How is HL doing these days? Is it worth playing HL or is sixes still considered the far better way to go for NA?

I appreciate the fast response. Another question I forgot to add is if me being busy with other commitments Tuesdays and Thursdays would make me ineligible to play on most teams or if teams have pretty open schedules in the lower divs.

It's been over 6 years since I last played on a TF2 team and lately I've been curious about getting back into it, so I had a couple of questions for you guys since I'm way out of the loop of the comp side of things.

1) Is TF2 competitive in NA worth playing / getting back into in 2023 as far as quality and enjoyment goes? (I more than likely would be starting at Open/the lowest league once again so I'm most interested in how that's going these days)

2) Is it true that most teams scrim/play super late at night, or is it possible to actually play on a team if you really can't go to bed later than 11 PM EST or so due to work? I think I read somewhere here that most teams play super late now?

3) Is there anywhere to play pugs/lobbies still besides TF2Center?

I Appreciate any responses and apologize if there's a big thread that details any of this or if you guys get asked this constantly on this forum.

finished

rip TF2 Key prices on marketplace

masturmbate

I've spent the entirety of my time playing this game in any form of competitive being an absolute shithead to everyone around me, whether it be via being a toxic asshole or blaming others for shit I do wrong constantly. Anyone that's played a Lobby or season with me knows that I'm a piece of shit, and it sucks because it's far too late for me to apologize to anyone for it. I want to get back into competitive and actually try this time, but I'm convinced my reputation is permanently ruined.

I feel the worst about ESEA S26, I got picked as Medic for an open team, I don't remember what it was at the time but it's now known as "Simian Aggression" on there. There were several losses in scrims and matches where I was definitely a good part of the reason why we lost and despite being told I need to find a mentor and practice more, I just kept going off the notion that "lmao no, xyz is the problem, I'm doing fine, look at muh logs!" - I became a total asshole and in the last couple of games and scrims I played with them I put zero effort in, and then got cut for it. I'm sorry to the people on that team for not listening and being a dick.

I don't think I've ever brought anything good to any "team" I've been a part of. It took until years after quitting all competitive based play to realize that. Years of blaming others and being a toxic asshole, and now I realize that for the vast majority of it, I'm to blame, that my toxicity and inability to try and stick with a team for more than a short season has led to me having zero friends left that play TF2 regularly or competitively. I regret it all.

This is more of just coming to terms with my stupidity rather than actually ranting, but oh well. I've been needing to open up about it for a long while now.

Though, at least I learned through maining medic to appreciate medics a lot more.

https://i.imgur.com/68h4e7u.png

but now we'll never see this list hit the ESEA team info character limit... :(

understandable have a nice day

(I do agree though, I'm having some stutter issues on them lately as well.)

Bumping, I'm LFT again so hit me up.

no

Found a team, thanks for the tryouts!

Sorry I didn't really word that right.

The HL community tends to hate it in pugs/lobbies, which is all I really ever get a part of since I mostly sub in HL.

I know that teams tend to enjoy it (assuming they know how to play it right) in actual play because it's an excellent break from the standard "snipers #1" system.

Considering how hostile the HL community is against it I doubt it's been properly tested ever in 6's. I think it would be neat to playtest, though.

You really can't go with what the current A/D maps in the Valve rotation, etc, as a reference to how it'd be in 6's though. If Mountainlab was more open and was more than just a ton of shitty choke points I'd say it'd be interesting to test how it'd play out, since my vision for A/D would be that 3 points to capture would be the most balanced and enjoyable.

Yeah, it may seem like it'd just always be either a roll on one side or a long stalemate, but we don't have any maps that are good enough to truly see if the potential exists for a more diverse 6v6 map pool. With maps like 2Gorge, yeah I'd definitely see it being a terrible experience, but imagine if someone took the openness of say Sunshine and made a A/D map based off that.

I'd be more than happy to make a test map based on community feedback to test this, as I have plenty of experience using hammer from jump/bhop mapping, but I'm not going to make it a super pretty and detailed map because I don't have the experience of making high detail maps.

This is simply a discussion I wanted to start on the viability of seeing Attack/Defend, specifically the standard "one team attacks, one team defends" type, become a gamemode played regularly in 6v6 in the future.

In my eyes the current Pros/Cons to this would have to be:

Pros:
-Increases the diversity of team setups - some offclasses will have more purposes than just to simply hold last or get a quick pick
-Prevents the 5cp "Stalemate" effect by forcing offensive teams to try and push against the defensive team, and giving incentive to do so in that if the offensive team fails, they won't lose any captured points.
-This would also likely widen the appeal of 6v6 to new players, as Attack/Defend, and the classes that would become useful because of it, would increase interest in competitive play.
-Teams would have to come up with brand new strategies, we won't see most of the same old plays anymore.

Cons:
-There aren't any Attack/Defend maps currently that I would call "able to be played in 6v6 comfortably." Gravelpit is probably the closest we've got, and it did work for many seasons, but there's reasons why it hasn't been played in years.
-Not everyone likes change, adding this gamemode could anger or annoy a pretty large portion of the active competitive community.
-Attack/Defend has not been tried in competitive in general with the exception of small events, singular seasons, and the use of non-standard A/D maps such as Gravelpit and Standin. Dustbowl has been tried, but only for a couple seasons in the very beginning.
-Attack/Defend has the potential to be a very slow gamemode.

Let's say that we completely reworked the gamemode and included new maps that were made to give it a much more satisfying feel, would the gamemode become viable in the game? My idea is to follow the Mountainlab system of 3 control points and non-multistage, but work what we've learned from 5CP and KOTH into the mix.

Give me your thoughts, this is not necessarily a thread that's solely for me to have questions answered, but for the community to think about it and discuss.

And no, I'm not the first who has thought of this, the first to have brought it up, or a brand new player that's trying to advocate for it's inclusion. I am solely making this thread to discuss the topic as I feel that at least a few other people may have had the thought on their minds too.