am I stupid or is whatever sigafoo said in this thread just more incriminating to their awful admin process? I feel like I've never read less substance in more words in my entire life, and the only substance I got was that despite the council of admins that congregates to discuss infractions, they still managed to decide to ban him only to rescind it later? that's almost less inspiring than just banning him and keeping it that way, considering despite 12 different perspectives they still thought the ban was merited, but collectively their decision matters so little that they'll unban based on a tftv thread. is that right or did I just misread? maybe they didn't start the council until aim's ban? I'll stress again I literally have no idea what that block of text is saying, it's an insane skill to dedicate that many words to such little meaning.

the solution to this seems pretty simple, whether you compare it to csgo or dota. just get a couple invite players who like to cast matches in close communication and give them the OK to cast matches. doesn't seem too hard. it seems based on one of the chatlogs, rgl is concerned with no-names and trolls signing up to cast matches and make a mockery of the quality of the league, so just make sure you get some people who are eager and skilled enough to cast? I swear though it's shocking that there's so much scrutiny over each report and bans still manage to be so poor that they upset the entire community. I don't even understand the point of banning... it's tf2, why would you want to ban anyone for an extended period of time unless they're bigots or something. even if the council thought aim did something wrong, you'd think it would start with a warning...

a simple, blanket rule would maybe work for a giant esport that's covered by media, advertising, etc. obviously when there's millions and billions of dollars of investment on the line, you'd expect that league and its investors to not want that language tied directly to it. even then, something like this where a known player has allegedly done something "wrong," a league would do its due diligence and apply context

but this is tf2 where context is much more easily applicable, especially when that context is banning a black person for using the n word, when they don't even know it's something that will be seen by anyone else other than themselves and their friends. you guys have like 100 players, doesn't seem too hard to use context

why is there still this narrative that if the tf2 community tried harder the game would grow? some people are so naive to think there's some puzzle that valve gave us that we never solved, or we haven't accumulated enough gold stars as a community so they're holding off on the competitive overhaul until we've proved our morals and learned our lesson.

like, what is this? do you think valve needed the cs 1.6/cs:s community to prove their dedication to the game to make csgo and eventually push the competitive format so it could grow into the esport it is today? it's about money, dude. money. you think these billion dollar corporations are running leagues and tournaments for their game to capture the spirit of competition? it's to make money. they have simply decided the risk associated with pushing competitive tf2 is not worth the potential payout. that's it. they're not waiting for the competitive community to reach their standard as true patrons of the game, who fully understand the compromise they need to make for the plight of the pubber. if they thought competitive tf2 could be lucrative they'd have a larger team either creating a sequel or making massive changes to the title to standardize the gameplay. there's nothing you can do about it. even pubs are suffering now because of bots. pubbers who used to have gabe newell as their steam avatar are now cynical valve haters who complain about bots and valve not caring every time sydney#123213213 joins the game to spin around in circles.

also making the community more accessible and healthier ISN'T mutually exclusive here. you can strive to make the game better for new and old players alike without expecting that to lead to tf2 as an esport. if you find out valve is never going to care (they won't) are you going to try to kill the game faster instead? make the game good for the community that plays. do your best to do your own advertising for the game so new players have a chance to play competitive if it's something they'd enjoy. stop thinking valve is implicated in this at all.

offclass: shrugger

depends on the definition of gimmick. it's a "gimmick" because the VR experience is 95% of the reason for playing a VR game. I've tried a fair amount of VR games, and while beatsaber is great, it's just DDR bro. and that brings me to another example, in this sense, the interactive aspect of DDR could be seen as a gimmick too. it's just a game with arrows that fall down the screen. I wouldnt have played that game at all without the physical aspect because there's just not much else there. and while that's fine, my worry with VR, at least during the early stages, is that the games will have a poor narrative with boring mechanics, simply because the main focus of the game is the VR. and while those things could only improve the VR experience, will these new, trailblazing games like half-life really focus enough on the other tenets of a video game? only time will tell.

but honestly, even with those things aside, half-life just doesn't feel like a VR game. I want to shoot at things and jump around with source movement. maybe that's the boomer in me tho

I don't mean to be rude but I'm extremely confused by your second paragraph. I don't think you're grasping the term "ethical." The point is that the argument of "life consumes life" becomes an ethical dilemma when we, as intelligent and sentient humans, make a conscious choice to consume other sentient, intelligent (albeit, less) organisms. As our intelligence reigns supreme on earth, we can identify the questionable morality of farming livestock en-masse in horrible conditions as a source of food, especially when there are alternatives that will only continue to be more feasible as we advance as a society.

