https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=366cVJsrSY4

I just want to point out that there's someone trying to argue with b4nny on twitter whose profile picture is maela, and banner is MGEMike's head. I think it's clear that regardless of your reasoning, the instant you start a war with UGC players, you've already lost.

i'm not sure too sure about tf2 (it's pretty old and a bit lacking competitively), but i think overwatch should be included and it'd shock me if it didn't cross their minds

I think it's very astute of you to realize that people would appreciate a response. However, I would go as far as to say that at this point in time a response would be something the lines of, "We are still deciding on the logistics behind attending i61." Unfortunately, that response would probably do nothing but stir the masses, with their feet repeatedly tapping the floor in impatience as they await a secondary announcement.

Most likely, posts that already assume Se7en will not respond, such as, "Is no one from Se7en going to officially respond?" are probably pretty annoying for Se7en/Kaidus to read, as he knows fully well both the situation surrounding the team and his responsibility regarding those who have supported them. I would be very shocked if Se7en fades into obscurity and never responds, considering Kaidus' reputation as a player, the work he has put into the team, and the foothold they have in the community.

If you need any more painfully obvious explanations, please hesitate to ask.

hahahahahaha yeah as a man VERY educated in the dictionary such as yourself you would know the phrase "a lack of interest" is mutually exclusive to money

SURELY the money and headache of attending aren't both reasons why you wouldn't be interested

hahahahahahahahaha holy fuck

dictionary

Why are people getting downvoted for defending them for not attending? Most fundraisers aren't actual reimbursements, they're just a percentage of the reimbursement, and if you come in 1st you MIGHT break even, considering the astronomical cost of everything else there.

You have to pay for the flight there (at this point in time, it's probably at least $1000 from the closest places in NA, hundreds more as you go west), the hotel, the transportation, the food, and lastly, the drinks, who almost everyone will partake in, as you don't just go halfway across the world to not socialize and have fun. If you have all the money settled, and you actually want to attend, you have to take off of work that Monday and likely Thursday/Friday, maybe even Wednesday if you decide you don't want to spend only 3 days at a tournament where you'll be playing for almost 2 entire days. In reality, for those who work regular schedules, you're losing even more money than simply the amount of the flights, travel, and LAN.

I really enjoyed going the first couple of times (the second time only because I met everyone I hadn't met the first time), but any amount more and it becomes kind of tiring. You dread the travel, you dread playing day 1 from like 9 am to midnight the next day on jetlag and minimal sleep, you dread the loss of money. It's not like it's some kind of fucking conspiracy that no one wants to go, as if you're all better people who would die for a chance to go to LAN and you're disappointed that everyone on froyo is missing this deal of a lifetime. Yeah, no shit, it would be your first time there, you're thinking entirely hypothetically, and you have no idea what the process actually entails. Once you've experienced everything, it can become not only overwhelming, but you can easily think of more reasons to not attend than to attend. And as banny says, if one person doesn't want to go, it becomes a domino effect. One person not wanting to go makes the next person, who thinks his presence invaluable, uninterested in attending. If you're going to spend money out of pocket to miss days of work and attend a LAN in Europe, you're going to want to do it correctly, with a real roster.

by volume alone sure, but when you consider which "na teams" are going as a top player, you're talking about notable teams that might actually take a few rounds off of you rather than open-level teams

rewind will always have more lower-level na teams than i61, whether "all" the top na teams make their way there in addition to i61 is a toss-up

Even though ESEA serves no purpose anymore, as it's clear the game is going nowhere, you still risk losing players by switching leagues. I'm sure there are many people who are hanging onto TF2 by a thread, and if one thing changes, they're probably done. You'd have to hope the new influx of players makes that worth it.

Saying NA players are stubborn for not wanting to leave ESEA is exceptionally closeminded. If ESEA opened by supporting EU as well as NA, and offered identical support, there would be no ETF2L and European players would be dealing with the same dilemma as you are now. You're going from a league that has been the primary league for the region for 7 years, with prestige and money, to a community-run league with no precedent or veteran support staff to work with it.

For the record, I think you should ditch ESEA, because paying money to a shady league for the 8th year in a row, without any chance of the game growing or becoming an esport, is depressing to imagine. They're continuing to collect, while never updating their rules/system to include map bans, a more flexible map list, a more varied map pool that doesn't repeat itself every week, a DM plugin for pregame, etc. It's just much harder than you probably think, and it's a unique situation compared to ETF2L, considering ETF2L has been the primary league for that region for a very long time, and ESEA was never a real alternative for them, as they proved they didn't have the ability to support both regions when they last tried to support EU.

obviously in a competitive ruleset in which you're allowed 2 of every combat hero except for demoman, he gets the short end of the stick. the reason demoman was limited to 1 in the first place is his ridiculous control over the game.

it's unlikely valve will balance the game around an arbitrary ruleset of "class limit 2, except for medic, demo, engineer, or heavy" or whatever the accepted ruleset is

This is the best day of my life

This is the best video I've ever seen.

I really don't consider that an option when we're talking about an actual stalemate where a demoman has put up stickies and is not afk to detonate those stickies. It's also way easier to 6-man rush through badlands choke, or snakewater lower, or process choke, or pretty much any other choke in the game, because those chokes aren't made worse by ceilings, and soldiers can jump above incoming spam, letting classes that get by on foot prioritize the healing.

I also really don't know what you're saying in this second paragraph. Are you saying you uber into the left onto the flank classes? Is it a solo uber or are you overwhelming them with players? Seems to conflict. Most of the time you ever catch people off guard in yard, it's due to an overextension. Sure, that's a viable strategy, but few times will it happen between good teams. And if you do actually take control of the yard, it's essentially given away, as defenders hit S and survive, knowing there's another stupidly claustrophobic choke if they sit inside of the house. I don't know what pantry or grundle is so I'm not going to address it. But while we're on the topic of snakewater, it's another map where you can actually push the second point via smart rotations; you can take engagements as a flank player to draw attention and let your combo push out another exit, because these exits are actually disconnected from one another, and even on different planes, allowing these engagements to be taken in isolation from one another. Defenders have to choose which choke they want to prioritize, not sit AFK in front of every choke and spam their weapons as they do on granary.

Ah, yes - most successful pushes indeed start by sending 6 players running through the same door that can easily be trapped or spammed by rockets. It seems that for about 8 years invite teams just didn't think about running through the same door into a wall of spam.

Middle to second is by far the hardest stalemate to break, unless you have uber advantage, which makes it irrelevant, because every choke is easily breakable when you're invulnerable and they aren't. There are "multiple options" to break the stalemate in that there are 2, which is more than 1. You can either rush a scout and maybe one other player into left yard and hope they roll the dice well enough to not take significant damage while they rush through the door blindly (there's no safe angle to spot for information), or you can send a roamer bombing in from right and hope that he forces or gets a pick. It's also pretty much the only map in the rotation that devolves into two entirely separate stalemates within the same segment of the map. You have a yard stalemate, and a house stalemate, both of which you have to break just to cap the second point.

The map isn't liked because it generally isn't fun. It's discussed very often how stalemates kill a lot of the hype in this game, and there's no map in the game that creates a more boring, linear stalemate than granary. You objectively have less options to use to push and there's effectively no flank, such that any engagement you take will generally be right in front of the entire team.

this is actually one of the worst posts i've ever seen. not only is the content shit but you assume someone's opinion off of a purposefully vague post.

the difference between a pubber's understanding of the game and anyone who's played at a high level in any scene is going to be much larger than the difference between a prem and NA player's experience. it's actually such an absurd comment i'm shocked you didn't hit backspace immediately. there are definitely things in tf2 about which a qualified person has more authority to speak. this video does a good job giving objective information.

also, maybe i'm not detecting the much-needed sarcasm in the first paragraph, but "no one has any special formula on what is more right or wrong," but apparently youtube views and subscribers are a great way to start?

i hope keemstar gives his opinion on tf2 soon

how to strike gold on the tftv forums: post a video in which valve states they're working on everything that everyone already knew or could have figured they were working on

obviously they're going to implement a new elo system and stress placement matches?? how else is matchmaking EVER going to work without either of them? the actual issue was not implementing these things in matchmaking when it mattered during the initial wave of players. we also already knew they were working on balancing items around "competitive player feedback," and afaik it barely showed last update. we also knew they were trying to bridge the casual and competitive scenes. the only thing in this video worth being hyped in any way about is a new map, as long as you ignore their track record.

valve communication has always been an issue when the majority of their information comes through a third-party source like b4nny or [player who visits hq], but I think you could reason that most of these things would be happening, no? are they planning on making matchmaking relevant somehow without an improvement to elo? are they planning on making competitive tf2 more popular without including the pub community? this video is everything everyone with a brain already knew just monetized so at least someone could make some money off of the game