420! oh

Post does not exist.

on the contrary, i think this thread has evolved quite well. unless i completely misread what this thread was about. on the surface i see this thread as means to inform the competitive community on what we can do to further highlander as the dominant format. an injection of growth into any department of game will help, no doubt. we will definitely see some of those highlander players transition over to 6s. throughout the thread, however, sal has clued us in to why Robin doesn't find 6s as a competitive format to be exciting and finds it to be more as a stagnant niche. clearly he thinks it's in regards to how we refuse to innovate. we refuse to try new weapons and we won't play 55% of the classes they put into the game. the reason why TF2 has been such a successful pub game is because the classes are so unique. as bloodsire so aptly put earlier, people will align with certain classes. for instance, stabby (famed spy and handsome gentleman) has what i believe to be over 5,000 hours on spy. personally i'd never touch the class. i don't like backstabbery, i like in your facery. if i were watching a highlander cast i'd never spectate from a spy pov because i find it somewhat boring. i would choose to spectate from scout or demo pov because those classes interest me the most. but that's just me, one among hundreds of thousands.

this has gotten somewhat convoluted so allow me to summarize. i'm trying to take what information valve has given me in regards to my favored format and turn it into a growth opportunity. i am spitballing ideas off of the community. i am trying to find a way to make 6s, hl and this game as a whole to grow. what are you doing?

Ok here goes:

Hey. Just wanted to introduce myself. Lurk around here but don't really post. I play pubs only, and follow comp TF2 sometimes, namely 6's. Got exicited reading this thread because Valve is actually trying to do something for this community - even if it isn't 6's, it's a great place to start. A person like me would definitely be interested in this.

I read the OP and can summarize into these bits:
1. Valve is willing to implement an in-game lobby system
2. They want 9 player teams, each class plays
3. They want players to use unlocks/sidegrades
4. They want a weapon pick/ban system

These things are a must. Without them the system won't run. So considering these limits, I thought about this for a while and have a major suggestion of my own now.

I don't know if you're reading this Robin/TF2 Team, but I think you've already created a similar system that works. If you made a few changes to that system, an in-game lobby system could work really well.

I think MvM is the best example to demonstrate this. Imagine an in-game lobby like MvM - players can join a team, they work together towards the goal, they are rewarded for it, and can "unlock" better abilities and weapons for the next round. Imagine if this were a lobby instead focused on high level play:

1. You have 2 teams of 9 players joining.
2. Every first round starts with stock (fair and will encourage stock use)
3. Players obtain "group points" for their team based on actions like kills/ubers/headshots/sapping/building, etc.
4. After the first round ends, the team group points allow each individual player to "unlock" a weapon/(s) of their choosing.
5. The more powerful ("op?") a weapon is, the harder it is to unlock, so essentially a team is rewarded for playing well while others will have to adapt <non-stagnant gameplay
6. Since it's beta, at the end there could be a voting session on items and whether or not they should have stats changed.

This idea has most of your wishes in it, and opens other opportunities (you can cash in on lobby items like strange parts and awards, achievements, etc). You can add more maps/arenas. There's a lot of starting ground already without having to alter much. You could make changes as you collect data as well.

Some major concerns:

This team point system - make it so every class can shine. There are power classes in TF2 who take all the glory - an ubered heavy combined with a medic will always be more powerful than a lone player. Because of this, most comp games will center around them medic/heavy/soldier and everyone else just goes to the sidelines. This might be causing the stale strats. You don't want that. And you want people to use more items.

Then reward the classes equally - medic kills with assists should always be worth less than kills done without a medic. Sapping a well placed sentry takes effort, reward the spy, building uber without dying should be bonus points, airshots - each specialty should be judged fairly and rewarded fairly so ALL classes feel like they've done the same effort without just having a medic uber them and getting easy kills. Now add in sidegrades. This would introduce different styles of gameplay and encourage different form of gameplay.

Looking at things in the future, this revised point system for lobby could work, but people might abuse it as well. Teams would become too focused to get points. But perhaps you could make it so upgrades would contribute less points or something, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to create a good system of balance.

Nothing here is absolute. I just wanted to give a good starting ground on something that I could immediately visualize for this game. I enjoy playing TF2 a lot and this and maybe any other lobby in-gamesystem would be better. Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope it comes into the making soon!

Made this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-lWvsdynJc

thank you for bringing your suggestion to the table! your suggestion seems like a tf2 raid encounter more than a pick up and play experience. how long are you expecting these players to be playing for? one full attack defend with vanilla (already a majority of your player interest is lost there) then you can choose what unlocks you want through earned poins? so now you're forcing players to play for points so they can play with items they already have and want to use? to my understanding, the major driving force behind the rollout of an in-game lobby system would be to tweak under/overpowered items. so they would more than likely be looking to implement whatever system gets them the most amount of this data as quickly as possible. a pick/ban system in the lobby, similar to dota gives them the exact data they want/need. i'm fairly confident this is not up for question.

i think you really misunderstood what i said

You should probably clarify exactly what, before people take what you say even further incorrectly.

