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Is this to say that the whitelist for s11 is final and whatever we discuss or say here won’t change that decision for the upcoming highlander season?

Quoted from Aoshi

Why would people try to limit another spy if they’re limiting their own as well? I wouldn’t as it doesn’t make sense in my eyes, a good spy will still be a good spy without the DR.

Most teams aren’t limiting their own spies though as very few actually play the DR playstyle (there were 2 spies doing it last season in prem). None of the teams who voted for the ban have a spy that can play that style effectively, which points to the weapon not being overpowered when most spies choose not to run it.

Quoted from ondkaja

on the contrary, he could be doing work for the league instead of reading your nonsensical drivel

That is the leagues work, to answer the complaints of their community. I know it’s a not-monetary community organisation, but you don’t complain to a staff member at a shop about a problem you have for them to say “it’s not my job to deal with your complaints”. Handling unhappy community members is his role, it’s generally a thankless job but that is what you’re there for. There are limits, for example I would never expect an admin to put up with suffering abuse and there are rules in place to legislate this, personal comments about admins are unnacceptable in my views but most points raised here are valid criticisms and warrant a response.

Quoted from Hildreth

It’s not your fault, there are no bad students only bad teachers and I have failed to engage you in education.

modded this. Really, Oxo?…

– Stinson

Hildreth refuses to acknowledge sniper vs sniper as being important because its a team game EleGiggle

Please tell me why danger shield is banned if svs isn’t important?

Scrambled,

The highlander gamemode consists of one of every class on both teams. We agree on this, i hope.

Hildreth Has, quite clearly to me, made no attempt at ignoring the importance of sniper vs sniper. He acknowledged other advantaged which in hl result in pushes. Whether you agree or disagree is irrelevant.

Darwin’s danger shield forces both snipers to run it as it will make one sniper have a huge advantage over the other. This is because a sniper that is quick scope head shot with DDS equipped, will take 143 damage and be left with another 7. He will also be overhealable to 225, which means he will be left with 82 health right after.

If both snipers run it, they will have a much lower risk of dying to their biggest threat on the enemy team, which is the enemy sniper. This is because the sniper rifle works on the principle of hitscan, which means that no matter the distance, one sniper can click the other on the head and kill him. Not dying immediately to a headshot is essentially like always having a buffed sniper.

I hope this isn’t too big of a logic jump for you, but assume that sniper is a strong class when executed correctly. Now let the enemy team be in a situation where they must cross through an area where a sniper can click them. They may choose to cross it regardless, or they may choose to kill that sniper first, among other options. The DDS makes it significantly harder and longer to kill a DDS sniper because a sniper rifle has to be charged before it can one shot a sniper using the DDS. When a sniper is charging, he will move very slowly and he will spend a lot of time in one place. When a sniper is forced to be in the same space for a long time on offence, he will require a lot of players around him so he is not distracted or picked off. Those players can’t be doing other things, so the objective isn’t being player around in many situations, such as most notably a payload.

I hope you can see from the above that DDS would considerably slow down the game due to the impact sniper has on the classes around him.

If you’d like, I could make some diagrams and pictures to help the argument but that might take a bit of time.

Is this clear or would you like me to explain some parts of these statements? As always, I’m happy to help.

Best regards,
3 time prem winner, 6 time pyro of the season, and the owner of the most fragile ego in the premier division,
Steve.

Quoted from Aoshi

[…]

1 (response 2))

I think it is unfair to say the thread didn’t contain much on the actual weapon, as it did, and it wasn’t a DR thread anyhow, it was a general feedback thread if I remember correctly. Before the whitelist was posted, since from what I’m reading the general look on the DR from the admin team was to not nessecarily ban it, so therefore the ban has to come from the vote. From what I understand the vote was close, as I couldn’t make out the exact result from the video posted. As the DR has been in the same state since well before season 9, why is it that it first now is considered OP/Broken? It is because of the vote, which was never argued for, which I think would be required considering the weapon has remained unchanged (and unbanned) for over a year, without any proper forum even discussing let alone spamming “ban the DR!” with lopsided opinions. On top of that the vote was so close, suggesting that it wasn’t very one-sided, even further requiring reason. Even looking at the tables now, if all remaining competeting teams for the ban came into prem, we would still be looking at a vote where the result would be a tie between no-ban and either Dr-ban or both ban depending on what frosties pick. And even if we consider both teams to go along with the compromise of a DR ban only, we are looking at 62% for, which is pretty close to 50% considering the lower amount of teams. These are the teams that are a by definition proved worthy of prem, and therefore to vote. If we look at other teams coming in we are looking at a 62% result against either ban, even further requiring justification.

