I really hate making serious posts. I can't even remember the last time I made one.

So, I guess, sorry if I've gotten rusty. Sildeezy, reporting live, from the bus.

I don't play competitive TF2. I ring for friends, mge, pub, bball, do pugs, etc. I find the game "fun." All of the friends I had in tf2 (who got me into tf2) when I started playing have since moved on to other games (save one, shout out to decimate) - I've made new friends, though. I've met some really cool people in the comp tf2 community, some chill, selfless, and hilarious people.

Sure, some people say the community is caustic, or overzealous. But maybe that's why you guys have managed to send teams across the country - across the fucking ocean on your own donations. Maybe that's why you took a game that you enjoyed - a game that valve didn't see the potential in, didn't give a fuck about - and turned it into something incredible. Other games get updates (balance changes, new "heroes" or "champions") aimed specifically at competitive play. You guys get a fucking laser rocket launcher and a scooba-crit weapon for the pyro. Yet, you took the shit hand you were dealt, and made a game mode that rewards precision and teamwork like no other current game can hope to.

Don't throw that away for an in-game 6's lobby system that valve has no interest in. I get your desperation. You don't want people to think of 6s as "that other game mode that valve doesn't even officially support - yeah doogs its all about highlander."

While I have nothing against highlander players, it would truly be a fucking travesty if highlander was recognized over 6s as a respectable competitive game mode. All valve has to do to fix that is recognize you - acknowledge your existence. Make it hard to play tf2 without knowing about 6v6 gameplay. Even little shit would be nice - remember that one time the tf2 community sent two teams to Europe for what would be the biggest tf2 lan in history? The pub community doesn't, because the only thing valve posted about it was this:

http://www.teamfortress.com/?p=7&tab=blog

Yeah, that picture of a charge n' targe demo on pl_goldrush really does i46 and $20,000 of community donations justice.

Obviously, nothing I said was news to anyone. But fuck doogs. Stay hood with that shit. Don't let the white man tame you - and certainly don't ask him to.

I agree with killing, a split in the community would be terrible for this game.

#1

Firstly, I think this is an opinion that a lot of people in oldschool fps scenes feel. This is not an unpopular opinion for the board you're talking to. I've been a part of all those scenes as well, but try to be impartial when looking at the big picture of what's going on. hope everyone doesnt get too mad at me

Esports really wasn't all that big back then. The flashiness of competitive events can numb someone to the numbers: The biggest viewership in the old days of CS was CPL 2004 with an HLTV filled to 40000. This was "The International" for competitive gaming at the time. Accounting for the inconvenience of no live-streaming is hard to factor but I would guess those numbers would increase by 1.5x.

For comparison, The International 2, a comparable game (where both essentially revolve around one big tournament), brought in 4million concurrent viewers. The game wasn't even officially available in China yet, and many weren't even aware of its existence. In a few months TI3 will bring even bigger numbers.

it was because the system was unmaintainable. people were getting paid more than what people are getting paid NOW-- when we have more access to larger viewerships that can be maintained daily, way more access to advertising, and way more player/team fanbases than back then. combine this with the bewildering and backwards "push to tv" when the rest of the world has been heading towards internet content, and it's pretty obvious why it failed.

If anything is an unpopular opinion it's probably this: how do you expect Valve to support competitive tf2 when it caters to a completely different audience than the majority of the people that play the game?

Think from their perspective: Their goal is to get lots of people to enjoy their content so they're comfortable enough to play it regularly and buy cool stuff from their store. Net effective fun is their measurement for success. We as competitive tf2 players play a game so different from everyone else that the definition of "fun" is shifted completely. And they're not going to choose our miniscule competitive playerbase's definition of fun if it ruins this net effective fun for everyone else.

We play 5cp when it is by far the least popular(or maybe it's ctf) mode played outside of competitive-- we've already created a huge contrast in the player experience. What are the repercussions of this choice? We DESPISE turtling play. Heavies, engis, snipers are considered "annoying" classes because we play a gamemode that is only fun when there's an intense tug-of-war of back and forth pushing. We choose to balance around this. In pub play, there are game modes oriented around cracking the base, which is more inclusive, representative of pub play, and the same notions of what is fun or not are shared among the people good and the people playing casually.

Imagine Valve implemented our current ruleset to some ingame matchmaking system and heavily promoted it. "Hey! Play this competitive stuff it's really cool!" These people with a completely different notion of fun would go "oh boy!" and proceed to click find match. They would get into a game and something like this would happen:

"you mean they only play those 5 point cp maps I always go the wrong way on those XD"
"I cant use ANY of my new items? why did I spend all that time trading..."
"why is everyone mad that im heavy..."

they conclude that experience was terrible and proceed to never play it again. a couple things happen as a result of this. one, valve wasted time and bloated their game with a mm system the majority of their playerbase don't use. two, they show a loss of touch to their main audience. I don't think it takes much to see if rules were changed to have a competitive game that actually mirrors what normal people play tf2 for, there'd be growth and support. highlander has already shown this.

a conservative mindset is a bad mindset. there is a clear problem with the game that has finally presented itself an opportunity to be fixed. an adjustment to some arbitrary rules really isn't that big of a deal and the whiners ALWAYS forget about these changes in a month of playing. it's been the case in every game where some radical change comes... unless the change is really bad. but some smart people seem to be helping mold this change with valve, so that is unlikely to happen.

why would esea not follow the ruleset adopted by an ingame system valve creates? the only way a schism will be created is if there are some really stupid people at the top making decisions. The best case scenereo is people stop crying about (gasp) playing more game modes and having more variety, valve implements a matchmaking type system ingame(you can stop here for enough reasons to do this), and valve potentially starts putting more funds into competitive and can say "look! we're giving these guys money while they play the fun competitive mode!" and the casual audience goes "wow this is kind of fun!" Think TI2 style: start prizemoney at x, add ingame item that contributes funds to this tournament. wishful thinking is the international becomes a "valve game" yearly tournament with this sort of prize money system in place.

the worst case scenereo is we get integrated pugging. in a ruleset you'd eventually learn to love. seriously, the effects manual weapon banning would have would be very cool.

anyways, my goal wasnt to be polarizing to what is likely to be a 12 page circlejerk. I just feel like there's a lot of issues that need to be looked at from other people's perspectives. and sorry for the formatting/any strange transitions its 6am and no sleep !

The biggest problem is game devs see their game in a pretty different light. Valve clearly had a vision for the game but thew players didn't agree and we experimented to find a balanced format that was too enjoyable. Now honestly did you find 6s stale and boring to play (screw watching that's not important really, viewers come to a game they love playing) We don't need to change anything just because someone is kinda like 'eh' at what the players-the people who play this game for a lot of hours a day created as oppose to the people who made it and probably play it for an hour total a week but in pubs.

There's another option of making it so different from 6's that it doesn't split the community. I'm not sure how Valve could do this, but I believe that there's more than two formats of competitive tf2, without two of them being similar enough to split the community.

This is what I'm saying, and why its silly for valve to try and promote comp tf2 through the highlander format only. Will they promote 6v6? Nope. Should we sacrifice the tried and true, time-tested format of 6v6 in order to appease the tf2 gods? NO.

I think the meta-game is getting to a point in its evolution which is very interesting to watch and play.

Personally, I don't enjoy Moba's, or RTS games (some RTS games are okay). Mostly due to the fact that I've been devoted to working on myself. Team fortress 2 is different for me, I work on my own skills, but also my team skills. Through the years I have thought about quitting, only reason to quit at the current moment is due to real life issues; But quitting is not that easy. Not because of the game, but because of the community. Hell, even if I did "quit" I'll probably be in pubs/pugs & mumble with friends.

tldr; Quitting is not easy when you find a community that has people who stand out from the crowd.

I really don't understand the point of this cl2, all unlocks 6s experiment. Valves biggest beef with 6v6 is that it has cookie cutter class line-ups that rule-out certain players due to their class preference. This new 6s mode is still going to be blighted by this - sure there will be a bit more variety but ultimately spys playing pubs won't suddenly be able to go add to a 6s pickup, which is really valves biggest problem with tf2 (even if they called it out as stale and that's the thing everyone has chosen to pickup on).

Lets be honest, if robin wanted to have an idea of what the 6s scene is he would of invited the top players of comp tf2 to headquarters to discuss certain changes to his proposed format. I know ESEA made a huge deal when Valve invited the quote on quote top players of Counter Strike to give their input on CSGO so idk why that isnt being done as well. (and yea i know the game was still in beta when all of that happened but I imagine they wanted some input from the competitive guys of the game as well)

actual pub player here, and something else to bear in mind: a mid fight is over in 5 to 15 seconds usually. a round can last one minute. popping uber when confronted by a bombing soldier or w/e requires split second reflexes. knowing whether to push or hold is all about timing—if one has advantage or not, etc.

