Creating games is easier than organizing and finding them. A system like the one you describe could support a combinatorial explosion of possible formats. Valve would have to restrict it somewhere and the first post states clearly that they plan on cutting that restriction off at 9v9 being the only format. From a technical standpoint, adding a 6v6 lobby would not seem to very difficult. Maybe I'm reading the first post incorrectly but my feeling is the opposition is more philosophical - they simply don't want to spend resources on it at this point in time.

#440 Don't confuse skill with performance. When you give a person a harder task than he is accustomed to, you have increased the difficulty but his skill is the same (assuming you didn't give him time to train). The combination of same skill, increased difficulty leads to reduced performance levels. Hence, highlander coordination tends to be shakier compared to 6v6. The skill ceiling meanwhile has been raised because the gap between high skill teams and average skill ones can now be even bigger in highlander than in 6's, assuming highly coordinated teams exist.

I do not think coordinating 9 people is such an insurmountable task. Combined military operations in the real world regularly involve more than 9 commandos. The difference is TF2 is a video game, whereas military or special forces training is serious business. The point is that higher levels of coordination and teamwork are possible in 9v9, even if nobody bothers to put enough time and effort in to achieve it (due to the increased difficulty).

What? Since when does making something harder lower the amount of skill involved? Yes coordination is hard but it's not exactly impossible. Teams that do it better than others will distinguish themselves by their victories.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea behind bans is to remove anything that makes the game less interesting. Don't just ban things because they are effective. Any hypothetically overpowered item that one team can use can also be perfectly counterbalanced by the other team using the same item. The issue that bans aim to address is not balance, but metagame diversity and fun (for both players and spectators). Vote to ban things that take the fun out of the game or tend to result in boring and predictable gameplay. For example the vita-saw isn't banned because it can't be countered - it can be countered with a vita-saw - but because including it makes the other saws (not that there are too many choices but still, more than one) non-viable, thus reducing the metagame diversity while not adding anything (its effects come from passively equipping it).

If we are trying to get back on topic, I'll repost mine from the thread about ideas for a Highlander pick/ban system:

#71 In most cases I would say to relax and let democracy do its work. It's highly unlikely that the majority opinion is to ban gunboats or degreaser. If it is, it is up to Valve how they want to handle that data, but we shouldn't be trying to prevent the data from being collected at all just because it has a chance of being "undesirable". Maybe it could be suggested that Valve get a second opinion from the competitive community before making any changes to existing items based on data from any in-game lobby system, just in case something odd like that happens.

#67 I agree, a notification on update would be a good thing.
#68 If they stop playing then they don't vote in specific games. The only issue is the global statistics. I don't think this is a problem. If Valve handles updates properly, any item that has its stats or properties changed should internally have a new item ID, even if it looks like the same model and item name to the players. In other words any old votes on the old version of the item should not carry over to an updated version. It is up to Valve to implement this properly but that would be the only logical way to do it. Also, updates can automatically reset item bans, as I've mentioned before.

#60 I was thinking to prevent stalemates, any ties are automatically decided in one way or another. It could be done the way you suggest (by a global statistic), or in my post I just suggested that ties go to "pick" in favor of not being too ban-happy.

To address the update problem, if Valve updates any items or adds any new items, they could as part of the update automatically reset everyone's choice for those specific items. They could reset the choice to pick, which encourages people to play test it some more and requires an individual to make a conscious decision to re-ban it.

I don't think posting ban / whitelist suggestions on specific items in this thread is useful. The purpose is to come up with a system that Valve can use to gather data for themselves. If Valve wanted the community to come up with a whitelist / blacklist for them that is a different topic.

Here are some of my thoughts.

First issue is logistics. There are over 100 weapons in the game, and a handful of set bonuses as well. We need a system that can cover all of the items while also not spending 5 minutes or more trying to set up the item list for a 15 minute match.

Second issues is troll / outlier protection. I think a majority voting system is better than any system where any one player has ban or veto power over any one item.

With these concerns in mind, here's my idea.

Each player should have his/her pick/ban list, which he/she decides offline. This makes sense because most users aren't going to change their mind for every new match, so there's no need to have the user repeat his/her choices for every single match. This saves time as well and lets matches get started faster. TF2 would need a separate menu / interface with the list of items that one can vote on, and you would go through the entire thing and select pick or ban for each. This list gets saved in your own TF2 account profile. A reasonable default setting can be debated on to be provided to people who are too lazy to go through this step and don't really want to vote.

Once a player joins a match lobby, his pick/ban list is automatically added to the pool. Once the match is ready to start, the server simply adds up everyone's pick/ban list and treats everyone as having 1 vote per item. Any item that has more bans than picks is banned, and the remainder are allowed. The final aggregated pick/ban list is displayed to every player before the match begins. This can be done very quickly to get the match going as quickly as possible without a protracted voting or debating period before every match.

EDIT: Unfortunately this system is probably much too ambitious to be easily implemented and tested in a week of IRC pugging. However people seem to like the idea in theory so hopefully Valve will at least see it and consider it.

Aren't the donations over? Which items are still available?

http://tf2b.com/tf2/76561198050056032
or http://tf2b.com/tf2/TipoftheHatsCharity

If that's the right link, it looks like as of this moment there are still over two and a half pages worth of signed stranges left to distribute. People have been getting items throughout the past week, and I can see mine in there, so I am not particularly worried as long as they don't give it to the wrong person.

If you want to be proactive, I think you can add Whisker Biscuit on Steam and request your item(s) directly. I'm sure they'll get through everything sooner or later. In the meantime, a big thanks to the organizers for all the work they did.

Since we are necroing, I feel like this could be the basis for a great pyrovision crosshair. Just needs more rainbow sunshine happiness to get in the way and make sure you can't see anything.

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