welcome back aimisadick

heavy can be played by an armless toddler, forcing him to be run 24/7 by either buffing him or changing the comp config like you're suggesting would not "raise the competitiveness" of the game. you'd be substituting out a player on an objectively more skill expressive and difficult class onto one that is not only orders of magnitudes easier, but less interesting to play as, against, and in front of spectators.

pyro has a light degree of more skill expression with being able to reflect stuff, but during a stalemate that's all the class can do. it can't get in (without getting instagibbed), it can't transition from space to space very quickly (without making yourself vulnerable), and it's again substituting a class that's more skill expressive for one that slows the game down

every pubber that says stuff like this seems to neglect that tf2 is almost old enough to go join the army. you're not the first guy to think of what the game would be like with a full time heavy. teams have tried it for entire seasons, on top of running a sniper or a pyro or whatever. the classes have pretty debilitating weaknesses in the main competitive game mode, 5CP. if you wanted to make the argument that these classes should be used more, you'd have an easier time pointing out how poorly favored these classes are on comp maps even in pubs. heavy in a 5CP pub against even moderately decent players is hard, let alone against an organized group of players dedicated to winning

I'll focus on the main part of your reply: You are defending the current arbitrarily constructed meta by pointing out that it has not been constructed arbitrarily at all: Instead, it is intended to maximise skill expression. That is a very interesting idea.

Skill expression in 6v6

I do agree that TF2 classes do not have balanced skill expression: Classes like Demoman, Pyro, Soldier, Scout, and Spy all have deep and unique skill expression in their weapons and movement, while classes like Medic, Heavy, Sniper and Engineer do not have much else than the ability to shoot and basic movement. (Medic and Engineer both even have a form of autoaim)

So then, why would there be an exception for Medic? Medic is the most important class in the game, but far from the most skill expressive. Without medics, lot of stalemates would never even happen. After all, you are less punished from taking damage when you have a medic in your team. Wouldn't that be a source of negative skill expression? Medic makes the game easier, and patches your mistakes.

But that leaves us back in a circle: Even when looked at the lens of skill expression, the ruleset is still arbitrary and seems to exist just to enforce the current meta, even at the cost of some skill expression

Weaknesses as skill expression

You also mentioned that Pyro has weaknesses that Soldier doesn't have, and therefore it makes no sense to switch to Pyro. And that's a perfect explanation for why 6v6 games tend to slow down: As you said, the current arbitrarily chosen meta (2 scouts, 2 soldiers) revolves around the fact that Soldier and Scout have very few weaknesses to exploit.

6v6 has an unique issue of the game slowing the down upon the slightest change. But in retrospect, that might make perfect sense: Allowing 2 extra strong classes with few exploitable weaknesses decreases the importance of individual mistakes across the board: Punishing Soldier's mistakes when he can easily reposition himself is harder compared to punishing Pyro's or Heavy's mistakes, when they can't. Your explanation of weaknesses gives an eloquent explanation to the source of stalemates, giving light to how stalemates might be solved: By weakening team compositions.

Your response has been very enlightening. Class' exploitable weaknesses are a great way to enforce skill expression. Kind of like Highlander, Spy: The weakest class - But that's what makes a good spy player so important, to be able to turn a low kill count into something more.

im gonna make a double post to say this too:

if you're new to competitive tf2 and you think people dont play full time off-classes because they just hate fun or whatever, i encourage you to make a 6s team and devise a plan around playing with those offclasses full time. you will very quickly see the weaknesses of your class and realize that the 6v6 format is called "competitive TF2" for a reason. the other classes do not provide enough or are just straight up too bad to be useful with that player count. i also dont understand the obsession with off-classes being made viable in 6v6 because highlander is right there dude. you want to play full time sniper? wanna get backstabbed every 30 seconds? wanna play with 18 people in the server? its literally all right there for you

the 6v6 meta was not decided on "arbitrarily,'" like i just said, this game is old as dirt, and 6v6 has been played for twice as long as overwatch the video game has existed. the format has been arrived upon by a consensus of the people who actually play the format, determining that the standard setup is what works best both for maximizing winning potential, fun for all players involved, and to maximize the pace of the game. nobody just threw darts at a board and decided how many of each class you get to have on one team.

