yeah im not a fan of this wildcard aspect. this is the thing that currently holds all teams in pick/ban divisions back from having more diverse map picks in matches, which is being unable (usually by personal choice) to practice a map for the whole season. far far FAR too often teams dont wanna scrim koth, or like granary or sultry early in preseason or weeks 1-2 cuz they dont have a full roster yet, or are feeling the team out still. dont wanna play weeks 2-4 cuz they wanna focus on other maps first, dont wanna play weeks 5-8 because they're behind on that map compared to the rest of the teams in the division and find it more worthwhile to refine maps they're already decent at, and then in playoffs you can just ban the map outright if u still havent played it at all (this would be like map G in the jemond outline where yeaaaa you COULD pick it but do you really want to take that risk?)

this mentality is a TRAP that plagues this game so hard dating back to the pick/ban season introduction in ESEA season 28, 5 summers ago now. i strongly urge players in pick/ban divs to diversify scrim maps so much sooner in the season or even in preseason because it pays dividends for your team later on.

TLDR play more maps earlier in the season or even pre season with your tryouts please god i beg that shit pays off SO much. personal anecdote below in the spoiler if u care to read it im not gonna post a whole gigantic block of text nobodys gonna read that shit

idk how lowering ping makes scrim/match times more lenient. thats entirely a time zone compromise thing. i guess multi-continental scrims/matches/cups/leagues could be a thing on weekends when people have entire days free but other than that? i dont see cutting ping to a 10th to be a catalyst for that on its own.

perhaps the added competition across continents grows the game somehow? but if the tf2 community has access to this tech then surely every other esport has access to it too.

thanks for the feedback, I have thought about these things and even had some of it in my script but cut it in favour of a <15 min runtime and a, i dont want to say dumbed down, but dumbed down script for simplicity's sake. I think the details behind who's calling what and when to be details far less fundamental than for simply SOMEONE to be calling what and when, its pretty common knowledge that every team operates differently and i'd rather reinforce broader ideas than specifics for this reason

for finding the clips i literally just go to my demos that i have saved on my pc and its pretty much just froyo vs witness vs g6 demos since they are easily the 3 best teams NA has seen in the modern day. I went out of my way to download other Invite demos from this previous season to help me find more clips and it paid off and i found relevant footage quite quickly (dothogs vs froyo, lebron vs cat posse).

as for showing examples of snipers getting picks and stuff, with my basis for collecting footage being FROYO/G6/witness demos, its much harder to find that stuff because... these players follow the fundamentals to a tee. i'd far rather use clips that show smooth, clean, near-ideal gameplay, found in a relatively short amount of time, than to take longer and find players fucking up, or dig for lower level demos, find these examples quicker and accidentally imply "these players are BAD they are NOT following fundamentals look at them SUCK". I think it was wandum or dreamboat who said about casting, something like "its better to highlight why a team is successful than why a team is struggling" or something along those lines and i think thats a good philosophy for these videos.

^for the sake of mentioning it, "a relatively short amount of time" in the case of the last push video is something approaching 3 hours looking thru demos, analyzing if what i just witnessed is a good example for the video, and then record it/rerecord it from different POVs, different angles in freecam (if anyone out there is skeptical about how long videomaking takes, be my guest to go search for this stuff yourself). combining that with writing and revising my script, recording voiceover, and editing, the video probably took something north of 10 hours to produce in its entirety.

That all said i appreciate your compliments, I'm not trying to whine and complain about how much of my time goes into this stuff too much lol

for the sake of putting it out there, here are some things that are already on my agenda: KOTH, Maincalling + Communication, Sac Plays and Pressure Cooking, Competitive Vocab, and even updating Marxist's precepts videos for modern day TF2 (scout, soldier, demo, medic fundamentals respectively) i can't guarantee release dates for these, but im looking to have a few more videos out by the end of the year.

if anyone out there have other video ideas, or if other top players want to reach out with knowledge for the above topics, i'm all ears and wanna make the most relevant, accurate videos possible. you can post here or hmu on steam/discord

new video: Last Push Fundamentals

https://youtu.be/Wg8MiGICWVw

https://twitter.com/BuffaloSabres/status/1692363372430278751?s=20
rip to the best commentator in any sport ever

https://www.teamfortress.tv/post/1032538/ill-give-100-dollars-to-the-person-who-can
its also been 2 years since i made this thread about pyro airblast locking you out of pressing your movement keys and mastercoms revealed that the solution is already in the vanilla game i think we should make use of this in our High Skilled Movement Shooter (emphasis on the Movement part i hope)

edit on top of that, since we made such a huge formatting choice in terms of the regular season (stage 1, 2, playoffs) and said "hey we'll test it out next season (season 12) and see how people like it" why can we not do something similar for tiny gameplay fixes? just try them out and see how they go and just revert next season if theyre somehow catastrophic? i dont see the harm in that. we run polls on weapon unbans and map rotation every season and that DEFINITELY holds far more weight from a game balance perspective than "hey my scout didnt block my pipes/rockets/stickies by accident and lose us the fight"

aubrey plaza fanclub mentioned

https://www.teamfortress.tv/61476/4dolf-lft-am
im glad john could turn it around

ive been using it since 2014 its sorta just what my brain immediately jumps to when i think about auto recording demos

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8xmblb18pkl2dt/smoke.vpk?dl=0

put in custom folder
EDIT this is not the same nosmoke as in the video but it looked like it at first glance.

goat. vouch.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/459957763741843459/1132891935099600896/image.png

im sorry but what even was the point of this post? you complain about people being disingenuous in that they wont apply for rgl staff to actually make change, but in this instance for the thread's creation it would only be relevant if they were joining AC team to swing the hammer down on elijah, and surely the bar for getting on the AC team is far higher than being a division moderator. if your inspiration for your post was simply durzo mentioning that the gukurahundi team shouldve been struck down years ago, then this nerd essay for a reply is simply overkill and comes across as hypocritical as it appears you are riding your high horse about being RGL staff while calling out others who dont want to do your job, while simultaneously derailing the intent of the thread.

im not sure if you misread something but Giblert Gaming League is not a serious new league. its just a meme name for giblert's tournament.

anyways glory to GGL

vegas wins. my bad guys.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyjQbOHaUAUZPxv?format=jpg&name=large

finally winning advanced is something i will be proud of for a long long time.