Heyo Fraac,

http://youtu.be/4MRQXsgbbSg (It says 90 minutes from now)

I massively reduced the quality of the render, which seems to have helped with the black screens thing - just looks really bad, but I'm busy from time to time and cant justify spending 2 hours rendering, 2 hours uploading lol.

Things to say:

I go over a lot of the negatives of your teamplay in the video so I won't go over that here, one thing I don't say in the video though, is that I witness you making a conscious effort a few times to put bodies between yourself and chasing scouts, which is a great improvement to your personal play :D

psttt. submit demos in my thread brah' and I'll at least give you demo reviews until you get better mentors :D

Here are just a few more things that I would like to add to the pot.

The donation stream isn't a bad idea and it could certainly help grow the game, I got interested in some of the guys from ADGQ and you can see several of them have talked about the spike in stream viewers they personally get now due to that event giving them so much exposure - it's a symbiotic relationship that ultimately benefits everybody involved.

Frag videos. It sounds stupid, but how many people can attest to the fact that a well produced frag video got them beyond "hey people play tf2 comp, that's neat" to "maybe I want to try this" We've been kind of in a lull as far as frag vids go since Cla's "pop culture"

More consistent match streaming. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we need to just re-air casts, or even post-produce casts and put them on as many nights as possible. VTV has been doing stuff everyday lately with fairly good numbers and their stuff is live - but it's not unusual to see a star craft stream rebroadcasting stuff for the second or third time in a day with 900+ viewers. Plus it would allow for rivalries to be built up to be a bit more than they really are - whenever bp. plays mix^ there should be a rebroadcast of the last several LAN finals or upper bracket finals etc. This is easy, all you have to have is a guy who can stream log in under the proper account and go to work. Not to mention that people who miss games would have less of an excuse - plus you could air stuff when the majority of the comp community isn't playing. Perhaps I'm wrong, but more page views can't hurt yeah?

I would also suggest, beyond what has already been established, that we have a serious discussion about systematizing how camera work is done for casts, and perhaps recording from multiple perspectives so that rebroadcasts can be more efficient or serve different purposes. I'm not criticizing anybody's recent camera work, but just imagine that you had never seen snakewater before, one minute you're looking at something thing you have no idea what it is.... then you see it again and you begin to get the flow of the map down, and then WAM some scout is doing stuff in some place that may as well be Mars, and you can't really understand what's so great about Mars other than that red and blu are there too. I would even suggest, although I'm sure it'd be boring for casters, that like in Star Craft, that 15+ wait time at the start of the cast should be spent talking about different spots on the map - we need to start assuming that people don't know whats going on and would be more engaged by the content if we explained it more.

Yeah sometimes the POV demo forces me to look at them and sometimes it doesn't I don't really know why :/

Feel free to send more anytime :D

Here you are fraac: http://youtu.be/aP1i-LNL3e8 (it says it'll be up in ~2 hours)

I don't have too many additional observations to add here - some things I ought to have said in the video:

Check your scoreboard more often, since this is a POV demo I'm under the impression that it would have forced me to see it also if you had done so, I may be wrong - and if so I am sorry, but you should basically try to look at the scoreboard every so often to see what sort of situations you have brewing.

Also, be more careful about where you stand (I go over that several times in the video but just a friendly reminder here).

And lastly, check behind you more often, you should flip around whenever you're just standing around every few seconds just to make random spy picks, ninja players, and other things less viable for your opponents.

No worries your video is rendering fraac should be up in a few hours time - unless it turns out as badly as maidos' video did and then I'll have to rerender - Quality assurance :D lol

fun to play terrible pugs with - less rage than me in said terrible pugs.

nice vidya

Yeah I have no idea why vegas was so mad while I was recording that lol But it took 2 hours to render and about that long to upload even with all the black frames - so I decided to be lazy lol.

A few things for you too maidos.

