one good reason might be that hammer doesn't work with steampipe. no new maps for a while :/

The competitive community's ideas are very important. One thing they stressed was that they didn't want to implement a pick/ban mode into their lobby system if all the official leagues like UGC and ETF2L used a different system than what was implemented. They want there to be one source of truth, and they want it to reflect what works best for us.

No, it's fixed already.

tell me, at this current point in the game, who else would he be able to ask to test this?

Splitting up competitive communities is a terrible idea. If you have an ingame matchmaking system that does things one way, a competitive league that does things another, and a group of players stuck inbetween its incredibly damaging for the game.

Obviously, Valve doesn't shut ESEA down just because they implement a matchmaking system. The reason I'm concerned is because they seem to want to jettison a fundamental way that TF2 is played (community made black/white lists) in favor of something completely untested, created by a team who doesn't seem at all involved in competitive play AS IT CURRENTLY STANDS. How can you make a competitive format for TF2 if you don't even play or watch the current meta?

Unless, of course, you think that meta is terrible and needs to be replaced, which I'm assuming the majority of people on this forum don't tend to agree with.

EDIT: Obviously, see above for a response, this was typed while that was etc etc.

oh, maybe you could have told us that before 4 pages of anger about pick/ban systems.

So what you're saying is valve would only do this testing until they figure out which weapons to ban?

This kind of supports what I suggested before.

-Have the current UGC or CEVO whitelist be always allowed
-Let the competitive community decide about a few global must-bans
-Leave other unlocks up to the lobbiey creator

I believe this would support the pub community in finding their own unlocks and creating new strats on one hand and have appropriate games from the get go without having to worry about unlock picking on the other hand.

Just like the invisible players bug.

In my opinion I don't think they really care about creating a COMPETITIVE format. They just care about creating a different format. Comp just happens to be the driving force for this.

If you want innovation change up the map pool, not the unlocks. I don't agree at all with Robin's opinion.

A banlist just isn't the direction they want to take. They'd rather be able to rebalance weapons than just have some that are perma-banned. The UGC banlist is definitely a great place for them to start looking at rebalancing, I agree. Nonetheless, their idea is to make the competitive space more dynamic than it currently is because of their update schedule.

Hoping we can start hearing about some pick/ban PUG results in the next few days. If everyone comes back and says "hey we tried it this way and it sucked," that feedback is just as valuable to Valve as "we tried it this way and it rocked." The key point I'm trying to make is, less talky, more doey.

I don't think some people understand what Sal is trying to say. Robin and his crew want to support competitive tf2, but they need data on which items need to be balanced to perfect it, and they start with highlander first (because it's generally easier and new people usually go to hl first instead of highlander+6s bans so many more weapons and hl item metagame can switch easily) and then they will start the lobbies, then if they seee improvement they'll try 6s (or atleast eventually)
correct me if I'm wrong.

Let me understand this better. Are they okay with banning a small selection of weapons à la Pomson right away, so my suggestion from before is feasible? Or do they want to leave it completely up to the lobby creators to allow everything if they want? In that case, what role do we play before the system is added for testing? Should we suggest weapons that are unbannable instead?

This is a fantastic step for TF2, but my question is how would one balance the bans?

Would there be something in place to prevent "banning out" a class? (IE banning all the Engineer's wenches)

And where would one join one of these pick/ban games?

Some sort of ranking system, where class based averages (in match, not general game) were taken into account (lets say i'm >50% of people on solly, but only >20% of people on scout, if i pick playing scout, i may get a less skilled team) would probably optimize the match making. Say Damage per Minute divided by deaths and capture points+assist. Medic would need a seperate rating system, but somebody could come up with that.
EG: Lansky in HRG vs vector would have 37:11 but Cyzer would have 31:19 and b4nny would have 56:19.

Less imposing numbers than the stat pages, and a simple ranking for what you're looking at. the first number indicates how effective they are in team fights, since it's damages and deaths in a simple number. The second shows generally how team oriented they are. It's not an exact answer, but it's a solid stance to base an ELO on in match instead of just MGE. Since both 1v1 dm and teamwork are necessary to create a solid team, getting numbers closer to each other would balance out teams. An average of 41:16 would be a great match up (admittedly, b4nny skews this number fairly hard, it's much closer to around 35 for the whole team), while a team of significantly higher/lower numbers would be a roll. a +/-4 deviation on either aspect is probably too far for an even match up.

Just my two cents to make this system better than lobby.

No, they care about competitive. Specifically, they mentioned that in games where pub play is the same as competitive play, such as DOTA and SC2, all the top competitive players are very well-respected by the playerbase at large. What they want to see is a TF2 competitive format that is similar enough to pubs that it drives that same kind of respect - and more than just respect: emulation. They want people to be able to connect with the pyro who made backburner famous or the best force-a-nature scout in the world. That's why 6v6 doesn't fit the bill, and why banlists in general don't have the right idea. It has to be a player-driven balancing system.

Can't ban stock items, id assume.

While we're at it, can you discuss removing random critical hits from the default game? It would help bridge the gap between competitive and pubs and remove a lot of frustration when playing pubs.

#103 Just about, yeah. The biggest thing they need from us is knowing where to start. If we can playtest a dozen different ways to implement a pick/ban system and provide detailed after-action reports to them, that will be a huge step.

http://i.imgur.com/71TumE1.png

I'm totally up to playtest the fuck out of it. Maybe we can see an early implementation on Team Fortress 2 Beta? Has Robin said anything about that?

Very few things ever get changed from SPUF, but there really is no alternate solution.

If valve implemented a voting system, where every player who logs into tf2 gets to vote on what item they would like nerfed the most and what item they would like buffed the most. I think very quickly weapons banned from competitive would be nerfed, thus making them more of a possibility for competitive.

That would in turn help pubs become less distanced from comp, which would push valve to further support competitive. :)

+1 on that^

#111 That is definitely something to suggest. But by "playtesting" what I mean right now is, get some HL pugs running and just work through a pick/ban round with captains. Start tonight. Valve aren't going to send us the code for a dozen different systems, we simply have to field our own rules and refine them.

#110 I also like food and am going to go get dinner. Will be back to read and respond to stuff in an hour or two.

Unfortunately I enjoy pubs more than highlander :(

but with the exception of 2 matches like 4 seasons ago I've only done lobbies so I guess I'll give this a try...

i haven't seen anyone say it yet, so: thank you to sal and eX for starting the dialogue about a pug system, regardless of format or people's gripes.

But how seriously will valve take a bunch of puggers who said this weapon is op and that weapon needs a buff if they have no proof to back it up ?

afraid random pubbers are gonna join and do random shit.
and also no 6s ;_____;

Well most PUG servers are running comp whitelists by default, some pickup admins should try to work out a pick/ban system. I'm not informed if pug.na has something like it in place, but I assume not? It's definetely easier for us as a community to implement it to our PUGs for testing than for valve to put it into the game so it owuld be cool if someone who runs a pickup could get on it.