He actually was using a lot of the exact same footage (the only differences being wireframes turned off and more context around each of the shots). Admittedly there were a few shots in the original video that were not present in the one that smobo just made.

The most notable omission for me was the shot that appeared to be on the head of a sniper standing on the other side of an otherwise blank wall. I would have liked to have seen this shot without wireframes on, and in a larger context, to see if there was any reason for him to be shooting at that location. Of all of the shots that was the only one that I could not attribute to glimpses+prediction of effective team comms.

I think there are some shots that are really really fishy, but I also think that the majority of the people posting in this thread about him have already reached their own personal conclusion and that is dangerous.

Paid up, I live like 30 minutes away from the venue (according to google maps) and might have some space if anyone needs a place to crash and doesn't mind a short drive the morning of.

If anyone is still looking for players for teams I suppose this means I am now LFT as medic.

You've missed the point entirely, this isn't a revenge project in the slightest. Every step of the way the community supported TF2C, acted to create chances for the leadership to own up to mistakes and improve because of them. And thus far that leadership has not only refused to take responsibility for actions taken, but has removed admins for attempting to right the wrongs, banned players for speaking out critically of the administration, and driven away all but a handful of highly dedicated members of staff.

MN has shown that he will use his position of influence as the owner of TF2C to attempt to force other organizations to cater to his wishes. And he has no problem mistreating his staff.

I'm not saying he can't change. No one involved in the replacement project is saying he can't change. But we aren't going to sit around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for someone else to do something. We are going to do what the TF2 community has done time and time again. We are going to build something better.

Whether that comes in the form of actions taken by MN to repair the reputation of TF2C and move it forward from this situation, or if it comes in the form of a brand new service that replaces it like TF2C replaced the old lobbies doesn't really matter.

You've said yourself that you are not involved in the community, so maybe you haven't been paying attention for the last decade. But as a community we have, time and again, done things that we should be too small to achieve.

Volunteers built MGE, Nodecg, created eXtv, tf.tv, UGC, ETF2L, TF2Lobbies AND TF2Center, countless pugging resources, Tip of the Hat, Flares that Care (and in the space of days dismantled Flares that Care and created TF2Can which was several magnitudes more successful than the original. We have created Sizzling Stats, Logs.tf countless server plugins. We have survived without developer support for nearly a decade, a feat few other games can even begin to claim.

We sent teams to an international LAN not once, or even twice, but 3 times. And one of those was almost entirely funded by a single member of this community (and was later paid back by the community through an outpouring of donations)

We have created production quality in our casts and coverage that rivals other, established, e-sports and done it with a handful of volunteers.

Maybe it would surprise you, but I don't think I'd be surprised by anything this community is able to accomplish through dedication, passion, and raw talent.

~With regards just 1 player who had no part in any of the above, but is still willing to dedicate time and energy to improving the services that the 99% use every day

TF2Center wasn't the first, it killed a giant when it was created, and a replacement could very easily kill it in exactly the same way.

As for the other point you made, maybe. I suspect it will decline considerably unless there is a change in direction. MN has done a lot to drive away the majority of strong candidates. And those players he has driven away are friends with most of the remaining candidates. We are a small community, and you said it yourself: the vast majority of us just don't give a shit.

The ones that do aren't terribly fond of the current direction that TF2C is headed. And if you don't care as long as you get to play lobbies why should you care if some of us make another place where you can find lobbies with the help of all those dedicated individuals who don't want to be a part of TF2C anymore...

A service, however well coded, can only function when it has a dedicated and passionate staff behind it. The current 'drama' might not impact you directly, but it certainly had an impact on the staff working at TF2C. And unless those incredibly talented and dedicated members are replaced with equally talented and dedicated members TF2C is going to start to decline.

I'm not saying that those people won't be replaced, it is very possible. But the truth is, people like you probably aren't going to be the ones who step up to fill the gaps. And the people who are likely to step up are the ones that are fairly invested in starting a new project because they do not like the direction that TF2C is currently heading.

You do realize that a service like TF2C is not self sustaining, it requires donations, it requires coders, it requires PR, and forum moderation, admins to handle abuse, harassment, rule breaking, hacking. Unless you know of a lot of other members of this player base that "does not give a shit" a lot of those services are going to be heavily understaffed.

Centers, Lobbies, and pug groups will definitely still exist after Valve MM drops. Their focus would transition from being a platform for introducing the format to a platform for introducing the team elements that would most likely be lacking in the standard match making. More importantly they would offer a more hands on community that actively seeks to remove hackers that valve is unlikely to be able to catch as consistently (given the sheer numbers that will hopefully be using their system).

Again, this project is entirely focused on forwarding the interests of the community. Having an OPEN SOURCE alternative to any of the current systems means that in the future it will be considerably easier for other players to take the foundation and grow it into additional services.

Our problem now is that we have a great, highly functioning service that is being run by people we have every reason to believe will continue to abuse their power and essentially hold the community hostage because there is no viable alternative. To solve this we must either give that leadership a reason to change their ways or create said viable alternative.

We can't change other people, no amount of reason and logic is ever going to change someones mind over the internet unless they are willing to consider other ways of thinking. We can hope that this is the worst that TF2C manages to do, but that is dangerous given the history that has come to light over the last few days. Or we can use this enthusiasm to grow and improve our community as a means of jump starting the project with the amazing talent that exists within our community.

Whether our alternative replaces TF2C or acts as a reminder to the leadership of TF2C that they must continue to provide not only a great service but also a great environment is inconsequential. Both outcomes are a win for the community.

