>weird pugs
i'm in

Set em up on the weekend, i'm down to do some weird shit

Maybe someone in the community should try and open up a dialogue with valve. Last bit of direction we got from them was second hand from sal and extine, and basically said "you guys should maybe do what dota does". We arent designers, and there is no one there to really make the decisions for the competitive community. There is a just a lot of bickering, and then nothing really happens.

The execution of the pick/ban was pretty much as vague and the instruction. we gave it half an attempt, valve didnt even acknowledge it, then we all forgot about it/called robin walker a cunt. Im not super sure how invested robin and valve are in competitive tf2, but its probably worth reaching out to them.

I'm down. Can we try my idea of two gunboats pocket soldiers and demo on the flank?

There's no better standard for 6v6 that will make it more enticing than Highlander. Therefore there isn't any point to adding pub garbage to 6v6 for the sake of pandering. Enjoy 6v6 for what it is and understand that it's a niche mode.

Dividing the community between two leagues last season was a huge blow to 6s.

Current registration for open divisions
ESEA: 9 teams with about 13 days left
CEVO: 24 teams with about 6 days left

Summer usually has a lower turnout but these numbers are pretty bad.

Always wanted to do this, so I'm down.

Oh man, so glad you posted this. I've been thinking a lot about 6s and tf2 in general.

Can I make a few selfish requests for this group?

Could the group please toy around with class limits? These have remained pretty much untouched in the majority of the 6s community. By removing these limits and properly documenting the results we can provide a compelling case to valve that could really improve the game in pubs and in competitive. If the best strategy does turn out to be 4 demos + 2 medics we need to document why that is, why that is/isn't fun for players and healthy for the game and what can be done to correct this. If four heavies passing sandviches around on last is too powerful, why? What can be done to fix this? (It's a shame the sticky nerf isn't still in place because it would be interesting to see what effect that has on an unrestricted team roster.)

Allow some universally accepted shitty unlocks. I know it would be aids to play with them, but show how the wrangler/pomson/GRU/whip can turn games into stalemates (IF they can) because I hope that if the community provides a strong case for why these weapons are not beneficial to the game, Valve will listen. If our results are from playtesting and not just theorycrafted forum bitching I think we might get more of a response.

Play different game modes. Play ctf, play special delivery, attack/defence, I won't as you to go as far as play territorial control but experiment with what makes these modes fun/boring and how they could be improved. Flag throwing?

I know it would be a pain, but try to implement the pick/ban system valve finds so comforting, just to humor them. Along with bans, have players submit reasons for why they banned that particular weapon, whether it be crit-a-cola (unfair advantage for one scout to have over another at minimal cost) or pomson (easily spammable with a large hitbox that drains ubercharge, the most vital mechanic in the game) and present the findings to valve. Let's not think of the pick ban system as something we are going to implement into tf2 forever, but lets just use it as a tool right now to determine what weapons have problems.

Those are my two cents, I would love to help out with the pugs myself, but unless we're testing the effect playing from New Zealand has on the game, I'm pretty useless. I think proper rebalancing of a few classes and weapons could go a long way toward making competitive tf2 look more like something they want to support in valve's eyes. Let's not make comp tf2 more like a pub, let's try to change tf2 for the better, pubs and competitive.

EDIT: Sorry guys please don't test this stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-lWvsdynJc&feature=youtu.be&t=7m8s

I don't think your conclusion from these numbers are good at all. Surely you know how many new teams spring up on the last day of signups? Not to mention all the teams that ESEA has hidden because they don't have anyone paid up yet.

I would also argue that the split was not a huge blow overall, maybe to ESEA alone. But that's not for here.

Maybe I'm crazy here, but I'm pretty against changing a gametype that I find a lot of fun just to get a potential increase in popularity. I'd rather play another year of 6s as it is than get 3 years out of it but with changes that make things slower.

An easy way to make 6s more popular would be to unban things like yhe powerjack, gunslinger, or GRU. People who love pyro, engineer, and heavy would be more inclined to play 6s if they can play their favorite class effectively. To me, that sounds like the least fun change you cluld possibly make.

I'm all for weird pugs to see if there are any interesting things that can be done with 6s, but I'm firmly against changing negatively the game I enjoy for the sake of a few more years of life.

nothing is going to replace current competitive 6s unless it works *as well or better
i think the point of this kind of pug is to find out what works *because nobody does jack shit otherwise

I've been dissecting the principles of what we know works in the gamemode of capture point and to be honest, I don't see why it can't work. Lack of resources in the giving-a-shit department is a huge factor, so half-assing it is why we didn't see any empirical information after trying it. Designing the pick/ban system would definitely be hard and would need code to prevent violations. But I can already see how I would design it myself to implement the features. Just the parameters of what to allow, who gets to choose, what's off the table and what isn't will be the most difficult part.

Let's scrape the top of the idea. Some things we know to be true like height advantage triumphs all in most situations, among other things that escape me. So we use classes that can capture such advantages. Soldier, demo, scout; all capable of reaching higher elevations fast. We need heals to live, since living is the primary objective besides capturing points, so we must keep at least 1 medic. You need to be alive to attack and defend. You can't kill yourself in the process. That leads to what we know as a reset/wipe, an the game typically doesn't go anywhere.

Deathmatching has always been an important factor, again because we need to kill things quickly and efficiently to capture points as quickly as possible. The idea is to capture a point before the enemy team spawns, so you've got 20 seconds of time to fight, and about 14 seconds of time to do whatever the fuck it is you guys planned to do before the enemy team can recuperate. But is it this we need to change? No, it could be that we just need to educate because if we changed that then we might as well play a different gamemode.
Then again, we go to the unreasonable issue of restricting weapons and such to keep the game pure and free from gimmicks. But Valve has done their fair share of updating to make sure it's less gimmicky and more useful for players to go ahead and play with new things without fear of being a scrublord. When people encounter it in different forms such as playstyles and off-classes, it's hard to accept that to sway from their norm. We've seen some very interesting things from the really creative minds in top-level play using utility classes, so the potential to use them is there. These plays have taught us that adjusting tempo in a playstyle can make an advantage. See, overbuffed heavy turtling last, sentry gun, switching off soldier/scout. All of these essentially gimps your overall speed as a team (taking a risk by not playing with all optimal speed/damage classes) but if done right can serve as an advantage or a big disadvantage.

It's a dangerous loop of finding the most optimal scenario that lets us take in more ideas to use different weapons Valve has given us, bullshit or not because a lot of people don't want to try it.

Knowledge is power in the game, and can be just as good as an uber charge if you play your cards right. I think the pick/ban system was actually pretty relevant, because you can pick and choose what your team has to work with and what they can't work with. Knowledge extends outside of the game by nature, because you can instinctively predict what a player is likely to do in a certain scenario. A prime example, I remember Mangachu alone being a huge pain in my side when I scouted in IM because he always found the time to hide and surprise us, and my team failed to compensate for that. If you can manipulate the opposing team's strategy by restricting the potential game changing weapons from play, you can favor yourself a better chance against a better team. With the pick/ban system, it forces each player to know something different besides "go here shoot that." several times per game. Imo, thus raising the skill ceiling across the board. With that in place, you effectively create a whole division of players. It adds to the repertoire each player should be capable of demonstrating and utilizing each round. Overall, making the game more cerebral and competent with different weapon mechanics.

In the end, is it important that we try to use different lineups at will, or bend our own rules with a pick/ban system? Hopefully this group helps figure it out, because by golly we're getting stale doing what we're doing.

argument pls

Just remember the current map pool is designed around the current 6v6 meta. Two demos MAY work but let's not bang our head against a wall trying to test 16 stickies on a map like gullywash.

I mostly agree with the things I've excluded form this post, but I want to extrapolate on the general idea of the pick/ban system and it's design.

I think playing around the with the class limits inside the pick/ban system would be interesting. In different contexts of gamemodes, manipulating the other team's lineup will incite a whole new spectrum of new anticipated possibilities that make the game worth watching. These things happen inside of our 6v6 gamemode, but it's almost always predictable and unexciting because. To me at least. Not to say watching clockwork is boring though.

In the pick ban system, I imagine two core things to select from to ban. Classes and Weapons. There's some strategy involved trying to inherently throw the other team off by cutting off one of their dependent classes for the map and gamemode.

This is what I imagine going through the heads of a competent captain in the pick/ban system.
"Restrict us to 1 engineer on ctf_turbine? Ok, you guys don't get homewrecker and we use two of our class bans to completely remove spy from the game. Don't have to worry about backstabs or sappers, but we left our door open for demo ubers. But with our lineup, there's room for pyro and I think that will neutralize it."
That's just a taste, I'm getting more and more interested in it, so I think I'm going to try and attempt to design something this weekend.

Do I think the world should change because I have a different opinion? No, but I think we have the capacity to try and not make all of what we've created pointless because we run out of players who get tingly clicking on things in the same, mostly predictable manner. It'll happen, it always does. TF2 Imo is a big uncracked shell of new amazing things to happen and is the only FPS that fundamentally gets away from it because we have so many classes and so many options to play against each other; it's dumb we limit ourselves in such a way.

Its also the fact that valve balances 3-4 weapons every 6 months or so, if that. That is just not enough. With the recent sticky nerf removal, you can be sure valve will be even MORE conservative with the changes they make to the game.

When the community cant count on valve to respond to weapon imbalances in a good amount of time, we're forced to take it upon ourselves to try and make the final decision. And again, we're not designers. We often make the choice that benefits us the most in the short run (which almost always ends up being keeping the status quo).

Which is why valve is gonna be required at some point. But, if all you want to do is see what currently works, I dont think anyone will stop you.

I would love to see this happen and eventually make an impact. Whenever it's come up in discussion, I've tried to make a lot of the same points you've listed, so it's a definite relief to see another person/group with goals like this.

I am extremely interested in seeing this happen. Whenever there is a change that affects 6s, I always want to play around with them and actually test them out. 6s as it is now is fine but I always think there is some changes that people aren't really willing to test out that could make the gamemode better or just more fun for people.

Is this exclusively geared at the 6s format?

For the time being. It's what I personally would like to focus on, I'm not really fond of Highlander myself. Though if people want to use the resource of players to test out some new Highlander rules or something, I'm not going to get in the way or anything.

I'm going to let the group stay public for the next few days until, idk say Sunday or a little later if this discussion keeps going. Then I'm going to switch the group to private and begin bleeding out the less-serious members and pick out some other leaders and supporters who are willing to let us use a server and mumble for organizing the pugs down the road. By the way, I'm not sure if people have read on the Steam group, I'm not going to start becoming active with this group until around the weekend of July 5th.

dMenace, I'm very pleased to see this post and wish you the best of luck. I doubt I can play in any games or contribute during the times you're looking to host things, but I can definitely help publicize some of the games via post-produced casts.

If you send me the best demos from these pugs, I will cast them and showcase them for the sake of discussion. eXtine@eXtelevision.com

___

I've said a lot about my feelings regarding some sort of pick/ban system and I think it is a plausible route if players are opened minded.

It's somewhat understandable that a team scrimming for ESEA (SERIOUS BUSINESS) would get upset about practice being ruined by the other team running a pyro, but really that's the type of disruptive strategies that we need to see. I would love to cast a match and at the start-up be able to break down questions like that. This team runs a pyro versus this team's demoknight. That's really what Robin Walker was trying to get at in regards to 6v6.

I'm hoping to run into some TF2 employees and talk TF2 at TI4, but really I should plan another trip up to Valve afterwards. I'm more than willing to convey the communities thoughts on things as well as try and push Valve in the right direction once again.