It was recently announced here that Valve were interested in building a lobby system directly into the game. For many, it seems, this announcement was merely the neatly tied, silver-colored box that wrapped the turd dropped on our favored format by the father of the game:
The competitive format is currently too stagnant. Robin articulated this brilliantly and I'm not sure I'll do him justice, but here goes. Robin barely watches competitive TF2 anymore because nothing surprises him. There are no "sick new strats" for him to see, especially not at the pace of other games. He wants to see Vhalin's black box innovation happening once every 2-3 months.
In the opinion of this writer, this was a stupid tone to set; still, there's implications to this statement that could be used to push the competitive side of the game towards a better path. But we'll get back to that later on.
Highlander PUGs are for Valve to mine data, not to support competition.
Yea, everyone's caught up on the whole Highlander thing. Is the 6v6 format to be sacrificed at the altar of Highlander so that Valve can sell more hats, and this community can feel like it's finally made it?
No, not exactly. Valve may implement this system, everyone will continue playing 6v6 as the format for the serious player, laaa la la la life goes on. The effects that such a system may have on the competitive ecosystem will be tertiary, of the trickle-down sort.
This is Newell's keynote address from DICE a couple months ago. Its well worth the time to watch all the way through, if you have it; but if not, at least watch through to where he lays out the two theses. The second half of the talk is geared towards the notion that "a fairly significant sea change in the way we all think of what a game is" will be arriving shortly, and that Valve anticipates that "all the games end up being part of an connected economy."
Where does competitive Team Fortress fit in such a landscape? Well, it doesn't really, I'm afraid.
Valve needs data, and lots of it. You can't run a large economy of interconnected games while not having the slightest idea about how the players that ostensibly comprise that economy are acting in it. This is really the primary goal, I think, whether anybody really realizes it or not, of building a PUG system geared towards Highlander directly into the game.
It's a worthy compromise between several factors: the teams are just small enough where a game can be arranged without too arduous of a wait; the teams are just large enough, with a built-in evenly spread class distribution, such that it suits the stock maps a bit better in the ways they were intended to be played on; it will theoretically attract the sort of player who's a bit more seasoned but not of 6v6-championship-winning caliber, and wouldn't mind spending an hour playing under some wacky constraints simply for something different.
Banning weaponry at the outset of a match in this system is less important, to me, than the ability to A/B test new items, nerfs, or buffs before they're rolled out to the game as a whole, in an environment where the time spent in a PUG doesn't carry the same sort of weight as a 6v6 team preparing for prize league matches -- that is, there's no implication of far-reaching consequences over time from any single match, so people will be less likely to bail or balk at the random insertion of new items, or tweaks, that could possibly be game-breaking.
The result is that Valve gets to ask deep questions of the data generated by these matches before rolling out changes. Does a tweak to a lesser used item then result in it being used more? Does it result in vastly better performance over other items, or does it result in similar outcomes overall? Does it achieve the intended effect of neutralizing a overpowered item on a different class (for instance)?
Valve getting to ask those sorts of questions will, in some cases, allow for matchplay bans to come off of some items that have been canned since their introduction but have found a better balance after data-driven tweaking, and will thereby introduce some variety into the 6v6 game; that certainly couldn't hurt.
But no, it's not the sort of deliverance the scene might be looking for. I think the side effects for competitive play will be there, and will be positive, but it won't result in massive floods of new players, or a completely rebalanced game that will make the 6v6 format totally irresistible.
But that's just the point: deliverance isn't coming, at least not from Valve, and you need to stop looking for it.
Unimpressible
I'm gonna toss this out there and see if it sticks: Valve, to the competitive TF2 community, is like that parent that will never, ever be satisfied with what you accomplish. It just won't be enough. Luckily, I'm not drawing this metaphor from direct experience, but everyone's seen it. Well, Valve is that parent.
There's a sense that this scene deserves more, and it's a shame Valve isn't interested in exploring it further. And that's the only rational conclusion to reach, if we're not sugar-coating this possible PUG system.
