At least keep natascha and sandman banned please. I wouldn't mind some jarate shenanigans mixing it up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7whwUtdA7E

at 0:11.

That's gonna be in the opposite: long-time players leave because they don't want to play against bias weapons
And friendly hoovy is still friendly hoovy, pubstomper scout with sandman and cleaver will still pubstomping, and no one give a sh*t about competitive. If pub players really feel interested in the competitive scene, they will find it out themselves

This problem relies on Valve, not us. If they want the community to use all of their weapons, then they have to listen to the community's opinions about the weapons and balance them around it. Too bad the developer is like "Meh, our ways are better..." and then they just do whatever they want; the way they "nerf" the Crit-a-cola already showed the amount of f*ck they have

And if you think unban all these weapons just to show Valve how they work in competitive games and then rebalance them, just like the "class limit" things you have argued 2 months ago, then you're so so wrong. The metagame has been developing so many years to became what it is today, there're reasons why this weapon banned or why no one run Pyro on mid; there's no need to go back to the ancient time and start it all over again, when they can just simply ask the community

you guys should dig in CTF, it has a lot of potential, the maps just suck

why would anyone want to ruin the only good things about TF2 by allowing these unlocks

Hey man just trying to include the entire community in the discussion this time around. Feel free to ignore the thread. We could always just do nothing and leave things as they are right now, but I know some people want to tweak the whitelist a bit between seasons.

i want the old whitelist back tbh

do nothing as in leave the really awful items blacklisted? sure sounds good. including the entire community is fucking retarded for a balance discussion. games are, and should be, balanced around top level play. if games used the entire community for input, CS wouldnt have the awp because it's "noob bc 1 shot kill."

like in reality this should be the invite captains or just invite community in general discussing this. not you making a post on a public forum asking any ape that can manage to slam his fists into his keyboard to give his 2 cents.

Right, I see where you're coming from, but I also got feedback like this:

Check out some of the feedback yourself:
http://www.teamfortress.tv/36168/global-whitelist-unveiled/?page=5#126

Anyways, I'm not trying to derail the thread. Just figured I'd make a post and open up a conversation is all.

Do you really see this and think anything besides "Wow, that was fucking retarded and should never happen"

First everyone complains that no one asked them before making the whitelist, now you complain that someone is asking you bout the whitelist.

Just shut up and play the videogame lol

I still don't understand why you are trying to push this Valve agenda. After listening to b4nny's stream tonight and you guys talking about the issue, I understand my opinion will not mean jack shit cause I am not in invite.

No matter how you want to sugar coat it, the fact is that the competitive TF2 community, as a whole, knows what items work and what items do not work to produce the highest quality TF2 gameplay for 6's. For you, to try and push or persuade us to change things to match Valve's vision for TF2 is a step in the wrong direction. 6's still revolves around player skill, for the most part. The more idiotic items you allow into that gameplay, the more you will decrease the raw skill of the players.

Why in hell would we want to degrade TF2 gameplay by listening to Valve's people who have no real competitive experience? Catering to the masses doesn't make the game better.

Unless you know of some amazing CTF map that can change the precedent of CTF maps being awful, I honestly don't see it possibly taking a seat among the 5cp and koth maps we already have

KOTH_BAGEL

I feel like you are mischaracterizing what I'm doing. I'm simply trying to get the entire competitive community to agree on something, and then I put my opinion out there to start the discussion. I then say "But we should definitely work towards shrinking the blacklist (expanding the whitelist) further, if for no other reason than reducing confusion" and then don't mention Valve at all. So I'm not sure where you're coming from, but that's besides the point.

The point is, I don't really care what we do. I'm just trying to get the community to talk about unlocks, and then make a decision heading into the next season. Sorry if it came off any other way. If you want to keep things the way they are, that's fine by me. At least we got to have a chance to have this discussion, which is the main complaint that we got last time we did this.

For the record, last time we put together a global whitelist I didn't make any decisions regarding which weapons were to be banned, and then when the community said they wanted to revise the list and add atomizer and base jumper to the blacklist I was more than happy with that.

For those of you guys who missed the discussion tonight, I think what we said was, let's add Rescue Range to the blacklist and maybe remove some stuff that doesn't need to be banned like the Solemn Vow.

What is the goal?

If having an open whitelist were some kind of panacea to convert the masses into competitive gamers then MyM would be overflowing with massive numbers. It's not.

I'm interesting in seeing other types of maps brought back in, AD, even some PL, but that's in MyM too and it makes little difference.

The 6v6 game isn't going to be made appreciably better by allowing an extra unlock or two and it could be made a lot worse if the wrong ones are let through, and the true nature of how an unlock changes the game often doesn't become apparent until a really important match. Remember the Quick Fix ESEA final. What reward is there for taking this risk?

