First of all I'd like to apologize, this video was not supposed to be a hit piece or a boycott of the league. I wrongly painted the comp and top players as 'evil people' for lack of better wording, and made a wrong assumption of how the league thinks. Although I still agree with what I had to say in the video I admit that I poorly worded various points I made in my video. In one of the first comments I had I replied that I was open to being wrong, this sadly got drowned out by cheer amount of commenters. For example the "is the market garden unbeatable" wasn't meant to be me making the point for unbanning the MG. Something that I also worded poorly is that "Lower division players should be treated equally as experienced players" Obviously in the context of voting this is not a good idea. I'd like to apologize again for my statements, I didn't realize what kind of damage I could or have done by making such a emotional, mean video. I do also agree with what a lot of the people had to say in my comment section (mainly the people that are actually prem or similar). For the title of the video "The ugliest of competitive TF2" yes this is a bad title, people are arguing that I should have been talking about "the history of nonces, rapists and cheaters plaguing the game" This is obviously the ugliest side of competitive TF2, however this is not for me to talk about, this is either for the law or the admin team as I am not informed on this side of the league. I have changed the title to "My issues with competitive TF2" I was very frustrated with how the league was managed and that everything seemed to be word of mouth. I love ETF2L and Competitive and I want it to change for the better. I did not mean to create a fucking reddit comment section on my video of all the people blaming competitive for the current state (casual) tf2 is in. I hope my video can still be used as healthy discussion about transparency and or trying some new things. I'm sorry. -flaresh.
Props to you for owning up to it, but i do want to emphasize again that weapons like the Gas Passer are banned for a good reason (it being buggy), unbanning it because "it's useless anyway" would be stupid because it would only be used for it's buggy properties and if, say, the bison could instantly kill someone because of a very hard to reproduce bug, guess what, it would be banned for being buggy despite being utterly useless.
@@Ban-zx9se almost the entire rostered team plays/played on SDCK/TWICE/feila. not to say prem hl = prem 6s, and not to diminish their accomplishments either, but there's a very obvious experience + skill gap regardless of the format. they're playing in div1 right now so we should see how they fare against better competition. so far they've only won 1 of their 7 matches and it was a ffw.
Small note: You covered a good amount of stuff in this video. But the most important section imo was the “responsibility” segment where you talk about how fucked and dishonest the banning qualifications are. That segment should be mentioned in the title of this video. It’s the most valuable part of the video. “The ugly and nonsensical bannings in competitive tf2” something along those lines.
Only listening to top competitive players never ends well as it simply allows them to mould the game in their favour. It's like the last edition of warhammer 40k, they only listened to top competitive players and all that happened was the factions those players took to tournaments the most got the best rules, and those that didn't got bad rules, or got nerfed due to those players not liking to play against them. When only listening to top players, any benefit you'd get from their expertise is immediately eliminated by player bias and the unreliability of a small sample size.
100% agree. Reminds me of Halo and listening to comp players ruined the game when making the next one. Comp players have such large biases to keep themselves on top that it ruins it for everyone else. Thank you for having such a good opinion 🙏
TF2 competitive players when they have to actually let the meta develop instead of just banning any new strat before seeing how it develops (It's the worst thing that has happened to them)
@@AncientFire because it has an op combo with poket med and scorch shot, it's not fun at all when you see an almost invincible guy with crit flamethrower run at you
@@Van4eus That's a problem of the scorch shot, not the phlog. It's like saying that the Darwin's Danger Shield was overpowered when item sets were a thing, not the item set itself
@@AncientFire It punishes an entire team for the mistakes of their bad/new players and is easily enabled by much more questionable weapons in a way other flame throwers just arent. Its also just absurdly unfun to deal with when the player has a pocket med since you cant stock them from getting a self kritz krieg nearly as easily too. It also teaches bad and newer players a lot of really bad habits and makes their understanding of how pyro works skewed as it denies them the ability to explore pyro's most nuanced and interesting mechanic in return for something much more basic and kinda brain dead honestly. Its a weapon that wants to be enabled by much better weapons and classes and itself isnt that good but it's also one of the most "punish players for their teammates mistakes" weapons in the game. Its just one of the least well thought out designs in the game, even ignoring balance.
I am a map maker myself, I made pl_eruption for competitive after I was approached to improve it for higher divisions. Some people were amazing and helped me a ton. But I reached a place where I am even concerned to test the map. The feedback I am getting is insane sometimes. For instance "Stop mapping for tf2" isn't the best kind of feedback to receive. Other people were complaining that they were even playing the map. (Again not everyone is like that, but a big majority is). Such a behavior makes me "NOT" want to map for competitive anymore. When eruption was in alpha where frankly it's super easy for me to make changes, only a small minority of comp players were willing to play and test the map. Players want the map to already be textured and detailed and look pretty in order to consider giving it a shot, but that's super hard for me cause I have to make huge changes afterwards while worrying about balance, detailing, clip brushes, the skybox etc. And even when I am testing the map on Beta I am not getting informed that they are playing the map, nor am I receiving any feedback. The environment sometimes is toxic AF. Thankfully there are some really good people in the comp community, they were responsible for helping me reach eruption on Beta. Wish more people would be as kind and helpful as them. (I don't want to name either parties here for obvious reasons). I want to point out how such behaviors can really discourage other people in creating stuff for your community, If I am feeling bad for even mapping or putting my map for testing, do you really think I will put the time and effort for anything else in the future?
Yeah... Valve made all these changes and they still don't want to even give some weapons the chance to be unbanned. Just stupidity from the comp scene sometimes
Remember when main snipers and comp players bitched and cried nonstop to Valve that the Base jumper was op, so they nerfed *and* neutered the only counterplay it had against anyone, then, comp players banned it in their league anyways. Funny, isn't it?
@@Artician How though? One weapon out of quick-fix, base jumper, crit o cola, soda popper, bonk, probably more. All were nerfed about a decade ago and still haven't been tried in any serious capacity in 6s. So idk where you are getting this idea that one weapon being unbanned after being nerfed invalidates all the others lmao
@@h20gamez Quick-Fix is busted in 6v6 due to the lack of concentrated damage + it being able to do so many things at once. Crit a cola is a stupid weapon both in casual and competitive and you know it. Soda popper is stupid for multiple reasons, mainly it somehow being having barely any penalties compared to the FaN anf it giving crazy good mobility. Bonk is giga slept on in casual.
"Rollers are barely used on purpose" They really have to stretch the definitions of "used" and "on purpose" for that sentence to not seem like it's written by someone who has only played 12v12 dustbowl 💀
Hell even in casual I use rollers on purpose, it's quite often I'll kill a light class with a roller since I'll shoot one behind them, so when they start backpedalling after taking the 100 from a direct pipe they end up in the roller's range and die not requiring a second direct pipe.
intentionally missing as opposed to using sticks is incredibly niche and the downside of not having rollers is easily offset by gaining the ability to mortar scouts from across mid.
@@captainweekend5276alot of times you just want to hold a area so using your stickies isn't possible and you shoot pipes at them around the walls you place your stickies at so you can actually do damage to people preparing to push. In a casual setting, if you play Demo as the defense class in name you understand why he has rollers. To damage players when he can't be damage
@@sn0ipe333 to be fair they had to also nerf the iron bombers explosion radius because of its rollers being so much better than stocks and yet it's still a pretty viable grenade launcher Id frankly argue. Like that to me says theres some value to spam roller type grenades at least to some extent
I remember back in like 2014 or 2015 I had my one and only discussion I had on a comp forum and it was about banned weapons. Banning items was mostly done to "overpowered and overcentralizing weapons", so I did the forbidden thing and mention that the crusader's crossbow and ubersaw are exactly that and are not banned (you WILL run the crossbow you WILL run the ubersaw). Boy, did they get butt hurt. Ever since, I realized a lot of my favourite weapons are banned and there's no chance for things to get better, and I lost interest in playing competitive TF2 forever.
As someone who didnt know or cares about competitive leagues it really messed up that they dont have to give a reason and there's no system to repeal the decision. If it were up to competitive players there would be no interesting weapons or cool tec. "Rocket jumping over my team to kill the sniper that's been oppressive that's getting banned."
@@Artician while I will admit that it is a bit of a strawman I had a weapon in mind when I was typing it out. It was the Ullapool caber. A meme weapon that was nerfed into the ground it's only viable use is in caber knight builds and your forced to play a suicide charger. The reason valve nerfed it was due to competitive players complaining that it could drop a medic (Note: I'm not saying competitive players ruined a meme weapon intentionally and with malice. Valve made the choice to nerf it out of viability and never fix it. I'm just saying I don't think they took it off the ban list). Edit: it was unbanned. Really showing my lack of knowledge on competitive.
