In starcraft, it was not possible to balance the game, so leagues created maps to do the balance work.

In TF2, it's not possible to balance the game, and 5cp maps are still the same/follow the same basic concepts :
each zone (especially mid to 2nd) has :
-one choke point
-one flanking route
-one gimmicky access near the choke point
-last point is easily defended from very close to the spawn

so when a team of six players needs to spread to cover only 2 zones, no wonder that people get good at it, and pushing can't be done.

I say that map makers can improve the game by changing the basic formula

for example, each zone could have:
-2 similar (or even symetricalchoke points
-A third flanking access far away from said choke points
-Last spawn is not on the far end of last point but on one side / attackers have height advantage pushing into last
-defenders holding last spawn faster than attackers like on koth

but maybe a totally different thing could be done. In any case, creating new maps that are just reskins of old map design concepts will not get the game anywhere.

Yes. Valve has spoken loud and clear. Have you played and experienced the train wreck that is supposed to be "Competitive MatchMaking"?

on what earth is that not a fucking prime case for banning that shit thats literally aids

How can you still be this blind? I hate having to derail the conversation even further, but we began our wait for "a major competitive update" in 2013. When it finally came out 3 years later it was complete garbage and too little, too late. During the wait to that, we've had some of the notoriously worst updates that have done nothing for neither the casual community, nor the competitive one.

Do you seriously, seriously still believe that your almighty Valve to come and bless us with a game saving update that will land us on the front page of Twitch every hour and give us weekly LANs?

b4nny, it really scares me how you're one of the most popular people in this community, and therefore have a huge effect on your followers, yet you're this backwards minded.

B4nny i challenge you to a debate on the pros vs cons of allowing more unlocks and all that entails. We can keep it civil and do it on stream so all the peasants can be in the loop. Your move.

i really hate it when theres beef in such a little community like this one.

Before you answer this question banny, it should be reworded. Of course you don't think there are going to be just one or two updates that solves these issues. You think it'll take time. I understand that you're fine with it taking a while to ultimately reach a point where we wouldn't have to ban any weapons. What about, however, the weapons in this game that can NOT be balanced and that can not be fun to play against even if changed, unless they were revised to the point where nobody would use them anymore (aka not "balanced")?

Can you explain how to go about some of those weapons? how can something like the beggars bazooka, air strike, or parachute ever be balanced if you were to keep in mind what makes soldier as fun, challenging, unique, and balanced as it is? Do you think people play soldier in competitive to sit in the sky and spam rockets or even to shoot multiple rockets at once, or is it because of the unique element of soldier that only arena shooters (or a mix of arena shooters and other fps's) might offer? I personally enjoy the unique and challenging part of soldier. To reiterate, you can suggest that it takes skill to use the beggars or airstrike, but is it really the same feel that makes tf2 the mix of arena shooter it is?

You can add all these weapons and also balance them, but why? Why would you make an fps game, especially one that already has a diverse selection of classes, more moba-esque in the sense that picking weapons is one of the main strategies? That was never the fun part of tf2, and it never will be. It has nothing to do with being afraid of change; it has to do with change in the wrong direction, the direction that everyone including yourself never enjoyed. You're lying to yourself if you disagree with the last sentence, because you constantly complain about specific weapons used in hl and how they should've never been implimented in the game. That's almost word for word from one of your streams a few months ago, btw.

I think it comes down to what valve does, as a lot of weapons are stuck banned because they are simply too OP.
We can't change much without valve changing things.

And when valve does tweak a weapon, some way of testing these weapons through scrims/pugs without them cutting in mid season possibly being OP.

this may be the smartest thing ever typed by a sniper main

and lucky for us we got to read it twice! thanks sam =D

we're in for a treat! a third time!

I think the way you would go about balancing those weapons is by changing there core gameplay style to something more unique and fun, while still being fair. Although that's something that's really difficult.

This conversation is getting confusing..

Is this about something players can do or something only Valve can do?

Is it about shrinking blacklists or making all weapons available (I don't think anyone's said the latter?).

It seems to me like people are more focused on shooting eachother down instead of actually talking about what Mr. Slin has brought up. Maybe there needs to be a more focused conversation by breaking it into parts (eg. (1) What do we want to accomplish? (2) Who do we want to accomplish this - players or Valve, etc)...

