just depends on whats on offer with a promod compared to not. if there was a fully fleshed out promod with built in class tutorials/mechanics improvers/role explanation/general "information consolidation" then I would be in favor. but a promod isn't an objective in it of itself, it's got to offer something more substantive than what we currently have.

i do think that it's worth discussing though. my areas of concern would be whos working on it? how do they plan on integrating currently built infrastructure (leagues, server providers, etc)? is there going to be a push for greater splintering from the base game wrt balance changes, class modifications etc or is it going to be purely a comptf2 promod w/ hardware optimizations? will we be able to airstafe out of airblasts again?

lot to ponder. very exciting though.

The biggest problem I could see is x, y or z change not being liked by a region (RIP global whitelist) and thus a fork would be made to appease those players. A surface level mod could be adopted with broad optimizations and client-side customizations, with any major changes being handled by leagues like weapon balancing.

Cool that valve has basically given a full green light to a project like this existing now. What sort of things would we actually want to see that couldn't be achieved with just server plugins? I can think of a few but not enough to justify a full standalone promod.

• More visual options (flat textures, no restrictions on viewmodels, larger max fov)
  
• Merged optimization improvements from like teamcomtress
  
• Sane default settings and a general optimization of the pipeline from install game to play 6s on a server with other humans

Everything balance related doesn't really need a standalone mod. You have been able to do balance stuff with server side plugins for almost 2 decades and we don't do that. If there are compelling reasons to require something standalone I'm all for it, especially now that the fractured community argument that has been going around for 10 years is less relevant. In game items and what not being usable is a huge win. Maybe anticheat is the real upside. I'm pretty confident that a standalone client would provide some real options for properly implementing and maintaining an anticheat system.

the playerbase being split (or walled off) further by using a promod would have to bring in some pretty hefty benefits to make it worth it. you could pretty easily implement the team comtress optimizations into the game but do any modders know if it would be possible to integrate or mod a pugging system straight into the client?

you could get people to download a promod directly on steam and theyd have access to pugging systems instantly, not sure how doable this is though. imagine you could check a box in the menu to sign up to a pug on certain classes and wait for it to start

you could expand further on this by including proper tutorials and guides for new players, explaining 6s exclusive concepts directly in the game (i.e. valve rocket jump map)

If there's going to be a promod, i want it to be worth the download. I'm not really interested in redownloading tf2 so that I can +15 fps and more air control during the 3 seconds per game I'm getting airblasted. I'd like there to be changes that are actually kinda ballsy and improve the moment to moment gameplay and newcomer experience.

Here's my wishlist for a promod: All of these changes are centered around the medic as I believe making the class as accessible and fun as possible is super important for the health of the game. It really sucks when people play medic in their first competitive game and their team instantly yells at them because they don't know the heal order and theyre forced to give up mid when they haven't even left spawn yet.

• the ability to build uber with any melee weapon by right clicking. Ideally this would be accompanied by a hilarious animation of your class deliberately hitting their self on the head while a voice line plays of the medic laughing maniacally. This would communicate how uber building works to new players and spectators, and it would feel true to tf2's goofy soul. It would allow for more melee weapon flexibility while also making the game ever so slightly less scout centric.
  
• I'm totally fine with QoL changes for medics even if it comes at the expense of true gamer skills like keeping track of how long it has been since your flank scout took 3 damage while watching IT. I'd like to see things like crit heal indicators, the medigun's beam being influenced by your current build rate, and having your team's ubercharge on everyone's hud.
  
• standardized spawn positions so that you dont have to thread the needle to heal your demoman. Id also be into more radical changes like just making it so that you start every round overhealed so that your midfight isnt instantly ruined because your medic is alt-tabbing back into the game.
  
• kritz should apply to the medic's own weapons for a brief moment after weapon switching.

I actually don't think this is true. Properly done, installing a free game where all of your items and stuff can still be used with 1 click directly from the store page is much less of a barrier to entry than what we currently have.

I think instead of looking into a Promod, we could use this opportunity to propose/code some community changes, with the hopes Valve may push it into the game at some point. Valve don't seem to mind pushing community fixes as long as they don't have to do it themselves.

Think big! We could push our proposals for fixing Competitive matchmaking, weapon buffs/nerfs, other balance changes. I know from a production/casting point of view, there's some changes I'd love to see in the spectator client, especially things like adding smooth lerp commands like the CS:GO build had to make those nice cinematics.

Need to summon the local source engine wizards to give their take on how feasible this is before writing down any ambitious wishlists. I don't think having to launch TF2 from a different client on steam will alienate players by itself, but making crazy huge revamps from the get-go will. There are plenty of low-hanging fruits that make the game immediately better for comp play without any downsides (fixing bannable exploits, shadow wallhacks, etc.). Overall glad that Valve is pretty much giving TF2 up to the community, been a long time coming.

