It had many obvious big issues? Lets talk about this. I did talk to several of the players after the challenge cup. Most of the primarily sixes players thought that it wasn't better than sixes, but liked it more than highlander. Most of the highlander players really enjoyed it thought it was better than HL as well.

The biggest complaints I got were around the pick/ban system. That it was cumbersome and slow. Which is completely fair we were using an almost entirely manual process for that. And the site I'm working on right now will have time limits and a more intuitive interface to help take care of those issues.

The other main complaint was around snipers. In particular the weapons DDS and Razorback. Because there was only 4 total bans at the start, teams were kind of put up against a wall. Do they ban the broken weapon or do they ban something strategically and hope the other team bans the broken weapon for them. So rather than using strategy to make decision, both teams wanted to ban the same thing, but wanted the other team to waste their ban on it.

On top of this, I have data to back this up: 95% of the time, In the first 4 bans during the challenge cup, one of those two weapons was banned. After getting this feedback and looking at the data, I decided to make the DDS and Razorback banned by default during the P/B process.

Looking at the format, the biggest weakness I saw was when it was being played on 5cp. It just was sluggish and didn't really play well. Which isn't the most surprising given that, that map type rewards fast classes. So with that in mind, I do not have any 5cp in season 1.

When it comes to the prolander format, I didn't get any other real feedback from what I recall of what should be changed to make it better. Even looking at the thread after the challenge cup: http://www.teamfortress.tv/post/672566/sigafoo-cup-hype.

No one is giving feedback on how the format could be improved.

Pretty much everyone who commented in that thread after the cup actually happened, basically said. It was actually okay, even if it wasn't their cup of tea.

And to the people who for some reason keep saying this was tried many years ago and decided was awful. Here is a list of major updates that happened in between the last time a variation on this format was attempted and the challenge cup.

The Manniversary Update October 13, 2011
Very Scary Halloween Special October 27, 2011
Australian Christmas 2011 December 15, 2011
Pyromania June 27, 2012
Mann vs. Machine August 15, 2012
Scream Fortress IV Update October 26, 2012
The Second Annual Saxxy Awards November 30, 2012
The Mecha Update December 20, 2012
100% Community-Created Update Robotic Boogaloo May 17, 2013
Scream Fortress V Update October 29, 2013
The Two Cities Update November 21, 2013
The Third Annual Saxxy Awards November 26, 2013
Smissmas 2013 December 20, 2013
Love & War June 18, 2014
The Fourth Annual Saxxy Awards October 1, 2014
Scream Fortress VI Update October 29, 2014
End Of The Line Update December 8, 2014
Smissmas 2014 December 22, 2014
Gun Mettle Update July 2, 2015
Invasion Community Update October 6, 2015
Scream Fortress VII Update October 28, 2015
The Fifth Annual Saxxy Awards November 18, 2015
Tough Break Update December 17, 2015
The Meet Your Match Update July 7, 2016

To say that something was tried before this game was even F2P is definitive proof that it doesn't work is a bit confusing to me. Especially given that we have a cup from 6 months ago which showed that it did work well.

Either way, if you can point me to this "detailed feedback" as you call it, that I did not find nor was brought up when talking directly with the players. Definitely pass that along to me, as I'm open to feedback on this stuff. I've actually already changed a couple minor things already on the site/rules after talking to people.

Also just real quick since people seem to be taking my words out of context around the meta. If you watch the video, I never call anything a stale meta or anything close to it. My point was more that, people often (in most games) get wrapped up thinking there's only one way to play something. And that I don't want RGL's community to stifle someone attemping to run pyro in the rec league, just because froyo doesn't do that. There's more to it then that, but I explain most of it in the video as well as in the mission statement of my site.

are you actually taking saam's comment as a compliment lmao

reduce team size to 6 and increase class limit of scout and soldier to 2

Why would you not just support the gamemode Valve already has for competitive if you want to do something different? No whitelist no class limit 6's. Valve isn't going to suddenly switch up their format around 7v7 with class limits and a pick and ban moba system.

Imo if it was basically just 6's with a extra player people might be more open to trying it. But lets say the 7th player is a sniper, that would be really annoying to play because then the meta theoretically would be more about who has the better sniper, but it would still be something different. But being able to have only 1 of each class with 7 players is literally HL without 2 players, just like 4's is 6's -1 scout and soldier (and really aids maps). If you want 7v7 to be a thing you have to mess around with the class limits, and also make a whitelist instead of a pick and ban system.

Looks cool. Wednesday nights actually work for me so count me in.

Less players = better game according to these statements. 6s is definitive format, the data is right there!

Seriously though, you're not getting proper feedback to improve the format because the majority of people are satisfied playing either 6s or Highlander.

here i have some feedback:

CHANGES:
-reduce amount of players by one
-make each class limit 2 except for heavy, engie, medic, and demo
-remove pick/ban whitelist, instead implement this one: http://whitelist.tf/7182
-adjust map pool to 5cp and koth

hey look you have a non-aids league/gamemode that people will actually want to play for reasons other than ez money!!

I'm not sure how you took those copy and pastes as constructive compliments. Saam's is clearly not a compliment, and Dolly said later in his post that "7v7 is a fucking joke." Most of the other comments are jokes about the format, which is honestly to be expected, people want to be upfragged. Why not have a survey, or ask top players, or review the gamemode to see what the issues are? From reading your post and watching your video, I wonder if you actually did that?

Honestly Sigafoo, the way you're going about this whole thing is based around your whole ego and how YOU want the game to be played, rather than what the community wants.
I feel like you know this, and that's the reason you are promoting it as a league with a $4k prize pool as that's the only way people will play it.
That's genuinely the major issue here.

Honestly, rereading over your posts in the initial cup, I don't really understand? People seemed interested in the format, and the ideas that could come out of it. You answered questions professionally there, explained what and why things are happrning, etc. You even agreed with Saam himself when he said that the format could never become it own league, but that it would provoke new strategies and thought about the game. Most people seemed to respect the initiative you were taking.

Then, you ridicule yourself, passive aggressively tell tf.tv that you are a lolhl engie, and radically change the rules. Both tsar and blaze asked you legitimate questions professionally that you completely ignored. What happened there? I'm so confused.

Here you go: do something else with your time.

LegendaryRQA's posts have just as bad grammar as sigafoo's website. Coincidence? I think not.

Whatever happens I genuinely want sigafoo to give this his all. There will be 1 of 2 outcomes. A) The league is a major success and the format is proved to be an fun and enjoyable experience or B) We will have another example of why the game that we have developed over almost a decade is superior and we will have better understand that nothing will blow life into this game other than dev support, sponsors and $. Only good can come from this.

.

For a cause you believe in of course! It's quite admirable to see someone do what they want in the face of such lashback. The money does what it is told and was never going to be invested in a cause that sigafoo did not see worthy so there is no real loss for the 6s community. At the very least it will be a great learning experience for sig.

just gonna take this 200 spot

just gonna leave this downvote :)

Seriously sigafoo you seem like a nice guy and all whenever I watch your streams but there is literally zero reason for wasting your time and money and this shit dude. The sixes players all hate it obviously and the highlander players would rather play highlander. Who is actually going to genuinely like this? All this amounts to is a painfully long b4nny fundraiser.

Played a pug on it, felt like a tf2 pub turned into a competitive mode tbh, for what its worth it was fun. Could replace highlander, obviously that isn't for most people here though. I don't agree with the pick/ban unlocks thing.

If you don't circlejerk here you get downfragged btw.

sigafoo, just because 7 is a lucky number diesn't mean it'll work. If you want your dreams of TF2's comp scene growing to become realistic, you need the support of Valve. Almost a decade of testing has already said that 6 is the best number for us to play with. TF2's dev team has already implemented competitive and it runs on 6v6, not (9-2)lander.

Technically that's the best number for 5cp specifically. You need more for PL.

