as an hl-only retard i came here pretty much just to post this. having played with and against soda popper scouts back in the dark ages i can say that it is a /completely/ different style than normal scout that requires different timings, movement, changes what fights you take and where. using it optimally has a fairly steep learning curve and playing scattergun-style scout (that hurt to type) with the soda popper in 3 pugs will naturally lead you to the conclusion that it's not banworthy. Players like Ibby, angryofficer, and sleepteiner (hey those are some old names) put the time in to learn the playstyle associated with it and punched waaaaaaay above their weight level.

that was back when you got the jumps from moving instead of damage, but the point still stands. if current top-invite level scouts put in the time to get really good with the weapon you're gonna see a soldier get dropped for an engineer since minisentries will be the only thing that can damage scouts.

they pay to play this

I don't think anybody feels that it's hopeless it's more that we know what works and we know what's fun to play with and against, can we please stop trying to make it more casual to play?
You just sound desperate and have yet given actual arguments except "it might not be shit"

trip and a muted Johnathan Michael decided the fate of us all.

anyone play with any of the weps that got allowed recently and think that the game is better? its not even about it being game breaking or not

cow mangler wasnt broken no one was like 'he has the cow mangler so we lose!!' but would u enjoy it more with or without? these new weps regardless of them being broken won't evolve the game for the better and all it will do is make the game less enjoyable to play for the people who already play it and thats literally all that will happen

any pubber who says he doesnr play comp because of the restrictive unlocks is lying to themselves because really its a matter of them not being good and having fragile egos

literally no benefit for adding things that do nothing good for the game idk how this shits gone so far

https://twitter.com/4G_b4nny/status/1077191335214383104

This is where we're headed if We do nothing to stop it

At this rate the natascha is gonna be unbanned.

Thanks B4nny

I think its insane that the reasoning behind unbanning weapons is so that we don't alienate the non-competitive community.
1) You think the non-comp community keeps tabs on what the ETF2L and ESEA comp situation is like? You think they're gonna be like "oh-shit guys, they've allowed bonk! Lets go try it!" no. I doubt they even know that these leagues and this website exists. The only ones who do are from b4nnys stream, and lets be real thats not a lot of viewers and people. Sorry but theres a lot more people currently playing competitive (ETF2L/ESEA) than there are pubbers watching his stream.
2) Stop being so focused on the outer community. The game is like 11 years old now, poorly optimised for todays computers and has no support from valve. They're not going to give a shit now. They've literally just fucking released a card game. They do not care for the competitive value of this game.
3) We "alienate tons of players" YOU'RE ALIENATING THE FUCKING COMPETITIVE COMMUNITY AT THE MOMENT WHO HAVE PLAYED AND SUPPORTED THIS GAME FOR YEARS. These players are FAR more important than the prospective players that would come to the game due to unbanning. People have spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars for this game and developed a shit tonne for this game on their own. Stop alienating those who care already.
This game is going nowhere, but its not dying either. The people currently keeping this shit alive are the ones currently saying that this is a bad idea.

Edit: If the game is getting "stale" and "stagnating" thats your own issue. Maybe its time for YOU to stop playing rather than forcing others to play with dumb shit they dont want to, to spice up your life.

i fucking hate that he have this thread literally every season and things only seem to get worse.

I once bet a guy 5 pounds I could eat a banana in one go. I did it, and I didn't even gag.

His endgame is him a medic and four other scout mains running around the map LMFAO

For real though who the FUCK wants to play matchmaking with no class limits that'd be so awful
Feel like that's the one surefire way to make everyone who actually enjoyed comp 6s quit and actually kill the game for good

So the goal behind all these unbans is to eventually have no limits whatsoever in regards to class limits and weapons, because in a timeline where TF2 is successful, nothing would be banned?

While I agree that this is most likely true, I think it might be a good idea to discuss how likely this is to happen, especially considering the risks. When was the last time the game was updated for rebalances? How much of the current competitive community would leave if this happened? Because I would argue that regardless of how true this stance is, if it only happens 0.01% of the time while the downsides are much more likely happen, it isn't worth undertaking.

