I still don't understand the point of the expanded whitelist, maybe someone could explain it to me?
Valve won't give a shit about the data and valve definitely listen to the what the community wants, they never have in TF2 and they never will. They struggle to do what the community wants in CSGO, what makes you think they'll do it in TF2? Valve only finally added MM and some support for the scene after TF2 finally got a direct competitor and not when it was obvious it would be a smart business decision (2010/2011 when SC2 and LoL really started to become big and eSports became more than a joke). If you want to point at DotA2 as a sign of valve being able to handle eSports, consider the fact that everyone that works on DotA does so because they want so and they love the game. Gabe Newell personally has an interest in the game and that goes a long mile to help the whole scene, a lot more than people can really be aware of I think anyway.
Gameplay won't improve, it seems like literally everyone is aware of this.. Last holds seems stronger even though they were already pretty difficult to break. Will more of the classes see more playtime? Maybe but probably not, and it's not like it matters because I would say most people don't really care about that too much.
The only argument I've really seen so far is that Valve will finally have data to balance weapons around and maybe more people would be willing to play competitive. Not only will valve not care about the data but it's already there, the simple fact that an item is banned means that there is something wrong with it and it doesn't take too much of a brain to figure out what's wrong especially if you play with the item in a pub or MM game for like 10 minutes.
If you think that somehow unbanning all these weapons gives us a "truer" TF2 experience then what the fuck have I been playing for the past 6 years cause that's the game I fell in love with, that's the game so many people fell in love with, it's why were here honestly and sure the weapons can be fun in pubs but I seriously fail to see how this gives a more dynamic, interesting and fun game that what we already have.
Pubbers also won't really give a crap. People start playing 6s/HL because they love the game and not being able to play with a few badly designed/overpowered unlocks isn't gonna stop them. I also just can't see someone saying "wow my favorite weapon got unbanned, it's time to finally start playing 6s/HL!" It just seems nuts to me, that's not a barrier that exists in this game.
If someone could give a reasonable explanation that'd be great because honestly I'm clueless about the whole thing.
And just FYI: I had no idea about this happening until rando asked for us to remove the whitelist during the scrim and Nursey explained the whitelist was getting bigger and noted something along the lines of "a few things are getting unbanned, nothing gamebreaking" but yet the atomizer and base jumper were on that whitelist...?