I'm confused. Is the target audience of this 6s players, HL players, casual players, or a combination of the three? It's pretty obvious that the only way 6s players are gonna play this is easy money, so I guess the only people this potentially appeals to is the HL and casual players.

Now I play both HL and 6s, but I really only care about the success of 6s. It's not like HL is going anywhere and it kind of draws the small playerbase actually interested in competitive away from 6s. I mean ideally HL should just die but the constant feed of new and old players wanting to play their specialist class full-time keeps it alive. And although we can all hope that people are going to just accept that you have to play one of four classes in order to play competitve, the reality is a large part of the casual community doesn't want to play a format like that (crucify me).

It would be really great if this killed and replaced HL, it seems to promote a better transition to 6s and 4 less players to start a match is good. I just don't see it happening without talking some sense into the HL community. If I were Sigafoo I would try to get support from notable HL players to change the "you can still play Pyro, Spy and Engineer" format to this. Attempting to appeal to everyone obviously isn't going to work.

A bunch of downfrags for this? Don't hivemind all at once here boyz.

This is a terrible misrepresentation of why people prefer highlander. One reason for why I think this format appeals to pub players is that in a casual/pug setting you can play most things, the only necessary class is a medic, and you aren't locked to one class/role. It also plays in a similar way to highlander with less players, which makes it much less of a logistics nightmare, hence being something that could be more viable for matchmaking than highlander. The 6s community is not the target audience of this format.

C) It's shit but retard class mains will use the bad feedback as an example of why '6s players are elitist'

... oh wait

Sigafoo would literally be one of the most appreciated tf2 people in 2017 if he hosted a 6s tourney with that amount of prize pool because currently we have to wait for DHW. DHS, I-Series, and ESA which are so far apart. A tourney in between could be really cool

If (misguided) people believe that the 6s "meta" is stale, this is the worst way to try to spice things up. I'm pretty sure the only reason games seems to play out the same way is because of the maps. 5 cp has some inherent flaws that cause things people don't enjoy, such as stalemates between mid and second, and no incentives for the winning team to push.

Alternative gamemodes have been played in the past, and most of the feedback have been negative, although a lot of people seemed to enjoy some of them. Examples are Gravelpit, which was a loved map for spectators, but a lot of players didn't enjoy it, and Standin (well I think it's a cool concept...). There is also Turbine pro (generally frowned upon, with some notable exceptions) and a variety of Koth maps, the latter which is the game mode I feel is a good fit for 6s and should be played more.

If I was in Sigafoos shoes and wanted to throw a spanner in the works, I would host a 4000$ tournament to try out new maps and different gamemodes. New and exciting maps don't get played as much as they should and this would be a good opportunity to get some actual feedback from people with a real motivation to do well and win, as opposed to new map pugs, where people can dick around a bunch. Heck, maybe we'd find one or two really cool different gamemode or map that could then be added to improve the current state of the game.

But this 7v7 junk is not going to do any of that. The things we want to get away from is slow stalemates and long holds. Removing mobile classes, forcing people to play heavy, sniper, engie, or pyro, classes that are good at holding, will only further this problem and not alleviate it at all. Basically, I agree with slideezy, Sigafoo seems to want to replace 6s, not because it's bad and needs replacing, but because he doesn't understand it and therefore dislikes it.

No, I definitely remember playing Highlander because I was a shitty Spy main and couldn't be that in 6s. Definitely. It's not a wrong misrepresentation, but one of many. Certainly applied to me, and a bunch of other Spy/Sniper/Pyro mains I know of.

A problem with KOTH (taking product as an example) is that the maps are very 1-dimensional, unlike 5cp where teams can get very creative during pushes and hold setups, KOTH maps rely more on dm and very basic pushes and concepts in pushing.(4-man sacs, uber trades to delay point time, forward holding) and while 5CP is stale currently, if creative unlocks similar to battalion's backup are added to the game, teams would have more options to break stalemates besides sacrificing roamers and 5min sniper duels.