#44 We did. They do not believe every weapon is perfectly balanced, but they also don't have a good way of determining whether a weapon is truly balanced or not. That's a big part of the reason for this system - they need data.

#46 Uh, no, they don't plan on giving you a 6v6 in-game lobby system. They plan on giving you a 9v9 in-game lobby system. 6v6 is far too different from regular play for them to support as a first step.

Of course. I would play them for fun too. I'm just saying that people shoul not complain about the format because it doesn't fit the style they want to play because it's obvious that the lobbies are not there to take the place of ESEA&co but to allow pub players to make the transition to comp and generally make comp tf2 not obscure anymore. If it is a success, maybe we will see money going form valve into tournaments too later.

I'm so weirded out by this news. On the one hand, "Yay!" they acknowledge that comp exists and are trying to create a format. On the other hand, it seems like they hate the pinnacle of competitive play!

I mean, do they even playtest within valve in competitive formats? 6s or highlander? Are they just coming up with these changes without having ever played comp? This is so weird.

Already did.

Really excited to hear this, don't let your hate for highlander cloud your vision, this is a good step to take.

Maybe I didn't make my post clear. They don't "hate" the pinnacle of competitive play. They are time-constrained. If they could offer all the things to all the people, they would offer a 6v6 lobby system. But that's a pipe dream. They have to do what benefits the largest number of people, and they still want to see the competitive side grow. If they can grow both the normal pub experience and the competitive experience at the same time, that's the ultimate prize, so that's why they are more willing to support 9v9 than other modes.

Is the point of the weapon bans to get rid of OP weapons, or to create some sort of weapon meta?

If it's the former just have everyone say x weapons they want banned, and then the x weapons with the most votes are banned. If there's a tie just ban both if they have >1 votes? In game it could sort of look like a backpack with all the weapons in it.

in case you havent figured it out yet, valve isn't there to cater to your needs. they do what makes them money. They probably feel that a HL lobby system could get people to play the game and they could find a way to make money out of it.

Valve isn't implementing this lobby system to be the pinnacle of competition within TF2. They care about themselves only just as any business does. acting entitled helps no one.

I don't think that all data points would be of equal value here. If all players have a hand in determining weapon balance for a game format that has been around for years then it seems like an unnecessary reinvention of the metagame... The views of the best players in the format should determine the weapon list, as they are the most familiar with the format as we want it to be.

But the community has spent years deciding what the best loadouts are to do what needs to be done. It kind of sounds like the people at valve don't realise how much time people have spent refining the competitive format to where it is now. I feel like it would be a waste of time getting all this pick/ban data when if taken seriously it will come up with a weapon blacklist that is extremely similar to the current UGC one.

I honestly think seeing how a pick/ban system plays out in front of my eyes before I take a specific stand on whether I like it or not. My big question is how does this system work?

are we just going down and doing a "PICK and BAN" once per each player, possibly until every item is either safeguarded or banned or is it one-two weapon per class banned or?

To me it seems like they're trying to make highlander more like dota and include this idea of adapting into loadouts. That's simply not possible at the moment(besides medi gun/kritz) because you cannot see which weapons a person is using unless he switches through all of them. And besides it's really hard to keep a track of all that, in addition to that you can change your loadout at any moment in time.

If they really want something like that though, it would have to be so that players have to pick their weapons at the start of the match and they are forced to use them for the entire match, similarly to how heros are picked in dota. Maybe it could evolve into picking counter-loadouts or something. That system obviously has it problems too, not being able to swap off to kritz, etc.

Let us not forget one thing, everyone: Valve has already a "lobby system" in the game. It's called Mann vs Machine. I think it will be rather simple to have a somewhat similar setup for highlander lobbies and possibly for 6s later. It's really not hard to change that once the basic stuff has been done. All that needs to happen is the HL system to be a success to keep Valve's interest. Which means that we need lots of pub players to hop on the comp train. This is best achieved through HL.