Forget Valve making any decisions based around or supporting established competitive activity. They obviously still do not get it. It's clear now that MyM was a least-effort-required attempt to provide a feature Overwatch was offering, not the sea change we all hoped for in their attitude to competitive.

Why break something people have worked so hard to create and establish? If meaningful Valve support and active item balancing were going to materialise as a result of going no-whitelist I'd be for it, but those things simply won't happen.

https://i.gyazo.com/4d4c41abadd004661b14761a48ec0f48.png

https://i.gyazo.com/dbc0453f0e22be0f7e8ae36020b81b46.png

https://i.gyazo.com/f8b59231c828258baf63b08b3359146e.png

https://i.gyazo.com/15a753c4286ed8ea6d20a4c492b47993.png

https://i.gyazo.com/e1888260b6a3916b9f4217654756d3b3.png

https://i.gyazo.com/759e364484b5dfadabd0a56e42a05382.png

Yes

Cogent points, eloquently made. Keep it up...

You're among them.

Just to illustrate a bit more clearly what I was trying to say about this unlock, I think if it doesn't get used ahead of the ubersaw I don't think it's a problem. If it does though then I think you've lowered the skill ceiling for the game a bit, and with many unlocks across multiple classes that's a problem that builds up.

When you said airblast and minigun are also low skill, that's fine because heavy and pyro aren't first choice options. If disciplinary action or GRU were unbanned though we'd see Heavy a lot more and they're also relatively low skill and frankly boring as shit.

I think it should be a design goal for a game that takes competitive seriously to ensure low skill loadout options don't override other options that may be situational or reward higher skill. Pyro and to an extent Heavy are for people who are new to FPS games IMO and should be superceded by other classes as a player's skill develops. YMMV

Oh shucks Burtis!

Unbanning everything in the hope that valve will magically realise that competitive tf2 is the way of the future is not going to help matters. Having discussions about the fact that Valve has decided to let this game die rather than pull their socks up and compete with overwatch will not change the decision that Valve made.

The way I see the whitelist discussion is that everyone who still plays tf2 does so because they love the game a lot. Like, a lot. When you consider the potential opportunities and competition that is available in overwatch and compare it to this game which has always been a meme to the majority of people (most people are idiots to be fair), the weight of the actual enjoyment of the game must be the deciding factor for the people who continue to play it, cast it, write about it, volunteer for it and just generally contribute to the scene.

So you should cater the whitelist and the ruleset to those people, the ones who love the game, and do so in a way that will make their experience the best possible. For mine, this would involve banning the 10-20 weapons that are annoying as fuck and allowed on the current whitelist. Things like the loch n load, cow mangler, rescue ranger, etc. Other people might think differently.

But you should listen to those who continue to play the game as it is now, not those who want it to be a super popular esport with majors and high level tournaments every week, because most of the people who wanted that have gone to overwatch. I was one of those people, but valve has convinced me that it's never going to happen. Eventually they'll manage to convince everyone -- including you, b4nny.

have they even said anything?

Perhaps its a philosophy difference. I find the game more interesting with options that create alternative playstyles or expand the utility of classes to a degree where they offer some strategic variability. There are many items that should certainly remain banned, but there are also many items that can do such a thing without ruining the overall flow of the game. From the current whitelist there are probably only about 6 items that could still be unbanned without ruining the overall flow of the game, and that's all I would advocate for. We aren't ready for a clean slate just yet.

What you say about TF2 now mostly being populated by people that have an undying passion for the game is true, but some, including me, also can't ignore the huge potential for our competitive scene to make progress towards a better one. The fact that alongside all of this Valve have been slowly balancing weapons to fall more in line with competitive principles makes it seem like a fruitful endeavor. We know that they have a major competitive update coming, so why are we still acting like they've given up? If they haven't then I won't either.

https://i.gyazo.com/e1888260b6a3916b9f4217654756d3b3.png

sounds exactly like someone we know ..

This is the thing with your argument. You keep telling people about this promised land of a flourishing competitive scene but there is absolutely no evidence, not even a hint of that. Valve had MyM in beta for ages being tested by the top players in each region and then realeased it with litttle to no change at all. Most of their weapon rebalances in the last 1-2 years show that none of them can even be bothered to playtest the weapons or play the game at all. From a business standpoint it also wouldn't make sense for valve to use any of their resources on tf2's comp scene. A lot of members in our community have come to the (realistic) opinion that there is no chance for tf2 to become more than a hobby. And if you just accept the game as a hobby, it doesn't make sense to make it less fun by allowing the jarate or rescue ranger in the hope of a miracle."

