Well, obviously all sticky variants would be thrown together in the limit to one, so you wouldn't just be able to run a Stickies Demo and a Quickies Demo... but I assume that limiting them together is the difficulty of making it into a config?

I see, so right now it's not possible to have a cart that is both tap-to-push and can also be pushed at faster rates? [like if it would be x1 if it was only tapped, but could also be x2, x3, etc. if there were more people on it]

Is the cart being capped at x1 max speed a side effect of how the tap-to-push was programmed, or an actual design philosophy? If not, are you trying to work on having the functionality of faster push speeds as well?

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.

I don't know why Valve ended up rejecting 9v9 matchmaking, but if it was simply a logistical problem that would be viably solved by Prolander 7v7, then it should be seriously considered... and I think that we should all want that even if we don't play Highlander, because it means less Spy and Pyro mains queuing up for 6v6 matchmaking...

There's no point in comparing it to 6v6, though, because it can't replace 6v6 for obvious reasons. [the gameplay provided by Prolander 7s is distinct from that of 6s] If anything, it should be seen as a potential replacement for Highlander 9s--in which case, the first two points are positives in favor of Prolander 7s, not negatives. The other two points are with a concept that isn't inherent to Prolander 7s: if any other league attempted to develop the format, it could easily be done with a static whitelist, just as with the majority of leagues.

For something a little more relevant to the league, what’s up with the map pool? Right now, it consists of 4 PL, 3 KotH, and 1 A/D. Obviously missing from that is any 5CP maps at all… and why? The original Challenge Cup had several 5CP maps, so what happened that deemed them not worthy of playing? I seem to recall nobody having any serious problems from the spectator’s PoV, so did the people who played in the cup actually give feedback of it being worse than the other 3 gamemodes? It seems like a bad idea to throw away viable game modes when the objective of the league is to push a less “stale” meta.

[I personally enjoyed watching the 5CP more than I did the PL maps, anyway…]

Technically, he did start the Challenge Cup as a 6s tournament that had Scout limited to 1, a diverse map pool, and the save and ban system.

If I remember correctly, he changed it to 7s because of the fact that he was getting shit on for trying something different, and decided that he wanted to do something that he believed in with the tournament [Prolander] instead of trying to be experimental 6s.

While it's possible that the Quick-Fix was on its way out anyway, it's worth noting, should there be any future discussion in the legality of the weapon, that the Pyro's flamethrower directly counters the Quick-Fix's Uber. [the buff they gave it where it reduces healing on targets hit by the flame particles applies to the Quber as well]

Accurate testing of the balance of the weapon [which may or may not even happen until the thing is nerfed even further] in the future should include attempting to both attack last and defend last against a Pyro.

To refer to it as rock-paper-scissors seems extreme to me. Does a team with a player running a Cow Mangler hard counter a team running standard? No. Does a team running an Engineer hard counter a team running a Cow Mangler? No.

It'd be nice if we could keep the "RPS" rhetoric down to things that actually turn -who wins mid- into a game of RPS with loadouts or class composition.

Well, I have idea where to look for whitelist history, but considering that the weapon messes with Uber mechanics, it was more likely just kneejerk banned in 2010 when it released, for the reason of the same kneejerk reactions that the weapon still gets today. Someone around in 2010 could confirm or deny if there were any matches played to see how the Vita-Saw affects gameplay.

While I can understand why it might intuitively slow down the game when just looking at the effect it has on building Uber, there's also the fact that it being the standard would also result in more Medic picks, because, while it often makes no different for individual situations, as a whole the 10-15* health reduction would have an impact over the survivability of Medic. I'm obviously open to the fact that it might slow down the game, but I don't think that it's blatantly the case from just looking at the stats.

*because a reduction in max HP also affects the health you get from packs, any time between picking up a medium pack and when you passively return to close to max HP, you are at 15 health disadvantage compared to stock. [also, if you never return to full health, this effect would continue to stack to 20 health disadvantage, 25, etc.]

The same could be said of the Escape Plan, the Sandvich, the Crossbow, etc., and yet those items are currently legal.

Obviously something being OP in the definition you're using isn't the rule that is used for banning [or else these items would be banned for being so much better than their alternatives in the meta], but rather we permit things so long as they serve to improve the game, or at least do not break it--and that's why I asked the question. Why ban the item before we even know if its inclusion worsens the game? Is there any evidence of it actually doing so? It changes the mechanics, but how do we know that this is for the worse?

But the argument made is that the disadvantage is so severe to the point where you'd be forced to run it practically constantly in a Vita-Saw-legal environment.

At that point, you can assume that the enemy Medic was running Vita-Saw. If he was not, and your team is in some way punished for the faulty assumption, how is this so different from the many other kinds of sub-optimal surprise plays that can work via the element of surprise from the enemy not knowing?

While I assume that this may already been widely discussed elsewhere, and my question be redundant:

OK, so it forces both Medics to run Vita-Saw...

...and? The natural question that should be asked from that is "what does this do to the game?" At face value, this just changes the game to be as if Valve had made the Medic at 140 HP, and made Ubers charge faster. [other than the first Uber, or any Uber where you do not die in-between. Only the second one actually yields an imbalance of sort in Uber prediction--and it isn't negligible, obviously, but its negligibility doesn't have to be a premise anyway to make my question valid.]

So is it not conceivable that the modifications that the Vita-Saw makes to 6s could actually be beneficial to the format? Has it at least been tried before concluding that, in some way, it breaks what makes 6s what it is currently?

[also, any actual effective use of the Ubersaw ever does the exact same thing to the Uber relationship, but in a much more volatile way than the Vita-Saw, since the Vita-Saw's effect is consistent, at least. Sure, it might not be very common, but why even allow the weapon if "don't mess with the Uber prediction mechanic" is one of our banning axioms?]