Suppose the TF2 team were active on the development of TF2.
What new features would you have the ingame competitive matchmaker to have?
What are the pros and cons in current pug services (e.g. TF2Center, Pugchamp, Pug-specific discords etc.) would you like added and removed respectively, to the matchmaker, and why?
Suppose the TF2 team were active on the development of TF2.
What new features would you have the ingame competitive matchmaker to have?
What are the pros and cons in current pug services (e.g. TF2Center, Pugchamp, Pug-specific discords etc.) would you like added and removed respectively, to the matchmaker, and why?
TL;DR: Make Valve Competitive more accessible to Casual Players, but also interesting enough for the occasional community comp player.
1) Remove Fixed Settings
2) Class Limit 2
3) 5CP, KOTH, Payload w/ frequent map rotations
4) Medics get more MMR on win and less on loss
With any one or all of these, I think we can move Valve comp into a 'midway zone' between casual and third-party competitive. VC should never seek to replace community competitive, its way too late for that but by providing a place where casual players can get a taste for organized play as well as competitive players having a more relaxed way to play TF2 without the chaos of Pubs. It doesn't make community competitive easier to play but makes the road to get there FAR easier than it is now.
Removing Fixed Settings does risk giving people certain advantages but the benefits far outweigh that risk. It would make sense for them to do that in newer games but the game is too old and clunky for Fixed Settings to be a thing. Class Limit 2 is a happy medium between the more restrictive community competitive and the unregulated casual. Frequent map rotations of a core set of competitive maps from 5CP, to KOTH & Payload means different classes and loadouts become more effective, meaning room to experiment and develop gamesense faster than just grinding one class for hundreds of hours. Medic is a problematic class as it is necessary to win games but noone wants to play them so providing some sort of incentive such as easier climbing of the ladder or a 'Medic Bonus' that gives a small increase in MMR victories for subsequent matches may help people play Medic more often in games.
This is just my thoughts, but using Valve competitive as a natural stepping stone to more professional play then we could see more engagement in both competitors and viewership on streams. And who knows, perhaps by playing Valve comp even we may find new strategies or playstyles.
[b]TL;DR: Make Valve Competitive more accessible to Casual Players, but also interesting enough for the occasional community comp player.[/b]
1) Remove Fixed Settings
2) Class Limit 2
3) 5CP, KOTH, Payload w/ frequent map rotations
4) Medics get more MMR on win and less on loss
With any one or all of these, I think we can move Valve comp into a 'midway zone' between casual and third-party competitive. VC should never seek to replace community competitive, its way too late for that but by providing a place where casual players can get a taste for organized play as well as competitive players having a more relaxed way to play TF2 without the chaos of Pubs. It doesn't make community competitive easier to play but makes the road to get there FAR easier than it is now.
Removing Fixed Settings does risk giving people certain advantages but the benefits far outweigh that risk. It would make sense for them to do that in newer games but the game is too old and clunky for Fixed Settings to be a thing. Class Limit 2 is a happy medium between the more restrictive community competitive and the unregulated casual. Frequent map rotations of a core set of competitive maps from 5CP, to KOTH & Payload means different classes and loadouts become more effective, meaning room to experiment and develop gamesense faster than just grinding one class for hundreds of hours. Medic is a problematic class as it is necessary to win games but noone wants to play them so providing some sort of incentive such as easier climbing of the ladder or a 'Medic Bonus' that gives a small increase in MMR victories for subsequent matches may help people play Medic more often in games.
This is just my thoughts, but using Valve competitive as a natural stepping stone to more professional play then we could see more engagement in both competitors and viewership on streams. And who knows, perhaps by playing Valve comp even we may find new strategies or playstyles.
- put the rank/medal on the main menu alongside the casual level badge to remind people it exists. And to annoy people enough to the point they play it to get a cool medal
- give "real" incentives to play/rank up (aka you give them some basic hats and skins at x rank/x wins/x wins w class)
- don't force graphic settings. Big part of our playerbase are children using the family laptop to play free games. MM isn't accessible for some okay PCs, unplayable for them. I remember playing MM at 9 fps on my laptop when it had just been released
- option of solo+duoqueue OR 6 stack. similar to LoL (afaik). seperated games.
- map pool should be good, but appeal to casual players. KotH is a good middleground, but stopwatch pl should be good enough as well. ofc 5cp should still be used, but shouldn't dominate the pool
Rant about class identity and rebalancing
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There is only 1 support class and you'll probably lose without one. You'll often be matched with people who don't (want to) play medic. There's no real way to fix this unless you rebuild class balance and identity from the ground up to allow for role queueing. aka you actually take the modern shooter (tank/)damage/healer approach.
