#263 ^-highlander player

highlander wasn't added to the game because it's impractical. uncompetitive and not fun are subjective, but it objectively wouldn't work unless

a) tf2 became bigger than league of legends (not gonna happen)

b) they didn't bother matchmaking based on skill/region (defeats the entire point of, well, competitive matchmaking)

LoL's the biggest MP game on the planet and if you're a top level player you can look at some super obnoxious queue times (i've watched some dudes at slightly off peak times get up to 1.5-2+ hours) and that's only 5v5 with 5 roles each. Highlander is nearly double that. And TF2 has - and this is a massive understatement - a significantly smaller player base. you would need to disregard all matchmaking parameters aside from role and form unbalanced games just to even make it work.

#264

i didn't say they wouldn't play competitive, generally i'd wager almost the entire playerbase in CSGO that actually plays the game and can play competitive matchmaking does. the problem is since casual is super different (you can't say that is bullshit, it's objectively different in numerous ways beyond just player count which is already a major difference) it makes the transition from casual -> competitive matchmaking much harder than it needs to be for newer players. i've seen players in the time I played the game during my placements that didn't buy defuse kits because they didn't know you actually had to buy defuse kits since casual gives everyone on CT for free. ditto for kevlar/helmet. ditto for the grenade limit difference. all of the changes in casual also warp the entire concept of a pistol round and the pistol rounds dont remotely play the same nor do the follow up rounds due to the economy changes.

casual should always be a relaxed way to learn "the real game", and casual CSGO is entirely unrepresentative of what the "real game" is.

the solution to that is not to make csgo's comp more like casual. just like the solution to tf2's problem isn't to make comp more like casual.

likewise to both though the fix to both requires valve's help (in tf2's case to make each of the classes more equally useful) and therein lies the problem.

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/podcasts/stuffyoushouldknow-podcasts-wp-content-uploads-sites-16-2014-03-brainwash600x350.jpg

REAL life footage of eXtine being brainwashed by sigafoo's 7v7 mind control tactics

key difference here

Also, these scenarios you're providing of new players having difficulty learning csgo competitive are really, really miniscule in comparison to the problems that players face transitioning to 6s from tf2 pubs.

tbh scrambled I think you're totally correct about the fact that transferring to pubs and sixes is difficult and needs to be looked at, but sigafoo's league will fix zero of these problems

No because its not designed to help people transition to 6s. I've said this before, the 6s community is not the target audience of this league.

To clarify, my point in this entire argument has been as follows:
This format has merits over the other formats.
Its playstyle is representative of pubs, unlike 6s.
It isn't a logistic nightmare for matchmaking/team leading, unlike highlander.

5 snipers on a team

You know what helps pubbers help transition to sixes? Fucking playing newbie mixes. Actually you know what? Fuck it. I have a better idea. We need to simply decrease the player count by one to help ease people into sixes. We can have 11s, 10s, 9s, 8s, 7s, then once they have completed all these leagues, then they can play sixes.

https://d13yacurqjgara.cloudfront.net/users/2138/screenshots/638276/attachments/54327/Lock-Update.png

Sigafoo doesn't play tf2 in what this community might consider a 'traditional' sense. By that, I mean he's a fucking engie main wtf?

On the other hand, this might mean that froyotech won't need a fundraiser for i61

unless they put 3 pl maps in the GF

So in one post, please spell out the pros and cons, these merits over other formats. Every reason you believe it to be better than 6s. That way we can address it point by point instead of this circular argument.

It's playstyle is not representitive of pubs. Subjectively, even less than 6s is. Full-time scout, soldier, sniper, demo, medic, and maybe one guy swapping between spy and engie is less like pubs. It just has MORE class restrictiveness than 6s. As well, a pick/ban system jumps it even further away. 6s itself doesn't prevent little old sigamains running full time engie through ruleset. Desire to win does.

Also imagine the leavers in mm when they dont get the class they want. OW has huge overlap of characters for this, TF2 doesnt. That's a logistical nightmare waiting to happen.

The only way this map rotation could be dumber is using the stock version of viaduct

i'd like to make the argument that attempting to make competitive tf2 resemble the pub experience is worthless and would hurt the competitive scene both in gameplay quality and in turnout. i mean just look at the stats, something like 25% of players are playing on 2fort and turbine at any given time. the average person who plays this game don't want a competitive, objective oriented, teamwork dependant experience. they want to wander around on a big empty map and spam binds in chat. if by some small miracle a player does want to take the next step into playing competitively, they are going to want a game that is as straightforward as possible. 6's is that - we play a minority of gamemodes, have simple rules, have a small banlist that most experienced pub players can understand immediately.

sigafoo format has a complicated decisionmaking process of picking and banning attached to it, meaning that getting into the format is initially much more difficult. you have to not only understand which weapons are more and less powerful on a grading scale, but also be able to strategically ban out your teams weaknesses while trying to save your teams strengths.

this isn't even to mention that 7v7 class limit one makes less sense to an experienced pubber than 6's class limits. everyone who plays the game for more than a handful of hours begins to understand that certain classes have strengths and weaknesses, and certain classes are better suited to certain jobs. its a fundamental part of the game. even if the pub players conception of these roles isn't entirely accurate, forcing people to play 7 of the 9 classes at any time doesn't make sense to an experienced pubber, because they can understand at the very minimum the class divisions that valve designated "wait, i have to play at least one defense class even when i'm on offense? why cant we just have another soldier?". this is worsened by the fact that you are less likely to be able to play the class that you want to in sigafoo format because of the larger number of players and more restrictive class limits.

the rules of the format are totally arbitrary, unlike the rules of 6's which have been tested and defined over years and years of testing, which is again why i say to sigafoo make your format a slight variation on existing 6's so that we can at the very least meaningfully test the changes that you would like to see instead

Real talk, can't disagree with this. Instead of dicking around with formats time would better be spent making sure that any player that is competitively minded finds out about their options, and has an easy intro via newbie mixes. The focus has to be on how to move from MM into 6s.

This is a good point. Personally, I've been a comp spectator for a while, but I'm just now trying to get into playing thanks to the etf2l fresh meat stuff. If Europe still had regular, well-promoted newbie mixes, I might have started a long time ago. Also, Valve MM isn't as helpful in that position as you might think. The first MM match I played, I was on a server in a different continent, and in the second match I was against a sniper who is now VAC banned.

Maybe I'm asking too much, but I feel if this community wants to recruit new players, the community has to ensure that the infrastructure is there, because it seems like Valve has no idea.

Are you in the etf2l discord? Hildreth and a few other guys host newbie mixes every Saturday. There's also a steam group for new EU players which is where some of the newbie mix stuff goes on: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/eunsc

MM isn't currently helpful except in the sense that it legitimises 6v6 as a format. It's meant to be a competitive matchmaking system but it's currently not competitive or any good at making matches.

Nothing about this argument makes any sense to me. Between map selection, class composition, and the style of the gameplay, is there anything that 6s has where it reflects how the general populace plays TF2 compared to Highlander? Is it just this weird obsession with trying to convince each other that Highlander is completely useless and literally has not a single advantage to 6s that results in delusions such as "because some pubs have 5 snipers, therefore saying that Highlander reflects pubs better than 6s has no meaning"? No amount of pretending that Highlander doesn't represent Valve's TF2 better than 6s is going to make that true, as representing Valve's TF2 never was the argument that 6s tries to make--it's about trying to optimize the game for what "plays the best or is the most fun", which is notable a subjective idea. [but nonetheless valid for those who are in agreement!]

Sure, we could make the game as much like a pub as possible by having a 12v12 league with no class limits and no white list, but would that play well or be fun? It simply wouldn't work on most, if not all, of the maps in TF2. Highlander clearly makes sacrifices that are necessary to keep the game competitively viable, while still being inclusive. What Prolander 7s is effectively "asking" is whether or not Highlander sacrifices too much in deciding to have one of all classes at all times, instead considering whether dropping this down to 7 of the classes at all times is still sufficiently inclusive, while improving both the playability and LAN viability of Highlander.

I would love for someone to convince me otherwise, but 6s is all about tossing out the idea of trying to be Valve's TF2, instead trying to optimize the gameplay toward what the community deems most fun. You can't have your cake and eat it too--either you're trying to appeal to the new players, or you're trying to appeal to what the current 6s players perceive as "most fun". But as long as people continue to use "but that would slow down the game!" as a valid argument in favor of restricting the viability of off-classes by banning the weapons that develop their utility and selecting maps that conserve the same old meta, then you aren't Valve's TF2, and that's a perfectly fine line of action for the 6s community! But don't be surprised when there continue to be people who want a different experience in competitive TF2. One would think that over 20 seasons of Highlander would make this painfully obvious, but I suppose not.

lol why are you still arguing about this
let b4nny collect his $2,000 and move on

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#291

I agree for the most part, I've tried to get some people to understand this in the past, but some people don't get that 6s doesn't grab a lot of Highlander players literally just due to the classes. This is evident in the fact that UGC 6s is free + has medals and it's still smaller than Highlander. By a lot.

The easiest way to explain it is the common 6s argument is "but you TOTALLY CAN PLAY [insert your utility class of choice here] 24/7", and sure, you technically can do that. However:

* you're not going to find a solid team.

* even if you do people won't want to scrim your team (I saw this first hand with Hooey on Runaway Five back in the day, there was people that would literally leave mid scrim over him going ham on Pyro and that was just partial offclassing)

* you're not going to climb ranks as 24/7ing that class because the cookie cutter setup is the best setup generally for a reason (weapon ban choice + class limits basically, no one would run 2 scout/2 soldier/1 demo/1 medic if everything was free game)

The reality though is this: there's a huge section of people in Team Fortress 2 who genuinely want to get better and improve - as one class. Maybe two. But generally one. They want to climb ranks, they want to improve at that class. 6s doesn't let them do that for most classes, and that's generally (the medals back in the day helped grab people's attention) why Highlander has always been bigger since the ETF2L Highlander Challenge happened and helped UGC take off.

To put it another way, imagine if hypothetically the way 6s was setup and the way Natascha was stayed the way it was the season every single team ran 2 Natascha Heavies for every single goddamn match of the season. There was no room for Scout....it would literally be impossible to ever climb ranks or improve in 6s as a Scout main for the foreseeable future. Would some Scout mains swap to Nat Heavy like they did for that one season? Sure. Would they keep doing it...unable to play the class they genuinely love, and keep playing 6s for multiple seasons? Almost all of them would quit, I 100% guarantee it.

Thing is though, this isn't really the 6s community's fault and this is generally where I disagree with the lower level Highlander players who hate 6s (most high level HL players play 6s or have played it) and pubbers who hate 6s. Team Fortress 2 just wasn't balanced around 6v6 and when you halve the player count a lot of things get more oppressive and the power level of everything shifts. Sure the ban list + class limits have created the current class selection, but if neither existed the actual resulting meta would be mostly stacking 2-3 classes with less offclassing and would actually reduce variety significantly. You still wouldn't be able to play most of the classes 24/7 and climb ranks on them. Even if you class limit 1 everything you still wouldn't be able to play all the classes 24/7 and climb ranks on them because you're not gonna be full time spying your way to Invite. Going back to the Natascha example, it was so oppressive that season with 4 Natascha Heavies in every single game that it wound up removing Scout, Pyro, Engineer, Sniper, and Spy from play essentially by being allowed. (yes it's not anywhere near as OP now, I'm just using this as an example of how something being allowed doesn't mean variety is created)

The only real solution to this problem (since you really do need a smaller player count to have a viable e-sport with often LANs etc in the first place, which is why combined with infeasibility for matchmaking Highlander was never going to be the main competitive mode) is for Valve to rework the game towards it and improve the overall class balance of the game. That way flexible people can be flexible and be successful, but people who want to dedicate to 1-2 classes that aren't just the core generalists can also be successful.

