The LAN situation, owl, would just be the final group from the highest tier - so essentially how invite would work - is you'd want a multiple of four teams (12 would pry work)..

4 teams - Group A
4 Teams - Group B
4 teams - Group C

The teams would play each other through the group as such:

Team A vs. Team B
Team C vs. Team D

Winner of A vs B, Vs. winner of C Vs. D, winner of this match advanced to the next stage
Loser of A vs. B Vs. Loser of C vs. D, the loser of this match is out of the season.

Winner of Loser's match Vs. Loser of Winner's match, winner is advanced to next group, the loser is eliminated.

Thus netting 2 new groups of 4. After these groups were dispensed with you'd have your typical 4 team LAN.

How many games do you think take into mind what the spectator thinks, let alone values it higher over competitive players' opinions? Lets say I were bored of seeing Batrider, Dark Seer, Kotl, the usual suspects in Dota 2: If I messaged valve and were like "Hey, you should remove these heroes from the game because they make the game boring for me as a spectator", how do you think they (and the players) would respond? It's not the most ideal analogy, but it should clearly show why spectator's opinions should not be considered in games/sports/etc.

I daresay if there were something that were changed to a viewer's dismay, I'm sure they'd suck it up and keep watching/following the game, because they enjoy the game as a whole, and won't get upset over one minor change. I'm sure a few people were upset about T9 not being in official map pools in QL - doesn't mean it "hurt the games growth" or people QQ'ed and stopped following the game.

After all - I wouldn't be surprised if highlander players thought the same way when a 6s player that doesn't play highlander (but sometimes watches it) thinks said 6s player is a moron when they suggested that unlock x should be removed from highlander because they found it boring when spectating.

assuming that you have to play the game to have a "functioning understanding" of what makes the game work/the meta is stupid.

i have a "functional understanding" of how the game works; being able to execute on that functional understanding at a high level is an entirely different situation.

look, i am not saying that the viewers perspective should be considered as 51% over the players perspective; but i am saying that i think it should be considered if you want the game to grow...

Gpit is a shit map, gpit has always been a shit map, this isn't even the first time it has been voted out of rotation. Clockwork made a stellar post about why the map doesn't work in 6s, plenty of others have put forward explanations for why it is detrimental to the game and the majority of actual 6s players have been pretty vocal about it being one of--if not--the worst map in rotation.

Your example if pointless because in light of all of the evidence and testimony as to why gpit is bad, your point stands contrary in the face of people that have ACTUALLY PLAYED THE MAP IN A COMPETITIVE SETTING.

If I walked up to the organizers of quakecon and said, "Hey man, I don't really play this game at any level that would discern me from your average pub player, but I watch a lot of it. As a spectator I think if you gave everyone a rocket launcher when they spawned it would make it a lot more exciting to watch." They'd either laugh at me, eject me from the venue, or tell me to go back to my seat in the audience.

Putting on clown shoes and tap dancing will get you spectators, it doesn't mean it's what is best for the game.

i do not think spectators perspective should be valued over players perspectives...nor do i think it is the only reason for tf2 not growing at the rate most would like to see it grow

all i am saying is that it should be considered -- and currently it is not as far as i can tell.

the perspective of "fuck you, you dont play the game" is one of the huge problems that 6s players have currently that does not seem to either exist in HL or that is well hidden among HL players (although many HL players are vocal about 6s being dumb/stale/not worth watching/etc)

Before we get too far down a road we can't go back from...

The main purpose of this particular poll is to find out player's opinions on the particulars of the rules, I haven't even attempted to take into consideration what spectators would want.

While spectator opinions may not carry the same weight as that of player opinions, it will be something to keep in mind. But ideally I would like to utilize some information from Twitch John first to get a better idea of where the research needs to go.

gpit was just an example...

again, saying that you have to play the game to understand it/have an opinion is exactly the same as the idiots around here and elsewhere who say that in order to critique a caster you have to cast yourself because it is hard. it is stupid.

not every comp player hates it...come on.

i would recommend you update your OP to say that you are looking for information from players only at this point in time...

Are you not getting that my point is that from a spectator's perspective you have come to a conclusion that is the complete opposite from what actual players have decided on being best for the game?

Does this or does this not make it clear how important actual experience with the game is for determining what does and does not make it function?

Dismissing his perfectly valid points because of a personal bias. Very good debate tactic.

While I agree that the people who actually play the game should be the ones making the final decision, it's stupid to just completely ignore everyone else's input. This guy, as a spectator of tf2, made points about what he enjoys when spectating. If the majority of players hate playing gpit, then we're not going to play gpit, but plenty of tf2 players (not you, june. we all know where you stand. You've hit us all over the head with it.) who wonder why tf2 isn't popular can certainly check this thread out where members of the community summarily dismiss the opinion of someone who wants this game to grow.

I guess what I'm saying is that while this guy may not be helping anything in the end, at least he's not actively hurting anything either by being dismissive and overly pessimistic.

come on, gravelpit was voted out with 76 votes (vs 26 for metalworks, 10 for granery)

the next poll asked "Which map would you like to see in replacement of cp_gravelpit in the TF2 S15 map rotation?"

the vote was: 56 for coalplant (winner), 54 for keep gravelpit and 37 for warmerfront

so not, clearly it is not the "complete opposite" from what comp players want. otherwise gravelpit would have gotten the 3 votes edifice received instead of losing by 2 votes (~1%)

having a functional understanding of how tf2 works is. not. that. difficult. stop acting like you have to have played at the comp level to have an opinion or understand how the game works. you do not.

Ok no. I am so sick of this bullshit. I don't know who started this "EVERY ILL-INFORMED PERSON MUST HAVE AN OPINION" thing or why it keeps happening but it's not just limited to TF2 anymore and it's legitimately getting me frustrated.

Let me break it down real simple like - if you have no experience in any sort of competitive play, you aren't allowed to have an opinion on it. Not because of "DRR I HAET NEW PEOPLE LET ME BE AS BIG OF AN ASSHOLE AS POSSIBLE" but because you have ZERO EXPERIENCE. The only knowledge you possess is that of a spectator. Your scope of the scene is limited to that of whoever is being focused on from the STV or stream. You've never watched a flank, never gone for an airshot (FINE CONDUCTOR A MIDDIE), never collapsed onto last, never blown a rollout, never dropped an uber, never wiped a team, and so on. You simply just don't know about why the way competitive games are played the way they are.

I honestly don't care which format you play. I don't particularly care for Highlander after seeing what it has become and what it has brought to the table but it's fun for others. However, if you don't know the meat and potatoes of Highlander from experiencing it, you aren't allowed to comment on it. I don't know who stabbystabby is nor do I know why he's relevant at all, but I do know that he's an active player. He has a role in the actual gameplay and can contribute an informed opinion about Highlander spy play. I know Munch - he's a Highlander pyro player who wants to play 6s. He knows a lot about Highlander play from experiencing it. He knows how and why pyro is relevant in HL - he is well informed. As a spectator, you've only seen gameplay happen. It's the Robin Walker effect - you have no idea what just happened or why it worked but god damn it looked cool as fuck. That's all you are informed on when you're just someone who watches streams and sits in 24/7 2fort and trade servers: you know what looks cool and what doesn't. Your opinion is relevant for streamer feedback.

This kind of mentality is exactly what plagues FPS games nowadays. I remember playing in the Hawken Alpha and someone on the forums straight up said that being able to change your graphics settings was cheating because you'd be able to see people hiding in shadows. I shouldn't have to explain why this is completely ill-informed. This is the viewpoint of someone who has never played a game of Hawken before and actually seen the design for the maps or gotten a feel for the movement of the mechs.

At the end of the day, you aren't entitled to an opinion not because people are looking to be massive elitist assholes, but because you have zero knowledge or first-hand experience of 6s and/or Highlander gameplay.

