These weps are op and should be nerfed, please don't defend them

I think valve is smart enough to realize seeing sandvich bans every match doesnt necessarily mean the weapon is too good.

Annoying to play against? Certainly. Overpowered? I doubt it.

Degreaser centralizes the pyro metagame too far.
Gunslinger is a pistol ambot which takes 3 seconds to build
Sandvich is aportable half healthpack for any teammate

I'm not explicitly defending them. Just pointing out that we'd essentially be opening the door for people who, in general, probably have zero comp experience to have a say in what weapons need balancing. While comp players would love to see items like enforcer get a strong nerf, would we be just as accepting of a degreaser nerf? This is a weapon that is basically necessary to bring pyro up to a level where it can compete with other classes. And even then pyro gets outshined by almost every other class at the higher levels of HL.

Balance for dota 2 is determined by pick/ban rates in high level games. I dont see why the same wouldnt be true for competitive tf2.

You must not have been to SPUF. If they balanced the game the results would be horrifying and arbitrary.

They want to remove the degreaser despite the fact that it's the best thing that ever happened to Pyro.

This was what I was thinking,.. not sure of the exact mechanic,.. but I love the little pre-game game of Dota picks.

Only issue I can see if the vast amount of weapons in TF2 making it a touch longer/more difficult.

Then I figured you could start from a place of allow everything, then do alternate team/player item bans or something?? Dunno,.. but I think this would work well and for casting would make for some good pre-game chat. In game it may require some dynamic strategy stuff too if your original YER set gets the hat removed so you have to rethink the spy work or something.

Ban gunboats every game, make soldiers cry \:D/

edit: TF2 isn't a moba, this pick/ban system will make Highlander pretty stupid since some weapons for some classes change the way it is played in such a high way for example Gunboats, Gunslinger, Wrangler, Kritz, Spy watches, all Pyro unlocks that are used etc. In Dota where you ban/pick heroes, the heroes don't have different skills depending on what you pick for them so I really don't see this system making 9v9 an appealing gamemode.

Edit 2: Changing the fundamentals of highlander gameplay, say for example Wrangler and Degreaser, just by how some pubbers/iron players/div6 or whatever your choice of elitism is wouldn't really make 9v9 develop as a gamemode. Teams are barely figuring out the metagame when it isn't changing (at least in EU), so changing the game every single time you play it would just make it even more chaotic and random especially in lower levels, since they barely have idea how to play with the current rules.

If you would go by the excuse of "In Dota they have all these different hero combos and picks and bans etc...", you have to think about the fact that in Dota, you have HUGE prize pools to fight for, you want to learn the meta because there is a lot of money involved. In TF2, especially in highlander, you have pretty much no prize pool apart from virtual items in NA, and you have like 500€ divided by 9 if you win one of the two seasons per year in EU. Also the pub play is much closer to what competitive is like, unlike in TF2 where pub is just a huge mess of broken unlocks and no class limits.

Sure the ingame lobby system is insanely cool and I hope it will bring players to the scene, but if they go and change the metagame by what is banned and picked there, then I really don't know if I personally will keep playing this game. Why fix something that isn't really all that broken?

also 6v6 support thanks

To protect important weapons you can just do a couple rounds of picks before the bans. The whole point of a pick/ban system is to not need a static whitelist, so I'm not sure why people keep suggesting that when Valve has made it clear they won't use one.

Also I'm against using captains, stupid picks can fuck up the match before it even starts. It should just be a team vote, with checks when the 9th person votes so that he can't force a tie (can't propose a new weapon if there's a tie, or if the votes on three weps are 3 3 2 he can't vote for the one with 2).

Also also Valve wants this to be something leagues will use, so pubs play these lobbies then join a league and it's the same thing. So keep in mind this should be useable at higher levels too.

Or maybe make it so that you can use all unlocks in tournament mode?

I'm not really liking that the system the majority is suggesting involves special treatment for certain weapons(stock+generally liked unlocks), but allowing all weapons to be banned could be pretty horrible. Sticky Launcher would be a standard ban then, making the demoman nearly useless. That's because all the alternatives to the Sticky Launcher are awful, but maybe Valve would realize this and buff/rework the others to be somewhat useful. That could take a lot of time though, so playing demo in this matchmaking system would be terrible for a long period of time.

Also copy-pasting here what I said earlier in the other thread:

I don't know if that's a good idea, but I'm just throwing that out there. Maybe allow the medic switch his medigun though.

When I first heard about this, I imagined a system whereby people would use a menu in TF2 to indicate their item preferences in advance. Perhaps by allowing you to select a certain number of weapons from a list of non-core unlocks (to avoid banning important items), which you may wish to ban.