Hey, a few things are speculations in this video and are indeed wrong. Firstly, every suggestion brought up by prem players is first discussed internally and in-detail with prem players, even holding meetings at some points to get in depth info about whether the gun is indeed OP or not, the reason this is first only brought up with the top 8 teams is because it is very unlikely a player in mid will have the same level of game knowledge as those who are in prem. Also having thoughts from those who have been top 3 for a while helps a lot, because the game knowledge from bottom and top prem is also night and day. There might have been some polls that were prem players only (?), but for as long as I have been a part of the discussion, in my personal experience, every issue is addressed with those that bring it up and then polled on the entire league (I was indeed a part of polls that were vast majority prem in favour of banning, but the weapon stayed unbanned because of the rest of the league voting against it) To simplify it: the prem division's opinion is weighted so heavily because those at the top understand the full potential of what's being discussed, therefore can better judge if it too strong As for the loch-n-load, the reasons you stated are the correct ones and those that were brought up for why it should be banned. Everybody said the reasons etf2l named on their post were dumb, and they were as you pointed out in the video. Now, battalion's backup was VERY strong, way too strong, hence why I, along with many others used it and have been for a while (not just wG and tf2easy). As much as I miss it, the ban is justified. I used to think winger was just a tool that made 1v1ing a scout as a projectile impossible, and while the jump boost might seem minor for repositioning, it can completely change the trajectory of fights in situations where instead of just shaving off 0.5 sec it has you completely avoid a route and saves MANY seconds. Also, the angle you approach highground from and whether you are seen approaching it is very important. Not to mention gaining access to areas you can't get to otherwise (also, scout is the most powerful 1v1 class yes, that's what he was designed for, but in 6s is far from being the most powerful or impactful class. Scouts carry in lower divs but good projectiles will always win you the game) I really do understand your confusion about the weapon pickups, solemn vow, etc. but I won't go in depth on every discussion that was held to potentially ban or keep a weapon, there can be a lot said about each of these things I already broke down, and even more about the ones I just mentioned. Because this game has unbelievable depth making these choices is very tough. I feel like a lot of your points were thrown away for meme material, swept under the rug as "this is useless" or just biased without taking any consideration of what implications it might have on teamfights. (i.e. gas passer) Overall it's good you brought up these things, although it feels like the video was only made to shit on etf2l and "prem players evil" as you only gave a side that benefitted your arguments. I'd say the only worthwhile takeaway from this video is that we need more communication and reasoning on changes, which is fair. Everything else you mentioned has been discussed in detail, and syncing RGL and etf2l whitelists would be awesome :) (as previously mentioned many times as well) p.s.: the game is in a really good state right now, and the league is seeing improvement going forward
@@garm2287 having your scout potentially set 4 enemy players on fire (safest, longest range, smallest damage option) - add up the afterburn damage and the medic having to distribute heals to many more people just to put them out, and if thats not done you take away the situation where someone lives on sub 20 hp, which is very common. Situation 2 you're an unbuffed scout doused in gasoline - one pipe or close range rocket kills you because you will burn out
@@buud7947 I think these posts are one large appeal to authority, and I have no idea what you're going on about with the Gas Passer. People too often look at these items in a vacuum, and need to consider what you're trading for the situational, Fire AOE which requires coordination from another player. Not to mention it's on a Cooldown. _You also have to play Pyro._
@@MiaoNya the coordination required is beyond minimum 6s coordination level. This is basic focus fire, you don't even need to make a call for this focus fire, just need to do 3 damage to make someone take 80 afterburn. Pyro is played VERY often on last holds so there is no reason to not run this, and the cooldown can be avoided by going pyro on time, as last holds are indeed set up before the enemy pushes your last if you have time Have you ever played 6s with comms?
This is an ancient take, but I still hold it against Etf2l for arguing to play Vanilla+Kritz back in the day. Some items like the detonator could allow people to play in a totally different way, by allowing a full-time pyro. I think most of the voters want to ban these items before they affect the overall meta of comp 6s, not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, seems dogmatic. Playing against pyros, lochs, market gardeners, and snipers can be annoying; but after 17 years of Tf2 it is nice to try something new.
