just to remind you that everything is relative and both csgo and dota are played at an esports level and both have healthy, thriving scenes

I can promise you my fleeting "remove this weapon" comments in Mumble are not entirely representative of my balancing techniques. The crux of my "remove this item" comments is that most of these weapons are actually so stupid, it would be faster and more efficient to remove them than to actually waste your time fiddling with them so that you don't end up like tsar, who would not like to forfeit his fun for a potential gain years down the line, once he has lost interest. Believe it or not, others have agreed, which is why we have blacklists. Maybe Valve should fix their matchmaking client so that a lot of these adjustments can be made outside of the ESEA client? Perhaps matchmaking could become its own testing ground for these items, with a growing ecosystem of good players and the ability to create metrics for how underused, underpowered, or overpowered these weapons are in a 6v6 format. Oh, wait, haha :) Just another example of how people can't trust Valve to make a quality update in a timely manner and as a result, will not forfeit even a fraction of their fun for a fleeting dream.

As far as the money statement goes, you do not reserve the right to use money as an argument in a game where only you make money. The entire issue is so unbelievably fucking divisive, it makes me laugh that you could accuse people of only doing x or y for money, or even argue that doing x or y for money is a deplorable thing, when you are the only person in the game who makes a livable wage off of the game. Also, seeing as many of the community are in agreement with this toxic attitude, perhaps one day you could extradite the entire community?

EDIT: #StandWithB4nny

First of all, it's astonishing you'd compare those two and pretend that they're actual 1:1 comparisons. You've hated OW for long enough that you should understand they're completely different games, otherwise I'd hope you'd just bite the bullet and stop playing this game. Weapons like that are even unenjoyable in Overwatch, yet they suit the game much better. A game like TF2 should never see any weapons you'd see in Overwatch, as it's a much more raw, movement/dm based game. As for the money bit, I guess you're figuring this out now? I have absolutely no idea how many people play ESEA every season, so I'll say there are like 50 teams total. I HOPE and feel like that should be less than the actual number, but 50 nonetheless, as an example. You're asking at least hundreds of players (and basically the entire competitive community) to literally have less fun playing for no monetary benefit or achievable goal in sight. Sure, maybe if real money were on the line, and players earned money monthly for playing the game, they could actually live with the bullshit. However, as I've covered already, you're asking people who play only for fun to forfeit playing for fun.

Yes.

Allowing broken, game-changing weapons into competition is basically forfeiting your fun now to potentially better the game a year or so down the line. It's not surprising that a lot of people aren't on board with that idea. Most people struggle to maintain interest in this game for even a fraction the time b4nny has. For people who don't use this game as their primary method to earn money (almost everyone in the entire game), it's questionable to ask them to basically act as martyrs for the future of the game.

20b might not be the only team coming back to play

http://i.imgur.com/2Xh7cMi.png

These seem like tricks for people who are familiar with the game. Actually, I don't really know any of these tricks and I'm pretty sure I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the weapons as well. The fact that you don't just spawn into a matchmaking server with every item at your disposal is probably also a roadblock.

The actual timeline of matchmaking should have been:

- in beta, open the client to a sizable number of players once the connection issues and logical bugs were all fixed
- start with class limit 1; is it good? What should be changed?
- try class limit 2; is it better? What should be changed?
- come to a consensus, even using something as shallow as reddit
- what items are blatantly overpowered, especially within the scheme of 1 or 2 class limit? fix them
- come to a consensus, even using something as shallow as reddit
- release the client, sans awful queuing/ranking algorithm, continue to fix the small issues

Instead, as toad up there is saying, there isn't any proper ruleset. You can't expect much balance to come out of a ruleset with no limits on any class, especially when all the classes in this game weren't even balanced for a setting with less than 20 players on the server. It just doesn't make any sense. You can't spin incompetence. You can try to use any angle you want, but that is not the proper way to balance a game, unless you're going to use the lack of limit as a starter and work your way down methodically, limiting each class to 3, 2, then 1. That's questionable though, considering it's very obvious that there needs to be some kind of limit in place, and if a limit is too forgiving, there might as well be no limit at all. But, if that's the case, it too should all have been done in beta, with consistency to the updates. You take too long, you lose interest, and messages become twisted over time, which is why you see the entire forum meming about how Valve never play their game and have 0 hours. Basically, you lose faith.

LOL valve will make this executive decision with their excellent matchmaking client that has all of these features:

- Games with death merchants playing against players on their first placement game
- A whitelist with every item allowed
- A lack of class limits
- Maps with varying sizes, chokes, and playstyles

You might as well say they shouldn't care about anything in the entire game without actually having a foundation of how many players are allowed on each team, and what each class' limit is. Unfortunately, matchmaking isn't indicative of anything. You cannot use this chaotic sandbox to determine anything. With what basis will Valve say we should play 5s instead of 6s? What is the actual benefit of 7s? Does anyone earnestly believe that a modern eSport will be 7v7? Add an extra player for that extra bit of clutter and inconsistency, while removing the necessity of players to switch classes, because you almost have every class covered when you spawn (given the limit would be 1). In what way does this add any depth?

