the wolf who cried STACK!

[Snidely Whiplash]

love my dustbowl, we've had some hella good games lately; that said:

The lamest thing people are doing on TV vi lately is complaining ONCE that teams are stacked and leaving. Way to go self-righteous indignation; now your former team is in a bad mood and somebody (like me) has to switch to a team that just lost its only competent player AND are coming to the realization that they are not the next Nan0_Girl.

Some of the lower scoring, but solid players need to balance more frequently. Certain players swing the pendulum of balance too far to the other side, it doesn't do any good just to switch up which team gets to win. If you're skilled enough to realize teams are stacked, you're skilled enough to do something about it.

Instead of some subtle "oh wow" or some other semi-incredulous passive aggressive statement to indicate your frustration, use a full sentence; like: "we're all trying to have fun so let's balance the damn teams!" If people won't balance they're pricks, and I've removed people from my friends list lately for not helping me to balance; the only thing we can do is stop being friendly with people who refuse to balance.

The other side of this is everybody likes to play with their friends sometimes; rammy, deadbanditos, and I aren't wearing the OTS tag just so we can't be on the same team.

[cam]

Well said snidely.

If I could just briefly touch on TV6 "stack" etiquette:

(1) Play a full back and forth before deciding to swap/balance teams. This means let both teams get a shot at playing on RED and BLU. Sometimes both teams are just horrible at defense.

(2) If your team is the one getting murdered, balance your classes before qqing. Some of you have like 9001 hours on dustbowl but 3 minutes of playtime as medic. "But I'm terrible at medic!"/"Medic is boring..."/"There's no one worth healing..." are not valid excuses. Just try to imagine Soltan watching you play and beaming about how proud you're making him.

(3) If the game is starting to get serious and its apparent that both teams are trying to play their best, don't demopan or trolldier around. Either get a little serious or swap over to rotation or go seed TV3/8. This is not an attack on the demopan way of life but if people are making a serious effort on your team it is disrespectful and a waste of a player slot on your team to troll around.
That said, sometimes people need to chill out, relax, and just play the game .

(4) DO NOT SWITCH FROM BLU TEAM TO RED TEAM FOR STAGE 3.
It's not cool! To explain: BLU team will sometimes powertrain through RED on the first two stages which puts the timer for RED to defend at 20 minutes. The good players that were carrying the BLU team will swap to RED and now everyone on BLU hates their lives for the next 20 minutes. Please, please, PLEASE stop doing this. I *will* start calling people out who do.

[The Domer]

You dustbowlians are hardcore.

[NerevarineKing]

You dustbowlians are hardcore.

[ketchuo]

You dustbowlians are hardcore.

[Uber!]

You dustbowlians are hardcore.

[Zork Nemesis]

You dustbowlians are hardcore.

....everybody else was doing it.....

[Will T.]

You dustbowlians are hardcore.

I want to be cool too!

... Plus it's true.

[Larry]

No

[ADevilishPotato]

You dustbowlians are hardcore.

[Boss Llama]

To break the chain of pointless replies there and get back to the point, yes, Dustbowl is a bit more "hardcore" than the other servers. It has been for years. Also, being the most popular server and map, it draws large numbers of random folks and "average pubbers" who aren't ready for or interested in the level of play found there. The problem with stack claims (which the first two posters point out well) is that many people complain the moment they don't win, instead of changing up their plan or trying to solve the problem. We're in a game where one team will win and one will lose; the fact that somebody lost, even badly, is not an indicator of a stack or any other significant problem. Class limits, auto-balance, or attempting to twist the rules to find an easy solution will never achieve what a group of people working together towards a common goal can.

Though I have no desire to cheapen the words of Gandhi, he did say this: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do.” This sometimes gets paraphrased as "Be the change you want to see in the world." If you don't like what you see, do something different. Lead the way, lead by example, and be positive. Don't whine, don't wait for somebody else to fix it, and don't lay blame. Nothing infuriates me more than people who give up, blame their team, and say "gg" while there's time still on the clock. Fight hard every second, from the opening bell to the closing bell, and do your best. If you aren't willing to fight as hard as you can and help your team, don't waste the player slot that could be used by somebody willing to do what's needed. In my experience as an admin, most of which has been spent on TV6, 95% or more of all "Stack!" complaints have nothing to do with stacking, and everything to do with one team not playing to the best of their ability. If people would look at themselves instead of trying to blame the internet for their problems, most of our issues with this would cease.

[cam]

In my experience as an admin, most of which has been spent on TV6, 95% or more of all "Stack!" complaints have nothing to do with stacking, and everything to do with one team not playing to the best of their ability. If people would look at themselves instead of trying to blame the internet for their problems, most of our issues with this would cease.

I totally and completely 100% agree! Thanks for contributing Alizee.

I also don't want people to get the wrong impression that the players are hardasses only looking to tryhard their way to victory. We have our share shenanigans, too!

[MateoTheBold!]

I echo what Alizee said. To the point of "be the change you want to see", I have to tip my hat to Snidely and Mummy who took the time to post on the forums about an issue trying to raise awareness about it in an effort to make the game better for everyone (I've also seen both of them team switch to balance things out).

Nothing would make me happier to see more people on the forums from TV6 and TV7 post and be more active in the forums and to that point I'm not sure that some of the replies here encourage forum participation. I know it was for the most part it was light-hearted, but please be more cognizant of the impression it makes.

[NerevarineKing]

I apologize for starting a quote train, I don't want anyone to think TV6's aren't welcome here. Like mateo said, I would love to see more people from TV6 and TV7 be more active in the forums.

[Joel]

I'm going to be completely honest and up-front here: I had team-stacked in the past and, on rarer occasions, switched to the winning team even when they're not down many players. However, I've been on the losing end of team stacks and rolls for just as many times as I've been on the other end, and that's partly because I do try to help out the underdog team. At the same time, though, I do run out of patience when I feel my team isn't trying to work together, and people just go off to do their own things. This is where I sometimes lose patience and snap at people. And I'm speaking from a recent experience during a game I played at TV6 a few hours ago.

With that said, whenever I do face such situations, I either try to help out the underdogs or, if I feel they're not trying enough to cooperate and win, just leave the game and come back another time. And as for my last game at TV6, I did eventually switch back to my original team to help them out once again. Deliberately switching to the winning team is something I rarely do and something I always regret doing out of shame.

Anyway, I just thought I should be honest with you folks, especially the ones I played with in the past few hours on Dustbowl.