It's super hard to disagree with Smaka about the unlocks, lot of them are stupid and not fun at all. The element of chaos though and randomness certainly exists, but you can minimize it through better teamwork/comms, that is the main skill of HL.

From my experience (albeit in Iron and Steel), 9v9 scrims and matches will either go fluidly for a skilled and organized team that works well together or they're a shitshow of unorganized comms and entirely too much restless energy.

This is why if you're going to play for a Highlander team, you'd better know positioning and exactly what the fuck your class should be doing at all times, not lose your shit easily, and have the ability to tune out your raging shitbag teammates very, very well.

You shouldn't even bother posting in a thread like this if you haven't read through it, which it's obvious that you haven't or else you would know that this is the furthest reason from the truth that anyone could ever come up with.

So many interesting points in this thread.

Having played more HL than 6's, my opinion is really biased. Having said that I think why people criticize HL with good reason:

It is really hard to keep track of a lot of key moments. In 6's, the gameplay is a lot like football (handegg, to our Euro friends) or Rugby. A good criticism of Highlander is that the game play closely resembles Soccer (Football, to our Euro friends). The scoring, and what is considered a good play is very different. People not used to this might see it as chaotic, spammy, etc. It can be hard to pay attention to all that is going on around you.

You can hear it in the voices of casters when they are having a difficult time following the match.

I think the question that may need to be asked would be, "Why do Highlander players care about what 6's players think?". And, to answer that question, I would say that as the established competitive scene, we really respect many of their opinions. The 6's environment will always be the Highlander touchstone for skill (in the same way that b4nny will forever be the "are you better/worse than" for demo, and ruwin seems to be for almost every class he touches).

Quick note on the "utility" classes. I think that we are only scratching the surface of the top utility classes skill.

I am reminded of when I first saw Bloodsire play pyro, or Stabby playing spy. It changed how I viewed that class permanently.

Tried to edit this down, sorry for the length.

http://logs.tf/104258

(steel-silver scrim)

HL is fun if your team is good.

i was blu scout, and i play 6's at a silver 6's level. got 4 med picks, 2nd top fragged.

I've never heard of chaotic being used to describe soccer, so I'm not sure that analogy is a good one. It's actually pretty easy to follow.

I was actually thinking about that... +1 to you, sir. Maybe hockey, relative to football?

But... Hockey has less players than football, and moves faster. Not exactly a great comparable to HL.

Imagine water polo, but with horses. And aimbot machines. And pick classes.

HA! That is pretty good.

lol

Then 6's would be, what, synchronized swimming (everyone looks the same, same goals, similar strategy, etc)? :D

*puts neg frag helmet on*

Its not like hl doesn't use mostly the same strats anyway.

heh

what

this would be great because I got thrown out of my last synchronized swimming league for dunking on some shitlords and also it was a women's league and also i wasn't wearing any clothes. But it was mostly the first thing

somebody get this guy to lan

If you're going to use an analogy like that you should probably say something like ass play.

I'm feeling the strain as the guy on a 6s team who's in charge of arranging officials, scrims and practice, when our roamer is on a highlander team that practices regularly. It takes conscious effort to not waste energy disliking highlander for it.

It wasn't designed as a competitive format. It was designed as a way to include all the classes.

I rang for a highlander team ONCE as scout.
http://sizzlingstats.com/stats/77446

Every single player in that game did not know how to shoot a good scout, it was a complete and sad roll and I top damaged by more than 50 dpm on top of the demo.

Contrast that to 6v6, where I couldn't overextend if I wanted to even against bad teams because you have two soldiers that will shoot feet and a demo that can shoot air stickies that will kill you and 2 scouts with hitscan weapons following you. Even if they couldn't hit you right, they'd just chipshot you to death, not so in Highlander. It's just boring or a complete roll.

?, you can totally over-extend and do retarded shit in low level UGC 6s.

using low teams which have a player way outside both teams skill range to say what a format is like is dumb.

e: also those are both Iron teams.

why not 9v9 all heavy

it's like chess but every piece is a queen

and they all have miniguns

The reason I like 6v6 more than HL is that much smaller things matter in 6s. Something as small as taking a bit of damage at the wrong time, or not getting buffed when you can, or a single person playing out of position, can mean the difference between a win or a loss. In highlander, it's much less fine-tuned. People can take a bit more damage, be out of position, suicide in, and it's usually not the end of the world.

Edit: And because such small differences matter in 6s, it opens up a lot more opportunities for huge plays to be made by a single person, yet relying on solid teamwork to follow up on that play.

The match between Mixup and Quantic on badlands during S10 LAN is considered to be one of the best games of 6s to ever happen, atleast from a spectator standpoint. I've always wondered, is there a highlander equivalent to this game?

I've never really enjoyed watching highlander being casted, either because of the quality of the caster, the skill differences in the teams, or the chaotic nature of certain maps (steel, 5-cp maps with many flanks, etc.).

ITT: 6s elitism

1. What's wrong with with maining pyro/spy/engie/heavy? Since when was it a crime to have fun and play your favourite class?

2. What's wrong with unlocks? They add new dimensions to the game, add diversity to each class and can be extremely fun to use. Some are unbalanced but then again many of these are banned in most HL communities.

2. HL is less organised, more spammy and more clustered than 6s but some people prefer that. Having more players on a map is more entertaining for some people.

4. HL features more maps, more game modes and more classes as opposed to 6s where you effectively only play one gamemode and even then only a select number of maps. HL offers greater diversity and that's why some people prefer it, there's no reason to criticise it.

If you like 6s, don't enjoy most unlocks and like a more organised style of play then so be it but there's no rational reason for this blatant elitism displayed by many 6s players. It's these sorts of people that are poisoning the TF2 community as a whole. HL is just as great as 6s, if you don't like it then by all means play 6s and enjoy yourselves but there's no need for this standoffish, petulant and ridiculous hatred directed towards HL.

Couldn't be more wrong. There is very little elitism in this thread (at least from the non-troll posts) and some real discussion is actually happening. Get over yourself.

I'd respond to your points but I'm at an Evil Geniuses filming on my phone.

EDIT: apologies for the rude post, bad mistake on my part, but I didn't witness much elitism from the posts that contained criticism. I'm a 6s player but HL still has a place in my heart because that's how I started in comp.

I don't know if there's really one definitive match, but Map 1 (Badwater) of Ginyu v SNSD back in March was one of the best maps I've ever seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1TbYl82wzw

People have made it fairly clear why they don't like playing against certain classes and unlocks. I doubt you've read the whole thread as people have gone over why they think they should be banned many times.

As for your gamemode arguement, bar payload 6s plays/played most of the same gamemodes. We've removed A/D from our current rotation but we did play Gravel Pit for quite a long time. I don't know highlander that well but i'm almost positive CTF hasn't been played in it in forever.

itt: highlander players cant fucking read and are giving me more and more reasons to be elitist about this

it bashes itself by having a shit community

You'd think so, but you forget that the UGC admins exist and make roughly 100% of Highlander-related decisions in North America.

Edit:

This is also a great reason to bash 9v9.