People bitched (and still bitch) about TF2 limiting FoV to 90...seems the competitive scene did just fine under that restriction.

That lylirra's guys rationale is completely reasonable...just as valve's rationale to limit FOV to 90 in TF2 was reasonable. It may not be what you prefer (it's not what I prefer), but it's silly to throw a fit over it and claim that it somehow impacts the competitive nature of the game when in reality it's actually beneficial for a more EVEN competitive environment across the player base. Obscure interp tweaks, bumping up your FOV and tweaking individual graphics settings to improve visibility are small things competitive players in TF2 do to create small advantages in their play. Yes, to the laymen even bumping up your FOV is an obscure thing. Sure it's fun to explore those and discover those...I generally look for those things in any new game, but it's FAR from a requirement for a competitive game. ...Just don't make FOV crushingly small to the point it causes nausea for people and I won't have a problem playing under the same FOV as everyone else.

CS:GO is locked down significantly compared to any previous iteration and seems to be doing just fine.

An emp weapon that when equipped makes all minisentries completely non-functional. To make it balanced it should have infinite range and once equipped should carry its effects across the entire TF2 server universe forever and also make whoever coded said sentry into the game get some kind of skin disease. Then I can enjoy pubbing occasionally again.

Also, something resembling the green/yellow pipe launcher from TFC/TF because using geometry in combat is challenging and a lot of fun. Would go in sticky launcher slot and be balanced for shortish-mid range damage output, while sticky launcher would be tweaked to be slightly more trap/long range oriented for slight differentiation.

gave it a go on steam recently and was disappointed that there was basically only a handful of populated servers...essentially none populated on CTF in most cases. :(

I deal with deciphering engineers that have english as a second or third language all the time, and I can't get over how poorly laid out question #1 was.

Is it really that hard to word it as : "find the difference between the number of coins and the number 6".....(which is bizarrely on a cup for no reason). The whole "part I know" and missing part is just...odd. TIL that coins are a missing part of a cup and it takes 6 coins to make a cup.

I've kind of been wondering why pubbing TF2 became less enjoyable for me in the past year or so and I'm realizing it does go back to the quickplay change like others are saying.

People probably view community servers as breeding mediocrity, but I feel like community run servers help drive a lot of players to want to improve their skills over time, and for many they plant the seeds to progress to competitive play. Some individuals take advantage of that, while others are just happy in their community. Community servers are like a bunch of little islands waiting to be explored. They each have their own customs, their own "community leaders" etc. A community server creates consistency, and players develop rapport and respect for eachother over time. A hierarchy of skill is established, and people most want to impress on those that they respect, so there is more invested in the public games.

Outsiders find it fun to hop into these community servers and get a peak into these little environments to see how they fit in and compare against the 'best' regulars. Regulars of the server get exposure to the highly skilled players that come through, and in having a solid understanding of the skill hierarchy of their server can better absorb the difference.
"Wow, joe pubstar came in and was dominating the best guy on our server by doing x and y, let me add those to my game"

I feel like you lose almost all of that at a valve server. When I goto a valve server I'm not taking a peak into some community, it is just an empty feeling assembly of players randomly brought together. It feels like it misses some element that I've always enjoyed in pubbing FPS games for years. There's no community, no identity behind it, no regulars, so I feel a lot less interested and invested in playing there or competing with whoever is randomly assembled.

time to unleash the direct hit soldier in all its glory

Community that makes up own gameplay rules finds it absolutely ridiculous that different community makes up own gameplay rules.
CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG

How many skill tiers do you need? Metals seem to be the easiest standard.

bronze
silver
gold
platinum
Australium

Icefrog is pretty unique in that he has always been tied in with the competitive players and viewed his decisions from that angle...he's obsessive about balance and has some very good methods to achieve it over time.

Robin was never that and it's probably not realistic to expect a game to have a dev like icefrog at the helm.

In TFC Robin and his team really had very little knowledge of how the game was played at a high level and how the classes balanced beyond a basic pub setting...and even at the basic pub level they were often ignorant. (Hmm...sounds like deja vu) The few times they made tweaks they probably did even less testing than they do on TF2.

Looking back though this was probably a silver lining as a lot of tweaking by a dev not in touch with high level play just screws things up further. When the dev is hands off at least competitive players can work around the balance flaws with league rules, class limits/weapon limits etc and make it work.

Robin is/was awesome but he's not the icefrog influence you're looking for. :(

I very rarely use facebook...I logged in after probably a year and ended up being curious and looked at my actual page. Apparently facebook was listing to my friends my "favorite movies, tv shows, and favorite books" that I had never read or watched at all and had never filled in on the site.

A few were political enough that who knows maybe some of my more distant friends even judged me by them, lol.

tl;dr: You may want to check if facebook is listing your favorite book is meinkampf. Creepy company.

That's about as true as firing a rocket, pressing jump, switching weapons and detting stickies are entirely autonomous and bound to a button instead of dependent on the player's technical and mental abilities.

Timing, placement and aiming matters just as much in the usage of any 'skill' abilities in a Moba, only in traditional moba you aren't dealing with 3 dimensions of aiming. You aim them or they affect a given area around your player. They have cooldowns so if the enemy does not use them to maximum effect they are vulnerable....you can bait them into wasting them (hmm kind of sounds like an uber?). You can dodge the abilities through your movement. I'm not sure why the assumption is that movement and aiming which is already used heavily in moba's in a 2d space won't play an even bigger part when you introduce the third dimension.

Monday night combat would disagree...too bad it was only backed by a small studio so it couldn't gain momentum, but it was a really fun, skilled and interesting game.

People really shouldn't judge the depth of a game by some early gameplay video...what do you think all of the TFC people were saying when they saw the trailer for TF2 and first tried it? It was incredibly slow and took away so many skills from the pedecessor...yet here you guys are. People found new and different ways of playing it over time that slowly expanded on the skill ceiling and what was possible.

To be fair, she's probably getting a much better return on her choice of investment

Sorry this is the most obvious troll/scam I've ever seen, I've heard better pitches from Nigerian royalty...so props for being so bad at it mr TF2GAMES. If the 5000 servers wasn't the kicker the mention of coding an advanced bot just for your fake lobby service is the most hilarious part of all of this.

Ah yes, these 'team members'. It's funny because the first thing any team that goes out with a project announcement does is advertise the skilled people working on it to help generate excitement and credibility. Yet we have not a single example of any work they've ever done or their technical backgrounds or online aliases they would be known by. I'm sure they just want to pour years of time for a competitive community that they have absolutely no connection to...yup that makes sense!

whats the ETA on it coming to steam?