FAQ

Who is invited?
The event is public and everyone can stream it.

How long do we expect this to go?
It's really difficult to get people from around the world to meet at the same time. We're going to try to limit the meeting to an hour and have a hard cutoff at two hours.

Will TFTV stream it?
No as it doesn't match our usual casted content, but we're sure someone will be streaming it if you want to watch one of their streams.

Who is allowed to talk?
Anyone can type in the chat channel, but the voice channel will have limitations due to the number of people that we expect to attend. Anyone can listen to the voice channel, but the only people allowed to talk in the voice channel are MR SLIN (host), league admins, and premiership/invite players. If it gets too rowdy we'll impose more limitations so please keep it civil.

Who will be voting on the whitelist?
Ultimately the league admins will decide the whitelists for their respective regions using their league's rules. The goal of the meeting is to bring everyone together for a discussion so that everyone ends up with identical whitelists.

Which leagues will be attending?
ESEA, ETF2L, LBTF, ozfortress, UGC, TFCL. If you're not on this list and are a league admin who wants to represent your league, DM MR SLIN.

If I am a premiership/invite player and want voice permissions, who do I contact?

• ESEA - Tri or Saam
  
• ETF2L - Crasp or Aoshi
  
• ozfortress - Obla or Fozzlm
  
• LBTF - Aratinga or Boomer

Please try to arrange for voice permissions ahead of the meeting to help alleviate the inevitable rush come Saturday.

Meeting time is subject to change but many admins have already confirmed attendance.

so will anyone be streaming it?

I demand the entire philosophical questions thread be read out loud before any votes are made, so that the board kows what the community wants!

http://puu.sh/titUR/cf11b3adc7.jpg

Natascha.... that is all :)

Any Asian representative present?

No representatives (league admin or players) from AsiaFortress will be present at this meeting.

Will you be needing chat moderation?

Question: What is the reason or logic behind this meeting and having all leagues use the same whitelist?
What I mean by that is: What are we, the players, gaining from a unified whitelist of items across all leagues?

I guess I just don't see what benefit ESEA could gain from from OZFortress and ETF2L players using the same whitelist and vise-versa. How will such a thing benefit each community?

Not to derail your intended meeting issue, but the biggest issue TF2 has always had is not about items. Competitive TF2 needs more players in our communities. A meeting on how to merge the comp scenes or attract new players would seem to be a more meaningful gathering.

i think its to do with international LANs and showing unity among different communities, i might be wrong

ninja edit...

esea also uses a different ruleset with two matches a week on one map, each match being win limit 5, no win difference and having two maximum 30 minute halves and a potential golden cap with unlimited time limit

as opposed to how in etf2l for each official they play two maps each for a flat 30 minute maximum time limit and round difference of 5

i dont think one of these is necessarily better than the other but they are certainly not consistent across the different regions
we have agreed for the most part that two halves are too long for tournaments but aside from b4nny wanting to do 45 minute time limits (and then realizing that 45mins*3 means you can't always do a bo3 in 2hrs) no effort had been made to "standardize" this

SpaceCadet, I'd encourage you to volunteer your free time to do whatever you want with it! If you feel like there's a problem that's worth your time fixing, you're free to start that up.

I'm spending my free time organizing this because I think that it's important that we unify the competitive community. I've noticed that other esports have consistent rulesets around the world, and I wanted to make an effort to have something similar for the comp TF2 scene. I think that we have a long way to go, especially since we haven't reconciled map lists or even rulesets (Europe still plays best of two 30 minute maps while NA plays one map for up to 60 minutes) but it's a work in progress. The whitelist was the first step and considerably easier to manipulate than the rulesets or map lists. We can consider talking about those things in this meeting if we have time.

Also Bear we're working towards it but progress is relatively slow since I don't exclusively work on this in my free time. We talked about mirroring the rulesets at the last global whitelist meeting but ETF2L had to recode their website to make it happen, and NA wasn't willing to change the way they do things.

Wow I certainly cannot contain my excitement for this event that will surely not make me want to die.

https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/emoticons/v1/1/1.0

Edit: I didn't know I could want to die even more than I already did.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1uK05iVQAINw2i.jpg

I have been doing that already with the Invite Database I created. It was a huge amount of work and time spent that nobody really cares about except me. You in particular shit on it when I wanted to use it to potentially help casters with some historical stats to talk about during down time or in-between rounds. I didn't take offense and accepted what you said. I am totally fine with how it turned out in the end, I will keep updating for every season regardless of the feedback.

You answered some of my questions with this response but it could have been done without your snarky remarks.

Many ppl give you shit because you attempt to help make things better but I am not one of them. I think the questions I posed were on point and if you can't respond without taking personal offense I guess future replies should just be shit flinging threads that get locked like the last one you posted. (that turned out great)

Even though its depressing as fuck because my stats are awful that invite database is fire bro dont let the haters keep you down

I can feel the heat from slin from 1,000 miles away.

You never, ever will satisfy everybody in this community - This is the same solution to an issue we've had in the game since the first unlocks were released. I appreciate your willingness to act and try to keep these things being discussed and going on, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Asking Premiership / Invite players of today to feedback and discuss weapons will just see an array of opinions thrown around - My team is very pro-unlock, other teams are very anti-unlocks - Other teams will wish to ban a lot of weapons we use because they don't use them and banning them will only benefit their team and not ours.

It's more to do with tactics than opinion. We saw it in Highlander with certain unlock bans being decided by a vote between Prem/Top High leaders, a couple of items were banned then overturned after a backlash by a vocal minority that "lost" the vote - Teams banned the Dead Ringer tactically because a certain player was by far the best player on his class using it and nobody could compete with him. The main reason this has happened is there is simply no clearly defined purpose for the whitelist.

Revisit the actual reasons why you need a whitelist and it is still nearly impossible to reach a coherent definition - To balance the game? In who's opinion will this balance the game? The players? Valve's? Prem Players? Everybody has different ideas behind class balance. If I Scout, I will hate playing versus a Natascha Heavy, because it counters on of the scouts biggest advantages - Speed but if I liked to play Heavy, I would want this weapon to help the class become more powerful as its the least mobile class and effective only over short/medium range and because of these limits, effective in less situations whilst scouts effectiveness is much more varied. Who's side do you take? You can't comprimise - You ban weapons for the Heavy or Engineer to make the Scouts life easier, you're effecting your own version of balancing the game - Which in turn is it really a game balance or is it a balance designed to help the Scout?

This is one scenerio - We all have varying opinions on game balance. Thre are so many questions to ask which we clearly don't have yes or no answers because criteria has not been defined - For example:

Why are you banning a weapon? It is Overpowered. How do you define Overpowered? Because it's an upgrade on Weapon B. Why is weapon A overpowered but weapon B not? Why is Weapon B overpowered for Engineer but not Overpowered for Heavy?

Simply put there are far too many components with differing definitions that make up the purpose of a whitelist and to reach an agreement is nigh on impossible. I think blabbing on about it for 2 hours will achieve little - Answer these questions before:

- Tell me the purpose of the whitelist?
- How do you define an "Overpowered" weapon?
- How do you define a "Broken weapon".
- Agree on the purpose and definitions.
- Get the unlocks to meet the criteria.

If it meets the agreed criteria, then it's banned.

Example: "Natascha is banned because is meets the agreed definition of an OP weapon as it's penalty in damage is only -blahblah% and it's slowdown is +blahblah% compared to the stock weapon, this gives it too powerful an advantage" or some shit like this, I dunno, you work it out.

Thx, appreciate it but don't feel so bad. At least you HAVE stats. I will likely never get to add myself to my own database no matter how hard I try.

I might have to pay some team captain and Rudy Ruettiger that shit for 1 regular season match. =)

@SpaceCadet, I've tried growing the game before through methods like mentoring, streaming, youtube videos, casting, and putting together tournaments like the recent FACEIT cup. I've tried a lot of things to try and grow this game, and I'm not going to pretend like I'm the best person in the world at doing it which is why I encourage you or anyone else to take a stab at it. But, I do feel like I'm putting forth my best effort and that's why I took offense to your earlier comment. If we had lots of manpower and volunteers, we could try to recruit people to our scene but even that fades (look at newbie mixes for an example, since coaches are volunteers and volunteers are limited). Growing pug websites like stadium and pugchamp, leagues like ESEA or FACEIT, or recruiting sponsors has been met with adversity as well.

I feel like the problem with competitive TF2 is a systemic problem. Our game mode is flawed (5cp, it's been discussed before), our rulesets are disjointed, and our game is much different than the standard TF2 that most pubbers enjoy. Some people are okay with this and are happy to ride it out until the game dies. I'm working to try and change that, and to answer your question above, I think that this is a way that can help. If we fix the structural issues with our game, the game itself becomes more appealing and everything else falls into place.

Now some people will see that and ask where's Valve? Why won't Valve fix our problems? But it's not their responsibility it's ours. We care more about competitive TF2 than anyone else, so it's on us to fix it. We're not changing the whitelist for Valve, we're changing it for us. We're trying to make competitive TF2 the best scene out there. Recruiting people to something that is broken is much harder than recruiting people to try something that works really, really well. And right now, the world can't seem to agree on what works really really well for competitive TF2. So that's why we're meeting. To figure out what works really well so that we can all unite and do the thing that works best.

I hope this answers your questions too Hildreth. I agree with you that some people will look out for their own team's best interests instead of the community's but we should really be looking to our community leaders (league admins and top players) to figure out where we should go from here. My only role in this is starting the discussion. Even if it does turn into a shit show, at least it can't get much worse than where we're at right now. I think the objective should be to balance the game in the way that makes it the most attractive to new players. Some people think that we have it really good right now while others think there's something better out there. I think change is scary but many people see the scene as dead already -- I don't think we have much to lose.

As I mentioned before, attendance is optional but I'd appreciate any support I can get here in helping to figure out how to make our game the best game it can be.

This seems cool. Reminds me of the old mumble casts.

I would love it if after this, we get started discussing about map pools and game modes. A lot of people are gonna hate me for saying this, and I do love 5CP, but I think 6s would be so much more fun if we resorted to KOTH as our main game mode.

Don't get me wrong I agree with you on some points you make but the highlighted bit I can't understand - If you want to balance towards new players, why are you asking League Admins and Premiership/Invite players to lead the discussion? We don't know what a new player wants from the game in terms of unlocks.Only thing a new to competitive player wants that we 100% know about is organised competition.

Why don't you do some research into what new players want, not just browse Reddit or TF2center forums, actually put some effort and collect data, least this way there is a logical approach to base decisions on.

Also you say the scene is in its worse place and it can't get any worse - Yet we've had nearly a decade to address issues, tried multiple scenerios and you want to recycle the same failed ideas. Hell you even pushed for this global ruleset last season and the trend is signups are declining (I don't think for a second anything you did had a massive impact on signups) but if you're saying things are as bad as they have ever been, it's just admitting how we are approaching rulesets is wrong and has always been wrong (I don't think it matters much in the big picture).

I mean you and others here pushed so hard to try and make TF2 more of an eSport - Numbers a going down and all you wanna do is keep recycling your terrible ideals and push them on the community. I give you respect for actually being here and not fucking off to OW like a lot of people did when they pushed so hard to change this game into something a lot of people don't like (Especially HL players) and realised their efforts are pointless and went somewhere else their talents deserved rewards, but seriously, come on.

Never once have I said anything to put down your effort to improve the community and I never will because I want TF2 to grow and prosper as well. I appreciate all the individual effort members of this community do for no reward like casters, production, etc.

You brought a lot more to the discussion than what was mentioned in your OP. You are now talking about the game-mode, rule-sets, universal map choices, etc.

My comments were directly strictly at what I thought this discussion was about, the whitelists. If you feel the whitelist discussion is a necessary "first step" to take before trying to solve larger problems with TF2 then that is fine and I wish you luck. I just didn't understand what gain there was for a 2 hour talk about universal whitelists on a player level.

Hildreth you say the game is going downhill but attribute all of the failures to me? Come on, it's a group decision here. I've tried pushing for certain things, but I'm not the only decision maker in the room. In fact, many people would be very upset that they don't have a say if that was the case, so that's why we have to have meetings and that is why change is slow.

To your point about asking about what pubbers want, I am one of the few people in this community who cares about what pubbers want in the game. Most people think those players are completely unqualified to make those decisions, but I think you and I both know that we need pubber buy-in if this game is to grow. If you want to use pubbers' feedback to influence our community, you are right next to me in this minority of people who care about what pubbers want in what is effectively a pro mod. The other person is b4nny, and that dude isn't the best at PR but he still got destroyed for trying to push certain unlocks that pubbers want in the game. The approach could use some work but he has good intentions.

Point is, it's a significant uphill climb trying to convince the established scene that having more unlocks is better for the game. But I think the right place to start is with a global whitelist meeting including league admins and prem players, so that's why we're starting at the top. We made VERY significant progress at the last meeting, reducing ESEA banned weapons from 50+ to just over 20. I think there is some cleanup to do in this second iteration but I'm comfortable making this meeting public for this version.

It's clear there's only two paths forward from here -- 1. ride it out and keep things the way they are until the scene dies, or 2. try to create changes that will make the scene better or die trying. I'm in the second group, but I know a lot of people aren't and I respect that. I'm not here to ruin peoples' fun, I just think that we can make our game even better than it is today by making a game that appeals to everyone, not just the minority of comp players.

@spacecadet For sure. Also sorry if I ever insulted your project -- I'm not aware that I did and if I did I'd like to rectify that. I actually used your stats in a recent video that I made about who has the most ESEA victories so I definitely found it to be useful.

Slin, where do you think the line should be drawn between Valve's MyM and what currently exists? I feel like the ultimate logic here leads to adopting the MyM ruleset because those are now - whether people like them or not - the "official" competitive TF2 rules with the "official" competitive TF2 map list.

Obviously if someone tried it there would be uproar... but where else can this path lead?

I ask because if we're talking about minimum friction for new players that is where they will come from. Talking about pubbers as such is now outdated. There is another official competitive mode in the mix that presumably a lot of players potentially interested in competitive are using.

hey slinny boy i think you might be missing something
if on the off chance the reason pubbers dont play 6s ISNT because they cant use their favorite epic pub weapons, then allowing those weapons wouldnt bring them in
and i dunno man, i dont think the DATA is there to say thats the case
then the side effect would be making a gamemode that even fewer people enjoy

Your first two lines proves you didn't read or understand the points I was raising therefore I will not read the rest of your post, no point in discussing it further.

slin: "wow, the last whitelist/blacklist thread devolved into a shitfest that brought out the worst in people! maybe if we gather the entire competitive community together in one discord then maybe we can have some civil discussions?"

tf.tv: "hold my beer"

I'm not going to pretend like the new matchmaking game mode is anywhere close to "good". I'm not trying to make our game like theirs. I'm just trying to bring our game more in line with what people expect, which is a game with no weapon bans. To pelt's point, removing one or two weapon bans won't move the needle by much but I believe that it's not any one individual move here but a series of moves that will make this game better. Unifying the whitelist, maplist, and ruleset would be a major milestone for our community. FACEIT, when they approached us, were confused about what the rules should be since it hasn't been clearly defined by our community. A community that supposedly has been iterating on this game for like 8 years. Valve doesn't even know what works and what doesn't work because we haven't done a good job of figuring this out. We as a comp community would rather play it safe and play our own broken 5cp game mode than test, and we expect Valve to stick their necks out and be the testers. In their defense, at least they tried (with turbine, badwater, etc.).

It's tough. Nobody wants to be the guinea pigs here and everyone is pointing at the other guy to be the tester. I think the most productive testing that we did happened after the first global whitelist meeting. Everyone was forced to play with a bunch of crappy weapons, and we found out what was truly OP and what was not. I think the logical thing to do here is take another step in that direction and continue iterating on the whitelist.

The whitelist has clear next steps. The map list doesn't. The next thing to do there is to convince a bunch of map makers that 5cp is a broken game mode and we should explore designing maps with alternate game modes that are fun to play. Then maybe Valve can stick those maps into the game like they have with other community maps, and maybe those can make it into matchmaking.