I played on literally the worst (surviving) open team in S23 (4/6 of our players had zero competitive experience and not a lot of in-game experience either), so I saw my fair share of all kinds of extremely creative unlock use. Banning them to coddle new players is dumb. They need to learn how to adapt and think outside of the box and how to make intelligent decisions for themselves. On my team we always made sure to control tilt when it came to unorthodox strategies and tried to coordinate together to take advantage of whatever that unlock's weakness was, and treated all of it as good practice for thinking and adapting. If someone can't deal with unlock use they can't deal with having to adapt on the spot and thus shouldn't be trying to play competitively. The whole thing is literally about whether you can make intelligent decisions for yourself based on the situation at hand, and not just copy b4nny's or some other streamer's decisions (which are most of the time bad decisions for you anyways because you don't have their full awareness, DM, or for that matter, opponents who think on the same level).

Even with a strict whitelist the competitive the majority of people play is nothing like the most publicized one (invite/prem). Invite mids are nothing like open- mids. Team pushes, sacc plays, all of that shit, isn't on the same level. So anyone who walks into this expecting to just be able to play the same game will be really disappointed regardless.

At higher levels lots of those unlocks have a one-life creative strat type of deal that's entertaining to play and fun for spectators to watch. Unlocks shouldn't be banned unless they breaks the game, lowers the skill-ceiling, or encourages stalemates (which may be relative for unlocks for certain defensive classes). But most of the bad unlocks don't do any of those things.

Real talk though, since there has been an interest in using MechaCop's whitelist or tweaking it a bit and overall having a strict whitelist, would it be alright to go with it?

If the Pyro update is yet another failure and Valve has yet to still support competitive TF2 in some way in that update, can we finally start giving up on trying to have a less strict whitelist and move to a stricter whitelist with much more bans? It looks like there is a lot of talk and interest in being able to play such a whitelist while we still can.

If there's any interest in using the whitelist I made I would like to remove cloak and dagger from it. It's easier to use and doesn't take as much teamwork because you can just sit invisible until your team creates a distraction or spams for you.

This would be my ideal whitelist http://whitelist.tf/7177.

I'm just an open shitter though so if people did want to use a more strict whitelist based on this one that would be great. I also wouldn't mind stuff like Black Box and Ambassador to be allowed. Since I'm bad I'm pretty sure my opinions don't matter though. I'd just like a more strict whitelist because most of the things allowed are only used for trolling/retard plays.

http://imgur.com/a/3aB6o

I don't disagree entirely, and you have good points. But I think it needs to be said that adaptability isn't taught only through dealing with unlock-based gimmicks. I'd argue it's not even that good at learning adaptability, at least not for the type of adaptiveness you'll actually use at higher levels (where you need to be fast at recognizing and dealing with odd/uncommon/gimmick strats, and unlocks are very obvious to recognize and require dying/going to respawn to switch between them so it's not very fast either).

I'm not trying to say that there's nothing you can gain from learning to deal with unlocks, it's just that I think if they spent the same amount of time playing against more legitimate setups and strats then they'd learn faster and be more skilled by the end of it. And, for the people who need to be "coddled" (I don't really think it's being coddled if you want serious clean tf2, that's why I started playing comp at least), that would usually also mean they stick around. If something unavoidable is making people upset and leave, then adios, but if the entire issue is avoidable by something as simple as changing the whitelist, I don't see why we shouldn't. We don't exactly have the signup numbers to be putting up arbitrary barriers.

It's always going to be different, but that doesn't mean we need to go out of our way to bring more differences. I think it'd be better to try and make it as close as we can, we don't need to have things that for the most part just cause a bigger difference between skill levels without adding much. Especially when the difference we're talking about is mostly in how chaotic things are, and the appeal of competitive to a lot of newcomers is that it's supposed to have as little chaos as possible.

I can't really disagree, it's down to opinion. I'd prefer to ban anything that does more harm than good to the game in general, but that's just me and I don't speak for everyone. As long as we cut down on the current whitelist though I'm happy.

After playing in the recent etf2l cup which banned the xbow I can say without a doubt it was a nice change of pace. The overall feel of the game was very different. Stalemates were tense because the spam damage took time to heal, instead of just being able to be instantly full hp again. It felt really good to know that my damage actually mattered for once.

I'm still not fully sold with banning the arrows since they feel like an essential part of the game at this point, playing without them would feel weird. Though if they aren't getting nerfed like they really should be, a ban should follow.

Oh and just for the record I didn't play back when arrows weren't a thing.

I agree. I really do hope valve nerfs the xbow or reverts one of its many buffs.

My insight on the cup yesterday is that it also improved the momentum of the game.
teams had more problems stabalising themselves after their holds were broken
so if a team had good continued aggression they could keep the pressure up, and keep pushing forward.
not without risk ofcourse.

And after that happens you do research and improve????

´
If the individual skill level of each player is exactly the same then it's not expected that the natascha "heavy + degreaser pyro + dr spy" will do very well with that setup. You seem to assume the players getting rolled are new, and their opponents are experienced. Let me assure you that there is a million ways to do dumb shit against inexperienced players and removing 1 or 2 options doesn't make a difference. And also, why are these more experienced players sandbagging anyway? This is a completely different issue.

You can also look at other games, like CS:GO and LoL and lots of other games where suboptimal strategies can completely destroy the lower ranks. That doesn't mean that they should be removed from a game.

Who is expecting them to do this exactly? If a team looses a match... They loose! And if a team wins they win!
I don't expect them to do anything, but if they want to win they should expect to be prepared.

Do you have a source on this? Where did you find out this statistic? I expect you to support your claims, and if you can't do that, you should not be making them. What I'm gonna say here is just as anecdotal as what you said:
I have never heard anyone say anything remotely close to what you wrote.
In terms of evidence this is equally valid.

You still haven't demonstrated your claim to be true so why would nayone take this argument seriously? And if you didn't remember, before this global whitelist came about, low level games and tf2centers/tf2lobbies were still infested with bad strategies and felt like organised pubs. The same way CS:GO matchmaking in Silver 1 feels like an organised casual match with less players. How is this a problem exclusive to any game? Can you point to a single esport or even a sport where this is not the case? How do you avoid making something in low levels of competitive very distinctive from a high level casual?

Yes

Citations needed

Again, they can. Don't play against teams who do this, and if you're desperate you can just say "we only play against people who play with normal classes and weapons". It's not a big deal.

Work they eventually need to put in if they want to become better.

High level players already put in this work and that's why they can handle it.

Citation needed.

Even if what you are saying here is true, that it's not what they imagined, how do you know it's because of the whitelist? Again, citation needed.

Virtually everyone on the tf2 subreddit hates that the competitive community bans everything. I've seen countless of posts where people complain that they can't play their favourite class or use their favourite weapons. Removing variety is not going to help.

We're loosing options to situational weapons to make the meta less stale. That's more than nothing.

The only reason your line of reasoning is attractive in this community, is that it resonates with people, and everything they already believe.

more weapons =/= less stale
more weapons doesn't necessarily mean there's more room for crazy situational scenarios where you can use force of nature or mantreads and outplay the other team
it usually just gives people who want to joke around options for trolling and rarely will it catch a good team
the only item situational item switches I see are vanilla strats we've all seen for years (medi to kritz, pistol to winger, pipes to loose cannon, so on)

of course there are a lot of unlocks for the specialist classes which people will only use if they're trying to catch the other team not expecting it or holding last, but rarely will any of the "situational" weapons that aren't meta ever help someone outplay a team they wouldn't have on stock/the good alternative weapons, so why have the bad weapons anyways? they don't add anything interesting or competitive.

It's not a matter of equal or does not equal, it is a case-by case basis.

When did I say this?

The act of whitelisting a weapon does not produce the in-game factors where it would be viable, or scenarios where it would be. It would, on the other hand, give you more oppurtunities to do different things; to put the opposing team out of their comfort zone and to catch them off guard.

I'm not saying allowing it produces these situations, but banning it entirely removes the possibility that it ever will happen.

Read #168 where I adressed some of your concerns already.

I also fixed your last sentance.

EDIT: responding to your second post

You're saying it like they either get skill from playing against unlocks, or never get better at anything. People will improve whether things are banned or unbanned. You don't need to play against unlocks to get better or learn to adapt, you learn that just fine by playing normally.

I don't have numbers or statistics, I'm speaking all anecdotally. But I've been on teams with new players for pretty much every team I've been on, and I've tried to help plenty of new players get into competitive.

We do have signup and team numbers to get some idea for though. In etf2l, season 26 has 57 open teams, when season 25 and 24 had 87, and season 16 and 17 had ~100, not counting teams that quit. UGC has as many players in NA steel as it did when it also had iron, meaning new teams have essentially gone from ~200 to ~100 in recent seasons. And while I don't have the numbers on hand for open, it should be common knowledge that they're not getting better. This was always the main reason I heard we were making the whitelist so slack in the first place, and since all we've seen is a substantial decline, I think it's safe to say that it didn't work (whether or not it helped cause the decline, it certainly didn't stop it).

And while low signup numbers could be / are from a lot of things, if there's a decent chance that changing the whitelist could help, we should try it. Worst case scenario, we just give the majority of current players what they want (as we've seen from the polls, where 80% of people wanted a much stricter whitelist).

I disagree. That specific example came from one of my earlier teams. We were seeded #1 in ugc steel 6s (it's fucking nothing but we were all pretty inexperienced) and we just started playoffs. We rolled the #16 team so badly in the first half that we were considering playing without a 6th player, and I think we could've too but we decided to keep all 6. Then we lost the second half pretty quickly because they started running that setup, and we just had no clue what to do even if we otherwise outclassed and outDMed them hard. The third half we started running heavy too, and that worked out better, but we just barely ended up losing. I realize what we could've done better and how we could've made it work, but I am a little bitter that afaik the rest of the team quit then or a season after and never played again.

And since you brought up sandbagging, it would be great if we solved that completely. But it's not easy to regulate either, people will alt or play on new accounts, or maybe someone was just carried in this higher div so he's not actually sandbagging, or whatever. It's extremely easy to make them a lot less obnoxious though, just ban the shit that they're where 95% of a weapon's usage comes from. It's not an issue with the whitelist, but it's an issue that the whitelist can help plenty with.

It will always happen to some degree. It just depends how much. There always was a separation between skill levels, but it wasn't as big or as different as it is now. And while I do feel that this separation being a lot bigger than it needs to be is a big reason people quit (as I've said many times before), this just goes back to the citations argument where the only thing we have to go off of is anecdotes and the team signup decline.

And they still do. They still say "the only reason pyro isn't viable in competitive is because all his stuff is banned" or "I'd play competitive if I could actually use a loadout that isn't stock" or "even highlander is better, they dont ban as much." Even after the whitelist has been opened so much that they're all flat out wrong. What they really mean is that they don't care about competitive and want a reason to hate it, and we'll never be able to convince them to join.

We shouldn't focus our efforts on appealing to them, because we can't really do anything more for them (the whitelist is as open as it's gonna get without rebalances) and we haven't seen any results from compromising for them (as the signup numbers say). The only crowd we need to appeal to is the people who like the idea of competitive, but aren't currently playing for one reason or another.

But the meta didn't suddenly become this fresh, new, unstale and exciting thing when we moved to the open whitelist. I'd say the meta now is more stale than it was before we started unbanning everything, easily. How stale the meta is doesn't depend on how many weapons are available, it depends on how many strats are viable, and unlocks often actually limit those (such as with the crossbow).

And don't forget too that most of the weapons we could ban aren't actually used as a part of the meta. I'd bet you could ban half the current whitelist and see no impact on the meta, only on lower level teams and sandbaggers.

Does that mean it's somehow wrong? Hell, the whole point of the whitelist at the end of the day is to make sure the game is more fun / remove things that aren't as fun, so if the overall community's opinion is "we should ban things", doesn't that mean we should ban things?

cloak and dagger should 100% be allowed, same with letranger and ambassador. this doesnt make the game crazy or random, because any decent team will know whats happening when they've been in a stalemate position for a decent amount of time, the enemy team has sacced a player that they haven't seen since the player spawned, and then the enemy team starts randomly being super aggressive and spamming. spy plays are extremely predictable, so giving spy a least a handful of utility options is totally fine imo.

anything that encourages people to play spy for picks instead of sniper will end up making the game move more quickly, because a spy failing gives the opposite team an opportunity to counter sac or attempt a push. a sniper failing means the sniper walks to a different spot and tries again, and also forces the other team to play sniper which further slows down the game.

oooookayy collaide

yeah, I shared my personal subjective opinion (albeit not well thought out) on a debate that is based on perceived enjoyment. just like you did. like everyone in this thread did. I'm sorry for not supplying my personal subjective opinion with short sighted hypotheticals and anecdotal evidence.

but you actually might be on to something. I agree now that we don't lose much from allowing certain items, and could see interesting plays in using them.

I don't have much say in this grand scheme of things, but I don't understand something.

How is removing crossbow a nerf to soldiers? It certaintly isn't one to roamers. Many people have pointed it out, but bombing is currently just hoping you get some kind of pick. At least without crossbow, even though you die, your bomb had some kind of effect on the game, even if you don't manage to kill someone.

Yo, can someone tell me why you think cozy camper needs to be banned? Sorry if this was already asked, in that case a link to a thread or reply, please.

It means you can't chip damage at them to make them miss or wait longer to take a shot, which other than avoiding sightlines altogether is the only real way to avoid them getting easy picks. On maps like viaduct especially, where snipers are common and sightlines are everywhere, this makes sniper ridiculously powerful and is a massive upgrade over SMG or pretty much anything else (except debatably darwin's).

e: that's why it was banned the first time, thanks viper. It's not anywhere near as bad anymore, but there's still fully charged bodyshots. Even if it's not super significant, I don't think it does any good and just gets sniper to go slower and be less skillful.

I agree with this whitelist, except i think banners should still be allowed as they are viable but not op. They change the flow of the game without making it more stale.

I have only 750 hours in tf2, and just about no skill. However, from my limited amount of time in the game, I have a few thoughts on the crossbow.

1. Medics can't just sit back and spam arrows during a fight- they won't be in the line of fire
   
2. The one disadvantage of the crossbow now is having the target stand still for easy arrows. Maybe this could be taken advantage of in a balance update (that won't happen), but it's nice to wish for.
   
3. Maybe the crossbow could also be affected by crit heals- if you deal 300 damage to a soldier, it won't be in vain, and you can take advantage of the damage like if they had used any other medigun

Also, on the topic of banning everything else- ban vaccinator. The only way for it to be a sidegrade for last holds at all is to nerf it to oblivion, or to make the uber disadvantage from switching mediguns too great

I don't know, gunboats just seem to be a better alternative. Saves you health and it takes time to get the banner ready, maybe they are good on last?

all of these are valid claims, but keep in mind the cozy camper was changed so where a full charge is required for the "no flinching while aiming" to take affect

At least from my personal limited interaction with new-to-competitive players, what they want is a serious setting where they can choose the people they play with and then work hard knowing that they're all working towards the same goal, as opposed to pubs where they're usually one of the a small handful of people who are aware of the objective and their team's goals. There is no "it's less random" focus of attraction to anyone who is only starting out because they have no concept of what "not random" TF2 looks like (and won't for a while longer).

... Why does it have to be an "or" situation? Why can we not have multiple options for people to use their brains and choose from, depending on what they're comfortable with, and the situation at hand?

I am not for allowing as many weapons as possible just for the sake of having a tiny ban list, but I also think that the calls for banning literally everything is absolutely absurd and are based off of completely random personal preference rather than any kind of logical reason. Our whitelist should only ban things that take away a certain skill-set from a team or player because of its function, or ones that facilitate stalemates through their stats.

Dude, I really don't know jack shit, so I can't respond those questions and I don't even know if they are rhetorical. Just wanted to post my opinion to see if I'm right, apparently not? I'll just get back to reddit, it's easier to discuss with someone who thinks pyro is overpowered, lmao.

Instead of making 10 pages here we could just make a test whitelist and try it out in pugs/scrims/whatever.

I'm sorry, I think I came off way more aggro at you than I needed to. It's honestly my complete incredulity at the assertion that there can't be any variation at all.

No, it's fine. It didn't hurt me or anything, just saying I'm not a guy worth discussing with when it comes to competitive.

since we're on 9 pages:

http://etf2l.org/forum/feedback/topic-33952/page-2/#post-562844
it's not exactly banning most unlocks but it's dealing with some big ones

ok have u literally not read the thread at all

do you even play 6s?

I would like to point out that the meta hasn't change almost at all since the global whitelist change. Maybe you see a few more CM5Ks running around but that's about it. It's not like you see Air-Strike, Gunslingers on Mid like everyone thought. Honestly the biggest change made to the game was the Medic Speed with scouts and that has nothing to do with any given weapon, that's just a core mechanic change like the sticky nerf a little wile back. I'm sorry, but until i see something in the vain of a Brass Beast Heavy pocketed by a Kritzkrieg wile a Panic Attack Engi guards them i'm going to remain unconvinced that allowing this weapons is a bad thing. It's almost as if the meta developed around the maps that are played because that was the best way of playing thous maps.