in pubs, 15 seconds is a short amount of time. the game won't be won or lost in 15 seconds unless it's at the end of a round. rounds can last anywhere from 20 minutes to hours depending on the map; one minute is setup time. when rounds happen as quickly as they would in a 6v6 game, pubbers vote for a team scramble. individual ubers aren't that important, particularly if the enemy is set up with 2 sentries and 3 sticky camping demomen and a heavy. and everything i've seen suggests that pub players have baaaad reflexes, probably even worse than my own 300ms (or so) reaction time. if pubbers liked fast paced gameplay, there wouldn't be nearly as many 32 player instaspawn 2fort servers.

and another thing! in 6v6, comms are along the lines of "they're down, push", "demo took 257, he's weak at train", "we have a 30 percent advantage", "let's run the scouts up through right and then bomb our soldiers in from under point". Most of the time. In pubs, on the rare occasions that comms are used at all, they're more along the lines of "can some of our spies switch to medic?", "does this sound like a reasonable price for a strange original?", "Personally, I thought My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic really went downhill after the first season", "I'm pretty sure this Ruwin Colonthree guy is hacking". People aren't used to talking while they play.

Being part of various competitive communities over the years, (Gears of War from 2006-2009 (I know...), Halo in 2010 (yes... I know...), Counter Strike from 2010-2011, and finally TF2 from 2011-present) I have dealt with all sorts of people. The community that really sticks out to me is the TF2 community. We're a relatively close bunch with all sorts of friendly and interesting people. In my eyes, the community is what makes this game so great. Honestly, what has Valve given us? If you can reply anything other than "next to nothing," I think you need to pay closer attention. That being said, what has the community done for it's own game? Sent teams from all over the world to play against each other at i49, developed MGE, DM servers, and various plugins. So, lets not forget what made this game great in the first place: you guys. The community. We don't need Valve as much as you may think.

stop talking and carry on playing tf2

I disagree with Killing.

First of all, why worry about a rift in the competitive community? There's already a rift between 6v6 and Highlander, and it isn't killing the game.

Second, how about a different fatalistic point of view: Six months from now, viewers are fed up with ESEA's limitations, especially server-wise, and the players themselves are frustrated with their relative irrelevance to TF2 and tired of seeing the same two teams win invite with the same strategies. ESEA's sponsorship of TF2 dies and competitive 6v6 dies with it.

Competitive TF2 needs to draw a larger portion of the community. Rather than saying Valve's ideas will never work, point out what needs to change and see what Valve does. For example, the main reason nobody runs a pyro to mid is that he is too slow. What if Valve gave pyro a mobility-enhancing weapon? He may still be a useless class, but Valve could fix that, too.

I think the best example of stagnant playstyles in our community is the Spy class. Nobody ever plays spy seriously in a 6v6 match. He has no 1v1 potential, no mobility, and his ability to get picks depends almost entirely on the stupidity of the other team. However, Valve partially fixed these problems ages ago with a godsend called the Enforcer, which allows a spy with good aim to actually do damage with his primary weapon. Rather than realizing that a useless class now had a means of contributing to the game, every league immediately banned the Enforcer because it was better than the default. That seems like close-mindedness to me.

I don't get why people think this whole discussion was about highlander?

Once a highlander lobby gets implemented it would be extremely easy to add a 6vs6 option with class limit 1. Just a little drop down menu or split screen on which mode you would want to play. As long as they are both quite similar, players would interchange to whatever suits them. Highlander can't kill 6vs6 TF2 because it's not a feasible LAN format.

You could even encourage our competitive style of play by making players pick the following classes for a 6vs6 lobby:

1 scout,
1 soldier,
1 medic,
1 demoman,
1 heavy,
1 utility (can change between the remaining classes).

Example:

http://arxandbeta.com/images/lobbychoice.jpg

If you think it will take 6 months to kill TF2 after we've been here for half a decade then you haven't been paying attention.

That's fair, the timeline was completely arbitrary. My point was that ESEA has its own flaws and it currently is the only viable league for competitive TF2 players who want to make money. I think diversification will only help the community.

I came to competitive 6s by my own means, randomly watched a video on youtube from extv, then randomly watched streams, then randomly fuck I am so into this. Nobody described to me what 6v6 was, I just inferred it from watching it.
I understood right away that 9v9 was a disorganized cluster fuck. I understood right away that 6v6 was so clean, so understandable and so fun. I understood right away that I had been playing the wrong classes, engi and pyro. And I felt no shame about myself nor had any problem to stop playing like a noob and start actually aiming using a 6s class.

I don't know where valve comes from to invalidate the 6s format and I don't see an actual gamer thinking that engi is a good class after watching a 6s game and seeing what all the other classes are capable of.

