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Quoted from Kaneco

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Fair enough, but TF2 is not a stale game, it’s one of the most diverse games I have ever played, and damn, do I love this game. Why are we creating artificial barriers making this game more stale and boring? Stale map pool, stale ruleset, stale mindset, everything, completely against what the Americans are doing, and look how it’s working for us. That’s what we have to change, and if you were to ask me I would say the first 2 would be the easiest ones to change, the mindset change will eventually come with the extra “tools” we will have. We have discussed it, unlocks do not change the metagame, they only allow for a different flow or more interesting options (imo), would it really hurt anyone or anything by trying or adding them? Unless you add a completely broken weapon like the pomsom that completely breaks game mechanics I would say, no. One of the most used arguments for people against unlocks is “We’re good atm, why change”, but I would say, we could be way better. I’m sure there’s an english word for it but I don’t remember atm but the notion that we are good, so we won’t even bother try to be better is really disturbing, and even more the “the game is going to die anyway, so why bother?” notion.

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Yes we’ve done pretty good, but I think we could be doing better.

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Hardly? Most of the people mention competitive artificially creates barriers for them related to weapons. And it’s true.

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That’s true as well but it’s not the “real thing” it’s one of the many causes mentioned.

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Why not? I would say the games with the most potential to be an esport are diverse games that have a big casual fanbase. TF2 is exactly that and much more. If we only got some support from valve. But even then we should be working towards it and not against. One of the biggest step is to don’t turn people away like you said. And no we shouldn’t be happy with what we’ve got, we have potential for much more. I would say we could be doing way better until we reach even half of the NA stream numbers, that is without notch tweeting about it of course.

Meanwhile the thread I created here http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2795616 already hit 300 replies and 20 forum pages in less than one day, I would say it’s a precious resource for us to analyze and see what we are doing wrong in attracting pub and casual players, not only unlock wise.

i think for my first quote you misunderstood what i was getting at (read again) and the second is quite a given; because 6v6 is so different from the normal game, tf2 will never be popular. You never hear a starcraft 2 pub player complaining that they hate competitive and vice versa, they are the same game just played to varying degrees of skill and meta. The same can be said about lol, dota, hon and their ilk; the public and ‘normal’ experience is similar to the competitive experience (or at least relatively so) and the progression to the competitive scene in the majority of these is natural and requires very little effort on the communities part. The fact we’ve had to change the experience so significantly is going to put people off who liked the original experience, alienating groups as you’ve seen on the SPUF etc; the classes that aren’t used, the unlocks we’ve had to ban because they are retarded, the crits we’ve had to turn off, the numbers we’ve had to limit to. All of these are the way they are for game balance and are the major factors in people not joining the scene. The smaller these barriers are, the more room the competitive scene has to grow. TF2 was never intended to be a competitive game and theres nothing we can do to change that.

That brings me onto my most important point and imo a /thread. I hate how people are bandying around this excuse that more unlocks will attract more players; the unlocks that we want to include are not the ones that will attract new players. I challenge you to make a SPUF thread again (small % w/e) and ask them if we added the unlocks within the realms of common sense (Gunboats, Equaliser, Boston Basher thats about it) they would automatically want to pick up comp and play. The answer is of course no; the unlocks people want are the ones they enjoy playing with, and very few of these are the ones that provide the kind of experience people are asking for.

If you want to include unlocks to attract more people, you have to include all of them. Half measures will only make you lose players from the league who dont want a lukewarm tf2 sludge puddle. Its vanilla ice cream or hot chocolate sauce, anything else is just plain unattractive or repulsive.

Kaneco. I’ve never talked to you, but your comments, specifically the ones about there being no more strategies to discover with vanilla (this one still makes me think you are trolling, and for being that dedicated i salute you) make me think you know very little about what I speak, so i’ll simplify it. We are teetering on the summit of balance. We either sacrifice competitiveness and bugger years of development to accomodate these players that are apparently so precious to us or we stick by our solidarity, confident in the mode that the community has created until time passes us by and we are left with nothing more then memories.

Add unlocks for a change, add them for fun, and them for any reason you like, but if you think they will attract players and not destroy the faux competitiveness we have tried to enstrue into this scene for years, you are misguided. Its our line to walk that will break us or make us but leave the community untouched forever.

Please dont reply

Chaplain

TL;DR, READ VALIS POST /thread

I wouldn’t be mad if you hadn’t used kinda and wholeheartedly in the same sentence

Quoted from Kaneco

Option A: 1 weapon to choose from each slot
Option B: 2 Weapons to choose from each slot

Voilà! variety!

If you reply to these kinds of things with such a face-value response, you show to everyone how little you understand the complexities (or in this case, simplicities) of the situations you are trying to argue for/against. Unless the second weapon option proves to be a meaningful side-grade, it will not create more variation: some weapons create dominant strategies (arguably the gunboats, boston basher) and any underpowered weapon will never see any serious play.

My reply to Monkeh’s post would be to point out how the gunboats can actually limit the variation we see in the roles of the soldier. While the gunboats obviously allow a bit more creativity in what kind of things a soldier can do in the “third scout” playstyle, you lose a ton of how effective he can be at the euro “second pocket” style. Vanilla soldier arguably can still do the “third scout” style of roamer, just not as effectively as the american unlocks allow (to the point of it being a dominant strategy?) and thus you actually have more potential variation of roles without the unlocks. The problem is that european tf2 is less aggressive, and therefore we see less of the aggressive playstyle. As AnimaL pointed out though, non-gunboating american sollies are still far more aggressive anyway. Playstyle, not unlocks.

Also food for thought: innovation thrives in restricted circumstances. The problem is that in europe (for reasons other than unlocks), many of tf2’s innovators have long since left or stopped caring.

I think the bar at i46 would be the perfect place for that, Tapley :]]]]

Quoted from Chaplain

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The bottom line is (dont quote the rest, quote this line and comment on in) there is so much more for us to work on in the boundaries we’ve set. So much development we can adopt and discover in the vanilla ruleset that we have only been using for a few seasons. Why should we change? why should we force people to adapt to a new environment when theres so much more to be discovered in the current one. Convince me when variety, growth and depth arent options (because they arent) what more do you have then you think they are more fun. For every member of this scene that thinks unlocks are more fun, i can find people that arent and that non-apparent majority is the real reason we should stick to vanilla.

When I said there was nothing new in vanilla I didn’t meant there were no new tactics to explore, but most of them were already explored and what we see is somewhat of a stale game with a stalemate gameplay. I don’t know about you but since you mentioned football, I prefer to watch a Man U winning a 4-3 back and forth game than watching Barcelona pass the ball all day long even if it’s with style. It’s much more exciting from a spectator POV and we should be also trying to please them, not only the holy grail of the community that are the sacred prem players.

Quoted from Chaplain

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Also, I do think we should change maps, however there isnt a single good map made for tf2 with any depth to speak of. Make some good maps with depth and new gamemodes with depth then maybe we can change to them, but for the time being the ones we have are the ones that are the best suited towards competitive 6v6.

Another flaw of our scene, stale map pool. There’s no good map to play? I for one love KOTH in 6’s, I think it’s amazing as well from a spectator POV and an exciting game all around when I’m playing it. American’s have 1 or 2 cool koth maps. viaduct pro in particular looks and plays awesome.
Warmfront looks and plays amazing. Process is cool although I haven’t played 6’s in it, but from a spectator pov looks cool, altough warmfront is better for me.
SD custom maps have potential
Even Snakewater and Gravelpit are awesome but people never want to play it in EU. Always the same old gullylands or granlands.

Quoted from Chaplain

[…]LET THIS THREAD DIE, IT ACCOMPLISHES NOTHING; in the end i dont want unlocks cos i dont think they are fun and the same goes for you, it doesnt matter how much you try and convince people, noone is going to want unlocks that doesnt now.

Not sure what you are trying to say there. I think unlocks are fun, Lot’s other people think unlocks are fun.

People who don’t want unlocks either A) Have been here for a long time and don’t want to take the effort to adapt to changes B) Are top players who don’t want their “throne” taken over by an up and coming player who can make good use of unlocks C) NO FUN ALLOWED, BAN KRITZ AND UBERSAW D) Really prefer vanilla over unlock ruleset, although I believe A and B are the main causes.

Hey kaneco, how about people like me who think vanilla is more fun?
Ps the football analogy. It doesn’t matter whether you are man u or barca, you still play by the same rules, you just play with different strategies, much like you see in tf2.

I think my main flaw is I quite simply have no empathy. I can’t see how unlocks are fun and I fail to recognise how you could have got so bored of tf2 and think unlocks will glaze over these problems. The community made their decision a few seasons back and nothing has changed (equaliser fix hollaaa) so why should we want to overwrite it?

This is what the community does. Freight. Turbine. Cold front. Obscure. People forget how shit this stuff was and look back in nostalgia and you know what. They are still shit, time and time again. Nothing has changed and I think you need to accept that there was a reason we went vanilla, before people are forced to play with them (or worse some horrid compromise) and rediscover how awful they were all over again. I call it etf2l syndrome.

Let this thread end. Etf2l is a community run league and without significant community (specifically high skilled) player support you will achieve nothing.

Quoted from Monkeh

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Oh wow, I made Chaplain mad, that’s almost unique.

I’d give that an item rating of Common.

But his body warmer I’d give an item rating of mythical.

and his stellar and wife beating ability rare at best.