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| SteamID3 | [U:1:39743963] |
| SteamID32 | STEAM_0:1:19871981 |
| Country | United States |
| Signed Up | April 11, 2014 |
| Last Posted | October 25, 2015 at 3:09 PM |
| Posts | 27 (0 per day) |
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Hype time gents. The site is at the stage where we're starting to use it internally to play lobbies. In fact we'll be streaming our first two at http://www.twitch.tv/kevinispwn
Come and watch as we inevitably find every embarrassing bug our alpha-stage site has to offer and we make fools of ourselves :D
How is hacking going to be dealt with? MM will introduce a huge incentive for hackers like we see in CS:GO. Do they plan on adding an overwatch-style system like what's in CS:GO or are there alternatives being discussed?
SheoThis may be late, but if you have the steam email verifications on trades, there's a slim chance you can get your stuff back? I'm not actually 100% sure, but the info in this thread, and the screenshots of the twitch chat is some pretty good evidence to show to valve.
Like I said I don't know if its a 100% solution, but its worth a shot I suppose.
No reason he should just play the victim and fuck over people who were doing something genuine.
No chance at all because it was you giving the items over. Valve expects you to do your own due diligence. If they can confirm your account was hacked, that's really the only time they'd give you back items.
perfect_numberaccording to plotchy and co. - snoven probably wasn't originally going to steal the unusuals, but decided just to run with it once the event was ruined. ofc I'm not excusing his actions or blaming this post
That's snoven trying to push this whole victim mentality thing he has going. He's trying to push blame onto others, it's something scammers and con artists do all the time.
Bucakeanyone else wonder if they might get to keep a percentage of the donations that went through Flares that Care..?
donating via their 'primary donation page' actually donates to "Flares that Care 2 benefiting Child's Play Charity".
because, even though the event seems to be cancelled, he keeps spamming that donation link.
while an actually direct donation would go to "Child's Play Charity" (which would also be a different link).
It's just branding many charity sites do. The link lets them track how many donations were made on behalf of the event.
CingOfSpadesOn the other hand, that's a genuine mistake, and before calling him out for being an awful person, consider first that he may just not have known any better.
Yeah, it's really hard to say he might not have known any better when he gloats about scamming people. From the OP:
DigresserHere’s the post where he gloats about his scamming to his victims. While the entire despicable thing is worth reading, here is the key bit: “In total, I gained somewhere near the 40 bud range of total input from people specifically from the vsh server, and I appreciate it greatly. It pleases me greatly that simply by asking for s*** from all of you, and pretending to care, or make some effort to scam it, via a broker, ill pay you back, etc., I could get ALL OF THAT.”
ApolloftwThe best thing to do is report shoven on steamrep. http://steamrep.com/
Please don't flood the steamrep system unless you yourself were actually scammed or have actual proof he was attempting to scam you. If you're like the wrench (sp?) guy who posted an alleged chat log then you have a real case, but those of us who haven't donated to him shouldn't make reports.
snovenI'll be leaving this account to attempt to try yet another at clearing my plate and trying to be a different person, which probably will burn and fail again...
ITEMS WILL BE RETURNED IF ASKED OTHERWISE WILL BE SOLD
FTC WILL GO ON for an hour at 12:00 PM PST for anybody expecting it for them to donate towards Child's Play for an hour.
I will no longer be running FTC nor do I expect anybody else to run it, if you do want to take over from my place to make it truly a charitable event, with all of the beautiful artwork done by Fox, Jess, and Blutz I'd suggest using it instead of wasting their hard work, I don't ask for forgiveness, I ask for you all to continue FTC as your own, truly charitable event.
Goodbye everyone
The correct response is to face your past, be very transparent about it, and then be very transparent about the event. Give someone else trustworthy control of the bot so they can handle the expensive items. If you were really trying to atone for your past crimes, this is what you'd do. The absolute wrong thing you could possibly do is try to hide it all by making a new account and trying to make yourself the victim here.
Is your criticism about the gametype or the lack of a solid support structure around it? Tools like TF2center and other pug sites/IRCs have had several years to develop a convenient interface for separate tools to make the gametype more accessible. It just seems to me a bit unfair to criticize the gametype itself for not being popular enough for someone to come up with a convenient UI to set up an A:R pug.
Things like people not knowing what classes they're going to play without a pre-game discussion comes from a solid meta not existing yet. 6's allows players to play any class in the game, but a long standing and refined meta makes the game a bit more predictable. Given enough time and playing, A:R will undoubtedly find its meta that people can rely on.