GentlemanJon nailed it - "Why?" What would this accomplish and how? Is this meant to bring more people into competitive play? If so, is that through making the knowledge gap between regular play and comp smaller or because it will make watching/playing competitively more interesting (or some combination)?

Based on what the goal is, the strategies should be well thought out and not just by top invite folks if your goal is to do something that attracts people to competitive (more "regular" folks should be included).

I'm relatively new to the game (~500 hours) and I've been interested in playing competitively since about 300 hours in (at which point I started exploring various options for doing so - watching streams, videos, demo reviews, reading websites, focusing on specific aspects of my game, etc).

A few points from my experience:

1. Whitelist/blacklist hasn't had any impact on my ability to play PUGs or understand how they're played. If anything it's made it easier (fewer options means less to know).
   
2. Video and other resources don't make it a lot easier to into competitive play. They definitely teach the basics, but nothing compares to real-time feedback on play.
   
3. NA newbie mixes have been the best thing at preparing for competitive, it's awful to hear that they're struggling.
   
4. Playing PUGs has been more fun than I thought it'd be - I'm not great at this game, but I have had very few interactions with people that weren't positive. The only trouble is the lack of constructive advice (but that's hard to give in a PUG).

Sorry (I'm Canadian and so I'll say this often), but I don't think it's fair to go to a poll when you've asked what you characterize as a philosophical question as there's obviously no cut and dry answer. Everyone needs to be on the same page (what to accomplish and, at a high level, how) and I feel you're putting the chicken before the egg.

A couple random bits I wanted to toss in:
B4nny - If it's at all possible, please do a demo review now and again, even if it's of yourself. I've found them incredibly helpful in learning the ropes and are a step closer to real-time feedback than many other resources.

Slin - your Youtube medic videos have been helpful.

TL;DR:

Before going to a poll, I think it's best to figure out what you want to accomplish and how. After this, make sure the steps you'll take will accomplish your goals (ie. don't only go to captains of invite teams if you want to do something to attract regular folks to competitive - get other voices).

Personally, I've found getting into comp difficult. NA newbie mixes are the only real coaching system (and they're having trouble staying up) and this is the best way to teach people and get them started. The newbie teams would also be amazing to keep going.

ok but the obvious difference between the classically liked weapons like the gunboats and crossbow is that these add something interesting to the game, such as fat jumps and airshots while weapons that are classically hated like the rescue ranger for instance literally add nothing more than sitting in spawn shooting at a stationary object and changing when it dies

it barely makes a difference to the game but it seems like you're acting as if any of the stuff you guys added in the last whitelist were huge meta changing additions and unfortunately some people just can't deal with it, while the reality is that nobody even really gives a shit and it's just mildly irritating that we have to deal with minor inconveniences for what seems to be absolutely no reason - it's not like valve will see us using natascha and that'll be the tipping point

Then we see stuff like this and it's just old at this point, pretty sure we've been looking at a 'large competitive update' for about a year now, probs more, so at this point I reckon very few people actually give a shit, especially since every time we've been excited to see what it is, it's always been hot garbage - is it any wonder so many people have given up when after a full year valves vision of tf2 competitive still doesn't involve a functioning ranking system?

As long as people are hyped and viewers come in b4nny will be happy.

However, he cannot realize how obvious some problems are for the general majority.
Things like the fact that this game was made back in 2007 and it runs like absolute garbage on 400-500$ laptops when most modern games have 60-90 fps stable or the fact that an entire community of high skilled players is literally playtesting the game much more than them and has proven time after time that certain weapons need to be tweaked in order to be allowed in the game just proves how "passionate" the current TF dev team is about the game.

They are just disconnected from even the simplest problems that the game has, that's why I can't see myself having any high hopes for things like competitive TF2's future.

Someone wanna tell me how tftv is making all of these decisions about ban-lists and map pool and keeping thr game from evolving? Last time I checked hardly anyone in tftv even playes the game for anything other then casts anymore.

Which banned weapons would currently increase "strategic variability"? the ones that let scout jump 3 or 6 times? the ones that let engineer delete your projectiles or negate 66% of damage? the one where the sniper cant be countersniped? the ones where scout gets "get out of jail free" cards and stuns? the one where you spawn with uber advantage?
the only "strategy" that could be added would be the heavy to mid strat and im sure most people dont want that

I haven't followed streams in a while, so I'm not totally up to speed about the previous whitelists. Were jarate and whip ever simultaneously allowed? This is the only way I could see to expand the whitelist that might be fun, from my uninformed point of view at least. Jarate would give teams a fairly easy counter to heavy to mid. But on 5CP it doesn't seem to me like full time jarate sniper is worth a roamer, certainly not a scout, so I don't think it would devolve into a constant piss throwing match.
Maybe it would make everyone go sniper to mid, throw piss and suicide and then switch, idk. Could be fun I guess?