@@SolarLight i was on a preseason team last season that ran full time pyro and was winning scrims vs the best team in invite edit: also loch has been allowed for like 15 seasons and ppl didnt start using it in NA until very recently. just because something is viable doesnt mean it will get used in 6s
personally, from my experience from the smogon community, im on the "don't listen to people who don't know what they're talking about/never even played the game" crowd. now i don't know how qualified the overall eu tf2 community is, prem players included, but id say its better than bending over backwards to people who have nothing but contempt for you and the game you play.
I mean Im pretty sure not listening to division 1 and 2 players isnt really like a healthy thing to do. They're not anywhere on prem level sure but like they still clearly love the game and do make up the vast majority of the players so their opinions should on some level still matter.
14:39 the Gunboats thing is not a bug. The item specifies "from rocket jumps" in its description. It strikes me as hypocritical that you would defend the Gunboats crutch plugin at the same time as decrying arbitrary weapon bans that result in a homogenized meta. Should not the Soldiers simply git gud at not hitting themselves when defending at close range or swap to the Shotgun and adapt just as you wish these prem players would have had to adapt to an unbanned Loch-N-Load?
how is a plugin buffing soldier against denying scouts result in a "homogenized meta"? both of these classes are going to be used anyway with or without it. same thing with the weapon bans, i dont like some of etf2l's whitelist decisions but the vast majority of them are for the main generalist classes. nothing says "homogenized meta" more like banning most of the tools of your supposed homogenized class line up... you can call etf2l's whitelist a lot of things, but "upholding the meta" isn't one of them. banning the battalions or the wrap assassin isnt somehow putting heavy or sniper down
People are still going to run double Gunboats even with the plugin disabled. The Shotgun wasn't meta before the plugin was introduced, so it's unlikely to become meta after it was removed. The plugin simply acts as a quality of life change to nerf Scout, and doesn't appear to influence secondary weapon choice. Don't get me wrong, ETF2L Admins are going insane with the bans lately, but the gunboats plugin is a separate thing. It's a shame they don't act more like RGL.
Real. I watches some videos on Medic's comp strategy. It was literally like chess with 5 schemes for an entire game. And, counting weapon bans, it doesn't sound interesting at all
the way that they handle bans is very dumb, but imo, it's fair to want to ban things that aren't particularly fun to use/fight and don't contribute anything interesting to the game (notably, base jumper and steak fall into this). they really should have a better system of voting though lol (p.s. greetings from 20BrassBeast)
I don't know why all the bad bans are in normal 6v6, I mean the rest of the formats have bans that are more understood due to the number of players or the objectivity of how broken they are. But in 6v6 it seems that they don't like TF2 and want to play cartoon quake
Probably gotten these comments already but RGL is fairly light when it comes to weapon bans (see WildRumpus' video on said bans, you'll see that there aren't as many as you might think) but more so issues in community management.
Same story, different year. Been happening for over a decade. One person gets too good with a non-meta unlock, forcing a few other players to play slightly outside of their routine each round, these players then screech and demand the weapon get banned. Ban the loch n load, because we can't have engineers building on last in a slightly different spot, and we just can't ask a medic to not stand in the exact same spots every time. Anything that makes players slightly deviate from the second-for-second predictability of the 6's meta is banned. People wonder why most players don't take competitive TF2 seriously. This is why.
ive seen times when i dont think the medic was in a bad position or did anything wrong but got piped across the map by the loch. impressive shot, yes, but feels kinda frustrating from medic pov.
@@river038 it's not the the position is bad, it's a normally GOOD position because they know nothing can touch them there, but now a weapon exists that forces them to take 5 steps to the left, and they don't want that.
Maybe Scout is too powerful because 6s players play one mode where Scout is basically designed to be the best class. Kinda feels like saying Engineer is too powerful in CTF.
Damn I just got into comp cuz I heard RGL relaxed the restrictions more such as unbanning steak sandvich etc, but etf2l is just banning even more weapons wtf.
Maybe the sheer degeneracy in the community but okay... On another note, I think this video is written very clearly to pander to uncletopian level players, and considering most of those people are tweens with no critical thought, they will just complain about comp more. (yay more flame wars and uninformed opinions!) I do agree we should shake up the meta, at least for some experimental cups, but I don't think adding back more random shit that makes the game slightly worse is the way to do it. The loch n load got banned not because of the sentries, it got banned because it's incredibly annoying to give demo another 100 damage long range projectile. The wrap assassin got banned because scout shouldn't have a random projectile he can just yeet across mid and have a 3-5% chance to hit the med with for approx. 70 damage. It just makes everything more fair since you just don't have these very annoying things you have to consider once you take 100 damage across mid with a mach speed projectile. I agree some of the bans are unfair, but I'd rather have a fun and fair game which takes skill instead of the market gardener. I don't understand this apparent obsession with random garbage that makes the game slightly worse. Even if we do fuck up sixes and make it more like pubs it's not like the pubbers are gonna start playing competitively. I don't mean anything mean, we need a civil discussion and I want to nurture that.
