Banny before

"We need a global whitelist for the health of the game and competition!"

Banny now

"Actually fuck the whitelist, I am right and you should all just follow what I say because I know best."

And not a single person is surprised.

Now dont get me wrong, I dont necessarily disagree with opening things up if its not broken, but its super fucking retarded that you decided to do this without actually consulting anyone outside of the invite Illuminati considering you where the one that pushed for the global list in the fist place.

I am not sure where this rumor came from but I am pretty sure it has never been like that ever. I have used the weapon quite a bit and am decently comfortable in saying if this was ever a bug its not present anymore

Tino are you unable to attack someone without paraphrasing and strawmanning them

Feel free to point out what I got wrong.

hahahhaha how the fuck is this real
this is actually so fucking retarded lmfao

The global whitelist does not get updated. The general community reaction about any whitelist changes has always been this extreme pushback about 'dumb weapons' and shit that rarely ends up mattering. The only weapon unban that has ever happened that was actually as bad as the community pushback would lead you to believe was the base jumper (the vaccinator is another good example but it was allowed for a while and then changed by valve, resulting in a ban). The cow mangler was allowed for an entire season and I don't remember that season being any worse because of it so I don't see why people are up in arms about it now. This is beside the point anyways. The point of the global whitelist was to get some centralization and consistency across leagues, but apparently its too cumbersome to discuss/update it because its been 6 months since the last major balance pass and we saw exactly 0 changes since then.

I also just wanna say, most people in this community just aren't experienced with the weapons that aren't commonly run in 6s. In the invite meeting most people had tons of misconceptions about items or were not aware of how they currently function. Just as an example, people talked about the reserve shooter and how it could be combo'd with airblast... despite not realizing that airblasting upwards after the jungle inferno changes (almost a year ago) is inconsistent at best AND that the reserve shooter doesn't even work with airblasting regardless. I don't trust the "community opinion" because you can pretty much guarantee that at worst its uninformed, and at best its just gonna be pushback against unlocks because "lol dumb weapons."

Also, painting the picture as if b4nny was the one making decisions is dumb because for most of that meeting everyone just kept telling him that its bad idea to unban everything.

I agree about all the unbans except the cow mangler. I don't think dragon fury is too much of a problem in 6s as it's trash for airblasting, atomizer has been nerfed and pretty boy too. As long as cow mangler reloads as fast as regular RL, i think it should be banned.

i mean b4nny literally has a history of going behind people's backs to unban weapons, like when he went against his teams wishes to ban the loose cannon and voted to unban it, leading to it being unbanned (this was when the loose cannon was much more powerful than it is now)

ur wack ass "invite" meeting was held after midnight est on some random night lol

Like seriously though this isn't blind hate or circlejerking against change or whatever, the cow mangler is literally a direct upgrade to stock that dumbs down gameplay by getting rid of ammo management which is an interesting mechanic semi unique to tf2, and one that takes skill and map knowledge. It also lessens the same skill for demoman because his pocket is not taking his ammo.

Why is b4nny so intent on ubanning these items?

rescue ranger why

is rr really unbanned?

surely we get a major now

correct me if im wrong but the reasoning for banning the mangler after it being used that one season is that it provides an unfair advantage to those not using it and that until it gets nerfed, it will stay banned. No significant change has been made to the weapon. What is the reasoning behind unbanning it, and if there is any, why did we ban it in the first place?

ive heard quite a lot that it's possible to equip both gunboats and mantreads at the same time, but have never actually seen it done and have been unable to find a video on how to do it. if this is an actual thing, feel free to prove it, but i hear this all the time and yet no one seems to have any idea how to do it.

I wish we didn't experiment with this season, I'd hate to see the amazing competition in invite messed up by these sudden changes

we can't remove old and outdated maps from the map pool there's no time left in the off season sorry guys, next season

but we've unbanned all these broken weapons without announcing a meeting had taken place or that the decision had been made. have fun!

Are you reading the same thread as me? Literally look at this other post I quoted. There are people with well reasoned arguments such as yourself but the general consensus is "ew dumb and broken weapons get it AWAY from me" while seeming to forget that what everyone is talking about was allowed and hardly affected the game for an entire season+

These were the unbanned weapons:
Pocket Pistol
Atomizer
Cow Mangler
Mantreads
Dragon's Fury
Gas Passer

Let's run through the list

Pocket Pistol:
Nerfed, at best you can regen 27 hp if you hit an entire clip. It hardly matters and nobody saw a real reason for it to be banned anymore. Inconsequential.

Atomizer:
It has to be fully deployed to give you a third jump (quick switch script patched). Anywhere a scout can triple jump to is someplace scouts could already have gotten to with the winger or basher anyways.

Cow Mangler:
Infinite Reserve ammo, Trade clip for a mini crit rocket that applies afterburn, -90% damage to sentries. Most arguments about it tend towards the side of "ammo management is a skillful and important mechanic" or that charge shots somehow broke the game which is honestly astounding to me because I saw no functional difference between s26 and post-ban. It is by far the most controversial change but it doesn't even get near "gamebreaking" status like some other weapons would (ex: vaccinator or base jumper)

Mantreads:
Actual interesting side grade, this weapon has been long past due for seeing usage

Dragon's Fury:
Not a great weapon for what pyros are used for in 6s

Gas Passer:
Inconsequential

I think this is important to note and repeat, and I'm glad it's from someone in Invite who attended the meeting.

