I'm not sure if I misunderstood your point or if you've misread mine. I never implied rules came out of thin air..?
From my understanding, the general process was along the lines of:
- Players play for a while
- Players find something they don't like
- League admins consider solutions for said thing
- League admins apply solutions
- Repeat
I haven't been verbose about it because I thought it was implied and obvious.
Feel free to let me know what I got wrong

https://cdn.frankerfacez.com/emoticon/223612/4

Nobody important has ever claimed that cookie cutter was the most efficient.
6s is shaped the way it is because 10 years of gameplay allowed the players express which parts of the game were interesting and fun and which weren't.

https://cdn.frankerfacez.com/emoticon/249979/4

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We can't change those

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???

If you read VALVe reviews from ex-employees (and take them with a grain of salt), it seems pretty established that teams with old devs and no future plans/release schedules are more often than not very toxic and that joining them is frowned upon as they should be choked out of the company.
My guess is that the team knows how to play the VALVe employee meta very well and won't get fired for being idle, possibly because of job security (nobody wants to touch TF2), possibly because nobody minds them.
Once again, grain of salt.

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So fucking hyped for this content. Thanks so much, dev team, looking fresh as fuck. Keep it up.

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Ask there: https://forums.tf2center.com/