You'd need at least one (probably 2) more viable supports. In case of TF2 there's no way new classes will be made. This would mean scrapping the kits of existing classes and rebuilding them. engineer, pyro, medic probably
Ironically you'd be making classes that would end up somewhat similarly to OW's support line-up.
basic medic, a moira-like pyro replacement and a mobile dispenser healing aura like lucio
Then you add a Damage and a Healer check box. Matchmaker now more easily puts either 1 or 2 support players on each team that actually want to play a healer
[list]
[*] put the rank/medal on the main menu alongside the casual level badge to remind people it exists. And to annoy people enough to the point they play it to get a cool medal
[*] give "real" incentives to play/rank up (aka you give them some basic hats and skins at x rank/x wins/x wins w class)
[*] don't force graphic settings. Big part of our playerbase are children using the family laptop to play free games. MM isn't accessible for some okay PCs, unplayable for them. I remember playing MM at 9 fps on my laptop when it had just been released
[*] option of solo+duoqueue OR 6 stack. similar to LoL (afaik). seperated games.
[*] map pool should be good, but appeal to casual players. KotH is a good middleground, but stopwatch pl should be good enough as well. ofc 5cp should still be used, but shouldn't dominate the pool
[/list]
Rant about class identity and rebalancing
[spoiler]There is only 1 support class and you'll probably lose without one. You'll often be matched with people who don't (want to) play medic. There's no real way to fix this unless you rebuild class balance and identity from the ground up to allow for role queueing. aka you actually take the modern shooter (tank/)damage/healer approach.
You'd need at least one (probably 2) more viable supports. In case of TF2 there's no way new classes will be made. This would mean scrapping the kits of existing classes and rebuilding them. engineer, pyro, medic probably
Ironically you'd be making classes that would end up somewhat similarly to OW's support line-up.
basic medic, a moira-like pyro replacement and a mobile dispenser healing aura like lucio
Then you add a Damage and a Healer check box. Matchmaker now more easily puts either 1 or 2 support players on each team that actually want to play a healer[/spoiler]
DrHappinessClass Limit 2 is a happy medium between the more restrictive community competitive and the unregulated casual.
I would take this further and insist class limit 1. This way, your team can't have 2 spies and the enemy team can't run 2 heavies-2 medics, a near undefeatable combination for gibus players.
MM is never going to be like 6s and it shouldn't be, as you alluded to. it would never gain an audience. The very restrictive class limits mean your newb teammates get to play offclasses without your team getting completely screwed.
[quote=DrHappiness]
Class Limit 2 is a happy medium between the more restrictive community competitive and the unregulated casual. [/quote]
I would take this further and insist class limit 1. This way, your team can't have 2 spies and the enemy team can't run 2 heavies-2 medics, a near undefeatable combination for gibus players.
MM is never going to be like 6s and it shouldn't be, as you alluded to. it would never gain an audience. The very restrictive class limits mean your newb teammates get to play offclasses without your team getting completely screwed.
What if TF2 ran better? Would settings restrictions be ok then?
What if TF2 ran better? Would settings restrictions be ok then?
Yeah the tf2 classes not really having well defined roles is part of what kills the more open MM concept as a gamemode. The medic being the only support thing is a particularly bad example but its also the only class that really enables you to deal with turtle defenses in most gamemodes, so you can argue theres kind of a limited amount of offensive or push classes too.
With things as they stand I don't think class limit 2 would be too bad (might cause problems in some weird cases you're running double heavy/engie or something, probably not that bad) but you pretty much require a limit of 1 on med because without that you actually end up limiting team composition more.
mastercomsWhat if TF2 ran better? Would settings restrictions be ok then?
This would probably be fine for a lot of the smaller parts of graphical configs. I'd still advocate for customizability of user settings that have little advantage but are there for user preference (e.g. why is viewmodel_fov locked down and why are the commands for moving viewmodels considered a cheat?). I also think that any command toggleable through the options menu and not just the console should be unlocked, pretty sure mat_monitorgamma was locked for a long time when MM came out and there's probably a few others that still are.
Yeah the tf2 classes not really having well defined roles is part of what kills the more open MM concept as a gamemode. The medic being the only support thing is a particularly bad example but its also the only class that really enables you to deal with turtle defenses in most gamemodes, so you can argue theres kind of a limited amount of offensive or push classes too.
With things as they stand I don't think class limit 2 would be too bad (might cause problems in some weird cases you're running double heavy/engie or something, probably not that bad) but you pretty much require a limit of 1 on med because without that you actually end up limiting team composition more.
