DotA 2 has over 100 heroes, that doesn't mean it's meant for 50 vs 50. Minor tweaks could allow for 9 classes to be relevant in 6v6.

I saw on the fully charged episode that cbear was talking about how its no fun to get rolled... is there anyway for valve to pit people with less than 600 with other people with less than 600 hours so that you don't get a less experienced player with 500 hours facing someone with 1001. just an idea. another thought I had is that maybe valve could have a video and or short summary of the basics of competitive. Sorry if these are terrible ideas

except there are plenty of pubbers with 2000 hours that are bad and comp players with less than 500 that are good. Hours is a horrible horrible way to rank. An elo system, although still flawed, would be better

I've had an idea to circumvent the whole "No linking to streams/sites" policy by Valve. How about we offer to make a series of Introduction to Highlander videos that Valve can host on the Team Fortress website right after the update hits. We can get a Plat player or someone known in the community to host for each class and then do a video about highlander/6's or whatever in general. Maybe even do some discussion of the uber/player advantage metagame. Make the videos similar to the old My Gaming Edge videos. That way we can introduce the core mechanics of Highlander, Valve doesn't have to do anything big to try and teach a general idea of how to play, and we can introduce TFTV to new/future competitive players in a non-obtrusive way.

I'm pretty sure if this gets off the ground they'll use a similar matchmaking system to every other Free-to-play competitive game out there, some sort of ELO/disconnect aggregate rating that pits you against other people of similar skill and similar consideration for other competitors.

I know this has been alluded to before, but in addition to the pick/ban rule set to balance weapons, there also has to be a way to balance the player's skill. It would not be fun for anyone if a person who had played for 2 days went up against someone who had been playing for 2 years. It also would be completely one-sided if arguably the most critical member of the team, the medic, was inexperienced, as compared to the rest of their own and the enemy team.
Some have suggested a matchmaking system that emulates the Starcraft team based lobbying style or a mathematically designed system that puts you with people of the same skill. However, I believe that mimicking the Riot system in League of Legends would be much more beneficial to the community, that of "leveling up". It would seem most fair if the total number of kills, damage, assist, etc. were tallied up after each lobby and added to your total number of that respective stat. When matchmaking starts people with similar skill levels would be placed in the same match. Now, this would need to be implemented for each class, as a person with 500 hours as solider should not be placed in the same lobby if he were playing as sniper with he only 4 hours on. For better or for worse, a person with a legit Hale's Own something or other is probably pretty good.

tldr: A League of Legends style matchmaking system should be used.

The problem with 6v6 isn't its format, it's that the most optimized classes and strategies are already there. When you leave a format alone for 5 or so years, that's bound to happen. If they want to sincerely shake things up in 6v6, give players reasons to not go 2scouts/2sollys/demo/medic. Make a utility class useful enough where people don't have to worry if any of the advantages that utility class has justifies severely fucking up dmg output. Classes like pyro are pretty useless normally, and the few situations they're justified, it's still questionable to have one over a scout. Change stuff like that.

I think Vaccinator could introduce other classes to 6s nicely. It doesn't work with the format right now due to the dependance on buffs, but with the right class setup it can be really effective.

The fastest way to get this rolling and show results to robin and valve and give him what he's asking for is to contact the fellas @ tf2lobby.com asap and tell them about this conversation with valve and have them code an add on for tf2lobby for this ban/pick item game mode in lobbies.

This is the path of least resistance. tf2lobby has the most number of users who are "first time comp" players than IRC and there are more people playing tf2lobby for highlander and 6's than on IRC, this will get you some genuine results from a new player stand point. Someone needs to contact them asap.

If the guys at tf2lobby are looking to get compensated to put in the time and energy to do this it would be a smart move for someone(tf.tv monopolization) to pay them to do it in return for shares and to be a part owner of tf2lobby.com (maybe even put some tf.tv adds up on tf2lobby.com). However if the guys at tf2lobby.com were smart they would do it for free.

EDIT: I have sent an e-mail to the owner of tf2lobby.com to inquire about this.

Not to mention, in theory (I code as well as a baby monkey, so possibly not in practice) developing a pick/ban system alongside tf2lobby shouldn't be the hardest thing, because you could just have a system that auto-updates the whitelist on their servers. They're the smartest and easiest option, for now.

As Bloodsire mentioned earlier in this thread, that was already attempted when the GRU was made for Heavy. Any other attempt to change the med/demo/2scout/2soldier metagame will instantly be banned in every league just like it was, unless the 6s community has a dramatic change in its mentality.

I don't want a weapon that can fix everything, though. I want the class itself to be fixed, because if the one thing the heavy has going for him in 6s is the GRU, that's not a good sign for the class itself.

