The blossoming controverse with its main characters Riemu (Four Kings) and Weqo (from God knows where) regarding a mysterious oligarchial rule change from cl2 ml1, to cl2 dl1 ml1 has caused nothing less than an uproar from the public. A critical post on the ETF2L forum by Weqo brought down a rain of replies with more or less amazing argumentation.
To understand this better, this discussion has been had before, and every time, the class limits have stuck with cl2 ml1, but now Riemu has tried to organize his own vote, on a private scale, among the division 1 clans of the world to change the demoman limit to 1. Weqo may or may not be in favour of this, but is mostly enraged that the top clans are doing this privately.
Another point of the problem is the distinct possibility that the leagues will not only stop with changing rules for div 1, but will proceed to change all the divisions. Only natural of course, and apperantly not even Riemus intention. All in all, this is causing another rift in the demomanic wound of the community. I wouldnt call it a schism, but it is certainly something a lot of people have an opinion about.
Why not 2 demomen?
A demoman is a powerful weapon in the defensive play of a clan. He can close down chokepoints with his stickies and bombard people in entrenched situations. Two demomen can close two chokepoints, and when many maps have only 2 chokepoints, the map is defacto shut down completely and, according to Riemu and his supporters, ruins the game. This shut-down-tactic was made a funny point of just last night as I watched the EURO 2008 game between Sweden and Greece. Two teams who played airtight defences against eachother without any particular offensive play to speak of. Sweden won 2-0 thanks to the prowess of the top striker to nail a given chance. Then accidentaly scored another one. Had this game ended 0-0, something that at times seemed inevitable, it would likely have been a candidate for “most boring game ever”. However, does this mean… we must put a limit to the amount of defenders? Its too hard to attack against 8 defenders, change the rules!!! Goalkeeper limit 1 (medic limit 1) is clearly defendable, but seriously, it would be insane to restrict the tactics of the team just because it is efficient. In the past, football was played with 1 defender and the rest on attack, now its the opposite. Why? Because it works! It is the way of the game, and if you dont manage to defeat the other team, its not because they used lame tactics. Its because you failed to overcome them.
So Riemu, what is the reason? Is it a) Too boring, or is it b) Too hard? The name of the game is TF2, a game based on tactics (because the classes are so well balanced) and the meaning of tactics is to use your teams resources to overcome the other team by means of wits, not pure force (or by changing the rules to prevent them to use certain tactics).
However, one must also concider that, in the case of 2 demos making the game less fun. Would it perhaps be fun to also change Spylimit to 3? Pyrolimit 1, Engylimit 1, sniperlimit 3, and how about spectactorlimit 4?! As you can see, there are many ways to configure these classlimits, but seeing as we have already come to the conclusion that cl2 is good, and everybody is generally quite happy with it, there isnt much reason to change it. Except of course if 2 demomen are too boring.
Also, we’ll see what devilry Valve comes up with with those next achievment spams.
The discussions:
Here is the team lineup:
