If only 12 unlocks are being used in a highlander match, then that tells them something too.

Yyyaaaoooo.

Chiming in finally. Gonna try and make it short, then write a letter my letter of thanks to valve for another awesome visit.

I read through the thread and a lot of great thoughts that I'm sure will provide good feedback for the tfteam.

Two important things.

This isn't an attack on 6v6 and highlander is currently the best place for a pick/ban system to be tested.

The argument of the TF team has been for a long time that they don't want to devote resources to tuning competitive play when they could be tuning play for EVERYONE. It's a whole lot more efficient and you can't really argue with it.

I can understand why Killing is passionately confused by this but he shouldn't be sweating his job. The nature of 6v6 breaks the 9-class balance of TF2 and necessitates the restrictions of items. The 6s community has considered banning heavies.

6v6 is a much more eXclusive format than Highlander, and it definitely does have its merits. If TF2 ever is gonna have big money prizes it'll be for 6s.

If TF2 is ever gonna have big money prizes, then we need to continue to grow as a competitive community and that's what this is about.

As Salamancer has been stating, Valve is in need of direct ways in which they can accurately measure how weapons are viewed by the community and whether said weapons are unbalanced. The competitive scenario of DOTA gives them feedback on whether heroes need buffs or nerfs. They had a slight Visage buff planned for Dota2 before the east qualifiers because Visage WAS an under-used hero.

If a pick/ban system could be implemented and Valve could gather data like: Pomson gets banned EVERYTIME, then it's much easier for them to see omg this needs to be changed.

One final point to bring us back around on how this relates more to highlander than 6s. Highlander is much more closer to the public game eXperience. It makes way more sense for them to tune their weapons based off of competitive feedback in the arena of Highlander. If a pick/ban system was put into place in 6s, the data would be heavily skewed due to how classes are used.

NOW, let's re-iterate what myself and Sal could use YOUR help with.

Picks/Bans. How many and when? Let's theory craft this shit together.

The Item pool for what can be picked/banned could be restricted for now to ease the shock of eXperimentation and eventual implementation. Do not allow full sets to be completed for eXample. You could also have a list of guaranteed weapons like kritz gunboats boston basher and escape plan, at least for the start.

You could take this idea far enough to decide that banning stock weapons is okay but that is another inital step we do not have to take.

Picks could work like: Each team blind bans 2 weapons from a class and blind picks 2 or 3 available weapons for each class. Could then go into another wild card pick/ban.

Last sentence I swear: If you wanna try dota style pick bans for 6s by all means PLEASE go ahead.

listen to yourself and don't be afraid to be quiet in order to give your co-caster more time to talk, or to just let suspense build.

Many casters just try and spit as many words out as possible. Focus on accuracy and communication instead of speed.

stream in house 3v3's, ultiduo, and mge

<3

Make sure you submit your clips from Week 1 of ESEA S14!
http://extelevision.com/submit

Hooli you're reading too much into that post. A lot of community contributors have often had flashes of being upset with people's ungratefulness. Not saying he's right/wrong, but just that I don't think that post either made him quit, or was his scapegoat for why he quit.

Sad to hear this about Zak as I always thought he was one of the few in the community who always followed through. Hope it works out for Relic and Zak makes things right.

algebra is the shit, should be teaching it to fourth graders imo.

Legend of Zelda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e317n9ktjRs

Getting the Aussies to i49 would be Aussome.

Burnsiders play Ultiduo and some 3v3, still need to find the best maps for 3v3, but it's pretty good practice.

gawd dam. so eXcited for this.

brad 2smart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZQYW9QrMSA - TL/DR: vague hints about a surprise.

eXcited!

Thanks for the mention! We just had our first social, but it was only four of us. We will be doing some filming IRL and publishing that footage, as well as streaming scrims+matches.

Not sure how we'll stack up against even the mid-table teams, but we're taking a multi-season outlook and are looking forward to playing and getting better.