I have a feeling that Sal added the "ever" to his post by himself (rather than quoting anyone from Valve directly), in the hopes that we wouldn't get too excited as a community and end up soiling our collective pants before that time has come. Even with this disclaimer, however, several of the posters in this thread came to the conclusion that we were getting a 6v6 lobbying interface added to the game, which is simply not the case, as Sal has put it so far. Goes to show how cautious you have to be when posting an abbreviated version of real conversations on behalf of other people.

#67 New meta.

Changes to the metagame are hugely important. Let's assume for a minute that Valve releases a new system in 6-12 months' time (they did not give any kind of timetable, this is just me speculating). All items in their current forms are allowed, and each team can pick 9 weapons to ban in a one-round blind pick. Duplicates are not re-picked.

So you get teams consistently banning the pomson, the cow mangler, the enforcer, and other items that nobody likes playing against. How long do you think it will take for the TF team to hone in on the exact banlists that UGC and other leagues have spent years crafting? Not long at all.

What about the random line about "stagnation" or whatever? Seems to be another reason for emphasizing 9's over 6's.

I get that they are constrained by time, etc etc, but what worries me is that we are having this outside authority coming in and telling us that our format is unworthy of being adopted because the TF2 team (who, to my knowledge, pretty much never plays the game competitively internally) is coming in and making some wide ranging decisions about how to implement proper item metagames.

Its like, does Capcom get to decide whether or not EVO is single elimination or swiss? No, its EVO organizers and fighting game community players who decide the formats. Even DOTA, which is where I'm imagining they got the idea for picks/bans, was an organic community led process which was determined by the actual players involved in the competitive leagues, not some arbitrary decision brought about from on high.

#74 Right, it's all my impressions. Nothing was directly quoted or recorded. Nonetheless, my very strong impression from the TF team was that 6v6 in its current iteration was not something that most of their customers could ever get excited about. They want a system that really integrates into and synergizes with pub play.

Blatant x-post from the thread over @ ozfortress:

The issue is that 6v6 is a very strict format - if you think about the logistics of forcing the majority of pub players (valve's focus) to play either medic/scout/soldier/demo in the staple 6v6 competitive style it's going to be miserable.

I'd be a lot more excited about something like this if there were less focus on "new exciting weapons!!!!!" and actually introducing pub players into the competitive sphere. It would awesome if valve was willing to run a standard 6v6 matchmaking system alongside this HL stuff - especially if people could queue for both and if 6v6 was marketed as the staple competitive format.

I think that valve's position that 6v6 is stale and boring - "the competitive format is currently too stagnant" - just because people have worked out the "best possible" competitive weapons/set up is extremely disappointing. It's basically confirming what everyone has been saying for ages - TF2 is never going to be considered a competitive game by valve. Ironically because it is too "boring" and the only "strats" that the company are interested in come from the blatantly pub weapons. If valve were interested in promoting competitive change in TF2 - especially 6v6 - all they would need to do is look at the Gunboats and how they changed the game and go from there...

This matchmaking system will probably see an increase in interest in competitive TF2, with players filtering from pub -> highlander -> 6s... but the focus on weapons and weapon bans is only going to inhibit the progression of the real competitive aspect of TF2. I hope everyone has given up on a new badlands-esque game changing 5cp map and is excited for some brand new payload maps to facilitate these super fun and exciting weapons in highlander.

tldr - it's alright

#75 this plus the collective force of 100000s of pootis pub players might actually be able to develop working strats for some of the weapons that are mostly seen in pubs today.
It will also help to balance new weapons more quickly, as everyone will be playtesting them when they come out and through the lobbies valve gets actual data on how well the new weapon performs as opposed to its sidegrades.

#76 Valve doesn't control ESEA or other 6s leagues, so this doesn't affect them at all. 6v6 can be preserved in its current form indefinitely so not sure where all this tinfoil hattery is coming from.

This is solely about Valve taking a step towards making TF2 a more competitive-friendly game. If they spend a few months or a year learning from the lobby system they implement and decide that hey, turns out 6v6 really is where they want to go, then they can do that.

FOR THE RECORD - I did NOT use the term "boring" to describe 6v6 or Robin's reaction to it, nor did he. He likes the skillshots and the finely honed art of TF2. He just stopped watching because he finds metagame and strategy shifts to be more interesting to watch - and he is pretty heavily involved in DOTA.

As unpopular of an opinion as it is on this board, I agree entirely with Robin on this, in that native in-game 6v6 lobbies wouldn't work very well.

And even if the current meta is the one that most rewards player skill, that still isn't enough for Valve to justify enforcing it natively to the game. Crazy strats that change the meta for 6s won't happen because the most skill-based plays with the most skill-based weapons on the most skill-based maps have already been figured out, for the most part. 90% of what's left for teams to do is to improve their communication (which will be almost nonexistent in lobbies anyway, let's face it) and DM to a watertight standard. That makes for a good show for people who want to watch sick frags and get sick frags themselves, but fresh and new strategies are drying up fast.

If 6s lobbies in-game existed they would just be ruined by the lack of communication, not to mention phlog pyros or gunslinger engineers getting easy kills through the lack of consistent banlists. HL only has 10 or so weapons banned at the moment, it would be much easier for lobbiers to make up banlists on the fly for it than for 6s.

And there's only 4 stock maps (badlands, granary, gully, gpit) that are even considered viable to play 6s on at the moment, compared to HL covering most of the stock maps and every active game mode except plr.

What? Who would ever look at valve for new competitive maps when we have an entire community revolving around making those? (I'm making one myself, it'll be done when HL3 comes out)

This is a very lame reason for justifying there activities. I'm fine with them focusing on highlander, after all that's where a ton of players are, etc etc. What I'm disagreeing with is the insistence that our game is "stagnant" and that if we want to be involved in Valve's vision of what competitive play is for TF2 we have to jettison years worth of competitive experience, focusing on a seemingly random set of pick/ban criteria that no one has ever used in TF2.

There is a point that a lot of people are missing about the weapon ban concept. On the surface, it seems like if we just have the people who are most experienced with the format decide the ban lists for this system, then you have a system that people can enjoy, but this view is looking at the situation from the wrong side.

The pick/ban system is not for the people who already understand the current meta and the reasoning behind the ban lists that already exist, the point is so that valve can see what the pub players whom they are attempting to introduce in to the competetive scene think about the weapons. Players in the in-game pug system who have a tendency to ban certain weapons are most likely coming from a pub background, and so valve receives feedback about their most popular format of TF2. At the same time as receiving this data, valve can use this system to funnel people in to the competetive scene, and so at the end of the day everyone wins. And who knows? Maybe the pub players who are trying this system will ban the stuff that's already banned in league play anyway. That would really tell us if the weapon bans that we defend so passionately are really as great as we think they are.

Could you get Valve to throw some links towards TFTV, UGC maybe? People are going to have questions and these are places with forums that could help people learn some of the basics.

Also what about maps? Will they being using just they're payload maps and/or CTF? Or will they also include community made maps that are being used like Swiftwater?

I wonder if he's seen Boink's recent spy plays on process... if that isn't a sudden creative shift in how 6s is played, I don't know what is.

Robin wants something new? I'll give him lazerbeems.

Feel like a pug for 6s would be pretty bad to begin with, pubbers not knowing the 'metagame' (i hate that word) and rollouts etc etc. Highlander is much more accessible, and while not as popular and widely played as 6v6, once you're in the competitive scene you always end up trying it. I think a 6s pug system would definitely put a lot of people off.

if this is the case, then why is sal asking us to test the pick/ban system idea? wouldnt that suggest that our ideas matter to valve as well?

anyways, look at the cevo hl banlist imo, it's pretty much perfect