jesus dude if you can't handle a skill-indexed engineer shotgun that gives you infinite ammo if used right you really are a bad player who's being coddled

it doesn't one-shot. it doesn't drain uber or cloak. it doesn't heal your sentry. it's just a fucking shotgun that rewards good aim. you're still a 125 HP class that no one in their right mind chooses in 6s except on lasts and gravel pit (if that was still played).

and you know what? in those rare moments people will just pick the default shotgun because it won't drain the metal supply that's also used for buildings (did you forget about that part?)

it's not overpowered in any format, not even 1v1. it's just a case of whoever makes these arbitrary bans not giving a shit and trying to downplay engie, and you know it.

I feel like the pick/ban system should include an option to vote on using a league's whitelist (ie:UGC,ESEA etc.) This would keep somewhat experienced competitive players satisfied and if newly competitive players don't like all of the sudden bans, they could vote against it. It would be players' vote whether or not there would be huge restrictions. The only problem being it would waste a bit more time during the voting session, and if whether or not Valve will add support for 6v6.

This sounds like a fun idea for a random drunken in-house pug at 3 am. You do it once, realize what happens, and then laugh about it after.

Unfortunately, it is both way too inconsistent and way too unfriendly to spectators - which means that it has no business in serious leagues such as CEVO or ESEA. There are much better ways to reinvigorate competition than this. Why would anyone EVER want to play medic seriously in a pick/ban system?

Besides, we don't need to enforce new policies that will alienate a nice chunk of the experienced player base. We were barely able to keep ESEA as-is.

Pick/Ban discourages newcomers because, unlike dota, you don't have access to every weapon in the game from the start. Granted, weapons are really cheap but still.

League is the same way, except when you play in tournament mode, you have access to everything.

hey yo,

sorry to bump this, but after watching the no-whitelist chaotic valve's game... games, i was thinking about this again; i'm no programmer, but would it be at all viable to create a system that does the following:

1) allow each team ~5 weapon bans from the entire unlock pool
2) allow each player to choose x unlocks from the unbanned pool for themselves only (4 seems like a good number to me? ~3 for each slot + 1 for offclass, or 4 for mainclass) which are revealed to the other team once everyone has chosen, not restricted by what other players pick (i.e all 12 players could choose the gunboats if they really wanted)
3) restrict unlocks available to each player ingame to only their selected 4 (this part seems awkward to do)

i honestly think this is worth at least trying as a good middle ground between the current whitelists and the everything-allowed games, since it deals with a lot of problems:

-remembering/learning what unlocks are allowed in different leagues, essentially unifying a whitelist (fuck if i know all of what's legal in etf2l any more)
-allowing teams to attempt new strategies without having a bloated whitelist
-possibly providing data for which weapons are always banned/never used for balancing (low chance but yeah)
-still being able to weed out overpowered weapons (see: bfb)
-this:

with the unlocks limited to 4 per player and revealed at the start, you can allow teams to try curveball strategies while still letting the opposing team prepare for them

imo if this works it'd make comp a little more accessible since people won't be asking why x is banned or is x legal in y league, along with slightly increasing the very low chance valve introduces 6s to matchmaking, since even if the meta stays pretty much the same we won't be cutting out half the weapons in the game (even if they won't be used, it'd be weird to see an official format where a large chunk of the game's weapons aren't allowed for some reason)

thoughts?

I think it'd be a good idea to update comp.tf with a small description of why "this" weapon is banned.

Don't make TF2 into a MOBA. We've played this gamemode for seven years now, and now Valve wants us to fundamentally change the way we play this game. But what do we get out of it? A fucking retarded game and Valve will probably still not give a fuck about us. They didn't care about us for seven years, they are not going to start caring now.

using pick/ban instead of whitelists does not turn a game into a moba

how do we know it'll 'fundamentally change' into a 'retarded game' without trying it? i get the feeling class lineups/meta will stay pretty much the same with maybe a couple of fringe strats emerging every now and then, except the format will be more compatible with the rest of the game due to not cutting out most of the weapons that are part of it; maybe that'll get valve to notice since it'll be more presentable to the average player? either way, what's the harm in testing it?

Adopting a pick/ban system is definitely a step towards more MOBA based gameplay. But unlike MOBAs, the gameplay in TF2 doesn't revolve around strategy, it revolves around mechanical skills, deathmatching skills, gamesense and positioning. In MOBAs, the gameplay revolves around strategies, which are realised by the picking of heroes. Unlocks, in comparison, don't have near the same effect on gameplay that heroes do in Dota, because of several reasons:

Most unlocks aren't balanced for 6v6 (or at all).
Most unlocks are useless/gimmicks.
The stock weapons can't be banned.

Because of these reasons, the pick/ban system for unlocks in TF2 becomes more of a gimmick than something that actually dictates the flow or structure of the game. Since most unlocks aren't used at all, you wouldn't ban them. This leaves us with a selection of a few unlocks that are actually worth banning, which makes the pick/ban phase very bland in comparison to Dota. Also, since you can't ban stock unlocks, there's nothing you can ban to make a team with strong DM weaker. TF2 doesn't revolve around strategies that are realised by unlocks, and banning unlocks have little effect on the game in most cases. It will still be a DM based game, and a pick/ban system only provides with superficial changes to the flow and structure of each match. But I fear the day a team who can't deal with kritzkrieg just opts to ban it in every game so they don't have to adapt.

Start with a "sane" banlist just to take some of the effort away.
Nominate weapons to un/ban.
Everyone votes whether to ban/unban nominated weapons.
If a given weapon is nominated and switched more often than not, change the "sane" banlist to reflect that.

This is the only thing I've read that doesn't have some really bad problem for TF2. Pick/ban doesn't work when both teams use the same items, voting on every single weapon every match takes too long, personal opinion lists end up unupdated, any set number of bans per team will fail to reflect the number of broken items in the game, captain bans will reflect individual preference, etc.

Why don't we actually try this in a league setting to see how it goes. Maybe work it out with UGC to try something like this. Maybe then we can get some Valve backing and see how it goes from there. It can't hurt to try and while we keep saying they won't do anything, that's a (very) educated guess. Regardless we should try it just incase they are feeling nice

5 Bans for each class
Maybe 2 picks for each slot of each class?

The problem with a pick ban system for TF2 is you can't have a standard ban amount for each class. Scout and soldier have dozens of weapon options while Engineer has a handful, you can't have scout ban 5 of his weapons and ban 5 out of the 10 weapons for engineer.

Looking at all ideas of a pick/ban system, it comes down to limiting every players ability to play what they want. And this ties into the difficulty of organizing a matchmaking system for the 6s format, the format itself is pretty oddball. If we wanted to see 6s in a valve standing, it'd have to be something like 2 per class limit for every class (including demo and medic) and then having some stats calculator seeing what weapons are doing the most damage, being used the most, etc. (outside of stock) and then looking at rebalancing the weapons from there. A pick ban system limits the game, similar to how a class-ban limits Arena Respawn; if snipers and soldiers continue to get banned in A:R, the game can never really grow.

The idea of bans themselves just hinder growth, and whatever weapons obviously hinder that growth (Beggar's Bazooka, Short Circuit, Baby Face Blaster) by being stupidly strong/counterproductive can then be expressly viewed by valve as such, and then nerfed/balanced.

I absolutely would not leave unlocks up to democracy, especially at this point in time.

There are (apparently) 135 stat-unique weapons in TF2. Out of all of those, I think I can count 6 unlocks (Pain Train, Gunboats, Crusader's Crossbow, Kritzkrieg, Ubersaw, Escape Plan) as some sort of useful utility to warrant frequent usage that isn't completely off the wall. There are other unlocks like Chargin' Targe, Eyelander, Wee Booties, Force of Nature, Direct Hit, Concheror, Liberty Launcher, Righteous Bison, Black Box, Shortstop, Scottish Resistance, Overdose, Vaccinator, Blutsauger, Buff Banner, etc that simply don't see a whole lot of usage either because the item doesn't do enough to warrant using it for an extended period of time or that it would just be better to use stock. Then we have what I'm going to call "community questioners"; weapons that have split the community in different sections concerning the weapon's balance such as the Quick Fix and Loose Cannon. Let's total the weapons I've mentioned up:

6 frequently used "safe" unlocks
15 niche unlocks
2 "community questioners"
=
23 weapons

That's just for the standard 6s classes, and those are just the most frequently used/talked about weapons when we do talk about them. There are still outliers like the Market Gardener, all-or-nothing weapons like the Loch n' Load (although Benroads and I in our autismical behavior did a little testing on this and it can do stupid numbers even with damage spread off), and THEN we have weapons for utility classes like the Backburner, KGB, and Cloak & Dagger (pyro, heavy, and spy respectively). At this point in time where the community population is shifting, I don't think it's at all wise to individually test each and every weapon we've got (because that actually does get complicated) nor do I think it's any better to leave weapon pick/ban decisions in the hands of the majority, let alone on a game-to-game basis. Hell, if I had my druthers we'd be testing vanilla 6s in comparison to cinnamon (vanilla + paltry useful unlocks) play instead but eh.

Do you guys think this is true?

New maps definitely bring in new strategy, but would you say players come up with new strategies the rest of the time?

Normally certain strats require certain picks or routes a team takes to out dm or out maneuver the other team. Which all comes down to dm, or "mechanical skills."