Yeah I agree encouraging teams not to go to mid is a great idea.

Well you can use only one config for an NA type rule set you just have to execute it twice and have a win limit of 4 as opposed to 3 as ESEA does (since one team winning 4, then the other winning 4 would result in an automatic golden cap in such circumstances, slightly different from ESEA but essentially the same).

Unless you want it to be *exactly* like esea then indeed you would need 2 different win limits per half :(.

I should also point out that I'm not specifically attacking Slin or his play - he's only one of 6 players so there's only so much he can do.

Ultimately, the best option they had, being as it was Uber Vs. Uber was to attempt to heal shift (if you've seen my video about pushing in 6v6 you have a few broad categories of pushes - the ideal one to use in Uber Vs. Uber stalemates is the utilization of "heal shifting" that is to pass buffs around (by putting your medic in motion) to various chokes and see if you can create enough space to push OR obtain a pick using a relative health advantage while non-buffed players utilize choke points to ablate their own potential relative health disadvantage. Of course the other Uber vs. Uber option is to utilize a utility class, but I personally don't love that option, and I especially don't like it for second --) mid pushes on snake). Heal shifting is the best and safest strategy for uber vs. uber defensive situations because it generally prevents precipitous losses (dooming your second defense) because it doesn't over laden chokes with players to be ubered in to (again likely dooming your second hold) and it's rather easy for 1 player to hold a choke from an ideal position without heals for a short period of time. So, not only is it better than a static defense in so far as it gives us something to watch (as players feel each other out and poke around), but a death from the team holding second isn't the end of the world because of their capability to hold second utilizing their relative spawn advantage there.

Active (elastic) defense is inherently superior to static defense because A.) it utilizes your relative spawn advantage on second (and against a team truly parking the bus they won't push anyways) and creates more opportunities for you to push out of defensive situations.

Quickfix is awful.

There is no choice, you run quickfix to mid or you lose because you can only hide in choke with kritz so many times - nobody is so stupid to fall for it 5 times.

A. Overlong stalemates exist not particularly because it's overly difficult to push in this game - they exist for 2 broad categorical reasons.

1.) Ineptness on the part of the attacking team: inability to utilize advantages properly, inability to position themselves properly during attacking transition fights resulting in a low success/failure ratio (encouraging more passive play), and/or poor communication (people tend to back up if they don't know what's going on or not join in pushes they don't know are happening).

2.) Overly defensive setups and holds - many teams hold *way* too passively on a lot of maps when it is inappropriate to do so, so even if the other team *does* attack (which they may not do instantly) they won't be able to push themselves forward fast enough to actually gain the subsequent point. You see this a lot on last holds where teams run 2 or more utils - if you run 2 or more utility classes it's going to be *very* difficult to get off of your own last no matter what map you're playing simply because 1/3rd or more of your team have to walk back into spawn. Furthermore, when the attacking team lacks experience and organization, extremely passive holds can pay dividends (just look at how a heavy can effect a pug (low organization) vs. how a heavy can effect an invite or Main match).

Aim is important, but the majority of this game is about coordination and organization - for teams that lack a high level of organization, passive play is *generally* favored. Or another thing you see, especially in open and lower levels, is going all in at mid (hoping you wipe the other team at mid by playing crazily aggressive so as to avoid having to push points). I'm not specifically trying to knock players, but the general rule of thumb is that the lower on the totem pole you are, the less organized and experienced you are, thus, rampant aggression is more difficult to deal with so it has a higher payoff (when we're talking about mids).

The term stalemate also needs to be defined. We've got temporary pauses in the overall play - but that's not so bad as long as they don't last over a minute - hell plenty of people watch e-sports where virtually nothing happens for 5-10 minutes at a time, not to mention physical sports (such as football where out of a 3 hour block you actually only see 60 minutes of actual game being played).

If you take for example the "stalemates" from last night's AG vs Rent, those were timely and well played out, great to watch, and while caps didn't always go down (in the first half) we saw an exciting back and forth with plenty of drama - there have been numerous LAN matches of this type as well.

What we don't want are stalemates like we saw at the last ESEA LAN where literally nothing happens for entire rounds because neither team feels comfortable pushing (more of a symptom of quickfix usage). You also sometimes see these things happening in lower divisions (I remember being able to hold lasts for 6-7 minutes at a time due to inability to push out without losing). It's part of the territory there.

Specifically to slin:

In part parking the bus is *rather* rare - again, this is primarily anecdotal on my part, but in general I think a 3-5 minute timer wouldn't really have the effect that it's intended to have because it would be *very* possible for teams to time out rounds pushing last (wait to get uber, wait to get pick, push, fail, other team can't push out, round times out - disaster). So it would encourage rampantly defensive play on the part of teams holding last because there is *no* incentive to push off of your own last with such a small timer - so long as the pushing team obliges you by taking a few minutes to actually push.

The 10 minute timer is ultimately fine and here is why.

I'll use your video as an example. This isn't specifically addressed to Slin because I assume he's already aware of this, but I'm gonna do it for the benefit of reading populations.

The team holding mid has shorter respawn waves and an absolute respawn advantage relative to the middle point. This does give them a definitive advantage in regards to holding the middle point. Thus Slin is correct in saying it does incentivize them to push second, but I should carefully point out that the reason it incentivizes pushing second is because that respawn advantage to mid makes mid relatively easier to defend should the push go awry. On the flip side, Slin's team has a disincentive to push mid because the opposition respawns more quickly relatively to mid.

That particular disincentive for Slin's team ONLY comes into play in a few situations:

A. those situations where Slin's team loses too many players and doesn't cap quickly enough to deny a rapid repush of mid (from the aforementioned faster forward spawns).

