went from being a degen and playing pugs all day and getting a C and D on my two most important classes last semester to actually having decent study habits and did super well, feels good to know you're actually putting in effort and achieving your potential instead of just fucking off and wasting ur time lol
also decided to not be an antisocial mong and actually made friends in my classes and shit which is nice

turns out doing things other than waste all ur time playing tf2 makes ur life much more satisfying and fulfilling :)

getting 3rd last season for once and taking a map off froyoblack felt super good as well i was disappointed that we choked on the other maps but regardless it was definitely a good accomplishment i didnt expect to achieve when i first joined midseason (plus beating vel convincingly in the other playoff bo3 after struggling 5-4 both games regular season)

I also started jumping more and trying to rack up the tempus points and it's pretty rewarding to improve at something ive been donig for so long but until now didn't really care about enough to grind (quints/wallpogos for example i just couldnt be asked to do before)

ps blues ur the best pls come back and grace this game with ur presence again one day

Would be awesome to go but dunno yet if it'll conflict with school

Has the prize pool been announced yet? Would be dope to see some na gamers go

Not the main point of the thread as tri said the pool has already been decided, but I'll say this anyways. Viaduct is easily the most interesting/exciting map to spectate because all the fast paced action and fights, and even to play and get rolled by a better team is usually still fun because there are no stalemates and it's so inherently back and forth (unless you get forward held for 3 minutes which is extremely rare obviously). Nobody I've spoken to in invite (besides b4nny and lucrative who have rather extreme opinions on completely changing the map pool) seriously thinks via should be removed, because it's such a perfectly balanced and fun map to play. Maybe in lower divisions where people aren't as coordinated and can't as easily counter a sniper by bombing and proper pressure, I can see people disliking it, but we should balance around the top level not some open team that never learned how to play the map properly or gets tilted cause it's different/they're not used to it.

I think it's the best map in the rotation because it allows every class to shine and show off their mechanical abilities/gamesense (medics surfing/arrows/movement/positioning, roamers going behind/sacking, pockets the same as well as doing good uber trades, scouts/demo clearly being super strong on the map).

Yes it is the only koth map but the fact that it is so good should be plenty enough to make that not matter. I see no reason why the pool must be entirely 5cp or koth or whatever other gamemode, and if anything it would be good to see more koth in the rotation. They add a completely new and unique element to the game and makes it so the team that is best at process/pug maps must also be coordinated and have to adapt to a different environment which is good imo and adds depth.

I do see the problem with the current ban system however, because people generally don't want to be upset on viaduct and unless you're really confident in your ability to play it well it's probably better to avoid the risk of choking and losing. I agree with the above posts about how moving back to a weekly map based system would help on this front and force people to learn to play via/propaganda as well as other less commonly played maps (and this preventing space cadet from having to play one in every three matches on process lol)

It's unfair to draw a comparison to gpit as that map was nearly universally disliked, or at least is now aside from a handful of people who want it back. Via seems to be the exact opposite, with only a select few people legitimately thinking it should be gone. The reason it isn't played is not that it's bad by any means, it's just different and people don't want to get upset. It doesn't help that it isn't played in pugchamp for whatever reason (iirc it was a config issue but I feel like that's not unfixable, maybe I'm wrong tho)

No they won't, if the hypthesis is right that badlands and granary are disliked by everyone they will just get banned instead. Propaganda is a pretty solid map and people already seem to like it a lot. I don't see the problem with what you're saying tho, let the people decide if they want to play propaganda versus badlands/gran/other maps. The same argument can go for any new map that people won't want to play it, but never in the past has there been such widespread support for it that it seems unlikely.

Edit: in ESEA afaik we play the original badlands rather than prolands, which I agree with you didn't fix enough and I personally think did unnecessary changes in removing hiding spots and the ledge on batts which was useful to stand on and nobody ever complained about.
I was talking to botmode yesterday and he talked about some other changes to last that he suggested on the thread but didn't get implemented which I think would be interesting to test. One was changing the spawn doors to gullywash style where they are rotated 90 degrees and moved backwards, which is a change that happened on sunshine and made it harder to just sit in spawn as a medic for example. The respawn timer changes are definitely a big plus as is the extra ammo, but one big issue people talk about is the sniper sightlines from choke and how hard it makes it to push out so maybe it would be possible to block off the sightline to right batts (just an idea, could end up being bad).