I understand your criticism of the whitelist, but even when you do have whitelists you still have a pretty limited set of what you can play. In 6's, most soldiers are going to be running the gunboats and never switch off of it. Scouts will just about always run the same loadouts. Demo runs stock.
I dunno, I just think your criticism is more about the A:R meta not being well flushed out than it is with the gametype itself.
Edit: Reworked my argument from a point-by-point criticism to a general one that's easier to read.
Radmanhttp://youtu.be/e31OSVZF77w
I actually think Extra Credits - Pro Gaming - What Esports Needs to Grow is super relevant for this discussion.
Extra Credits: Balancing for Skill is also another great video to watch as background material when discussing weapon balancing.
bowswer5CrayboffWhat I mean is by the game isn't altered from regular gameplay is that competitive and casual play is similar and consistent. When new weapons are added, you have to try to adapt the scene to those new weapons if possible. I'm not saying every single weapon should be whitelisted, but the scene should allow for the game to move in that direction instead of vehemently trying to stick to "pure" gameplay.
You're missing the point that pub TF2 is and has always been a random and mindless gamemode in comparison to the pub versions of more popular e-sports, ruining any hope of consistency between competitive and public modes in this game from the very beginning. Pub League/Dota and CS:GO are miles ahead of pub TF2 in complexity, structure and competitive appeal.
If you understand that, then you will understand why everyone who sees the competitive appeal in 6v6 or Highlander is against bringing in more elements of play from pub TF2. By doing so it would sacrifice the game's competitive structure and appeal for the more casual crowd who already prefer to play the game in its random and mindless format. It's a lose-lose situation if we sell out the game to pub players because what allowed the game to remain inherently competitive isn't there anymore.
Highlander is the best in-between we have with a lot of room for skill and strategy that still has some pub resemblance and that's as far as we can go. Of course the only way around this issue is to make competitive TF2 the new pub TF2 instead of vice versa, but because TF2 makes money off things unrelated to our competitive scene that will never happen.
I agree with most of what you're saying. Pub tf2 is supposed to be a casual mostly unstructured experience and competitive is different from that. But the point I'm trying to get across is that if you approach the future of competitive in a it-has-to-be-this-one-way mentality, then you eliminate the possibility for improving the scene and growing it.
I don't have a solution for what exactly needs to be done to grow the scene, but I know the worst thing would be to shut ourselves off from doing things like bringing more weapons into the whitelist or some other changes.
downpourInstead, consistency means the that the game isn't hugely altered from regular gameplay and that it stays with a single game instead of changing to new ones every few years.i dont understand how you can hold both these ideas since releasing new weapons is essentially changing the game
TLDR; Fear of change and improvement leads to stagnation. Refusing to make the game more accessible to new players in an attempt to keep the game more "pure" is the best way to put a death sentence on a scene.
What I mean is by the game isn't altered from regular gameplay is that competitive and casual play is similar and consistent. When new weapons are added, you have to try to adapt the scene to those new weapons if possible. I'm not saying every single weapon should be whitelisted, but the scene should allow for the game to move in that direction instead of vehemently trying to stick to "pure" gameplay.
I'll update my post to clarify that.
aatjeThe reason competitive TF2 is hugely underplayed relative to its quality as an e-sport is that it exists within one of the most ridiculously bloated, impure free-to-play video games currently existing. Valve's Game is more of virtual shopping mall than an actual game. And then within this virtual shopping mall, there's this relatively minimal, pure FPS game, existing in direct contradiction to everything around it.
No, there are several reasons why competitive TF2 isn't popular, but this "purity" argument has nothing to do with it. Both poster childs of "impurity", in your expressed opinion, are two of the most massively popular esports there are. If "impure" games can be very popular, than how in the world can the "impurity" be what is limiting TF2?
aatjeTruly, those who advocate moving towards Valve's Game are asking the question, "How can we make competitive TF2 more accessible and attractive to casual TF2 players?" But they fail to take the next step in that line of questioning. Why would someone who wants to play a competitive video game look to TF2 in the first place?
Competitive TF2 is not drawing from other TF2 players. It is drawing from other potential competitive FPS players.
