Bastid:
bastidKevinIsPwnDid you hear yourself say that? There is no downside to running GRU on heavy over stock. You run with it during rollout and don't switch when you're at mid and you get to mid with your team for no downsides. Which makes it OP.
It's overpowered compared to the underpowered existing options (minus FOS I guess). By itself it's fine, Heavies don't make big impacts at mid anyway, any good team can focus fire them down, as has been demonstrated in the recent showmatches.
Nonono, it's a straight upgrade from stock in any form of competitive. As a heavy in 6s, you will never pull out your melee, meaning you'll never deal with any of the negatives of GRU, meaning it's a straight upgrade.
bastidAlso isn't Escape Plan the same thing?
That's a bit of a streth imo. Soldiers much more regularly use their melee, so the downsides are more apparent. Also, soldiers would get to mid just as fast without the upgrade, maybe with a bit lower health. Midfights aside, you can't use escape plan to get to transition fights after respawn without a risk of dying, but GRU is pretty safe. I just listed the easiest to visualize issue with GRU, and the one extine mentioned in the vlog.
bastidKevinIsPwnWHY WOULD YOU WANT THAT? There are people that have devoted 1000s of hours to this game why the FUCK would you want random shitters to replace them? I'm sure your youtube audience loves to hear that, but like... that just sounds like a really stupid idea. You can do the local thing with good players...
Random shitters = new players???
I'm all about bringing new players into the game. I coach/admin newbie mixes, I talk to people about competitive (6v6, hl, and even 4v4), I try my best to promote people to try competitive with my tournaments, etc. But in terms of spectating, yes that's exactly what I'm saying. If you've ever watched a UGC 6v6 cast or low level UGC HL cast you'd understand.
bastidKevinIsPwnBecause that version of tf2 is the one we can play 5 nights a week 3 hours a night without having fucking aneurysms and killing ourselves.
This must mean 6s is an anti-competitive hugbox :)
I can't tell if this is a troll or not because that's really not a reasonable thing to say but neither are the other things in your post.
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Extine:
eXtineKevinIsPwn ... any competitive format that plays with the "meta" (see: random silliness and stupidity) will be taken seriously by no one, valve included.
Valve eXplicitly told me they'd like to see a competitive format more in tune with their meta.
They said that years ago why are you all of a sudden trying so hard to change it now rather than then? Also I feel like changing from something we (most of us) all love to something we're (most of us) all skeptical of isn't the best of ideas.
eXtineKevinIsPwnit's not a competitive form of tf2
We take 5 people we put them up against 5 people. How is that not a competition? You're welcome to the opinion that 6s is MORE competitve, but A:R is definitely a competitive format.
What I meant by saying that is that it's not a format that has been played competitively at a high level (and never will be with your/PBL's current plan).
eXtineKevinIsPwnThere's no reason you have to switch the entire structure of competitive tf2 so you can have your 20-person burnsider lan.
That's pretty much what I was trying to say with my Vlog and dispel the idea that I'm trying to force everyone to adopt A:R over 6s. I'm hoping we can build up passion for TF2 and establish local groups through A:R, I'm not trying to dictate how you should play the game.
That's not at all what the vlog came off as. Regardless of your intent (which a very small fraction of your youtube audience will see), the vlog came off as a "we need to do this as a community together" type thing. The fact that you tell users actively that you think UGC 6s is something they should support shows just how disconnected you are from the community you claim to represent.
At this point it honestly (and this might seem harsh) seems like you're desperately clinging to the notion that this will work out in a way that Valve accepts it and it becomes big and you're able to make this league a big thing that you're able to work with full time. And to claim this last bit of hope you have to make tf2 a "real esport" or whatever you're willing to destroy what this fantastic community has built up over the past 6 years.
And you can say "you do your thing" all you want to save face on the forums that a few hundred people read but that means literally nothing when you just made a vlog for your 100,000+ youtube subscribers denouncing 6v6 and supporting a new, unproven format in a foreign game mode.
I'm really appreciative of all you've done for this community. You (along with Salamancer) were one of the driving recruiters for competitive back when I started playing, and you convinced me to hop on a 6s team in late 2012. But sometimes it's good to know when your goals are fogging up your view of the present and tampering with your ability to see a reasonable future ahead, especially when your view has so much influence on the view of others.