they link them in csgo. also the tftv stream is usually very responsible and good about being safe for work. they could at least work with us to link stvs and match pages in the news feed they rarely if ever use.

In my opinion, considering the op information, Valve just discovred the 18 players semipub (slightly modified). Teams will most likely be stacked and Valve "COMP" servers will most likely be available by buying tickets from the store. Most of the people who already play comp will keep using the current options. If Valve would want to improve the TF2 comp they should just offer a couple of better servers to the current competitive scene.

I think you have no idea of comp, valve, tf2 or servers.

Unnecessary.

I think the ban system is supposed to be a middleground. Maybe this is Robin's suggestion for dealing with what he probably sees as new weapons inevitably being initially overpowered. If something is really overpowered, it will get banned every game and wont ruin comp play. At that point, valve can fix it.

The ban system is clearly valve's attempt at trying to provide some weapon balance after they gave us the second beta which they used for about a month and then completely forgot.

I don't particularly care for highlander because I feel it is an intrinsically flawed format and I doubt it will increase the 6s community size by any margin, but it's certainly not bad for us in any way. Maybe we might finally see gunslinger/jarate/mad milk actually being balanced.

That being said, it will probably be flooded with shitlords who will ban what they dislike and historically broken weapons will remain broken because captains will refuse to ban their crutch weapons for bad players.

Its happening! I dont play HL but im still very glad that valve got into competitive play and starting to support. In the future i hope to see 6v6 but we'll see how that goes!

Who said anything about captains? A matchmaking system couldn't have a reasonable captain system unless you signed up with teams, which is too much.

You're right. Those sports have been played the same way for ages but they didn't always have a static rule set. In soccer the offside rule was added at a later date to prevent people from sitting around the opponent's goal waiting for a long ball to put in the back of the net. That was an adaptation on what was still a successful sport, simply to make the game better. It does happen.

While you're focusing on the successful sports, what about all the ones that haven't made it to the mainstream? There are a tonne of 'sports' where the actual product is simply bad. It might not be enjoyable to watch for most, it might not be enjoyable to play for most, it might be too hard for new people to get into. As unpopular as this comment will be, competitive TF2 is one of those failing products. The public game is a million times more popular than the competitive game. By all means, if we want to be one of those little tight communities, that plays their own game, just like several weird sports communities do, then awesome, we can do that... but then at that stage we have no right to complain about how TF2 is not a popular eSport.

There might be a way that we can make small(ish) changes to the game, and make it a LOT more appealing to people outside of our competitive community. If that means having a few extra unlocks, or changing a few rules / formats here and there, and results in us having more frequent, high stakes tournaments with more viewers and global recognition... then that's something I'd be willing to sacrifice; and who knows... maybe they game might end up better anyway!

The game is fine how it is (to play) but if we want it to grow, simply put... changes NEED to be made whether you like it or not. Going from 3000 viewers for a league final to 4000 viewers for a league final in the space of 2 years is not the kind of growth that large sponsors care about. We need to change our product, or be content with that we have now (as it's only going to get slightly bigger over a long period of time). Either way works with me.

And on a side note. In terms of a pick ban system, here's what I wrote on another thread in regards to an 'in game lobby' system that uses picks / bans on unlocks:

Here's a quick idea of mine.
http://arxandbeta.com/images/idea.jpg

So you would have those weapon boxes for each of the classes. There would be 9 weapons that would feature permanently for each class, and then a selection of 6 weapons (could be 9, or any other number) that change each week. Obviously this isn't ideal for competitive play as it adds a random element, but it might not be the end of the world.

There would be a set number of bans in total. Maybe have a max limit on bans per class, so say, all of the medic unlocks can't be banned leaving everything else open. Team captain would be decided on the player with the most experience (played the most hours or played the most lobbies etc...). That player would be in charge of the weapon bans.

There would be a 'buy unlock now' button for unlocks that are not owned (gives valve some incentive and potential income).

Anyway, just an idea.

Should probably add a "rent now" button as well. Other than that, it looks pretty cool

EDIT: Maybe have the classes sit horizontally so it resembles the loadout screen. You could have the fancy hover enlarge effect that is on that page on this too.

Who is going to do the banning then? Everyone casts 5 votes and you just tally up and then ban the highest? How would that benefit the item balance at all since every class obviously wouldn't ban their own broken shit?

That and a draft phase would obviously be the best and most interesting way to go about it as you could see what items people would ban in respect to other items being banned.

I'm not going to disagree with this at all (because its true), however 6v6 tf2 has been changing. Class limits, have changed, they've been mostly static but double heavy was only banned 3 seasons ago? There have been unlocks, gunboats and escape plan have changed the role and effectiveness of the soldier, the pain train has allowed for new plays (I equip it for last pushes as roamer and jump onto last to get cap time, clear sticks, draw players in). Over the past several seasons, the metagame has become faster paced and more aggressive. I will certainly agree that it has been a while since there have been any significant changes, and that we could use faster/bigger changes. However, I just do not think that this is really what is holding tf2 back.

#312
What I said isn't a matter of what's necessary or not for a good banning system, it's a matter of practicality. To have a reasonable captains system, you need to know how to identify people as good captains. To do that without the inherently flawed (for this purpose) concept of a personal rating system, you need to have people set up teams and select their own captains. To use these teams in matchmaking, they have to go to queue together. You just can't get a captains system without drafting the captains first (like our pugs) or the teams being prebuilt (like dota 2 lobbies). If you want to use a system that only works with captains then I have bad news for you: it won't work with a public jump-in-and-play matchmaking system.

i actually just imagined a world where all unlocks are allowed in 6s.

it would be fucking madness but imagine the increase in viewership and new interest from non competitive players. frankly, they don't understand why we only use vanilla loadouts on nearly all of our classes.

imagine a soldier who perfected the art of the beggar's bazooka jumping to mid super fast with gunboats to then blow up three people at process choke. that would suck to the the three people that just blew up but man that would be cool as fuck to spectate. you may think, "wow, that sounds stupid as fuck. i died instantly before the mid fight even started." well, guess what! mid fights now start even further back! put defensive stickies up at choke in preparation for the beggar's bazooka bomb or turn into giblets. go through three different entrances. there's now a choice for the medic between healing the soldier or the demo on round start. create counter-strategies, evolve and have more cards up your sleeve. imagine a world where instead of having two or three different rollouts per class we had two to three different rollouts per weapon. i've been playing the game since literally day one. i've been in competitive tf2 since it was born. it is getting a little stale and i think a change like this would be extremely difficult to adjust to at first but in the long run it would eliminate stalemates, there would be many more opportunities to make big plays or to just make plays your opposing team hasn't seen a thousand times before. you'll hear some top teams say "we're not worried about x team because we've seem them play and have played against them many times before." well, no longer! you can now bonk behind your enemies while your team pushes forward with a jarate/mad milk off uber push.

tl;dr i want to see some new crazy shit.

Here Valve, these are all the HL pug/mix groups I know, you can join any server or ask their admins and see their ban list.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tf2pugnahl
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/arg-tf2-mix
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/mix_tf2br
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/mixtf2cl
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tf2lobby

They've been using the same whitelists for 9v9 matches for years, because you know, they've never managed to make up their minds and separate which items are truly overpowered vs. which ones are just hated or loved as the flavor of the month.

Hope this helps.

Yeah it was just, something thrown together in a minute. I'm sure someone would come up with something a billion times better. It's more the concept that I was suggesting, as in, only allowing a few unlocks but rotating some of the lesser used ones? Could that be a 'meet in the middle' compromise to the whole unlock situation or does it make things too inconsistent?

I was simply thinking that it would be similar to the league of legends free champion rotation. Players might see new unlocks in the rotated item list that they don't own, read the description, and then want to buy it. At the end of the day, we need to make Valve money if we want their support for tournaments and stuff.

#315 It's like I'm really playing quake on new maps as a low skill dueler!
/bad joke
Agree 100%

Unpopular=/=Bad. If you got into competitive tf2 for the money and call it "failing" because it doesn't deliver, I'm afraid you went very wrong somewhere.

1) Thank you, Sal and eXtine!

2) Seems like people are frustrated that Valve aren't supporting 6s? I wouldn't worry about it too much. Here's why.

