I see where you're at with this but I'd like to counter with the following:

1. A team of competitive TF2 players went to Valve's headquarters and confirmed Valve is creating a 6v6 matchmaking system.
   
2. They created that system and then asked competitive players to join as part of a beta test.
   
3. They then launched the system and have continued to make changes that are in line with competitive play.

I'm not going to say that they care about what we think, since they might have done all of that stuff on their own without us, but I mean... absolutely no proof? Come on now. I know everyone didn't meet the developers and it's sort of your word versus ours but... no proof at all?

There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence of competitive players talking directly to Valve developers so I feel like a lot of you guys are exaggerating. They've even posted directly on these exact forums.

Even after we found out they were making 6v6 matchmaking, we found out it took them years to build it. My bet is that they're just slow and people are upset that updates are not being rolled out faster. If you want fast updates, your game should be the size of Overwatch, a game that has a team 100x bigger and has the justified popularity to be such. They post patch notes on the regular, they release developer video updates, and they are very communicative with the community. That is no accident but we can't expect TF2 to be the same when it's not as big.

Last time we held the meeting in secret with just admins and top players. People said they wanted insights into the meeting, so we did the same meeting as last time but this time held it in a public place so people could see it. A lot of people are under the impression that it's best if only the top players are able to make these kinds of decisions around the whitelist (historically in ESEA we did invite captain-only polls) but I thought it'd be good to open up the discussion to the community.

Hindsight is 20/20. As I mentioned, I didn't expect to discuss it at this meeting and it was just an organic topic of discussion.

Okay no worries, I posted some meeting notes. Hope they help.

We didn't either, the topic just came up as the LAN is only a week away. It's only two weapons we are talking about here, so I'm sure we can approach samiface and discuss it with her.

I'm confused people told me the rescue ranger was awful and you didn't want to play with it anymore, and it was justifiable to ban it ASAP? I might have misunderstood, just seeking clarification.

To take it further you guys want to see a Rewind LAN with rescue ranger then?

Meeting notes:
1. We won't be unbanning anything for the rewind LAN because it could drastically change results due to limited preparation. Players on both sides of the pond agreed that the rescue ranger and jarate were the worst offenders and needed to be banned regardless, at least for the time being.
2. We can always schedule a follow-up meeting but league play starts in a week so let's start experimenting now.
3. There are major issues regarding consistency of weapon bans. People wanted to ban the cow mangler simply because it was annoying (not game breaking) but couldn't apply the same logic to the natscha or the fan of war.
4. We should operate under the assumption that Valve won't give us major game balancing updates more than a few times per year.
5. We shouldn't make massive changes from the last global whitelist. Thus we proposed only 7 changes.
6. Tri specifically (ESEA) was against the quick fix and the solemn vow for reasons you guys have listed above. We agreed to a week of playtesting followed by a solid decision.

Samiface wasn't at the meeting so this all needs to be discussed with her. I'm not going one way or the other but I figured this is at least an option for her to choose from. I'm not throwing her anywhere. We agreed to a week of testing prior to the LAN.

My post isn't very detailed I just figured people who couldn't attend the meeting would watch the relevant VODS before jumping to conclusions.

As I mentioned before I really don't care what you guys do I'm just trying to organize a meeting so we can reach a decision. People don't understand that I don't play in leagues anymore so I don't have a horse in this race. I'm using my own personal social capital to get relevant parties in a room so that you guys can have the unlocks you do/don't want for next season. I provided minimal input on weapon selections and let you guys make the decisions. Anyone who attended the meeting or watched the VODs can see this plainly. Yes I have my own opinions but I didn't push for the quick fix unban and if rando doesn't want it next season he is entitled to his opinion as well right?

I've made it abundantly clear that the respective admins are in charge of their own leagues and events. I'm just a neutral third party to this who is only involved because I believe the best thing for the TF2 community is to have everyone using the same unlocks. Hope this helps.

I casted that LAN and was one of the people complaining. The worst part about the weapon was that it got changed mid-season so it messed everything up. We've had a chance to take a look at the weapon in the off-season so this isn't the same situation.