i actually agree that medic is devoid of a meaningful amount of skill expression that makes him fun enough to actually want to play. there's plenty of evidence of this, especially when you look at how few medic players there are on RGL pugs (though that has other contributing factors unrelated to the format lol)

the issue is that medic is a necessary evil. tf2's entire design, no matter what server you're playing in, is hinged around ubercharge. many a choke would be nigh impossible to push without it, and even in pubs, the medic is the most important class in the game. he enables you to be able to explosive jump and engage with the most fun part of tf2, its movement. he minimizes downtime to keep you engaged in actual combat, and he breaks stalemates when the other team doesn't have means of countering the uber (by way of their own or other things like explosive or airblast denying)

i think if you've played a decent enough amount of tf2, you can realize how disingenuous this argument about medic is. the game literally is built around him. i do certainly wish he was more fun and still expressive to play, but honestly surfing damage and hitting arrows is already more fun than fucking Pootis.

your solution to stalemates in 6v6 is to... make everyone play Worse classes that are Less fun...?

That's not true. As you yourself said: "standard setup is what works best both for maximizing winning potential", that's what meta means. But deciding which "standard setup" to allow and which to ban through item bans and class limits seems to have been an arbitrary decision compared to the alternatives. Banning double medic makes sense - But as I claimed in my original post - double any class is problematic. The exceptions for other classes seem very arbitrary for the reason we have both outlined: It makes double Soldier and double Scout mandatory. We agree on this. That "fun" of some players was prioritized over others. That sounds awfully arbitrary.

I agree with this, that's what I also wrote. And as you stated too, your original argument that 6v6 is currently maximizing skill expression is disingenuous.

As previously stated: I understand the sentiment that fun comes first, but that goes both ways: Why would non-Scout players and non-Soldier players find it fun to play a format that focuses so much on those classes? You're not maximizing fun by making people play Soldier.

Medic is also probably stronger than Soldier, so why has your point suddenly shifted to current 6v6 being unfun because we don't play 2 Medics?

Finally, I understand that you're probably having a bad day, and that's fine. But your recent posts have begun to be very disingenuous and disrespectful. Take a walk before responding, thanks.

on a scale of 1 - 10 how retarded do you have to be to post this

your steam reviews have made me realize you are trolling and i will no longer engage with your strange post

That's creepy.

It sounds like you are trying to invent prolander again which is probably the most failed competitive format in this game and is not currently being run because nobody wants to play it. So pragmatically at least I imagine most ppl will dismiss this because it's already a time proven way of killing the game. Nonetheless though I think these discussions are important (as long as ppl argue in good faith) so I'll engage and offer my opinion as somebody who mains a dogshit class (pyro) and has way more hl experience than 6s.

This is... a strange view to say the least. The need to learn or adapt should be correlated with competitiveness but it's not the end goal. I can make 100 dogshit changes to any format that will definitely force players to adapt and change but I think most people would agree that that makes things less competitive, not more. For FPS games and a lot of esports in general execution (or skill expression) is just as important for the competitive aspect and is the reason why a lot of people watch or play it. Your ability to adapt and change is conditional on your execution skills and both are needed.

I assume you're EU because pyro unlocks aren't banned in NA. But I think you're mistaken here, people really want to play 5cp so they would not have banned it, just ban the stuff that makes it awful for 5cp. The highlander solution is to ban 5cp (again in NA I don't follow EU HL) because as you alluded to it is so awful once you have full time defensive classes.

Over-centralization is not the core reason that stacking meds would be bad though. No matter what tf2 competitive format you play you already play in an incredibly medic-centralized metagame. It's bad for direct gameplay reasons (you need to be able to kill medics to allow the game to flow), not some higher level metagaming reasons. You can argue that in theory it would be nice to not have the game so centralized around one class and that's a perfectly fine argument, but how the platonic ideal of a game should look like doesn't really have much bearing on how it actually plays out unfortunately and should not be the primary reason of how you balance the actual game.

I've already talked about why that's a weird definition of competitiveness but I also want to make a point here; oftentimes it's also just not fun for the people maining the dogshit classes like pyro. This is actually a very common highlander phenomenon; people who main stuff like pyro/engineer want to play comp for the first time and naturally gravitate toward HL cause you can't play it in 6's without throwing. But then they quit highlander because the gameplay on those classes is and will never be anywhere near pubs. Going from doing random shit in pubs on engie and then forced to sit on your sniper in HL is quite jarring. Yes the format of 6s makes certain classes unviable full time, but the formats that do allow for those classes to be played are still not even close to pubs. No amount of format trickery can save a class that is just inherently bad. So really when pubbers claim that 6s sucks because they can't play their favorite class, the reality is that sorry, the version of the class that you want to play doesn't really exist in any competitive format.

Weird way of phrasing it, it's not really a mistake by the soldier player then if they have an escape option. Similar to how on pyro you can linger against uber longer than many classes because you have airblast, that's not a mistake of the pyro player. What constitutes a mistake is a function of the tools your class has, who cares about the fact that you would be dead if you were playing a different class.

Spy is not the weakest class in HL, probably around 6th (med demo sniper scout soldier higher, some people might actually swap spy and soldier or say heavy better than spy).

This Russian-Finnish-American suffers from PTSD after three days of playing 6s medic on TF2Center back in december.

scorch shot is banned in highlander but not 6s lol

Worth noting that the reason highlander never ends up the stalemate state that 6's ended up in is teams are always either attacking or defending in highlander, they aren't doing both. 6's doesn't have stalemates on koth, because after the mid fight there is one team that must push, and one team that must defends. There were tons of stalemates in HL when we were running 5cp maps. Stalemates are a map/gamemode issue.

that's very creepy.

Knowledge is an ability that is applied in a single situation. You know a time it takes to run across a flank path so you know when to expect a scout that disappeared into the backlines. You might know the distance you can rocket jump. Or you might know what rules have been changed.

Inversely, a skill is an ability that can be applied it in any situation. You probably have never trained for a specific airshot, or done a specific rocket jump before, but you have the aiming and rocket jump skill to apply different inputs in different order and achieve the intended result.

What I meant, is that gaining skill is where the "fun" of competitiveness should strive from. If someone's sense of "fun" goes against these principles, that's completely fine - But that fun is not competitive. I said this because it's very easy to accidentally go "this is fun" without noticing you're arguing against competitiveness itself: Yeah, x100 mods are fun, but not a good change to 6v6 because they are not competitive; Yes, Medic is stronger than Soldier, but having more Medics isn't more competitive.

I would define competitiveness as something along these pillars:

1. Interaction. (Players should have meaningful interactions with each other that affect the outcome of matches.)
2. Skill. (Players should always be improving their skills and expressing that skill is what should affect the outcome of matches.)
3. Community. (basically, be nice, have integrity, no cheating, etc.)

That's not a good balance ideology. There are also x100 mods, they are great fun too. And we discussed the issue with that above. You don't want to design around "fun" at the expense of competitiveness in a mode that tries to brand itself as the "competitive TF2" mode.

You misunderstood what I meant by overcentralization. I meant is the circular logic of "opponent probably plays the best class, so I should too." That's the reason people would run 2 medics. Not because it's fun, or because it expresses more skill: Because it would the new meta.

A healthy meta isn't one with constant changes to the rules, a healthy meta needs no changes to the rules. Look at chess, last update few hundred years ago - New opening strategies still invented to this day. CS2, outside of incredibly small changes, the game is basically "finished", yet pro matches look different every year. This isn't happening in 6v6, and as everyone here knows, is intentional: The meta is intentionally overcentralized around Soldiers and Scouts.

The point of the medic example was that this issue of overcentralization is a known issue. We all know "pick best weapons" doesn't work. We know "pick only the strongest classes" doesn't work.

I am not lying in my post - my only goal is competitiveness, not "pub"-like experience. There already is a lot of rules that decrease the strength of certain options or classes: Scout weapon bans, banning double medic, etc. Second roamer was inherently worse than a second medic - and format trickery saved it.

Thats a weird inconsistency, though: Overcentralization is the intended outcome of having no class limits. But people disliked playing with medic overcentralization, so that was banned... And now, it's not anymore about how competitive the format can be, but how much the current fanbase "likes it". But heavy mains would probably also like being able to play the format. Why is their fun less important? 6v6 isn't focusing on "more fun", just "my fun" - And that's just not very nice - or competitive mindset.

True. I meant "mistake" as a misplay. Soldier has bigger "action pool" than pyro or heavy: In 10 seconds, Soldier can be in a lot more places and states than either class. If soldier does a misplay (such as rocket jumping too far/too close, taking a risky peek, escaping too soon, etc.) the soldier has more outs than a pyro.