The exact same logic follows the ban of the short circuit. Also, I don’t personally think it makes any sense to say a team would vote to ban the DR to limited the potential of other teams, because it is a commonly used item, and the spies on the respective teams would be unhappy with the decision made by their team. Hildreths example I feel is a special case, because he played with the only spy that pretty much never used the DR.

2 (response 4))

Here, first of all you are critiquing the use of comparing an unlock, which allows a special playstyle, to a class, which you do yourself in the next sentence.

Second, the game is about winning, not having good logs. The DR can give you nice logs, but it will not win you games. As I have said previously the dead ringer is only really beneficial to your team if you are skilled yourself. Staying alive doesn’t contribute to your team. The jail free card argument I feel falls short as well because you aren’t nessecarily useful just because you stay alive, and a lot of spies prove this partly just by how they play, but also because how more useful they become when they switch over to invis from time to time. Even though it is partly the point of the unlock, killing a DR spy is difficult, however it is just not impossible, and if you think about how to deal with it, it can be done without the hassle it supposedly takes. Multiple scouts have shown me this. And if it was impossible, which it isn’t, everyone would be running it all the time, which they aren’t, and even if all this was true, they wouldn’t be nessecarily be more useful to their team compared to a part time invis spy, which this game is all about; being useful. The reason to ban an unlock is if its either bugged or too good. Since it is neither of these, because if it was too good everyone would be running it ALL the time, it does boil down to the annoying argument again, since every argument, casting aside all the shitposting, for the ban in either thread has been proven not to hold up.

I also think there’s an argument to be held about how it impacts spy in general. While grenjabob disagrees with me that the watch isnt better than any other, I do think he would agree that both watches has it’s time and place in many different areas, hence the general statement that the best possible spy is one who uses both. By banning it you are taking away many places where spy has been useful previously, effectively nerfing the spy massively because there are suddenly a massive amount of areas where the class can no longer deal nearly as well as it has been since season 1. Additionally not banning razorback here, you are buffing sniper massively and nerfing spy massively, which seems weird considering sniper is generally considered a better of the two pick classes.

3 (response 5))

If we are talking about how useful you are for your team (which is what this game is about), which is proportional to how good the unlock is, then the less skill argument just doesn’t hold up either. It does not require any significant less (or more) skill to run. It is true that nobody has a hard time pressing mouse2, but that doesnt make you useful, thats just annoying because you aren’t dead and it happens repeatably. Scrambled confirmed this by saying that I was good because of things like positioning. Take those qualities away and suddenly the DR player becomes quite mediocre, as again proved by the lower skilled spies.

I suspect the misconception of the DR is easy to do well with (in proper games) comes from pugs/lobbies where people, who don’t play spy much, use it just to stay alive, but rarely do you see them dominate the game whatsoever and are, again, not as useful as they could be. In this environment the unlock is harder to deal with because there is way less teamwork involved.

If you look at the beggars, that was also an example of a weapon that people found annoying, and wanted it gone. When admins put up threads about what they want to see gone in the season, there are usually also a variety of weapons people want gone. People have different opinions and most realize that they probably can’t get it banned if they suggested it considering a large majority of people would have to agree, which doesn’t happen because people have different opinions.

Response 6 concerning the “team bans item x to make them not able to use it” and “These players should still preform at a respectable level even without it.” problem are already adressed in the response.

Id also like to respond to:

Quoted from Aoshi

[…]
The season already started so it would be unfair to teams to unban it now.

There is no way in heaven that the DR change would have caused any resulting changes in the playoffs, and the main season hasn’t actually started yet. Changes can still be done as the effects are pretty much zero. Last minute changes aren’t unheard of, see 6s.

What you have done above is exactly something I’d like to see more of from admins, as you are somewhat giving out the thought proces and having it more up for discussion. Thx.

Also, I have played with the new whitelist and my points hold up.