What it sounds like is that Valve is interested in trying to offer better pubs, rather than a real competitive environment. And I'd like to see that, actually. I've been interested in comp mainly because pubs are so bad. But pubs are a lot more convenient for me.

But there are a lot of competitive games in which "sick new strategies" aren't introduced by way of drastic rule changes every few months, but which remain interesting. Basketball and Chess come to mind. I think Valve has made TF2 a lot less interesting in any format by introducing so many unlocks. Strategy evolves subtly, and developing a strategy requires having some idea of what to expect- after a certain point more options mean less interesting play.

Thanks. I didn't mean for it to come across as an MvM raid but the first round, yes stock would be fair. I understand playing for points could be a problem so why not just simply award more points to doing the objective? If people are that focused on points, they'll go after the bigger goal, but that doesn't mean players who are pulling their weight don't get to contribute as well.

Also no one would have *unlock/sidegrade weapons in the first stock round, they would have to be earned. Sure, they exist within the game and may be in your BP already, but for lobbies they couldn't be equipped in the stock round.

I think tweaking might work, sounds like good idea. Also how exactly can you pick/ban weapons with such a small pool of items? And what if someone has a specialty - like they can DH really well yet in the game people decide to ban it. How would it be fair for a person like that?

This idea of a crazy 'no limitations' comp tf2 doesn't differ that much from highlander. Basically a more hectic game style where crazy plays and weird strats are prevalent. It's a fine way to play but I think a lot of the current comp community doesn't want sixes to take that route. That is why, after all, the vast majority of experienced players still take sixes more seriously than HL.

It may make the game more exciting to watch but at what cost? I know I wouldn't play anymore if it came to the point of not having your demo go to mid because of the fear of a beggars bazooka soldier instagibbing him. I'm not saying that couldn't be a very fun game to play, but it wouldn't be the TF2 I love.

what 'sick' new strategy do you propose for two choke points into granary yard? where the demo can sticky and watch both chokepoints. this is where unlocks come in my fellow brother.

I think Kirby was just being positive about the fact that such a massive discussion was going on.

In terms of increasing the weapon variety to increase the gameplay variety. It makes sense that the meta would eventually settle down, and that weapons could be balanced internally. But there's something of an opposing force to that, which is that more strategic weight would be placed on your team's build. This obviously seems to be a positive thing for Robin, but I feel uneasy about it, because at the extreme it would reduce TF2 to a battle of builds, where at the moment it's a battle of execution with just a touch of builds (I think someone said this earlier?? Can't remember who sorry).

I feel that every time you increase the materials that you work with, it inserts some randomness into the game. You can kind of see it between 6s and HL already - it's much harder to coordinate 9 players than 6 cohesively (imagine it with 100 unlocks as well), and this can lower the skill ceiling in some cases. Often builds and strategy would be more effective not due to any design but just by coincidence.

This would all be avoidable obviously, I'm just saying what I think the potential danger is, and why I prefer strategic weight on positioning/teamwork etc rather than builds.

EDIT: And if you think of balance as [success being representative of skill], then we'll have to find the right medium between increasing variety but avoiding imbalance. There's probably some perfect amount of weapon variety.

It's an interesting thought to think about in contrast to Ruwin's awesome posts. I think, to reassure you, that things will be okay either way, because the scenarios will end like this:

1) Valve rebalances items; community still hates them -> whitelist as it is
2) Valve rebalances items; community LIKES them, meta shifts, fun times will be had.
3) Still broken for now; community will obviously hate them -> whitelist as it is

The crazy one is #4:
- Half of the community likes the meta shift of unlocks.
- Other half likes the old ESEA whitelist (to give an example of a widely accepted whitelist).

This will either result in ESEA shifting or remaining the same for a while longer. And it might result in another league adopting a new whitelist with meta changes OR a new league popping up with new ideas for the whitelist.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't worry too much; I think there will be a place for our beloved whitelist for a long time. At least theoretically, based on what I think, alone.

most fps games, including tf2 are meant to be picked up, played and put down with relative ease. heck, you could even play a map on your lunch break at work. going to a lobby before a match, playing, going back to a lobby and having to wait on everyone to buy their desired weapons with the points would take ages. i believe the point of this lobby system is to eliminate a reason to ban any item. through statistically based tweaks, valve can make every weapon viable. with the only difference from weapon to weapon being what situation to use them in.

What? Since when does making something harder lower the amount of skill involved? Yes coordination is hard but it's not exactly impossible. Teams that do it better than others will distinguish themselves by their victories.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. You obviously understand 6s a lot better than I do, but I'm not sure what you're saying.

If there's a problem with the way certain maps play competitively it might be best to fix the maps. If there's a problem with the way most maps play because of the allowed set of items in comp it might be best to add some unlocks, or even design some new ones, carefully. But I'm not sure that 6s would be better if a whole bunch of radically different unlocks were added to each ESEA season and the season were used to figure out which were terribly broken.

