Originally Posted by Salamancer
''I promised some exciting news through twitter, so here it is.
eXtine and I had a long meeting with the TF team and Robin. They are happy to make a competitive lobby system in-game.
However, there are serious caveats and hurdles to overcome for us to get there. These fall into "philosophical" and "tactical" categories. Let's start with philosophy:
1) 6v6, and even most forms of highlander, are currently too different from regular pub play. This matters because the TF team is time-constrained and they simply can't spend time providing updates to a small subset of their customers. Robin's thoughts on clearing this hurdle boil down to "highlander with a pick/ban item system." More on this below.
2) The competitive format is currently too stagnant. Robin articulated this brilliantly and I'm not sure I'll do him justice, but here goes. Robin barely watches competitive TF2 anymore because nothing surprises him. There are no "sick new strats" for him to see, especially not at the pace of other games. He wants to see Vhalin's black box innovation happening once every 2-3 months. Highlander allows for this a bit more than the current ESEA setup, but it's difficult for Valve to get feedback on which items are truly overpowered vs. which ones are just hated or loved as the flavor of the month. Again, clearing this hurdle is the same: highlander with pick/ban data that Valve can see. If a weapon is banned in 95% of games, then the TF team can obviously see "oh nobody likes playing against that, now let's revisit it."
Now, the tactical hurdles:
1) Valve hasn't had good insight into what works best for competitive. I think that's solvable by doing some testing and experimentation, and that's where you come in.
2) Current reasoning and feedback for league weapon bans aren't always data-driven, and Valve has no insight into that. This will probably be solved when (if?) they roll out a Highlander Lobby Update. Data on what gets banned in the pick/ban system, as I said before, will make it abundandtly clear what is just not fun to play against.
Given all this, here's the path forward for putting lobbies into competitive TF2:
TESTING AND FEEDBACK.
By no later than this Saturday, everyone should try to play in a pick/ban PUG. The tactical questions, I leave to you. Should each team ban 5 weapons for the game? Should each team pick 9 non-stock weapons that become their only choices? Should defaults be in play for bans? Have a chat about this and run some PUGs with different rules. See what works, what's fun to play. Do so with the knowledge that you are essentially alpha-testing a competitive lobby system for TF2.
I'm hoping the PUG.NAHL and other IRC titans will be able to experiment with these systems, and I hope you all get the word out. 6v6 players may be somewhat disappointed with this update, but I'm going to make it very clear: highlander is the only way Valve will ever support competitive TF2. Let's make it happen.''
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