What everyone really wants to see is a scene that isn't constantly turning their pockets out to fund the goings-on, the leagues, the offline tournaments. (No, for those that are familiar with my older thoughts on structure, I'm not taking this essay there. I know better.) This community has shown a resiliency and passion that few others muster, and it's really terribly awesome how many times this group has gotten together and smashed piggy banks to get teams to big tournaments. But I think everyone would really rather that not be necessary. For that, the game has to draw bigger audiences. There's no way around it.
There's some really audible echoes of Battlefield here, the scene I was first seriously involved in; a scene which also suffered from the same 'not intended use case' treatment from the developers. The game did work to a degree at 8v8, but all the maps were designed with sides twice that size in mind. Teams, and individual players, put on ridiculous displays of skill match after match, but there were still massive balance issues that made half of the core competitive maplist dubiously playable. The map editor routinely crashed and produced buggy builds, making it difficult to even make tweaks to stock maps, let alone create new ones. The spectator mode was essentially a hacky workaround, one that required commentators to join a team, spawn, and suicide at the start of every round, altering the score - if there was a commentary crew of three, one had to repeat this process twice. The developers promised better support in patches, but they never came, and it became obvious they really just didn't care. That was the situation for the first three major titles in that franchise, and it got worse from there.
I'm not trying to compare sob stories, just trying to show that it's really not all that bad for TF2, and there exists here a massive, perennially unrealized potential. Making endless overtures to Valve, or Twitch, or some other third party isn't going to change things, not significantly. At some point, you've gotta stop trying to impress the unimpressible dad, get on with just doing what you do, and be happy with endeavors to improve the situation, however they turn out. Focus on attracting an audience, not on attracting Valve.
Tackle the imperfections best you can
Ok, time to unpack the turd.
If one watches any sport - or esport - to see an unending stream of novel and game-changing stratagems over the course of every season, one will be disappointed by every last game. Basketball's 'triangle offense' was devised in the 40's, for fucks sake, and it took the Bulls to six championships in the 90's. As Killing rightly puts it in the thread announcing all this, once a sport finds a well balanced groove to sit in, that's when the most interesting stuff comes, in watching teams trying to perfect their execution against each other, and the story-lines that evolve both on and off 'the court'. Constant tactical innovation is simply not the nature of sports over the long term; it's only the nature of freshly minted new games, and it's a temporary state, one that exists while people simply haven't 'solved' the game yet. If Robin truly wishes to see that, he should starting working on some new IP.
Seriously, though. Unless something large was missed in translation, that was not brilliant nor well-put.
But that's not to say the current state of 6v6 is in that perfect, well balanced groove either. It's not bad, but has always had some rough edges, and I think an opportunity was missed here to deliver some actionable feedback. So, I'll provide some instead.
Expecting perpetual invention with approaches is foolish, but that shouldn't rule out the possibility that tweaks to the format could produce matches that are more enjoyable to watch and play.
Let's be frank: the format discussion for TF2, just as it is with every newly sprouting esports scene, was short, not exhaustive, and dominated by a few people that got early administrative nods at now dead leagues. People swinging over from the DoD:S scene seemed to have an outsized influence on things for TF2 in particular, strangely enough, and I don't think the effects of that history have been an altogether positive thing for this game's format.
So, while it'd be foolish of me to think I possess enough of a player's mind to prescribe specific fixes to gameplay mechanics or map particular, I think I can at least point towards a good direction to bring a wrap to this piece, and offer some things to consider from a wider perspective.
Pick a game mode and stick with it: cp_* is it.
As much as you may love gravelpit, it's super weird this map is still in the rotation, what with the "how's this work again?" stopwatch scoring system, and the fact that nobody ever defends A. (Yea, it's meant for a defending side twice the size.) It's always been the weird bump on the schedule, along with that King/Hill map you guys insist on playing every season, and they should be cut in favor of 6v6 focused cp_ maps. King/Hill maps in particular are dreadfully boring to watch and commentate. If you want to have a thriving esport, you have to attract an audience; these maps don't cut it or add unnecessary confusion, and they currently occupy 25% of your schedule every season. They've gotta go.