The more I think about the possibility of banning stock weapons, the more I like it. It pushes players out of their comfort zones and encourages exciting, innovative play, which is exactly what Robin and the dev team want out of this. It's the kind of tf2 that I would want to watch. However, this raises the possibility of completely banning out a certain class. This is unreasonable. If the other team has a very strong demoman, we want to be able to restrict him, not take him completely out of the picture.

A simple solution would be to allow only one weapon ban per slot per class. For example, if a team comes up against a strong demoman, they could ban the sticky launcher. This would force the demo to play a more passive, defensive role, but the player will still be a threat (instead of restricting them so comprehensively that they end up playing demoknight). Alternatively, the opposing team could ban the scottish resistance early on, ensuring their best player his strongest weapon.

This approach forces players to adapt and have multiple playstyles at their disposal, while not being able to completely ban out a skilled player.

In terms of the number of total bans or banning order, I'm not sure. I'll leave that question to other better suited to answer.

Overall, I think this would be a simple solution to keeping the tf2 metagame fresh and exciting, and I'm hyped to see what comes out of this.

just my two cents :)

you will likely receive a response in 9-12 months next time floor_master logs on

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/5/30/announcing-chess-2.html

GG like 50% of the posts in here.

Looks balanced to me.

Now what does that article have to do with anything?

1. Okay, you have no idea what the other balancing factors are.
2. It was just a joke. A lot of people brought up the fact that chess hasnt changed in hundreds of years.

Looking at some new thing for one second without even seeing it in action, then immediately declaring it's imbalanced.

Your knee-jerk reaction is what's relevant to this thread. :V

I dunno what all these theorycrafting/complaining posts are for anyway. The whole point of this is to get everyone to actually use the weapons. Play with them. Try to figure out some pick/ban system that's interesting. Don't go into a game already thinking "oh I have to play against Minis and Pomson that's so dumb". Please give them all a chance.

Why, you guys want 6s as a pub lobby format is beyond me for reasons that have probably already been stated and that most people wouldn't be interested if theirs no spy, pyro, sniper, heavy, or engi 95% of the time. Not to mention if they had made this for 6s or with 6s I hate to imagine what Payload would be like 6v6 which is probably the most popular Pub mapmode.

Also not everyone wants to play 6s over HL, especially people who've never played competitive. I still remember signing up for a community pug not knowing why I couldn't signup as Pyro or Sniper (which are classes I consider to be alot more fun to play than standard 6s classes), and that some items were banned. Like Fists of Steel, Sandvich, Atomizer (yet the FaN was/is allowed...), etc.

Finally, to be fair to Robins statement on 6s being stagnant, their's only so much 12 players on about 1 dozen maps can do, even then most of the strats are just simply replicated between maps of the same mapmode, especially when 95% of the time it's 4 classes.

So... is there anyone actually trying this pick/ban system out? For now, we could just do it in a TF2Lobby chat and mostly rely it on trust, although that's an easy access for griefing.

My general idea was something like:

http://arxandbeta.com/pickban/
There are probably a million mistakes in there but I just threw it together as a start.

I personally think we should be building on something like that, working out how it's going to feature in the game. While I wrote it out for highlander, I would intend on there being some sort of 6vs6 option, maybe with class limits set, but highlander is the easier option to discuss at this point.

We need to workout how a pickban lobby system would actually work in TF2. Everything would need to be automated, simple to use for a beginner, and reasonably quick (people won't wait 20 minutes for games). In this design, I've just put together a random system that I'd expect people to build on. Like... talk about the downsides of this method?

I like it because you don't have to look through every unlock in the world (more will come too). It keeps things reasonably locked down, but every unlock does get featured at some point. Anyway, I won't ramble, have a look and come up with some ideas.

Ultimately we want a 6vs6 pub lobby format to aid in the growth of the 6vs6 game. Sure highlander is all fun and dandy, but you can't take highlander to LAN events. I don't know of a single major eSports tournament that has 18 computers setup on the stage ready for a grand final, not to mention the travel costs for teams of 9.

I think it's highly beneficial getting players into playing a competitive style of TF2, whether that is highlander or 6vs6 as that means they might have interest in watching other people play competitively, increasing stream numbers, sponsorship potential, and also just our competitive player base!

I'd personally like to see the efforts focused on promoting an in-game highlander lobby system over a 6vs6 one, however I do believe there needs to be an option for 6vs6 somewhere in there (maybe even with explained class limits but one designated 'utility player' who can change class in game to any of the other available classes). Some people will have interest in playing 6vs6, but maybe after they get into the competitive spirit of TeamFortress2, and I feel highlander is the better introduction to this side of the game for them.

Only one I can think of right now is that map votes should be alongside picking your classes, with item bans coming later. If we're rolling with pick/bans as a metagame gig, I'd want to ban certain items in certain maps. Making a situation up on the spot, I wouldn't really care for the pain train in a 5CP map, but an A/D map? Sure, maybe having the opposing demo/soldier get more time into capturing isn't a good idea for you as a defender.

e: actually wait, I know of something else. In my mind, I don't see a reason for having to vote for a team captain, because shouldn't a player just be able to ban one item from the opposing team? It nicely balances itself out, because you can't just outright ban all the items off a single good player.

#531 Earlier in the thread, Saam linked to a steam group that he made for Pick/Ban PUGs. I've been in 3 myself and they've been really beneficial at getting some conversations going about bans n such. Here's the link to the steam group.

but dota doesn't have the issue of competitive play drastically differing from pub play, which is why all of this is getting brought up in the first place. 6s will never be able to capture the same experience because people find pubs that small to be boring.

Thank you, it's the kind of post I wanted. Map choice before bans makes perfect sense for the exact reasons you listed.

As for one player banning 1 unlock, I'm not sure it's a great idea. Might get trolls banning a weapon you've said you wanted to use or something, where as with a captain vote, you will have voted for someone you 'trust' to pick the bans. Also by having a captain, it might also carry into the game with the captain playing a more... 'main caller' kind of role, which organised lobbies should have.

I disagree that the main caller should be (or be defined by) the captain, it's extremely important that it's a person who has enough information in game to be so judgmental about how things are going. It should be something that the players agree to, because maincalling is such a social contract in the first place. The people who go into this matchmaking aren't going to be playing the same version of the game as us, remember, and it's not as coordinated either. Highlander is about individual player classes filling in niches, actually doing their jobs properly, and I know it's kind of self-definite to say that but it's much more important and less obvious to do your job at low levels of highlander than 6s exactly because the players are overall more specialized in their role on the team. Having a definite maincaller in HL isn't as important as 6s, especially not at the level we're going to deal with.

As well, think of the kind of system this is going to be: We have people who are going into matchmaking, with a class and map they want to play. If they're playing medic and their friends are playing demo and heavy and the other six people on the team are grouped up together and playing every other HL class, those six others are very likely to vote for one of their own group as a captain exactly because of familiarity. So the three classes which are best and most important as maincallers are going to be completely different from the captain and their friends. And the captain position is going to be an authority and will interfere with what otherwise would be a normal peership of players figuring out how to comm with eachother even if only because of their presence, even if at the very least it's in subtle ways like Medic: "Let's push now!" Scout (captain) (on the flank being baited by a spy): "Why?".

You have to remember that this is public TF2, but played in a competitive style. There isn't going to actually be a main caller, half of the people aren't even going to have a microphone. But by selecting a captain pre-game, you automatically have some sort of leadership, at least for the bans. In most games it would be irrelevant inside the actual gameplay, but in some games, the captain getting the vote from his team mates could be a sign that they respect that player, and his voice might stand out above the rest making him kinda of like a main caller.

That's all I was trying to say.

What I do like however is a captain banning the weapons. Having some sort of chat box does mean that players could request a certain weapon to be banned, so the captain does get input from his team, but it means you vote for someone sensible to manage that side of things for you.

6v6 is like that (for the most part, class limits being another reason) because the game was originally designed as Generalists and Specialists. The Scout, Soldier, Demoman, and Medic are Generalists and intended to be ran the most while you switch them out for the other 5 classes on a need by need basis.

Of course, most of the unlocks have changed this, but imo this isn't a problem. 6s as a format plays as close as possible as to how the classes were originally intended to be used, Highlander uses them as close as possible as to how they are currently intended to be used. That's my 2c.

Then again, I think Robin has poor reasoning to begin with here, there's more to metagame changes than just wacky items. The 6s meta has changed in many ways since I started paying attention to it (2009-ish) and I'd only say items played a small part in it, which i46 pretty much confirmed - regardless of bans the American teams played basically the same way. Robin just might not be the sort of person who can appreciate the more subtle changes though??

If you want to mess with the sixes metagame - the easiest way to do that is to develop new *maps* with interesting new quirks and features - not release items that make full time sniper more viable for example.

Yes, we've more or less agreed upon 8 maps that are solid - but there would be a lot more change and innovation if we had a map of cp_process's caliber being released every few weeks/months. If we were in a place where cp_badlands was in serious danger of being retired because of the quality of maps available to us - like Star Craft (where old mainstays come and go) - were so high, we'd be a much healthier scene in general.

But making new maps is very hard :(