People seem to conflate valve and the tf2 developers, they are not the same. Multiple ex-employees have told how they've had a horrible experience working at Valve, and that everyone is forced to play internal politics. Everyone wants to work on the new stuff and old IPs are left to rot. The skeleton crew working on TF2 is committing career suicide only because they care deeply about improving the game. They have limitations too. They can't just beg money from gaben for "TF2 majors" without showing results.

The casual and competitive side of TF2 are vastly different, unlike any other esport. From the outside, everyone looks at it as a hat simulator. You need to bridge the gap between the two gamemodes for any chance of success. I don't think what b4nny and co. are doing is the right way, but the community needs to be a bit more flexible too, and they have shown time and time again that they refuse to budge.

You guys could've unbanned relatively inoffensive weapons in pugs, exploited the shit out of them and generated incredibly valuable feedback. We saw Valve implement sensible changes in Jungle Inferno and Blue Moon updates from your feedback, they aren't incompetent. But even after the changes it took so long for anyone to actually try out the rebalanced weapons. There's invite players who don't even know about balance changes.

Even now, no one is advocating for straight up unbanning bonk,etc. Teams are going to try the new whitelist in scrims, you are welcome to exploit them and find out those edge cases. If it's broken it won't be in the next season.

Side note, I've seen the same thing with maps. No one wants to even give new maps a chance, they just see a couple big flaws in early builds and dismiss their potential. The only time they get played is when there's money on the line.

What chance of success are you talking about? What is considered successful? We used to have sponsors back in the day because TF2 was like 3 years old and not 11.

The TF2 dev team don't know how to make a good competitive game and ruleset. Comp is interesting because we made a ruleset and classlimit, more medics would get rid of the importance of the class and the importance of uber and being able to count the enemy's uber. Europe used to have 2 demos then they realized it was too annoying and made it so only 1 demo was allowed. TF2 devs might love TF2 which I don't doubt, but they are as clueless as any fresh install when it comes to what's important for competitive.

Ban b4nny pt 3

I find it hard to believe that the approach to this "problem" remains the same after two years. Unbanning every unlock works, but only if the developer behind the game actively balances all the items around competitive and I think its more than clear that valve has no interest in doing that. Assuming otherwise just means you're deluded. If Riot Games releases an overpowered and/or annoying-to-play-against Champion in League of Legends, you can be damn well sure that the competitive community is gonna ban it until the developers balance that champion. This is normal procedure in any (competitive) game and I don't understand why we should be the exception.

Please, Valve is so disconnected from the game in terms of balancing. They nerfed the Ambassador into the ground and the Righteous Bison also for no good reason. The Gas Passer is absolutely useless in any situation. There were probably a few exceptions but feedback from competitive players was pretty much NEVER a factor when they put together all the balancing updates.
And don't delude yourself, people usually realize very early on if a map has got potential or not. Reckoner was perhaps a bit slow according to some but people enjoyed it for the most part and then the mapper changed way too much and it was voted out of the map pool. It is as simple as that. Have you considered that maybe sometimes it is the fault of the mappers and not the players?

yeah copy pasting hats other people make for them must be so challenging they need a raise on their 100k salary
quit defending a dev team that is consistently inept and struggles to use other people's content

Making it even remotely possible to have two medics ruins the point of 5cp, disrupts ubercharge building and counting and makes pushing last even more bad if a player can just switch to medic as soon as his med dies (this part isn't theory crafting btw schocky did this with vaccinator in etf2l season 26)

1 - classlimit 1 on all classes
2 - new maps that let you push last
3 - allow unlocks that are not broken or straight upgrade (iron bomber, disciplinary action, cow mangler, detonator, wrangler, sidney sleeper and jarate).

there you go, let's do olgha's cup

about these weapons, let's see

iron bomber : -10% damage
D. action : charge system like the thermal thruster
cow mangler : -10% damage
Detonator : shorter after burn for people getting splashed
wrangler : honestly dunno
sudney sleeper : -33% damage
Jarate : same splash as the direct hit

forgot about banning mad milk or make it like above
and reserve shooter
and crossbow/ ubersaw

When did I advocate for no class limits? When did I say they know anything about comp? Stop arguing against strawmen. My entire point was that you need to give them more actual feedback rather than theorycrafting from the sidelines. 45 mins of pugs aren't enough for an informed decision, but it's better than nothing. Hopefully the next couple weeks of scrims are enough.

