The casual community doesn't even know why it hates comp. Competitive tf2, especially 6v6 is just not accessible due to the basic level of skill you need to even function in an open or newcomer team. People act like anyone could come in and pick up the game and have fun, but you can't in competitive.

If you do not understand the basics of aiming, movement and maps/rollouts you will be at such a disadvantage from the get go. If you find a team to scrim with and play competitive in other games you kinda are playing near the peak of that games competitive skill. TF2 is no different, the average open player can pubstomp relatively easily. However there is no transition from pub to competitive.

Valve tried to make one and it sucked and was infested with hackers they did nothing about for years. Faceit not being popular also sucked, as they could have actually had a proper regular newbie 6v6 experience.

Those pubbers you try to convince to play comp who are actually capable (think uncletopia tryhards) are scared to lose. They just don't want to admit it. They will come up with every excuse in the book. However they don't want to lose. They don't want to try to win either, they just want to win. Out of the tens of people I've seen cry about comp players, only one was self aware enough to say that they just aren't good enough to compete and they just want to stomp pubs, but they can't anymore cus of comp players.

Those kinds of people who hide behind a veil of lies and excuses are just pussies as far as I'm concerned and if they read this, put your money where your mouth is and learn how to play 6s by playing highlander lobbies first, then 6s lobbies on tf2c. Prove that you are actually good at the game instead of just crying how comp players ban your favourite weapon, or just admit that you like your free wins.

I dont play overwatch anymore, but sometimes I still skim the overwatch (think r/tf2) / overwatch university subreddit (think r/truetf2 except alive and with a ranking system) and the singular biggest current complaint is about tanks being rock paper scissors and people not wanting to play that game. People want to play their main and have them viable, even at a small disadvantage just not at the current massive disadvantages they see.

There is decent insight and self awareness where the players actually acknowledge that it's necessary to either have incredibly weak or strong tanks. They either are weak and do nothing and noone plays them, making the counter matchups have less impact, or they are strong and do stuff and therefore the counters are also exaggerated.

I guarantee if tf2 was the same rock, paper, scissors, there would be the same sentiment. It's a known thing that redditors don't know what they want, and this is a prime example.

I'm actually a huge advocate of offclasses, and I really don't think they are used correctly, especially in NA. Not only do american teams NOT offclass on last by default (see how often they have scouts on last during last LAN), but no region really uses a class that is strong based on the point of the map. Personally I think the usage of pyros during ubers and heavies for post ubers is not utilised nearly as much as it should be for it being such a strong strategy on multiple points of different maps.

Instead of forcing someone to play pyro to counter soldier, and then another guy to run heavy to counter the pyro, then another to run sniper to counter the heavy, they should use those classes to properly play according to the maps aswell as what the enemy is playing and they would be able to play their mains. Or just play highlander.

I see quite a lot of MH cases when I work on an ambulance, and there are two things that really remain consistent. One is that it doesn't matter how much you help someone if they don't want to help themselves. The other is that there are some people who just can't be helped, even if they want it. They will assault people and they will cause serious harm to others without realising it.

I don't know if ROL falls in either of these categories, but you have to see that these sorts of threats are not normal behaviour of an adult and are not fixed with kindness and respect. If they are fixable, it is done by proper medical therapies and medication. Giving people who are mentally unwell, especially incorrectly medicated schizophrenics (they have prescribed medication but they would not be allowed to attend whilst taking the medication) the space to do stuff like shoot themselves in the head means they WILL follow through with the threats. An online community of gamers has 0% chance of helping this person, and will ACTIVELY BE PUTTING THEMSELVES IN DANGER BY TRYING.

Having interacted with people like this DURING their mental health crisis, I would personally NOT go to any event they had a chance to show up to and I would suggest to remove them from the greater community if the organisers of these events wanted them to remain safe. It is unsafe for them and unsafe for the rest of the community to have them at such a place without either a trained full time chaperone or having them in handcuffs, which is no way to be treated.

To say a point about being nice in the community, I'm going to take a different stance. You don't have to be nice or be friends with people but the scene isn't very big, so you have to be able to work with people if you want to keep playing. From my perspective, I don't really want to interact with someone who is that mentally unwell (severe schizophrenic having multiple crises), or someone who is just a cunt. I would rather not play than play with many people in this community, and it's a large reason I don't play pugs anymore (I used to play a lot of pugs).

Is there a bracket? Just on challonge or something? Haven't followed it directly so far so idk who is still in

I would say 2-4 people in prem could be actively cheating, definitely a couple of sus individuals however with little to no evidence other than the words of people who play against them, it would be unwise to say their names.

If you doubt this statement, keep in mind catbocker's apology above. A role model to many finally coming clean, and I hope future generatioins of European tf2 players have clean, sanitary individuals like DomoCatFace to inspire them on their future careers.

Currently watching castlevania and i'd binge it if i wasnt limited to others watching it.

https://www.twitch.tv/wilsons_disease

Im gonna get hate for saying this, but I know a lot of people who are currently enjoying dota or league of legends.

Massive update in dota and arena gamemode in league (temporary gamemode tho) makes them much more fun rn.

True, the plane ticket to somewhere like philadelphia alone is 10x what it costs to travel around europe for me (UK travel, local bus to airport for £2)

I can quite literally have the whole trip in a thursday to monday (hotel, food, drinks, even the lack of pay for missing work on the weekend) going from london to any major city in europe for less than a plane ticket to the US, and that's just for me, someone who lives in one of the most accessible places in the world for travel. It's only going to be worse for anyone else in europe or america.

Plus the problem with the age and size of the community. The community is small which makes fundraising money harder, but also the average age is quite old. A lot of young adults who would travel to these events have more important things to spend money on (like rent or food). So whilst sure they could afford to drop money to support people to go play games, and donate to a fun event, it just isn't worth it for them.

https://i.gyazo.com/e17a24d784033dae3eb98ab29499db6a.jpg

Garda beat both TLR and Skedda in the main season so they would have no problem getting through in third place in case of a 3 way tie. The SB tiebreaker isn't needed.

Nice article, but a couple things were wrong.

One is that garda were always guaranteed playoffs. This is due to even if TLR get all 6 points, they lose the tiebreaker to garda as they lost the main season offi to them. Both end on 23 points, but garda won 5-1 against TLR in main season. The results for france vs garda are already in, but garda always had playoffs guarantee.

Also to note is the result of germans vs poles doesn't matter at all for playoffs, only for final placings. Germans best case scenario 5th, but that doesn't deny anyone of playoffs since their match is against last place team who cannot get anything but last place.

Nandem vs skedda must result in one team having over 20 points whereas germans can only get 19. (4-2 to nandem puts them at 19 vs skedda 20 and 5-1 to nandem puts them at 20 vs skedda 19 table points, these results leave it up to whether tlr gets their 3 points in their offi to take 4th place, otherwise either nandem or skedda take the fourth place).

The tiebreaks will be for 5th place against germans if they 6-0 poles, which skedda will win and nandem will lose due to their individual scores against the germans.

So whilst it's nice to think the offi means something, unfortunately for both the 7th and 8th place teams it is just a match for honor, as the 5th place tiebreaks mean nothing for playoffs, and in my experience coming 5th isn't different to 6th or 7th in a close season like this.

It will be interesting to see if mandem tryhard to attempt to secure nandem in playoffs as their sister team or if they will relax a bit to try to get TLR over skedda as skedda was the only team so far to take a map off them in the main season. Keeping in mind, skedda still has complete control as a 6-0 against nandem guarantees playoffs no matter what.

All you can think about is bagels huh?

I don't know exact measurements for everything (personally I just taste as I go), but here is a rough recipe for a good sauce you can toss wings in:

150g butter
250ml hot sauce (any sauce that is mostly chillies and vinegar is fine to use)
100ml ketchup or bbq sauce depending on the flavour you want
1/2 cup of brown sugar (idk weight of this)

Melt butter over low-medium heat in a pot and add all other ingredients listed together until sugar has melted. This is the base.

From here on add whatever you want, personally I use varying amounts of:
Siracha, cayenne pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, liquid smoke, tobasco, MSG, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, mustard, honey, black pepper, salt or literally anything else you could think would work well in a barbecue sauce.

Remember you can add more, but not take it away.

Choose your extra ingredients and add to the pot and let it simmer away with an open top to thicken to your desired consistency, sitrring to mix sauce thorougly and to let the spices do their thing. Usually taking between 15-25 minutes. This sauce tends to be good for either tossing or dunking wings into, it isn't that thick but isn't that thin and is the perfect mixture of sweet and spicy. It is also extremely unhealthy since there is a lot of sugar and butter.

For oven wings (im not as good at the chicken bit), split the wings into drums and flats.
Create a dry seasoning of salt (decent amount), pepper (similar to salt), plain flour (this is like 70% of the mixture) and bicarbonate of soda (a few teaspoons).
Cover chicken with dry mix, like how you do a dry dredge for a deep fry batter, and arrange on a baking sheet for the oven, cook depending on size but I usually find 200 celsius for 18-20 mins skin side up, then flip and cook for another 10.
Try using greaseproof paper with oil on it so the skin doesnt stick, but ideally it crisps up enough in the first 20 mins so it doesnt when you flip.

I also like adding the chicken juices into the sauce.

I looked homeless, bald and 40 when I was 23. I was doomed from the start. If I look 55 when I'm 30, it'll be a blessing.

Why do you need to play competitive? Most people who have a sense of belonging usually play on the same community servers with the same people. Competitive is a pretty niche subset of communities in this game.

As an example, plenty of furries and weebs stack uncletopia together and they have 0 competitive games.