Or, to put it another way. If there is no other game in town, and no indication that alternatives are being developed then there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for MN to change his ways. People are stuck with TF2C if they want to play the competitive format outside of scrims, matches, and pugs. If the open source foundation for a viable alternative exists then the cost of creating strong competition for TF2C is cut dramatically, and that is fairly good motivation (from a business standpoint) to start caring about what your user base thinks of you.

I think the point that people are currently missing is this:

The entire goal of this effort is singular: ensure that the competitive TF2 community has the best possible stepping stone service between public games and competitive play. It is very possible that as the effort to create a viable alternative grows MN will see this, and begin working to improve the image and service of TF2C. If that happens I would personally consider all of the time I invest into creating an open source alternative time well spent. If that does not happen, then creating a viable OPEN SOURCE alternative is the best way to create the kind of market competition that is required for the player base to influence the administration through their actions.

As a community we have, time and again, done things that we should be too small to achieve. Through volunteer efforts we have hosted wildly successful charity events (some of them organized and run in the space of a few days), created world class production through the efforts of a skeleton crew of largely unpaid staff, survived as a community for nearly a decade with little to no support, sent teams to Europe on the backs of community funded donation drives not once, not twice, but three times (as of later this year). We've coded services like Logs.tf SizzlingStats, TF2Center, and countless others.

Sure, it is no mean feat, but if you honestly think it is too much for the TF2 community then you obviously haven't been paying enough attention over the last decade.

If this goes somewhere I can put time into it as well. I'm more familiar with front end UI and UX design, but I have a passing aptitude for backend coding and debugging.

Yeah, timing isn't great, and the sign-up window isn't terribly big either, but whoever is available should make a push to get any many teams as we can signed up. Would hate for the opportunity to disappear because it didn't get enough interest from the community.

Name: _In_Sanity
Class: Open Medic
Available: after 7pm any night I'm not already in scrims (and, with some warning, and provided I'm not missing all of my scrims, some of those nights as well)

If you are set on defending your innocence than this thread is not the place. There is a lot of very reasonable suspicion (a number of those frags look really fishy... which I do admit does not immediately mean hacks, but it raises a lot of doubt). Because of that you aren't going to win in the court of public opinion right now.

That has nothing to do with this being a win-win situation, it isn't. But it is a situation where the cost of being wrong and exonerating you when you are guilty is incredibly high (it would essentially invalidate any future investigation before it began and that is dangerous).

Anyway, if you are genuinely innocent then what you need to do is stop feeding the fire here, and go to whatever admin group is handling the actual investigation and ask them what you are trying to ask here. What do they need, if you are innocent be as cooperative as you can be, give them whatever they need, and stop worrying about opinions in this thread. We can't ban you, regardless of our personal opinions.

You are right though, catching a hacker isn't a game of absolutes. There is a chance that even if you are legit you will be banned, and you need to be ready for that, and you need to handle it gracefully. As long as you are cooperative and respectful to the admins you should be fine.

I love the idea. Ultiduo is great, but there aren't any reliable places to get involved with it if you are new to the format other than tournaments that require buy-ins and come with a very high likelihood of getting crushed early by much better teams. A league, especially one with divisions to allow at least some level of skill separation, would be a great way to lower the barriers to entry.

Some passing thoughts:
- You'd want to have a loosely defined default match time (I would not enforce this, more just have it as a way to 'start the clock' on when a match must be played). Basically, default to a Monday (or whatever, at a specific time) and they have a week from that day to play their match and report scores.

- Casting without a default time would be difficult. It might be possible to create a system by which teams would notify evlTV or another group about selected match times if they are interested in being casted. Or casting groups, like evlTV could select a time (or times) that work for them and if a team wishes to be casted they would need to schedule their match during that time. Ultimately I think that would be up to the casting groups to determine what works best for them.

- If there are playoffs/finals those should probably have a more strict default match time. Could probably still allow teams to play the match at a time that works best for them, but you'd want to avoid a situation where the teams are unable to agree on a good time.

Anyway, you can add me to the list
_In_Sanity

You don't need a single international league, or even a single international website to share the collective resources of the various communities.

If you want to leverage the size of the NA and EU scenes to help grow the smaller ones than find a way to give them access to our casters and streamers. Lets get them coverage, not just so we know more about them, but so they have a bit more local hype to entice new players into the scene. We don't need an international league or even an international forum for that. We just need a more international pool of casting talent and a better means of sharing knowledge, programs, and resources between casting groups around the world. Package our production tools, help interested players/members from the smaller leagues learn how to use them.

The point is there are far easier ways to grow the smaller leagues around the world than forcing them under one big, international, umbrella.

I am on wired internet, so it isn't a wireless connection (but it is comcast internet, so there is that). Anyway, I get a solid 50-60 ping to pretty much everywhere but when I join servers for scrims or matches my ping starts spiking from average ping to around 800 and then back down.

For a while it felt like a time specific problem as I would experience the ping spikes between 8 and 9:30... but everything I've tried to isolate this has not worked. I've gone around and kicked everyone else off the internet and prioritized bandwidth allocation for tf2 to limited success.

I'm hoping that someone else has experienced this issue and might have some suggestions on things that I can try to fix this issue.

was not aware that so many things counted as "stunned" definitely needs more fixing then.

The rest of the stuff, good points, and pretty much all of it I already knew and agree with. I was just trying to comment generally about what aspects of the weapons felt the most broken to me while remaining solution agnostic.

Surprisingly that was more difficult to do than I expected. So much of our language surrounding currently overpower weapons centers around how we believe that they could be fixed. To the point where a lot of the core issues with the weapons are only ever described by ways that we would go about changing them.

I can understand why valve has always resisted suggestions for weapon improvements/fixes. It is easy to convince yourself that you know what is actually broken about a weapon, and that you have a real solution to that problem, and completely miss the mark.