Crayon the purpose of the meeting was to discuss unbans AND bans. Don't be so narrow minded.

I'm not the tournament admin for the LAN, these are just our proposed changes after talking with TF2 league admins and high level players from around the world. I believe Samiface is the tournament admin for Rewind LAN.

Our thought process was that these two weapons are very overpowered and a significant portion of the competitive community doesn't like playing with them. We didn't want to make a potentially unexpected, significant change by unbanning something so we only banned two items. These two items have been hotly debated in the community throughout the season.

The Rewind LAN whitelist: http://whitelist.tf/6769
Experimental PugChamp whitelist: http://whitelist.tf/6772

We decided to only ban weapons for the upcoming Rewind LAN to have minimal effect on the event.
We'll experiment in PugChamp with an experimental league list since matches start the week of the 22nd and we need time to playtest. Will run this by Erynn.

There's still room for a followup meeting should we need it prior to the start of league play. I'm sure there will be a lot of whitelist discussions at the Rewind LAN itself as well.

Changelist for Rewind LAN (list #6769)
Ban > Rescue Ranger
Ban > Jarate
Ban > Machina

Changelist for League Play (list #6772)
Ban > Rescue Ranger
Ban > Jarate
Unban > Sodapopper
Unban > Dalokohs Bar
Unban > Pomson 6000
Unban > Quick Fix
Unban > Solemn Vow

Meeting notes:
1. We won't be unbanning anything for the Rewind LAN because it could drastically change results due to the limited amount of time that teams have to prepare (less than one week). Players on both sides of the pond agreed that the rescue ranger and jarate were the worst offenders and needed to be banned regardless, at least for the time being.
2. We can always schedule a follow-up meeting but league play starts in a week so let's start experimenting now.
3. There are major issues regarding consistency of weapon bans. People wanted to ban the cow mangler simply because it was annoying (not game breaking) but couldn't apply the same logic to the natscha or the fan of war.
4. We should operate under the assumption that Valve won't give us major game balancing updates more than a few times per year.
5. We shouldn't make massive changes from the last global whitelist. Thus we proposed only 7 changes.
6. Tri specifically (ESEA) was against the quick fix and the solemn vow for reasons you guys have listed above. We agreed to a week of playtesting followed by a solid decision.

anyone else bummed that it's a 24.5 inch monitor at 1080p? not sure if worth

I get where you're coming from but when we try to "fix" the whitelist or make these changes to the game, it's attacking the growth of our scene from a different angle. For example you could grow the scene by spending your time coaching newbie mixes, or you could make our game better and more naturally enjoyable to pick up and play. Both are valid uses of time in my eyes.

Everyone in our community can pitch in and play to their strengths. If you're a great teacher, coach newbie mixes. If you're a great map maker like Sidular, look to make our map selection more enticing.

I'm not going to pretend like the new matchmaking game mode is anywhere close to "good". I'm not trying to make our game like theirs. I'm just trying to bring our game more in line with what people expect, which is a game with no weapon bans. To pelt's point, removing one or two weapon bans won't move the needle by much but I believe that it's not any one individual move here but a series of moves that will make this game better. Unifying the whitelist, maplist, and ruleset would be a major milestone for our community. FACEIT, when they approached us, were confused about what the rules should be since it hasn't been clearly defined by our community. A community that supposedly has been iterating on this game for like 8 years. Valve doesn't even know what works and what doesn't work because we haven't done a good job of figuring this out. We as a comp community would rather play it safe and play our own broken 5cp game mode than test, and we expect Valve to stick their necks out and be the testers. In their defense, at least they tried (with turbine, badwater, etc.).

It's tough. Nobody wants to be the guinea pigs here and everyone is pointing at the other guy to be the tester. I think the most productive testing that we did happened after the first global whitelist meeting. Everyone was forced to play with a bunch of crappy weapons, and we found out what was truly OP and what was not. I think the logical thing to do here is take another step in that direction and continue iterating on the whitelist.

The whitelist has clear next steps. The map list doesn't. The next thing to do there is to convince a bunch of map makers that 5cp is a broken game mode and we should explore designing maps with alternate game modes that are fun to play. Then maybe Valve can stick those maps into the game like they have with other community maps, and maybe those can make it into matchmaking.

