I am excited for this new course valve might be going in.
It will obviously destroy everything my fellow TF2Center members and I have spent years on, but in the end it's their game.
There are a lot of unknown factors I'd like to shine a bit of light on.
6v6 is not the vastly more popular game mode
If bringing up the stats for 6s and HL for EU and NA (TF2Center's biggest locations), we see HL is doubling the 6s numbers. Although I've been digging deeper, removing edge cases, and only grabbing the "clean" lobbies (no subs nor unpure closereason), it shows it's really close:
EU6S -(28.85%)
NA6S -(25.02%)
EUHL -(24.00%)
NAHL -(22.11%)
http://i.imgur.com/t7LFCLq.png
Like Enigma said in #144, HL requires 18 players.
Even with 1.5 times the amount of players it shows highlander kept up with 6v6.
Especially with competitive games it's really difficult to optimise this process and make sure everyone that started this will be able to finish it and give it their best.
This is something we're are trying to tackle in the matchmaking system TF2Center is developing, but it has a lot of constraints on who can actually play and punishments for players that are leaving.
It's most likely a 6v6 system is far easier to develop and implement, but the lot of the staff have an highlander-oriented mindset and would like to include all formats instead of trying to scale systems up to try to cater it.
So yea, don't pick either. Do both HL and 6s, and maybe look into ultiduo and bball.
After running the lobby system for a while, it is really tough to set up match making if you want to include all players that want to try to experience competitive TF2. you need a distinction between players. Even if it's just for the sake of quality during startup. It is really hard to mix casual competitive players with tryhard winning-mentality (team) players. And the upper part of comp TF2 has a lot of the latter.
The base of these plans was set after talking to players at i52. Seagull, Harbleu, Enigma, Lange and WARHURYEAH (we tried to talk to Hildreth but he kept introducing me as the worst heavy in prem to everyone that would walk by,) gave a pretty good view for us what would be required and needed attention.
Needless to say we worked way too slow to satisfy the comp TF2 community and our chance could be over if Valve is really serious about adding this (if not adding in mann power 2fort matches).
But the focus of Valve needs to be broader. Match making is one thing, but one thing I as an ETF2L admin have seen is the blatant lack of support. There will be a few news posts about a signup opening or finals coming up, but as everyone might know the entire competitive scene is held up by a few people doing everything. From medals, maps to configs this step could change it.
I think it's a horrible idea to set up a pick-ban system. A few years after the red-letter where we got the message that they would rather see a dota-esque system for TF2 we (EU HL) players started doing these matches with the help from whitelist.tf (create and upload your whitelist on the fly).
It just turned out no matter what you do, the OG sixes classes don't really get hurt like the support classes. A demo targe banned doesn't have quite the same impact as banning the wrangler, sandvich or dead ringer.
Either work to abolishing whitelists and making all weapons more balanced, or enforce the league whitelists. On TF2Center we've chosen for the second for obvious reasons, but Valve has the power to do the first.
TF2Center is always open to share what we've learnt with Valve if it helps the competitive scene. Just have to let us know.
Sorry for jumping from one thing to another, I'm just typing where my thoughts lead me to. I'm really passionate about this so I'm trying to cram the most important things in whilst I'm still kind of sober.