Then when a lobby is created, the preferences of each player are automatically analysed and any weapons with more than x amount of votes are banned. That way there is no need for a long vote process to take place every game.

What do you think are the disadvantages of this?

For the sake of balance in the competitive setting but also providing access to new players, here are my thoughts:

Always Unlocks:
I think these are necessary regardless of the pick/ban format.

- Kritzkrieg (completely changes the flow of the game- provides teams with an alternative strategy to use as needed)
- Degreaser (the degreaser allows the pyro to compete with other classes in being an effective class that uses m2 and also combine it with other weapons. Otherwise, all we'll get is this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gTOQxmrCPA)
- Stock weapons

I would also argue for bans > picks and an unlocked loadout simply because by banning certain items, you still have the option to use other combinations of loadouts. Also by having unlocked loadouts, team's can have a greater variety in strat. as per need. (Oh I've got forward spawn as heavy, let me run by brass beast).

I think bans should be common for both teams, and as a guide to the newer players, the UGC/ETF2L whitelists could be provided as templates. Furthermore, a team vote should decide the bans (with a timer, if you don't vote in time, your vote doesn't count. Ties are put up for a revote).

Also, one point of curiosity is, will this matchmaking system run a elo ranking system as well? Regardless of this choice, I would definitely join these matches to help out newer folk. However, by adding in an elo system, higher level "teams" would be able to exhibit their skill (maybe add in watch stv option so newer guys can watch high level matches?) This would also give players with high skill credibility to the lower players- OH his elo is XXXX he must be good.

Has anyone set up any groups yet? We really need way less talky and action soon if saturday is the deadline.

Uhh, have you even played HL ever? Or watched it being played?

Claiming that pyro is a support class on the level of medic is absolutely absurd and demonstrates an incredibly limited knowledge of the format at best. Please remember that this thread is HIGHLANDER pick/ban system.

My ban list for the new lobby system (Yes I realize this isn't how it works, I just want to voice my opinion on this.):

Soda Popper
Baby Face Blaster
Sandman
Beggar's Bazooka
Loch'n'Load
Splendid Screen
Axetinguisher (not worth trying to spell...)
Natascha
Holiday Punch
Pomson
Wrangler
Vita-saw
Bazaar Bargain
enforcer
Spycicle
The Sniper and Spy Polycount hats

I feel like these are all self-explanatory but if anyone has any questions why I hate a particular weapon feel free to ask. Also, I hate the Gunslinger as much as everyone else but it plays such a role in offensive engineer it would be better to nerf it than ban it.

I think a way to implement a simple ban protocol would be to write a sourcemod plugin that iterates through each item in the game and creates a vote that bans the top 5 voted items on each side. Each team would have 60 seconds to make their votes.

what if players have an item list they can modify by pushing the items they want banned to the top

the lobby takes an average of the lists from the players joined and bans weapons accordingly

- implements voting; helping to avoid banning popular items (trolls banning kritzkrieg as their 'pick')
- flexible; for new unlocks and when items get changed
- discrete and much faster; a player predefined list is ready to crunch as soon as he joins, for the most part, everything is in the background

a 'currently banned items' list could update inside the lobby as players join which would allow waiting players to adjust their lists if something is(n't) banned that should(n't) be

EDIT: UPON FURTHER REALIZATION - looks like they've set their hearts on a dota style picking/banning

The issue with a pick/ban system is in DotA ban/picks work because they are essentially a (at the highest level) very deep metagame with a lot of strategy behind it to try and net your team an advantage over the other team, after all if you pick a hero in DotA the other team can't use it, so you deny them that hero. I mean, it's such an intricate thing that there are people famous in the competitive community solely for their ban/pick skill.

A pick/ban system in TF2 wouldn't serve the same purpose and would just be kind of dumb. Items in TF2 simply do not have the same effect as a hero in DotA does, and a pick/ban system would be picking/banning which things can be used by both teams, not each team picking what they themselves have so most of the strategy goes flying out the window right there.

People are just going to ban the most OP stuff since they won't want the other team to use them.

Which is what we do already for the most part with neigh unanimous agreement barring a few quarrels.

To me, it really seems like Valve should just look at the UGC banlist (which is used in ETF2L Highlander as well) and just go from there.

Start with UGC banlist.

Every player picks up to one item not on the banlist to ban.

Then, from the list of items banned by every player + the UGC banlist, every player gets one "lock" and one "save." They can lock up to one item to prevent it from being saved and they can save up to one item to take it off the banlist if they want to.

Each round of picking would take up to 2 minutes on average probably, and there are going to be a lot of people who just skip to get into the game faster, so I'd estimate this would take around 5 minutes. If we let people start picking bans while they're waiting for players (don't show the results until all 18 are present and have picked though), then that can speed it up even more.

