This thread is made to promote discussion on the Blog post about MoB gaming, Blight, and the ongoing debates about unlockable weapons.

Talk!

the DH kills BBall :<

BRB, gotta read it first..

Alright.. From my perspective (I have posted a bit in the TWL debate threads also) here are my thoughts

1) New weapons introduced during a season should simply stay out of the formal leagues until the next season. it keeps the rules consistent and very easy and removes the so called "astericks" from any particular match that did or did not have the unlocks.

2) Leagues should involve certain teams for experimental matches, TWL got this somewhat correct by using the holiday break to have matches where they were allowed, or schedule something inbetween season where teams take a serious look.

3) Between seasons, the team captains will vote individually that represent a team vote to make some decision for the following season.

As far as the debates go, its simply noise, mid-season changes are always going to be hotly debated and cause all kidns of issues, which is exactly the reason the major leagues chose not to do it during the season, and honestly, ESEA/TWL all made some pretty big mistakes by toying with allowing them or not during an existing season.

The weapons have been out a few weeks, mostly over the holidays when people may not of been in game, so we are seeing things as a knee-jerk reaction and was just to early to deal with the topic. Let the teams PuG on it and play with them outside the league to get some real thoguhts abotu it that can be approached rationally.

As far as MoB/Blight, it's a shame to see it go that way, MoB honestly, I don't believe as ever really considered a playoff calibur team that would run witht he EG, Complexities, Blight's of the world. So its not a major thing that way broke up, I hope to see them get a roster back and finish a couple matches before the seasons out.

Blight on the other hand, this is just nonsense, I don't believe they were ever considered the top team, even when they won it all as 20ID, that season they had issues with Complexity(Then loaded). Not taking away from winning that season, but they were simply the best that day and not the best in TF2. Since the additions of OPlaid and others, they are stronger on paper, but they didn't seem to get it together again to make a run. They had a phenominal game against Complexity in the playoffs, but that was simply the best I expect them to be.

For the record, my current thoughts are that the Complexity team is simply the team to beat right now, and unless teams are able to really push them for a loss more consistently, they will remain that way.

I don't really see how, from the hour or so I've played it since the update the RL still seems better even here (in bball).

Given an highly accurate rocket shooter, I can see it playing a bit differently, but as far as an actual match, I would say the DH really cripples your spamming capabilities to the point I would rather deal with the old trusty rocket launcher.

I played a bit of BBALL with the DH, I didn't see a drastic change, but it became a more frustrating game when we all get picked off. We ended up playing 1DH 1 Standard and moved on from there..

Buff banner is hardly useful (games usually end before you can get a charge off). Direct hit should be unbanned as soon as the whole stair-issue is fixed (I still don't think it should be banned at the moment). All of the other unlocks are fine. I'm actually not convinced that the sandman is worth banning anymore (though I don't think it's worth using either).

Blight boycotting it is whatever. It's good that someone's standing up, but I don't know if it will make an impact.

It's a shame to see MoB die. They were probably the most improved team last season (that was noticed).

After all the changes, I am for the Sandman coming back in, it don't do anything to ubers, players can now move.. Why not have it in at this point. If they don't like it don't use it..

Well, the Sandman can still stun on long range hits, and it's the stun that makes it a disliked weapon, not that it's "overpowered", just that being stunned sucks, no matter how infrequent.

well i mean, if they're THAT far away, its highly unlikely that the scout will get a chance to kill the stunned person most of the time... idk, its just not as annoying/overpowered anymore

plus the scout is still playing with -15 hp

Yea... Sandman is kinda one of those things that now, when you see a Scout running around with that wood bat, you just know they're easier to kill... It's not even all that viable in Pubs. In 6v6 just stick together a bit more and the stun wouldn't even slow a team down.

It's a bit sad to see the FAN so dilluted as well, I haven't even messed around with it in a while so dunno how it's viable at all now. Hopefully thats not what happens to the Direct Hit.

the FaN actually is almost the same... if you get shot at (while you're on the ground) you're stuck in the same spot for a minuscule amount of time(like you would be before) except you're still on the ground, so you don't have to wait to fall back down

The Sandman is underpowered. However, being stunned is really irritating, so nobody likes it.

With the massive amount of changing that valve had to do to the sandman and FaN, I think we can all agree that those weapons were a tad unbalanced. However, Valve overall seems to do a decent job of making sure the weapons they release are, if not balanced, then not overpowered, within an update or two (admittedly they failed pretty hard with the scout update, but it wasn't that bad with the other ones).

Sandman seems okay now, but I'm not sure if the leagues are going to start allowing it now just because valve did a massive set of nerfs to it.
FaN is actually okay now, getting hit by it isn't a major, major issue if you see it coming.

My main irk is actually with the DH. It's not that bad at long range, but as more soldiers learn to use it, I'm increasingly finding myself juggled and airshotted with the thing. I'm not so much annoyed by that as by the fact that it will sometimes happen *while I'm hiding behind my pocket.* I'm not sure if that was intended, but it's really annoying, and only getting worse as I find more soldiers that can do that.

As far as the ESEA teams go, I agree with Hawkeye about MoB, but I think blight should really be better than this. My question right now is how the rest of blight feels about blackstar and seagull...

P.S. Great article by extine, clearly outlines the issues here

EDIT: tl;dr I really like venting my spleen, it seems...

the only irritating thing about the stun now is the third-person view. All the new unlocks are pretty balanced but I'd like to see the regular shovel have a new ability, even if it is gimmicky like a charge similar to the targe charge or crits in mid-air. Or even both.

Just chiming in that the FAN is actually bugged right now - it only does knockback when the enemy is in the air and directly over you. If you test it on a bot, you'll see that a ground shot knocks them back as far as a normal scattershot.

So yeah, it's a bit bugged.

They removed the popup still, but yea

Near the end of last season, I felt like MoB got over a huge stepping stone by making playoffs and really make a decent showing against EG and loaded (coL). If we would've kept playing and kept interest, I don't have much doubt we would've kept improving. Unfortunately this didn't happen and we won't get to prove ourselves at the invite lan :P.

Also.. sureshot didn't really carry MoB. He's a strong soldier and smart... but guy doesn't talk at all. Was nearly impossible to work him and I'm pretty sure all of MoB would agree. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy and belongs in esea-i but he soaked up a lot of heals which explained his high k/d... if someone sat in our mumble and watched a match, this would be pretty clear.

Seagull was playing in tonight's match against EG...

Unless that was a troll account on the gotfrag thread a while back, I thought I read ehfk said he would be re-evaluating his decision based on cyzer's survey, which is something I can agree with instead of blanket bans on glitches (in which case we should ban the flamethrower and airblast as well)

Hope Cyzer's player survey is listened to, handling discussions through team captains is a solid approach to the issue.

Its kinda sad to see Valve finally give us the unlocks for Soldiers and Demoman, the two most wanted sets of unlocks for the competitive scene, only for them to be banned from competition. I'm sure the ban won't last much longer, but the aliveness of this game is one of its biggest strengths. New strategies will appear and teams will surely learn counters. If something does prove to be better than the past approaches it will be adopted universally. Everyone wins!

I missed cyzer's survey. Anyone have a link or at least a synopsis of what went down?

I think the DH was close to 50/50