South Africa here. :P.

Have been thinking about the technicalities and valve would need to update whitelists so re-skins are covered by a single item in the whitelist, and if banning stock items is allowed, then that has to be added to the whitelists too. Nothing really complex though.

Is anyone interested in writing a script for this in the mean time?

Also, I think the new changes to the game that would be possible if banning stock items was included would be amazing, with the banning of medi guns or sticky launchers totally changing how the maps would play out.

I am more a 6v6 person, but I think any interest from Valve is a huge plus for the worldwide community, when it comes to getting people interested in competitive tf2.

I posted about this idea about a year ago on reddit. Not many people saw it though.

Either a ban-pick system like dota or a ban only system and all else allowed

PIC: http://i.imgur.com/GgfDk.jpg

OLD REDDIT THREAD: http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t7d5g/captains_mode_for_tf2_idea_from_dota/

It's easy for us as sixes players to feel entitled to royalty treatment for the thousands of dollars we have spent in-game and for those of us at the top of the game to look down at Valve's effort to promote competitive play because it does not match up to our expectations of what Blizzard or Riot Games do for their competitive communities. I respectfully suggest we taste a slice of humble pie and look at what's being attempted here.

From a business perspective, 6s TF2 carries far less weight than Highlander because it relies on a well-established metagame in terms of loadouts and general strategy that appears stagnant as compared to the variety of the individual and teamplay in highlander. I must say that I agree with Robin's assessment of the game today from a business perspective.

While this may not be the voice of the Valve competitive community, are we the ones fielding (and paying) developers? Does most of Valve's revenue come from the competitive 6s community? We look at SC2 and DOTA and want to be paid $200,000 for winning a LAN, sure. But we don't realize how low-value competitive 6s are in terms of drawing in revenue. That can be changed, but unless we come up with a workable idea of how to do it, It's not a decision I would back.

I took another look at what's being done here and I see the beginning of something that could benefit TF2 for many years to come. After all the years of complaining that Valve does not support competitive TF2, it is not appropriate that we, the custodians of competitive TF2, whine like spoilt children when the first step to supporting competitive TF2 is taken.

I think eXtine and Salamancer's effort is admirable and Valve's decision to back competitive TF2 in the form of Highlander is a landmark that deserves our support. While it may not be the Utopia scenario, I think it is a first step, and a big one to making a mutually beneficial competitive scene that hopefully can be nurtured to do justice to the game we love and play.

what about a compromise? same concept -- unlock picks and bans -- but with an optional lobby cap of 12 instead of 18.

surely a simple option select the player limit isn't too much to ask for if the primary issue is a limited amount of time/resources?

#244
This.

Valve's problem with 6s seems to be that it's to rigid and distant. If we go the same way with class restrictions as with weapons, and just make them all default to no caps, it's just a lowered player/server ratio. Which, given that they're already handing out 5-man MvM servers, which also needs to handle some 20-odd bots, shouldn't be too much of a problem in retrospect.

A highlander lobby system would be an excellent addition to the game and something I, even as a 6s player, would use over joining a public server from the server browser if done properly.

but then you have to explain the different class limits to the children. and the class balance.

you think anyone with a single clue as to what they're doing is going to have fun if their team rolls out to mid with a spy instead of a demoman and an engineer building on last instead of a pocket?

there's more to it than just making lobbies with 12 slots.

Pick/ban could lead to some really annoying bans and the fact that valve will only focus on highlander makes me sad :(

all your grievances apply to 9v9 highlander lobbies too, but that's besides the point (which is for valve to throw the 6v6 scene a bone without having to put in much effort)

I think this is a great idea. Not only would it allow the variety that Valve wants, and be easier to fill than 18 players, but it would facilitate a gradual understanding of the comp 6s meta. People would enter the format without restriction, but then observe how the best play (if Valve advertise matches) and emulate it.

If players understand the meta on their own accord then they will engage with it much more.

Glad to see highlander finally getting the attention it deserves. Game on.

:)

why no 6v6 :(

I'd be more than happy to make some tutorial/explanation videos to use in-game! :P

Well , well , well.. Only saw this thread now and my blood is boiling with excitement so I have a lot to say.

First of all, this is a huge step towards the right direction, and I am happy for it, I don't know how it will go or when it will happen, but it is a huge step and I am happy for it regardless of the outcome. Things won't happen if you don't even try. The fact they're trying is cool and respectable.

Secondly, I understand valve wants to test waters with an highlander based system first, and that's awesome and I actually think that's the right decision, as long as they don't completely rule out other competitive formats from start. TF2 competitive is much more than highlander, hell, it's much more than 6vs6, my utopian dream for competitive tf2 would be to have a complete ingame matchmaking for both 6vs6, Highlander, BBall and Ultiduo, which I think are the most exciting and appealing competitive variants of tf2.

Thirdly, I completely understand the position of valve on Unlocks, I would love to play a competitive game where there are no banlists, where all weapons are allowed, even on 6s, but that won't happen as long as there are stupidly overpowered or game-mechanic breaking weapons as the phlog or the pomsom are (along some others), if those weapons were to be balanced I would be more than happy to play with them.

Also, the competitive community is kind of elitist when it comes to unlocks (it gets worse here in europe although we changed a bit in recent seasons), hell, even I will get mad if I get killed by a huntsman sniper or a Force of Nature scout in a 6s game, but that is something that needs to be changed not necessarily by banning those weapons but tweaking the mindset and the status-quo of the competitive playerbase, and what better way to do that than crowd sourcing? If you empower competitive players by allowing them to have an opinion that matters, then they will think about things differently. Allow for an in-game crowdsourcing system that allows players that use this competitive system (please don't allow the general pubber, because of course a person with 10h on the game that only plays pyro is gonna suggest all pyro weapons to be buffed and so on, common sense applies here) to vote or suggest improvements on every weapon.
For example, allow the matches to be played with every weapon available in the game, at the end of the game you get a list of the weapons used in that match and you can vote what you thought about them and if you think they're balanced and if they're not what kind of change you would suggest to it. But this really needs to happen if they want a update of this magnitude to be successful, YOU VALVE, you have to hear our opinion and prove us that it matters. I am sure if a system like this was implemented and if valve were really proactive about it, at the end of the 1st week you would have enough feedback for a big-ass update on weapon balancing. Also, this weapon balancing should of course transfer to the entire game not only competitive play but pubs as well, there are plenty game-breaking or unbalanced weapons even in pub-play, and both sides of the game would only benefit from weapon tweaking according to player feedback.

The "competitive format is too stagnant" is barely an argument, I won't even bother to counter-argument it that much because robin is a cool guy and I love what he has done for tf2, but this is kind of a personal opinion and I am sure thousands of people that regularly watch tf2 casts and are subscribed to competitive tf2 related youtube channels would tell otherwise. That being said, I would love to watch a competitive 6s game with different kind of strats, I'm sure there are plenty of force of nature scouts, or direct hit soldiers that really excel at using a different weapon that is not usually employed in competitive play, and it would be awesome to watch teams try different approaches to unlocks.

yeah, let's ban the primary that helps pyro be useful

as for #1, holy shit it's about time

Great news! Let's stop debating and start playing. It's clear that Valve will not make a move until we have data.

I hope we can all enter in to this with enthusiasm and open minds. Even if you you think it is ill-advised, the best way to demonstrate that to our Australian overlord is by playing his game.

comp support and possible unlock rebalancing

it's like a dream i had in tftv thread form

To complement what I said above (and because I reached max post limit 4000 characters yay).

For this to happen and be successful you need to:
-> Actually make players feel that their opinion matters
-> Regularly update accordingly to players feedback
-> Players see the results from their feedback turned into real game updates and will continue to do so, thus creating an awesome feedback cycle that benefits both the game and the scene.

Also you need of course to have an integrated mentoring or at very least a very basic guide/walkthrough explaining the essential competitive game mechanics to the average pub player because they might know a uber makes a player invincible and usually it's better not to get near an ubered player but they might not know how much of a big deal is an uber advantage or an ubered team pushing against a non ubered team. Or how much of a big deal is a uber drop or a demo pick on last.

This would be easily done through crowdsourcing, our community as a whole is one of the best communities in gaming and we are more than capable of doing things, hell, we raised almost 20 Fuckin Thousand dollars for a international tf2 lan with teams from 3 continents, there are people flying from kangaroo's land to play tf2 and have fun for a weekend in the UK thanks to our community, this is kind of a big deal. We have also shown we are capable of even entirely community-made updates with the last update, just empower us to be able change or create things and we will fuckin do them I guarantee you.

Over and out.

My idea for this would be to have an option for individual players to set weapon bans outside of the lobby itself. What I mean is, instead of starting a lobby and then choosing what weapons to ban, allow each player, if they so choose, to make editable presets that they can select from while creating the lobby.

vvv Here's an example below. vvv

I want to make a lobby so I click on whatever takes me to the area where I can start making a lobby. For this example, let's say this button on the main menu is "Create Lobby". So I hit "Create Lobby" and now I'm on a new screen. This screen has options that open up other windows: weapon ban presets, class ban presets, cosmetic presets (maybe???), server location presets, map selection preset, and some additional stuff, possibly such as limitations to cl_interp or other commands (example: lowest interp set to 0.0152 and max interp set to 0.090 or whatever). I click on "weapon ban presets" and each weapon is listed with a checkbox, where checking validates the weapon's ban in this preset. Hit okay, go back to the previous window. Now if banning the GRU is all I wanted to do, I can then hit "create lobby", which would then prompt me to choose the map and whether it's Highlander or 6v6.

I see his point here, but honestly most of the weapons that are banned are banned because they can provide an easy, unfair advantage or just don't keep up well enough. I'm not implying they need to immediately make weapons that can benefit in competitive TF2, whether or not that would be what they want, but my point is that a lot of their weapons just don't work in 6v6.

Tactical in what categories exactly? Weapons, map selection, or something else? If it's weapon, then what I said before about a lot of the game's weapons are banned for reasons that make a lot of sense. If it's map selection, that shouldn't be hard to figure out really. If it's something else, well I can't really say much about it since I don't know what it would be about.

i think the matchmaking should have 18 weapon bans per match
that way each person playing could ban one item that they don't want to play against

although i really feel like there are going to be trolls that ban things like kritzkrieg or something like that

imo the main weapons i would personally ban:
beggar's bazooka
batallion's backup
atomizer
vitasaw
pomson
spycicle
dead ringer
phlog
degreaser
wrangler
gunslinger
splendid screen
one of the items in the spy or sniper set

edit: i know 18 item bans sounds like a ridiculous number, but there are a lot of weapons available for use, and i think it would narrow down which weapons people don't like in general as to what valve is looking for in terms of implementing a system like this

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Weapons

If this does end up happening, they should add some type of penalty system for people who leave pugs early. For example they can't play another pug for a day or something.

extine and sal the heros of tf2

Lots of missing the forest for the trees here in this thread, imo. This situation might be a rare instance of a 'trickle-down' economy working.

That said, I think the reaction would have been better, and discussion would have been more focused and fruitful, if Robin's dig at 6s was omitted. Beyond being unnecessary, it's simply an incorrect assessment about what makes any sport interesting over the long term; changing tactics is a small part of that, but the shifting landscape of dominant players and teams within relatively unchanging constraints of the game's rules and dominant approaches is a much larger and significant factor. If the only reason you watch an esport is to see massively new tricks, then sure, you're going to be disappointed with everything.

Regardless, it's super easy to come away from this thread thinking that 6s now has its days numbered, and is to be sacrificed at the altar of Highlander so as to sell more stuff. It's partially true, but the end effect should be a far more interesting and robust 6s game as a result of Valve's focus on gathering data from Highlander PUGs.

Watch Newell's keynote from DICE a couple months ago. Valve is quite deliberately positioning themselves towards a future gaming landscape where "all the games end up being part of an connected economy" on the other side of "a fairly significant sea change in the way we all think of what a game is." That was basically half of the talk linked above.

And you can't guide thriving economies at any scale without piles and piles of good data.

