https://www.mousepads.cool/

if you need a mousepad for your whole desk, this is it

I've honestly been too scared to get one myself, but i've read and watched a bunch of reviews and it seems to be pretty high quality.

they need the /s (puke)

sea of piss

yeah, except nobody cares about their mmr in casual, it's only used to balance teams to (in theory) make them more fun for everyone

when you have a publord scunt dropping ~50 frags and losing, and therefore losing mmr because the system weighs win/loss more heavily than individual performance, it just makes future matches for that player more unbalanced because the system is weighing team performance more than individual when considering individual skill level. and this is compounded by the fact that it's casual and most players probably aren't playing for the win anyway, they're playing to have fun, whether that's by going friendly heavy, or trolldier, or sniper, or spy, or whatever. in that kind of environment where win/loss doesn't matter to the players, why should it matter to the matchmaking system?

but to reiterate: valve doesn't care, and we probably shouldn't either, because it's fucking casual. i'd rather they spent as little effort on it as possible so that they can work on the real problems the game has: the ambassador being too good and pyro not having enough mobility

i mean it seems wrong that that would still be considered performing below my skill level

in a game with such wide skill differences and such large team sizes that depend on the skill, composition, and cohesion of a team to win, win/loss should probably be weighted less than individual performance when considering skill indexing.

but you know, valve, so

https://i.imgur.com/Fq7L00O.png

that feels wrong somehow

ur brain is tiny

has there been a test cup played with it banned recently or at all? or is everything just theorycrafting and whining?

its a plot of how likely each value is according to the data. its just an easy way to see visually how far from the average any given value is. there should be a way to auto-generate them in the spreadsheet software somewhere, but idk.

it must be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV_GCXqFbek

def still an excellent choice tho, and nobody ever said two fragmovies couldn't use the same music

[*]

tbh you haven't lived until you've mained pootis on a 24/7 2fort server for a year and a half.

i used to recommend one of these bad boys
https://www.amazon.com/Zalman-Zm-Mic1-Sensitivity-Headphone-Microphone/dp/B00029MTMQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524595149&sr=8-1&keywords=zalman+mic
plus whatever your favorite headphones are, but it seems like the zalman is out of production now. $15 is still a pretty good deal, but I bet you could find something better for that money.

one of these is pretty close to the original price of the ZM1
https://www.amazon.com/Technica-ATR4650-Condenser-Computer-Microphone/dp/B006QSSUK2/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1524595568&sr=1-10&keywords=zalman+mic
but I can't vouch for its quality.

other than those, if you want a clip on you could go with just a real lav. this one looks fine
https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Microphone-Omnidirectional-Smartphones-Cancelling/dp/B016C4ZG74/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1524595694&sr=1-3&keywords=lavalier+microphone
but again, i can't vouch for it.

if you wanna give a desk mic a shot, really anything here should work fine
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_8?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=desk+microphone&sprefix=desk+mic%2Celectronics%2C165&crid=1IVDXZ4FXQ6PU

just make sure you buy an actual mic, not a stand.

the only thing you really need to know is that you don't need to drop 50 bucks on a modmic or a snowball to get something that'll work for comms in your favorite gamer games. as for headphones, the general rules are

• don't buy anything gamer branded

anything that says gamer is gonna be either really really cheap shit marked way way up by some no-name company to get people who don't know any better to think it must be good because it's expensive, or it's going to be the same shit you could get for about half the price, but just with LEDs and really ugly plastic pieces all over it to make it for gamers. either way, avoid at all costs.

• open backed > close backed

having an open back will give you better positional sound, but it'll also let in a lot more of your ambient noise. if you live in a really noisey house or a dorm or something, probably stick with closed back stuff, but if you can, i'd definitely say go for opens or at least semi opens.

• stick with real audio brands if you can afford them

again, you don't have to spend $200 on some 598s like all the streamers have, but something like these
https://www.amazon.com/AKG-240-Semi-Open-Studio-Headphones/dp/B0001ARCFA/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1524596557&sr=1-3&keywords=akg+k240

or these
https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATH-M30x-Professional-Monitor-Headphones/dp/B00HVLUQW8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1524596627&sr=1-1&keywords=m30x
are gonna be worlds better than anything from the chinese company you've never heard of, or a computer memory vendor turned headset company.

cromen

https://i.imgur.com/7Tbirqx.png

https://i.imgur.com/klzSrjT.png

:thonking: