BECAUSE VALVE WILL CARE ABOUT US THEN

please love us valve :c

People thought valve would be more likely to give this scene support if we had few/no weapon bans.

Because some people still think that unbanning the majority of the unlocks will make valve do balance changes for all of them with comp in mind, which has been proven false because Valve is noticeably out-of-touch with the competitive community. Keep in mind they nerfed unlocks like the bison.
Basically, everybody gave up hope when it comes to "If we cooperate with Valve, they will cooperate with us" except a few people who still cling onto their hopes that Valve will actively try to push competitive TF2.

I think it has been proven quite a few times that this is bs, no one is this delusional...

I don't know if it's just correlation or but I've seen a lot less of the "6's players can't deal with good class like pyro so they ban all his weapons" r/tf2 bullshit. So maybe it did work. Or maybe it didn't. But most of the newly unbanned unlocks aren't really used anyway because they suck

i think it has been proven quite a few times that marxism is bs, no one is this delusional

point is that people argue the extremes where a situation in which valve would cooperate with established competitive formats and their representatives is if people gave valve the opportunity to gain feedback of how gimmicky or broken some weapons are through extensive playtesting. now extensive playtesting is entirely subjective, which is why you're going to find these delusional people over and over again

It is a delicate balancing act that pits 2 different viewpoints and philosophies against each other with little hope of them coming together for the greater good, and I am not talking about balancing items.

In any competitive community, the goal should always be to push the limits of the game to produce the highest quality play possible. At this point in TF2's life, the comp community knows what items best fit that mold. Allowing items that are not compatible with 6's play means the quality of the competitive matches is lowered. Gimmicks and items abilities will begin to dilute the 6's gameplay and that should be avoided at all costs.

I just don't think Valve will ever agree with that logic or even consider it as a possibility. They want all items and classes available at all times while thinking they can fix the items that seem broken. Personally, I don't think it is possible to balance all the items (or even most items) in TF2 for 6's competitive play and keep the highest quality play. Valve's idea for 6's comp is basically a free for all. (MatchMaking)

A lot of bans are worth relooking at just because the ruleset/game/meta is different (E.g. sandvich used to heal heavy when he tossed it to the ground, minisentries were banned back when 2 engies were allowed and gravelpit was in rotation, the battalions backup used to build via damage taken).

Reviewing the whitelist used to be done regularly for esea but was stopped for a bit. And while im not a fan of unbanning unfun stuff just because they might not be overpowered, i think its a good idea to vote on whitelist changes periodically for the sake of trying to make the game more enjoyable.

At some point in it's development there was, and possibly still is, an entry for "strategy time" in the game's code. I always thought this might refer to an unlock banning phase or something similar, that would at least give the opportunity for them to gather structured feedback on the unlocks people least want to see used. Shame they never bothered with something like that.

your bannyBrain just isnt big enough to understand yet

Who says that? You? That's just you opinion and other people might see it differently.

Uhm sorry but you logic is just flawed here.
If you allow more weapons that definitely means more variety. Just by definition...
And mechanically? If you allow weapons that use game mechanics the other weapons don't use then yes, it does add something to the game mechanically.

I think asking to ban stuff, to take away options, without any good reason other than you don't see why we need them is pretty stupid.
More options to choose from is always better than less options if there isn't any real reason to not have certain options.
If some items turns out to be game breaking or too annoying you can still ban it no problem.
Took them like 2 days to ban the atomizer again last time. Big deal.
But having more weapons to choose from makes the game more fun and might breath some fresh air into a otherwise pretty stagnant meta.

So far I think the global whitelist has helped a lot more than it hurt the game and I don't really see why you're complaining about it?
Maybe you can name some specific items that are bothering you?
With the vague statement you made it looks like you just enjoy complaining.

I can think of two well known players who are this delusional.

Because that's not how basically every other E-Sport works. In dota, you don't get to remove Eye of Skadi because its "unfun to play against".

yes but was dota 2 designed to be a hat simulator

i mean of all the examples of esports you could pick, you pick the one with an incredibly important pick and ban phase?

Good thing this game isn't an esport (with money in it) and we aren't the developers of this game so we don't have to worry about that!

if u dont like it quit tf2 xdddddd

yeah the big whitelist change was a good thing imo considering so many things had been banned since 2011ish. no matter how much shit you wanna throw at valve the game is easily the most balanced its ever been when you look at shit like old natascha, sandvich, dead ringer, escape plan, etc

Cow mangler, same mechanics, is played the same way that stock, appart from a few gimmicks like the charged shot that is really irritating to play against. Looks horrible. Takes away ammo management making roamer rotation sometimes inexistant, gives perma spam... It doesn't add any skilled mechanics, play with words if you want, but it's not variety if it doesn't change the way you would abord a fight. Plus I'd rather have a game orientated towards how poeple play individually and has a team rather that "what weapon you choose at the beginning of a round" like in ow...

You said it yourself, if it doesn't add anything positive to the game but has a negative effect or is annyoing to play against, why not ban it. I was talking more about the fact that I've seen people not wanting to ban stuff on the mere fact that they weren't blantantly overpowered and game breaking, even if they were unfun to play against.

I'm not even complaining, I'm just criticizing the approach of certain players supposed to be quite experienced regarding the whitelist...

TF2 had unlocks implemented for pub plays, it wasn't an esport until the community decided it would be one, and I'm sorry but if you think weapons like the eyelander, the sandman or the base jumper have a place in an esport I can't do anything for you...

>eyelander, the sandman or the base jumper

Eyelander is cool af and carry building is a core part of MOBAs. I'd love it if the eyelander was a core part of tf2 cause it would do a lot of cool shit. It'd make momentum more important but also increase the gamesense required because demo situationally would go from incredibly high value pick to mostly worthless use of a sac

Sandman is pretty shit but the ball mechanic isn't inherently flawed. Stuns are bad but honestly with the right mechanic behind it it could be cool. Something like "can't cap for x seconds" or something that makes it a team support weapon would be kinda cool

Base jumper allows more movement options which is good for tf2

tbh it sounds like you have a concrete notion of what TF2 is and refuse to let anything else be "esport" but that's honestly myopic af

wat

it would be a good idea to periodically change the whitelist if there were actual changes to the weapons made by valve ...
but nothing has changed since the last time, yet here we are again discussing it ...

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against theese weapons and I personnaly like to have them in the game, but we aren't talking about tf2 generally here, we're talking about 6s, and there kinda already is a notion of what 6s is

Unfortunately, if we as a community could get the tf2 team to actually listen to some of the suggestions that we can come up with for weapon changes, there would be less of a need for a whitelist. I, like many others, would like to see other things come into play, but some weapons like the pomson and reserve shooter don't make the game a fun one based on mechanical skill and teamwork, and instead create an instance of which team can cheese the other team harder. There are also so many threads of "weapon rebalance suggestion" related topics on this site it's utterly ridiculous. And some of them are so good as well.

For example, I remember pitching an idea to change the consumable items (crit a cola, sandvich, bonk, etc) to be a one-time use, similar to the razorback. Instead of having these recharge over X amount of seconds, just make that item a one-time use thing. Then there would be more of a possible pool for preference, where there isn't a clear cut "best" weapon combo. If you're trading extra bullets to finish off an enemy for a short stat boost where you can try and make a good play sounds much more interesting to me than "here comes the crit a cola'd scout with a pocket medic with a vaccinator, let's hope he doesn't just wipe our team like he did on mid since his drink recharged since the midfight".

It's just incredibly frustrating because some of the people that play the game the most know what problems there are and how to fix it, but without any actual follow through, the game will just continue to progress on the course that it has been for some time now, which is in a general downward direction. We wanted to believe that Matchmaking would be the thing that saved the game and brought more people into it, but the general consensus is that it simply wasn't up to everyone's already low expectations of valve.

i think the community could come up with really great balance changes to support the current iteration of 6's that we play, but valve clearly has no interest in supporting that particular version of the game (even if their in game mm is 6v6) so they wouldn't be interested in balance changes so specifically oriented around 6's. fwiw i dont think that they have the right mindset, but thats definitely the case right now.

Here's one line of thought that someone could potentially go down:

1) Banning weapons and creating class restrictions creates our own little pro mod, even if our game is only slightly different from the main game.
2) Pro mods tend to be unsuccessful as far as esports go, especially since you don't get much developer support for your pro mod until it gets really big. This also explains why we haven't had many weapon balances thrown our way.
3) Unbanning weapons will bring our game more in line with that of the existing competitive game (matchmaking), reducing the barrier of entry for new players to join.

We're all pretty aware that our pro mod is much different than the existing TF2 game though, so I'm not surprised that there is resistance to remove these restrictions.

To be honest, I think that most people who read these forums don't really care that we've created a pro mod, since they enjoy the pro mod. That said, everyone realizes our community is relatively small compared to the larger TF2 scene. Again, this is consistent with how pro mod populations typically go. There's conflict between people who want to keep the pro mod a pro mod, while others want to do away with the pro mod but bring everyone with them. It's weird.

If you really wanted to play a game with no unlocks though, I might recommend that you start your own league with no blacklist and no class limits... nobody has done that yet.

yeah sorry i projected a bit

might be I'm just bored of 6s but I honestly wish there were more weapons that created interesting gameplay dynamics. its a really delicate thing tho and I probably should put more thought into it, sorry.

I don't doubt that some people feel this way, but I don't think that's a real/difficult barrier for new players. Not using a weapon is pretty simple to adjust to.

If you're looking at getting new players into competitive I think you have to turn your attention elsewhere. The whole mechanic of working with a team is completely foreign to anyone who hasn't played competitive (proper pushing, holding, etc, you rarely see that in pubs - hell, you rarely see anyone uber decently in pubs).

Valve created the promod Slin. They could have worked harder and made unlocks work for everyone but they didn't want to.