How would you approach seeding? Not just in invite, but in all divisions. This situation would definitely lead to some issues with that. Of course, in posting from my phone in between grading tests I may be missing part of the picture again, but it seems there'd be plenty of argument.

no people stream to hl because they can play their favorite class in a competitive-ish setting and play with their friends

Let me give you a reason for why this game isn't AN ESPORT. It was never meant to be. It's a cartoon shooter and the competitive game was carved out of it through the blood, sweat, and tears of people that were too bad at quake to make money and too good to enjoy being amateurs forever. Anyone that picks this game up to play will be completely ignorant of the competitive aspect of it unless they actively seek it out.

All of the fabricated reasons about why we aren't getting 20k viewers every night that emerged once we got off gotfrag have all been espoused by people that were not here since the beginning and that came off reddit expecting this game to explode once we figured some things out. This isn't an esport, it never will be. BUICK got it right when he said that we should be most proud that we have people still playing the game 4+ years after it was released, but that being a large widely-renowned esport was never going to happen. You can drink all the kool-aid you want and it will only get you a sugar high.

And yes, weighing an uneducated opinion the same as an educated one is detrimental to the game when the largest portion of tf.tv posters apparently have never touched esea open despite "a functional understanding of the game being easy to achieve" according to illustrious tf2 spectator, themanwithnoname.

Bad example. Valve would nerf those heroes into the ground, and buff new ones that havent been a part of the meta. Case in point, Kotl was pick/banned constantly, so he got nerfed. Now we dont see him as often.

Shadow demon was picked every game, so he got nerfed. you see him a lot less now.

Batrider nerf is incoming.

A LOT of dota changes are made with the spectators in mind.

Don't even attempt to make this argument. You're wrong. Unless you are prepared to discuss almost a decade worth of game development with me I suggest you never posit that dota changes are made because of spectator input.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/undecided-voter/n27698/, here's a more concise analogy for why treating spectator's opinions on 6s rules as valid is bad.

This is Valve we are talking about, not Riot Games. Also, it's a difference between the heroes being 'imbalanced', vs a spectator getting bored about seeing hero x time and time again. Please read what I actually wrote :)

I don't see a furion nerf anytime soon.

no one likes seeing furion win the game by himself. furion has yet to eat a nerf after over a year of being a pos hero.

So why am i wrong about dota?

TF2 doesn't need to be an ESPORT for us to encourage its continued growth (and it is growing). Hell, I don't want TF2 to be on that level, because if there was real money in this game I'd have yet another reason to not get off my lazy ass each morning.

manwithnoname made no controversial statements in his first post. He said that ignoring the viewerbase in these discussions keeps tf2 from growing (true, whether or not you care about tf2 growing). He said that casual viewers like watching maps that they understand (true). He said that standardizing the rulesets would be beneficial to the average viewer (true, and it's a fairly easy fix, once we get everyone's opinion). And he framed all of that from the perspective of a spectator of the game. He didn't even propose any real changes beyond what we're already discussing in the topic.

I don't see why you're so intent on denying tf2 any growth. We all know that nobody is gonna make a living playing this game. Nobody expects to. But ostensibly you became a part of this community because you enjoy playing competitive tf2, and it stands to reason that you should want to share that enjoyment with more people.

viewers don't make the game grow, players do.

How this passes you as an uncontroversial statement is baffling.

I am not opposed to TF2 growing, but making decisions and respecting uneducated opinions in the interest of making the game grow is moronic. When the Robin Walker shitstorm started, Killing of all people made a fantastic post about how dancing for money will ultimately kill your game. You shouldn't always be so quick to forfeit what you have in interest of what you can have. It's now been a running joke in this community to tally how many teams die on gpit week, do you think its inclusion for the sake of the spectators is ultimately beneficial then? Beyond that, if themanwithnoname was correct about spectators wanting to see maps that they understand, then can you please elaborate on what makes gpit easy to understand, but metalworks rocket science? You probably can't because there isn't any logic to be had there, it's inconsistent, it's uninformed, it's bad.

