when are we going to celebrate our 6 year anniversary of having this same fucking discussion every week?

next week

Not sure if I want to start this, might be a little ranty but here I go anyways.
If people think that we can make tf2 into an e-sport or even get huge numbers of people they really need to take a step back and look at what they are saying. As hard as it is to say, tf2 will never be a e-sport or big at all, it has no backing from any sponsors, companies hell even the devs them selves dont care. Sure its great to try and make it bigger and sure we may grow a little but we will never get big, we play TF2 because we like they game and the people that play the game, god knows we dont play it for cash of any kind. Also people need to keep in mind that all the big e-sports of today didnt just start up with that game, the backing was aoways there in the begining Starcraft has brood war, DotA 2 and LoL have WC3 and the original DotA, the communities all have a really stable and solid backing, and what do we have? A couple of dead quake players and some NS1 players, we never had and I dont think we ever will have a real backgroud to put TF2 on any map, if anything this community is a BW or WC3 like community the base and starting point for somthing in the future. Just the way I see it, so take from it what you will but all I know is there has been a hole lot of talk and no where near that ammount of action taken in the past 2 years. Point in case people still want to play ESEA even after all the shit they pulled, they just want to play and have fun not have a paying job going to tf2 tournys.

http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/1rsxz0/my_99_cent_mousepad_arrived_today/

honestly i feel like these threads do more harm than good, especially when they are posted on reddit/steam forums

I feel like these conversations always involve comp. players trying to figure out what pub players are interested in. Even the reddit discussions are people who have at least some basic knowledge of comp. TF2's existence.
I personally have never played more than a game or 2 of UGC Styrofoam HL in my life, but I've been watching comp. TF2 since before I started playing TF2 at all.
Comp. TF2's problem is not that it's hard to understand. It's really not. You kill people and capture points, which is exactly the same as in pubs. Sure, the intricacies of what each position should be doing and when is much more involved, but I enjoy watching football matches without knowing half the positions on each team. If viewers are really dense enough to not understand this game at a basic level, I don't think changing things around will help much. Like I said, I started watching before ever playing, and while I didn't get everything at first, it wasn't that hard to start catching on.
It's not that we ban too many weapons or classes. We don't ban classes, and the weapons that are banned honestly make viewing matches absolute shit. I've been watching ESEA since S7 I think and the only thing that's caused me to stop watching was the ridiculous quickfix stalemates last season. I've planned my schedule around LAN weekend for years, and last time I was completely free and couldn't even be bothered to watch the stream. And since even pubbing against gunslingers, Pomsons, etc. is infuriating, I can't imagine the unwashed masses suddenly becoming diehard supporters if they got to see them used in actual matches.
Just so this doesn't come across as an unrelentingly negative screed, I think the one reason why people don't watch comp. TF2 is that they don't know about it. There are 30,000 people playing TF2 right now at midnight EST on a Thursday night. How big is this forum? How big is even the /r/tf2? It has 100k subscribers. I think that if we had well-produced and regular content (which we do, be it Sal, TFTV, eXtv, ETF2L, what have you) and could get pubbers to realize that there are bigger things than 24/7 Harvest, that would be the key. I really like the idea of comp players adding teamfortress.tv to the end of their names while pubstomping (but not acting like dicks). When a new player sees someone better to them, and maybe that person is giving helpful advice, they'll naturally follow. Or at least that's what I would do.
But since I'm basing the entire credibility of my argument on my lack of experience of competitive TF2, don't pay this any more heed than what you paid for it.

Maybe, maybe not. I'd like to see that to be honest. More diversity, and well I don't think roamers wouldn't be useful at all, but obviously cant be sure.

I really just feel like all the restrictions is what stops new people from playing competitive (especially 6v6). Items, classes, but also requiring mumble, 1000+ hours in lobbies / pugs, otherwise kicking and such.

It's so frustrating to see half the posts consisting of "let us watch good players use broken OP weapons because it's fun!"

The reason I never went through with playing on a team is because of the quick fix buff, and how it's allowed in UGC, combined with the ESEA malware thing. The part about 6s I found fun wasn't the non-stop brainless DMing, it was timing, teamwork, co-ordination and big plays, which the quick fix tends to remove quite a lot of for me.

Pubs aren't fun for me anymore, and 6s becoming more lax on the ban list, yet combined with barrier to entry, is also pushing people away, or at least myself and my friends.

^From a Reddit post. Thing is, I get the feeling most people here absolutely love "TF2 from years ago with no items" or "slower paced teamwork-focused Quake" like myself, and not "throwing dozens of players against eachother with random weapons and random classes that can utilize boring unlocks to make everyone hate themselves". Or at least, not as much as they like the former.

Actually, that poster is pretty spot on. I fucking hate TF2, it's broken, it's slow, it's random, it's buggy as hell with invisible players and exploits that have gone unfixed for a long time, with every patch breaking something else. Pub TF2 has the worst community I've seen in any game, including LoL, Quake, Starcraft, other f2p/non-f2p shooters, etc while also managing to have the worst players. But I like 6v6 as its own game and the community is comparatively great.

This topic can only boil down to personal preference, and making your favorite or beloved or boring or hated 6v6 into something that will appeal to the largest number of casual players, or see how far you're willing to bring it to pub level in order to get more players, while losing other ones. Doesn't seem like something that can be discussed this long, and yet here it is, right on time this week.

Thoughts of a lurker who agrees more with TFtv than Reddit, I guess. Who knows, maybe most of you don't actually agree and are getting tired of 6s in their current form, in which case I'm just out of luck and need a new game.

Okay this might sound unpopular but I'm gonna say it anyway... I don't think we should be allowing every weapon / class format, etc, just to appeal to pub players like pyour said.

Keep in mind I was one of the few players on ETF2L fiercely supporting unlocks and a more diverse map pool (not only 5cp like before) when etf2l was completely vanilla 5-6 seasons ago. And I was made fun of quite a fair amount of times. So I think diversity both in weapons and maps is a good thing to the scene. But these have to be well thought and I don't think we should allow everything to appeal more people.

TF2 is a f2p game, that means the game is never gonna die unless an official sequel comes out. The community is going to keep a stable growth or worst case scenario stabilize and not grow. For anyone that quits there will be another player experimenting the game for the first time. We shouldn't be approaching both settings (pub and competitive) just so that more players join us, are we really willing to trade a functional/exciting/balanced metagame and flow of the game for a bit more popularity? What we should be doing is helping with the transition between the 2 settings, and making players know there is such thing as competitive tf2 (yes because there are many people not even aware of comptf2). That was my ultimate aim with comp.tf, help with that transition between the 2 settings because I know when I started there was no such tool to help me, and I can honestly say I'm happy with what we have done so far, but there is just so much more we could be doing in that regard.

You are pubstomping and someone calls you a cheater or the likes, instead of saying "lel u mad", "get rekt" or "l2p noob" maybe you should say instead, "no dude, I play competitive tf2 that's why I can hit these shots, you should check it out at teamfortress.tv of comp.tf or whatever, it's a lot of fun". You get friends with someone on a pub, you tell them to check competitive tf2 out. You own a pub, you implement competitive oriented maps and classlimits and have a server message every x minutes saying in chat something like "For more info on competitive tf2 check out comp.tf or teamfortress.tv" or whatever site you want.

We have played before without class limits, 2 demos, everything else you can imagine, the competitive scene already tested those waters at the beginning and we shouldn't be going that route again. Even pubs have class limits, and for a good reason. Also let's face it, there are completely broken weapons in this game, weapons that completely disregard a class main weakness or weapons that completely break an essential mechanic of the entire game. Weapons like the pomsom, shorth circuit (as it is currently, not the old one), phlog, Darwin's Danger Shield, etc, should never be allowed in any competitive setting in any way. Honestly they shouldn't even be in the game in the first place.
I wouldn't want to be playing 6v6 without a class limit, weapon whitelist and a well thought map pool, it simply wouldn't be fun, it wouldn't be the thing I fell in love with originally and most of all, it ultimately wouldn't be competitive.

Competitions have rules, competitive settings or sports need to have specific rules to promote competition, if we allowed everything and any class limit it wouldn't be a competitive setting anymore, it would be total anarchy, much like a pub. We shouldn't be going down that route IMO. The smartest way we could go as I said above is making the transition between both settings smooth and let other players know we exist. Ideally we should also be in direct contact with valve and have influence in weapon/map balances, like it was actually very talked about a few months ago, but no one ever did anything about it afaik and valve doesnt seem to keen on it either.

Average age comp players >18
Average age pubbers <14

I never believed in the concept, that if the comp scene changes format/allows all unlocks, that suddenly we would see a huge influx of what used to be pubbers.

If that was the case HL would be huuuge (although i guess that is getting more restricted every season, but still)

I mean if someone truly wants to "compete" he is not going to be stopped by not being able to use X Weapon.

Remembering back when I was "just" pubbing...I wanted to win the rounds and get better which resulted in me picking the appropriate class for the next obstacle to overcome -> I was playing either Demo/Solly 90% of the time and very rarely and only for specific situations what we use as offclass in 6s.
That is not because I just preferred those classes, but rather as time went on I understood that I have to play those to have the maximum impact on the game.

Now there weren't as many unlocks back then, but the same applies to loadout, If you want to win and have an Impact, you're not going to play Demoknight or jump around trying to market garden people or whatever. You'll realise that the sticky launcher is still the best weapon in the game.

On a side note: If I started playing today, I really doubt I'd have sticked around. The game was already confusing back then (coming from FPS games that were hitscan only and didn't have different classes) but now, Pubs are such a clusterfuck with all the different weapons, seems impossible to tell whats happening as a beginner.

I have pretty limited experience actually playing comp TF2, really just some PUGs here and there.

But I do have to say that TF2 is the only "eSport" that has ever caught my attention. From the perspective of someone who doesn't play comp too often but watches it a fuckton, it's really the only game where I highly enjoy seeing fellow nerds duke it out at a high level. None of the MOBAS managed to do so, I never really liked watching CS even though I like playing it etc.

So.. I don't even play it much, but I still love both 6s and HL for different reasons.

So thank you all for entertaining me many late nights with streams, youtube vids and drama.

EDIT: I do support at least trying out a pick/ban system in PUGs though. Of course not something ridiculous like allowing people to ban stock primaries (aka banning stickies), but have a somewhat bigger pool of unlocks that as a result go on rotation and gets tested.

each captain bans x amount of weapons each

game begins

there u added a shitload of diversity to the game

Yeah, then we should have all classes move with mouse 2 and implement individual spells and ultimates as well. As a result, tf2=Dota 2 and that means more diversity and growth of tf2 community.

I think the day quick fix was banned was a huge turning point in the competitive scene... Possibly marking the beginning of the end. We need to stop limiting the game and i agree with brad 100% on this.

one of the reasons why I'm so in favor of doing bans is because it actually gives us a chance to decide what weapons are actually truly overly powerful.

What items have the biggest impact on the game? What items are annoying but not important enough to ban or even use if allowed? If the powerful weapons are let through, could the players/teams use them correctly?

I think we'd discover that some items like the phlogistinator aren't as impactful as people think. Sure it's got some crazy effects, but it also doesn't have airblast. Is it really worth a ban?

People's opinions on the power level of weapons is definitely filtered through the eyes of the class they play. It's a natural thought process, but it does make things seem more powerful than they really are in the wider scope of the game. Darwin Danger Shield has been kicked around as an OP weapon but really its only impact is to be obnoxious to spies and force them to revolver the sniper if thats the pick they want to make. It requires a change of tactics from the team to address it, but its not overly problematic.

Edit: Whooops, I was wrong bout Danger Shield, confusing it with the razorback. Leaving it as written will eXtrapolate about the correct weapon down the page

http://moesucks.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/lets-beat-that-horse.jpg

There are over 1,500 ugc hl teams right now, what exactly constitutes as huge? I think you'd be hardpressed to find a league with that many teams for pretty much any game. (Let alone one with a team size as large as 9)

There are broken weapons. That is the truth. Valve has always been very poor in the balancing of weapons, in great part because they don't actively listen to the community. And just the fact that the last balances indicate they are optimizing weapons for MvM use confirms my statement that some weapons should never be allowed in a competitive setting.

The phlog for example is the maximum exponent of rewarding stupidity and not skill, it actually rewards w+m1 and after all that you still get to "refill" all your health and have a crit spree, it's not stupidly OP but it doesn't reward any bit of skill whatsoever, it's a gimmicky weapon that doesn't bring anything fun to the game. Also and for me even a bigger issue with that weapon is that its particle effects are so badly optimized that a great % of people would experience FPS issues when facing a player using it. I know when I had my old PC my FPS's dropped as low as 10 when I encountered someone using it. Now even with a great pc my fps's still drop by 20-40 when I see people using it. That is simply not ok.

Ignoring the fact that you confused the Darwin Danger Shield with the Razorback (which for me is a pretty good and balanced item), the darwin danger shield completely defeats the purpose of Headshots, it nullifies sniper vs sniper battles because anyone wearing it will have the advantage and it's simply a stupid item that should have never been rebalanced IMO, the old version was fine as it was. If they made it so you have extra health and dmg resist but still die in 1 hit for headshots I would be cool with it.

Bottom line is, there are broken weapons in the game, there are weapons that should never under any circunstance be allowed in a competitive setting because they go against the competitive aspect itself, they are gimmicky, they destroy base game mechanics, they cause technical issues, they can be exploited, they don't reward any sort of skill, etc etc, there are various reasons some weapons shouldn't be allowed.

Maybe this is why people aren't overly enthusiastic about you making a "reasons why unlocks are banned" video :D

Darwin's Danger Shield is the one which grants you 25 extra health and 15% damage resistance to bullets, in exchange for 20% extra splash damage. You're thinking of the razorback I imagine.

EDIT: God fucking dammit Kaneco.

I don't this community is retarded enough to make that an unpopular opinion.

(I hope)

I made a post but i dont think i came across as having an inferiority complex enough so it's never going to see the light of day on reddit:

I think the best thing for TF2 would be making CTF playable.

I wrote a mod a few years ago that added configurable return timer, touch returns and flag throwing and made it so you can't cap without your flag in base. I added it to instagib (except flag throwing) and it was much more fun than stock CTF but I don't think it ever got used outside of iCTF.

If people want to play with something like this, I can dig it out and update it so it works again.

There are a few broken weapons in the game, but those will be guaranteed bans. The number of bans can be fleXed based on whether the number of broken weapons goes up or down. If weapons have a 100% ban rate that is a clear message to Valve that they need to be changed.

Having an eXtensive BAN list like ESEA removes a lot of the choice from TF2. The Darwin Danger Shield does have a big impact on sniper v sniper battles, but if Jarate is allowed is the sniper really gonna run the Darwin? If it's a HL game, do the run Darwin, Razorback, or Jarate?

One of the things that makes people passionate fans of watching dota is the fact that you can be an armchair captain. This was really hammered home for me while at the last International. You got a ton of nerds watching players that are wayyy better than them at a game, and throughout the whole event the spectators are all chatting with each other: I think they should have picked/banned this, I think they should have built this item instead of that....

It creates a conversation about the game and how the teams approach it instead of just arguing about what scout has better aim.

there is no answer to this debate (that's why it pops up again every couple months...)

some people want tf2 to be more about traditional shooter skills (clicking on people, movement, positional advantage, focus fire)

some people want it to be more about countering your opponents by changing classes and weapons

nobody is right or wrong

the quickfix lan was absolutely awful and the ban was a sign of people not liking it, not 6v6 as a community being stubborn

Why not play the game as completely separate games in the same way people play Highlander as a different game from 6s? If you change the whitelists to an extreme degree, you can turn the game into a completely different beast and set up different ladders/leagues with whatever game you please. Classic6s, Unlock6s.

I don't get it how we should copy the moba method of pick/ban in a competitive setting. FPS's have been around for 20 years (?) and Competitive FPS's for almost as long and I have literally never heard of any competitive FPS using the pick/ban system for anything other than maps. Then again there haven't been many FPS's with different changeable items, but tf2 competitive has its own merits even if valve (or the pub community) won't acknowledge it and we shouldn't change just to appeal them.

I do agree however the pick/ban method could work in HL if all weapons were perfectly balanced from the start, which they aren't. And it would probably never work in 6s because there are weapons that simply would never work in 6s even if they were balanced on pubs/HL.

And as I said in my first post, I'm for more diversity, both in terms of maps and weapons, but there are things which will simply not work in a competitive setting and I will never support them unless they are changed.

Esea has an extensive ban list? Maybe try ETF2L which just 2 years ago was full vanilla + medlock. And just 3 seasons ago they introduced unlocks like the gunboats. We have come a long way so far and we are getting more liberal in the use of unlocks and I have always been very supportive of that. I think HL has the perfect weapon bans and map pool for a person making the transition from pub. But I also think some HL allowed weapons would be destructive in a 6v6 environment.

I don't get the appeal of dota, I tried LoL back in 2009 when it was starting out, I forced myself to try dota more than once and I have also tried a bunch of other mobas, I don't get any joy from it ( at least from what I have tried so far) so I wouldn't want to see tf2 competitive change to dota settings, I also wouldn't just base myself on an entire different genre of game. And I'm sure not everyone likes mobas.

That approach can already be made with the current whitelists both in HL and 6s, my HL team discussed plenty of times what items to use or not use and what we should do according to that.

Assuming people would actually want to play this game type, it would only succeed in broadening the distance between pub and comp even further.

I just want this game optimized. That's all.

do you have an actual argument? it's the best way to have items in the game while having control and gives raw info on what's actually overpowered to valve

oh wellyoure dumb/bad why do ibother