After the game, a window pops up asking if the player thought they made good choices with their picks and if they thought an item that was allowed had a big impact on the game.

Everyone needs to keep in mind that Valve isn't going to look at the bans and assume the most banned weapons are overpowered. They're going to assume that those are the weapons that people want to see the least. It signifies a need for reworking, not for nerfing. If they ban sandvich everytime, valve sees that a large portion of the community doesn't like the heavy to carry a hp kit. That doesn't necessarily mean it's too strong, it's just not fun to play around.

To those saying "just look at the UGC banlist":
Valve doesn't believe right now that we properly represent the feelings of the whole TF2 playerbase. This system gets the silent majority into a position to voice their mind. I think it is very likely that most players will have similar opinions to us about weapons, but valve won't be convinced until they see the ban stats, so we need to create a system that allows pubbers to reach our conclusions about weapon bans as quickly as possible without actual telling the pubbers to believe that because then Valve will think we're brainwashing everyone.

Quite frankly, this pick/ban feature seems to be pretty similar to Ranked League of Legends games. I'm sure we will get some hate from the LoL community but eh, not too big of a deal.

If this was 6s I'd get that, but this is Highlander which is very very big, for the most part has no one arguing over weapon bans (except Wrangler), and has very few weapon bans in the first place.

tbh I bet Highlander is a pretty substantial part of the community already, so i don't think it's that far of a stretch to look at the banlist.

dota did it first so who cares what they think

Pyro is a specialist class, so this is no surpsise.

I don't see the problem with what you actually said, but I do believe that it's unbalanced for certain properties all going together.

Medic is a portable dispenser that turns people into pure powerful killing machines.

You don't have to convince me. I agree with you, but only like 1-2000 players are registered in UGC, and there are hundreds of thousands of TF2 players. You can see why valve might be skeptical to believe us blindly without this system supporting us.

I really like the idea of having preset ban lists that you update on your own time, and then the match making system just tallies up the teams lists to create the ban list for the lobby. I think such a system would speed up the large number of lobbies of just random people set together as a team. However, I do think such a system would hinder pre-built teams with team strategies. If I'm playing with 8 friends who I know and perhaps have practiced with, could there be a separate lobby ladder option for prebuilt teams, with perhaps an elo ranking system and then a team decided ban list?

When I saw this, I pictured:
- Each player picks 2-4 items, with stocks and staples (ETF2L whitelist?) off-limits
- Picks from all 18 players are pooled together, and any weapons appearing a certain number of times are banned for the match
The preset picks which have been mentioned are a great idea.
I would also want to see set hats banned (ever lobbied against a good Saharan Spy?)

Wtf are you even talking about. Nothing. Changes. For you.

I don't think posting ban / whitelist suggestions on specific items in this thread is useful. The purpose is to come up with a system that Valve can use to gather data for themselves. If Valve wanted the community to come up with a whitelist / blacklist for them that is a different topic.

Here are some of my thoughts.

First issue is logistics. There are over 100 weapons in the game, and a handful of set bonuses as well. We need a system that can cover all of the items while also not spending 5 minutes or more trying to set up the item list for a 15 minute match.

Second issues is troll / outlier protection. I think a majority voting system is better than any system where any one player has ban or veto power over any one item.

With these concerns in mind, here's my idea.

Each player should have his/her pick/ban list, which he/she decides offline. This makes sense because most users aren't going to change their mind for every new match, so there's no need to have the user repeat his/her choices for every single match. This saves time as well and lets matches get started faster. TF2 would need a separate menu / interface with the list of items that one can vote on, and you would go through the entire thing and select pick or ban for each. This list gets saved in your own TF2 account profile. A reasonable default setting can be debated on to be provided to people who are too lazy to go through this step and don't really want to vote.

Once a player joins a match lobby, his pick/ban list is automatically added to the pool. Once the match is ready to start, the server simply adds up everyone's pick/ban list and treats everyone as having 1 vote per item. Any item that has more bans than picks is banned, and the remainder are allowed. The final aggregated pick/ban list is displayed to every player before the match begins. This can be done very quickly to get the match going as quickly as possible without a protracted voting or debating period before every match.

EDIT: Unfortunately this system is probably much too ambitious to be easily implemented and tested in a week of IRC pugging. However people seem to like the idea in theory so hopefully Valve will at least see it and consider it.

#59 Before anyone points out the problem "stalemate" problem with just aggregating ratings like that, all you have to do is prefer ban/pick for stalemated items. The matchmaking system could throw in an extra ban for each item based on whether it's been banned or picked more often, recently.

One problem with the "have a list of items you don't/want" is that people may be likely to just leave their lists the same; even if patches fix an item they couldn't bother to unban it sometimes. Whether they put down in the list they want an item banned or not is itself a bias for later voting.