I think that's exactly what the don't want to do anymore, their post straight up says that if you have some small tweaks for the game, then you should go and make it into a mod instead.

One thing that might ease the transition for many players would be the ability to be compatible with normal TF2 servers. I'm not a modder so I don't know if it's possible to do this or if Valve would want you to do this, but it would make installing a separate game more attractive to a lot of users, even those who don't play competitive.

I will say one big thing for the community, we need some kind of tutorial for new players who are interested and downloads the mod to help them understand and help them get up to speed with changes if anything, that's all I want honestly.

i think this would be a good idea, only thing ill say is to make sure we dont repeat the same mistake the DoTa 2 community has done.

what did they do? i never played dota 2.

just one more tutorial for how to play 6s and it will capture the minds and hearts of every casual player and save competitive forever

just saw the video and yeah that's rough for how long and complicated it is, how can we not do that if we want to make a short but effective tutorial if we decide to do that?

all I can think of is give the essentials and make the complicated stuff more optional to read or learn.

I would say not mention a lot of the terms that higher level players use and let them learn that on their own or have it as an optional thing for them to read, same with some callouts with that website that shows all the callouts for every map, but give universal callouts like choke, last, 2nd, mid, etc.

S TF2 Guides can be a good example to go by

this is just the rough draft of the idea, but feel free to add your thoughts.

My wishlist:

• Be able to strafe after being airblasted obviously
  
• More in-game crosshair options, including glowing crosshairs. Crosshairs in tf2 can be hard to "see" while playing because of a lack of crosshair depth, opacity options, and so on. clockwork mentioned something like this once.
  
• You should also be able to see what crosshairs and viewmodel settings other people are using when you're spectating them, that would be cool.
  
• Players should be able to ping locations on the map like in modern FPS games (CS, etc.). If that seems too chaotic, make only medic and spy able to do it and add a delay between pings.
  
• I think a minimap that only shows your teammates is worth testing. It would probably take some work to implement and might not fit for 6s, but not having to call exactly where you are every 2 seconds if you're behind the enemy team would be nice.
  
• You should be able to see your med's uber % whether or not you're being healed. There's already a way to do this but it's banned.
  
• A way to automatically record POV demos for league matches (or on specific servers) so that no one is able to forget to record would be nice.

Common-sense weapon and class changes I'd also like to see:

• Reduce the sniper rifle's ammo from 25 to 10 or 15 (small change but worth it IMO, 25 is way too much)
  
• The whip as a weapon would have a lot of positive implications for 6s (e.g., whip bombs through doorways) but it's currently broken because it allows you to get a heavy to mid with little downside. Just add a delay of 10s to the whip on player spawn like the gas passer and it would instantly become balanced enough for 6s.
  
• You could also balance the guillotine for 6s really easily by just increasing the delay or adding a charge meter (e.g., 150 damage)
  
• Spy should get a speed buff of 5% while cloaked to make it easier to roll out. You should also be able to fake reloading while disguised (e.g., by pressing the reload button while disguised). I think this is already possible but it requires turning off autoreload so nobody does it.

If I had a wishlist towards a pro mod, in-game player QoL is obviously important. But I'm imagining things that might make production easier, and there's a couple of things that come to mind. If we could have tools like CastingEssentials built into the game, it would make it WAY easier to configure before streams, or for newer casters to get involved. Native support for multiple huds, more options for customization without having to go down config rabbit holes, all of these things seem like no-brainer level positives. I know the PASSTIME group already have ideas in mind for bug fixes for their game as well, which cause a lot of grief for anybody trying to produce for that game mode too

I don't know if this "valve's last update" type of update but outside of seasonal hat additions it probably is. Whoever is going to be in charge of this project has a lot of work and expectations from the community, and they shouldn't take that lightly.

The biggest problem with comp is that we need to make it easier for new players to access, not harder. Having a pro mod seems very counterintuitive.

Would be cool to see your meds Uber % at the top of status board tbh. Don't get rid of mge tho :(

Main issue is this would be yet another project fully based on volunteer work. And one of a very big scale.
This thread is a wishlist for an open source project without developers

imo a higher priority is creating a 6v6 vscript layer for maps. custom minute round timer, pregame DM, etc can be implemented into the maps themselves. Instead of relying on plug-ins which will need updating as the game updates (which this update perfectly demonstrated by happening in the middle of EU scrims)

Using vscript, we can already add entirely new mechanics. Weapon balancing, bug fixes, new mechanics, etc are already possible in TF2 with this. And if a promod ever exists later on, we'd have these vscript maps ready to port over

I don't think it would happen, if we handle tf2 as one big game instead of seperating regions, it's already bad enough that we have a million seperate leagues with different rules. It would be a community project anyways, so the whole community could vote on how things should be handled.