Edit2: cardinal was played by 20b vs velocity (show forgot to ban it), and my team (mentality) played it vs velocity as well in playoffs. We didn't think to ban it and they picked it because they had scrimmed it/knew how to play it.

I personally think the most reasonable/best option is to replace cardinal with propaganda and keep the pool the same otherwise.

There was a brief discussion in the 'invite meeting' a little while ago but haven't heard anything since. I noticed pugchamp added logjam and propaganda and removed badlands and granary and remembered that was what some people were pushing for during the meeting but I wasn't aware that it was officially decided by any means.

I remember tri talking about how he was going to look into making the map ban system more transparent (e.g., avoid problem of both teams banning the same map) and maybe even add more bans? Would be good to get an update on what's going on with things.

Installed it to test and it seems to only work on eu pugchamp? I would think the ESEA stats would let it be implemented into NA as well but maybe there's too many people who haven't played or something? Pretty cool regardless

edit: reread post and saw it says " If you would like to add PugChamp-Helper support for ESEA/NA PugChamp" nvm guess it doesn't have support yet

alright can we ban this kitchen spot valve obviously fucked up and re-added it even tho it got removed on the previous versions
shits gay as fuck

safrix is more of a 6th place kinda player

didnt they make a plugin to fix it for RGL tho?
granted, idk if valve will even be able to fix these shadows lol

https://clips.twitch.tv/TalentedCorrectFrogFeelsBadMan

His endgame is him a medic and four other scout mains running around the map LMFAO

For real though who the FUCK wants to play matchmaking with no class limits that'd be so awful
Feel like that's the one surefire way to make everyone who actually enjoyed comp 6s quit and actually kill the game for good

https://www.change.org/p/na-pug-champ-gg-crestrict-milan

I agree with this point on one hand but on the other hand I think it's good to encourage people to be well rounded and good at all the maps as a team, that way if a team fears your viaduct and gullywash or something like that they have to compromise and allow another map like cardinal or propaganda. Granted, you can't really expect every team to get good at all the maps like this and in reality ppl will just ban all the 'unfun' maps anyways. The old system was easier for scrims and though it sucked having to play an important match on via or whatever other map if your team wasn't good at it there's still RNG factors to the pick ban and that shit is really dumb as well. Adding more bans to remove RNG almost guarenees cardinal and new maps to be banned as well so it's hard to say that system is easily fixable. Also really bad that there's no transparency and both teams can waste a ban on cardinal or whatever and then it RNGs out of 4 instead of 3 which is even sillier. Could hypothetically out of six if both teams ban the same three. I think there should probably be a poll about the old system vs new as well because in the invite meeting for some reason everyone seemed to like the new one but according to jags point it really would make no difference cause new maps just get banned anyways. People might complain having to do a week on propaganda but I think overall for the game it'd be good cause people would actually nplau it and learn the map and find flaws etc. I think cardinal should 100% be removed until it gets updated and second is fixed though, I am not at all for playing that for a full week that would be awful

I would like to see a poll between invite players, which people legitimately want badlands gone vs granary gone vs cardinal gone (would guess nearly unanimous). I think there are a good amount of people who do actually want badlands to stay for example but maybe I'm the only person who thinks gran is salvageable, need data to see. I can just make a strawpoll for. I think voting is an important thing to do because many people even if we're invite don't get a voice since our team captains night have different opinions from us for example in the meetings. Perhaps lucrative/b4nny are right and the votes are entirely useless because people are "closed minded" and automatically hate new maps, and will end up keeping the map pool, but I think this is VERY MUCH not the case, people hate cardinal and like propaganda almost unanimously.

Feedback on the maps.fod map makers: