hallu

I think calling this the "new config era" or something similar works, but era naming is more for people in the future to do

Setting aside the feedback people have given already, I think there a few ways you could go with this.

Option 1: A series of "player profile" style videos that you can work on and upload periodically. For example, the first video could be about b4nny, the next about a different player, and so on. Shorter interviews (if the players are still around/you can get in touch) interposed with highlights, stream clips if there are any, etc. I think showing a career highlight or two and having the player explain what they were thinking could be really interesting. While casual players know about b4nny, I think a lot of people don't grasp that the 6s scene goes way, way deeper than froyotech. I also think focusing not just on, like, top15 all-time players, but also low invite players, well-known players in general, etc. in order to get across the breadth of the scene. So it would look like this:

• TF2 Player Series 1: b4nny
  
• TF2 Player Series 2:
  
• TF2 Player Series 3:
  
• etc.

Option 2: You could do a longer player documentary series (10+ minutes each) focusing on all-time talents. Of course many of these players are no longer active, so getting in touch might be impossible; the overall feel of these videos would be more historical/documentary-like than option #1. Explain their careers, what made them so good at 6s, you could interview other players who are still active (i.e., "what was it like playing against clockwork?"), etc. This might align more with what you had in mind originally.

Option 3: A series about the history of 6s in general. A single documentary about the history of 6s I think would be way too hard, so you could tell the story through videos on the different "eras" of the game (Ancient Era, Golden Era, Dark Era, RGL Era). I recommend reading through the NA Top100 series Tery did in 2021. You could explain how class compositions were established, the biggest changes throughout each and their effects, in what ways players improved or how the scene shifted, etc. Would really help if you could get a hold of some super old players/clips/stories to make it interesting. A series like this would really allow you to set the stage for clips. Showing casual players artist's bomb in s6 finals is cool and all, but explaining it in the context of strategy and the game's history I feel would have casual players on the edge of their seats when watching.

the changes I want !!

1. A "ping" system, that either allows medics to ping locations on the map, or all classes or something. (I also think minimaps like in cs would be a welcome addition but i understand that would be pretty hard).

2. Reduce the radius of the airblast cone, or make it so that airblast gets weaker and weaker the more times it's used in a row. Alternatively, make players who are airblasted able to strafe like they jumped, or at 80% strafe speed or something. Or do all of these things.

3. For weapon changes, I thought of some that I thought might be cool but any reworks to the broken weapons would be welcome:

Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol
This weapon fires 100% accurate rounds
This weapon holsters 20% slower
+15% primary (scattergun) reload speed penalty

The Mad Milk
Heals only 20% of damage done instead of the current ridiculous 60%, and you can only milk a maximum of 2 players at once
-5% movement speed on wearer

Vita-Saw
+15% Medi-Gun range
Per melee hit: Medi-Gun range increases by 5% (up to some maximum)
-10 maximum health

The Diamondback
On backstab: 3 seconds of 100% critical chance
-20% damage penalty
-33% clip size

please make a 5cp map next for us to play :-)

4 minute round timer and pro config for IM+ for this season, thanks Taylor

also LOL buffalo steak sandvich got unbanned

bump - looking for med tryouts today and tomorrow

Roads not yet glistening, rain slight,
Broken clouds darken after thinning away.
Where they drift, purple cliffs blacken.
And beyond — white birds blaze in flight.

Sounds of cold-river rain grown familiar,
Autumn sun casts moist shadows. Below
Our brushwood gate, out to dry at the village
Mill: hulled rice, half-wet and fragrant.

frags like a gentle stream is LFP!
NAME CHANGE: peashooter army

scout: jw
flank scout: daveb
pocket: mono
roamer: nazara
demo: alfredodan
medic: rebite

thanks and message Jw.#4795 for tryouts!
poem is Rain by Du Fu
在破裂的石門旁，軍醫再次掉落

It's kind of ridiculous to me that people are still friends and scrimming with this guy and nobody says anything. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like if people were pugscrimming with or ringing nursey. There's no point in permabanning a player if he can still actively participate and do everything except play matches. The people who scrim with alfa need to be banned.

This isn't novel either, it's right there in RGL's rules and they aren't enforcing it for some reason

Is this rule not being enforced because the people breaking it are top invite players? Did the admins get together and decide to give them an exception because they're good at the game? And do these people really have no backbone that they won't refuse to play with him? It isn't like they don't know what they did. This is a disgrace.

"Purge the evil person from among you." (1 Corinthians 5:13)

What I was trying to say is that reaching the widest possible audience is not always the best solution for the growth of competitive. If we treat this as an advertising issue, which maybe it isn't in the first place, then we'd want to target our "advertising" of comp toward players most likely to benefit the scene long-term. Instead of just paying for general advertising on any website, for example, a company that sells premium candles would pay for advertisements on premium clothing websites, girly websites, etc., even if fewer people total would actually see one of their advertisements. It's the same thing for 6v6 TF2.

While I don't dispute that TF2CC getting an official blog post for their newbie cup is a net positive, often trying to reach the most players possible in advertising competitive TF2 will actually have less benefit than being more targeted or selective, just like the candle company. Like I think the higher-level community server pubbers might be more likely to try comp and enjoy it enough to stick around than general casual players, so maybe it would be a good idea to try to partner with some community server owners or something, rather than being more general. I also think youtuber partnerships could work well, i.e. an invite demo doing like a Q&A session or a POV review of an exciting match with some demo youtuber.

So per grapejuice's post I mean that some demographics are more likely to try out 6s/keep playing it than other demographics. And obviously if the advertising is free we take that. Instead of marketing to the "casual community" as a whole, which I don't think works super well because it creates so much extra work, smaller-scale targeted projects would probably work better. In terms of trying to get people from other games to try 6v6, or Uncletopia players, etc. those are just some ideas I had.

davidb always melee dueling, baiting people into the train on freight, locking down the tunnel on demo on turbine, etc. and it's still not even close https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/conker/images/4/4d/ConkerCashEyes.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20111229210918

I think trying to market to the "casual community" is basically useless because casual players as a whole will never be competitive-type players. RGL tried marketing to casual players with "No Restriction 6s" and to an extent Prolander which were total failures.

6s is its own game and needs to be treated as such; trying to appease people who say "I would play if I could use engineer more" or "I don't like the fact that there's x rule" will never help grow the scene and can only cause the 6s we know to die and get absorbed into the casual sphere. In other words, appealing too much to casual players can only cause 6s to lose its identity and not be 6s anymore. Sure, groups like TF2CC cast a really wide net, but then we get in a situation where (literally) people are asking to get their pubs demo reviewed, etc., and it ends with almost no one sticking around because they're all casual players at heart.

This is why it's important to appeal to competitive-minded people to begin with, rather than just TF2 people in general. Purebred casual players simply play a different game than us. Maybe trying to get people who already play competitive movement FPS games to test out 6v6 TF2, or having some kind of ELO-based matchmaking service that only appeals to competitive-minded players in the first place would work. Part of the problem is that a lot of people in and out of TF2 don't even know "comp" exists to begin with. I don't know how we'd fix that.

I hope you're feeling better if you're alive, spider. still have friend requests open to you if you see this.

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." (John 15:18-19)

1. Implement the win-difference config in all divisions.
In my view this config should be made the gold standard for competitive 6v6 at all skill levels. It eliminates "parking the bus" as a viable strategy (something that is really only a problem in matches in the first place), and makes better use of 5CP's offensive/defensive map design. The main argument against this config is that it's too hard to understand, but it really isn't, and the config announcing when the winlimit changes in chat also helps with that.

2. Change the round timer to 4 minutes or 4 minutes 30 seconds.
We saw that a 3 minute timer was too restrictive even for high level teams, and that a 3 minute timer may have nerfed the attacking team too much by denying time for reasonable sac waves. Both the 3 and 5 minute timers are improvements from 10 minutes. However, 5 minutes is still too slow/does not go far enough. I think RGL should recognize that there is still room for reasonable experimentation with the round timer. I lean towards a 4 minute timer.

3. Implement the pick/ban system for all or most divisions.
I think expanding to allow Advanced teams to do pick/bans was a good move, but it's not like Main or even IM teams are too bad to be able to do pick/bans. Pick/bans increase the potential skill ceiling of every team and increase player participation and teamplay at no cost. If RGL wants to keep NC and AM on a set schedule I think that's fine (but not necessary), but there are basically no downsides to allowing teams in lower divisions to do pick/bans in the same way as Adv/Inv. (I also think pick/bans should be done minutes prior to map start, but that's more fringe on my part and more debatable.)

4. Only include new maps that are in active development.
Whenever considering whether to add a new map to the pool, the first question RGL should ask is whether the mapmaker is prepared and willing to change their map (even to a large degree) in response to being tested in the pool. Reckoner is the biggest example of why this rule should be implemented; any valid feedback about the map (the cap point under mid slowing the game down too much, the lower entrance into lobby that shouldn't exist, etc.) didn't matter because the mapmaker quit the game. It's not that most people mind playing new maps -- if suggestion 3 is implemented they can just ban them -- but that people don't enjoy playing new maps that never get updated or never have glaring issues fixed.

bump