And really, that's what I think the primary goal of a Highlander-oriented PUG system is: not as a direct endorsement of 9s as a superior format, but actually a recognition that it's the most efficient way to gather data about item balance and use. It's the best way to gain actionable data from the largest sample size of relatively skilled players. Valve should also be able to easily use such a system to A/B test new weapons or nerfs/buffs to existing weapons, by randomly assigning the tweak they wish to test to sets of individual pugs, allowing them to track the effect in a controlled environment that's a bit more serious than a pub, but isn't so weighty that people would abandon a match simply because a single-match tweak was dropped into it.

In the end, the goals align - both the 6s scene and Valve benefit from a larger item set that is well balanced against the rest of the game. It allows players and teams more individualized approaches, and allows Valve greater monetization. Just so happens the best path for that is through Highlander.

Incredible stuff, some of us have been waiting for a long time to get some kind of in-game competitive acknowledgment, even if it's not for 6s I'm thrilled for it and high5s to Sal/eX for getting this rolling.

I read through everything above and one item more than others continues to ring in my head:

Why not let this very high SNR thread continue while we start another one to store AARs so that the data collection can begin in a semi-organized way, right away? Getting some kind of AAR template standard going could put us on to this path, at the very least it would likely need:

Who played:
--Blue:
----Scout: [div/name]
----Soldier: [div/name]
----Pyro: [div/name]
----Demoman: [div/name]
----Heavy: [div/name]
----Engineer: [div/name]
----Medic: [div/name]
----Sniper: [div/name]
----Spy: [div/name]
--Red:
----Scout: [div/name]
----Soldier: [div/name]
----Pyro: [div/name]
----Demoman: [div/name]
----Heavy: [div/name]
----Engineer: [div/name]
----Medic: [div/name]
----Sniper: [div/name]
----Spy: [div/name]
When played: [dd/mm/yy hh:mm]
Weapon bans enforced:
Formalized outcome: [Red: X Blue: Y]
Things to keep:
Things to alter:
Notes:
[link to STV demo]

..so what do you say to making it our collective mission to get together and come up with a few pages of these kinds of AARs to help the cause?

EDIT: based on Kissme feedback below

I agree with what Dox said. Obviously a lot of 6v6 players are going to be upset with this, and as a 6v6 player, I can agree, but this is the route that Valve wants to take.

This doesn't mean that Valve won't scratch your back if you scratch theirs.

They went to Sal and Extine to ask for help, so lets help them. It can only benefit TF2 in the long run and will bring new faces into the game.

One thing to add to Dox's post, we should try and also add what 'level' or 'division' the people that play are, and also get some organized games in each division level going on. Then we can see how the play styles differ and weapons are used, because obviously higher caliber players will be able to exploit a certain weapon more than a lower caliber player (IE a Steel soldier with gunboats vs a platinum soldier with gunboats, one can make much more use of them). Also, if STVs of the games are available, it'd probably be best to post a link to it so we can show them why a certain item was banned in most of the other games.

My only concern (and this is to Valve), is that this is meant for generally the newer pubbers of the game, so what happens when the only weapons they have get banned? For example, if someone brand new to the game is playing medic, and decides he/she wants to play a HL game, what if the first weapon that is banned is the Medigun and he/she has no other healing device available to them? I know a lot of people are going to say 'just tell her to go trade for one', now lets be real. Will this HL pugging system give everyone the ability to use any weapon in the game? I think that is a question that needs to be answered at some point.

Because 6's is nothing like a pub, highlander is much more likely to be played as you can choose any class, not just one of 4 with off classes. It's more (pardon the expression) noob friendly so newer players to competitive will have an easier time getting into the swing of things. Jumping from pubs to 6's is a bit much, but going from a pub to a HL game isn't nearly as difficult.

A side question, if eXtine and Sal went to Valve did they discuss casting tools to TF2, particularly in relationship to Highlander as it is very chaotic to watch a game.

Just wanted to say thanks to eXtine and Sal for helping to facilitate this kinda thing with Valve, great job dudes.

pretty sure this falls into a minority group, thus they're not interested