If I could reproduce the feeling that I got when I found out that scouts are not the first ones to get to the mid fight, but is rather the demo and even the soldiers, I'm not sure robin would still think that 6s is stale for the pubbers.

quick reminder that your entire belief as to what valve "wants" is actually just vague retellings from people who don't work at valve, and ideas for 6v6 from high-level players.

no wait shit, see those half-known implications? that probably means valves wants you assassinated, ok

For someone who hasn't been around long enough to know that I'm not actually european you have a fantastic tendency to come off as condescending literally every time a series of characters dribbles out of your skull.

I'd try not to, but it gets tiring to hear unrelenting cynicism from things that aren't even confirmed but vaguely implied.

You are not making an "unpopular opinion" by making the same laughable end-of-times freakout statements as everyone else

Valve thinks highlander would be easier to support because it's closer to pub play. Highlander is easier for pub players to identify with because : there's a lot of people, there's all the classes, there are all their loveable unlocks and its played out like a pub with some communication.

6s was created through years of experimentation which included allowing the unlock changing metas that Valve loves. Unfortunately some of these unlocks change the game to the point that it's either slow, does not require skill or are just down right stupid. Valve wants these unlocks in their competitive lobby, but 6s does not work with them. Therefore Valve turns to highlander. The only way for 6s to possibly get this lobby is to change the format, which means hit the restart button and do it all over again, which I for one do not want to do since we've already spent years doing it.

Valve will not support 6s because they do not understand why the meta is so stale and predictable. The reason that they don't understand is because they do not A) play it, and B) watch a lot of it.

Robin does not like 6s because his weapons are not in it and he does not get to see mini sentries everywhere or sydney sleeper snipers tanking head shots and wranglers tanking damage while auto aiming at other people.

So the conclusion is, Valve favours highlander because it has a better chance of attracting pub players into their new lobby system. The lobby system is probably a way to attract more players, and that means more profit. This looks like a business opportunity to them.

Yet Valve is ignoring years of work from the product that the 6s community has created. This 6s community was able to give a $20,0000 donation for two teams at I46, and draw 4000 views for matches there with NO SUPPORT FROM VALVE.

Valve is ignoring the successful part of the community for some reason and is supporting the highlander format.

Now I'm not saying highlander is bad, I'm just not understanding why Valve chooses not to support the 6s format which achievements (see I46, ESEA LANS, ETFL2 LANS) are much better then that of the highlander scene.

Valve promoting this highlander lobby might lead to more players playing competitive, yes. They'll be playing comp highlander which is highly unlikely to get a LAN (due to number of players required). These pub players who love their unlocks would not want to go into 6s without their unlocks after playing in this lobby system that allows them to keep their beloved jarate/caber etc.
They'll just keep playing the format the lobby introduces them too : Highlander.

Valve is ignoring 6s, supporting highlander, which will slowly lead to less 6s players and the format dying out in favor of the "easy simple solution" which involves getting pub players to play highlander which is basically the same thing except with communication.

It is true that 6s is completely different from pub play, but that does not mean 6s cannot be the GO TO competitive format.
I don't offer a solution to be honest, I just offer my opinion on the situation and how I am seeing things.

I mean, all Valve really needs to do to help comp tf2 grow is a god damn notification that a match is going on in ESEA or a link to comp leagues like ESEA, UGC, ETF2L, and other leagues.

Even a TF.TV link would help.

PLZ.

Valve is like an abusive father. It comes back after 5 years of no support and tries to be part of our life again, but only if we convert to Catholicism and break up with our "slut" of a significant other.

Am I the only one who doesn't know who these people writing walls of text are? Besides killing and a few others.

What? Who cares? They're voicing their opinion, I doubt everyone knows you, lol.

I got you, Crespi...

My dumb opinion is that the 6v6 community should resist the doom and gloom implications any of this might have (if any), happily assist in the great HL balance weapons experiment, and go about our merry way of carrying on with business as usual.

From a casters perspective, the 6v6 community has finally come such a long way, top to bottom, with intelligence towards the meta and DM execution that it would be foolish and a shame to shake things up on the basis of a theoretical eucatostrophic shift from Valve. Our game works. It doesn't just work, it works with a unique simplicity I can't find in any other game. Valve made a cool class based fps. This community made an intelligent and highly competitive system within that FPS.

-The Uber dynamic adds a continuous time keeping meta.
-The classes add a unique "best tool for the job" meta.
-The physics of the game add the necessary DM emphasis. Which, as we've seen players improve across the board, is actually quite strong.
-Our 6v6 player restriction has created a unique team-intensified format.
-Our rule restrictions has (for the most part) allowed for growth within our system.

The beauty is that all of these things, at any moment, compete for dominance within a match. Teams needs the perfect level of DM, class makeup, uber management, teamwork, off-class/unlock understanding to win rounds and ultimately that match. The unlock/rule restrictions are a part of what makes our game our game. Barring a slight off-class bias, the unlocks allowed have always been handled as they should...filtered slowly into the game, contingent on what they bring to our meta. There is no need to upturn that system (in 6v6). Why shift the balance and emphasize a discernibly non-competitive system of unlock-meta? This trips up the DM and teamwork aspects which are so vital to a competitive FPS.

6v6 used to be "pick a class you are good at, join a team with dudes, see which 6 guys on these classes can out DM these other 6 guys on some other classes. At that time, perhaps unlock-palooza might have added something that nudged that game toward a path of improvement.

Now there is no need. It has already changed.

We don't have 2 scouts, 1 medic, 1 demo, and 2 soldiers anymore.

The improving meta has always been driving to the finally realized point of 1 brute/heal player, 1 flank/ceanup, 1 Pocket, 1 Roamer, 1 damage doer/caller, 1 medic/uber-meta tracker. That is the makeup of a perfect team: the classes within the classes: the roles that must be filled.

With this makeup, your team can win rounds and matches. As we know the 2 scout/2soldier/1demo/1med system accounts for this makeup most of the time. That doesn't mean that there aren't 5 other tools in the box that can help at others. With regards to unlocks, they should all be looked at in the light of how they improve this meta of affecting these player roles. That is the hard approach, but it is entirely worth it for the next gunboats/kritzkrieg/boston-basher/ubersaw.

This unlock/Valve discussion has become an overreaction. The only way to expect valve help is to make them money. Unlocks are not the way.

So, TLDR: 6v6 is fine. Could use help from Valve? Who couldn't? But there is no need to fret over unlocks. Let HL work-out the balance. Assist with the effort and hope for better unlocks that can improve what our game is about. The better balanced HL lobby system will serve as an introduction to competitive TF2, and so long as 6's remains as the upper echelon of competitive TF2—and it will so long as the best players stick to playing the best format (and they will since 6v6 is the only format that allows for all the things I outlined that make tf2 a competitive success), there is nothing to worry about. Competitive minded players will naturally trickle up to us as we continue to grow and hone this unique sub-game we've created. But that's my opinion, and I am dumb, so...

This is... really silly to me. I'll try to keep this at a medium length, to strike that balance between "important enough to read" and "too long to not vote on halfway through."

Most people here aren't looking at the right problem, and I've been pretty vocal about this in the past. The common consensus seems to be that "Vale doesn't like 6v6, and wants us to change." If you really believe this, you need to open your eyes a bit. The truth goes something like this:

"The average TF2 player doesn't like 6v6, and doesn't want to change."

All of this talk about creating a lobby system and getting Valve to support our game mode is, again as I've mentioned before, a hugely misplaced effort. It would be amazing if Valve gave us what we've wanted, and don't misread my intentions as "stop wanted Valve to help", it's more complicated than that.

As others in the thread have gone over, yeah, Valve isn't interested in helping 6v6 grow. This isn't the same as not wanting competitive TF2 to grow; they've supported highlander a fair amount, and the rumblings of a matchmaking system are just further proof that the company cares at least a little bit about the game.

Anyway, my point is this: the reason 6v6 hasn't grown into something massive isn't because we don't have enough outside influence, it's because people don't like 6v6 TF2. That's something we can't ever change. Now, that being said, there are probably a ton of people out there who would enjoy 6v6 and have never actually heard of or seen it, and although this number could potentially double our league size (triple? quadruple? who knows?), that number is still not a big enough fraction to be worth Valve pouring time and money into.

So, the bottom line and question we should really be asking is "How do we make people who would enjoy 6v6 TF2 aware of its existence?" And the easiest answer to that is something a lot of people have mentioned already, that conflicts pretty heavily with killing's wall

which is to support anything that helps the competitive community as a whole.

While it's true there's a big division between 6v6 and highlander, I think that's a gap we can close if we stop thinking of them as two different games (even though they are - the mentality behind them is the same). Both game modes aim to create a more competitive setting, and both are drastically different from the average TF2 game. It's almost guaranteed that if one grows, the other grows with it, and the easiest mode to grow is obviously highlander. There's no reason for us to think that supporting more 9v9 will kill our community, and there's also no reason to assume that we'll only ever get help from people if we change the way we play.