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Well regardless of the outcome, I like the idea of this cup. I only found out about it when I read stuff today, but something like this can really help TF2 grow.

My personal opinion about the unlocks, as I’ve made publicly aware on several occasions, is that they are a good thing. Yes some slow down gameplay, others have slight balancing issues, or at least, change the game from being played the ‘standard way’, but most are relatively harmless, if not useless compared to their default counter parts.

The main thing however for encouraging the use of unlocks is simply for the spectators. When you go to a LAN event, and have a huge audience where 75% are not TF2 players, they don’t appreciate good pushes. What they want to see is epic killing sprees, airshots, melee kills, funny moments and things that are a little bit crazy. Unlocks often come with a hillarious animation, killing sprees, airshots, loud shouting and the full use of every class used on public servers which means casual players can relate.

Our LAN finals are allready epic. Hardly any of the spectators care about the result or the game. Seeing darn standing up, shaking someones hand mid game. The taunts, the airshots, the bottle kills. That’s what make the audience walk away feeling satisfied about the match they’ve just watched. Sure, a close game is also incredibly entertaining, don’t get me wrong… but if TF2 is going to grow, it needs to be by far the most entertaining game to watch.

You get hit by a sandman, _you_ get fustrated, 1000 source TV or live spectators have a huge laugh. You will get some satisfaction back when you kill him a few times because he has less HP because he is running the sandman. It balances out, you just don’t notice it.

Ubercharges are fun for spectators, kritz is insanely fun for spectators, buff banner is another thing for us commentators to yell, and results in more killing sprees. I totally 100% agree that the buff banner gives the winning team an advantage. This is something TF2 doesn’t need as the game has allready been designed to give the winning team an advantage (to stop stalemate situations). It is however entirely possible it can work the other way, allowing for some smart, clutch play from the team that is behind. Do I think the buff banner is needed? No. But since it’s there, I feel it’s not going to cause TOO much harm if it was allowed. Nothing compared to the extra satisfaction our spectators would get from seeing the mass killing spree that come with the weapon.

Having said that. It all depends on what this community wants. If you want a highly competitive environment, you will need a bit of both. To become highly competitive, you need more players. This balances out the skill levels of the teams. But for a highly competitive game, you would want a standard rule set, keeping the game familiar to all of the competitive teams. We allready have that rule set. CL2, ML1 medic unlocks and a couple of wildcard unlocks is the current standard. It’s been this way for a long time and the competitive game has developed with this in mind. Allowing all unlocks would no doubt attract more spectators which leads to more sponsors which leads to more competitive teams being formed. But it could be at a cost of some of the enjoyment us players get from playing the standard game.

Bored at work.
TL;DR version:

“read the above as ‘i like pie’ and skip to the next post.

We used Pain Train and Bonk! Drink, also experimented a bit with Sandman. But was too busy to get myself positioned correctly for a good block with the Bonk or to Hit and Run with it.

Pain Train:
Pro’s: Didn’t notice one because our Solly’s and our Demo most of the time push to the next point and let the scouts cap. Only 1 time we got our roaming solly behind enemy lines and he could have gone for a backcap but decided to pick the medic, and failed.
Con’s: For a Soldier, absolutely nothing 10% more dmg is like 1 sec healing by the medic. But if your opponent see your demo with a pain train, you can feel it how their scouts run like bulls forwards him

Bonk! Drink:
Pro’s: Makes the scout really usefull, as in most situations both are waitung for uber and the scouts have the ability to go straight to the enemy and try a pick without haveing to fear death or he can go before you push and check for sticks.
Con’s: Weaker on scout 1v1, i miss my pistol ;_;

Gunboats:
Pro’s: Makes the soldier nearly to a scout because of his ability to push fast forward and move around even faster than the scouts. Splits the team into 2 groups, the scouts and gunboat solly as attackers and the pocket, demo and the medic as more defensive positioned players.
Con’s: They are always crying for ammo or rockets because of the missing shotgun and the long reload times.

Sandman:
Pro’s: Stunning 1 gives you the advantage to avoid the spam for like 3 seconds, not much but really helps, also saves you from nasty sticky traps if you hit the demo.
Con’s: Hitting with it, only 1 shot like all 30 sec or something like that. Also makes you die ALOT, never noticed 15 hp would make such a difference.

We faced some teams using Crit-a-Cola but i think its totally useless because most of the time you die before you can shoot 2-3 times.
Also we had a team using Gunslinger as Engineer, but was not a big problem because its quite fast down.
Having a opponent using The Direct Hit was really annoying, makes your solly’s stop rocketjumping on mid, also is a perfect counter for a gunboat solly.

Oh i almost forgot that i played Huntsman for like 1-2 rounds and its more fun than usefull, but i still rock with it :P

Quoted from sweiny

the fan was really annoying as its always. but if 2 scouts on the same skill level are in a 1on1, one using a fan and one using the scatter, i dont think the fan scout has any chance to win, but if u think of maps like badlands where a fan scout can just cap the point and burst everyone jumping up to him all over the map, its still a bit overpowered.

Underpowered and Overpowered you say ?

Quoted from Hildreth

[…]

my bad, guess not everyone is as good a solly as me :D

Yeah, maximum damage output, guess average is lower.

Still I wanna do another cup like this – with the Polycount weapons.

+1

Also, how awesome was the casting? :D

Edit for content: I loved watching the cup. It was great to see something different and to see how teams coped with using weapons and tactics that were not always familiar to them.

No Pants No Lag were awesome in the first round. Loved the sniper and pyro action <3

Tetris was insane in the High final, O'rly vs Xen. Those Russians sure do love their heavy!

With 3 games under our belt, I felt the gru heavy was really good but then everyone was running them. But with a heavy limit 1 I daresay it’s acceptable to use (We switched out a scout for him)

Vitasaw in my opinion was really good as well, we weren’t fully able to abuse it but it did get us the ubers that much quicker, especially together with kritzkrieg an uber was built in no time o:

I think every opponent we faced used the mad milk, but I can’t think of a single moment it was a deciding factor in any fight :/ So I am not sure where the OP talk comes from, please do enlight me.

I don’t think I really noticed any other unlocks.

Edit: also thanks to the teams, every single match was decided in the last possible moment (2 golden caps even) and was epic :D

Our team used : Heavy, Pyro, Degreaeser, Man Milk, Buff Banner/Battalions Backup (/Raeeeg)

The heavy seemed to be a very viable option on both of the maps utilizing the GRU, and finally being able (somewhat) keep up with the team.

Using Pyro(+degreaser) myself, was pretty much amazing, even though it was rather limited to Granary. The Degreaser’s quick switch is great for putting out a lot of damage in a short amount of time, and is also great for finishing airblasted people off with the shotty. But I cant really remember a single time I actually used the flames themselves as my primary offensive tool.
A pyro on fire without actual fire.

I was greatly annoyed by the Buff Banner and Battalians Backup.
Both of the times when I switched to them in my loadout, the rage-meter wouldn’t appear. And in fact, it wasn’t just a graphical bug or something wrong with my hud, I still couldn’t use the Buff banner nor Battalians Backup after taking lots of damage in the mid fight and attacking second.
So my second slot weapon was useless. Really annoying.
I only regained rage-meter when I respawned..

Can’t say much about the Mad Milk. The few times it was used, I could notice that it greatly benefitted when you were playing 1 on 1 (or 2), since the healing buff pretty much made it impossible for the enemy to take you down.
When you were attacking a bigger group, it was rather useless.

Gotta say though, this cup was quite unique, and very fun to play in.