I really don't understand why your definition of viable is so.......... strict. Why does a class being viable mean that it has to be played in every single game? Why do you feel like every single class has to be the exact same level of importance?

How many 7s games have been played where a team decided that of the 9 classes, the medic wasn't important? Does this make medic over powered? Can I just BAN UBER during the picking stages in order to prevent such and OVER POWERED weapon from being used?? IT'S USED ALL THE TIME HOW OVER POWERED AND DUMB!!!

Why is it that a class being viable doesn't also allow for it to be specifically useful in a certain situation? In any competitive format spy should really only be useful once. Pyro is just straight up out classed by other classes. You ignore fundamental mechanics and core balances within the game to fulfill some sort of fantasy of players being able to play their favorite class. (WHICH SIDE NOTE, you talk about how people are choosing ideal classes for the situation and stuff, but if that's really what you wanted you would put no class limits, no item bans, and let people just do whatever they please.)

LET'S BE CLEAR: I don't give a fuck what you do with your money. Really, you can do this all you want and have fun with your lil league of pubbers and invite players that want a check. The only reason a lot of us care to write our little nerd essays is because it's frustrating seeing so much community effort going into something that ultimately disagrees with the path Valve and the majority of high skill players see for TF2. (just fun fact when players disconnect from competitive it replaces them with a bot, and does it's best to fill the roles of 2 scouts, 2 soldiers, a demo and a med. If 6 players disconnect it fills in with the current 6s meta.)

Pls pls stop bully sigafoo hes a cool dude Ok

6s players acting entitled again and telling what you should do and what you shouldn't.
Definitely didn't see this one coming

gee its almost like he asked for feedback for his gamemode

I didn't define all class viability, but lets do that here. All class viability, what that means exactly is what that statement says, that all classes are viable. For instance, a majority of tf2 classes in sixes are not viable a majority of the time. For instance during the Rewind finals Froyotech only ran 5 of the 9 classes in tf2 a cumulative 1.7% of the time. Ascent ran 5 of the 9 classes in tf2 a cumulative 7.8% of the time. When you see a majority of the classes in TF2 see less than 2% game time, that's not viability, that's a voting margin of error. And to be clear, that's okay for this game mode. This isn't me trying to say sixes should change, it shouldn't. It is exactly what it wants to be already. It's genuinely a great game mode for what it's aim is.

My point is, that sixes does not have all class viability in any meaningful way. There is a section of the community, that includes me, who think that class viability/diversity is important to their competitive tf2.

Viability != Overpowered classes. So I'm not sure where you got the idea that I believe that classes are over powered. I don't think that, nor do I believe I've ever claimed that. In TF2, as I'm sure you know there are classes which by default are better than others. I think this is good, I think a homogeneous skill level would make the game worse. So of course there's default picks. You'll probably always see a Scout / Demo / Medic. Pretty much any game mode in tf2. If you can run these classes, you probably will.

The problem comes to class restrictions. When people get really competitive, they will try to min/max a format. Which isn't inherently bad, but can lead to some downsides. e.g. Min/Max 5cp can cause the attacking team to not attack, because there is no upside. Currently inside of MM, there are no class restrictions at all. I'm guess if we had an ESEA league and meta was given time to develop. The majority of the game you'd see something like 2 scouts, 2 demos, 2 medics. Maybe just 1 medic, but you'd probably just add in another scout or demo. This is assuming it's still only 5cp.

It's the illusion of choice, while technically you have exponentially more possible combinations of classes. If you min/max the game you will choose the most powerful class you can. Which means that you actually have less choice, since you only have a couple power classes to choose from, for a majority of the game. Meaning you have worst class viability, because why would you run a soldier, when you can just run another demo or scout.

I don't think having more powerful classes is wrong, I think it makes sense to have these powerful classes, but if you make a format where you cater to them, then you won't see the other classes. It's actually from the class restrictions (or no restrictions) that you end up hurting or helping class viability. That's one of the reasons you see OW went from CL2 to CL1, because early on in the comp game. It was often double tracer, double winston, double lucio. It had a stale hero meta. The only time this wouldn't be true is if the classes power levels were homogenized. Which I don't think anyone wants.

For instance spy isn't good in sixes for anything but a very tiny niche in the game. All of the classes are highly mobile and spies are useless against them. I would say spies counters are: Heavies, Engineers and Snipers. You don't see heavies a majority of the time in sixes because he lacks mobility and the weapons which can help him have mobility (Disciplinary Action) is banned. You don't see engineer because he lacks mobility and generally the scout is just better in terms of raw DM. You don't full time run snipers because it's usually less consistent DPM than a scout.

However, if you had a game format where you see these classes (snipers, heavies, engineers [oh my]), then suddenly spy would be a viable pick. He might not be the right one, but he could be ran and be effective. This is why in Prolander a lot of teams run spies consistently. Since the enemy team runs what he counters.

Basically you get more class viability when two things happen.
1) When every choice you make isn't against the best class in the game.
e.g. If every time you select your class it's, do I run scout, demo or X. It's almost always the power classes is correct. When it becomes a question of do I run a spy, heavy, pyro or engineer, as those are your options. Then suddenly it's a more nuanced and not straight forward decision. This allows leaders to better class diversity for the other teams choices, because you are running a more diverse line up, so now the other teams class selections can be based off of what you're running.

2) You don't play on maps which are focused on mobility. This isn't a shot a 5cp, but it does hurt class viability, since it puts so much of a strain on mobility. If the sixes played more koth and payload, you'd probably see more diversity in class selection.

Spy is useful only if you don't have class diversity, but in a game mode where you see the classes he counters in the game. Suddenly he becomes a lot more useful. In prolander where you typically see a sniper and a heavy. It's not uncommon to see a spy get 20-100% of cumulative game time. Just depends on your teams strategies.

As stated above, I don't think every class has to have the exact same level of importance/strength. What I do believe is that some people want to have the genuine viable option to run the classes they want. And the more classes you see in the game, the more viable all of the other classes become.

And class restrictions help, since you're not comparing every pick against a power class. It becomes a question of between the non-power classes, what is the best choice right now, to help my team or counter theirs. And that's when it becomes more nuanced and possibly strategic. It's not about having every class be at the same level, it's about not making every choice have to be compared against a power class.

To kind of wrap this up. Currently we have two major formats in tf2. You have sixes, which has very low class viability. You have highlander which has all classes viable, but it's static. There's no dynamicness to the class selections. My personal goal is to find the best version of a competitive game mode, that's dynamic, fast paced and where you have all classes be genuinely viable a majority of the time.

Why is this important to me, because there's a section of the community that enjoys having the option to play all classes in a competitive game mode. Right now Prolander hits all of those points and a growing section of the community enjoys it. I plan to do some experimental cups in this off season to play with rule sets, maybe have less players, we'll see.

Final thing is, it's okay to not like prolander. To me, sixes and prolander are like Rugby and Football. They have some similarities, but are more different than similar and that's okay. I can see why people like sixes, even if it's not my cup of tea. I hope you can understand why people in the community like competitive game modes that feature all the classes.

props to sigafoo for still responding to posts on tftv

I was planning on not posting anything, as this shit does tend to just drag on. But then it got bumped back up today for whatever reason and pete raised some interesting points that I thought I could answer.

how tall is sigafoo?

Very short, it's my ego that gives me height.

Sigafoo is 3"2

.

"This is now an AMA. I dare you."

whoops wrong thread

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/469742130349342721/588205864934965255/d27dae1bc6970571835fcf42d9856190.png