In short, wolves don't share these moral quandaries when eating rabbits because they aren't intelligent enough to consider an ethical framework that supersedes something as basic as a food chain. And even if they could grasp ethics, they don't have the tools to do something about it. However, humans do. And there lies the ethical dilemma.

*shrug*

people are just very committed to the idea of the game becoming an esport. it's understandable, because nothing sounds cooler than playing the game you love as your job. but in a lot of cases, that glamour is just idealistic. I went to play overwatch solely to understand and experience what playing a game as a passion-fueled career would be like. but unless you have the right game, that career is really just a job you have to put mindless time into. there are a few people that i'm sure are living their dreams, like cs players who have been grinding the series for a decade, or who grew up on watching and playing it like a kid would player soccer or baseball, to then become one of the people they looked up to their whole lives. i don't really think that's too common, though.

that is unfortunately very much how it works for modern games. esports became very profitable very quickly and so companies and investors jumped on the opportunity to artificially churn out games and leagues in pursuit of money off of esports. games like CS, dota, starcraft, etc that only became esports once the money caught up to the passion are so few in number comparatively, because you have to create your esports quickly now as opposed to just letting them grow organically.

i agree that the reality of the situation is terrible, though. tf2 would definitely be an esport if money were thrown at it and leagues were made to profit off of that. however, it would probably be a no class limits, all items available, chaotic tf2 that would need many iterations of balancing to get it to an enjoyable level. in fact, there's so much of this game that makes it good that would have to be changed if you wanted a real esport out of it, so it's really just unrealistic.

melee's technical ceiling was 'by accident,' but the game itself was developed in a way that cultivates that kind of gameplay while casting aside those technical limitations. even without wavedashing, the game would still be highly technical. in the grand scheme of melee fundamentals, wavedashing is only one piece of the puzzle. a tiny piece, too. especially among inexperienced players, wavedashing has more flair than usefulness. the important point of this is that the game was difficult to play and punishing at every level. the characters move quickly, there aren't really any anti-snowball mechanics, the game is very free-flowing, the attacks don't necessarily have ridiculous hitboxes that reach across the stage and last forever, etc. so you'll see newer players missing 90% of aerials, getting smash attacked in the face, running off the cliff by accident, and generally looking like they have limited control over their character.

in contrast, a lot of newer games stress the barrier to entry for newer, and especially younger, audiences, which dilutes the experience on a foundational level. that being said, I have no idea why the tf2 community has to be so negative and cynical in response to new shooters. tf2 is not going anywhere, you should hope that this game is designed to be competitive and and not to hold the hands of every new child that launches the game. that reality would benefit everyone in fps limbo, including everyone on this forum.

mmm I think the bigger problem with that scene is the fact that littlefinger is built up in the books as an extremely cunning, almost visionary person who can play the game like a chessboard, but when he's convicted of treason his rebuttals are:

"i'm a bit confused"
"none of you were there"
and "please sansa i've only protected you"

the show has always failed to make littlefinger appear as tactful as he is in the books, with precedent leading all the way back to season 1, the first time you see dialogue between littlefinger and cersei. littlefinger randomly says this inflammatory thing to cersei, showing that a) he wants her power and b) he isn't to be trusted, and cersei just fires back with this one-liner that renders him speechless. book lf would have done his best to both brown-nose as much as possible and avoid altercations with more powerful people he's trying to control.