[quote=mastercoms]What if TF2 ran better? Would settings restrictions be ok then?[/quote]
This would probably be fine for a lot of the smaller parts of graphical configs. I'd still advocate for customizability of user settings that have little advantage but are there for user preference (e.g. why is viewmodel_fov locked down and why are the commands for moving viewmodels considered a cheat?). I also think that any command toggleable through the options menu and not just the console should be unlocked, pretty sure mat_monitorgamma was locked for a long time when MM came out and there's probably a few others that still are.
I'd also be interested to see unranked 6v6 added to the game with the exact same ruleset as ranked to give new players a feel for what works and what doesn't.
As for the question over what do pugsites have that MM doesn't, the main advantage of pugchamp, tf2center and even just 12 people in a mumble together is that they're all on the same page and know what's expected of them, no one agrees to a 6s mix and then complains they can't perma pyro etc. while people don't always get to play the class they want to they understand we need a med, demo, 2 sollys, 2 scouts. We've even seen third party pug sites die from not being able to force this (although you can still queue up to faceit, it's nearly a year since the last match :( ).
IMO for ingame comp to have been successful it needed the backing of comp players to play it, stream it, make content around it to introduce new players to what high level player should look like, but valve killed that dream before it could start with poor decisions around mappool and graphical settings. It's a shame though because I see even casual players frustrated that they have to play against competitive players, a common criticism of this game's competitive potential I hear is 'we don't wanna try-hard every game we just wanna run about and have fun', however there's a decent amount of us that would wanna play at least semi-seriously that would appreciate 6v6 pub games that they can try harder than your average friendly heavy but without the pressure of it being a scrim, pug or lobby etc. that's what ingame MM should be, at least in my opinion.
I'd also be interested to see unranked 6v6 added to the game with the exact same ruleset as ranked to give new players a feel for what works and what doesn't.
As for the question over what do pugsites have that MM doesn't, the main advantage of pugchamp, tf2center and even just 12 people in a mumble together is that they're all on the same page and know what's expected of them, no one agrees to a 6s mix and then complains they can't perma pyro etc. while people don't always get to play the class they want to they understand we need a med, demo, 2 sollys, 2 scouts. We've even seen third party pug sites die from not being able to force this ([url=https://www.faceit.com/en/matchmaking/4e56e193-3521-4770-b4cd-8418e851082f/TF2%206v6/matches?state=past]although you can still queue up to faceit, it's nearly a year since the last match :([/url] ).
IMO for ingame comp to have been successful it needed the backing of comp players to play it, stream it, make content around it to introduce new players to what high level player should look like, but valve killed that dream before it could start with poor decisions around mappool and graphical settings. It's a shame though because I see even casual players frustrated that they have to play against competitive players, a common criticism of this game's competitive potential I hear is 'we don't wanna try-hard every game we just wanna run about and have fun', however there's a decent amount of us that would wanna play at least semi-seriously that would appreciate 6v6 pub games that they can try harder than your average friendly heavy but without the pressure of it being a scrim, pug or lobby etc. that's what ingame MM should be, at least in my opinion.
i'm gonna get destroyed for holding this opinion, but frankly 5cp is fucking TRASH on valve comp and definitely needs to be limited to 2-3 strong maps rather than being the majority
It's just obvious though. You can't play maps that have been built around very good players and their ability to rocket jump properly, rollout properly, push with ubers properly etc, with players who can't do any of this stuff. if you put yourself in the shoes of your average pubber, who cannot rocket jump, why are you going to queue up to play maps where rocket jumping is literally a requirement to play. Even your average valve pub stomper can barely strafe. How playable is process as a soldier if you can't jump through choke? How about if you play offclasses and can't get to half the mid on snakewater? How fun is gullywash when I can literally rollout as demoman and you don't even get to play the mid?
Also, outside of competitive, 5cp is not a popular map type and not a huge amount of pubbers queue for it, usually outside of halloween event stuff, it's the least popular map type out of the main ones, and it's not that much more popular than PLR. Playing VC 5cp is still a completely different world to the majority of players. It's not even close to being marketable.
Valves problem was that they couldn't decide if they were trying to cater to pubbers or comp players, and they've ended up with a service that doesn't serve anyone; you have a competitive pool that contains Swiftwater, Turbine, and Viaduct, and I can only assume these maps have been added because of their history in competitive, but none of these maps work at all on VC. Swiftwater is way too big, Turbine just sucks and Viaduct isn't fun without co-ordination and allows for no flank at all because it's not the pro version. It's borderline unplayable. They have to swap all of the "comp" maps-that-aren't-even-actual-comp-maps out for human player maps that see regular play on pubs, but aren't terrible.
So for example highpass gets played way more than viaduct, so give that one a go and see if it's ok. It can't get much worse than viaduct, so why not at least make an effort? Said effort draws in more players just by default.