Also, if you think the previous updates didn't have any well thought out rebalances you should read them again.

You also avoided answering what success we'd gain from unbanning unlocks, you said "bridge gap between competitive and casual" and besides whitelist the difference is classlimits and rules

I completely understand the pessimism, Valve have given very little and outside support has dried up leaving you embittered and clinging to whatever still works. But it's also true that being resistant to change will be the game's demise. Promods have never and will never gain enough traction. OTOH, multiple games have been made esports simply by publishers dumping money into them. I know there are weapons which will never work even with tweaking, but there's precedent of valve completely redesigning weapons from the ground up.

I have no delusions about tf2 ever being a major esport, but it can still get rocket league numbers. As someone else said, it's like cancer, you can either die a natural death or go through chemotherapy and maybe survive.

Please, they DO are incompetent and they've proved to be clueless about this game for so long now...

I mean, if there is one person in the world who is delusional enough to think that unbanning everything and turning this into Matchmaking will make an 11 years old game an esport all of a sudden, that's b4nny.

think back to when you first watched 6s imagine ur watching i69 grand finals or something and u see a scunt jump 1 billion times and get a nice streak / bonk through a choke

would u say

a) wow what an interesting mechanic this is sick i wanna play

or

b) this is fucking stupid

not rocket science idk why u think that would matter to volvo a little bit. literally tf2s niche in the grander esports world is being 'the harder overwatch that takes skill' and thats what we as a community should focus on if theres even a sliver of hope about that shit in the first place. the more stupid and shitty we make the game the LESS people play it as we already found out over the years

The TF2 devs will not give us a $10,000 tournament if we cater to their needs, stop being desperate

-

People can't distinguish between knowledge and experience, but I also have a theory towards why they want to appeal to fake ideas of promises (TF2 devs just said they won't support current ruleset which is way too fucking vague, it doesn't guarantee a healthy esport), they're at the top and no matter which direction TF2 took they'd very likely still be at the top, so if they could make TF2 more popular by any measure they'd take it for the sake of getting more money out of the game, us who play for the simple reason of passion are against this for it makes the game less enjoyable for anyone who cares about just enjoying a game with great mechanics and a pretty good meta (compared to what would be the case with no rules.)
B4nny and Nursey are willing to sell their bodies for an extra slice of cheese. Disgusting.

TF2 gets MAYBE 2 quality updates a year (if that) and people are still trying to get on their good side to make the game an esport? Jesus Christ. I’m of the opinion that this game will never be a true big esport, but even so, the only way to actually do it would be a melee and take everything into our own hands rather than try to please Valve. You’re pursuing grandeur at the expense of the ire of a large portion of the people who make this community what it is and have kept it alive.

I definitely support banning for bonk or solemn vow (even it won't effect higher levels where people can count uber solemn vow actually takes skill away from the game why unban it :<) but I think that soda popper is getting overhyped and I have played against most of the really amazing soda popper scouts (ibby, jump4r before the rework).

The nerf to make it rely on damage instead of movement is huge, it takes 350 damage to build the charge so you now need to actually be fighting things for a while before you can take advantage of it. The thing that made playing against good soda popper scouts (ibby) awful was that they practically always had the jumps ready. Not being able to charge it in downtime is a massive nerf to a weapon that is now actually forced to be worse than stock most of the time. It's like running banner on a class that doesn't have any particularly good spam weapons, yeah when you get it to work it's great but a lot of the time it won't (and this isn't even going into the steep learning curve of the weapon).

Also IMO you can't just walk through flanks for free as a bonk scout anymore. It is still super broken but I think if they hit you for a few hundred damage they can consistently just follow with their scout and trust their's to win with the speed advantage. But you can still do really dumb stuff with it like bonk sacs where you just walk your scout up to their medic and wait for bonk to end. I think the weapon is overrated, but scout is already really broken and doesn't need any buffs, so definitely keep it banned.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/313994735012282368/526802449458266123/IMG_20181224_114440.jpg

this is some utilitarianism shit