changed name from shaffe to ash_nazg

Before I add your stream "directhitenjoyer" to the sidebar under your name, are you sure that's the correct URL? It doesn't seem to link an actual twitch stream.

name changed from Ragnaz to DmRagz

I've updated your twitch handle from quid__ to quidworldwide.

I've added bunnies twitch to the sidebar

I've added Ragnaz's twitch stream dmragz to the sidebar.

name changed from tr15t3n to tristen

please crash out somewhere else

I'm sorry, the username is already taken. Is there an alternative you'd prefer?

nothing will beat VARgentina
spain you are our final hope

everybody loves saying that one quote about how twenty two men chase the ball for 90 min until the germans win right until anybody but Undav has to do something
I'll cheer for england with you guys now

name changed from Endreo to goMY

changed name from Spannzer to twpsyn

I've been trying to catch up with all of the FIFA activity for a bit now, watching Brazil vs Morocco right now too
Videogames wise, if I'm playing a game it's going to be deadlock that game has gripped me fully

I think one thing that hasn't necessarily been talked about enough in these discussions is that people don’t just play competitive TF2 because they’re trying to min-max progression through divisions. A huge part of why people stay in the game is because they want to keep playing with specific groups of people, which was absolutely true for me when I first started playing.

A lot of the players I used to queue and team with are now either much higher div than I am or have moved on from the game entirely, while I also stepped away from playing at a serious competitive level for a long time. The result is that under stricter restriction systems, it becomes realistically impossible to ever form some of those rosters again even though we already played together in the past and weren’t some untouchable superteam, even when it was more competitive. I would absolutely shoot stickies into DoomIcorn again.

I see a lot of people echoing the same sentiment of “I would come back if I could play with my friends again,” and I think that resonates because the current system tends to treat players as permanent snapshots of their peak placements instead of where they actually are now or what kind of team they’re trying to build. And realistically, with the size of the current playerbase and the amount of volunteer admin work already required, it’s impossible to perfectly evaluate every returning player’s current level through demos, logs, sparse recent matches, scrims, etc.

There’s always going to be tension between “maximally competitive league” and “league people can actually come back to and participate in without dedicating all of their free time to grinding.” Those are fundamentally different goals. Obviously there still needs to be protection against blatant stacking/ringing/sandbagging, but I think the league has drifted too far toward preventing hypothetical imbalance at the expense of roster expression and player retention. At the current size of the game, I think that’s more damaging than just letting the teams (and just jazz) play.