I don't think anything from other pug services is required. It just has to be run like matchmaking is for other games, where there is an actual reward for being good, and the devs listen and make changes based off what public players want. Also it can't just randomly change settings. A setting can't be an unfair advantage on competitive only, and perfectly fine on a pub, unless they mean to imply that any unfair advantage on a pub is not a problem.
i'm gonna get destroyed for holding this opinion, but frankly 5cp is fucking TRASH on valve comp and definitely needs to be limited to 2-3 strong maps rather than being the majority
It's just obvious though. You can't play maps that have been built around very good players and their ability to rocket jump properly, rollout properly, push with ubers properly etc, with players who can't do any of this stuff. if you put yourself in the shoes of your average pubber, who cannot rocket jump, why are you going to queue up to play maps where rocket jumping is literally a requirement to play. Even your average valve pub stomper can barely strafe. How playable is process as a soldier if you can't jump through choke? How about if you play offclasses and can't get to half the mid on snakewater? How fun is gullywash when I can literally rollout as demoman and you don't even get to play the mid?
Also, outside of competitive, 5cp is not a popular map type and not a huge amount of pubbers queue for it, usually outside of halloween event stuff, it's the least popular map type out of the main ones, and it's not that much more popular than PLR. Playing VC 5cp is still a completely different world to the majority of players. It's not even close to being marketable.
Valves problem was that they couldn't decide if they were trying to cater to pubbers or comp players, and they've ended up with a service that doesn't serve anyone; you have a competitive pool that contains Swiftwater, Turbine, and Viaduct, and I can only assume these maps have been added because of their history in competitive, but none of these maps work at all on VC. Swiftwater is way too big, Turbine just sucks and Viaduct isn't fun without co-ordination and allows for no flank at all because it's not the pro version. It's borderline unplayable. They have to swap all of the "comp" maps-that-aren't-even-actual-comp-maps out for human player maps that see regular play on pubs, but aren't terrible.
So for example highpass gets played way more than viaduct, so give that one a go and see if it's ok. It can't get much worse than viaduct, so why not at least make an effort? Said effort draws in more players just by default.
I don't think anything from other pug services is required. It just has to be run like matchmaking is for other games, where there is an actual reward for being good, and the devs listen and make changes based off what public players want. Also it can't just randomly change settings. A setting can't be an unfair advantage on competitive only, and perfectly fine on a pub, unless they mean to imply that any unfair advantage on a pub is not a problem.
You guys are going to hate the idea but the easiest and most effective way to do it would have been for valve to buy off tf2center and integrate it into the game.
You guys are going to hate the idea but the easiest and most effective way to do it would have been for valve to buy off tf2center and integrate it into the game.
4hpYou guys are going to hate the idea but the easiest and most effective way to do it would have been for valve to buy off tf2center and integrate it into the game.
As long as the admin team is not retained and possibly put in some sort of prison in a third world country.
[quote=4hp]You guys are going to hate the idea but the easiest and most effective way to do it would have been for valve to buy off tf2center and integrate it into the game.[/quote]
As long as the admin team is not retained and possibly put in some sort of prison in a third world country.
Before fixing comp matchmaker it would be nice to have a working anti cheat, work out some bugs (sticky det, iron bomber hitbox, projectiles thru teammates) and perhaps to improve the regular pub experience.
I miss the days before the casual matchmaker where I could play against my friends and nowadays map votes make several maps played a ton and some others never
The spawn doors staying closed at start of rounds and explosives not working in spawn need to go
Then, for comp matchmaking, enforce players staying for the whole match in some way, or having a surrender option. Perhaps a tour of duty like incentive to play the gamemode could be good.
Before fixing comp matchmaker it would be nice to have a working anti cheat, work out some bugs (sticky det, iron bomber hitbox, projectiles thru teammates) and perhaps to improve the regular pub experience.
I miss the days before the casual matchmaker where I could play against my friends and nowadays map votes make several maps played a ton and some others never
The spawn doors staying closed at start of rounds and explosives not working in spawn need to go
Then, for comp matchmaking, enforce players staying for the whole match in some way, or having a surrender option. Perhaps a tour of duty like incentive to play the gamemode could be good.
Most unlocks need to be reformed or removed imo. Why would anyone ever use the family business???? Is arbitrary stat changes really needed?
Most unlocks need to be reformed or removed imo. Why would anyone ever use the family business???? Is arbitrary stat changes really needed?
what if they just made it pugs without being able to offclass? ik it would cause a lot of stalements but it would make new players learn the format
what if they just made it pugs without being able to offclass? ik it would cause a lot of stalements but it would make new players learn the format
Remove fixed settings, class limit 2, fix the map pool, map banning phase.
Remove fixed settings, class limit 2, fix the map pool, map banning phase.