The impact of the slight differences between the 2 sides of a map is less than the random spread on demo pipes.

learn to read (or learn to comprehend what you read):

having a functional understanding of how TF2 works is not that difficult.
...executing on that functional understanding is another thing entirely.

i understand the role of the pocket in 6v6. i understand the impact that tri_hards running double gunboats made on the pocket's traditional role.

does that mean i can fulfill the role of the pocket? no. does that mean i can suddenly jump onto a team and be a solid player? no.

acting like you have to play a game at a high level to have a functional understanding is stupid. i will say it again, it is like saying that you have to cast to critique casters -- that is just not the case.

have i played in an NFL game? no. do i have a functional understanding of how the NFL works? yes.

since it was evidently not made clear in my comments earlier in this thread:

i do not think that maps or rules should be decided only on what spectators think.

i do not think that maps or rules should be decided only on what 6s players think.

i do think that maps or rules should take into consideration a blend of what both spectators and players think about the rules and maps (heavily slanted towards players opinions.)

do i think that tf2 is suddenly going to have "20k viewers every night" if spectators views are taken into consideration -- not a chance. i do think that being more spectator friendly will result in some level of growth in spectator numbers and will also result in some level of growth in the number of teams/players in the game as new people watch discover tf2.

----------------------------------

i would go out on a limb and say that members of the tf2 community that utilize your posting style is significantly more "detrimental" to the game than considering (to any extent) the views of spectators.

Furion is actually pretty fun to watch offlane. Ill be surprised if next patch we dont see a nerf to either jungle furion, or the hero as a whole.

spectators (that generally play tf2) understand that map because almost everyone who has played tf2 has played gravelpit multiple times.

how many competitive players, world wide, have played metalworks? pledge, who has casted quite a few games in his time, stated that he has never casted metalworks before it was played at the ESEA lan. metalworks, as far as i can tell, was never played at i49 -- at any point in the tournament.

i guess that understanding a map you have played vs not understanding a map that you have not played is illogical, inconsistent, informed and bad?

I just want to point out that I've actually played more 6s than highlander at this point, rofl. I only played like, half of a season of highlander with a team in Gold that ended up dying and that community challenge thing etf2l did like 3 years ago. I just pubbed pyro a lot since I originally bought the game in 2007 and got into playing 6s around early 2012, but knew of its existence for several years before hand due to being friends with MaskedJackal. I wouldn't really consider my opinion on how highlander should be played to be all that valid, especially since I didn't really have that much fun with it when I played it over the summer.

But yeah, not to detract too much from the point june/stalin have been making, before I actually started playing 6s, I did watch a lot of it on youtube (this was before tf.tv existed and streaming was not as big as it is now) and while I was able to get a very basic understanding of it through watching casts/player PoVs, I have grown to understand much much more about how 6v6 is played in the year and a half or so that I've been playing it than I ever would have if I had only stuck to watching it. Even then, as someone who is probably around the mid-open skill range at best, there are other players who have been playing this game competitively for much longer than I have and/or have played it at a much higher level, and thus have a greater understanding than I do about certain aspects of the game. You have to understand that experience really is a big deal when talking about how a game should be played competitively, and that's the point we're trying to make here.

No, spectators should not get to have an opinion on rules or map rotations. I don't care if you think you understand what double gunboats means, because you never played the game without gunboats. By your own admission, you've never played them with gunboats. You can swear up and down that you have a functional understanding of the game because you can espouse the opinions of the casters that you watch, but it will never serve you as an actual understanding of how the game works.

You do not know how the changes in a rule set can impact the game because you have never played the game. You have no interest other than your own entertainment so as far as you're concerned anything that makes the game more entertaining to the detriment of the players is good. There are more than a dozen posters like you that think "the meta is stale" because robin walker told you so or think that the QF is good because it's fun to watch medics jump around. Your opinions are formed solely by what you have watched and your supposed understanding of it, but you have never given anybody proof that you do actually understand it because you do not play the game. You have no credibility here other than your own theorycrafting and for that you do not get to have a say in how other people actually get to play the game.

except that all 5cp maps play out fundamentally similarly while gpit in 6v6 has some strategies that would seem unintuitive and confounding to a primarily pub player.