What I would say to anyone in 6v6 thinking this is a good thing. Valve have just stated unequivocally that what you play is boring and stale, and they are about to take a course of action that will in all likelihood have negative consequences in the medium-to-long term for 6v6.

If you don't mind the idea of switching to HL and the new unlocks system, then great. If you don't, then don't try to delude yourself with the idea that this will have a positive trickle down effect.

Well if you take something that is hard but useful and make it so hard that it can't be reliably done, to such a degree that no one tries to do it, you have lowered the skill ceiling, in practice.

If you make something only reward people who do it really well you haven't lowered the skill ceiling, but you have removed something skillful from the game at levels where people don't have the skill to do it. So if you make it harder to get real rewards from co-ordination you haven't lowered the skill ceiling but you have removed some incentive to co-ordinate from less skilled teams.

I wouldn't say that. It's hard to know how this will affect 6v6. It could easily help transition players into 6v6 over the long term. It could also give everybody a negative view of 6v6 in favor of highlander. Or it could do nothing.

Adapting is a skill. You might not know what the enemy team is running when they leave their spawn, but how you react to it will define the very best players from the shitters.

Some elements of skill will be removed from the game by adding unlocks, but other skills would be added. Difference is we get closer to the public game, we promote Valve's F2P business model and spectating TF2 would be insane for quite a long time to come!

Competitive highlander just doesn't make sense to get serious about. if you take 9v9 xxclusterfuckspamfest420xx seriously you should rethink your priorities in life.

However, The 6v6 limited weapons has indeed been so strict about banning weapons, I can see how that would cause new players to be displeased with the limitations and just go back to pubbing.

Is it valve's fault for making unbalanced weapons for the sake of selling keys and crap? Yes.-
Do I blame them for it?
No. They gotta pay the bills!

I want to see the lobby system for both 9v9 and 6v6. Any reasons why that couldn't be done?

This has to be the monst angsty post in the entire thread. What do you even think is going to happen? Big evil valve will destroy our carefully established meta and leagues will bow to Sauron-gaben and shove all the wonky unlocks into sixes against our will (despite the fact that nobody is even talking about sixes at this point), forcing you to switch over to highlander or never play tf2 again?

I think you should calm down have some tea.

Because Highlander is more popular, and they're a business. It might be done in the future, but generally speaking, they already support highlander and will continue to do that.

I think he's talking about bonk scout to bypass/set off the sticky traps to allow your team to pass through.

these issues can be fixed with some slight adjustments to the map, i agree. i never claimed we should use esea in its current state to test unlocks. perhaps a new league or an exclusive pug group could do that. will 6s be better after playing in a league with most if not all unlocks? who knows. there is only one way to find out. what i do know is there is only one way to make the game grow and that is what i want. please see some of my earlier posts in regards to this.

new items will not be designed 'carefully' as i assume your definition of carefully means with competitive tf2 in mind. what we can do is try them, give feedback and try to work as many interesting and gameplay enhancing weapons as we can into our version of competitive tf2.

I see your point now. You can make most weapons viable after a couple of tweaks, sure. In fact, if Valve can do that without banning most weapons, everything is pretty much solved and waht you said works completely. You can definitely start with all of them, assuming every weapon is already balanced in relation to the others - but doing that might take a long time. Much longer than simply slapping a time limit of 30 seconds to chose a sidegrade.

Look at the atomizer. It's a weapon that changes playstyle completely and would most likely be banned but on the flip side, if something like that were in the game, maybe you could see a 'sick new strat.' I'm not saying to include it, but now suppose you have a heavy now with the Gloves of Running Urgently enabled - that changes playstyle too. So if a Heavy can have more speed, the scout should be able to jump more etc. There will be so many conditionals and 'if-that-why-not-this' - would all of us agree to everything? Suppose even if after a little tweaking some weapons are still powerful, why not just make them harder to get instead of denying people a chance to play with them at all? Valve wants the items enabled, I don't think they would take to it if we banned too many of them.

This whole system of ban/picks seems misplaced to me. I agree with ruwin about certain items being banned for no reason and i would personally LOVE seeing some invite scout Bonking a medic with the sandman and insta-kill him with the cleaver during a stalemate. Pick/bans works for dota and Moba games because they have Champions or hero's that each bring a different skillset, which can be Banned. What valve proposed is a system that basically bans those hero's skills or spells instead of the hero itself, and just replaces that hero's Banned skill with something else.

Also i think the Banning weapons is fine cause that does add some spice to the game (for highlander), but I dont understand how you would do a pick phase. Does that mean that you would pick 5 weapons that are basically banned from the other team that they cant use, then everything else is wide open? Correct me if im wrong but i think this will probably be the first voyage into having a Pick/ban phase in a FPS game.

>There will be so many conditionals and 'if-that-why-not-this' - would all of us agree to everything?
No because balance between non-identical things is literally circular and the logic would go on forever if you treat it like that in pure theorycraft.