Thoughts on my first season of competitive TF2

Season 4 of 4v4 was my first ever step into competitive TF2, after months of people telling me I’d do really well, that I’d be perfectly alright, that I was plenty good enough, even though I can only play Medic. They may have been right, but I’m still not sure and I’m not sure whether I want to continue or not. At least in 4v4.

The first thing I noticed is organization. For 4v4, matches are on Friday, to be completed and scores updated by Monday. But it’s really hard just trying to get a date from the other team. Trying to organize scrims was just as hard, only two teams actually scrimmed against us, everyone else blew us off. I’m surprised how hard it is to organize 8 people, kudos to all of you who manage to organize Highlander matches. No idea how you do it. I assume it involves a LOT of subs and ringers/mercs/whatever. Didn’t help this season that the UGC site had a lot of problems, it’s still throwing up errors now.

Playing the matches was always fun. We only lost twice this season, once to a really good team, the other time because we lost our best player (who is also our team captain and does all the calls) 10 minutes before the match, had to replace him with a guy with no microphone after the other team couldn’t make up their mind on denying an off-classing 300 ping ringer/merc (said yes twice, then changed their minds twice), and ended up playing on their server because not one but two servers we rented both had connection issues. We only had two forfeit wins this season, but I’d rather have played the matches. Forfeits feel dirty, and I’m glad UGC kinda has something so you get less points for a forfeit.

Being the highly self-critical person that I am, I know where I need to improve. My map awareness is incredibly poor, many of this season’s maps I’d never played before, and I’m also really passive, which does not mesh at all well with my highly aggressive team mates. Need to work on my crossbow aim, which sucks, and on building Uber faster too, my average build time was very poor. Our comms were poor too, but that’s a thing we have to improve as a team. The team was fairly odd. As described by, um, someone, we had one serious person, one person who dicks around, one person trying to improve and one inexperienced person, who didn’t really seem to want to play Demoman. I don’t blame you, I don’t like playing as Demoman either.

I found the meta in 4v4 interesting too. I like the fact that Pyros are more common, even if that means more Uber-stalling. We ran Sniper quite often too, since we had a fairly good one, one team ran a Demoknight and Battalion’s Soldier and one team really threw us off by suddenly switching their Medic for a Heavy. I did feel limited in my weapon choices though. It was Kritz or nothing, apart from Mojave, which had setup time.

Speaking of map choices, I do love King of the Hill, which is one of the reasons I decided I was going to try this season (the other being the fourception of season 4 of 4v4). But the other maps felt far too large with only 8 people total. Mojave was a confusing mess and Warmforst was good, but too large, half the map was unused. Unfortunately 4v4 just doesn’t lend itself to varied maps.

There are two things that upset me. The first is that most games were rather silly, either we got rolled or they got rolled, or there was a ton of messing around. We only had one match that was genuinely close in skill level, on Mapleridge. The next match was only close because my team mates were fucking around and our team captain lost his comms and couldn’t hear us in the last rounds. The second thing that upset me is that we’re reliant on someone else to input the scores from our matches, but the inputting of scores was delayed. This had an annoying side effect of placing us against weaker teams, who ended up kinda getting rolled. Unfair for both them and us. It also meant that we ended up in the playoffs against people who know how to actually play.

I did very much enjoy playing. It was wonderful having a team somewhat listening to you, and part of me doesn’t want to go back to pubs, where my Medicing isn’t as appreciated. And I do want to do a second season, I mean, it was a ton of fun, but maybe I should try a different format or something. Of course, if Confusion needs a Medic, I’ll be happy to comply. How about some 6v6 or Highlander or something?