Like I said before, it's pretty sad that we let this company control the fate of NA TF2.

When I made my first post, that was before I learned that they straight up lied to us about the 1.9 coins, and it turns out it was closer to 30. The real joke is that we're expected to believe that lpkane was cashing in on these coins for weeks without noticing; yeah right.

So the question now is, what do we do about it? Well, the majority of people are probably going to stick with "nothing". If a lawsuit comes down on ESEA, I would love it, because for all of the good stuff ESEA does for E-Sports they have an about equal amount of "dumb and bad" going on.

Enigma says (and has said pretty heartily in the past) that without ESEA, NA TF2 dies. Let's consider for a moment why that is:
1. Prize pools
2. LAN
3. Anti-Cheat

We could spend all day arguing which is more important than the other, but looking at it, how many people actually agree with this? Open and IM players certainly don't compete for the paycheck (though it's a decent incentive), so the competitiveness definitely doesn't come from there. The LAN us huge for obvious reasons, but I think the two biggest parts are a) reduces cheating at the highest level b) brings a more personal face to the scene, which makes it more interesting to watch. The Anti-Cheat client that ESEA provides is a nice complement to VAC, and would be tough to do without.

So, given all that, it would seem that Europe actually provides a good model for what a community based TF2 league could do (which is probably why it's been talked about to death): they have "premiership" prizes, the i-series LANs, and a community made anti-cheat (I'm not too familiar, how good is it?). Seems like a pretty good deal to me, but it's always met with some form of resistance.

At the risk of ruining all of my valid points, I'm gonna say something I think is on a lot of people's minds: the reason we continue to support ESEA is to keep the top players in the game interested. The mid level open teams who dump a collected hundred or so dollars into the league for a missed-playoffs record certainly aren't gaining much, and the top level open teams have more competitive games scrimming IM teams than playing their lower matches.

Does this help the game grow? Sure, but at what cost? We haven't had a massive jump in open teams in a few seasons, so how much is this really doing? I love watching and playing TF2 on LAN, it really is a different experience. And without a suitable LAN alternative, I don't know how successful an alternative league would be for TF2. Should we rekindle the ESEA boycott fire? Perhaps, perhaps not. All I'm saying is that everyone should really consider what they're putting into the league, versus what they're getting out. If you can justify it, hey, that's fantastic, good luck in the upcoming season (I'll probably still be there despite this wall of text). If not, I hope you can come up with a reasonable alternative.

tldr: esea is the league we need, not the league we deserve (heh)

I think the best part is lpkane being lpkane and just laughing it off like it's no big deal. It really is unfortunate that this is the only way we can keep TF2 going.

A HUD without random ammo colors +1

I play enough TF2 during the week that I don't feel like playing on the weekends. I feel like that might be a root cause of your problems.

Pretty impressive turnaround time, if dropping some of those features meant getting it out in less than a week then I'm okay with that. It looks great for have a short time.

I think it would be nice to just release unedited footage that isn't being used right now, since everything else is so close to being done. I'm sure people wouldn't mind raw tapes of interviews and stuff.

I don't get it

what did you change about the classes

Funny dude with slick moves and rigid aim.

As mentioned: if you can reliably hit the meat on a scout after popping them into the air, there is nothing wrong with it. I would, however, recommend not doing this against any other class with a buff (excepting *maybe* the demo) as it could take more than one shot.

We're not talking about the campaign though, hanbrolo specifically wanted to discuss the use of such derogatory terms among the community.

In regards to your first point, though: yes, I understand that telling an asshole to stop being an asshole will never work (lookin' at you june hahahahahaha), but my point was that there's no reason we need to encourage them. June talks about double standards: is it not a double standard to think it's bad when someone is actually trying to insult someone when they call them a faggot, but then toss the word around jokingly with your friends?

I don't really care one way or the other, I just think it's silly the way people try to justify the use of their language - after all, if you don't think it's a big deal, why defend it so vigorously?

This is pretty much the most important and valid argument, and one nobody seems to understand when they say "don't be offended".

A lot of people have said "if we ban it, it gives people who use it more power"; this is just ridiculous. The only way this becomes a truth is if we turned words like "faggot" around to be positive things - you don't take negativity away with more negativity.

To the people who haven't experienced what it means to be hurt by these words (and this includes gay people who aren't offended when a hiding spot is "gay"), you should probably learn that your personal experience is never, ever going to be the same as someone else's.

The biggest argument in favor of tossing these words around seems to be "it shouldn't bother people because I _______" - what makes you the authority on what shouldn't be offensive, or what other people should or shouldn't feel? You ask for the freedom to say whatever you want, but then you say that other people don't deserve to be offended by what you say? If it's their choice to be offended by certain things, then it's your choice to be offensive - whether you mean it or not.

The point is, you have the choice to either say something that's potentially offensive and has negative connotations, or simply use a different word (which, really, how hard is that?) to express yourself. It really shouldn't be this difficult to understand.

But that's because keys are becoming more valuable, not because buds are becoming less so.

cp_badlands.

Am I alone in not liking to even spectate gravelpit?

lan is over carl time to get back to work