Gonna start off by saying that I'm the resident NR6s guy just so everyone else who isn't a 6s player gets some perspective. To start off with RGL running NR6s in cups and not seasons, it's mostly a logistics thing similar to what happened to Prolander. It would be difficult to get people to sign up for NR6s (or again, Prolander) during a regular season since you're now competing not just for attention of format, but more importantly: scrim time. Generally speaking 6s scrims are during the week (or any day) and Highlander is on weekends leaving 0 days for you to be able to either scrim or schedule matches without an immense amount of conflicts. Don't get me wrong, I personally know enough people to be able to get a team or two of either NR6s OR Prolander, but who would we scrim that also has a team full of people who want to play those formats instead? Like if it's delegated to the weekend we need to compete with Highlander scrims, and vice versa for the weekday. Then, to be completely honest the most positive feedback I've ever received as an admin (other than LAN) has been for NR6s, then for the recent whitelist testing cup. It's pretty clear to me that there are many players who would like to see the whitelist expand, and I think that's good! BUT there are some obvious weapons that are HUGE issues in 6s, and NR6s for that matter. I think we absolutely could get standard 6s to a reduced amount of bans, but anyone who thinks we can get to 0 (outside of NR6s which has no class limits etc) I can't really understand. The main culprits in testing for causing issues have been the Vaccinator (number 1 not even close), Wrangler, Mad Milk, Fists of Steel (switch bug to keep resistance without losing healing), Reserve Shooter, Jarate. I think for NR6s here you probably could allow the Reserve Shooter but for standard 6s it's just not gonna work. The main two issues I'm really seeing nowadays in whitelist discussions for banning/unbanning is either A) A weapon becomes a hot topic for a bit and players who might be a bit salty instantly call for it being banned (ex. proposed Beggar's ban because of Antoni, and Soapy) or B) People don't know how an item functions within the Traditional 6s ruleset because they literally haven't played with it in that environment / it's been many years since the last test of that item. A good example being the Buffalo Steak unban recently being completely underwhelming as it was used literally once in Invite and failed since the gimmick wasn't as strong in the current meta as people thought it would be. As for the arguments for pubbers trying to use the B.A.S.E. Jumper against 6s players, we just need to poll it again in the traditional 6s (non-cup) audience. I kinda doubt that anyone in the know would vote to keep it banned since Edgebugging is much better, and given the abysmally low strength rating from the cup. So TLDR: If I could ban items in NR6s (the format I love running and playing and will continue to love playing), I STILL WOULD. Get that vaccinator outta here. But other than the few bad apples there's not much I'd want to change and I enjoy the environment. 6s players are *probably* a bit more progressive in North America than you think. And if you want to play NR6s, sign up :). A bit off the cuff so I hope all of that makes sense.
I think the current whitelist is pretty good. Wrangler, vaccinator, jarate, reserve shooter, rescue ranger, most of scout’s secondaries, and fists of steel all warrant a ban. However, unless I’m missing one, I think pretty much every other item would still allow this format to be fun to play and watch.
people that have never played 6s and complain about the whitelist and/or class bans should be forced to push last vs 2 engies running rescue ranger and wrangler for all of eternity
I feel like people give shit to the comp whitelist because of the disaster of MYM, and instead of blaming valve for thier shitty decisions, people have been giving comp players hate for the past since 2016. And continue to give shit to comp players like valve is still listeining to them.
@@TurtleGalaxies Hm... yeah, I forgot about those. Though, I noticed they don't seem to have those in the default server selection anymore. But, I'm sure there's a community server that has that.
@@garretwoeller7669Crockets are definitely an issue, though melee crits can be pretty absurd in terms of class balance. Sniper and demo are both supposed two be weak at close range but since both of them can fill their crit bucket super easily that basically erases the weakness. With medic though it’s just negativity bias
This is what honestly convinced me that while taking balancing cues from competitive is good, nothing should be reworked for the express purpose of being unbanned from competitive, because it's not exactly a matter of balance, but a matter of preference. TF2's competitive scene is reactive, and only makes changes to their ban-lists when a specific weapon ruins the integrity of the game. A lot of casual players arent a fan of this since it feels like you're not playing the whole game for what it is, but what TF2 is, is balanced around 12v12 with players that barely communicate. TF2 competitive however tries to balance around 6v6 or 9v9 with rules in place to make the formats work. Attempting to balance a weapon to be unbanned in competitive is futile because sometimes its not any numbers you can tweak, but rather the concept in of itself. So TF2 should inheritely be balanced towards its original intention of 12v12, but should still take notes and tips from its best players, which often happen to be players who take the game seriously.
tldr balance around highly skilled players and not specific formats, which i agree with for the most part. the issue i stumble across with this is that it's usually the highest skill players who end up focusing on their personal preferred formats, same as casual tf2 players thinking the only way to have fun is to make every weapon as wacky and insane as possible
would just make the game boring for everyone else. why would you balance a game in favor of the competitive mode if your tournament prizes don't even reach five digits? 😂
@@ArchChrono Vaccinator isn't fun to play against in casual either. It's easier to counter when you have a large team, in theory, but that still requires teamwork in a casual setting. Most casual matches consist of a bunch of quick 1v1 and 1v2 fights, and Vaccinator shuts those down hard. And if the server happens to lose some players, Vaccinator only becomes stronger. Not every casual match is a full 12v12.
@@White-KaguraNormal Uber does that too and to an even broader extent. I know that it's harder to get and you don't get it as often but it's still the same mechanic. So what you said is not really a good argument against it.
You jokingly brought up unbanning mega rayquaza in gen 7 pokemon singles for the "just get used to it" argument but there is a really good example from gen 8 that actually happened and demonstrates why that argument is terrible. In early generation 8 bans were being rolled out pretty slowly. During this time dracovish rose up among the ranks as a very clearly broken pokemon that despite it's obvious balance issues, didn't get banned for a long time. Dracovish has this stupid attack that deals double damage if dracovish attacks first, or if the opponent switched. This move basically ate most teams for breakfast, very few things could switch into it. However there was a very clear and obvious counter to this. Seismitoed with the ability water absorb can completely wall dracovish. Because of this, the previously never seen seismitoed became the 4th most used pokemon for a while. The meta adapted, but became significantly less enjoyable. With so many team structures being forced to run seismitoed or other super nieche options that didn't provide much value outside of the dracovish matchup, teambuilding became a lot more restricitve and a lot less fun or competitive. Eventually after months of terror, smogon finally held a suspect test on wether or not to ban dracovish. 90% of qualified players voted to ban. This i think serves as a great historic example of why allowing broken things in a competitive metagame is bad idea, even if the meta is capable of adapting.
For a moment I expected this to be about the concept of banning all unlocks in 6s. Then I remembered the whitelist. Banning ALL unlocks would be kind of insane, especially for classes like Medic and Soldier.
I'm just glad to see you discuss a lot of these "non arguments" as you put it honestly. The Reserve Shooter and BASE Jumper was the most brain scratching one I ever saw
I struggle to see why this is even controversial. Am I right in saying you're familiar with pokemon? Because I sure hope I'm right because of how relevant linking these two are. As a pokemon creator or anyone who dabbles in smogon or showdown will know, you learn to ignore the people who are offended by the idea of banning things or establishing a metagame when they themselves know they don't really care and are just backseat balancing. Some of these people literally just don't know what they're doing and are just yapping but some take personal offense on behalf of the sanctity of the game which in their eyes would be hurt by modifying even if it's for the best. These are people who drop by to leave opinions and that is their entire interaction with the community. They have zero stakes and will leave whether or not they get their wish.
Incredible how nearly every competitive game in existence that exercises community bans gains a following of anti-ban armchair theorycrafters who barely care about the game, contain a breadth of knowledge about one step above the surface level, have never played outside a casual environment, and STILL believe that they have more valuable insight than pro players and organizers. Never has there been a more convincing display of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Competitive players sure know a lot, with their 10000th repetion of the exact same situation, with absolutely 0 variance, huh? They're both not a good source for game balancing, let's be honest
Dunning Kruger effect is when people who have some knowledge think that they know more than they do. It doesn't describe people who have little knowledge and think they know more than others. Quite ironic to use it wrong like that.
@@benshulz4179 How is what he's saying a wrong application of the dunning kruger effect? He literally said that they have only slightly more knowledge than a casual(which implies having some knowledge), and that they believe that they have more valuable insight than experienced players(which isn't contradictory with thinking they know more than they do)
@@ANinjaDude-o7v That's not dunning kruger effect: From wikipedia: "Nevertheless, low performers' self-assessment is lower than that of high performers." Again, ironic to do that mistake.
"you dont play the gamemode/format enough/at a high enough level" is not a justification by itself, as it would be possible for an enthusiast or analyst to make reasonably informed predictions without having direct experience themselves (essentially their experience is vicarious). But the venn diagram of people who fall into either category is almost two separate circles, aka there are very few non players who have chosen to inform themselves of the arguments and reasoning and provide a coherent argument that can be reasoned with. Inevitably, opinions change over time and often a few of the people with the counter argument will end up becoming involved in the scene themselves, which often gives rise to opinion or meta shifts. Sometimes re-evaluation of old rules or principles comes years into a game's lifespan, so nothing is ever set in stone. As you said, it is up to the majority consensus of the community (or an informed community group) at a given time that dictates the ruleset of a format, and that's all that matters at the end of the day.
Something that keeps me up late at night thinking is the idea of a quick fix unban. I wish the people who want it unbanned could experience the pain of playing against goblin zone zooming their medic around the world. They would feel regret
in some games it's fine to ban for comp play because the devs aren't actively balancing the game for comp (pokemon, tf2, smash bros kinda) and some games are balanced around competitive mode (you have an example in mind, most game are competitive nowdays) like why the hell do people care about a ban in comp when they aren't in comp
@@nektahatz5646 Thing is, those 'for comp' nerfs absolutely guttered some of the weapons casuals loved the most, so of course they're going to still be salty. They still haven't returned caber to how it was for example.
I want to chime in with an opinion I feel like you didn't bring up in terms of weapon bans in general. I know I am one of the more progressive players in the comments so this may get hate or whatever. I feel like its not a matter of having weapons banned, it is a problem that some weapons are/were unfairly banned. I agree that mad milk, wrangler, jarate are broken and this is regardless of format. Almost all players with an ounce of balance understand this fact. However, players from outside the competitive scene used to see the buffalo steak being banned and wondered why. The steak was banned for the idea of keeping a meta game. This is obviously apparent with the idea of heavy to mid. But many players fought for this weapon to never being unbanned where the only place it isn't is NA, and only happened a couple seasons ago. I can also say that almost all high level comp players probably have never even used the buffalo even in a pub but yet its banned. There was an old clip with a high level tf2 players being asked what mad milk did and didn't even know but yet would fight to the death that it should be banned. This is what I see as the problem. Many of these players haven't even played with/against these weapons in a 6s environment but yet will fight for the balance of the format above all else. RGL ran the cup to test weapons and guess what? None of the top level invite players that mattered played the cup. So regardless of what players put no weapons were unbanned because invite didn't play. I think players cannot fight to keep some weapons banned when they haven't had them in the format ever. Quick-Fix was changed years ago and has never once been tested seriously by any league, nor crit o cola, nor base jumper. Testing needs to happen to have weapons that aren't problematic come into the metagame whether they change things or not. B4nny fought for the unbanning of Rescue Ranger during the Global Whitelist and yet it hasn't seen the light of day since. Even the players who played the RGL cup said it didn't change all that much. Sticks still fuck up a sentry and that wont change. Players will look at stats and repeat the same sentiment about weapons when stats vs reality is so different. If the loch's identity used to be a crutch weapon and now people want it banned, Im sure weapons that are called overpowered and banned could have the exact same effect.
@@h20gamez Simply put, the leagues are community run, and some just don't want to vs. some weapons. We also need to consider the game flow and if something is necessary. The rescue ranger as an example, I know for a fact, could be used in ways that sixes otherwise just doesn't need.
@@razerous7 Id say this is the exact argument casual players find disgusting. No offense but experimentation!! Or simple map changes that would fix 99% of last hold problems never being done!! (Nerf respawn bind)
12v12 casual (usually payload) with unlocks isn't even the game as originally intended anyways, a lot of the first maps were just tested as 8v8 5cp lol, so i don't know what all these Epic Casual TH-camrs who HATE COMPETITIVE are actually talking about anyways yeah tf2 is far from the only game that does this, fighting games have occasional banned characters (algol in SCV comes to mind) and some games like smash (as casual a "fighting game" you can get, besides competitive melee which is actually insanely hard) have restricted rulesets for competitive play strategy games, whether 4x like civilization or grand like hoi4 also have rulesets communities agree upon during competition tfc also had restrictions and a more inflexible meta than tf2 (a lot of tf2 6s rules are just trying to prevent tfc defender nightmares from happening again it seems) even fucking MARIO KART TIME TRIALS have restricted rulesets compared to casual races i don't even know if the people who complain about 6s even play base tf2 either, people complain about wrangler and short circuit all the time, wouldn't you want them removed lmao
I think sixes has a huge optics problem with its meta. Ppl don’t understand that it’s healthy and surprisingly diverse, so they assume unbanning weapons would “revitalize it”. Reserve shooter is a great example because like you said it removes the bomb sack meta, but it also centralizes the game around what strategies remain, and even more so around Uber, which is itself a centralizing strategy. Basically, by getting rid of this one gun, you let people do so much more in the game
Uber isn't a centralizing strategy; There's a medic limit just to prevent that. Now lets wonder together why soldier doesn't have that limitation together. The thing is, we all know the 6s bans aren't trying to construct a healthy meta, but a specific one: 2 Scouts, 2 Soldiers, 1 Demo, 1 Medic. Anything falling outside of that is not unhealthy, it's just banned.
@@benshulz4179 I mean u can wonder all u want lmao maybe you’ve got a bit of a different definition of centralizing but when teams wait for Uber advantage and push off of it that sounds like a specific strategy dictating the flow of the game to me lmao I’m interested to know, do you play a lot of tf2?
@@ExplodingImplosion I don't really get your point. You said uber is centralizing because the team that doesn't wait for uber to push is at a disadvantage, so both teams are forced into the same strategy. So why wouldn't both teams running same classes classes and exact same loadouts also be centralized? Honestly, I think if you replaced "centralizing" with "fun", you would make more sense right now.
@@benshulz4179 unfortunately i think a small part of your misunderstanding comes from a competitive-specific semantic regarding uber. Uber "advantage" can refer to 2 things, that being having uber while the other team doesn't, or simply being significantly closer to uber than the other team. It doesn't mean you're at an inherent disadvantage to push without uber, unless the other team is significantly closer to 100% or already has it, and your team can't build to it within the next couple seconds. the rest of the game is (largely) not as centralized because people tend to mix up their loadouts and classes depending on their playstyle and the gamestate. Even in class mirror matchups, different teams at different skill levels with different players will mix up what weapons they're using. add to that a variety of strategies teams can explore even with the same tools as the other team, and the game is really diverse with a lot of room for people to play how they want.
@@ExplodingImplosion 6s is definitely not "mixed up" as you claim. In highlander there's genuine game states where it's advantageous to go for even something as silly as loose cannon + shield, to bomb the enemy combo. Something like that doesn't happen in 6s at all, demoman is played one exact way. Highlander's entire point is that there's 1 of each class, so there cannot be strategies around picking more scouts or more soldiers - But in 6s, double soldiers is basically a format requirement. Even if you didn't get banned from servers for doing some other team composition, all other compositions would still be at a disadvantage against the double soldier.
understanding the thought behind banning weapons is interesting, but it's still funny to meme on comp players for banning weapons like cow mangler 5000 or sydney sleeper. i just imagine some comp player dying to a charge shot cow mangler from across the map or from a hard scoping sydney sleeper bodyshot and they launched a whole petition to ban these weapons
it's not necessarily just about banning weapons that are overpowered (disrupt the balance), but also removing things that are deemed to lower the quality of the game. continually reloading/spamming cow rockets + waddle charging across the map isn't fun, interesting or dynamic. charging up to deliberately bodyshot from across the map and cover an opponent in stinky piss isn't particularly fun, interesting or dynamic.
There was a season of ESEA 6's where cow mangler was unbanned. It was super popular and unfun to fight against. Charge Shots + unlimited ammo is crazy in 6s. Also its not the sydney sleeper bodyshot thats a problem- its the fact that it covers you in Jarate and you can get focus fired from a distance at low risk. Thats a lot easier than landing a headshot with the regular rifle. I do think its strange, though, that those weapons are banned but the Fan o War isnt? A sneaky FoW hit from a flanking scout marks you for death for 15 seconds. That can be crippling. Circumstantially- that's worth trading a scout for- hitting a demo or a medic and forcing them out of a fight. (By death or Retreat) I know the circumstances surrounding that happening are rare, but I find it odd that it isn't banned in line with the others.
As a filthy casual player, I always figured stock-only was fine due to the game being originally built around that and anything else working in a serious setting was a bonus lol Most people who I've heard complain don't even play Comp lmao; and the *only* Comp-related Issues _I've_ had in the past at all were applying comp-centered balance changes in casual to unban something in 6v6s Interesting perspective, overall
I've never been part of this discussion and I honestly don't care much, but allow me to play devil's advocate for a minute if maybe I can make sense of the situation. It seems to me that the critics perceive the bans as a lack of adaptability, or simply a refusal to do so; like mediocrity is being prolonged and the meta is forced to stop evolving because a group of influential people was too lazy to adapt to a new strategy. Well, we tried to play with them and it sucks. But why didn't you play more? You can never win against this argument because you can always have played more. Of course, these people would be oblivious to the existence of unrestricted 6s, which I think just shuts down the argument completely. Another argument, there is a sort of subconscious desire of the masses to see unused weapons be used by good/competitive players, because these are the players, in the critics mind, that can discover or refine new tech for the weapon, even tech that has never been seen before. Look at Antoni, I guarantee most people who saw his videos for the first time didn't know that the beggar's bazooka could be used that way. I'm not saying its new tech, but its tech that is exposed to more people that didn't know about it and wanna try that on their own. So you could see banning weapons as robbing the whole community of potential tech, or discovery of new strategies that could be even more fun to watch and play than we have now. This just relies on basically a "what if" so its mostly food for thought, but its how I see people reasoning to critique a whitelist.
the thing is, the beggars is not broken. I love antoni, very talented soldier, but the beggars is an actually balanced weapon that may actually be on the weaker side. Not all weapons are equal, the beggars is different from jarate or mad milk. They don't have the same amount of depth, they're just overpowered. They don't lead to brand new interesting strategies or playstyles, they just supplement already powerful classes who are going to play the exact same way (especially scout and sniper). And even if they did, it wouldn't matter because people would just use them the most optimal, most degenarate, lamest way possible (spamming guillotines in chokepoints rather than doing a funny guillotine/wrap assassin combo with the stacking bleed.) There's an opportunity cost to using a powerful option in a "funny new" strategy rather than just abusing it the best possible way, especially if you're playing to win. Basically, they're shallow. You're not being robbed of a new, varied, flourshing meta because the natasha is banned.
This is an awful devil's advocate. Or rather, it is so good, that your response to it doesn't make much sense. Basically, your counter-argument boiled down to that adapting to strategies shouldn't happen in competitive setting. This is not how any lasting, popular game works: Innovations are only banned if they remove interaction or core part of the game. In 6s, that "core part "has over the years grown into 2 scouts and 2 soldiers, 1 demo and 1 medic on each team. If a strategy requires you to swap or change loadouts, it's seen as bad. But these are core parts of TF2, that 6s disregarded. So of course people look at weird region-specific bans like detonator and do not see TF2 competitive at all, just some weird nonsense mode like x100. Also doesn't help that playing that pub competitive servers ban you if you play off-meta classes. Basically, 6s isn't a competitive game at it's core. Also, TF2 have many maps and gamemodes. If 5cp engineer last is not competitively viable, why would that be engineer's fault more than the map or gamemode's?
The problem I still have with the base jumper to this day isn't really with the 6's community but valve itself. They never should have tried balancing the game around a game mode which the community was already self regulating. However I really disagree with the assertion that the base jumper was a weapon people enjoyed just kinda floating around with and that it is the only functionality which was used. The old base jumper had a bunch of fun tech which isn't possible like fluttering the chute while jumping to change speeds suddenly. Using it to make the market gardener more reliable and applicable in closed quarters scenarios and just the lack of restriction on air control meant that you could do things like go all the way down the cactus canyon first map slope off of one jump. Now are all of these part of the reason why the old jumper got banned in 6's? Well they certainly didn't help. But in the casual format they were super fun and made the weapon very non linear. But because it could be abused in 6's valve opted to nerf it. And I think that is the main thing about 12v12 no restrictions vs 6v6 whitelist is it is really hard to abuse weapons in 12v12 giving them a sense of balance that they might not have. The vaccinator is essentially a direct upgrade unless you are going up against 2 sentries and a team to back them. In which case it does start to falter to a point where the casual experience doesn't think its broken (it is) tldr; I have no problem with the 6's community and blame the base jumper nerf on valve's lack of foresight. But I also do not agree that my disappointment in the state of the weapon is diminished or invalidated because the weapon can still serve its "perceived" main function.
i think that is somewhat true, it's to uphold the class meta, similar to the GRU ban. but the detonator is an explosive long range fire weapon, like the scorch shot, which could also have something to do with it. take what i say with a grain of salt. i dont have close to enough experience to be reasonably informed on this.
While I don't have much experience in 6's the detonator might be the single most effective spam tool in the game, even moreso than than the scorch shot. I have little doubt a comp player could keep the entire enemy team on fire the whole game. If it was just a jumper weapon it would probably wouldn't have been banned in the first place.
@@vittrippsIs being set on fire from 500 ft away really that bad. Can't the other team just run a pyro as well, if not the other team is playing with 1 less power class
All this eternal "banning unlocks in comp" argue (Started probably when kritzkrieg was added as I remember) is just an outcome of tf2 comp core problem - tf2 6s gameplay is so extremly different from tf2 pub gameplay that it is basically a 2 different games. As a result even keen people from pubs usually prefer to stay away from comp and tf2 comp was never as popular as it could be if there weren't some big mistakes made by league admins in the early days of tf2. I think esl admins should've probably adopted 8v8 from tfc, rather than trying to reincarnate much less popular quake fortress 6v6, but now after 17 years it's just an empty talk. Though If I would get to remove 1 tf2 weapon from the game that would probably be not wrangler or vacc but crusader's crossbow.
people are weirdly fickle about the idea of a nominally casual game that theyre attached to even having a competitive scene with bans in the first place. they dont understand the reasoning for bans and dont really think about how unbanning things will just serve to make the game less interactive and fun. these are largely gentlemans agreements that are done for the sake of player fun and skill expression i think a lot of the animosity toward competitive players by casual players at large is due to a lot of discussions about game balance naturally touching on the highest level of play (or at least the warped greater perception of it.) this even happens in singleplayer games, a lot of discussions of fire emblem units hinges around optimized planned playthroughs because the game in its casual form, even at the highest difficulty settings in the series, is easy enough to where the differences between units are diminished. and this often frustrates the general population but its somewhat necessary to establish a baseline of viablity that isnt "well i pumped favoritism into them and they killed the final boss"
the melee and pokemon comparisons are really funny personally having played melee since 2016 and all the “person who has never touched competitive pokemon has some very strong opinions on recent ban from ou” memes ik the scene is too small to sustain it but i kinda wonder what separate tier based 6s rulesets would be like
It's unfortunate because some players GENUINELY want to see TF2 Competitive die. I used to watch Zesty's streams and in one his streams, I asked him whether he thought TF2 Casual and 6s should be more connect rather than the disjointed nature it has now, and his answer (paraphrased) was he thinks there should be as much separation as possible and that comp and casual can never reconcile together. He also added that he thinks that comp is the reason this game went downhill over the years and that Valve should've never listened to us. It was extremely sad to hear him say that, especially since I think he has a lot of good content otherwise.
For the record, I am someone who does not play sixes or have any interest in it, but as someone who plays a lot of magic the gathering, I'd say there is an inherent advantage to avoiding banning things, and that's variety and strategy. More options can lead to more diversity in what you see and can lead to a less stale environment. Of course, I'm not going to say that everything should be legal, because often that will just lead to the same samey games but with less fun commonalities. While I agree with you that there's nothing sacred about default settings, implying that bannings have no downsides is a bit much.
competitive 6s is a different game from casual TF2. For the main base game, the weapons are all (relatively) balanced, and as we've seen, trying to balance weapons for both comp 6s and the base game is not a simple task, so there will have to be restrictions in one format or another. neither game is objectively better, they're just different and must be played with those differences in mind
I think a lot of people don't understand how game balance works. There is no "include everything" option. There is a finite amount of space in the balance of the meta and everything you include takes up some amount of that space. Good balance means looking at your possibility space and filling it efficiently, you want a good variety of fun options and that means excluding bullshit that isn't fun and kills variety. As a toy example just to show how this works, imagine if the crusader's crossbow could oneshot scouts. "Including everything" means including this item, but including this item means excluding every other medic primary (there is no reason to use them) and the entire scout class (there is no reason to play it). Obviously an extreme example but every item and class does this same thing to a lesser degree. 6v6 has a different possibility space than other formats. It has to fill that possibility space differently if it wants to be fun.
As much as the wrangler may be OP, and stacking them can be even worse… Sometimes I’m trying to carry as engineer and I need to tank this gun for 20 goddamn seconds bc my team is screwing arohnd
I know you prbly said it as a joke, but as someone who has never even played 6s, I find your voice and style of talking extremely relaxing and I’ve fallen asleep to your videos more than once 😂
To put into perspective what anti-ban casual players see, they typically see a paradox. Competitive play is for pros, but if you ban and change a lot you're not playing TF2 as the vast majority do so you're playing a different game and considering yourself a pro at TF2? It also begins to bleed into casual with major issues, for example an item might only be powerful because its counter is banned. This item is too powerful and needs a slight nerf or to be banned, on other games this often leads to a slight nerf. So now in casual this item has a counter and is nerfed destroying it. This is less common in TF2, but is an unfortunate issue none the less. I am not arguing if the bans are right or wrong, rather drawing attention to the fact that there is inherent friction between casual and competitive for valid reasons that can negatively impact everyone when changes don't get locked to their respective mode they are balanced for.
I think it really is just that a lot of casual players get most of their fun from trying to use as many different unlocks as possible. Just look at the popularity of weapon review videos. Casual players assume that less weapons = less strategy because that's how it is in casual for some people
If I had to guess the sort of "root cause" for why so many people are fundamentally against the idea of weapon bans, it's that, in casual/unrestricted formats, picking loadouts to deal with specific situations or counterpicking against other people's loadouts is a big part of the game for a lot of people. 6s has a lot less of that by comparison, so people feel like a core element of the game is lost. Now personally, I don't think it's as important as people make it out to be; (after all, the game originally was designed and launched without any unlocks), but I do at least understand why some people feel this way.
**Title: The Case for Pyro in Competitive Team Fortress 2 6v6 Play** **Abstract:** This dissertation explores the arguments for the inclusion of Pyro in competitive Team Fortress 2 (TF2) 6v6 gameplay. It examines the historical context of Pyro's exclusion from competitive formats, evaluates the Pyro class's potential impact on game balance and team dynamics, and proposes strategies for integrating Pyro in a way that aligns with the competitive integrity of TF2. By analyzing Pyro's abilities, comparing them with other classes, and considering feedback from the competitive community, this dissertation aims to present a balanced perspective on the feasibility and benefits of including Pyro in 6v6 play. **1. Introduction** 1.1. Background of Team Fortress 2 Team Fortress 2, developed by Valve Corporation, is a team-based first-person shooter with a variety of classes, each offering unique abilities and roles. The game features a diverse roster of nine classes, which are categorized into offense, defense, and support roles. 1.2. Competitive 6v6 Format The 6v6 format in TF2 is a popular competitive mode where two teams of six players each compete against one another. The format emphasizes strategic depth and teamwork, with a common setup involving the following classes: Scout, Soldier, Demoman, Medic, Engineer, and a combination of Sniper or Spy. 1.3. Pyro's Exclusion from 6v6 Pyro's exclusion from competitive 6v6 play is largely due to concerns about balance and the class's perceived lack of utility in high-level play. This dissertation aims to reassess these concerns and provide a rationale for Pyro's potential inclusion. **2. Pyro's Abilities and Role in TF2** 2.1. Pyro's Core Abilities Pyro is equipped with a flamethrower, which deals damage over time and has a unique effect of "afterburn." Pyro also possesses a shotgun and a melee weapon, offering versatility in close combat. Additionally, Pyro can use the airblast mechanic to deflect projectiles and extinguish burning teammates. 2.2. Pyro's Playstyle Pyro is often characterized by a close-quarters, aggressive playstyle. The class excels at disrupting enemy formations and can provide significant crowd control through its airblast ability. 2.3. Pyro's Utility and Synergy In traditional formats, Pyro's role is seen as less critical compared to other classes. However, Pyro can offer substantial utility through its crowd control, defense against explosive damage, and support for pushing or holding objectives. **3. Evaluating Pyro's Impact on Competitive Balance** 3.1. Historical Context of Pyro's Exclusion Pyro's exclusion from competitive formats has been driven by balance concerns, particularly related to the class's ability to counter specific strategies or dominant classes. Historical precedent and community feedback have shaped the current competitive landscape. 3.2. Potential Balance Issues The introduction of Pyro could lead to potential balance issues, such as disrupting established meta strategies or overshadowing other classes. Analyzing these issues involves evaluating Pyro's impact on the effectiveness of common class combinations and strategies. 3.3. Mitigating Balance Concerns To address balance concerns, it is essential to consider adjustments or modifications to Pyro's abilities. This section explores possible changes that could ensure Pyro's inclusion does not compromise competitive integrity. **4. Comparative Analysis with Other Classes** 4.1. Comparison with Offensive Classes Comparing Pyro's abilities with those of Scout and Soldier highlights differences in playstyle and utility. Pyro's role in aggressive pushes and defense can complement offensive strategies. 4.2. Comparison with Defensive Classes Pyro's potential synergy with defensive classes like Engineer and Demoman is explored. Pyro's crowd control and area denial abilities could enhance defensive setups and protect key positions. 4.3. Comparison with Support Classes Examining Pyro's interaction with support classes like Medic offers insights into potential benefits and drawbacks. Pyro's ability to protect and support Medic could influence healing strategies and team sustainability. **5. Proposed Integration Strategies** 5.1. Role Definition and Specialization Defining a clear role for Pyro within the 6v6 format is crucial. This section proposes potential specializations for Pyro, such as a defensive or disruptive role, and how it can fit into existing team compositions. 5.2. Balance Adjustments and Testing Proposed balance adjustments, such as tweaking Pyro's damage output or airblast mechanics, are discussed. Testing and feedback mechanisms are outlined to ensure that Pyro's inclusion is balanced and beneficial. 5.3. Community and Competitive Feedback Gathering feedback from the competitive community and conducting playtesting sessions are essential for assessing Pyro's impact. This section emphasizes the importance of iterative adjustments based on real-world play data. **6. Conclusion** 6.1. Summary of Findings This dissertation summarizes the key arguments for including Pyro in competitive 6v6 play, highlighting the class's potential benefits and the strategies for addressing balance concerns. 6.2. Future Directions Future research and development directions are proposed, including further playtesting and community engagement to refine Pyro's role and ensure its successful integration into competitive formats. 6.3. Final Thoughts The inclusion of Pyro in competitive 6v6 play could enhance the diversity and strategic depth of Team Fortress 2. With careful balancing and consideration, Pyro has the potential to contribute meaningfully to the competitive scene. **References** A comprehensive list of sources, including historical data, community feedback, and balance analyses, is provided to support the arguments and recommendations made in this dissertation. --- This structure provides a thorough exploration of why Pyro could be a valuable addition to competitive 6v6 play, addressing both potential benefits and concerns in a balanced manner.
Some dude mentioned banning stock weapons, I think it would be awesome if there was a sixes event where all stickybombs were banned, all but the quick fix and kritzkreig were banned, and every class had a limit of only one besides spy who you can run 9 of, oh and scout can only use the sandman
14:10 Weren't the caber and sandman also nerfed for this reason? They were both extremely popular and fun weapons until they were gutted into their current unusable states.
sandman no that was the community talking about how broken it was when it stunned, then they changed to slow and it doesn't even work so people didn't use it, caber i think so cause it was nerfed in the mym update which, beats me on why, that could've been a fun weapon in comp and casual as it was just to one shot a class and themselves if they got too close to the demo.
@@bethnicz I heard caber was nerfed because comp players would use it with the sticky jumper at the beginning of rounds to pick medics. I think sandman was also banned before it got nerfed and later unbanned.
What timeline are you living in? Most pubbers despised the old sandman because getting stunned and cleavered was really fucking lame. Obviously there was plenty of crying after it was nerfed, but that's because the few people who used it were utterly obsessed with it and were consequently more vocal than the rest of us. I'll admit that most people loved the caber and even to this day I regularly see people groaning about the nerf, but once the novelty of "haha he blew himself up!" wears off for an individual, getting 1-shot by something that requires neither aim nor prediction becomes boring, esp. when wielded by something as fast and tanky as a shield-boots demo. It wasn't "unbalanced" in the grand scheme of things because the demo usually dies after getting his kill, thus rendering his effect on the game-state relatively neutral outside of specific circumstances like a mass of people stacking on cart, but from the PoV of any specific victim it's kinda annoying how the only convenient counterplay for most classes is "play more passive, never deplete your clip, and let someone else absorb the caber" (given that any non-lobotomized caber knight does not make his presence known until committing to his actual charge)
I haven't played any form of competitive tf2 outside of one match of valve's dogshit mode (enemy team had 2 hacking snipers lol). So I apologize if this is a silly question, would a stock only 6s format be good? btw love your videos, a lot of interesting game design topics get brought up
I think what makes people dislike 6s is that people intuitively dislike competitors being able to influence the competition. It's supposed to be a competition, people show up, there are always the same rules and there's this aspect of you using you impressing your skill on a certain immutable reality. When you have ban lists and so on, that aspect is cheapened because it's no longer just that, now you can alter the rules if you don't like something, there's no longer that purity there. It's funny you compare it a lot to Smash Melee because this is a beef that a lot of FGC people have with Smash. In normal FGC people like the purity of just logging on, you fight and you win or you lose - no complaining about items and rule sets. For a lot of FGC people all the restrictions in Smash and using one game mode (which isn't even the main one) are all things that cheapen it as a competition. And i think that it's something of a natural expectation for people to have regarding competetive activities. That said, i think the best way to think about 6s which kind of mitigates it is just thinking of it as another game, or a mod for tf2. Games are defined by their rules, and 6s has już such radically different rules that imo it's like comparing playing football to soccer. Sure in both games you run around on a field with a ball but they are completely different
But most competitions do not have a definite set of unchanging rules. Most sports develop their rules to fit the version of the game that the players and spectators want to see the most. Consider the goal tending rule, the 24 shot clock and 8 second rule in basketball. These rules had to be added because the game became boring with frequent stalling. All competitive games involve a community which collectively agree on what rules are the most fun, e-sports are not really any different.
@@Smoothiecom No serious competitive game bans strategies for being unfun. Competitions are about beating the opponent in a specific skill. You can cry all you want about what strategies are unfun, what skills you dislike learning. But competition is never about what you liked to learn, it's about being better than the opponents. And if a game breaks because players find a strategy where they do not need to show off their skills with interaction, where they can just stop the game for minutes at end, obviously those get banned. 6s doesn't just ban unfun strategies, it doesn't ban uncompetitive ones. 6s still players 5cp, despite it being easy to stall. Many weapons are banned for causing that stalling to happen, but the gamemode and maps stay (almost as if 6s doesn't care about competitiveness)
All esports are balanced around what pros are crying about on twitter. The rest of the community usually either doesn't care or parrots whatever the content creators, who are mostly pros or former pros are saying. In tf2 Valve don't make any (or good) changes and they don't provide any incentive to follow their lead (money, a good ranked system) and the community consensus revolves around whatever uncle dane and zesty jesus say. "Pure" tf2 on low player counts hasn't been playable since the wrangler released in 2010 so obviously the competitors will have to figure out a playable ruleset, who else?
@redtpc8194 I do agree with wrangler ban, but it's hilarious if the only reason truly is that "it's unfun". Implies people seriously played against wrangler, didn't notice it was uncompetitive and lead to stalemates, and didn't think of that as the reason to ban it. Comedy gold. Imagine a serious competitive game, balanced solely around "what pros are crying about on twitter." Lmao.
I understand bans. Just in my personal opinion, given there's no stacking I've never felt that playing against a *weapon* was *unfair*. Definitely doesn't mean I don't get mad. I agree with you somewhat, still, just wanted to mention my experience. And yes, it would probably change if I regularly played comp¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think it is worthwhile to consider that coordinated comp teams play very differently from the uncoordintated teams in casual, when is the last time you saw a sniper hurl a jarate at a group of enemies trying to push in to help his team defend rather than using it on a single spy or scout that happened to get close to him
@@Wild_Rumpus possibility* just watched ur video on other comp gamemodes from two months ago and agree a major issue with prolander is the whole sniper aspect. Currently Sixes is the best format (including it’s whitelist) Do suspect that if Valve was to go back into supporting comp TF2 again it would be 6v6 with one per class. As it would allow for the Sixes community to continue while also having a competitive mode that’s more aligned to how the average player experiences the game. (6 is also better than 7 or 9 in regards of organising a team, class switching or just communication, and the roles are more flexible (pyro isn’t just spy checking or air blasting 24/7)
The argument against unblocking multiple broken weapons is valid if the following is correct: the broken weapons are not banned for degenerate gameplay reasons, the class is sub-par power/fun level in the format and could use the additional generalist power/utility/fun, and the power levels of each banned weapon is roughly equal. We don't currently live in a world where all of these conditions apply to currently banned weapons, and there are plenty of examples of whitelisted tf2 weapons that *do* adhere to this principle - the majority of melee unlocks. Most classes where melee unlocks generally unrestricted are generally to give much needed utility to that class, does not create degenerate gameplay and has an interesting trade-off choice between which unlock you might pick (similar power levels). So whilst the logic is sound, the competitive community already understands it, it's not a new concept. I think that's probably what makes the argument frustrating - it shows a lack of understanding of the existing reasoning behind some whitelist choices.
Pokemon is a great example of why bans are positive for a game. If fluttermane was unbanned in gen 9, it would no doubt be on nearly every serious team and actually reduce team options overall
Honestly some weapons like mad milk, jarate, nahasha, and the vaccintor I can understand because how annoying and broken they can be. To me I blame vavle thinking that 6 v 6 is a good reference to balancing some weapons. Also i like the comprasion to pokemon and tf2 as both pokemon(smogon) and tf2 competitive's scence is almost different games. Especially given the new stuff and changes do take account the competitive stuff for the most part
Banning weapons became from preventing unbalance to keeping the 6s meta as it is. NR6s already debunked many of the reasons for several weapon bans too in terms of balance.
I understand that a lot of people who don't actually play don't usually bring great arguments but I also think there's something to be said for the fact that people who do already like the way a format is will be the people playing it, which creates a feedback loop
Sometimes the things I hear from people sound like they either must be outright arguing from bad faith or must genuinely not understand what a competitive format does on a fundamental level. So for the latter, here's a summarization from my own experience. ANY (good) competitive format is intended to enable longevity. This can take a large number of forms, but here I will look at American Football, Pokemon VGC, and 6s for some examples. American Football has a large number of rules/regulations intended to protect the safety of the players. For example, grabbing the mask of a player while tackling them is not allowed because it can cause concussions. This is a pretty obvious example, as if player safety isn't prioritized there is a massive barrier to entry for any prospective new players. To compound on that, in addition to fewer new players there would be significantly more injuries. This would force players to leave the sport and create a much higher demand for new players, which there are now fewer of. In Pokemon VGC the format rules rotate on a fairly regular basis. This cycles which Pokemon can and can't be used and which strategies are most effective. This means that the meta is constantly changing quickly, which maintains interest for the audience. The continued interest allows for events to stay profitable, giving the organizers reasons to continue to host events. In 6s, a community chosen whitelist is used to prevent various strategies. This can be for a number of reasons, but here I will use the Wrangler and actual number of players as examples. Pushing through a wrangled sentry is already difficult enough when there are only 6 players on a team. However when the engineer additionally has coordination with his team, the resources a wrangled sentry requires to destroy can be easily capitalized on by the rest of the team. This would lead to stalemates much more often, which slows down the game and subjectively makes it more boring. As for the number of players in 6s, this is a low enough number of players for each individual player to feel impactful. Additionally, a low number of players makes teams easier to put together: coordinating 12 people is easier than coordinating 24. However, too low of a team size causes higher volatility. If the team size is 3 as an example, a single missed shot from a scout could often mean a lost teamfight. In this instance, the community has decided that 6 players balances volatility with practicality and perceived impact. The main consistency between all of these competitive formats is that they encourage the longevity of whatever they are regulating. There is debate about changing all of these formats in various ways. As an example, there's an argument that 9 players with one of each class is closer to the intended state of the game for TF2. And you can argue back that coordinating 18 different people is simply too difficult. There is no entirely correct answer, but the results speak for themselves. American Football continues to generate massive amounts of revenue. Both Pokemon VGC and 6s have lasted far longer than many other competitive video game formats. While there are certainly other ways to approach longevity, the 6s format as a whole works for a reason, and consensus weapon bans are a core part of it much like the number of players
being into plat fighters and stuff like Mariokart time trials myself, there's actually a certain joy to get from playing in a more limited, structured gamemode. i may not be interested in playing TF2 that way, but it's not crazy that people enjoy the smaller weapon pool
I have no issues with a banlist they are often required due to the disconnect between competence and casual rule sets but u do have a problem with stagnation over time (or more accurately balance patches but those aren’t exactly coming hot and fast) the leagues need more experimental matches that really test how broken these banned weapons are do you really need to ban all of heavies movement options or maybe a weapon got banned years ago due to a wallclip glitch maybe go back and see if those are still problems Also it doesn’t help that valve tried trickle down balance but forgot that 6v6 and 12v12 are very different game modes so just nuked sone weapons like the base jumper because 6v6 doesn’t use a lot of hitscan
I don't have a problem with 6s players banning weapons in their own servers and doing their own thing with their gamemode, I just don't like them pushing those opinions onto base TF2 weapon balance because I feel like base TF2 in a pub is a very different game than 6s
The again, the default settings for smash lead to some rather engaging gameplay. The only issue is people don't seem to like having to react to consistent randomness.
Yep, just banning a problematic weapon is the best way of doing it. Nerfing said comp problematic weapons is reckless and will negatively affect most players (rip BASE Jumper and Caber). that's kinda the issue with comp in TF2, it's next to impossible to balance weapons for the main casual audience and the small comp scene. with Pokemon and melee, you can ignore Comp, the main Pokemon game still works, and casual melee is practically unchanged. but in TF2, nerfing a single weapon (for example The Ambassador) has a ripple effect across the whole game (Sniper was indirectly buffed as a result of the Ambassador nerf).
I don't care about banning weapon in 6v6 or highlander. The problem is bringing up that stabdard in casual gameplay. TF2 weapon balance MUST be based on casual. We don't want to see the base jumper shit or caber shit again.
I love these comments from people who cant even top score a pub criticising 6s. They have so little understanding of meta game and balance. I wonder if they argue with their doctor’s diagnosis because they think they think that they have useful input.
I don’t think the rayquaza argument really works because Pokémon has divisions of competive you can play with mega rayquaza in Ubers hell you can play anything goes and get your evasion boosting team to support your funbro stall strategy
As an ETF2L player although I’m completely in favour of weapon bans, but I’m also wary of being too liberal with them. Contrary to popular belief, pro players are usually terrible at balancing the games they play (an example I often use is CS:GO pros playing with the m4 and AK for 6 years before discovering that there have been way stronger options that entire time) and in Europe bans are basically only voted on by invite players, which leads to some really questionable bans. Again, I’m 100% behind banning broken or boring weapons like vaccinator, natascha, jarate etc. But when you start banning weapons that are pretty much objectively sidegrades I feel like you lose a bit of variety, hype and specialisation for the sake of a more homogenous (but not necessarily better) metagame. Bans I’m referring to are for example the bans of the market gardener and the potential bans of the solemn vow and winger. I just really don’t see how these bans will make the metagame better in any way, and especially the market gardener I find a huge loss since it was always super hype when your resident glue sniffing soldier dropped the med in the first 2 seconds of a midfight (and I don’t even play soldier consistently myself). Likewise I like the discussion of preference between pistols myself (I’m personally a stock user actually) and the solemn vow gives medics a more interesting role communicatively in the middle of fights. I guess my point is that while weapon bans can absolutely be good for the game, we should not be instantly banning weapons as soon as some specialists get some good results with them, or ban weapons just to “balance scout” or because it happens to be usually better than the default option, without a reasoning as to how specifically it will make the metagame better. ETF2L in general happens to be way more conservative on this, since a lot of things unbanned in RGL that have proven to be completely fine are still banned in ETF2L.
Casuals who share their hot takes on reddit on how "vaccinator is banned because it combats meta smh!!!" should be forced to play against 2 vaccinator medics in 6s
I just see it as, you guys are playing your game, and you don't want to ruin ours so we are square. You have your reasons, and I will keep abusing the detonator in pubs regardless.
play pocket scout for a season and go heavy when your team inevitably gets pushed to last. push out of last as heavy to your dreams content buddy, because playing him outside of that is such a slog
Now if only same people who ban them didn't also demand them nerfed, which resulted in ruining of a ton of perfectly fine weapons down to the dumpster tier and complete erasure of anything powerful in the game that wasn't a demo mindlessly spamming stickies.
we didnt demand anything lol why do u blame comp players for design decisions valve makes ? also u have furry art as your pfp so ur opinion (already bad) is discarded
So which of those 2 is the goal? Competitiveness or fun? Is 6s meant to be competitiveness or casual gamemode? Competitiveness as a goal for rules is simple: If the strategy or action requires players to interact, and the more skilled player wins, it's competitive. If you dislike the skill that is required, you are bad at the game. This is how competitive gamemodes form. Fun as goal is simple: I don't like it, I vote to ban it. This isn't a concrete goal, just anarchy: Whatever strategy gets first accepted as the core identity of the game stays, anything else cannot. This is how casual gamemodes form. 3:09: Correct, there is nothing wrong with forming a casual gamemode in this fashion. Sleep clause is intended to be competitive though, so your example is odd. 5:23: If a strategy removes interaction of skill between the players, that's when a competitively-oriented player has proven it to be banworthy. Of course you have to test wrangler before banning it, instead of telling others to prove it's not broken... I don't really get what your point here is. Also, "they are arguments for why something is worth including"? You mean "worth excluding?" Everything is worth including by default because it's part of TF2, gamemodes are restrictions of certain elements. 6:53 & 16:15 Okay, this is just direct mask off. You're just saying you dislike some skill expression (loch n load, base jumper, natascha), and seem to be lacking the skill to interact with those elements. Instead of seeing the competitive value of losing to a strategy, you're just saying it's not fun to lose to it and move on. Cool. You just admitted that's your goal for 6s, for it to be a casual gamemode, at the cost of it's competitive integrity. No wonder nobody takes 6s seriously: 6s players don't either.
@@benshulz4179 your logic fails by assuming that there is a more pure form of competition when using one set of tools over another, i disagree and think that healthy, balanced competition takes precedent over unlock diversity (which is kind of a misnomer since including broken weapons actually decreases diversity, as the broken weapons completely replace whatever choice you had between more modest unlocks). I also fail to see how fun is mutually exclusive from competition, and making decisions for the sake of a game being more fun can absolutely happen without repercussions on the competitiveness of a game, and its a good thing when that happens
@@Wild_Rumpus That was my entire point. Centralization in team composition and loadouts already exists, with very slight variation - Which isn't great for the reasons you outlined.
6s is meant to be a competitively fun game (in my opinion) because of it being grassroots and being built by the community, for the community, they have worked on making a competitive scene since day 1 of launch and they have playtest weapons all the time, tried and made maps to put into the leagues map pool, and talked to each other about what is a good weapon to ban or not ban to this day by other competitive players, the best example is the cow mangler. It's no secret that the comp community has banned some weapons because of "fun", but competitive and casual are two separate entity's on their own and while one weapon is weak in casual, it's strong or just plain annoying to some in 6s and vise versa, like, no one likes to be slowed down by the natasha to the point where they can't out maneuver the heavy as frankly any class you just have to out gun him at the point and that isn't really fun. There is a lot of weapons in the game mode that help or is played in one way or another (some popular than others) like the "Pain Train" granting faster cap time speed, The Escape Plan helping soldiers get out of bad situations with low health but greater speeds, or even the Solem Vow helping medics see the enemy players health or the medics uber when they get the chance, lists go on. This game mode gives skill expression in a different way in a mechanical setting, micro plays, playstyles, how good you are at DM, how good you are at rocket jumping, using movement to your advantage, surfing explosive and hitscan damage to escape danger, placing traps well to kill all of the enemy team, etc etc. This idea goes with other competitive game modes like 4v4 competitive passtime (look it up it's awesome) to make it a functional and fun game to play, they ban all hitscan weapons and classes for projectile classes and weapons, it's fun and competitive at the same time so why can't 6s? Don't get me wrong I love to have other classes being played more and having different weapons being played, it's just got to take time to get there and we already see that with more off-classing for small situations that make off-class shine more, more full time off-classing to push limits against the meta, and certain players making other weapons work in 6s full time (antoni). (side tangent don't have to read) I never like the saying "6s is the main competitive format." because it's silly to think that when there are other game modes that can be their own game and be represented as well in competitive because of how rich the mechanics are in this game like highlander, 4v4, 4v4 passtime, literally no restriction 6s, etc. it's just people need to make that connection and represent those as well.
@@bethnicz That's the problem though: You can completely negate Natasha's slow with simple skill expression. Not being able to do that obviously feels unfun, same as seeing a dribbling player in football or backspin in tabletop tennis But competitive spirit is exactly the opposite: You want to be bad at things, to have things that feel unfair until you learn to deal with them. Otherwise there'd be no competition. Healthy competitive meta is when the meta isn't overcentralized around a certain strategy: If the teams are all the same, for example, 5 Natasha heavies, it makes sense to ban or limit. But health of the competitive scene is clearly unimportant for 6s: It's a "competitive" format fully overcentralized around 2 soldiers, 2 scouts, 1 demo and 1 medic meta. Also, by every account, the shields' trimping has a lot more skill expression than stickybomb jumping or camping traps in bushes or doorframes. It's hilarious to even imply skill expression is even a factor in constructing the meta: Stickybomb launcher isn't banned.
@@benshulz4179 if we are talking the meta, I’ve had plenty of conversations and arguments around it and what I have concluded for myself is that, it’s the “meta” because it’s the most fun to play with and against alongside being meta in only 5cp because they are the most versatile classes in a game around a game of tug of war, while the 5 other classes are too slow or don’t bring enough damage to fight well in the ring constantly (if we are just talking about just stock, some weapons can make it better than others which that’s too deep to get into lol) if you play other game modes things will be different like King of the hill, sure you need a bit of speed to get to point but not all the time cause the point is close and all you need to do is cap and hold for 3 minutes, ez, so other classes has better chances to shine. It’s honestly just as simple as valves fault for not making the best changes to help the scene, given they tried, but they destroyed casual and competitive matchmaking where it was almost unplayable for some reason, so they had to try and fix that and after all that they didn’t bother to even try to balance around their gamemode No Restriction 6s which is upsetting honestly. Competitive spirit or competitive in general is as simple as two things, rising against the odds and becoming the best player in your own way or just fighting with the vast majority of players to be the best and beat the top team or player, that’s what makes competitive healthy, so I’m not sure I’m understanding your thought in fighting unfair things to be better is better competition than fighting fair and feeling more satisfactory when beating someone fair and square than using a gimmick to win. ^^; May I ask, what is competitively fun to you?
As an Engineer main, I've always really enjoyed what the wrangler unlocks for Engineer as an offensive option in a competitive environment. And it's the one unlock I am just really grieved is banned because I think it adds a lot to the class, particularly when paired with a mini sentry. The extended range to control space, bullet jumping to high ground to take advantage in a mid-fight, etc. I think it's a real shame such a deep unlock for Engie is pretty much entirely banned just because it lets him cheese last holds and stall out games. Which, tbf, is a very valid criticism. I don't know if formats are big fans of "conditional" bans of sorts, but I've always thought that perhaps the Wrangler could remain banned when combo'd with any of the engineer's wrenches, but if Engie is using the Gunslinger it would be acceptable to use. Cuz I really don't think a wrangled mini is gonna destroy 6s for the other classes, and it adds a lot of value to Engie being ran as a potential full-time pick. I could see a partial ban of that nature being a lil messy to enforce, but I do wonder if it's a perspective people have considered before. It allows Engie to keep the weapon as an offensive unlock when being ran full-time. But restricts it from being used in his main niche as a last point staller.
I think this point is similar to smogon (unofficial singles pokemon format if you're not aware) where complex bans just open up a can of worms (i.e. can I run broken secondaries like mad milk on scout if I use a dogshit primary) that nobody really wants to deal with. Also in game I'm not even sure if you can do conditional whitelisting but I think that might be more cause nobody has tried.
Moderately unenergised demo main talking about why "literally 1984" is good. Now that's a good way to end the night. Also thank you for bringing up Base Jumper. I am genuinely impressed by the amount of people who almost religiously cling to this thing and claim that it was somehow the funniest shit ever added to the game. Even more baffling are occasional propositions to unban it so heavy/sniper/engie get to see more play. Wild stuff lives in people's heads sometimes.
I like zesty but hating weapon bans is ridiculous. The tf2 comp scene is a grassroots scene that isolates and amplifies certain aspects of the base game-it's only natural some things will not fit the visions of 6s or highlander. As usual valve is to be blamed for the unfortunate reputation of comp players in the greater community. MYM was truly the nail that shut the coffin on comp players ever being viewed positively. Sometimes grassroots scenes should stay grassroot.
The arguments against weapon bans have always been stale, considering how a large majority of them always come from players who don't have any skin in the game. If people don't like the current whitelist and want to contend it to prove a point? Run a cup or league.
We all know that banned weapons are comp meta nerds who dont like going against their norm. And valve trying to cater to them they should've told valve or rather flipped them the bird because If pubs dont match comp scene Comp scene shouldnt match pub scene Honestly having 1000 kills as a stock scout isnt brag worthy when every limey runner uses it. Now a 500 kills bfb or short stop scout. That would be something. Its why that one demoknight who dominates 6 v 6 with the katana is fun to watch and shows how a counter exists for any setup or weapon. Short circuit = dont go soldier or demo. Just go scout as the meta Idk wtf is wrong with the base jumper. Its not like every soldier in 6s pubs or standard comp scene was using them 24/7 to spawn camp an entire team solo.
@@itsasecrettoevery1 It's because you read like a first grader, correct? I'm not surprised that reading such a short comment is difficult to you, lmfao. Go ahead and give me the inevitable reply like usual with you people.
@@itsasecrettoevery1 ROFLMFAO! Right on cue on giving me the inevitable reply like usual with you people. You really can't help it but respond, can you? Thanks for confirming that not only you read like a first grader, you think like one as well. Go ahead and yet again give me the inevitable reply like usual with you people.
I honestly just hate how some mediocre/bad unlocks got butrchered because compies whined about it. And even after the nerfs they're still banned (Look how they massacred my boy (Parachute) )
Gonna start off by saying that I'm the resident NR6s guy just so everyone else who isn't a 6s player gets some perspective.
To start off with RGL running NR6s in cups and not seasons, it's mostly a logistics thing similar to what happened to Prolander. It would be difficult to get people to sign up for NR6s (or again, Prolander) during a regular season since you're now competing not just for attention of format, but more importantly: scrim time. Generally speaking 6s scrims are during the week (or any day) and Highlander is on weekends leaving 0 days for you to be able to either scrim or schedule matches without an immense amount of conflicts. Don't get me wrong, I personally know enough people to be able to get a team or two of either NR6s OR Prolander, but who would we scrim that also has a team full of people who want to play those formats instead? Like if it's delegated to the weekend we need to compete with Highlander scrims, and vice versa for the weekday.
Then, to be completely honest the most positive feedback I've ever received as an admin (other than LAN) has been for NR6s, then for the recent whitelist testing cup. It's pretty clear to me that there are many players who would like to see the whitelist expand, and I think that's good! BUT there are some obvious weapons that are HUGE issues in 6s, and NR6s for that matter. I think we absolutely could get standard 6s to a reduced amount of bans, but anyone who thinks we can get to 0 (outside of NR6s which has no class limits etc) I can't really understand. The main culprits in testing for causing issues have been the Vaccinator (number 1 not even close), Wrangler, Mad Milk, Fists of Steel (switch bug to keep resistance without losing healing), Reserve Shooter, Jarate. I think for NR6s here you probably could allow the Reserve Shooter but for standard 6s it's just not gonna work. The main two issues I'm really seeing nowadays in whitelist discussions for banning/unbanning is either A) A weapon becomes a hot topic for a bit and players who might be a bit salty instantly call for it being banned (ex. proposed Beggar's ban because of Antoni, and Soapy) or B) People don't know how an item functions within the Traditional 6s ruleset because they literally haven't played with it in that environment / it's been many years since the last test of that item. A good example being the Buffalo Steak unban recently being completely underwhelming as it was used literally once in Invite and failed since the gimmick wasn't as strong in the current meta as people thought it would be. As for the arguments for pubbers trying to use the B.A.S.E. Jumper against 6s players, we just need to poll it again in the traditional 6s (non-cup) audience. I kinda doubt that anyone in the know would vote to keep it banned since Edgebugging is much better, and given the abysmally low strength rating from the cup.
So TLDR: If I could ban items in NR6s (the format I love running and playing and will continue to love playing), I STILL WOULD. Get that vaccinator outta here. But other than the few bad apples there's not much I'd want to change and I enjoy the environment. 6s players are *probably* a bit more progressive in North America than you think. And if you want to play NR6s, sign up :).
A bit off the cuff so I hope all of that makes sense.
imo the vaccinator should be removed from the fucking game, this shit inst fun to fight anywhere
I think the current whitelist is pretty good. Wrangler, vaccinator, jarate, reserve shooter, rescue ranger, most of scout’s secondaries, and fists of steel all warrant a ban. However, unless I’m missing one, I think pretty much every other item would still allow this format to be fun to play and watch.
people that have never played 6s and complain about the whitelist and/or class bans should be forced to push last vs 2 engies running rescue ranger and wrangler for all of eternity
While also fighting a Heavy-Medic Natascha-Vaccinator combo
and 2 5k-hour sniper players watching every choke with the machina
Uber Demo.
@@Schizoknight It's still not fun, as a frequenter of casual.
Badwater Last our Beloathed.
I dont understand. Casual players are most experienced against 4 wrangled sentries in payload lasts :)
Enough talk about banning unlocks, I want to ban stock weapons now.
This
Stock is OPd
Better than any base weapons
So ban stock
@@newturtle3 Stock Bat, Shovel, Fire Axe, Fist, Bonesaw : "What's Overpowered ?"
tl;dr we ban weapons cause there is differently formatted game modes and not all weapons are directly compatible.
the entirety of my enjoyment of tf2 completely hinges on whether i can use the base jumper or not. checkmate.
I feel like people give shit to the comp whitelist because of the disaster of MYM, and instead of blaming valve for thier shitty decisions, people have been giving comp players hate for the past since 2016. And continue to give shit to comp players like valve is still listeining to them.
Except comp players never asked for the changes to quickplay. That's all on valve, not comp players. They just wanted a separate competitive mode.
@damsen978Comp players don’t make or balance the fucking game 😂
The item servers went down some months ago and it's a good reminder how base tf2 is an extremely tight game!
You know, TF2C is ALMOST that concept... but then for some reason started adding new weapons too.... =/
Bosscrow...
@@DataDrain02 The last time i played tf2c, they did have "2007" servers with only stock
@@TurtleGalaxies Hm... yeah, I forgot about those. Though, I noticed they don't seem to have those in the default server selection anymore.
But, I'm sure there's a community server that has that.
Unless you play spy, then it gets old after like 20 minutes. Afterburn AND airblast is _rough_ without unlocks.
Honestly I don't think stuff like the wrangler or the vaccinator should even exist in casual in their current state
I once heard this unironic balancing hot take from a long-time pubber: random crits are good because how else would medic defend himself?
well it's a hot take
Yeah all 6s maps should have Mannpower powerups so that medic can defend himself
Meanwhile I consistently get kills defending myself against non explosive classes with the syringe guns
I thought melee crits weren't the issues but crockets and the like
@@garretwoeller7669Crockets are definitely an issue, though melee crits can be pretty absurd in terms of class balance. Sniper and demo are both supposed two be weak at close range but since both of them can fill their crit bucket super easily that basically erases the weakness. With medic though it’s just negativity bias
we must defend our gamemode borders against radical anarchopubber supremacists
we need to build a wall
M6GA
that sounds like an ideology you would hear about in a meme ideology video
This is what honestly convinced me that while taking balancing cues from competitive is good, nothing should be reworked for the express purpose of being unbanned from competitive, because it's not exactly a matter of balance, but a matter of preference.
TF2's competitive scene is reactive, and only makes changes to their ban-lists when a specific weapon ruins the integrity of the game. A lot of casual players arent a fan of this since it feels like you're not playing the whole game for what it is, but what TF2 is, is balanced around 12v12 with players that barely communicate.
TF2 competitive however tries to balance around 6v6 or 9v9 with rules in place to make the formats work.
Attempting to balance a weapon to be unbanned in competitive is futile because sometimes its not any numbers you can tweak, but rather the concept in of itself. So TF2 should inheritely be balanced towards its original intention of 12v12, but should still take notes and tips from its best players, which often happen to be players who take the game seriously.
tldr balance around highly skilled players and not specific formats, which i agree with for the most part. the issue i stumble across with this is that it's usually the highest skill players who end up focusing on their personal preferred formats, same as casual tf2 players thinking the only way to have fun is to make every weapon as wacky and insane as possible
would just make the game boring for everyone else. why would you balance a game in favor of the competitive mode if your tournament prizes don't even reach five digits? 😂
I would ban Vaccinator outside 6v6
This man has never played tf2 outside of 6s
@@ArchChrono Vaccinator isn't fun to play against in casual either. It's easier to counter when you have a large team, in theory, but that still requires teamwork in a casual setting. Most casual matches consist of a bunch of quick 1v1 and 1v2 fights, and Vaccinator shuts those down hard. And if the server happens to lose some players, Vaccinator only becomes stronger. Not every casual match is a full 12v12.
@@ArchChrono I just love it when medic presses R and M2 a few times to fully disable all of my classes weapons
@@ArchChrono
@@White-KaguraNormal Uber does that too and to an even broader extent. I know that it's harder to get and you don't get it as often but it's still the same mechanic. So what you said is not really a good argument against it.
You jokingly brought up unbanning mega rayquaza in gen 7 pokemon singles for the "just get used to it" argument but there is a really good example from gen 8 that actually happened and demonstrates why that argument is terrible. In early generation 8 bans were being rolled out pretty slowly. During this time dracovish rose up among the ranks as a very clearly broken pokemon that despite it's obvious balance issues, didn't get banned for a long time. Dracovish has this stupid attack that deals double damage if dracovish attacks first, or if the opponent switched. This move basically ate most teams for breakfast, very few things could switch into it. However there was a very clear and obvious counter to this. Seismitoed with the ability water absorb can completely wall dracovish. Because of this, the previously never seen seismitoed became the 4th most used pokemon for a while. The meta adapted, but became significantly less enjoyable. With so many team structures being forced to run seismitoed or other super nieche options that didn't provide much value outside of the dracovish matchup, teambuilding became a lot more restricitve and a lot less fun or competitive. Eventually after months of terror, smogon finally held a suspect test on wether or not to ban dracovish. 90% of qualified players voted to ban. This i think serves as a great historic example of why allowing broken things in a competitive metagame is bad idea, even if the meta is capable of adapting.
amen
For a moment I expected this to be about the concept of banning all unlocks in 6s. Then I remembered the whitelist. Banning ALL unlocks would be kind of insane, especially for classes like Medic and Soldier.
I mean, we did see how tf2 was when there were no unlocks at all. It’s pretty fun
15:06 dude has definitely heard zesty jesus rant about the base jumper lmao
I'm just glad to see you discuss a lot of these "non arguments" as you put it honestly. The Reserve Shooter and BASE Jumper was the most brain scratching one I ever saw
I struggle to see why this is even controversial. Am I right in saying you're familiar with pokemon? Because I sure hope I'm right because of how relevant linking these two are. As a pokemon creator or anyone who dabbles in smogon or showdown will know, you learn to ignore the people who are offended by the idea of banning things or establishing a metagame when they themselves know they don't really care and are just backseat balancing. Some of these people literally just don't know what they're doing and are just yapping but some take personal offense on behalf of the sanctity of the game which in their eyes would be hurt by modifying even if it's for the best. These are people who drop by to leave opinions and that is their entire interaction with the community. They have zero stakes and will leave whether or not they get their wish.
yeah i typed this out before 1:40
It’s best not to bend over backwards to those guys to make a metagame that they still won’t play either way
He mentions sleep clause 3 minutes in.
this is because of the tynnyri thread isnt it
Incredible how nearly every competitive game in existence that exercises community bans gains a following of anti-ban armchair theorycrafters who barely care about the game, contain a breadth of knowledge about one step above the surface level, have never played outside a casual environment, and STILL believe that they have more valuable insight than pro players and organizers. Never has there been a more convincing display of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Zesty Jesus
Competitive players sure know a lot, with their 10000th repetion of the exact same situation, with absolutely 0 variance, huh? They're both not a good source for game balancing, let's be honest
Dunning Kruger effect is when people who have some knowledge think that they know more than they do. It doesn't describe people who have little knowledge and think they know more than others.
Quite ironic to use it wrong like that.
@@benshulz4179 How is what he's saying a wrong application of the dunning kruger effect? He literally said that they have only slightly more knowledge than a casual(which implies having some knowledge), and that they believe that they have more valuable insight than experienced players(which isn't contradictory with thinking they know more than they do)
@@ANinjaDude-o7v That's not dunning kruger effect: From wikipedia:
"Nevertheless, low performers' self-assessment is lower than that of high performers."
Again, ironic to do that mistake.
"you dont play the gamemode/format enough/at a high enough level" is not a justification by itself, as it would be possible for an enthusiast or analyst to make reasonably informed predictions without having direct experience themselves (essentially their experience is vicarious). But the venn diagram of people who fall into either category is almost two separate circles, aka there are very few non players who have chosen to inform themselves of the arguments and reasoning and provide a coherent argument that can be reasoned with. Inevitably, opinions change over time and often a few of the people with the counter argument will end up becoming involved in the scene themselves, which often gives rise to opinion or meta shifts. Sometimes re-evaluation of old rules or principles comes years into a game's lifespan, so nothing is ever set in stone. As you said, it is up to the majority consensus of the community (or an informed community group) at a given time that dictates the ruleset of a format, and that's all that matters at the end of the day.
Something that keeps me up late at night thinking is the idea of a quick fix unban.
I wish the people who want it unbanned could experience the pain of playing against goblin zone zooming their medic around the world. They would feel regret
in some games it's fine to ban for comp play because the devs aren't actively balancing the game for comp (pokemon, tf2, smash bros kinda) and some games are balanced around competitive mode (you have an example in mind, most game are competitive nowdays) like why the hell do people care about a ban in comp when they aren't in comp
because competitive tf2 pushed valve to make balance changes that were not good for how tf2 was meant to be played
@@gappleofdiscord9752 is this why they buff weapons that are banned in comp?
valve only balanced weapons “for comp” once. a vast majority of shitty nerfs, such as the amby nerf have been casual influenced.
@@nektahatz5646 Thing is, those 'for comp' nerfs absolutely guttered some of the weapons casuals loved the most, so of course they're going to still be salty. They still haven't returned caber to how it was for example.
@@nektahatz5646 "shitty nerfs" and then your example is the only sniper nerf I can even think of
I want to chime in with an opinion I feel like you didn't bring up in terms of weapon bans in general. I know I am one of the more progressive players in the comments so this may get hate or whatever.
I feel like its not a matter of having weapons banned, it is a problem that some weapons are/were unfairly banned. I agree that mad milk, wrangler, jarate are broken and this is regardless of format. Almost all players with an ounce of balance understand this fact.
However, players from outside the competitive scene used to see the buffalo steak being banned and wondered why. The steak was banned for the idea of keeping a meta game. This is obviously apparent with the idea of heavy to mid. But many players fought for this weapon to never being unbanned where the only place it isn't is NA, and only happened a couple seasons ago. I can also say that almost all high level comp players probably have never even used the buffalo even in a pub but yet its banned. There was an old clip with a high level tf2 players being asked what mad milk did and didn't even know but yet would fight to the death that it should be banned.
This is what I see as the problem. Many of these players haven't even played with/against these weapons in a 6s environment but yet will fight for the balance of the format above all else. RGL ran the cup to test weapons and guess what? None of the top level invite players that mattered played the cup. So regardless of what players put no weapons were unbanned because invite didn't play.
I think players cannot fight to keep some weapons banned when they haven't had them in the format ever. Quick-Fix was changed years ago and has never once been tested seriously by any league, nor crit o cola, nor base jumper. Testing needs to happen to have weapons that aren't problematic come into the metagame whether they change things or not. B4nny fought for the unbanning of Rescue Ranger during the Global Whitelist and yet it hasn't seen the light of day since. Even the players who played the RGL cup said it didn't change all that much. Sticks still fuck up a sentry and that wont change.
Players will look at stats and repeat the same sentiment about weapons when stats vs reality is so different. If the loch's identity used to be a crutch weapon and now people want it banned, Im sure weapons that are called overpowered and banned could have the exact same effect.
@@h20gamez good points i think many people just default to the "safe" status quo because it's familiar and fun so they don't think it needs changing
@@h20gamez Simply put, the leagues are community run, and some just don't want to vs. some weapons. We also need to consider the game flow and if something is necessary. The rescue ranger as an example, I know for a fact, could be used in ways that sixes otherwise just doesn't need.
@@razerous7 Id say this is the exact argument casual players find disgusting. No offense but experimentation!! Or simple map changes that would fix 99% of last hold problems never being done!! (Nerf respawn bind)
@@lessar2721 idk if ur troll or something. but yeah we have experimented a ton, sixes is like well over a decade old
Is there a reason to fix what isn't broken?
Can [X] be unbanned? Maybe! Does it hurt the game if it's not? Not really. So, who cares?
12v12 casual (usually payload) with unlocks isn't even the game as originally intended anyways, a lot of the first maps were just tested as 8v8 5cp lol, so i don't know what all these Epic Casual TH-camrs who HATE COMPETITIVE are actually talking about
anyways yeah tf2 is far from the only game that does this, fighting games have occasional banned characters (algol in SCV comes to mind) and some games like smash (as casual a "fighting game" you can get, besides competitive melee which is actually insanely hard) have restricted rulesets for competitive play
strategy games, whether 4x like civilization or grand like hoi4 also have rulesets communities agree upon during competition
tfc also had restrictions and a more inflexible meta than tf2 (a lot of tf2 6s rules are just trying to prevent tfc defender nightmares from happening again it seems)
even fucking MARIO KART TIME TRIALS have restricted rulesets compared to casual races
i don't even know if the people who complain about 6s even play base tf2 either, people complain about wrangler and short circuit all the time, wouldn't you want them removed lmao
If it were up to me even more stuff would be banned in 6s 😐 Good video
I think sixes has a huge optics problem with its meta. Ppl don’t understand that it’s healthy and surprisingly diverse, so they assume unbanning weapons would “revitalize it”. Reserve shooter is a great example because like you said it removes the bomb sack meta, but it also centralizes the game around what strategies remain, and even more so around Uber, which is itself a centralizing strategy. Basically, by getting rid of this one gun, you let people do so much more in the game
Uber isn't a centralizing strategy; There's a medic limit just to prevent that. Now lets wonder together why soldier doesn't have that limitation together.
The thing is, we all know the 6s bans aren't trying to construct a healthy meta, but a specific one: 2 Scouts, 2 Soldiers, 1 Demo, 1 Medic. Anything falling outside of that is not unhealthy, it's just banned.
@@benshulz4179 I mean u can wonder all u want lmao
maybe you’ve got a bit of a different definition of centralizing but when teams wait for Uber advantage and push off of it that sounds like a specific strategy dictating the flow of the game to me lmao
I’m interested to know, do you play a lot of tf2?
@@ExplodingImplosion I don't really get your point. You said uber is centralizing because the team that doesn't wait for uber to push is at a disadvantage, so both teams are forced into the same strategy.
So why wouldn't both teams running same classes classes and exact same loadouts also be centralized?
Honestly, I think if you replaced "centralizing" with "fun", you would make more sense right now.
@@benshulz4179 unfortunately i think a small part of your misunderstanding comes from a competitive-specific semantic regarding uber. Uber "advantage" can refer to 2 things, that being having uber while the other team doesn't, or simply being significantly closer to uber than the other team. It doesn't mean you're at an inherent disadvantage to push without uber, unless the other team is significantly closer to 100% or already has it, and your team can't build to it within the next couple seconds.
the rest of the game is (largely) not as centralized because people tend to mix up their loadouts and classes depending on their playstyle and the gamestate. Even in class mirror matchups, different teams at different skill levels with different players will mix up what weapons they're using. add to that a variety of strategies teams can explore even with the same tools as the other team, and the game is really diverse with a lot of room for people to play how they want.
@@ExplodingImplosion 6s is definitely not "mixed up" as you claim.
In highlander there's genuine game states where it's advantageous to go for even something as silly as loose cannon + shield, to bomb the enemy combo.
Something like that doesn't happen in 6s at all, demoman is played one exact way. Highlander's entire point is that there's 1 of each class, so there cannot be strategies around picking more scouts or more soldiers - But in 6s, double soldiers is basically a format requirement. Even if you didn't get banned from servers for doing some other team composition, all other compositions would still be at a disadvantage against the double soldier.
But i want to drink the funny radio-active drink in competitive :(
understanding the thought behind banning weapons is interesting, but it's still funny to meme on comp players for banning weapons like cow mangler 5000 or sydney sleeper. i just imagine some comp player dying to a charge shot cow mangler from across the map or from a hard scoping sydney sleeper bodyshot and they launched a whole petition to ban these weapons
honestly that's probably true about Europe since they ban pretty much everything
it's not necessarily just about banning weapons that are overpowered (disrupt the balance), but also removing things that are deemed to lower the quality of the game. continually reloading/spamming cow rockets + waddle charging across the map isn't fun, interesting or dynamic. charging up to deliberately bodyshot from across the map and cover an opponent in stinky piss isn't particularly fun, interesting or dynamic.
There was a season of ESEA 6's where cow mangler was unbanned. It was super popular and unfun to fight against. Charge Shots + unlimited ammo is crazy in 6s. Also its not the sydney sleeper bodyshot thats a problem- its the fact that it covers you in Jarate and you can get focus fired from a distance at low risk. Thats a lot easier than landing a headshot with the regular rifle.
I do think its strange, though, that those weapons are banned but the Fan o War isnt? A sneaky FoW hit from a flanking scout marks you for death for 15 seconds. That can be crippling. Circumstantially- that's worth trading a scout for- hitting a demo or a medic and forcing them out of a fight. (By death or Retreat) I know the circumstances surrounding that happening are rare, but I find it odd that it isn't banned in line with the others.
@@noahmason2546 the problem with the fan is that sure you could hit them or you could just cripple them by shooting them for 104 damage
Ye except no one is petitioning. They just talk to eachother like any community.
U can do whatever you want in your competetive circle :-D
As a filthy casual player, I always figured stock-only was fine due to the game being originally built around that and anything else working in a serious setting was a bonus lol
Most people who I've heard complain don't even play Comp lmao; and the *only* Comp-related Issues _I've_ had in the past at all were applying comp-centered balance changes in casual to unban something in 6v6s
Interesting perspective, overall
I've never been part of this discussion and I honestly don't care much, but allow me to play devil's advocate for a minute if maybe I can make sense of the situation. It seems to me that the critics perceive the bans as a lack of adaptability, or simply a refusal to do so; like mediocrity is being prolonged and the meta is forced to stop evolving because a group of influential people was too lazy to adapt to a new strategy. Well, we tried to play with them and it sucks. But why didn't you play more? You can never win against this argument because you can always have played more. Of course, these people would be oblivious to the existence of unrestricted 6s, which I think just shuts down the argument completely.
Another argument, there is a sort of subconscious desire of the masses to see unused weapons be used by good/competitive players, because these are the players, in the critics mind, that can discover or refine new tech for the weapon, even tech that has never been seen before. Look at Antoni, I guarantee most people who saw his videos for the first time didn't know that the beggar's bazooka could be used that way. I'm not saying its new tech, but its tech that is exposed to more people that didn't know about it and wanna try that on their own. So you could see banning weapons as robbing the whole community of potential tech, or discovery of new strategies that could be even more fun to watch and play than we have now. This just relies on basically a "what if" so its mostly food for thought, but its how I see people reasoning to critique a whitelist.
the thing is, the beggars is not broken. I love antoni, very talented soldier, but the beggars is an actually balanced weapon that may actually be on the weaker side. Not all weapons are equal, the beggars is different from jarate or mad milk. They don't have the same amount of depth, they're just overpowered. They don't lead to brand new interesting strategies or playstyles, they just supplement already powerful classes who are going to play the exact same way (especially scout and sniper). And even if they did, it wouldn't matter because people would just use them the most optimal, most degenarate, lamest way possible (spamming guillotines in chokepoints rather than doing a funny guillotine/wrap assassin combo with the stacking bleed.) There's an opportunity cost to using a powerful option in a "funny new" strategy rather than just abusing it the best possible way, especially if you're playing to win. Basically, they're shallow. You're not being robbed of a new, varied, flourshing meta because the natasha is banned.
This is an awful devil's advocate.
Or rather, it is so good, that your response to it doesn't make much sense.
Basically, your counter-argument boiled down to that adapting to strategies shouldn't happen in competitive setting. This is not how any lasting, popular game works: Innovations are only banned if they remove interaction or core part of the game. In 6s, that "core part "has over the years grown into 2 scouts and 2 soldiers, 1 demo and 1 medic on each team. If a strategy requires you to swap or change loadouts, it's seen as bad. But these are core parts of TF2, that 6s disregarded. So of course people look at weird region-specific bans like detonator and do not see TF2 competitive at all, just some weird nonsense mode like x100.
Also doesn't help that playing that pub competitive servers ban you if you play off-meta classes. Basically, 6s isn't a competitive game at it's core.
Also, TF2 have many maps and gamemodes. If 5cp engineer last is not competitively viable, why would that be engineer's fault more than the map or gamemode's?
The problem I still have with the base jumper to this day isn't really with the 6's community but valve itself. They never should have tried balancing the game around a game mode which the community was already self regulating.
However I really disagree with the assertion that the base jumper was a weapon people enjoyed just kinda floating around with and that it is the only functionality which was used. The old base jumper had a bunch of fun tech which isn't possible like fluttering the chute while jumping to change speeds suddenly. Using it to make the market gardener more reliable and applicable in closed quarters scenarios and just the lack of restriction on air control meant that you could do things like go all the way down the cactus canyon first map slope off of one jump. Now are all of these part of the reason why the old jumper got banned in 6's? Well they certainly didn't help. But in the casual format they were super fun and made the weapon very non linear. But because it could be abused in 6's valve opted to nerf it.
And I think that is the main thing about 12v12 no restrictions vs 6v6 whitelist is it is really hard to abuse weapons in 12v12 giving them a sense of balance that they might not have. The vaccinator is essentially a direct upgrade unless you are going up against 2 sentries and a team to back them. In which case it does start to falter to a point where the casual experience doesn't think its broken (it is)
tldr; I have no problem with the 6's community and blame the base jumper nerf on valve's lack of foresight. But I also do not agree that my disappointment in the state of the weapon is diminished or invalidated because the weapon can still serve its "perceived" main function.
It feels like some bans are there to make a class unplayable - like the detonator
i think that is somewhat true, it's to uphold the class meta, similar to the GRU ban. but the detonator is an explosive long range fire weapon, like the scorch shot, which could also have something to do with it.
take what i say with a grain of salt. i dont have close to enough experience to be reasonably informed on this.
While I don't have much experience in 6's the detonator might be the single most effective spam tool in the game, even moreso than than the scorch shot. I have little doubt a comp player could keep the entire enemy team on fire the whole game. If it was just a jumper weapon it would probably wouldn't have been banned in the first place.
that gun is allowed in nearly every region..
@@vittrippsIs being set on fire from 500 ft away really that bad. Can't the other team just run a pyro as well, if not the other team is playing with 1 less power class
@@redwarrior118 Ah, I should've clarified i was putting out why i thought it would be banned, i think the det is fine if not annoying.
All this eternal "banning unlocks in comp" argue (Started probably when kritzkrieg was added as I remember) is just an outcome of tf2 comp core problem - tf2 6s gameplay is so extremly different from tf2 pub gameplay that it is basically a 2 different games. As a result even keen people from pubs usually prefer to stay away from comp and tf2 comp was never as popular as it could be if there weren't some big mistakes made by league admins in the early days of tf2. I think esl admins should've probably adopted 8v8 from tfc, rather than trying to reincarnate much less popular quake fortress 6v6, but now after 17 years it's just an empty talk.
Though If I would get to remove 1 tf2 weapon from the game that would probably be not wrangler or vacc but crusader's crossbow.
people are weirdly fickle about the idea of a nominally casual game that theyre attached to even having a competitive scene with bans in the first place. they dont understand the reasoning for bans and dont really think about how unbanning things will just serve to make the game less interactive and fun. these are largely gentlemans agreements that are done for the sake of player fun and skill expression
i think a lot of the animosity toward competitive players by casual players at large is due to a lot of discussions about game balance naturally touching on the highest level of play (or at least the warped greater perception of it.) this even happens in singleplayer games, a lot of discussions of fire emblem units hinges around optimized planned playthroughs because the game in its casual form, even at the highest difficulty settings in the series, is easy enough to where the differences between units are diminished. and this often frustrates the general population but its somewhat necessary to establish a baseline of viablity that isnt "well i pumped favoritism into them and they killed the final boss"
the melee and pokemon comparisons are really funny personally having played melee since 2016 and all the “person who has never touched competitive pokemon has some very strong opinions on recent ban from ou” memes
ik the scene is too small to sustain it but i kinda wonder what separate tier based 6s rulesets would be like
It's unfortunate because some players GENUINELY want to see TF2 Competitive die. I used to watch Zesty's streams and in one his streams, I asked him whether he thought TF2 Casual and 6s should be more connect rather than the disjointed nature it has now, and his answer (paraphrased) was he thinks there should be as much separation as possible and that comp and casual can never reconcile together. He also added that he thinks that comp is the reason this game went downhill over the years and that Valve should've never listened to us. It was extremely sad to hear him say that, especially since I think he has a lot of good content otherwise.
i loved the background gameplay, the medic was the best of your team btw. always in position and ready (maybe some ubers were a inoportunous btw)
For the record, I am someone who does not play sixes or have any interest in it, but as someone who plays a lot of magic the gathering, I'd say there is an inherent advantage to avoiding banning things, and that's variety and strategy. More options can lead to more diversity in what you see and can lead to a less stale environment. Of course, I'm not going to say that everything should be legal, because often that will just lead to the same samey games but with less fun commonalities. While I agree with you that there's nothing sacred about default settings, implying that bannings have no downsides is a bit much.
competitive 6s is a different game from casual TF2. For the main base game, the weapons are all (relatively) balanced, and as we've seen, trying to balance weapons for both comp 6s and the base game is not a simple task, so there will have to be restrictions in one format or another. neither game is objectively better, they're just different and must be played with those differences in mind
I think a lot of people don't understand how game balance works. There is no "include everything" option. There is a finite amount of space in the balance of the meta and everything you include takes up some amount of that space. Good balance means looking at your possibility space and filling it efficiently, you want a good variety of fun options and that means excluding bullshit that isn't fun and kills variety.
As a toy example just to show how this works, imagine if the crusader's crossbow could oneshot scouts. "Including everything" means including this item, but including this item means excluding every other medic primary (there is no reason to use them) and the entire scout class (there is no reason to play it). Obviously an extreme example but every item and class does this same thing to a lesser degree.
6v6 has a different possibility space than other formats. It has to fill that possibility space differently if it wants to be fun.
its okay rumpus, i still enjoy your voice for my bedtime ritual
We should ban every weapon except for the heavy’s fists
As much as the wrangler may be OP, and stacking them can be even worse…
Sometimes I’m trying to carry as engineer and I need to tank this gun for 20 goddamn seconds bc my team is screwing arohnd
mom wake up, there's a new wild_rumpus video
I know you prbly said it as a joke, but as someone who has never even played 6s, I find your voice and style of talking extremely relaxing and I’ve fallen asleep to your videos more than once 😂
To put into perspective what anti-ban casual players see, they typically see a paradox.
Competitive play is for pros, but if you ban and change a lot you're not playing TF2 as the vast majority do so you're playing a different game and considering yourself a pro at TF2?
It also begins to bleed into casual with major issues, for example an item might only be powerful because its counter is banned. This item is too powerful and needs a slight nerf or to be banned, on other games this often leads to a slight nerf. So now in casual this item has a counter and is nerfed destroying it. This is less common in TF2, but is an unfortunate issue none the less.
I am not arguing if the bans are right or wrong, rather drawing attention to the fact that there is inherent friction between casual and competitive for valid reasons that can negatively impact everyone when changes don't get locked to their respective mode they are balanced for.
I feel like all of this is just pointless navel gazing in a game that doesn't receive _any_ balance changes, competitive nor casual driven.
this!
The current banlist is almost perfect, I don't play sixes though, ya boi likes Highlander/Prolander
As a swordfighter i understand this very Well on Most Battlefield Stabs are forbiden cause IT IS to Dangerous and simply unfun so ITS banned
I think it really is just that a lot of casual players get most of their fun from trying to use as many different unlocks as possible. Just look at the popularity of weapon review videos. Casual players assume that less weapons = less strategy because that's how it is in casual for some people
I'd love to see a video on demo melees, specifically when to use either the zatoichi or pain train
If I had to guess the sort of "root cause" for why so many people are fundamentally against the idea of weapon bans, it's that, in casual/unrestricted formats, picking loadouts to deal with specific situations or counterpicking against other people's loadouts is a big part of the game for a lot of people. 6s has a lot less of that by comparison, so people feel like a core element of the game is lost.
Now personally, I don't think it's as important as people make it out to be; (after all, the game originally was designed and launched without any unlocks), but I do at least understand why some people feel this way.
It's funny that you mention sleep clause cause I think they removed sleep clause in gen 9 lol (and instead banned ALL sleep moves).
Good vid tho.
**Title: The Case for Pyro in Competitive Team Fortress 2 6v6 Play**
**Abstract:**
This dissertation explores the arguments for the inclusion of Pyro in competitive Team Fortress 2 (TF2) 6v6 gameplay. It examines the historical context of Pyro's exclusion from competitive formats, evaluates the Pyro class's potential impact on game balance and team dynamics, and proposes strategies for integrating Pyro in a way that aligns with the competitive integrity of TF2. By analyzing Pyro's abilities, comparing them with other classes, and considering feedback from the competitive community, this dissertation aims to present a balanced perspective on the feasibility and benefits of including Pyro in 6v6 play.
**1. Introduction**
1.1. Background of Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2, developed by Valve Corporation, is a team-based first-person shooter with a variety of classes, each offering unique abilities and roles. The game features a diverse roster of nine classes, which are categorized into offense, defense, and support roles.
1.2. Competitive 6v6 Format
The 6v6 format in TF2 is a popular competitive mode where two teams of six players each compete against one another. The format emphasizes strategic depth and teamwork, with a common setup involving the following classes: Scout, Soldier, Demoman, Medic, Engineer, and a combination of Sniper or Spy.
1.3. Pyro's Exclusion from 6v6
Pyro's exclusion from competitive 6v6 play is largely due to concerns about balance and the class's perceived lack of utility in high-level play. This dissertation aims to reassess these concerns and provide a rationale for Pyro's potential inclusion.
**2. Pyro's Abilities and Role in TF2**
2.1. Pyro's Core Abilities
Pyro is equipped with a flamethrower, which deals damage over time and has a unique effect of "afterburn." Pyro also possesses a shotgun and a melee weapon, offering versatility in close combat. Additionally, Pyro can use the airblast mechanic to deflect projectiles and extinguish burning teammates.
2.2. Pyro's Playstyle
Pyro is often characterized by a close-quarters, aggressive playstyle. The class excels at disrupting enemy formations and can provide significant crowd control through its airblast ability.
2.3. Pyro's Utility and Synergy
In traditional formats, Pyro's role is seen as less critical compared to other classes. However, Pyro can offer substantial utility through its crowd control, defense against explosive damage, and support for pushing or holding objectives.
**3. Evaluating Pyro's Impact on Competitive Balance**
3.1. Historical Context of Pyro's Exclusion
Pyro's exclusion from competitive formats has been driven by balance concerns, particularly related to the class's ability to counter specific strategies or dominant classes. Historical precedent and community feedback have shaped the current competitive landscape.
3.2. Potential Balance Issues
The introduction of Pyro could lead to potential balance issues, such as disrupting established meta strategies or overshadowing other classes. Analyzing these issues involves evaluating Pyro's impact on the effectiveness of common class combinations and strategies.
3.3. Mitigating Balance Concerns
To address balance concerns, it is essential to consider adjustments or modifications to Pyro's abilities. This section explores possible changes that could ensure Pyro's inclusion does not compromise competitive integrity.
**4. Comparative Analysis with Other Classes**
4.1. Comparison with Offensive Classes
Comparing Pyro's abilities with those of Scout and Soldier highlights differences in playstyle and utility. Pyro's role in aggressive pushes and defense can complement offensive strategies.
4.2. Comparison with Defensive Classes
Pyro's potential synergy with defensive classes like Engineer and Demoman is explored. Pyro's crowd control and area denial abilities could enhance defensive setups and protect key positions.
4.3. Comparison with Support Classes
Examining Pyro's interaction with support classes like Medic offers insights into potential benefits and drawbacks. Pyro's ability to protect and support Medic could influence healing strategies and team sustainability.
**5. Proposed Integration Strategies**
5.1. Role Definition and Specialization
Defining a clear role for Pyro within the 6v6 format is crucial. This section proposes potential specializations for Pyro, such as a defensive or disruptive role, and how it can fit into existing team compositions.
5.2. Balance Adjustments and Testing
Proposed balance adjustments, such as tweaking Pyro's damage output or airblast mechanics, are discussed. Testing and feedback mechanisms are outlined to ensure that Pyro's inclusion is balanced and beneficial.
5.3. Community and Competitive Feedback
Gathering feedback from the competitive community and conducting playtesting sessions are essential for assessing Pyro's impact. This section emphasizes the importance of iterative adjustments based on real-world play data.
**6. Conclusion**
6.1. Summary of Findings
This dissertation summarizes the key arguments for including Pyro in competitive 6v6 play, highlighting the class's potential benefits and the strategies for addressing balance concerns.
6.2. Future Directions
Future research and development directions are proposed, including further playtesting and community engagement to refine Pyro's role and ensure its successful integration into competitive formats.
6.3. Final Thoughts
The inclusion of Pyro in competitive 6v6 play could enhance the diversity and strategic depth of Team Fortress 2. With careful balancing and consideration, Pyro has the potential to contribute meaningfully to the competitive scene.
**References**
A comprehensive list of sources, including historical data, community feedback, and balance analyses, is provided to support the arguments and recommendations made in this dissertation.
---
This structure provides a thorough exploration of why Pyro could be a valuable addition to competitive 6v6 play, addressing both potential benefits and concerns in a balanced manner.
NODEAL
pyro is already part of 6s it just gets overshadowed by generalist classes which is why it isnt run full time
@@justjazz784 OOOooo Ok.
Some dude mentioned banning stock weapons, I think it would be awesome if there was a sixes event where all stickybombs were banned, all but the quick fix and kritzkreig were banned, and every class had a limit of only one besides spy who you can run 9 of, oh and scout can only use the sandman
14:10 Weren't the caber and sandman also nerfed for this reason? They were both extremely popular and fun weapons until they were gutted into their current unusable states.
sandman no that was the community talking about how broken it was when it stunned, then they changed to slow and it doesn't even work so people didn't use it, caber i think so cause it was nerfed in the mym update which, beats me on why, that could've been a fun weapon in comp and casual as it was just to one shot a class and themselves if they got too close to the demo.
@@bethnicz I heard caber was nerfed because comp players would use it with the sticky jumper at the beginning of rounds to pick medics. I think sandman was also banned before it got nerfed and later unbanned.
@@nickenchugger I guess there is merits to it, just don't think it's only the comp community wanting nerfs 😅
What timeline are you living in? Most pubbers despised the old sandman because getting stunned and cleavered was really fucking lame. Obviously there was plenty of crying after it was nerfed, but that's because the few people who used it were utterly obsessed with it and were consequently more vocal than the rest of us. I'll admit that most people loved the caber and even to this day I regularly see people groaning about the nerf, but once the novelty of "haha he blew himself up!" wears off for an individual, getting 1-shot by something that requires neither aim nor prediction becomes boring, esp. when wielded by something as fast and tanky as a shield-boots demo. It wasn't "unbalanced" in the grand scheme of things because the demo usually dies after getting his kill, thus rendering his effect on the game-state relatively neutral outside of specific circumstances like a mass of people stacking on cart, but from the PoV of any specific victim it's kinda annoying how the only convenient counterplay for most classes is "play more passive, never deplete your clip, and let someone else absorb the caber" (given that any non-lobotomized caber knight does not make his presence known until committing to his actual charge)
coming to think of it, if i went to the philly LAN i could've greeted you irl!
I haven't played any form of competitive tf2 outside of one match of valve's dogshit mode (enemy team had 2 hacking snipers lol). So I apologize if this is a silly question, would a stock only 6s format be good?
btw love your videos, a lot of interesting game design topics get brought up
gunboats and crossbow are too fun to *not* play with. and not being able to play with the boston basher or kritz is pretty limiting for no good reason
@@itsasecrettoevery1 The crossbow one makes sense. Its practically stock for medic lol
I'm sad there's a lack of cat petting in this video
I think what makes people dislike 6s is that people intuitively dislike competitors being able to influence the competition. It's supposed to be a competition, people show up, there are always the same rules and there's this aspect of you using you impressing your skill on a certain immutable reality. When you have ban lists and so on, that aspect is cheapened because it's no longer just that, now you can alter the rules if you don't like something, there's no longer that purity there. It's funny you compare it a lot to Smash Melee because this is a beef that a lot of FGC people have with Smash. In normal FGC people like the purity of just logging on, you fight and you win or you lose - no complaining about items and rule sets. For a lot of FGC people all the restrictions in Smash and using one game mode (which isn't even the main one) are all things that cheapen it as a competition. And i think that it's something of a natural expectation for people to have regarding competetive activities.
That said, i think the best way to think about 6s which kind of mitigates it is just thinking of it as another game, or a mod for tf2. Games are defined by their rules, and 6s has już such radically different rules that imo it's like comparing playing football to soccer. Sure in both games you run around on a field with a ball but they are completely different
this!
But most competitions do not have a definite set of unchanging rules. Most sports develop their rules to fit the version of the game that the players and spectators want to see the most. Consider the goal tending rule, the 24 shot clock and 8 second rule in basketball. These rules had to be added because the game became boring with frequent stalling. All competitive games involve a community which collectively agree on what rules are the most fun, e-sports are not really any different.
@@Smoothiecom
No serious competitive game bans strategies for being unfun. Competitions are about beating the opponent in a specific skill. You can cry all you want about what strategies are unfun, what skills you dislike learning. But competition is never about what you liked to learn, it's about being better than the opponents. And if a game breaks because players find a strategy where they do not need to show off their skills with interaction, where they can just stop the game for minutes at end, obviously those get banned.
6s doesn't just ban unfun strategies, it doesn't ban uncompetitive ones. 6s still players 5cp, despite it being easy to stall. Many weapons are banned for causing that stalling to happen, but the gamemode and maps stay (almost as if 6s doesn't care about competitiveness)
All esports are balanced around what pros are crying about on twitter.
The rest of the community usually either doesn't care or parrots whatever the content creators, who are mostly pros or former pros are saying.
In tf2 Valve don't make any (or good) changes and they don't provide any incentive to follow their lead (money, a good ranked system) and the community consensus revolves around whatever uncle dane and zesty jesus say. "Pure" tf2 on low player counts hasn't been playable since the wrangler released in 2010 so obviously the competitors will have to figure out a playable ruleset, who else?
@redtpc8194
I do agree with wrangler ban, but it's hilarious if the only reason truly is that "it's unfun". Implies people seriously played against wrangler, didn't notice it was uncompetitive and lead to stalemates, and didn't think of that as the reason to ban it. Comedy gold.
Imagine a serious competitive game, balanced solely around "what pros are crying about on twitter."
Lmao.
I understand bans. Just in my personal opinion, given there's no stacking I've never felt that playing against a *weapon* was *unfair*. Definitely doesn't mean I don't get mad. I agree with you somewhat, still, just wanted to mention my experience. And yes, it would probably change if I regularly played comp¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think it is worthwhile to consider that coordinated comp teams play very differently from the uncoordintated teams in casual, when is the last time you saw a sniper hurl a jarate at a group of enemies trying to push in to help his team defend rather than using it on a single spy or scout that happened to get close to him
Explain why Europe bans so many things
Because they suck at the game
@@tangerinepaint3643as a European I can confirm I suck at the game (I'm level 14 and have 200 kills)
Could you do a video on the possibly of playing sixes without double classes? (No more double scout or double soldier)
@@raquetdude would probably just look like prolander with 6 people instead of 7 to be honest
@@Wild_Rumpus possibility* just watched ur video on other comp gamemodes from two months ago and agree a major issue with prolander is the whole sniper aspect. Currently Sixes is the best format (including it’s whitelist)
Do suspect that if Valve was to go back into supporting comp TF2 again it would be 6v6 with one per class.
As it would allow for the Sixes community to continue while also having a competitive mode that’s more aligned to how the average player experiences the game.
(6 is also better than 7 or 9 in regards of organising a team, class switching or just communication, and the roles are more flexible (pyro isn’t just spy checking or air blasting 24/7)
@@Wild_Rumpusnow what about no class limits for scout and soldier, heeerm??
The argument against unblocking multiple broken weapons is valid if the following is correct: the broken weapons are not banned for degenerate gameplay reasons, the class is sub-par power/fun level in the format and could use the additional generalist power/utility/fun, and the power levels of each banned weapon is roughly equal. We don't currently live in a world where all of these conditions apply to currently banned weapons, and there are plenty of examples of whitelisted tf2 weapons that *do* adhere to this principle - the majority of melee unlocks. Most classes where melee unlocks generally unrestricted are generally to give much needed utility to that class, does not create degenerate gameplay and has an interesting trade-off choice between which unlock you might pick (similar power levels). So whilst the logic is sound, the competitive community already understands it, it's not a new concept. I think that's probably what makes the argument frustrating - it shows a lack of understanding of the existing reasoning behind some whitelist choices.
Pokemon is a great example of why bans are positive for a game. If fluttermane was unbanned in gen 9, it would no doubt be on nearly every serious team and actually reduce team options overall
Honestly some weapons like mad milk, jarate, nahasha, and the vaccintor I can understand because how annoying and broken they can be. To me I blame vavle thinking that 6 v 6 is a good reference to balancing some weapons.
Also i like the comprasion to pokemon and tf2 as both pokemon(smogon) and tf2 competitive's scence is almost different games. Especially given the new stuff and changes do take account the competitive stuff for the most part
Banning weapons became from preventing unbalance to keeping the 6s meta as it is. NR6s already debunked many of the reasons for several weapon bans too in terms of balance.
I understand that a lot of people who don't actually play don't usually bring great arguments but I also think there's something to be said for the fact that people who do already like the way a format is will be the people playing it, which creates a feedback loop
Sometimes the things I hear from people sound like they either must be outright arguing from bad faith or must genuinely not understand what a competitive format does on a fundamental level. So for the latter, here's a summarization from my own experience.
ANY (good) competitive format is intended to enable longevity. This can take a large number of forms, but here I will look at American Football, Pokemon VGC, and 6s for some examples.
American Football has a large number of rules/regulations intended to protect the safety of the players. For example, grabbing the mask of a player while tackling them is not allowed because it can cause concussions. This is a pretty obvious example, as if player safety isn't prioritized there is a massive barrier to entry for any prospective new players. To compound on that, in addition to fewer new players there would be significantly more injuries. This would force players to leave the sport and create a much higher demand for new players, which there are now fewer of.
In Pokemon VGC the format rules rotate on a fairly regular basis. This cycles which Pokemon can and can't be used and which strategies are most effective. This means that the meta is constantly changing quickly, which maintains interest for the audience. The continued interest allows for events to stay profitable, giving the organizers reasons to continue to host events.
In 6s, a community chosen whitelist is used to prevent various strategies. This can be for a number of reasons, but here I will use the Wrangler and actual number of players as examples. Pushing through a wrangled sentry is already difficult enough when there are only 6 players on a team. However when the engineer additionally has coordination with his team, the resources a wrangled sentry requires to destroy can be easily capitalized on by the rest of the team. This would lead to stalemates much more often, which slows down the game and subjectively makes it more boring. As for the number of players in 6s, this is a low enough number of players for each individual player to feel impactful. Additionally, a low number of players makes teams easier to put together: coordinating 12 people is easier than coordinating 24. However, too low of a team size causes higher volatility. If the team size is 3 as an example, a single missed shot from a scout could often mean a lost teamfight. In this instance, the community has decided that 6 players balances volatility with practicality and perceived impact.
The main consistency between all of these competitive formats is that they encourage the longevity of whatever they are regulating. There is debate about changing all of these formats in various ways. As an example, there's an argument that 9 players with one of each class is closer to the intended state of the game for TF2. And you can argue back that coordinating 18 different people is simply too difficult. There is no entirely correct answer, but the results speak for themselves. American Football continues to generate massive amounts of revenue. Both Pokemon VGC and 6s have lasted far longer than many other competitive video game formats. While there are certainly other ways to approach longevity, the 6s format as a whole works for a reason, and consensus weapon bans are a core part of it much like the number of players
being into plat fighters and stuff like Mariokart time trials myself, there's actually a certain joy to get from playing in a more limited, structured gamemode. i may not be interested in playing TF2 that way, but it's not crazy that people enjoy the smaller weapon pool
I think if you didn't ban some items there would be build that everyone runs 100% of the time because other builds aren't as broken
Which would be fine, IF the community found it to be the most fun way to play
19:31 has there ever been any experiments with allowing a scout to offclass as Demoknight. Pros: it would be funny, Cons: pills for dinner
you are like the bkc of tf2
I have no issues with a banlist they are often required due to the disconnect between competence and casual rule sets but u do have a problem with stagnation over time (or more accurately balance patches but those aren’t exactly coming hot and fast) the leagues need more experimental matches that really test how broken these banned weapons are do you really need to ban all of heavies movement options or maybe a weapon got banned years ago due to a wallclip glitch maybe go back and see if those are still problems
Also it doesn’t help that valve tried trickle down balance but forgot that 6v6 and 12v12 are very different game modes so just nuked sone weapons like the base jumper because 6v6 doesn’t use a lot of hitscan
I don't have a problem with 6s players banning weapons in their own servers and doing their own thing with their gamemode, I just don't like them pushing those opinions onto base TF2 weapon balance because I feel like base TF2 in a pub is a very different game than 6s
The again, the default settings for smash lead to some rather engaging gameplay. The only issue is people don't seem to like having to react to consistent randomness.
Yep, just banning a problematic weapon is the best way of doing it. Nerfing said comp problematic weapons is reckless and will negatively affect most players (rip BASE Jumper and Caber).
that's kinda the issue with comp in TF2, it's next to impossible to balance weapons for the main casual audience and the small comp scene. with Pokemon and melee, you can ignore Comp, the main Pokemon game still works, and casual melee is practically unchanged. but in TF2, nerfing a single weapon (for example The Ambassador) has a ripple effect across the whole game (Sniper was indirectly buffed as a result of the Ambassador nerf).
I don't care about banning weapon in 6v6 or highlander. The problem is bringing up that stabdard in casual gameplay. TF2 weapon balance MUST be based on casual. We don't want to see the base jumper shit or caber shit again.
I love these comments from people who cant even top score a pub criticising 6s. They have so little understanding of meta game and balance. I wonder if they argue with their doctor’s diagnosis because they think they think that they have useful input.
oo rumpus feelin spicy today
I don’t think the rayquaza argument really works because Pokémon has divisions of competive you can play with mega rayquaza in Ubers hell you can play anything goes and get your evasion boosting team to support your funbro stall strategy
As an ETF2L player although I’m completely in favour of weapon bans, but I’m also wary of being too liberal with them. Contrary to popular belief, pro players are usually terrible at balancing the games they play (an example I often use is CS:GO pros playing with the m4 and AK for 6 years before discovering that there have been way stronger options that entire time) and in Europe bans are basically only voted on by invite players, which leads to some really questionable bans. Again, I’m 100% behind banning broken or boring weapons like vaccinator, natascha, jarate etc. But when you start banning weapons that are pretty much objectively sidegrades I feel like you lose a bit of variety, hype and specialisation for the sake of a more homogenous (but not necessarily better) metagame. Bans I’m referring to are for example the bans of the market gardener and the potential bans of the solemn vow and winger. I just really don’t see how these bans will make the metagame better in any way, and especially the market gardener I find a huge loss since it was always super hype when your resident glue sniffing soldier dropped the med in the first 2 seconds of a midfight (and I don’t even play soldier consistently myself). Likewise I like the discussion of preference between pistols myself (I’m personally a stock user actually) and the solemn vow gives medics a more interesting role communicatively in the middle of fights.
I guess my point is that while weapon bans can absolutely be good for the game, we should not be instantly banning weapons as soon as some specialists get some good results with them, or ban weapons just to “balance scout” or because it happens to be usually better than the default option, without a reasoning as to how specifically it will make the metagame better. ETF2L in general happens to be way more conservative on this, since a lot of things unbanned in RGL that have proven to be completely fine are still banned in ETF2L.
Casuals who share their hot takes on reddit on how "vaccinator is banned because it combats meta smh!!!" should be forced to play against 2 vaccinator medics in 6s
I just see it as, you guys are playing your game, and you don't want to ruin ours so we are square. You have your reasons, and I will keep abusing the detonator in pubs regardless.
you need to be banned
Considering the possibility that the specialists will likely never be a part of 6s just leaves me skeptical.
they are..
play pocket scout for a season and go heavy when your team inevitably gets pushed to last. push out of last as heavy to your dreams content buddy, because playing him outside of that is such a slog
@@itsasecrettoevery1 Since I am a heavy main, you underestimate me enjoying heavy.
specialists are literally part of the game
I would not respect whoever would defend the Wrangler to be allowed.
Now if only same people who ban them didn't also demand them nerfed, which resulted in ruining of a ton of perfectly fine weapons down to the dumpster tier and complete erasure of anything powerful in the game that wasn't a demo mindlessly spamming stickies.
we didnt demand anything lol why do u blame comp players for design decisions valve makes ? also u have furry art as your pfp so ur opinion (already bad) is discarded
I genuinely cannot tell whether or not this is bait
just imagine vaxx on 6v6
So which of those 2 is the goal? Competitiveness or fun? Is 6s meant to be competitiveness or casual gamemode?
Competitiveness as a goal for rules is simple: If the strategy or action requires players to interact, and the more skilled player wins, it's competitive. If you dislike the skill that is required, you are bad at the game. This is how competitive gamemodes form.
Fun as goal is simple: I don't like it, I vote to ban it. This isn't a concrete goal, just anarchy: Whatever strategy gets first accepted as the core identity of the game stays, anything else cannot. This is how casual gamemodes form.
3:09: Correct, there is nothing wrong with forming a casual gamemode in this fashion. Sleep clause is intended to be competitive though, so your example is odd.
5:23: If a strategy removes interaction of skill between the players, that's when a competitively-oriented player has proven it to be banworthy. Of course you have to test wrangler before banning it, instead of telling others to prove it's not broken... I don't really get what your point here is. Also, "they are arguments for why something is worth including"? You mean "worth excluding?" Everything is worth including by default because it's part of TF2, gamemodes are restrictions of certain elements.
6:53 & 16:15 Okay, this is just direct mask off. You're just saying you dislike some skill expression (loch n load, base jumper, natascha), and seem to be lacking the skill to interact with those elements. Instead of seeing the competitive value of losing to a strategy, you're just saying it's not fun to lose to it and move on. Cool. You just admitted that's your goal for 6s, for it to be a casual gamemode, at the cost of it's competitive integrity.
No wonder nobody takes 6s seriously: 6s players don't either.
@@benshulz4179 your logic fails by assuming that there is a more pure form of competition when using one set of tools over another, i disagree and think that healthy, balanced competition takes precedent over unlock diversity (which is kind of a misnomer since including broken weapons actually decreases diversity, as the broken weapons completely replace whatever choice you had between more modest unlocks).
I also fail to see how fun is mutually exclusive from competition, and making decisions for the sake of a game being more fun can absolutely happen without repercussions on the competitiveness of a game, and its a good thing when that happens
@@Wild_Rumpus That was my entire point. Centralization in team composition and loadouts already exists, with very slight variation - Which isn't great for the reasons you outlined.
6s is meant to be a competitively fun game (in my opinion) because of it being grassroots and being built by the community, for the community, they have worked on making a competitive scene since day 1 of launch and they have playtest weapons all the time, tried and made maps to put into the leagues map pool, and talked to each other about what is a good weapon to ban or not ban to this day by other competitive players, the best example is the cow mangler.
It's no secret that the comp community has banned some weapons because of "fun", but competitive and casual are two separate entity's on their own and while one weapon is weak in casual, it's strong or just plain annoying to some in 6s and vise versa, like, no one likes to be slowed down by the natasha to the point where they can't out maneuver the heavy as frankly any class you just have to out gun him at the point and that isn't really fun.
There is a lot of weapons in the game mode that help or is played in one way or another (some popular than others) like the "Pain Train" granting faster cap time speed, The Escape Plan helping soldiers get out of bad situations with low health but greater speeds, or even the Solem Vow helping medics see the enemy players health or the medics uber when they get the chance, lists go on.
This game mode gives skill expression in a different way in a mechanical setting, micro plays, playstyles, how good you are at DM, how good you are at rocket jumping, using movement to your advantage, surfing explosive and hitscan damage to escape danger, placing traps well to kill all of the enemy team, etc etc.
This idea goes with other competitive game modes like 4v4 competitive passtime (look it up it's awesome) to make it a functional and fun game to play, they ban all hitscan weapons and classes for projectile classes and weapons, it's fun and competitive at the same time so why can't 6s?
Don't get me wrong I love to have other classes being played more and having different weapons being played, it's just got to take time to get there and we already see that with more off-classing for small situations that make off-class shine more, more full time off-classing to push limits against the meta, and certain players making other weapons work in 6s full time (antoni).
(side tangent don't have to read) I never like the saying "6s is the main competitive format." because it's silly to think that when there are other game modes that can be their own game and be represented as well in competitive because of how rich the mechanics are in this game like highlander, 4v4, 4v4 passtime, literally no restriction 6s, etc. it's just people need to make that connection and represent those as well.
@@bethnicz That's the problem though: You can completely negate Natasha's slow with simple skill expression. Not being able to do that obviously feels unfun, same as seeing a dribbling player in football or backspin in tabletop tennis
But competitive spirit is exactly the opposite: You want to be bad at things, to have things that feel unfair until you learn to deal with them. Otherwise there'd be no competition.
Healthy competitive meta is when the meta isn't overcentralized around a certain strategy: If the teams are all the same, for example, 5 Natasha heavies, it makes sense to ban or limit. But health of the competitive scene is clearly unimportant for 6s: It's a "competitive" format fully overcentralized around 2 soldiers, 2 scouts, 1 demo and 1 medic meta.
Also, by every account, the shields' trimping has a lot more skill expression than stickybomb jumping or camping traps in bushes or doorframes. It's hilarious to even imply skill expression is even a factor in constructing the meta: Stickybomb launcher isn't banned.
@@benshulz4179 if we are talking the meta, I’ve had plenty of conversations and arguments around it and what I have concluded for myself is that, it’s the “meta” because it’s the most fun to play with and against alongside being meta in only 5cp because they are the most versatile classes in a game around a game of tug of war, while the 5 other classes are too slow or don’t bring enough damage to fight well in the ring constantly (if we are just talking about just stock, some weapons can make it better than others which that’s too deep to get into lol)
if you play other game modes things will be different like King of the hill, sure you need a bit of speed to get to point but not all the time cause the point is close and all you need to do is cap and hold for 3 minutes, ez, so other classes has better chances to shine.
It’s honestly just as simple as valves fault for not making the best changes to help the scene, given they tried, but they destroyed casual and competitive matchmaking where it was almost unplayable for some reason, so they had to try and fix that and after all that they didn’t bother to even try to balance around their gamemode No Restriction 6s which is upsetting honestly.
Competitive spirit or competitive in general is as simple as two things, rising against the odds and becoming the best player in your own way or just fighting with the vast majority of players to be the best and beat the top team or player, that’s what makes competitive healthy, so I’m not sure I’m understanding your thought in fighting unfair things to be better is better competition than fighting fair and feeling more satisfactory when beating someone fair and square than using a gimmick to win. ^^;
May I ask, what is competitively fun to you?
Honestly you don't even need to bring up pokemon. COD literally deletes over half the weapons, leaving AR, SMG, and maybe snipers
As an Engineer main, I've always really enjoyed what the wrangler unlocks for Engineer as an offensive option in a competitive environment. And it's the one unlock I am just really grieved is banned because I think it adds a lot to the class, particularly when paired with a mini sentry. The extended range to control space, bullet jumping to high ground to take advantage in a mid-fight, etc. I think it's a real shame such a deep unlock for Engie is pretty much entirely banned just because it lets him cheese last holds and stall out games. Which, tbf, is a very valid criticism.
I don't know if formats are big fans of "conditional" bans of sorts, but I've always thought that perhaps the Wrangler could remain banned when combo'd with any of the engineer's wrenches, but if Engie is using the Gunslinger it would be acceptable to use. Cuz I really don't think a wrangled mini is gonna destroy 6s for the other classes, and it adds a lot of value to Engie being ran as a potential full-time pick.
I could see a partial ban of that nature being a lil messy to enforce, but I do wonder if it's a perspective people have considered before. It allows Engie to keep the weapon as an offensive unlock when being ran full-time. But restricts it from being used in his main niche as a last point staller.
I think this point is similar to smogon (unofficial singles pokemon format if you're not aware) where complex bans just open up a can of worms (i.e. can I run broken secondaries like mad milk on scout if I use a dogshit primary) that nobody really wants to deal with.
Also in game I'm not even sure if you can do conditional whitelisting but I think that might be more cause nobody has tried.
Cowards, allow the bison and revert it, it was kinda insane.
the bison is allowed
@@nektahatz5646 I SAID THE REAL BISON
Moderately unenergised demo main talking about why "literally 1984" is good. Now that's a good way to end the night.
Also thank you for bringing up Base Jumper. I am genuinely impressed by the amount of people who almost religiously cling to this thing and claim that it was somehow the funniest shit ever added to the game. Even more baffling are occasional propositions to unban it so heavy/sniper/engie get to see more play. Wild stuff lives in people's heads sometimes.
Banning everything is fine people still complain about this. Ban stock for all I care
I like zesty but hating weapon bans is ridiculous. The tf2 comp scene is a grassroots scene that isolates and amplifies certain aspects of the base game-it's only natural some things will not fit the visions of 6s or highlander.
As usual valve is to be blamed for the unfortunate reputation of comp players in the greater community. MYM was truly the nail that shut the coffin on comp players ever being viewed positively.
Sometimes grassroots scenes should stay grassroot.
I get why but when most weps are banned might as well ban them all
The arguments against weapon bans have always been stale, considering how a large majority of them always come from players who don't have any skin in the game. If people don't like the current whitelist and want to contend it to prove a point? Run a cup or league.
We all know that banned weapons are comp meta nerds who dont like going against their norm.
And valve trying to cater to them they should've told valve or rather flipped them the bird because
If pubs dont match comp scene
Comp scene shouldnt match pub scene
Honestly having 1000 kills as a stock scout isnt brag worthy when every limey runner uses it.
Now a 500 kills bfb or short stop scout. That would be something.
Its why that one demoknight who dominates 6 v 6 with the katana is fun to watch and shows how a counter exists for any setup or weapon.
Short circuit = dont go soldier or demo. Just go scout as the meta
Idk wtf is wrong with the base jumper. Its not like every soldier in 6s pubs or standard comp scene was using them 24/7 to spawn camp an entire team solo.
im not readin allat
@@itsasecrettoevery1 It's because you read like a first grader, correct? I'm not surprised that reading such a short comment is difficult to you, lmfao. Go ahead and give me the inevitable reply like usual with you people.
@@robrulez4532 im not readin allat
@@itsasecrettoevery1 ROFLMFAO! Right on cue on giving me the inevitable reply like usual with you people. You really can't help it but respond, can you? Thanks for confirming that not only you read like a first grader, you think like one as well. Go ahead and yet again give me the inevitable reply like usual with you people.
I honestly just hate how some mediocre/bad unlocks got butrchered because compies whined about it. And even after the nerfs they're still banned (Look how they massacred my boy (Parachute) )
the parachute is shitty in casual and broken in comp like it’s always been. i don’t agree with the nerf but i don’t think it really did anything.