Well that's not entirely true. I hate most almost every FPS out there, but love TF2. Being a TF2 player is what got me into competitive. I can name a dozen other friends who feel the same way. Also people don't devote a thousands of hours into a game just because it's a FPS but rather because they enjoy it. You don't go into comp in any game merely because it's an FPS.
aatjeThe problem for competitive TF2 isn't casual player's lack of interest or pub server's, it's other competitive FPS games. If competitive TF2 did the things Valve would need it to do to get Valve's support, you'd lose that competition anyway. People who play competitive CS:GO don't want to play Valve's Game. So, you really can't win. We need to accept that and accept that making competitive 6s as good as possible is way more important than chasing popularity.
Developing a scene for only the most hardcore is the best way to put a death sentence on it. People inevitably get burnt out and if you don't have a steady influx of fresh blood to take their spot or bring fresh ideas then you inevitably run out of people who are willing to play.
aatjeAt the end of the day, there is no "solution" to make competitive TF2 big. It's very existence as a very pure game within the realm of TF2 is almost a paradox. To dilute the quality of the game to chase popularity is ethically wrong and a disservice to the competitive players who are already playing the game.
"dilute the quality of the game" Again, this is an argument that fears change and fear only leads to limitation and alienation. If you design a scene for a hardcore niche, it can never ever grow and become big. Accessibility is probably the most important hurdle for e-sports (as the video below goes into in detail) and tf2 already suffers from huge problems of inaccessibilty. Focusing on making the game more "pure" or focusing on limiting the player pool only will make this problem more apparent.
At the very least, please watch this Extra Credits discussion on what pro gaming needs in order to be successful. While you're watching it, please keep in mind that the consistency he talks about isn't the same thing as the "purity" you have discussed in this thread. Instead, consistency means the that the competitive game isn't hugely altered from regular gameplay and that it stays with a single game instead of changing to new ones every few years.
TLDR; Fear of change and improvement leads to stagnation. Refusing to make the game more accessible to new players in an attempt to keep the game more "pure" is the best way to put a death sentence on a scene.
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Whoops, this didn't look nearly as long while I was typing it up in notepad, sorry guys!
continued:
aatjeThe problem with looking at popular e-sports for advice on the question of "How to make TF2 bigger" is that when we look at CS:GO and LoL, we are not actually looking at the e-sports equivalents of basketball or American Football, we are looking at the e-sports equivalents of the NBA and the NFL. LoL and CS:GO are businesses run by Riot and Valve, which are themselves businesses. They are not e-sports, they are video games. TF2 is the same. They all exist to make money. Basketball does not exist to make money. Soccer does not exist to make money. The NBA and the Premiership do, to an extent, but they also have a distinctly public character or charter which is totally absent from e-sports.
Every single successful sport you have mentioned are ones that only thrive because of the cultural phenomenon that I mentioned above. That's what the "public character or charter" thing is you're talking about.
aatjeLoL makes money by selling champions. CS:GO makes money by selling skins and weapons, but it is not free-to-play. The competitive versions of those games are designed to reinforce features that make money. They are not necessarily designed to be the best competition possible.
LoL is by far the worst offender. The level of competition is almost criminally sabotaged by LoL's aggressive patching and the ludicrously large champion pool. Valve's monetization of CS:GO is saintly compared to Riot's of LoL, or even compared to Valv'es own structure in TF2.
LoL is played at a hugely competitive level. Certainly they make money off people buying champions and sure they might improve some people's experiences if they didn't require people to purchase the champions. But that doesn't make the gameplay itself any less competitive. That doesn't stop people from wanting to play the game or stop them from running in droves to watch high level competitive play. Merely pointing at the success of the game and its competitive community has been is enough evidence to show that, in general, people don't see LoL as an uncompetitive money grab you seem to be suggesting.
aatjeIf he didn't get the weapon for free, he can trade. Valve prides itself on the secondary economy, and talks about how much value they create for their users. What they never talk about is whether the time that new player spends trying to hand off his $4 sniper rifle in exchange for some alternate scattergun is time not spent actually playing the game(!) Valve's Game is one that has a flourishing virtual economy at the direct expense of actual gameplay. If you count time in TF2 spent buying hats time spent playing TF2, you have a weird definition of playing but probably a very accurate definition of TF2.
If that new player wants to get his better weapons through random drops and without going to the store, then he has to sink a lot of time into the game all the while playing, by that person's own definition, a competitive disadvantage. During those many hours, he is building an awareness of all the other cosmetic shit Valve has thrown into TF2. Valve's support of competitive DoTA or CS:GO comes from the fact that the competitive versions of the game make them money. Competitive TF2 does not. It's that simple.
If there is one thing that TF2 is applauded for over just about any other game with weapon unlocks, it's that its stock weapons rarely give you a disadvantage. Sure there are some that are a little bit better, there are very stock weapons that are just plain bad.
aatjeIn CS:GO, you are never at any competitive disadvantage by never spending money on weapons. This is because CS:GO is not free-to-play. That's the trade-off, right there.
Your arguement is that because you have to pay to play CS:GO, it is competitive. But because you have to pay to play TF2 and LoL competitively, it's not competitive? You're paying all of these situations while at the same time letting casual players who don't care about comp to experience the game. Plus, it is a LOT cheaper to purchase every single TF2 weapon, not to mention just the good ones used in competitive, from the community store than it is to buy CS:GO itself.
aatjeOthers have made this same argument and come to the conclusion that competitive TF2 needs to embrace Valve's game. The problem is that by the argument's admitted logic, you would be making changes to competitive TF2 for reasons other than improving competitive TF2. You are looking to increase the player base. Bigger might sometimes be better, but bigger is definitely never better when enlargening it comes from knowingly making it worse. Worse != Better
The point of "Valve's Game" was to explore whether or not all of the disallowed weapons should be left disallowed. If you watched the games and read the feedback, you'll see that there were only a very small few weapons that actually made gameplay less fun for the players (quickfix and BFB were really the only two that made any sort of difference in those games). What it showed was that not every weapon is great for competitive, but at the same time that doesn't mean we should be so quick to write off more weapons just because it's "impure".
Also the worst thing you can do when trying to grow a community (which you need to constantly do if you want the community to survive, you need new blood to replace those who inevitably get burnt out and to bring fresh ideas into the mix) is to limit it to please a small niche of players. "Impurity" as proven by LoL and CS:GO doesn't necessarily mean that it is making the game worse.
aatjeIt is fundamentally wrong, perhaps even immoral, to make changes to a game or sport with the aim of increasing popularity or profit. The sport exists to be the best version of the sport. That's the fundamental difference between e-sports and real sports, although some real sports are equal violators of this principle. Notably, the NFL changed it's version of football to cater to fantasy football, which has become its most important audience. This has led to rule changes that have inflated offensive statistics and diluted the game.
Yes, of course these changes are value judgments. It's all aesthetics at some level. You can argue that the NFL is better and more entertaining today than it was ten years ago. The NBA has gone the opposite direction, being true to its sport, relaxing defensive restrictions which led to the stale iso-ball of the Jordan era. The league is stronger and better to watch and follow than ever. Franchise prices and TV money has soared accordingly.
So, both approaches can increase popularity. You can increase popularity by improving the game (NBA) or you can increase popularity by making changes that increase popularity (NFL).
I hate being that guy, but your arguments are entirely subjective and come from a place where change is feared. A change that leads to more popularity means that change was considered a good change for a lot more people than those who didn't think it was a good idea. Sure some changes can make a game less fun and less popular, but that doesn't mean that change is bad.
I apologize in advance, my response will span over multiple posts.
aatjeWe see this exact sort of approach in the popular MOBAs. League of Legends has more than a hundred champions, each with different abilities, strengths and weaknesses... Just as in the absurd soccer hypothetical, direct competition between human beings is reduced by all this other stuff, by these impurities.
CS:GO is impure in a different way. CS:GO has a variety of weapons and grenades, but FPS's probably need a variety. Rather, CS is impure because of its economy. The economy reduces direct competition between players because in a majority of rounds teams do not have equal or equivalent equipment. This means not only are the players competing against each other, the guns and grenades are competing against each other. Just like the champions, or the random crap in the soccer hypothetical, the presence of additional factors is cluttering and crowding out direct competition. This is what we walk about when we talk about impurities.
CS:GO and LoL may both be "impure" but you're missing the biggest point. They've gotten MUCH more popular than TF2 both in casual comp and in tourney play. Those are two of the biggest e-sports of all time so obviously "purity" isn't stopping people from having fun playing it. E-sports are different from real sports, which I will go into more later.
aatjeThe vital difference is that in TF2, you don't buy Soldiers and Scouts, or Medics and Demomen, and you can't have three scouts or two medics because you have more money. Clockwork and b4nny never have to run out to mid with pistols against their opponent's scatterguns because their team is eco-ing a round. They are always competing directly against their opponents. That is the purity of competitive TF2. Everything is always the same. That allows the actual players to create all of the differences.
