ive been most well known as the guy who camped his own spawn for literally 6 years

welcome to the tf2 community lollerbearz

came in here to say this

check his stats its absolutely absurd

whats the deal with funs, is he like hung over or dying of food poisoning

dont doubt me euros

im pretty sure the NA team has underperformed in every one of these seeding group stages because they're jet lagged as shit

prove me wrong in the upper bracket finals 7

two questions:

1) is pvhud issued at birth to all aussies

2) will it make me good at scout

Truly the Hard Aim Pootis Serbia of lore.

glad to hear he's getting help, takes a big man to admit you have an addiction that you can't beat on your own

good luck buddy

at the end of the day, people with a win-at-all-costs mentality/personality type are probably more likely to be playing a game with money and "fame" on the line and not tf2

the thing about b4nny is that it's an aberration that this game even has one guy like that, and given how he basically had to corner the stream market to even eke out a living, it's unrealistic to expect more than one

I sometimes wish players had more of a growth-oriented mindset and took criticism better/sacrificed for the team more/fucked around and got emo less, but the fact of the matter is people who are that competitive aren't in this community

ok so the problem here is that you're just wrong. it's like you're parroting a concept that's true for most esports, which is that individual skill evens out at the top and things like coordination and communication become more important, and thinking it's just because once a game has been around for a while that sort of plateauing is inevitable. the reality of tf2, however, is the player base is much smaller, so the difference in individual skill between even top 4 invite teams can still be felt. take habib, for instance- he's significantly better individually from a DM standpoint than just about any other demo. true, he probably wouldn't be as effective having to play the bdonski/campy role, but if your team wants a carry demo who will take lots of heals and put out as much damage as possible, there is literally no reasonable facsimile of him, and he's on froyo. following this, there's a reason why b4nny and habib still mge and dm for literally hours a day, and it's not only warmup or superstition or whatever- no one has come close to reaching the skill ceiling on most classes, and that edge is still important.

I do agree with you that there's a lot of untapped potential strategically in tf2 (which for the record would probably require coaches/salaries/in-person meetups to really reach another level), but I think a lot of people underestimate the value of individual decision making when they set up the dichotomy of DM and teamwork. froyo has players with a ton of experience, sure, but they also have an intuitive understanding of the game. there's a reason why blaze and yomps both started out as scout mains but pretty much instantaneously reached an invite level when they switched to soldier; their sense of timing of when to aggress is incredible. not saying that can't be taught/improved AT ALL, but to act like more teamwork-oriented practice would suddenly make teams like Ascent, Velocity and NGF to have as good teamwork and comms as froyo is unrealistic, because there's an individual component to that as well.

trust me, I'm as big a hater of the "better players are better and that's that" tautological arguments as you are. once upon a time, highlander used to have a limit on the number of invite players that could be on one team, and my ridiculous nerd essays were one of the biggest reasons why that stupid rule got removed. I pointed out that it wasn't as if invite players were a different species, and useoftoaster helpfully added that, if you replaced "invite" with "really good", you would realize how stupid such a rule was ("limit of 2 really good players per team", "we need this rule so that teams without really good players stand a chance", etc.).

still, I have to be realistic and point out that a) froyo is still improving themselves, b) the gap is larger than some people think BECAUSE individual dm/gamesense is a factor as well, and c) froyo has shown themselves willing to poach players on other playoff invite teams, and therefore catching up to them is extremely difficult. I definitely don't think it's impossible, but reducing it to "just practice better" is disingenuous.

again, I think you're underestimating the gap between players, and therefore how diminished the returns are. I will concede that scout is so OP right now that your good day/bad day argument would lead to upsets if a team had scouts almost as good as froyo's (which is why I said that the best possible team of non-froyo players could prolly win up to 20% of the time), but that still hinges on making some serious roster upgrades.

the problem is, froyo has better DM AND coordination/comms/trust or whatever else than Ascent

they just have better players, that's the reality

froyo's dominance is pretty much just the inevitable result of an amateur game with a relatively small talent pool.

as others have said, no one can afford (literally) to put in the effort of b4nny consistently, which isn't changing anytime soon. on top of that, an underrated aspect of froyo's dominance is that, as the #1 team, they've always had the ability to get talent from other teams- yomps, arekk and habib were all already on the #2 or #3 teams in invite when b4nny grabbed them up, meaning that a) they were already incredibly strong players and b) he was simultaneously weakening his biggest rivals. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, it's just natural.

the difference in a game like, say, CS:GO, is that the number of truly elite players is just too high for such a strat to result in a permanent #1 team. in fact, this sort of thing happens in domestic scenes all the time. SK reached the top by always picking up the best Brazilian players; same with Astralis for Denmark and with Na'Vi for the CIS region. we just don't think of Ascent as being like the Immortals or the North of tf2 because there's only ONE superteam (at least in NA) in this analogy, not 4 or 5.

the sad truth is, this season's ascent roster only had 2-3 individual players at the level of the guys on froyotech, so no amount of practice and dedication could quickly close the gap. I personally feel like there's enough talent in NA to build a team that, like Ascent from a few seasons ago, can get very close to froyo and maybe beat them 10-20% of the time. however, even that team wouldn't be CONSISTENTLY as good, and I don't think there's enough talent to sustain more than one team like that at a time.

tf2 came out in 2007, had no developer support compared to modern games, and still has a small but vibrant and passionate scene compared to most games of its ilk. to me, that's enough, and I've made my peace with dwindling pug playerbases and tiny prize pools. froyo being this dominant is just another consequence of our situation. but you know what? tf2 has had a good run regardless.

well after watching the finals it was clear (in my opinion) that ascent was the better team.

this fuxx guy might be phrasing his opinions like a neckbeard but at least theyre actually unpopular

some of yall are like "MGE tryhards are annoying, getting to invite requires both DM AND gamesense, and pyro is annoying to play against! stop me before I go too far!!"

reminder that joe did this in plat grand finals and stabbed nursey

no hate