Everything that's being said is just absurd. These decisions can't be made by Valve on the basis of matchmaking pubs. Countless games with 0 indepedent variables gives you 0 input. Multiply 0 as many times as you'd like and it's still 0.

I think you misunderstand. I realize my personal investment in this game is irrelevant, and it's almost insulting that you're implying that I think I hold any power over this game. I care more about the effect blind faith has on the players, rather than the game.

You have to define what you mean by the word "cares." Is caring creating a ridiculously primitive matchmaking client and endangering its success by barely using the beta for anything substantial? Maybe if your justification is, "they put it in the game, didn't they?" For many, I don't think that definition would suffice. Even your phrasing for this paragraph is ridiculous. Why are you comparing the wishes of players for open communication to an explicit promise for a TI? Are you placing a "TI for TF2" in the realm of possibility? If that's the case, you have a lot of explaining to do. The only thing people really wish for in terms of open communication is acknowledgement of the "work" you say the TF2 community is doing by bashing their heads into a wall a thousand times in their average mm game of the day.

I perused your article when you first posted it, and I more-or-less agreed with everything you were saying. It seemed pretty rational, even though most of it was history that the majority already knows. I was even pleased by the actual content. You wrote:

"I’d encourage all of you to think about why you play this game. Hope for the best -- hope that TF2 can grow into an esport, hope that TF2 has a future in this space. At the same time, plan for the worst. It’s quite possible that competitive TF2 will never grow out of this phase of its life and that it will die in its infancy. if you’re still committed to TF2, read on."

It was refreshing to see that blind faith wasn't taking precedence over anything else. However, judging from your responses, it seems to be going in the opposite direction. Even if you aren't explicitly saying that TF2 has a high chance to succeed within eSports, you're potentially giving people misplaced faith by comparing TF2 to other successful video games and regaling the possibilities of TF2 as an eSport, with Valve at the reins, as if this is all a matter of patience rather than pragmatism.

You've already said this in your article, but I will say it again. I IMPLORE any young person in this community with dreams of eSports, who is holding on to TF2 for the wrong reasons, to not pass up great opportunity. Don't get baited like so many already have. If you play TF2 merely for fun, juggling it with your full-time school or career, go nuts. If you're waiting for something substantial, you're probably making a mistake.

comparisons made between dota2/csgo and tf2 make me sad. the circumstances were never and will never be similar. the game is 9 years old and its update history isn't conducive to a competitive game. they're incredibly different. both csgo and dota 2 were new sequels to games with larger and more established competitive scenes than tf2.

i would also argue that copying 6s and leaving the game entirely open to interpretation are equally lazy. especially when the latter isn't regularly updated.

it's a shame someone hasn't simply time traveled 6 years into the past, bought out valve, and allocated more resources toward tf2 as an esport

one of these days

This is essentially what I was trying to put into words. This is an 11 page compilation of 9 years of discussion. The method by which Valve is forcing the community to test its formats is ridiculous. The current matchmaking system is a cesspool of variables and it's logically impossible to make sense of which variables belong in the game. There aren't even class limits. Valve has taken the game all the way back to kindergarten, where we have to actually argue for class limits in a game with 9 different specialized classes and hundreds of weapons. All these variables affect each other; the balance of three scouts per team is exacerbated by allowing all three of them to triple jump, too.

It's all well and good to "take your time" and "figure it out," but creating this system and making no notable changes to it in half a year means that it's destined for failure. Keep in mind, the only change from MM beta to release is they removed the word, "beta." The mindset of testing individual variables (impossible) can only be applied to a BETA format. If the client were open beta, and class limits, weapon stats, and map pools were all changed appropriately throughout the beta's existence, with regular input from the community, it wouldn't be a big deal. But you can't apply all of these changes to an officially released system without the community in uproar. It's entirely backwards to treat the currently released MM client as a beta that the community and developers can use as their own sandbox, when IT USED TO BE IN BETA AND NONE OF THIS HAPPENED.

I'd argue that most of the frustration from the community comes from how poorly the matchmaking system was developed, maintained, and updated. It was the final nail in the coffin for many TF2 loyalists. After years of begging and blind faith, they finally added a system that regressed the competitive format a solid 6 years and have made no steps toward rebuilding. If you think of competitive TF2 as a piece of architecture, class limits are LITERALLY THE FOUNDATION of the building. Nothing makes sense without that backbone. All items, maps, stat changes, EVERYTHING, are at the mercy of how many of each class is allowed on each team.

blaze's cfg is standard except for the tidbit where he caps his frames at his refresh rate so his mouse feels like shit and his screen looks like he has 60hz