Perhaps one of the most telling issues with "everything is always the same" is that once things are strategies are standardized things don't usually change that much. I'm one of the people who can appreciate the slight differences made by individual skill, but a large majority of the audience can't see that in every single game. Sure they may appreciate skill, but after you've watched hundreds of casts it really does start looking very repetitive. I don't blame anyone for getting bored watching a game that doesn't leave too much room for innovation. When developing a strong e-sport, one of the most important things you can do is
I'll discuss at least one reason why real life sports can get away with it later.
aatjeMost rounds of CS:GO feature one team having superior equipment than their opponent and some aspect of worrying about preserving equipment. TF2 players never have to back away from a fight to save a sticky launcher. If you don't understand this argument about purity and directness, consider that most CS:GO matches feature multiple rounds where a player chooses not to fight his opponent in order to save his own gun. In these common situations, the game encourages non-competitiveness. Even the best player in the world would be sometimes recommended not to try his hardest to win the round, because of the way the economy works in the game.
I disagree with this point completely. You'll frequently have TF2 players backing off of fights so they can defend the next point. Dying puts a player completely out of play for quite a few seconds which can be a huge penalty just as losing powerful weapons in CS:GO can be. Even the best medic or demo in the world will be recommended to back off from a lost mid-fight to help stop the enemy from rolling quickly to last, because of the way respawn timers works in the game.
aatjeLoL is truly ridiculous with the limits it pushes impurities. At least in CS:GO, teams switch sides at the half. In LoL, whatever champion differences exist last through the entire match. Analysts frequently say a given match was won in the pick/ban phase. Consider how ridiculous that is! LoL is a game where it's valid to argue the match was decided before it was played. That's the complete opposite of direct competition. The competition between players was literally prevented by the advantage one team had from their champion selections.
But LoL is one of the most successful e-sports of all time. Its "impurity" is obviously not stopping people from having fun playing it.
aatjeA version of competitive TF2 where strategy is about gaining advantage with your weapons is a version of competitive TF2 where teams are actively seeking to minimize direct competition between players. In some respect, that's all that strategy is: gaining advantages beyond of skill level. That means the more strategy in a sport, the less direct competition that sport has. In a way, strategy is an impurity. It's all about efficiently and elegantly creating strategic options without adding bullshit like a hundred champions or a hundred weapons.
Regardless of how many champions or weapons you add, people will still choose which are best in a certain situation. The second a meta is established (which happens really, really quickly), the game goes back to being about the players' individual skill and ability to adapt.
aatjeCompare Tennis and American Football. Tennis of course still has a great deal of strategy, and any fan can recall the way Nadal deliberately attacks Federer's backhand. Boxing is similar. Boxing and Tennis have a ton of strategy. But the NFL, by comparison, has a ton of tons. 90% of the NFL's millions of spectators can understand no more than 10% of the strategic levels the game is operating on, all the myriad the schemes and playcalls. LoL is similar.
Of course, the NFL and LoL are wildly popular. But so are the World Cup and Wimbledon. It is safe to say that competitive TF2 is not wildly popular. That doesn't mean it needs to be changed.
Real life sports are popular largely because love for the game is handed down from one generation to the next. Those who have fathers who love watching baseball will most likely love baseball themselves. Real life sports become a lot more just the game itself, from the audience side of things (which is arguably the most important aspect of things like the NFL) the game isn't so much about an individual person's skill or "pure" gameplay as it is generating experiences and memories with close friends and family. Sports are a cultural phenomenon that lasts and grows through generations.
Video games literally just do not last long enough for that to happen. New games come out very frequently and those that have stuck around (Counter Strike, TF2, Starcraft) have only been around for 10 years. They have only reached any sembelence of popularity in the west during the last 3-4 years which isn't enough time to grow up with it then pass it down to your children. When e-sports become an ingrained aspect of a widespread culture experience, that's when you can deal with "purity" and your "purity" arguments start taking hold.
Until then, it only limits innovation and growth in a field that has a lot of competition. Products and businesses don't last long in the world if they only cater to their small niche and don't constantly work to evolve and improve on themselves.
Real life sports and e-sports are entirely different beasts at the moment. It is idiocy to ignore decisions that are successful in e-sports just because you disagree with them.