In my opinion, the hardest part of playing demo (and that thing that separates the top tier demos from the rest) is knowing when to be really aggro and when to be more careful. It's something you'll be working on forever prolly - so don't feel bad about it :D

As far as referencing that last push or really any push with tons of uber advantage: you want to push 2 people in ahead of the medic, and one follows up, who are also ubered. Why? Well, you can just flash them, the other team can never kill anybody because you just flash on them, and if they pop kritz on you - so much the better because even if your medic drops somebody you're still invincible. Whenever you push with full advantage (30+%) basically nobody should die because they should just get in the uber if things get dangerous.

As far as your demo play I don't really have anything else to suggest - I'd work with your team on making your pocket do more work - you're being forced into a lot of demo only pushes, and those are actually really hard and it strips you of your ability to kill all the grouped up people sometimes because it forces you to shoot all your ammo so as not to have bad ubers etc.

Submit as many demos as you like and I can go over more stuff - if you'd just like an analysis of pushes and holds just send an STV and I can even draw silly things with my mouse cursor lol.

@ #15 doller:

Yeah... I mean it's always for the best to try to use your weapons and have the heals from my understanding you should be getting oodles of heals, so really only go to melee if you absolutely have to.

2. It really depends on the map. If you can't get close or shouldn't try to get close you should charge stickies - it's also good for peeking and shooting a deep sticky. HL works a bit differently from sixes so I can't really advise you on the specifics, and I'm sure lots of demos get away with just arcing their stickies since you don't tend to have a ton of long range engagements.

Uh....

I have played a little highlander, but I don't think I'd be all that helpful/knowledgeable on the subject. :(

I guess you can ask but I may not have anything useful for you.

Here you are Maidos: http://youtu.be/ad-mZ86md2A (video will be ready in an hour and 1/2)

- The render screwed up several times in many places, but it's not so bad that you can't see the whole thing or something bad like that - you should still be able to learn :D It's just so long that I don't want to do it a bunch of times again to fix it - call it laziness.

Some general commentary:

1. Your team needs to have a little more cohesion on pushes - sometimes you guys are losing points you shouldn't because some people are playing super passive, while others are playing aggressively. You need to all be on the same page.

2. Look into managing your ammo better - there are several times where you completely unload and then miss golden opportunities for damage/kills because you've got no way to hurt anybody.

3. Your medic should look at the way he's healing people - there are many times when buffs are being handed out when he should just be focused on building, or when you're being used as the primary pusher, whereas the pocket would probably be better suited to that.

4. You guys have a lot of issues with when to push and when not to push - and also when and how to hold. Also you guys spread out a lot when you have premium uber advantage - if you've got 50+% uber you shouldn't bother splitting up, keep 3 combat classes in the uber and make sure people know to go to your med if they're hurt.

5. Don't stack cap points, push up - unless you're going to deny lots of people forward spawns.

If you'd like me to outline my philosophy on when and how to hold, and when and how to push I suppose I could whip something up if you think it would be helpful to supplement this video.

Feel free to submit more!

Here you go Barry it'll be done uploading in about 100 minutes it says :D

http://youtu.be/D-RJ3od95hA

Some general commentary if you happen to check this.

1. Tell your team not to bump you on rollouts if at all possible and make sure you practice all of them. Even if it's just 2-3 times maybe 3 minutes a day. Starting out you can gain huge advantages for yourself by being faster than everybody else at your relative skill level.

2. I outline how you could try changing your behavior relative to the combo that will make you somewhat more successful. I would recommend (if this is something you'd like to look deeper into) looking at any invite demo's behavior (IM would work too I guess in most cases) during pushes.

3. Try and get your team to not stack every cap in the world and push up - the only time you should stack a point is if they have TONS of people dead and you're confronted with the potential of denying them forward spawn (which gives you the second pt for free if you're fast).

4. Somebody should pressure last - you only ever die on last because somebody isn't doing their job (or you had a bad push, but that happens sometimes).

It probably isn't invite or prem quality, but I remember some CEVO (maybe) or some other org's casts from eons ago of 7v7 from prior to medlocks.