Its the single most greatest thing I've found to invest my time into. I can put my whole heart and soul into improving at this game and it never disappoints me. I love improving and seeing my hard work pay off through hitting those huge airshots. I love competitive TF2.

In regards to the competitive scene specifically, I think this game has the greatest competitive scene of any game out there, in that it is extremely new-comer friendly, but in no way fails to cater to the higher levels of play. What I mean by this is that I have played many games competitively before this, including Super Smash Bros Melee, and League of Legends, and in those games, the gap between casual play and competitive play is ridiculous. In SSBM specifically, you're either nothing more than the best out of your friend circle, or you're a top level player. There really is no entry-level competitive scene, or anything in between at all, unlike what the competitive TF2 scene presents. There aren't exactly divisions to progress through or a ladder to climb as you improve. TF2 competitive does extremely well at providing a competitive scene that is enabling of everyone.

Very true, and that makes me wonder why not more people play competitive, and stay playing the game they know?

Is it:

I think doing this would get much more people playing in teams, playing competitive. Allowing items and classes is no problem, variety is part of TF2 and is what makes it interesting and that many people who keep playing it (publicly included). The high divisions will still use what works best and keep to scout / solly / demo / medic (although you might still have to limit demo and medic to 1?).

but the short circuit

I think that, to appeal to the "mainstream" tf2 audience, bans and limits need to be decided on a game per game basis. I don't care how it's done necesarily, I just care that whatever happens works. Pre-set banlists and rule lists don't appeal to pubs. It's like they're being bossed around by something that they don't understand, because they're not into it. If someone figures out and implements a PUG system where every game there's some kind of decision making for the weapon ban list and the classlimits (sans highlander), it would benefit the kind of people who are worried or upset about what seem like arbitrary or selfish restrictions to them.

Unlike I've been hearing about from time to time, I don't think a dota-like pick/ban system would work. For a couple reasons. First, it wouldn't work for classlimits because a class isn't something you "have or don't have" in TF2. You can change classes in the middle of the game necessarily, and you can have multiple of the same thing. Also, blocking out a class entirely could completely ruin the game. So it doesn't seem like the concept of picking or banning applies. Second, it wouldn't work for weapons, because there are just so many, and being able to pick something that happens to be broken hurts the game more than DotA, because counters don't work the same way in DotA as in TF2. That is, there are "necessary" things in TF2 that can be "broken" by weapons, like the pomson draining uber, where similar things don't exist in DotA because the game doesn't rely around singular aspects like TF2 does.

There are a bunch of other ideas, like giving players a list that automatically votes on every weapon for them, or changing a few bans every game, but my favorite idea is a system where you start with a banlist that's similar to what people tend to play with and you do nominations for which weapons to change and then vote on the nominations.

Hey we should totally stop banning weapons, and allow totally fair and balanced unlocks such as

[*] Short Circuit
[*] Darwin's Danger Shield
[*] Wrangler
[*] Widowmaker
[*] Atomizer
[*] Beggar's Bazooka
[*] Disciplinary Action
[*] Gloves of Running Urgently
[*] Phlogistinator
[*] Quick-Fix
[*] Pomson 6000
[*] The Rescue Ranger
[*] Jarate
[*] Spycicle
[*] The DiamondBack
[*] The Enforcer
[*] Vita-Saw

No Luke, higher div players will NOT use Scout/Solly/Demo, since a lot of the mobility of those classes will be made obsolete by GRU+Disciplinary Action heavy to mid. It will be a clusterfuck in the beggining, and then later stale as shit due to everyone running heavies which ALSO makes roamers obsolete.

"Mainstream" tf2 players will never play seriously competitive tf2 regardless of what ruleset you give it. I have met more than my fair share of people who expressed interest in playing, played with my group in pugs, etc for a couple of weeks, then disappeared, completely never actually ending up on a team (this is through MULTIPLE groups of friends, pub communities and otherwise). Most players who do stick it out and join a team never persist past the point of UGC silver. They simply don't have the time to invest into chasing invite dreams like the typical tftv poster does. Anyone who is competitive and loves tf2 already plays competitive tf2. Everyone else has either moved onto the next hotness (CS, Dota, lol) or will never ever play in ESEA open.

I disagree, their's still plenty of players out their who would love to play competitive but think they're not good enough or they just simply hate the rulesets. You forget that TF2 is probably the 2nd-3rd most popular FPS out there after CS:GO and maybe BF4.

Hopefully Robin Walker doesn't stay with Valve forever.

You don't necessarily have to play professionally to enjoy it. I think this is as much as about viewers as its about players. Even with the record numbers that the big streams of i49 and other big events, it's still only a tiny fraction of the TF2 playing population. If more people enjoy watching TF2, I think that would naturally lead to growth in the player base as well.

I think the point about how comp TF2 is a completely different game is spot on. To this end, Highlander is a lot more accessible than 6's and I've even heard players in pubs saying "Holy shit dude, have you seen Max snipe? Now that's amazing"

Max is amazing though

Wow. What an offensive thing say. Robin Walker created Team Fortress. He believes that each class has a purpose, and he wanted to see each class be able to do well in competative. That doesn't mean being run all the time in 6s. That means used more often than off classing on last. Sort of like how many players love playing sniper to any point. I agree; some classes are a bit broken (Pyro airblast), but robin just wants to see each class useful in most situations.

I highly doubt more than 10% of the competitive TF2 community seriously aspire to play at the Invite level.

please not another 20+ page thread with people arguing about what the right meta is

if classes weren't fucking annoying to play against (i.e. engi and heavy) it'd be amazing to see them used more often
if valve didn't go about making those classes be used more often with unlocks like the gru and the gunslinger then that'd be fantastic
unfortunately valve seems to think that it's a good idea to make classes literally nullify the classes that are designed to be most effective against them

I have tried playing with all unlocks allowed, but with the same maps and classlimits and it's truly horrible. It was a total mess more resembling a pub than a scrim despite people communicating properly and the players being good. Maybe that would appeal to people who enjoy pubbing? I certainly didn't find it fun.

I guess eventually after 3 or so seasons some "cookie cutter" strats would be formed that would stabilise it a bit, but then new players would just have to learn them if they wanted to progress past shitter level.

Imo it's like learning a sport, it takes time to learn the rules and how everything is played - you can't just go from bouncing a ball around with your friends on the road to playing in a basketball league without some in between steps where you learn the rules, what's allowed and what isn't, how it is played and the strats. I personally don't think it makes any sense to allow everything in order to get more attention. Time would be better spent making the transition as easy and as appealing as possible.

There's a reason why the pub community is alienated from the comp community and that's because not everyone wants to play competitively. Instead of trying to assimilate both communities together, enhance them separately. Comp should be just that, competitive. It is very precise on weapon bans and balances to keep the game balanced and fun. (for those that like comp 6s)

Plenty of people already play HL and that's pretty much the closest thing to pubs in comp tf2 (no offense meant)

Also to seagull's response to brad, I'd imagine the game is getting stale because you've been playing it for years on end and have been in the top level of tf2, not because the game hasn't changed it up with class limits/weapons. To newer 6s players we enjoy the game and will continue to enjoy it until we get tired of it like most ex-invite players.

It's the grind in everything. Once you reach the top of anything it eventually becomes boring. There's a limit to how long something stays fun as sad as that is.

That's my philosophy anyway.

The reason why pubbers don't play comp is either because of the skill level or they don't know about it. I would say most of them don't know about it. Games like quake, CS, dota etc have comp as the normal game play.

Like it has been mentioned a million times before, TF2 just needs a competitive game mode accessible from the game menu. Yes the skill level would be low but it's all about progression.

They've been trying to reduce the number of hard counters to pull classes out of the specialist niche. It's not the worst thing in the world honestly. Engi is definitely the most situational class in 5cp. This is normally balanced because he trades situationalality for being able to shit on scouts, pyros, and idiots. Making him into a generalist class that provides area denial is fine. Gunslinger isn't a completely horrible idea, it's just implemented in an incredibly awful way because engi trades being able to get shit on by demos for being able shit on idiots less effectively. Making a class into a generalist is fine, as long as the class trades it's ability to be hard countered for its ability to hard counter. Gunslinger gives up the ability for demos to make a meaningful impact on Engis, but still let's engis destroy the flank. The GRU lets heavy not be killed by anyone who can jump or hold the S key, but he doesn't lose his effectiveness. The GRU makes heavy shed his weakness that makes him niche, but loses nothing in return. He still shits on everything. If the GRU did made you lose a large amount of combat effectiveness or something, like 40% damage, it'd be less ridiculous.

Real talk, unless an item messes with the ability to track/keep uber, it is something to work around and doesn't affect one of the key aspects of this game.
The only bans i could actually support are the vita-saw and the Pomson.

so you're cool with heavies to mid and scouts that can rape 95% of soldiers in the game 95% of the time?

Requesting that eXTv does not make a video explaining weapon bans without community discussion.

Whenever there's a 6v6 discussion with pub players it always ends up with them asking about specific weapon bans, and I see a lot of 6v6 players giving incorrect reasons behind the bans. Then the pub players point out the flaws and make us look bad.

Anything eXTv posts about it will be taken as the definitive explanation by pub players.

finally someone who isnt afraid to tell us how great we are.

I feel like there are 3 kinds of people who play TF2 (and aren't on trade servers/mariokart/etc)

1. The OG 6s player: They want the game to be based around a player's skill. If achieve something, it was because of your raw ability to click on things. Your team and you have practiced with what you consider the, in-general, best loadouts.

2. The OG HL player: They want the game to have a malleable meta. New strats can be found in a day by studying how all elements of the game interact. They want teams to be able to develop around all of their individual strengths, and enhance individual strengths through weapon choice. Different playstyles of classes result in a teams that can play drastically different from eachother.

3. The OG pub player: They play TF2 for the casual game that it is. They don't understand (or don't want to) why the choices they make in pubs aren't effective in other formats. The experience of killing other players is enough for them. Any way that helps them kill players easier is welcome.

These seem to be the major PoVs that people argue from when discussing TF2. I think it's just fine that these stay separate areas of the community, with some overlap between each. Infact, I think 4s could provide for some nice overlap between the 6s and 9s players, offering more diverse classes and weapons, but still having the same focus on very skillful individual gameplay.

I do disagree with Pyyyour about changing 6s that much though. 6s has been well established as what it is, and changing it would largely just hurt the current playerbase. Imagine if you suddenly updated Quake Live with all kinds of silly new special abilities. It's just not the experience people are looking for, it's not what the people who play are there for; it's something else.

Also another question to pose here: What is TFTV's view of 4s? I've only caught some comments about it that generally bash it (me included to some extent), but I feel like it's a really nice compromise for people who want to see a lot more out of 6s, but still want the general feel of it.

If I got a dollar for every "growing comp TF2" thread, I could pay off my student loan.

If I got an extra dollar for every post in said threads, I could buy Valve and make them create TF3 that's built around comp from the ground up.

Edit: Ok I thought these threads were bad. Then I looked at the replies on /r/tf2.

I really don't understand the obsession of trying to grow comp TF2. It's large enough that any level team can find scrims almost every night and the number of teams steadily gets higher every season so it's not about to die overnight. We're at the point where the impact growth has is pretty marginal. If the end game is attracting sponsors I'm sorry but most sponsors only invest in a couple games and they're going to do so in the games that get 100k+ viewers for big events not some old shooter that struggles to break 5k concurrent viewers.

I don't actually care at all. But wonky uber diddlies are irritating as all fuck for the entire match.

?
They've been trying to reduce hard counters so they reduced the number of soft counters and added a hard counter using an unlock instead of basic gameplay style?
I don't quite get what you're trying to argue for here