in the thread have gone over, yeah, Valve isn't interested in helping 6v6 grow. This isn't the same as not wanting competitive TF2 to grow; they've supported highlander a fair amount, and the rumblings of a matchmaking system are just further proof that the company cares at least a little bit about the game.

Anyway, my point is this: the reason 6v6 hasn't grown into something massive isn't because we don't have enough outside influence, it's because people don't like 6v6 TF2. That's something we can't ever change. Now, that being said, there are probably a ton of people out there who would enjoy 6v6 and have never actually heard of or seen it, and although this number could potentially double our league size (triple? quadruple? who knows?), that number is still not a big enough fraction to be worth Valve pouring time and money into.

So, the bottom line and question we should really be asking is "How do we make people who would enjoy 6v6 TF2 aware of its existence?" And the easiest answer to that is something a lot of people have mentioned already, that conflicts pretty heavily with killing's wall

which is to support anything that helps the competitive community as a whole.

While it's true there's a big division between 6v6 and highlander, I think that's a gap we can close if we stop thinking of them as two different games (even though they are - the mentality behind them is the same). Both game modes aim to create a more competitive setting, and both are drastically different from the average TF2 game. It's almost guaranteed that if one grows, the other grows with it, and the easiest mode to grow is obviously highlander. There's no reason for us to think that supporting more 9v9 will kill our community, and there's also no reason to assume that we'll only ever get help from people if we change the way we play.

I liked the slow motion, but the whole video didn't have to be in it. It would have been neat to have it only slow down for the actually fighting, or maybe do the cliched normal - slow down while killing - normal again thing. It was nice at first but then felt like it was dragging on (2 minutes for ~30 seconds of content).

But it was a sweet thing to capture, I didn't catch this game. +1

That's the thing though, other people are consistently doing it with a higher quality. The defense of "there are too many teams to handle and not enough time to proofread or else someone else would do it" doesn't work when someone else is already doing it.

Look, I get it, Deathanchor wrote stuff up at a time when nobody else would step up and consistently put out content. However, that's not the case anymore; regardless of information being correct or not, there's no excuse for getting paid to have awful grammar. Even cond and london have people proofread their stuff to double check, and they do it for free.

I'm not saying Deathanchor is retarded, or that he's a piece of trash writer, but I'm also not going to give him praise for doing mediocre work for my money (albeit a tiny portion thereof) when there are star writers out there who are putting in more effort without the motivation of a weekly check.

cond 4 writer #2012

Didn't see anyone post about this and I just learned about it from a coworker.

This is an [experimental] application that should let you change/remove mouse acceleration and what not on OSX, something that's been a thorn in a lot of people's sides.

It's pretty slick, puts itself right into System Preferences.

Hope it helps.

http://smoothmouse.com/

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but there's a bigger reason beyond just "pub and comp play aren't the same": most people don't want the 6v6 format. It's not just that they don't play it, they have no interest in it. A lot of pub players only play pyro, spy, engineer, because they enjoy it, but you just can't do that in the 6v6 format. It's not that they don't understand it, they just don't want to take part.

tl;dr: As far as gameplay goes, TF2 is as comp-centric as it can get. The issue is a lack of official support from Valve for 6v6 gameplay.

The only interaction I had with Zak was buying a new DeathAdder when he was doing the auction for hardware. I never received it, but when I told him he said he sent me another one right away, and that one actually got to me. I don't know if he actually sent the first one (I've always assumed he did, I even offered to pay for shipping on the second one around and he wouldn't let me) but like other people have said, this seems pretty out-of-character.

He could have been playing the long con, but considering how many other deals he's #closed on that were more than generous, I'd imagine that even if he did take all the money for himself, he only broke even in terms of money donated to TF2.

EDIT: I guess my point is that, to me, there's probably a damn good reason he hasn't been around, but worst case is that all of the money he's put into TF2 was reimbursed by us suckers.

Let's just sit here for a second to think about what these two statements mean.

So, being inspired by NIU_NIU (who even are you?!) but not being nearly as artistically gifted, I decided to start writing a small program to help casters make these.

The idea is, every time there's a new match up, you'd normally have to fill out the image with all the details. Instead, I wrote a C# application that'll take two XML files and insert the information into the appropriate places.

At the moment, I have the program taking two XML files and it fills out each teams' name, roster and logo (the logo at the moment just gets stretched to 184x184, not the best). I'd also like to add a map background, the commentator/cameraman spots, and the stuff at the top. The XML files are pretty simple and can be easily changed if rosters are switched up:
HRG.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<team>
  <name>High Rollers Gaming</name>
  <image>HRG.png</image>
  <scout>cyzer</scout>
  <scout>shrugger</scout>
  <soldier>lansky</soldier>
  <soldier>taggerung</soldier>
  <demoman>b4nny</demoman>
  <medic>shade</medic>
</team>

Crappy interface:

http://i.snag.gy/jOhQc.jpg

Before:

http://i.imgur.com/ywiij8U.png

After:

http://i.imgur.com/UiX0TQ1.jpg

I love crossing

You're still going to bail out our international LAN funds when we haven't raised enough, right?

glhf in your new stuff and don't be a strangerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I'm signing my ESEA team up, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. I know it can be difficult to manage 3 matches a week, but if you at least try to play your CEVO match, you'll help their community.

As far as I'm concerned, CEVO is much more interested in TF2 than ESEA is - the fact that they don't have a LAN is probably the biggest reason they haven't taken over. Regardless, I'd like to see them grow.

Not sure if you were just abbreviating in the post, but preferably having the full URL in the name would be better, since we can't get the TF.TV domain.

Edit:

Back when the game first came out, I was still using GM as a hobby. I started writing simple stuff at first, but then began trying to do aimbots and junk; there was a surprising amount of control on the client end of the game at the time, it pretty much just sent your current state to the server.