There is a tldr at the end of the 2nd post in this thread

Edit: Really short follow up survey with some whitelists the survey suggests here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10FrzunEPluz9T6rA60hvNlQcsVefTcGIAypR56DAZJc/viewform

The survey into banned unlocks got just short of 200 responses. Given the length of the survey this is good, and given the size of the competitive community this is highly representative, it’s as if a political poll in the US were filled in by 10s of millions of people.

There will be an element of selection bias in terms of those who filled it out probably strongly adhering to a specific agenda, but this is extremely hard to quantify. Any interpretation should probably be slightly softened to account for this, but still there are some very clear indicators.

We will also learn why Sun-on-a-stick might be the most important unlock in competitive TF2.

The Classics

Let’s start on a positive note. Some unlocks received overwhelming positive support, clearly improve the game and get a lot of use. They are:

Gunboats
Kritzkrieg
Boston Basher
Ubersaw
Pain-Train
Iron Bomber

Iron Bomber might be a bit of a surprise inclusion but it’s viewed very favourably and is generally welcomed. The Overdose was also given a lot of agreeable coverage, but it’s hardly ever used due to the dominance of the Crossbow.

Other unlocks that were strongly judged to have an overall positive impact on the game but weren’t quite in the same class are:

Crusaders Crossbow
Cloak and Dagger
L’Etranger
Concheror
Ambassador
Black Box

The Crossbow is the most controversial of these having a lot of fans but some hardcore opponents as well (it had the highest deviation of scoring amongst any generally positively perceived unlock). However although it’s detractors may be highly vocal on the forums, it receives clear support here. I’ll go into the Crossbow voting breakdown later.

Ban this filth!

Just as some unlocks seem to receive universal support, some are the target of opprobrium. The following unlocks were on average rated as “disagree” or worse to the question “this unlock should be allowed in 6v6”. On a scale from 1 to 5 I’ve picked out those that scored less than 2.5 on average and are therefore below the range of “unsure” and would be rounded down.

Pomson 6000
Natascha
Beggars Bazooka
Jarate
Air Strike
Diamondback
Baby Face’s Blaster
Frontier Justice
Brass Beast
Tide Turner
Chargin Targe
Splendid Screen
Loch-n-load
Wrap Assassin
Back Scatter
Machina
Gunslinger
Phlogistinator
Ullapool Caber

Your pet hate may or may not be on the list, but it seems like a lot of these are predictable - demoknight, unlocks giving crits, unlocks affecting movement and weird random shit.

However some of them are rarely played. Adjusting for the amount that players report facing them we can create a misery caused index of which the top 10 are:

Jarate
Natascha
Machina
Loch-n-load
--------------------
Pomson 6000
Gunslinger
Chargin Targe
Air Strike
Diamondback
Brass Beast

If Pomson is the mechanic everyone hates, Jarate is the unlock that causes the most grief closely followed by Natascha. Getting rid of the unlocks in this list (although only the top 4 have above average utilisation, above the dotted line) would probably produce the biggest quality of life improvement for the most players if you were only to make minimal changes.

A lot of players may think Gunslinger is somewhat benign but it’s no surprise to discover that scouts in particular hate this unlock and the mini sentries that go with it.

http://i.imgur.com/uR1JIkB.png

I should make it clear though that respondents that identified themselves as scout almost universally dislike all unlocks more than anyone else, often even their own.

Honourably bad mentions go to the Vaccinator and Cow Mangler. Their usage rates would actually give them quite high entries on the Misery Index if their overall inclusion scores hadn't just scraped them into average unlock rating territory. I'm still not sure if this is the right way to go about it, but these are the kinds of edge cases that make a statistics based approach potentially unreliable

Bones of Contention

Averages will only get you so far of course. Some unlocks are the source of divided opinion and that in itself can be an acceptable reason to consider an unlock ban to protect the innocent from the tyranny of the majority.

Rocket Jumper
Sticky Jumper
Sun-on-a-stick
Cow Mangler 5000
Market Gardener
Dead Ringer
Huntsman
Holiday Punch
Classic
Backburner
Crusaders Crossbow
Fan O’War
Killing Gloves of Boxing
Direct Hit
Your Eternal Reward
Sandvich
Righteous Bison
Ali Baba’s Wee Booties
Force-A-Nature
Bushwaka
Mantreads

Just like the disliked list above, many of these items rarely see any play. Sun-on-a-stick, Holiday Punch and Your Eternal Reward for example. Who so controversial then?

If we look at usage rates combined with variance of opinion we can finally see why the not particularly controversial Crossbow is the subject of such debate

Crusaders Crossbow
Cow Mangler 5000
Market Gardener
Direct Hit
Sandvich
Bushwaka
Huntsman
Ali Babas Wee Booties
Dead Ringer
Force-A-Nature

Of these only the Crossbow, Market Gardener and Wee Booties are above average in terms of being allowed, with the Crossbow clearly above that. Let’s take a look at the Crossbow in more detail to see why it’s so controversial.

http://i.imgur.com/1J85JM0.png

One reason is that although it is generally positively viewed by everyone else, it is massively popular amongst medics, but the population that identified themselves as medics is too small to create a large scale imbalance themselves.

The other group that drove up the controversy score on this one were scouts, in particular NA scouts. Even so despite opinions being very split, the overall trend was to a positive perception even among this group.

Looking at the Cow Mangler (which is much more typical of all unlocks in this list) it’s a little different

http://i.imgur.com/59hfyHH.png

It’s much less popular, and for some reason Demo players are bumping this thing up as a group. But as with the Crossbow although you can see some groups have differing opinions either way, the items themselves simply seem to be controversial in their nature.

There is a fundamental split in opinion on the allowing of some unlocks that we will explore next.

There hasn't been a submission in over 24 hours now so I'll close this tomorrow and start the analysis. Last chance to complete this if you haven't seen it before or were putting it off.

https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder913/46896913.jpg

No gemm!

Is a 6v6 competitive environment, I think it's strongly implied by the context but I could have made it absolutely clear.

Just answer it in the way that seems right to you, my impression from browsing responses so far is that this is what most people have been doing. Either way is fine really, it combines with the other information to have more meaning.

I noticed this after setting it live and looking at some early results. Looks like people are getting it though, apologies for any undue stress.

I'm not really assuming anything, I'll see how people answer it and figure out what it means from there.

The number of responses isn't too bad so far, I did think maybe nobody would bother at all but it's going OK. The lack of any structured feedback for unlocks is probably encouraging responses despite it being a pain in the ass.

I'll probably leave it open to responses for a couple of weeks then start the analysis. Shouldn't be long after that depending on other stuff.

I get it, but by asking just a couple of other questions I can identify some pretty important extra factors about how the unlocks are affecting people's experience, and it is just clicking in a box.

Yeah, I was in two minds about making them required because there are a shit load now. Ultimately I think it's better to get more data but I'll see how things go

I blame Slin for getting them all unbanned myself

Seeing as unlocks are once again on the agenda I've made a survey based on the current allowed unlocks list. Because the list of allowed unlocks is now very long, the survey is very long so give yourself plenty of time to fill it in

Each unlock has 3 statements to which you can decide the extent to which you agree
This unlock should be in 6v6
This unlock improves 6v6 (different to the first as people's attitude to allowing dull or low impact unlocks may differ)
I've never even seen this used (to assess the impact and usage level of the unlock)

Each question description has a link to the TF2 wiki's page for the unlock in case you're not sure what an unlock is

Complete the survey here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYhEnHjnmqJ7un7zw_HsRQ2z3dK-_-4fYgc-BhKPyggqncQw/viewform

I'll leave it up for a couple of weeks then do results analysis as long as there are enough entries to make it interesting

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/873/260/a5b.png

Yourself

Hildreth: Your requests are unreasonable, use etf2l channels to discuss (this is not unreasonable)
Thalash: I have reason to think privacy might not be respected so I don't want to

I know Thalash isn't putting it nicely, but this is the basic content. It really isn't that important, but the points do follow each other, he's not just going off on a tangent. It's a conversation with related back and forth. Just because it doesn't end where it started doesn't make it ad hominem.

If Thalash was saying that the rules dispute in question should be settled in his favour because of this perceived failure of standards then yes, because he'd be drawing a false relationship between the two things, but as far as I can see that's not what he's doing. It seems to me he's saying he doesn't want to discuss any further if he has to use those channels.

If you think that's still ad hominem then I won't try to persuade you otherwise.

I think you're misunderstanding my opinion with clarifying something about what someone else is saying. I'm not strongly invested in either side. I get on fine with Hildreth and I'm not assuming he's wrong. It seems his overall position is perfectly justifiable, but that others don't want to extend him the courtesy of the second chance.

You can grab all this information from the valve api, sometimes through undocumented methods. When I first saw teamworktf's effortsI ran my own scans to see if I got the same results and it all tallies.

However I also ran the same scans against CSGO servers. I found that they are 90% defuse mode on competitive rotation maps with 5 man teams. You can slice that any way you like it, player numbers, servers running maps, populated servers, etc, the 90% largely holds. A lot of them might be in casual mode rather than full competitive but it's basically the same game with no half time.

It was an enlightening comparison.

I read that he didn't want to have a private conversation in the recommended etf2l channels because he expected it to not be treated as a private conversation.

No, I'm saying what I actually said. You could try reading it again and see if it sinks in

You're kidding, this is the most interesting thing to happen in etf2l in years