Edit: here's a video in which I go into detail about my thoughts on extv/pbl's decision not to support 6s:
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Original reply:
I love that you're trying to grow this community with change and whatnot but (as I've made clear in talking to you) some of your points are just straight up flawed, and I feel like the community needs to hear a less one-sided vlog from the most known competitive TF2 org.
6s isn't working with the meta that valve is trying to implement
That's because the "meta" they're trying to implement is fucking stupid. Pub tf2 is fun sure, but any competitive format that plays with the "meta" (see: random silliness and stupidity) will be taken seriously by no one, valve included. People will say "wow, the competitive community is finally allowing unlocks and letting me run minisentry engie to mid oh boy!" and then realize how fucking stupid it is after playing with it for a week.
6v6 is playing a version of tf2 that is several years old
Because that version of tf2 is the one we can play 5 nights a week 3 hours a night without having fucking aneurysms and killing ourselves.
Any other game you have competitively, you have things that come out and change things around
You say right after this "some people don't like playing against gimmicky things". The people that don't like playing against these things are the people that actually play the game. It's pretty ignorant imo to expect people to play against things that make the game not fun just so that a few new people try it out (and eventually decide that it isn't fun too).
The GRU is banned not because it is OP but because it helps heavy get to mid
Did you hear yourself say that? There is no downside to running GRU on heavy over stock. You run with it during rollout and don't switch when you're at mid and you get to mid with your team for no downsides. Which makes it OP.
The other is to bring in some sort of pick-and-ban system
This works with mobas because you set up your class structure at the beginning of the game and you don't change it. To do this in tf2 would be to break the so called "meta" valve is striving for. And to enable class/ weapon swaps during the game with an open whitelist (minus a few unlocks) will be broken.
[People] have seen it all already
But they haven't. That's like saying just because football goes by the same rules every game that you've seen it all already. Sure you've seen passes, runs, etc but you'll never see the same combination throughout the game. People ignorant to football might say "this is stupid it's the same thing over and over" but those people just don't understand how the game works.
Arena respawn is a different offering of tf2
In that it's not a competitive form of tf2 (in it's current and foreseeable state). I've played in them and I think they're fun to play, but only in a casual setting. The moment you present rewards for winning you better believe you'll be seeing terrible, boring, stalemate-y games. The meta will revolve around abusing the broken weapons valve doesn't fix and constantly switching gimmicky weapons. It doesn't take some super theorycrafter to realize this, it's pretty obvious honestly.
Of course there's the debate of whether or not we should be creating another format
This is what I've said about A:R the whole time. In trying to make the competitive game more like "valve's game" or whatever, we've gotten to a point where we're playing a gamemode that doesn't even exist in the game. (????)
Then you go on a tangent about items and whatnot that has nothing to do with A:R that a lot of people (including me) agree with.
It's really easy to get five random people with 5 different skillsets and have them play a game
Except it's not. With normal pugs, you know from the start what you'll be playing and what your team will need. In A:R pugs (and I've experienced this), you have no clue what will be banned until after you pick your teams and then it's up in the air who's playing what class/loadout when. It can lead to some pretty unfun games.
It's a nicer time than the 30 minutes euro format
Okay... why?
PBL, we're trying to build up a regional league with tf2... [tangent] ...with A:R we can build up a community of lower level players
WHY WOULD YOU WANT THAT? There are people that have devoted 1000s of hours to this game why the FUCK would you want random shitters to replace them? I'm sure your youtube audience loves to hear that, but like... that just sounds like a really stupid idea. You can do the local thing with good players...
It's easy for us to have a 20 person lan once a month
Then do that. There's no reason you have to switch the entire structure of competitive tf2 so you can have your 20-person burnsider lan.
We think A:R brings a really exciting format
You think that, and the people that you've convinced at PBL think that. The vague "we" seems pretty tough considering you're talking to a huge audience. I know people that do casting things in extv that don't even think that, so the generic "we" is pretty odd.
If we see that A:R isn't as good as we thought it would be and 6s has implemented [lots of things] [we'll consider switching over]
Why don't you just trust the format that boasts one of the most sustainable competitive game out there? Not many competitive scenes as big as the 6v6 one can say that they're as large as we are today. That's because this game is awesome and unique and constant and loved by thousands of people.
I need to head out right now but I'll respond to the rest of the video when I get back and also share some closing thoughts.