3) HL is closer to pubs than 6s. HL is the correct decision, given how much support TF2 is receiving on behalf of Valve (vs. Dota 2). But this is NOT bad for us. In fact, it's probably better than starting with 6s. Ease the non-comp players in! Make it fun for them, don't go straight to 6s and scare them away!

4) Item rebalancing is an INCREDIBLY exciting prospect.

5) Valve have made some odd decisions in the past, not with just other games but also TF2, of course. But they're willing to fix and/or optimize their decisions. That's what this says to me.

EDIT: Big Ruwin

Honestly, it would be MAD at first (probably in a bad way), but after a while, a new, diverse meta game would start to appear, but there would still be room for some crazy strategies and set plays that could keep the game fresh.

there would have to be limits

no stuns
no crits except kritzkrieg and headshots
no healing except medics

dispensers???

i forgot ng is a class in tf2

but at least that isn't instant heals??? idk

#323 why

For one you'd have to look at the lengths of time these games have been in existence. Change in meta is always slow in any field (whether it be sports or academic fields). At play is a lot more than "some people find this fun and others don't". I'm no sociologist but behind football is a lot of history, hype, identity formation through a team, etc. I honestly don't like Dota 2, I find it slow and boring. But there's a shit-ton more hype around it (and anything else associated with hype like money, time, ads) than tf2. Moreover, tf2 is way older. Even if you started seeing ads now for competitive tf2, the population at large probably wouldn't care much - "isn't that the game that came out 7 years ago?".

My bigger problem is that 6s is already hard enough to follow as it is (I get a lot more out of watching a demo by myself than streams in 1st person. I'd rather watch from the top to see how things develop and go in 1st person if i'm looking at what this person did in this specific situation). HL just has too much happening that makes it too hard to follow. Behind football are huge crews of camera-men and guys telling which camera they're going to be on etc. If you want to have HL be taken seriously you'd need more than 1 camera guy focusing on specific players. For me, the limited amount of information bombarded at you makes 6s much more bearable than HL.

(on stuns) because literally being able to do nothing is bullshit

at least flashes in csgo you can still move (fast enough to not be pointless) and shoot, even though you cant see. you still have a chance.

I feel less strongly about crits and heals, i just think that these would take too much of the medics importance away

Correct. I don't mean we have a bad game to play. Obviously we like it enough to stick around for a number of years. If that is the only thing that is important to us, then by all means, change nothing and we can continue as we are!

What I'm getting at, is we have a bad product if we want to have larger tournaments, more players, largest prizes, more frequent events, more viewers, more discussions, communities, fan art, global recognition, and even.... future versions of the game!

If we want all of that, the product needs changing pronto. If we just want to enjoy ourselves playing the game as it is for the last few years of it's life, we can do that too! I like the game, but I'd personally want to see how big we could get it to become. I'd love to see how intense a TF2 tournament with a $100,000 prize fund would be. Imagine the nerves in the final! I'd shit the bed even watching that game, let alone being one of the 12 players actually competing in it. If that's what you want, we need to change.

So yeah... you're correct. The game isn't bad and it isn't failing as such, if this is where we want to keep it.

First off I've only read the first 7 pages of this thread so apologies if what I type here is a repeat of someone else's post.

One way I see this rolling out is to pick class then get queued into a random lobby that's missing that player class, or else get a group of friends/team together and queue to join when a lobby server has space for all. Not sure how the matchmaking will work but happy to let Valve engineers fix that.

'Game' starts and each player picks a weapon they don't want the other team to have. Take it in turns or all at once, doesn't matter. You're informed if your team has already made that selection, and if they have you pick again. Then a 2nd round of voting occurs as before. In lobby this will probably become a meta game as it is with DOTA2. In comp this format will allow the casters to discuss the weapons and the potential strats that come from each one being removed. Gives a chance to introduce a narrative that's currently missing from most shoutcasts. After 2nd round of voting a white list is formed and your GUI with cross out the weapons you can't pick.

It should be set up so that each player will be denied a total of two weapons from their possible load outs. Many weapons considered OP will become staples of the "ban list" but they won't ever be banned before the voting starts.

This will lead to absolutely mad load outs, things that have never been tried before in comp or lobby. Players will learn how to play with and without their trusted weapons and the audience will be enraptured by the myriad of strats and maneuvers that appear.