it's been shit like this that turned me off from the show, leading all the way back to the first season. it needs to be said, though, that the first few seasons are MILES ahead of the last few from following book narratives to overall quality

I don't work in the sales department of the video game industry, so it's likely i'm missing something, but from my perspective there's a weird relationship between mechanics and marketability that seems almost entirely contrived. i think if tf2 came out a couple of years ago in the state it's in now, it would've been huge. there are a lot of things developers can add to games to make them more appealing to a casual audience. for example, fortnite actually has quite a lot of mechanical depth in its building/editing and the speed at which you're required to do it, but the average 12 year old only really cares that they can run around in a chicken costume and shoot grenades. and even in the fortnite world, where you're playing a battle royale with hardly any (if any at all) skill-based matchmaking algorithms, these casual players are sometimes getting smacked around by players like tfue without even realizing it. and they're still logging in to play everyday.

a game like melee had an incredible underground scene that learned all of the crazy techniques you see people still mastering and utilizing 2 decades later, but from a casual standpoint the game was a massive success. for some reason people/nintendo seem to think otherwise? i'm pretty sure the sales for melee were monumental, and there was no need to make brawl a game that tried its hardest to eradicate the competitive side of the franchise.

i would imagine that if you're really new and have a casual approach to games, most of the mechanical depth in melee, csgo, quake, tf2, etc. will go entirely over your head and you won't even have to experience much of it, because you'll play with and get matched against people in that same bracket. it seems like the key in the development of mechanically deep games is to have a very friendly and shallow base to your game that everyone can enjoy for what it is, while supplementing that with cosmetics and extra content.

now that I've watched a good amount of ultimate from genesis, I think one of the game's most frustrating mechanics to spectate is the fact that every single hit slows the game like it's a cinematic

coming from someone who spent the last 15 years of his life on and off studying melee and learning/practicing all the adv tech, it looks and responds so slowly comparatively

in general I'm okay with the games being fundamentally different, and it seems skill/speed wise ultimate is the closest the smash community has come to melee, but at the same time I still think the game has very casual, hand-holding mechanics like its ridiculous hitstun and edge-play

Top artists -- Short Term (4 weeks)

Thrice
Kanye West
Beach Bunny
Dance Gavin Dance
Lena Raine
Nujabes
Green Day
I The Mighty
Circa Survive
Emarosa

Top artists -- Medium Term (6 months)

Scary Kids Scaring Kids
Thrice
Dance Gavin Dance
Alexisonfire
Kanye West
Emarosa
Lena Raine
Linkin Park
The Killers
Saosin

Top artists -- Long Term (years)

Dance Gavin Dance
Drake
Saosin
Circa Survive
Kanye West
Alexisonfire
Emarosa
The Beatles
Slaves
Emancipator

not sure how slaves is on my long term, maybe kept a song on repeat when I was afk

Is this parody? This is hands down one of the most narcissistic viewpoints on competition I've ever seen. You would be genuinely upset that the community isn't banning the best team? That the community isn't allowing you an undeserved 1st place? That you couldn't make marginally more money? There are so many questions. Where are your explanations? You made a sweeping claim that he was right. Based on what? Are there statistics on how many players are playing now that froyo is banned? I mean, probably not, right? The season hasn't started. Is there a way to qualify that more people playing RGL due to froyo's ban is "better for TF2?" It's very clearly not a popular league, nor will it be anything that Valve supports. So...?

All I can infer from this is that you're highly narcissistic. You value the potential money that you'd earn and the "work you've put in" over winning the league fairly. Other teams, like froyo, put in work as well. It's a competition; the players who can be most effective under the rules of the competition deserve to win. One's own bitterness and exasperation that they aren't good enough isn't an exception and shouldn't be supported.

Also, lol? From the words of Ascent players themselves, it is disrespectful to act like they put no work in. You could assume based on that admission that it's disrespectful to ban froyo to allow 2nd place teams to finally win, because then they've effectively avoided work entirely to win. This post is one wild ride, man.

this is the kinda stuff i just hate to see... this game would be an esport if people were just nicer to each other