That actually sounds really cool. Really curious to see how this pans out.

one one end, adding a map could be a nice way to try out new maps that are up and coming like reckoner, kalinka, propaganda, bagel, cardinal, and synthetic, especially seeing we just had a new map tournament (albeit was a european one, not NA)

on the other hand reducing the map pool so granary_abortion is out would be neat

regardless of what happens progress!

will also be really neat to see team's skill level revolve more around their map pool

tfw you might never have to play viaduct again

https://i.imgur.com/a9CDWzc.jpg

Holy shit

uh i dont want to play process snake and gully all fucking season. The other maps may be less popular but they promote different types of play which makes the game interesting.

This seems cool but... it's gonna make scrims really weird.

Let's see how it plays out for this season at least!

then have your leader ban those maps

Looks interesting. Hopefully it leads to less monotonous daily practices and more well rounded teams, but depending on how people use it, it could easily backfire and lead to only process/gully/snake all season. Let's add an additional test map at least.

litty

honestly i'm just worried about finding scrims during the season with this map ban system. i've always been a fan of just playing one team all night instead of multiple so that's not a problem, but am i just going to essentially waste half of my night playing maps we don't need to practice just to help another team out, so they can in return help us? like the pool of good teams in im is small enough, finding people who wanna scrim the same maps week by week is gonna be hard

This isn't just about me though. streams are less interesting when you see the same map over and over. People don't grow as players when they don't have to adapt to new situations on new maps. Only getting good at those maps also lowers the skill ceiling because there is less map knowledge and play styles and strategy to learn. Whats more scrims will be a fucking nightmare to find especially at the higher levels because you'll have to scrim maps that the other team isn't necessarily playing and vice versa and there aren't enough teams.

i feel like while this is an issue, i think teams at the higher level at least where most of the teams know each other will try to coordinate with each other and try to compromise on a map that both teams are happy with playing, your point about scrims is valid though at an IM and invite level where there's only ~25 and 9 teams everyone's gonna need to get in sync with each other or do things like pug scrim which typically doesn't go well. as for streams most streamers just pug all day and they only play process snake and gully anyway so i feel like that won't matter too much

I know it's a totally different system in EU so it's hard to compare but it's much better how their week of matches consists of pairs of maps. 2 at a time. So far from reading this, to me, it seems like the cons greatly outweigh the pros. Idc if a lot of people don't like viaduct or granary... they are 'different' maps with unique approaches and I would hate to never play them again.

Yall already downvoting this man when these are issues lots of teams have already experienced that would just be amplified by this change. boxcar is right you can just ban maps for variety, but why would you do that when you never get to scrim something like metalworks because its not popular. The solution to this is made ineffective by the problem.

My idea thoughts now: A good way to balance people playing the same maps over and over again is doing a system where previous bans carry over, forcing people to deviate from the standard, even if it doesn't necessarily mean every team plays every map in a season.

Also maybe I'm missing something here, but this seems far less effective than just swapping out the less played maps for new ones and trying it out? All this does is create a even closer-minded group towards non-standard maps, it doesn't really address the problem of staleness in the map group. Try said "Some maps are less popular for a reason", instead of ignoring that problem we should be looking for a solution in trying other maps.

Sounds like a disaster. 75%+ of the season is going to be playing 3 maps over and over again. If I'm wrong, then you have the problem of your weekly scrims being half as efficient by needing to go half and half on maps in scrims with maps you won't need.

Adding maps makes the 2nd problem worse, removing maps makes the first problem worse. Fucked either way, it looks like.

That's a real shame for everyone like me who loves less popular maps like product

Finding pregame scrims is gonna be hell

remove granary and make it a 7 map pool

(if its a 7 map pool you can coordinate bans with the other team and avoid a random map pick)

time 2 play process gully or snake everyweek

get out of here you filthy sniper main

I see this as a step backwards in it's current format. Our community is not large enough to copy the CounterStrike system. Our ability to currently find consistent scrims is barely good enough as evidenced by Discord every night. This change is a scrim disaster and will not be good for comp TF2 in general. IMO, we don't have enough teams/players for this type of change.

For players like myself, who have often been on the fringes on playoffs, I would actively look forward to the less played maps as a chance to upset or surprise a "better team" because we know they would either care less or in some cases not practice the map at all. For myself, it made TF2 more fun and made scrims more meaningful.

remove viaduct this season, add cardinal and reckoner/some other next season?
Makes entire map pool 5cp and also jumping from 7 maps to 9 maps next season would work with this

Selected randomly or by a home/away team?

Seems like it's randomly picked by esea based on the original blog post

imo everyone is overreacting and this will probably not change much

If its randomly picked that seems really stupid, theres already a home/away team system that isnt used for anything if i remember correctly, just give away teams the first ban and home team picks what is left?

#bringbackgpit so it can just be banned every week anyways

esea could've added medals but instead you got this

I don't fully appreciate the criticism that "oh we'll just play a few maps over and over again." If both teams want to avoid granary and viaduct (badlands and metalworks to a lesser extent), it sounds like they're the ones dealing with it. Why would a team willingly play a map they think is less enjoyable, worse, or simply not as strong a team on?

I personally think it's insane how an abortion like granary made it through this long. Shouldn't competition replace the least prefered maps with the favorites?

However, with that being said, I understand the appeals against monotony and scrim finding/playing. I don't know a solution to the scrim situation (this seems to be a good point for teams who are serious about their week's practice), but there is no way this would be as controversial an implementation if we didn't so strongly favor half the maps over the other half. Having better maps would, at very least, mitigate the damage of this change. I advocate a change in the map pool.

- logjam boner intensifies -

imo that's part of the problem. The efforts of all map makers are appreciated obviously, but many (not all) of the end products in the past haven't been up to par in a lot of peoples eyes. There's a reason why for multiple seasons straight, when ESEA held the seasonal map vote, granary would win the vote out, and then win the vote back in. The contending maps (coalplant, gravelpit, ect) were just never good enough in comparison (you could make a few new arguments about whats better now, though).