Come to think of it, I have a few of these stories, but I think one of the worst to experience was when my mom's ex paid a bunch of meth-heads to break into our house and steal our stuff cause she owed him a bunch of money.

Edit: Actually, probably the worst I'd be willing to post here was when my sister got her teeth knocked out + a concussion while being assaulted by a couple of dudes for being trans... in San Francisco, supposed gay paradise. Scumbags.

No longer looking.

My boyfriend is about to be nearly as unavailable due to Dark Souls as I am due to TF2. B)

Only other math major TF2er I've met, so automatic thumbs up. ;)

Yeah, I paid $1900 for my wisdom teeth out before I got insurance. Same price for three cavities filled. £220 seems a dream.

On this topic, my friend likes to say, "You have no idea how much money is in my mouth..."

Naw, I don't think the 14-win folks would switch around, seeing as it's kinda similar to the bubble teams from last season (see the thread I linked before). As in, not every team that went 14-2 this season played every other team with the same record, so head-to-head rules won't be applied. Like what tsc said.

The sorting you're using is like... an amalgam of different factors. It's not esea is gonna go, "Okay, we'll apply rounds but override that for head-to-head record when it exists kinda." If esea does follow their rules for open, they'll go down the list in order. That is, if there's a tie in record, they look at H2H. If that doesn't apply for all teams tied in record, they go to rounds.

I don't like at all that there's a rule system that doesn't work directly with the rankings generated throughout the season, though. It's just a baad website, man. Nothing is transparent.

If that's the case, we would play diexxxtracrispy and The Baddies would get Decent Dudes. :0

The funny thing is if we and the Baddies switched and then diexxxtracrispy and Decent Dudes switched, we would all still have the same first-round matches. It would only change second round. Still, that would mean us not facing wood pig second round, if we made it past the first.

My team had the head-to-head thing come up last season with the team Open Winners, though, and what I've heard is that head-to-head record doesn't actually mean anything unless you're in invite, regardless of what the rules actually say, haha. Thing is, though, we and the Baddies are the only ones with a 12-4 record... hmm...

For anyone else who looks at this, just fyi: the dev site is only going to be used for testing now, no pugs. So, please direct yourself to na.pug.champ.gg. It's not just for open players.

There's a decent-sized group of TF2 players in Portland, including me and eXtine. There are occasional meetups, so maybe one could be arranged while you're around. :3

Portland has a barcade that can be pretty fun, so that's been a destination for us in the past.

http://www.neighborhoodnotes.com/uploads/images/ground-kontrol.jpg

Exile, now luvsic, has been on rival teams for mine, rising at the same pace, for over a year now:

https://i.gyazo.com/0a5ebb4477b33f2ed48e891d02277897.png

He's definitely a big fragger, and though I haven't had the experience of actually playing with him, I feel confident in saying he deserves to move to IM next season. He is always level-headed and friendly when we interact, the kind of player I'd like to continue to know for a long time to come. :3

idk, metalworks is one of the few maps I still wanna play on after a week of scrims. I like it a heck of a lot more than sunshine, that's for sure.

Ed has coined "Bear hugs" as our new congratulatory phrase in honor of that match. :D

God, I love my team.

Yeah, but that's a challenge everywhere. It's not like playing in ESEA = magically having the same level of motivation. It's all about finding the right team... or setting your own standards for who you pick up on your own team.

I don't buy it. I think there should always be a place for people to try and play comp for free. That's not to mention that UGC actually does some things better than ESEA, like scheduling.

In my experience, there are a lot of committed steel and silver 6s teams to give good practice for people who want to improve. I think people forget that or never have an opportunity to see it because gold+ is mostly just ESEA-ers fucking around since it's closer to their level.

My team got two seasons of experience in UGC first and then went 9-7 in our first season of open. That means we've had balanced competition that whole time. That was a much, much better experience than I think paying a bunch of money just to lose a lot, get salty, and then die would have been. diexxxtracrispy is another good example, given that half of their players are totally new to ESEA this season. Meanwhile, have you noticed that basically all of the newbie mixes teams are dead, like most low open teams? That's because playing in low open kind of sucks. I get how it's a good idea in theory to direct people here and build up a base of newer players in the division, but in practice, I think that that experience can be more discouraging than saying, "You might wanna try UGC," ever could be.