B. Those situations where the team that formerly held mid obtains (somehow) a significant uber advantage and has enough players present to repush without using uber to obtain mid.

The same factors apply, defensively for Slin's team. His team has a relative spawn advantage to second. That's why we often see pushes but no movement because neither team can organize itself for offensive actions on forward points as various spawn waves come in. They have the spawn advantage to second. Thus, it's not *impossible* to push mid, take small loses, back up, and hold second effectively on the weight of incoming respawns (however their wave timer is relatively longer, so if deaths occur in a spread out fashion it would doom a potential second hold in some cases).

Slin's team unfortunately fails to take this into account - they *wanted* the other team to push into second because they knew that was the area where they had the most advantageous position (because of their respawn advantage to second, and their preparation of the second point - establishing a hold and so forth). However, having the lead, the team on mid refuses to push because they're afraid of that advantage, and they have the lead so they've got no incentive to push a point laden with defenses. Ultimately Slin's team is left with 2 options.

1. Let the round time out and refight mid (boring + bad).

2. Never stop attempting to push - In the entire 7 minutes of second --) mid stalemate did I see an attempt to stack a side and overwhelm a singular defender. Surely *somebody* on that team could have been dealt with presented with overwhelming force (which would open a window to push). Again, this isn't suicidal for Slin's team so long as they effectively manage their deaths and respawn waves. They're a victim of their own tactic and an active party in the stalemate - both teams essentially chose the same strategy. They both assumed pushing was too risky so they refused to do so and made no *real* attempt to push - except in the most hamfisted way (cycling ubers in saw - or as I like to call it - playing the I bet my pocket is better than your pocket game). Off classes were certainly an option as well, but I'm not a particular fan of utility usage outside of last points so I understand why they didn't utilize that option.

tl;dr it's not necessary to modify round timers or add a shot clock. What needs to be altered are the assumption teams/players make about holding second and the approaches they take to defense (active as opposed to static defense - or if you want to use military theory, Elastic as opposed to Static Defense). If a stalemate lasts 5+ minutes with no real pushing both teams are at fault for choosing a weak strategy.

I've had fermented dog's milk (bitch milk).

I'll stick to drinking milk from other alien animals however - cow is better than goat's. Never had the nut based milks. The kiddo likes his milk, but it's mostly served in schools because dairies need somewhere to send their surplus to keep the price artificially high (since virtually all agriculture in the US is subsidized in this way - the government buys the surplus, and either gives it to prisons, schools, food stamp users, or military personnel, and/or stores it in a warehouse to rot).

We missed like 3 weeks of school here in 99' it was right after Christmas break ended too so we got like a full month off of school + 1 week or some nonsense. It was the best time to be a kid ever lol.

They're apparently *thinking* about putting the kids back in school around Friday here - but I have my doubts. Even the major highways here are still sheets of ice. Even with 4wd I didn't dare go faster than 20 mph.

NE Indiana here.

I watched the snow come down for a while, then went to bed. The next day, I awoke to find my dog being particularly floppy. She only gets floppy-like when something is really stressing her out. That's when I realized she wasn't able to go outside because a snow drift had completely covered the door she uses to go outside. That was fun.

Our road is completely impassable, I got a call from the highway department saying they *might* start plowing today. We got about 12-13 inches of snow or more, the drifts are some of the biggest I've seen since 99'. Maybe I will be able to leave the house, but I'm assuming I won't be able to make a food run until Thursday - so my braving the INSANITY in the grocery store this last weekend was worth it.

They'll bolt that thing back together and he'll be right as rain in a few weeks, even faster if he can get some questionably legal supplements as long as he didn't destroy a bunch of connective tissue.

The worlds first bit is pretty hilarious considering the legal status of marijuana in the US prior to the 1930's "weed makes migrant workers murder people" campaign.

Starting out counting uber to the second isn't that important because you'll never really be able to take advantage of what that information gives you the ability to do - at least with any real degree of reliability.

The simplest method is such:

1. If you die at any point and their medic does not they have advantage - assume defensive positions

2. If their medic dies at any point and you survive beyond that point in time, you have advantage get ready to push.

3. If both medics spawn at the same time roughly, you'll all have uber in 40-45 seconds, try to get kills if you hold mid or more than mid, or do not have the point in KOTH.

4. If somebody goes kritz they will potentially have advantage, if they spawn around the same time as you they'll have kritz when you're around 65/70ish percent.

It's obviously good to practice physically counting the uber, but it rarely proves to be all that useful unless you have a team capable of consistently pushing off of the smallest of advantages (rare) or pushing into advantages knowing the other team wont have uber yet (even rarer). Things to try in scrims on occasion. If you can get it down you'll have a great weapon, but generally that's out of reach to the vast majority of teams.

At the bare minimum, knowing who does or does not have advantage is the single most important piece of information you can have. Because ideally, your entire behavior as a team, should be predicated on that knowledge.

self-loathing and drinking a bit probably.

maybe i'll go visit some old friends, but i'll prolly just end up playing tf2.

I could probably look into doing some demoreviews - my PC has been being a pain so I stopped making videos while i try to figure out how to make OBS start working again lol.

it's almost like i went to bed and woke up in Europe or some civilized nation with functional air transport

I buy presents and get presents and meet up with old friends because they're all on vacation. That's mostly the useful bit of it.

This is primarily a test pilot - if they made the $ amounts on mentoring too low they'd potentially be responsible for the death of those who signed up to do it as a donator perk lol.

Best of luck UGC :D