Hildreth you say the game is going downhill but attribute all of the failures to me? Come on, it's a group decision here. I've tried pushing for certain things, but I'm not the only decision maker in the room. In fact, many people would be very upset that they don't have a say if that was the case, so that's why we have to have meetings and that is why change is slow.

To your point about asking about what pubbers want, I am one of the few people in this community who cares about what pubbers want in the game. Most people think those players are completely unqualified to make those decisions, but I think you and I both know that we need pubber buy-in if this game is to grow. If you want to use pubbers' feedback to influence our community, you are right next to me in this minority of people who care about what pubbers want in what is effectively a pro mod. The other person is b4nny, and that dude isn't the best at PR but he still got destroyed for trying to push certain unlocks that pubbers want in the game. The approach could use some work but he has good intentions.

Point is, it's a significant uphill climb trying to convince the established scene that having more unlocks is better for the game. But I think the right place to start is with a global whitelist meeting including league admins and prem players, so that's why we're starting at the top. We made VERY significant progress at the last meeting, reducing ESEA banned weapons from 50+ to just over 20. I think there is some cleanup to do in this second iteration but I'm comfortable making this meeting public for this version.

It's clear there's only two paths forward from here -- 1. ride it out and keep things the way they are until the scene dies, or 2. try to create changes that will make the scene better or die trying. I'm in the second group, but I know a lot of people aren't and I respect that. I'm not here to ruin peoples' fun, I just think that we can make our game even better than it is today by making a game that appeals to everyone, not just the minority of comp players.

@spacecadet For sure. Also sorry if I ever insulted your project -- I'm not aware that I did and if I did I'd like to rectify that. I actually used your stats in a recent video that I made about who has the most ESEA victories so I definitely found it to be useful.

@SpaceCadet, I've tried growing the game before through methods like mentoring, streaming, youtube videos, casting, and putting together tournaments like the recent FACEIT cup. I've tried a lot of things to try and grow this game, and I'm not going to pretend like I'm the best person in the world at doing it which is why I encourage you or anyone else to take a stab at it. But, I do feel like I'm putting forth my best effort and that's why I took offense to your earlier comment. If we had lots of manpower and volunteers, we could try to recruit people to our scene but even that fades (look at newbie mixes for an example, since coaches are volunteers and volunteers are limited). Growing pug websites like stadium and pugchamp, leagues like ESEA or FACEIT, or recruiting sponsors has been met with adversity as well.

I feel like the problem with competitive TF2 is a systemic problem. Our game mode is flawed (5cp, it's been discussed before), our rulesets are disjointed, and our game is much different than the standard TF2 that most pubbers enjoy. Some people are okay with this and are happy to ride it out until the game dies. I'm working to try and change that, and to answer your question above, I think that this is a way that can help. If we fix the structural issues with our game, the game itself becomes more appealing and everything else falls into place.

Now some people will see that and ask where's Valve? Why won't Valve fix our problems? But it's not their responsibility it's ours. We care more about competitive TF2 than anyone else, so it's on us to fix it. We're not changing the whitelist for Valve, we're changing it for us. We're trying to make competitive TF2 the best scene out there. Recruiting people to something that is broken is much harder than recruiting people to try something that works really, really well. And right now, the world can't seem to agree on what works really really well for competitive TF2. So that's why we're meeting. To figure out what works really well so that we can all unite and do the thing that works best.

I hope this answers your questions too Hildreth. I agree with you that some people will look out for their own team's best interests instead of the community's but we should really be looking to our community leaders (league admins and top players) to figure out where we should go from here. My only role in this is starting the discussion. Even if it does turn into a shit show, at least it can't get much worse than where we're at right now. I think the objective should be to balance the game in the way that makes it the most attractive to new players. Some people think that we have it really good right now while others think there's something better out there. I think change is scary but many people see the scene as dead already -- I don't think we have much to lose.

As I mentioned before, attendance is optional but I'd appreciate any support I can get here in helping to figure out how to make our game the best game it can be.