This conversation is about weapon balance, not matchmaking or tournaments. It's fair for now to be under the assumption that we will continue to play on 3rd party platforms. But even then it's still a worthwhile pursuit because it introduces more freedom for play style variations, which I find valuable. The next major competitive update will certainly have weapon rebalances, just as the last one did. I'm saying we should be as involved in that process as we can be by generating valuable experience-based feedback from use in a serious competitive setting. The results of that process have already been seen in the last update through changes to the Quick-Fix, Cozy Camper, Wee Booties, Iron Bomber, etc, all of which were changed to more happily sit within our 6v6 meta. Absolutely none of those could have been properly changed unless those items were thoroughly tested (they were all legal in seasons of ESEA). By forfeiting your participation in the process you should also forfeit your complaints, because you're engineering a system that leaves Valve to solely gather feedback from casual players and reddit tantrums. I'm not okay with that.

Maybe valve are just really good at talking to these people irl

Remember when valve was going to buff the reserve shooter :)

And because of feedback from the competitive scene they didn't. Now people are arguing for circumstances where changes like that could more easily happen.

i want a notarized letter from valve that says "unless you play an entire esea season with the vitasaw allowed none of your opinions hold any weight"

im getting sushi with my mom and there is nothing you can do about it

I think the rescue ranger is a good weapon
really opens up a lot of options when positioning sentries and essentially give them a small health boost. Believe me any competent demo and soldier can take it down. Even when rangering the gun into spawn your taking a big risk when you might need to go scout or soldier when they bait the point. and then rebuild it to level 3. it might be annoying but it increases engies defensive viability without breaking the game. I really believe off classes in there right situation keep teams more aware while breaking stale mates.

best post in the thread

the demoman nerf and the medic speed buff were both awful for the class balance/speed of gameplay in tf2

The fact that your completely fair and logical conclusion with reasonable weight to its merit is still perceived as optimistic at best and not actually feasible just shows how great of a job valve has done at keeping the communities trust

I'm willing to believe that doing this all would pay off in half a year (oh nevermind even more haha) but the fact that there's no transparency of what actually has impact on updates unless we have a middleman explain it (as you seem to be doing) just shows how seemingly disconnected valve is from the competitive community as a whole, which can make being open to change as the ones slin suggests extremely difficult because it's banking on putting all your trust into a company that has let me down so many times in the past year, and I imagine many other people feel the same way.

confirmed

https://twitter.com/4G_b4nny/status/817482932340355076

coud that shit be any sadder lol ...
i mean the actual ppl that had a brain and moved gears that went on to that initial meeting all realized what was going on and said fuck it after a while, now we have to deal with the leftovers that post shit like that

Only a sith deals in absolutes... Heh

But honestly, Slin brought this up in the context of attracting players, but it seems like that's tangential to weapon balance. Pardon my confusion.

@b4nny
The unsuitable part is you're not even being remotely satirical. You legitimately think that if somebody doesn't agree with you on this topic, they don't want the game to move forward--they like the same old tf2 and that won't get us anywhere. I agree that it won't get us anywhere, but like I said in the previous post, there's another direction to take BECAUSE of the way valve works not only as a company, but also because their specific tf2 team is so slow, impractical, and to be frank, not very intelligent (even when given advice). I really hope you recognize that you can't follow the steps of playtesting a large list with tf2's specific team.

Allowing broken, game-changing weapons into competition is basically forfeiting your fun now to potentially better the game a year or so down the line. It's not surprising that a lot of people aren't on board with that idea. Most people struggle to maintain interest in this game for even a fraction the time b4nny has. For people who don't use this game as their primary method to earn money (almost everyone in the entire game), it's questionable to ask them to basically act as martyrs for the future of the game.

You're being dramatic as always. Are items like the Rescue Ranger, Jarate or Cow Mangler really "forfeiting your fun?" They've hardly changed the overall flow of the game and only expanded the viability of different playstyles. Increasing your tolerance to change slightly is not remotely the same as martyrdom.

Yes.

Literally every mechanic about those 3 items listed has an even more extreme parallel in OW lol. At least we know the true solution: if we pay everyone to live in the shadow of a big streamer they'll be willing to forfeit their fun! :o

Accusing people of being dramatic, yet posting stuff like that on twitter.:thinking: