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Just in case you haven’t seen this I’m running an in depth and lengthy unlocks survey into currently unbanned unlocks.

It’s very long so make sure you’re well supplied with tea and biscuits. It’s not official etf2l or anything like that, but the results may be interesting enough for admins to take into account.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYhEnHjnmqJ7un7zw_HsRQ2z3dK-_-4fYgc-BhKPyggqncQw/viewform

I’ll probably leave it open to responses for about another week or so roughly then work on the analysis

Quoted from kKaltUu

you have to check 3 boxes per weapon, and do that for 107 weapons? do you think you will get good quantitative data with a survey like that? I don’t mind spending a few minutes but this is a bit much.

It’s about the same number of responses I’ve had to other shorter surveys so far, so I’m not unhappy. By any normal polling standards it’s already easily big enough to be an excellent sample but more is always better.

Nice survey, but I just have a slight issue with one of the questions.

Why ask if an unlock makes 6v6 better directly after asking if it should be allowed?
That question is certainly applicable to some unlocks like Jarate which certainly don’t make it better, but there’s plenty of unlocks in the game that if/are currently allowed wouldn’t make 6v6 any better OR worse due to them being, for want of a better word, terrible.

Things like the Neon and Volcano Fragment for example. They should be allowed because frankly they don’t actually do anything. Unlocks like those bring virtually nothing to the table because they’re bad and/or situational (Or in the case of the volcano fragment, just bad) but they shouldn’t be banned because of those very same reasons.

I personally would invert the question. Make it “Is this unlock an active detriment to 6v6”.
Don’t get me wrong, “Does this unlock make 6v6 better” is a fine question, just the wrong one to ask about the majority of unlocks in the game since allowing bad/extremely situational to the point of unviability unlocks won’t impact the game positively or negatively, so they may as well just be allowed.

Just would be fairly easy to get the wrong idea from the data, you ask three questions but the format implies that the justification to allow an unlock must be derived from any perceived improvement it brings to the format. There were quite a few unlocks where I put Strongly Agree with allowing them but Strongly Disagree for the question of whether they’d make the format better.

Just seems like it’s pretty hard to justify the inclusion of an unlock by that question alone since there’s a lot more factors at play, whereas if the question was more like my suggestion it’d be quite a simple matter to see why people want an unlock included. In my opinion it’d just look a bit odd, and potentially even misleading, to have a lot strongly agree for allowing an unlock but strongly disagree for one of the qualifiers to have said unlock allowed.

Now some would disagree with me and say “Why allow weapons if they don’t do anything, might as well just keep them banned if they’re never ran”, which to an extent is equally valid as allowing them. I however believe if we follow the path of “Don’t allow an unlock unless it brings something positive and largely prominent to the game” will bring us back to the days where the 6v6 whitelist was very tightly restricted and there was little to no variety in it.

Weren’t the main goals of the Global Whitelist to get away from that kind of thinking? It was by no means perfect but introduced the concept of banning only unlocks which are a problem and unbanning as much as possible. In my opinion it makes the format much more presentable to new players, particularly those who are coming fresh from pubs. A whitelist too restrictive has the tendency to turn off potential new blood, and contrary to popular belief most pubbers come to competitive wanting to get away from degenerate things in public servers which is why I don’t understand the arguments from some prominent Highlander players about allowing degenerate unlocks. I believe the community’s had it wrong for quite a while. They’ve been seeking to be more restrictive with 6s and unbanning almost everything in HL, whereas the opposite should be happening for a healthier game. The arguments against 6s are it being “stale” which the global whitelist pretty much solved. Highlander may be a bridge between pubs and 6s largely but that doesn’t mean we should allow every unlock in Highlander.

Pubbers get bored of pubs because no class limits, poor coordination and dumb unlocks. Most don’t want to deal with spamming overpowered or broken unlocks in Highlander despite the “they’re inexperienced so they want to play with them” belief that some players in HL seem to hold, but that’s a topic for another thread and I’d like to stay on 6s.

By employing an approach that seeks to look for reasons to ban weapons rather than reasons to allow them, the format starts to diversify and become more appealing to new players, and in addition it becomes more fun to watch and cast. It’s fun seeing gimmicks in action, especially if the weapons are underwhelming the majority of the time (Muuki using the Phlog + Detonator comes to mind).

tl;dr: Good question to ask, but the wrong question for the majority of unlocks, I then rant on for a while about unlock ban approaches which while not 100% to topic of thread I included to qualify my statements, pls dont forum ban me ty

Apologies for the rather poor and disjointed writing in my above post, it’s rather late and I’m tired; in addition I also didn’t proofread very well.

I forgot to say while making my point about pubbers coming to comp: Most want to get away from degenerate stuff in pubs (i.e. power class spam and stupid unlocks) which are solved by rulesets, class limits and whitelists, but wish to maintain variety and freedom. This is one reason why a whitelist is essential BUT it should be as liberal as possible to accommodate part of the spirit of pubs without it adversely affecting the competitive game.

The competitive scene is already pretty alien in a lot of ways to pubs and valve’s comp matchmaking so why alienate further with such unnecessarily restrictive whitelists when a liberal whitelist that only bans overpowered, degenerate or overgratuitous game-altering unlocks will suffice while at the same time keeping variety and freedom? It would also help to grow the playerbase without destroying the game which I think the competitive scene is in dire need of. (A larger playerbase that is, not the game being destroyed c:)

Consider this post an edit, but I sidetracked so quickly to HL in my last post I thought it wiser to post seperately to clarify instead of attempting an edit and potentially making my post even more disjointed.

I’ve posted the results and commentary here for those that are interested

http://www.teamfortress.tv/41065/unlock-survey-results

but I won’t re-post the entire essay on etf2l