In a stalemate, both teams aren't playing perfectly. But with a higher action pool, individual misplays can matter less than with lower action pool. As I said: Class' exploitable weaknesses are a great way to enforce skill expression: Making less misplays is a skill. Strong, fun characters can express that less.

We did a full circle and returned to my original point: It is easy to say that getting less punished by misplays is fun. But that type of fun goes against competitiveness.

I am not saying we should ban Soldier - I still think TF2 classes don't have balanced skill expression. But all of those classes still need skill, and nobody has yet played a perfect game of Heavy. It's disingenuous to imply that the skill required to play Heavy is so low that it was the sole reason the format was constructed around double Scouts and Soldiers.

you clearly have not played long enough to remember the medieval torture of playing 5cp highlander on gullywash, process, snakewater. I would bet that more than 2/3 of games that weren't a roll on these maps ended in the 30 minute halftime timer running out twice. if we played 5cp it would absolutely be stalematey again. the reason modern HL doesn't devolve into stalemates is because we don't play maps that have average 30 minutes halves anymore - KoTH has a maximum of about 8 minutes per round, payload 30 if both teams are just really bad at offense but averaging 20 including setup time.

3/5 highlander classes are defensive in nature (pyro, heavy, engie) and while the other 2 are pick classes, generally spy in 5cp is most valuable in doing nothing but communicating with the team which choke point the other team is planning on pushing so that you can continue stalemating them.

meanwhile every 6s class is supposed to be fast-moving and way more viable at busting through chokepoints and flanking. while stalemating has been a problem in 6s, it would be far far worse if full time HL classes were mandated as well.

bro is posting his 95 theses to the wall

You weren't joking. This person's reviews are ridiculous.

They gave a "Not Recommended" to, among many other well-reviewed games,

- The Witness
- Spelunky
- The Stanley Parable
- Slime Rancher
- Celeste
- Hollow Knight
- Slay the Spire
- The Talos Principle
- Baba Is You

It's fine to not like every single highly-acclaimed game. If you think The Witness sucked, then you should of course leave a "Not Recommended". If you didn't like The Stanley Parable, or if Celeste wasn't for you, then go ahead and complain. However, if you think every single game on this list sucks, then that says way more about your lack of good game design judgment than it does about these games that you think aren't worth buying, especially when your negative reviews aren't even focused on the actual legitimate criticisms you could make about these games.

The Witness:

This is literally just a skill issue self-report. Even when beating the main game of The Witness for the first time, you don't need to take notes or use external software for any of the puzzles unless you're planning to take long breaks between play sessions. I'm not saying that people playing The Witness shouldn't take screenshots or notes while playing (everyone should feel free to do whatever helps them enjoy the solving process), but to call this a con of the game is unconvincing.

Baba Is You:

The point of the game is to prove that you understand its rules and can figure out how to get past each of the designer's challenges. Whether you need to move text entities for any given level is irrelevant. Your job is to solve the level and show that your solution is correct. For some reason, you seem to think the point of the game is to make sure every level uses what you call the "main mechanic".

To give the entire game a "Not Recommended" just because you found it tedious to demonstrate that your pathing for some levels was correct is bizarre. Normal people would think, "huh this level is surprisingly easy compared to previous ones that I liked, let me put in the solution and then never think about this level again while I enjoy the rest of the game".

Celeste:

You spent a third of your Hexcells Infinite review ("Not Recommended", of course) complaining that the rules aren't written correctly and that the developer is illiterate, despite the fact that the game has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam (meaning that, at minimum, thousands of children had no issue with the game rule you complained about), so it's funny to see that you yourself can't be bothered to proofread your own writing or understand the (very short, in Celeste's case) dialogue of characters in the games you play.

For the record, Celeste is obviously about transgender identity, depression, and perseverance, which are very much not "nothing".

just jump at the right time lmao

This is a terrible take from someone whose Steam profile states that they are a "Game and level designer." The fact that you apparently spent 8 hours playing through the main campaign and still didn't end up with an understanding of why you wouldn't want to always automatically grab every wall is remarkable.

Slay the Spire:

Considering players have beaten A20 20 times consecutively without save scumming while rotating through all characters, this is again just a skill issue on your part.

---

The common thread through your reviews is that you buy a game, the game makes you do something you weren't initially expecting, and instead of having an open mind, you conclude that the game developer is bad at their job and that everyone else who has enjoyed the game are the ones who are wrong. Maybe that's why your take on how 6v6 should be played is so garbage and out of touch. Your Steam reviews are so uninformed that a developer responded to you and called you out for being clueless (this review in particular is for a free early access platformer with 96% overall/100% recent on Steam, for what it's worth).

That all aside - I just came here to talk about 6v6 class limits. Do you understand how creepy your behavior is? You understand that stalking, even online, is pretty weird behavior, right?

Anyway, you're weird. Just go to the reviews and comment on those, I don't remove comments. If you want to talk about 6v6 class limits, this is the thread to do so.

ĉi tiu estas unu el la pli konfuzaj ripetoj de ĉi tiuj afiŝoj ĉar ŝajnas, ke li nur volas ludi HL aŭ prolander, kiuj ambaŭ jam ekzistas

How you gone have 3k hours in cs2 and be faceit level 2 tho.

This is a really convoluted way to say that you like Prolander

you can't really compare a 6v6 game to a 9v9 game and say "yeah class limit of 1 should fix it"

like I'm more on the lines of offclasses can be viable with your team working around it, but this ain't it chief.

forcing a class limit to 1 on 6v6 the meta will be scout, soldier, medic, demo, heavy, and sniper, it won't be fun to play with or against. it'll just come down to who is the better heavy or sniper

What are your intentions with this post? I am confused as to why people from the outside come into the 6s community and complain about anything, let alone class restrictions.

You pretty clearly don't play this format. Are you upset that others are playing a format you don't understand the appeal of? Is there some delusion here that daddy Valve will come back from the store with a pack of smokes if the most popular competitive format is run with more class diversity? I do not understand.

Why did you type all those words? What sort of specific result are you looking for with a post like this?

This is creepy behavior. It is fairly okay (if a kind of sad) to look at people's accounts or other posts. It is weird and creepy to search extensively through different accounts as if you're trying to find something.

Agreed. A lot of things aren't fun, but that's life. I'd recon Heavy wouldn't be played if other team constantly runs Sniper, but depends on the map and point, too. I don't really understand what's wrong with matches being dependent on which player is better, care to elaborate?

Weird line of inquiry. I want 6v6 to be a good competitive format. I don't know my intentions any more than that, I guess I just find competitive things neat.

No idea why you think I'm from the "outside", but that place is pretty neat. They are called "blades" of grass but they're actually very soothing to touch. Seriously though, of course I'm "new" to these forums, most players don't use these types of forums (and by the amount of creepy replies just on this post, even less would probably want to more than once)

you want 6v6 to be a good format and you like competitive things in videogames so you intend to completely break any semblance of flow or enjoyment to be found in it by forcing a player who generally plays one of the most skill expressive and satisfying to master characters to be relegated to a dedicated gimmick pootis slot

Apologies if my line of inquiry wasn't clear. Generally, when someone writes as many words as you do the purpose of those words is self evident. I am saying that up until now that purpose was not.

If you "don't know your intentions beyond that", you should do some introspection. You seem to be confused as to why people on here are engaging with you in bad faith. It is because your criticisms are:

• Easily addressed by playing the format. Your ideas are intuitively bad if you have played enough.
  
• Absolutely radiating insecurity and negativity. You seem to fancy yourself a game developer/ level designer and yet only engage with content in that vein negatively. When you do that you look insecure.

6v6 is a community made game mode. It exists and is as popular as it is because of demand for it. It is community maintained. There are channels for changing the gamemode as it is played in RGL, the prerequisites of which are to have played the last full season in the league. There is also nothing stopping you from simply running an experimental cup or league with all of your changes. You can just do that! You can also just play a different gamemode! People have brought up prolander a lot in this thread, and you can simply play prolander. You will not find many people to play with you because the issues with it are painfully obvious if you have played it. But you can play it!

Text dumping every issue you have with a very niche and unsupported gamemode is weird. It is weird because you clearly want a different gamemode entirely, and on some level maybe you know that, but complaining makes you feel like you are better than the people actively putting in work to maintain that gamemode as well as the playerbase keeping it alive.

...

Yes.