I hope that everyone who is railing against weapons has had a look to see how they actually work. Not so much Cow Mangler etc because we know what that is, but like Daffodil points out, some weapons have been changed multiple times since they were last seen in Invite.

Let's try to stay away from knee-jerk reactions if we can. It's good to be informed if you're gonna give your input.

lets unban mad milk

I thought they fixed issue where you always got the maximum health back from it

And if they didn't fix it everyone that isn't a Scout is already more screwed than before

Edit: They nerfed it twice since that clip

"December 13, 2017 Patch
Fixed the Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol always giving 7 hp per-hit.

March 28, 2018 Patch #1
Reduced maximum (close-range) per-hit heal amount to 3 (from 7)."

Clip was from 9 months ago and it was fixed iirc

why cow mangler baned in dm server? i need practice >:[

#b4nnyrealjob2018

This is my opinion about updating the whitelist. I want the whitelist to be as opened up as possible for a couple reasons.

Firstly, anything that rewards game knowledge and good usage of alternative strategies is something that I see as desirable. If a player is able to use unique strategies with a balanced unlock then that is something that shouldn't be stopped just because we can't update a whitelist for over a year. Imagine the timeline where we banned the conch or whatever. I am sure there are some people out there thinking "I wish" but I think that would be quite the loss.

Secondly, I don't think playing with all unlocks will "give us a major" but I DO think that keeping a well maintained whitelist gives the team at valve good data to look at when doing balance passes. This game isn't gonna blow up and become a esport even if valve endorses it, but it can always be improved and everybody here seems to just have the most pessimistic and shitty views despite that.

I'll try to address a few things here

Nobody wants to go to the trouble of organizing a global whitelist meeting every season, including myself. Sorry if I'm stepping on the toes of other leagues but at this point I feel that the global whitelist initiative does not have a strong impact unless we do things like unify rulesets, maps AND make controversial and aggressive changes to the whitelist rather than just have the same perfunctory weapon bans each season with a few tweaks. I'm not exactly opposed to the above but that's a topic for another time.

The invite meeting was held at a time when we did not know how many invite teams were alive or reforming. I need to submit changes such as map changes and whitelist changes before the season starts (i.e before the registration deadline). I realize that this is somewhat circular reasoning as clearly there were more opportunities to get more substantiated opinions from invite players, but since a lot of invite teams died and we did not know the status of the division (like every season), I was more worried about getting the invite division together, and I really did not know that there would be a reg extension (the extension was due to some issues causing players to not be able to pay their fees).

So that's why we addressed weapon bans in that meeting. That being said I attempted to make changes that everyone present had not only universally agreed upon, but also agreed that they were fairly inoffensive choices. Regarding map bans, there was very little agreement on either which maps should be removed (except that most wanted badlands out), or which should be added. The community map vote was not very helpful as there was strong sentiment for keeping badlands in.

Rescue Ranger: it's still banned.

Cow Mangler. With respect to the original global invite whitelist meeting where we decided to ban it, IIRC it was not something that was strongly agreed upon and the reason behind banning it was that it's a straight upgrade without enough of a downside (rather than being strictly overpowered). I know that a lot of people think it's overpowered but we did discuss it during the meeting and no one felt that it was worth leaving banned. The two upgrades on the item are the infinite ammo and charged shot. Maybe someone has pushed or won a fight off of low ammo counts at some point, and there are some strategies involving the charge shot for area denial. I don't think that either of these mechanics are overpowered.

Skill expression: Ammo management is not an expression of skill or team coordination. If it is, it is not comparable to something that is an expression of coordination AND has a strong impact on gameplay, such as damage/health callouts (referring to the Solemn Vow allowing you to see enemy health).

Closing remarks: Please direct your hate towards me instead of b4nny or any of the other attendees of the invite illuminati meeting. I'd like to express some of my frustrations too. I think the best method would be a global vote among invite players/teams, but that cannot be done if I don't know what invite teams are even competing until practically the last second. anyway thanks for listening

Our decisions about the whitelist should not be motivated by things we think valve could be doing. It's not the place of the community to do a dance so that the developers do stuff. Even if we were to ban dumb unlocks completely that would still give valve data, as it did for years, that there is something wrong with the weapons even if they're not overpowered. We don't only have to ban things because they break the game or are just straight up better.

Having said that

I don't think anyone gives a shit about any of these bans aside from cow mangler
and in what you've described your view to be implies that it probably should be banned

It completely removes ammo management and just adds spam to the game, which the game doesn't need.
The only place that cow mangler adds and "alternative strategy" is charge shotting the doorway people walk into mid, which is not actually alternative because you should be doing it every time and all the other team has to do is make sure their medic doesn't get hit by it because no one else should really be getting hit by it either. Hitting charge shots does not take skill, it does not take game knowledge and it is not an alternative strategy. On top of all this, getting essentially randomly hit by a charge shot is not fun at all and as much as some people like to think, that's actually a pretty good reason to have it be banned.

Like I said I don't think people really care about most of the items. From what it seems a lot of people are annoyed cow mangler is unbanned because it's just a dumb weapon with a dumb mechanic but also about the process by which all of this was unbanned which did not represent the community and was not a fair process towards the people playing in the league.

can we just agree to not use cow mangler even if its unbanned this season

This thread just gets better and better