We've all been waiting for Valve to work on the game like that for a long time now.

idk what exactly you people are writing dissertations on but i'd just like to butt in and say as an hl player i can confirm the format is very close to death and nobody that plays it really cares about it anymore

ok thanks for reading

except it doesn't lol the ability to switch classes is like the core crux of tf2 and i remember all those tf2 dev interviews specifically mentioning specialists and generalists, clearly suggesting that valve's tf2 (whatever the fuck that means/should you really care at this point) was built with class switching/class minmaxing in mind.

more classes being played is not inherently less restricting, if anything highlander is the one true gamemode to let you know that there are situations where your main is complete and utter dogass, assuming your main isn't one of the core 6's classes or sniper.

Valve's
TF2
doesn't
matter.

"Valve's TF2" isn't relevant because Valve is exceedingly ignorant to the mechanics of their own game. TF2 was an accident. Look at rocket jumping - go watch videos from 2009, then watch recent videos. No one saw rocket jumping evolving the way it has - and that's just one tiny part of the game. Back in the day, scout was considered "the hardest class," people thought being good on scout was like a miracle of finesse or something - then people figured out how to play it right. Valve had no idea how the game would evolve.

Thus, when it comes to balance and tf2, valve is clueless, and they've demonstrated that over and over. Remember when reserve shooter got a buff for some reason? One of the most busted weapons in the game got BUFFED. Hello? Valve doesn't know anything about tf2. Their "vision" of TF2 doesn't matter.

And before anyone calls that an elitist mentality or some bullshit: Valve's vision of tf2 definitely wasn't 2fort with 13 snipers, engies building random shit underwater, and no one trying to cap the intel. It certainly wasn't trade maps with 12 year old Bulgarian kids trying to buy unsuals for 3 scrap metal and an uncraftable jumper's jeepcap.

that seems oddly specific

do you need to talk to someone

It's something that you (unfortunately) figure out only when you've played the class for long enough. 5 seasons of playing Engineer has got to be the worst long-term decisions I've made, and at this point I don't have much motivation to take it seriously anymore. Highlander seems to me like a friendly beacon of hope to people who don't want to give up the chance that they can play their favorite class, but after a while a while I see them get bored with it. I can't tell you how many specialist class mains I hear get frustrated with themselves after they have played the class for forever, and either hit the skill ceiling or realize the repetitiveness. It's a shame that newer players can't experience that beforehand.

Don't get me wrong, I still love Highlander, I just can't continue convincing myself it's a better representation of TF2 than 6s anymore.

It is potentially useful in that a new player that is competitively minded will go there first. Players that play MM will at least have some interest in playing a structured format with the focus on the objective. They may even stop playing pyro long enough to actually help their team. Essentially they are self selecting potential competitive players, it seems obvious there should be a focus on converting them.

I don't think it particularly matters what gamemode people start off with, because eventually everyone finds their way to 6s, because it's the best one and the most popular.

People don't go from being 6s mains to only playing highlander, people come from highlander and end up playing 6s and putting HL on the backburner. Happens all the time, so in that sense it's only really a good thing if it lets engineer mains come closer towards the competitive community. The same thing will probably happen with 7s if it ever takes off.

you don't really play 4s or hl mixes so eventually you almost have to end up on 6s

I see no point in continuing this discussion with a select few pubbers and hl players that can't comprehend that 7v7 is actually further away from pubs than 6s and logistically harder to accomplish.
How about we just have b4nny take the money so froyo can get to lan without a fundraiser and forget about this league when the second season without a prizepool anywhere near 4k is anounced? Meanwhile the 15 people in the tf2 playerbase that actually think this gamemode is good fun can play it all they want.

Our game will never take off and have a hugely successful esports scene unless there's a tf3 down the road, but part of what makes our game and community so charming is the small community and that you know the people you play with. With that in mind we should really keep the points made by GentlemanJohn in mind and put more emphasis on newbie mixes and stuff like the fresh meat cup in order to have a steady influx of competitive minded pubbers to keep our community alive.

So:

I'll watch the matches just because extine is casting. he's a treasure