Are the class limits actually necessary?
This might be daft, I'll admit up front; but are they? Doesn't the meta-game itself enforce some sort of equilibrium to begin with? If that's not the case, are there tweaks that we can make, without Valve's intervention, that could bring a greater degree of difficulty to each class and bring most loadouts more in balance with each other?
For instance, would a loadout of five soldiers and a medic be invincible? If so, what would mitigate that? If not, then why not let teams roll with more than two soldiers?
I guess what I'm getting at is, if Valve can't and won't take the time to work on 6v6 balance issues - and they have quite legitimate reasons for doing so - then this community should look to commission a group of insiders that will.
First to five is, actually, kinda dull. Dump it.
TF2's flow is more analogous to soccer or (obligatory: American) football, than it is to tennis; there is no regular cadence to scoring that would necessitate a limited scoring system. Dropping the hard score limit and making the clock more of a factor would magnify every minute of a close match. A mercy rule could be employed in lower divisions to keep those absolute roflstomps from running on longer than they need to, but the play at higher levels has been reasonably close for some time, with notable exceptions, I think.
I remember calling a significant number of matches that were end-to-end, back-and-forth affairs, decided by that ninth cap with at least ten or fifteen minutes left in the second half, and a good amount of time shaved off the first half with the arbitrary 'halftime at three caps' limit. It's head-desk dumb to cut a good match short when an extra 15 minutes of nail-bitingly good play could have been had from it. First to five sells your best matches short, and that's good for nobody.
Running with these first two suggestions then sets a consistent surface for statistical analysis, with games not ending early due to a scoring cap, or a quarter of a season played on maps that are total anomalies.
With that gone, you can do one of the following:
Twenty minute halves
This at least brings the clock more into play, while still ensuring that matches get done and dusted in under an hour, even with ten minutes of bullshit pre-match and at halftime. Matches get a predictable rhythm, one-sided affairs don't go on for too terribly long, and the best of the even matchups can be fully realized.
Ten minute halves, two maps
I prefer this option because of the further effects it can have on match preparation, as well as opening up interesting meta-game possibilities. But this brings the clock even further into play, bringing an impending stoppage in play to the forefront four times a match. A team may feel greater pressure from the clock on the stronger of the two maps to be played, as they'll want to score more on their stronger map so they have some breathing room on the weaker. This would also open up the option of specifying a group of four maps for each week of play, with each team banning one just before the match.
Teams would be encouraged to keep a sharp edge on a wide range of maps over the course of a season rather than just scrimming the living shit out of one map for six days straight. With scrims taking only 20 minutes, it's perfectly reasonable to get practice in on a number of maps in a single session, and a practice of each team picking one map to play in an hour-long scrim is pretty obvious.
Not knowing exactly what map you're to play going into a match, I think, would have interesting consequences that would be interesting to watch. Spectators get a little more variety for their time, and don't have to watch teams slog through the same map for a week straight either. Playing two maps against a team mitigates the effect of getting scheduled against a dominant team on their most dominant map, and would give opposing teams the opportunity to ban those known strong maps when they come up in the rotation; it's then advantageous to remain constantly proficient on a number of maps rather than just scrimming up on when it comes up in the season. Matches will become more of a reflection of who is a better overall team, than who's just better at this week's map, or who didn't get screwed on the schedule.
Anywho:
There's lots of runway here and room for experimentation. I hope that's what Robin meant to say; I think it'd reflect well on us to take it that way. That might seem like a weird place to end up as a result of Valve announcing interest in a Highlander PUG system, but I think it fits. Anyway you slice it, it's up to this community to figure out what, if anything, will help draw a larger audience; it's not really in Valve's wheelhouse, for this IP in particular, to aid in those efforts. The stuff outlined above are only things I dragged off the top of my head while jamming on this essay, and I'm sure people with better TF2-IQ than mine will be able to devise better ideas.
Get on it--