I think there is a big potential for a TF2: Competetive game, like we could have a proper elo based matchmaking (that doesn't suck ass) instead of small self hosted pugs. My only problem with something like this is that, if the competetive mod differs too much from the base game it will be harder and harder to get a slow but steady amount of new players from the original game. Also what about highlander vs 6s would those be different forks? If not it becomes a lot harder to balance the game for both modes.

i'm gonna be honest, i see lots of wishing for a tutorial but it never needed TF2 SDK to become a reality, especially now that vscript exists. someone has to put in the work :shrug: also it's not the educational silver bullet you think it is

yea
E: but at the same time, is it necessary? would it be acceptable to make it work in a server with plugins? you connect to some 100 player hub, you can queue pug and play mge/dm while waiting, picking happens in game and then you get forwarded to match server. you can do all of this in the official game, just takes work

these all sound doable by server plugins

you couldnt join VAC secure servers with a promod client, and vice versa, the modifications brought by a promod likely would break the network protocol and would prevent the official client from connecting

i get that it's a nice convenience for players but it's a stupid amount of work to develop and maintain for an experience that's mid for enthusiasts to terrible in specific cases, plus seemingly dogshit for everyone's mental

How is it bad for everyone's mental or idk what you mean by that? And what would be terrible about it?

I think you're right. Everyone hates tutorials and ignores them or tries to just get through them as quickly as possible, even if they're scripted well. You have to sort of sneak the tutorial into the game while the player already feels like they're playing the game normally and let them think they're figuring it out on their own. That being said, I have never understood why Quake games for example didn't include defrag as a highly visible game mode, and the same goes for TF2 with jumping and surfing. You can make it look as if it's just another competitive mode where you're competing for completion times(which it of course is), while it simultaneously teaches players the required skills for the main game. Movement is quite a hard and essential part of the game, so it's better to teach it in a fun and addictive way.

everyone who play valo ow rivals are addicted and have dapression bro

It’ll be honestly way better than having to shift through forums, YouTube videos, discord servers, websites that you probably didn’t know existed till looking up things, what have you just to figure out what the hell does this specific term means, hell we can’t even agree on certain callouts or terms like gullywash’s elbow or is it banana?? You have to do homework on this gamemode just to feel like you are contributing in some way let alone know what the hell is going on. Which is fine, but be consistent, we are definitely not consistent in many ways, different regions with different rulesets and whitelists, different callouts for the same spots on the same maps, hell grape juice had to make a video about terminology’s of comp tf2 because how poorly people used them.

It’ll at least be something is what I’m trying to say for the community to direct the new players to to ease them in more easier.

you are right tho we have to put the work in or even could’ve done it awhile back when VScript came out which really got on my nerves when it came out barely anyone cared about it in this community, at least from what I saw.

okay so you didn't answer why it would be worse than what we have, and if i get it correctly your other point is being able to play whenever you want without an hour wait for a match is bad because you get addicted?

I think its time for the competitive community (more specifically 6s) to take their blinders off and finally admit that the reason why there is a "bridge" to be built or that there is a gap between the casual and competitive community is entirely because the casual community is filled with people who main or primarily play pyro/spy/sniper and would like to play their main classes in 6s full time but are fundamentally barred from doing so.

My wish for a promod (if anyone wants to build a promod) is to take this reality into fact and aim to "generalise" the "specialist" classes so people who want to play these classes full time can do so without ruining the aspects of 6s that makes it so great. There is a fine line here, as the promod should aim to both keep the identity of these classes intact and also make them work in the core 6s gameplay loop without slowing or "hero shooter"-fying (i.e damage sponge galore) the game.

A 6s gamemode where 9 out of 9 classes can be ran full time opens the door for finally unifying the HL and 6s community as there would no need for a gamemode that specifically caters to offclass mains, adding in tons of players who are invested in the same game and the same scene. This would bring more life to this dying game that any "tutorial " or "QoL" change can ever hope to bring

give pyro a lightning gun

You are not going to accomplish this with the pick classes without completely reworking them. Explain how you can make spy and sniper, who can only achieve kills by very specific criteria and have little utility outside of that job, just as generally applicable and consistent as a soldier? Not to mention how you're gonna make them actually fun to play against on top of that. One shots in videogames are very notoriously hard to balance and very few games can pull them off without feeling unfun.