You'll need Windows 10 eventually for DX12 though, no?

ideally everyone comms but you don't have to have perfect communication with your flank to play at a high level. what you have to understand is that the combo is the center of the team and the flank makes decisions based on what the combo is doing. sometimes the combo will make decisions based on the flank (like the example you gave where your flank is hurt or another example where your flank is bombing/sacrificing in and you can peek for some spam) but for the most part your flank will be making decisions based off of what you tell them you're doing as the combo. at the bare minimum the flank should raise the alarm if something is going wrong but if there's no pressing matters there then you can get away with minimal flank comms.

I think it's too easy to blame your flank for your mistakes. if you're consistently getting caught out and you blame your flank for not helping you position correctly, you're probably just not thinking far enough ahead and can make the right decisions on your own by hitting tab or keeping track of ubers (aka playing faster aka making quicker rotations).

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or maybe only enable those sounds for captains.

My understanding is that it's best of three because you get more games in that way which allows the matchmaking system to be tested more (because it is in beta and they need to test that stuff). It could be extended to best of five or first to five later on.

I just played a 20 minute game, they can be long since the rounds don't have time limits, only the 10 min capture limit.

I just did this and had a similar problem. Here were the two problems for me:
1. the first time I put in my power supply the main motherboard power cord came lose and it wouldn't power on. made sure all of my cords were tightly plugged in.
2. three of my ram slots weren't functioning properly. when I had two sticks of ram plugged in the fans would turn on but computer wouldn't post. unplugging the ram and trying different variations and combinations of ram allowed me to find a configuration that worked and allowed my computer to post.

Just throwing this out there but have you guys considered that people have had conversations with the TF2 team outside of the guys who publicly post or tweet "hey I want everyone to know that I went to Valve HQ"? A post doesn't have to be made every time the TF2 team reaches out to the community.

I've heard from a number of people in the competitive community that they've had conversations with the TF2 team and have had many opportunities to give feedback to them, but I don't think that those conversations warranted a thread on the forums. For example, Dave Riller reached out to me when they were putting streams on the TF2 client, and I had a great ~45 minute phone conversation with him where I got a chance to pick his brain about matchmaking changes and the possibility of supporting future events in TF2. Super nice dude who surprised me with how much he knew about the competitive community and how in tune he was with us, and I'm definitely not the only one who has had a chance to talk to him or other members of the TF2 team.

My point is that they pay attention to the community, our discussions, and the things that we do and just because they're not posting or directly talking to us all the time doesn't mean that they don't care and, more importantly, people shouldn't feel like they're being left out of the conversation. Sure they pay really close attention to content creators (such as b4nny) and website owners (such as Geel) but they read the forums just like everyone else. Whether you realize it or not you're giving them feedback about the game and they're taking that information and incorporating it into the game to make YOUR experience better. You just don't always see them working on it until it's released, polished, and ready to present to the public.

Will everyone in the community have a chance to talk to the TF2 team? Probably not. They're pretty busy working on the upcoming updates and they already have a good idea of what needs to be fixed (remember that Valve has a lot of experience working on competitive games and esports). Some of these things just take time to build. The community is obviously excited about matchmaking, but they want to make sure that they do it right. As many of you suggest, they could make announcements about every change that they make but they risk disappointing the fans should their plans fall through and that's just not worth it. It's better to keep it secret and release the information alongside the update when it's ready.

At the end of the day you'll have what you want, just be patient. You're not going to get any information out of the TF2 team that you don't already know, and you just have to trust that they care enough about the game to do things the right way and honestly the updates have been awesome so far. I can't wait to see the next one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqAxtwH0LGo

No more invite, I just put you up on the sidebar. Twitch team is full.

I messed up. Fixed it sorry!

yea :\

I think watching other players is important because they do things you've maybe never thought of doing, or they might have an interesting way of doing things that you can imitate to make your play better. It also helps open up your mind to what is possible so that you aren't caught off guard in the future.

Is it absolutely essential to do in order to be good? Nah, but it depends on your definition of good and how much time you want to spend to get there.

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