TYREEEZY

best streamer by a mile. He made his stream fun w/o having to be good.

I think the ban system is supposed to be a middleground. Maybe this is Robin's suggestion for dealing with what he probably sees as new weapons inevitably being initially overpowered. If something is really overpowered, it will get banned every game and wont ruin comp play. At that point, valve can fix it.

I dont really care for football, but I have watched every superbowl in the last 5 years. There is something to be said about the role spectacle and prevalence in the popularity of a sport.

With that being said, look at how much more popular football is than baseball. Football actually has different plays that can make a game interesting for the casual observer.

Look at the popularity of different esports. Going from most popular to least popular also lets you sort by the amount of variety and strategic depth of these games: Mobas>SC2>CS>>Vanilla tf2.

If you dont think the problem is variety, then what do you think is the issue here? What is making dota so big and so much fun to watch at a high level that tf2 lacks?

Or more weapons. Basically get a free random drop when you finish a game.

Balance for dota 2 is determined by pick/ban rates in high level games. I dont see why the same wouldnt be true for competitive tf2.

I think valve is smart enough to realize seeing sandvich bans every match doesnt necessarily mean the weapon is too good.

The change was just smaller splash radius and extra knockback. It was taken out because the self-knockback increase was OP. But without that change, it was back to being a boring/useless weapon. Getting to any koth mid in 2 rocket jumps was super fun though.

That seems to be the best option, but I still forsee bans affecting certain classes more than others.

But if valve is looking at competitive balance again, its a non-issue. If its a problem, it will be recognized and fixed.

I didnt say the UGC/ETF2L weapons are off limits. But there are certain unlocks that seem to be necessary for certain classes to be viable. Banning gru, degreaser, gunboats, gunslinger is like banning the sticky launcher.

Then there are weapons like the flare gun or dead ringer which provide a different option for certain classes. Those weapons should be left in the pool of bannable weapons, since a team that wants to prevent a spy from using the Dead ringer makes the tradeoff of letting another weapon that is potentially more game-breaking through.

EDIT: if we allow the banning of ALL unlocks, players will just ban the most useful ones. At that point there will be a disparity between classes that are always amazing (demoman, scout) and classes that become viable with unlocks (engie).

If you want to argue that every unlock should be on equal level, then you need to accept the fact that some unlocks were designed to make classes more viable, not just to give them more options. At that point you need to accept that certain unlocks are on the same level as stock, and therefore stock should be considered alongside unlocks for the banning phase.

If we're talking Highlander, then there has to be certain locked unlocks. Shit like the GRU, degreaser, gunboats. I think its fine to leave stuff like the flare gun out. A weapon that is balanced well like that most likely wont get banned. And if it does, that means they let an actual broken weapon through.

Shout out to the guy who name-dropped MLB as a reason variety isnt needed in tf2. Baseball has to be the most boring sport out there. Not even actual baseball players enjoy watching it.

This is a baller-ass hud.

The huge amount of variety in Dota 2 is what keeps me watching, even though I like tf2 so much more. Every match of dota is different (even though the a sizable portion are just batrider, gyrocopter, nyx). Every match of 6v6 is more or less the same, with the only really interesting parts being the flashy airshots. HL has the same problem, but to a lesser degree. The difference here is that dota has balanced their game to the point where stupidly easy heroes can be just as viable as the most difficult ones, so any combination of heroes could be viable with a decent enough strategy.

Dota is a game full of bullshit mechanics, and gimmicky heroes and items, and its competitive scene incredibly popular because of it.

Just use a global skill rating. Having different skill ratings by division and class is ridiculous. Besides, how much worse is someone's medic vs. scout vs. soldier? ofc no one can play every class at the same level, but i think anyone who is decent at 1 class can play any other one well enough to justify their mmr.

If you do it right, you will have 0 competition from tf2lobby (i think the creator will actually be relieved that he can finally stop supporting it).

TF2lobby has no matchmaking, rating-system, or support for encouraging external-voip. If you had your own pug system, teams could have a quick glimpse at the skill-level of free-agents, without having to scrim or mge with each one (assuming stats/ranking is tracked). Additionally, free-agents could have a way of meeting up and playing together outside of randomly starting a team and trying out player after player. Going from pug buddies to teammates would be seamless since both parties already have active accounts with the site. The name of the game here is accessibility. The easier you make it for players to play and start teams, the more players you are likely to get.

I dont really know how much time and money it would take to get that feature running, so i guess its up to you guys to figure out of its worth it. If your concern is that there are better alternatives in TF2 already and youd be competing with other services, i dont think that is true.