I will get into comp tf2 just so I can lead a revolution to get the loch-n-load and the market gardener unbanned. Or try and get players to join UGC EU 6v6 until ETF2L clean their act up.
unrelated but I feel like a complete moron for not knowing that the gunboats resistance doesn't apply when rockets hit other players until like a month ago 5k hours in btw
First, thank you for the video. Second, I think your anger and frustration with the leagues (while very valid) kind of led you to make some misjudgements. I think all of your individual points on balance are valid, eg weird and unjust reasoning for banning loch load. But I think your criticism gets lost in these points. More generally, the leagues seem to be lost in the sauce. When you get lost in the sauce, the bigger picture and taking a step back becomes vital to getting out of the pudding. That's valves lack of support for the game. The leagues can only do so much short of modding the game. Overall, it's hard to have a standard when the comp scene has basically grown without support from the game dev. Comp match making didn't help. Also, it's been a very long time since I've played the game so um. What I'm saying might not be valid.
why the fuck doesnt etf2l just redesign every banned weapon. if theyre nerfing the winger to require its deploy speed, having better gunboats etc... i say go all out. fuck it, redesign everything to work for comp. its already a different gamemode when compared to vanilla casual tf2
I mean, redesigning a weapon that can go straight through walls (COUGH COUGH GAS PASSER COUGH COUGH) is more of a task for valve to fucking do since they have direct access to the code and don't have to rely on plugins that can't fix everything.
If we’re changing the game this extensively anyway, then maybe it’s a sign that comp players should be playing something else. Hostile take, but there are good games other than Team Fortress 2 that are designed with comp play in mind. I say this as someone who has been playing TF2 since 2014.
@@MeowHype the fps market is pretty bad for a competitive tf2 player who wants something similar, because there’s nothing quite like tf2 which combines the quake-like arena shooter movement and aiming with unique and dynamic teamplay. overwatch resembles more of a first person moba (also run by a shitty company), tactical shooters are much slower and focus on very different skillsets and actual arena shooters are almost exclusively 1v1 (and dead lol). also the scene has always been grassroots and small so many comp players already know that there’s pretty much no future in the pitiful esports scene and treat the game like a hobby that they’re very passionate about.
@@ryvn_ryvn_18 Honestly, all this really tells me is that people should just play Quake competitively instead. The competitive meta seems to continuously centralize around the roots of Quake, so comp players should just play Quake.
Wishful thinking. Its just out of depth for most players. Tf2 is good enough and there's nothing close. The game design versus comp quake is different enough for both to be unique experiences. But i wish more people would give Quake a chance. Itll make a comeback eventually
Top players know the game better than lower level players. Let them decide how the game is played and showcased in matches. I don't think top players are in favour of "status quo", otherwise we would be on win-diff 5, vanilla, no scout speed etc. They just don't want the game to be unfun and not competitive. At times do they maybe not explain things well or unjustly ban items? Probably. But this video doesn't really attempt to seriously or in good faith make arguments against the map picks or weapon bans (imo). ETF2L is a free league ran by volunteers who admin and maintain the website, plugins, bans, matches etc. A lot of work for a tiny competitive game. Is the fact that the gas passer or steak sandvich is banned so bad that it warrants a whole boycott of the league? Probably not.
Top players are the most unwell and brainrotten ones. The game being unfun is precisely what they want because a perfectly balanced game cannot be fun. Even counter strike is not perfectly balanced. Chess is, though. Tf2 isn't and was never meant to be, it's always been very casual with unfair rng mechanics and unfixed exploits. Basically every unlock has to be equal to or worse than stock in ANY given situation, otherwise someone complains about it and it gets banned. Loch n load is objectively worse than stock but it got banned just because some prem player complained about demos two shotting his sentries. I understand that the vaccinator or short circuit or some other weapons have to be banned because they are simply broken but many of the bans are literally "every single weapon that is better than stock in some situations will be banned because only stock weapons are the ones those whiney nerds won't complain about". Although I won't be surprised if next year prem players start complaining about stock weapons and demand to nerf them with plugins. Thankfully in TF2 all of this is only limited to a competitive league, but some game devs rebalance their games for EVERYONE based only on what the pro players are telling them and it always ends with those games becoming unfun, boring and frustrating and with regular players leaving the game en masse.
@@kerzch672 Ubersaw, crossbow, solemn vow, panic attack, escape plan, iron bomber, all of demos melees are unbanned. All straight upgrades from stock. The majority of weapons are unbanned, look it up on the tf2 whitelist site. Also loch n load was banned because of how effective it was at range iirc, not because of 2 shotting sentries. I think its unanimous among demo mains that the loch is better in most scenarios on most maps. You are quite biased against competitive for seemingly no reason. But being competitive is better for the game. Not fun dying to random crits? Competitive players got the ability to disable crits added to the game. A lot of needed changes in 2015-2017 were done in the spirit of competitive, which made the game more fun to play. A balanced game is a fun game.
Don’t really agree we should “nerf last holding”. A lot of rounds already basically get decided by the midfight and making last harder to hold just worsens this, though this really depends on the map (can we just delete sultry please).
I will say I absolutely understand not necessarily listening to low div players, open players opinions are generally not the best when it comes to anything meta related and also listening to the majority isn't instantly better, I'd say mid or div 2 should be the cut off for who gets to vote on weapon bans/unbans personally
Not to take away from this video because ETF2L is garbage and the only way to play 6s if you're stuck in Europe so these are all super valid, but I do think it's important to point out that other regions are way more reasonable on pretty much all of this. Most negative stereotypes about competitive are really just true things about ETF2L that don't apply elsewhere
I was agreeing with you but after that clip at the end I can't help but feel you're wrong and that the loch n load DESERVES to be banned, like holy fuck is that thing op. honestly kinda stupid to leave in a clip that proves you so wrong
@@Artician did you know, they can change the rules to prohibit players from doing that. It's not casual, it is a monitored league with actual moderators and GM's.
@@Artician this is such a minor bug that is has 0 effect on the game, especially considering how bad the gas passer is. uhmm pyro can like puff his flames through the spawn gate thats a bug ban him
Dont be deceived too much by RGLs experimental cups. They will unban things for the cup but will always say the didn’t get enough testing to unban them for the season
really the only bans "holding him back" are the fists of steel (incredibly justified) and whip, which does not need any elaboration as to why it deserves to stay banned. maybe he's a trash class because he isn't nearly as versatile as other classes, and relying entirely on singular unlocks to keep up with them is actually emblematic of how poorly he fits into 6v6.
@@mrstudent9125 steak isn't banned in na and it changes absolutely nothing. heavy is still as useless outside of last holds as he is now. there's only like 2 maps where he doesn't get rolled immediately outside of last and it's like, clearcut and gully -- maybe snake.
Weapons: Loch and Load should be banned: mid fights with it are cancer and players can just spam across the whole of even large mids like process easily - no safe distance from blind spam. It being equiated to last is stupid and not what a single prem or high div player has given me personally as ban reasoning. Battalions should be tested: using it out of last equates to pretty much a double uber which is nuts but on maps like sunshine and snakewater i think thats why you probably need to push outta last if im honest. Needs to be given more seasons or atleast pre season cups. Buffalo steak sandwich: yeah i dont get this one ngl unban please. Detonator: yeah probably unban. its pyro. weirdly the reason ive heard its banned is because of it destroying stickies there reasoning in the blog post is dumb and wrong for 98% of players. Base jumper : i mean i think it encourages a cringe playstyle but its easily beatable so fuck it. Gas passer: not a fucking clue. Winger: Personaly i think winger should be banned for its free 100+ damage at close range with the jump height means its basically impossible to lose to a soldier. Voting: I have a contoverisal opinion on this I know but i genuinley think we should leave the decesion making to people with a better understanding than us. Do i think that should be exclusivly prem? No. But do i think Timmy with 3 matches in open should have a say on whether things should be banned? FUCK NO. I think including div 1 in this would be a good fix as the div is not size limited, maybe even include div 2 if we are feeling spicey. All these vores should be counted equally. Overuling gunboats plugin because prem said so is cringe - even though personally I think its additon was bad (and im a solider main). Reason im against gunboats plugin is it does just making nuking groups of enemies easier, bombing into a single target and holding W in there face became almost free, created a weird divide between casual and competetive play and holding W at any class with an overheal and not knowing the skill in maintining range just removes a skilled element. Big disadvantage now however is scout can just W at you and is almost garunteed a trade. Clearcut is shit im sorry. Its core design with shed is bad and makes medic so easy and hard to kill - should'nt have been even tested in the first place. But changing decesions between different blog posts is cringe, admins please be consitent. I'd also recommend speaking to some top players. I am close friends with a couple and dating another and i definetly dont get the impression they just wanna ban things because "change bad". Assuming prem players mentality here is wrong imo - be better, talk to them. Closing thoughts: We need a shit tonne more transparency. I want a long multi paragraph blog post about why each inviidual change is made, why the change is being made, data, opinions from players and everything in between. There needs to be some understanding of what the fuck is going on so we can have the kind of disscussions this video brings up on equal playing fields. Thank you for making the video I hope more comes from it.
I think the reqaon gas passer is banned is because of a bug where it can clip through walls, and steak being a fast hwg item gives people tommy gruvich fear
Battalions: Yes absolutely, I am in favor of testing rather then instantly unbanning battalions. Especially since this weapon was / is proven to be problematic. Winger: I disagree, scatterguns also do 100+ damage at close range, and you also have to factor in the RNG of pistols. For the jump height, I'd say that is fair but I haven't seen that happen so often that we should ban it. Voting: I agree, if we could maybe people with more then a few seasons can vote or at least a vote for everyone that is above Low or in Low. Prem / Div2+ players should also hold a heavier vote (for lack of better words). On clearcut I've made a statement on a other comment that I will just copy and paste here. I personally think clearcut is a good map, and it's fine if people dislike it. However it was stated that they wanted to gather feedback, this was the golden opportunity for the people that dislike clearcut to change it or take the feedback for clearcut and create a new map from that. The thing is that I literally don't know any prem players, I'm sure a lot of them are chill people that you could definitely get a beer with. I also don't have friends that are dating prem players. My "change bad" take was from the outside looking in, I do not have the full picture and that's what extremely frustrating. Closing thoughts: I agree. Thank you for the nice comment.
only thing that maybe should be is loch tbh simply because its generally hated and unskilled but honestly its still a big maybe. Banning it before we even know how good it exactly is probably isn't worth it.
The premiership in the United Nations Security Council, does matter what the rest of the non-permanent members say or what the General Assembly says, the choice is usually rested on them to completely shut down something or say no to something for personnel motives..
12:04 Wait what is gunboats plugin? Does it make it so even if you take dmg while hitting someone you still take reduced self dmg? I thought you always take reduced self damage with gunboats 😅
if you hit someone with the rocket launcher and take splash damage at the same time you dont get the 60% damage resistance so soldier doesnt become a super high damage tank at close range
Good video i agree this is just silly, you should allow as many weapons as possible so you don't end up with a stale and boring meta, and you should only band weapons that is broken
Seeing competitive weapon bans feels like a watching kid trying to build lego house, not using half of the provided details and then crying that they can't finish a building
First of all I'd like to apologize, this video was not supposed to be a hit piece or a boycott of the league.
I wrongly painted the comp and top players as 'evil people' for lack of better wording, and made a wrong assumption of how the league thinks.
Although I still agree with what I had to say in the video I admit that I poorly worded various points I made in my video.
In one of the first comments I had I replied that I was open to being wrong, this sadly got drowned out by cheer amount of commenters.
For example the "is the market garden unbeatable" wasn't meant to be me making the point for unbanning the MG.
Something that I also worded poorly is that "Lower division players should be treated equally as experienced players"
Obviously in the context of voting this is not a good idea.
I'd like to apologize again for my statements, I didn't realize what kind of damage I could or have done by making such a emotional, mean video.
I do also agree with what a lot of the people had to say in my comment section (mainly the people that are actually prem or similar).
For the title of the video "The ugliest of competitive TF2" yes this is a bad title, people are arguing that I should have been talking about "the history of nonces, rapists and cheaters plaguing the game"
This is obviously the ugliest side of competitive TF2, however this is not for me to talk about, this is either for the law or the admin team as I am not informed on this side of the league.
I have changed the title to "My issues with competitive TF2"
I was very frustrated with how the league was managed and that everything seemed to be word of mouth.
I love ETF2L and Competitive and I want it to change for the better.
I did not mean to create a fucking reddit comment section on my video of all the people blaming competitive for the current state (casual) tf2 is in.
I hope my video can still be used as healthy discussion about transparency and or trying some new things.
I'm sorry.
-flaresh.
Props to you for owning up to it, but i do want to emphasize again that weapons like the Gas Passer are banned for a good reason (it being buggy), unbanning it because "it's useless anyway" would be stupid because it would only be used for it's buggy properties and if, say, the bison could instantly kill someone because of a very hard to reproduce bug, guess what, it would be banned for being buggy despite being utterly useless.
the year is 2025, the gunboats have been banned. etf2l has fallen
Doomsday theory
I will crry if the gunboats get banned
we can only hope
Demoknight got banned on 2024
2026 the original has been banned because it is different than stock
The year is 2034 TF2 has been banned from TF2 competitive
if odin gets to prem then i guarantee wee booties or katana is on the chopping block
good thing he wont get to prem because he plays a dogshit playstyle
That'd be fucking hilarious
@@eontf2301 less of a testament to demoknight being good but rather how far a team comprised almost entirely of invite hl players can go
How hard do you think odins team was sandbagging? /gen
@@Ban-zx9se almost the entire rostered team plays/played on SDCK/TWICE/feila. not to say prem hl = prem 6s, and not to diminish their accomplishments either, but there's a very obvious experience + skill gap regardless of the format.
they're playing in div1 right now so we should see how they fare against better competition. so far they've only won 1 of their 7 matches and it was a ffw.
Small note:
You covered a good amount of stuff in this video. But the most important section imo was the “responsibility” segment where you talk about how fucked and dishonest the banning qualifications are. That segment should be mentioned in the title of this video. It’s the most valuable part of the video.
“The ugly and nonsensical bannings in competitive tf2” something along those lines.
Only listening to top competitive players never ends well as it simply allows them to mould the game in their favour. It's like the last edition of warhammer 40k, they only listened to top competitive players and all that happened was the factions those players took to tournaments the most got the best rules, and those that didn't got bad rules, or got nerfed due to those players not liking to play against them. When only listening to top players, any benefit you'd get from their expertise is immediately eliminated by player bias and the unreliability of a small sample size.
100% agree. Reminds me of Halo and listening to comp players ruined the game when making the next one. Comp players have such large biases to keep themselves on top that it ruins it for everyone else. Thank you for having such a good opinion 🙏
Do you play comp?
"Trickle down balancing" really isnt a thing and its astounding how many people seem to still think its actually how you balance a game like tf2.
How long before ETF2L just switches to a random TF2 2007 build because there are no unlockable weapons to cause any “disadvantage”
That would be so based
Sounds fucking sick
demoman banned for being incredibly op
They would start banning classes.
thatd be so cool, it would mean valve can unnerf the original casual weapons since theyre going to be banned anyway, so might as well
TF2 competitive players when they have to actually let the meta develop instead of just banning any new strat before seeing how it develops (It's the worst thing that has happened to them)
There's a reason the vast majority of the playerbase does not care for comp
Yeah honestly the comp community played themselves
MY MAN FLARES SPITTING FACTS AS USUAL! 💯BLESS HIM 💯PRAISE HIM 💯
Your comment looks like some bot impersonation
"The Ugliest Side of Competitive TF2" no talk about pedos on etf2l, only about bans XD
@flareshmoney make video about THE etf2l purge :D
all flamethrowers are now banned because i don’t like airblast :(
What about phlog?
@@matthewbrown6573Everyone hates the phlog anyway (for some goddamn reason)
@@AncientFire because it has an op combo with poket med and scorch shot, it's not fun at all when you see an almost invincible guy with crit flamethrower run at you
@@Van4eus That's a problem of the scorch shot, not the phlog. It's like saying that the Darwin's Danger Shield was overpowered when item sets were a thing, not the item set itself
@@AncientFire It punishes an entire team for the mistakes of their bad/new players and is easily enabled by much more questionable weapons in a way other flame throwers just arent. Its also just absurdly unfun to deal with when the player has a pocket med since you cant stock them from getting a self kritz krieg nearly as easily too. It also teaches bad and newer players a lot of really bad habits and makes their understanding of how pyro works skewed as it denies them the ability to explore pyro's most nuanced and interesting mechanic in return for something much more basic and kinda brain dead honestly. Its a weapon that wants to be enabled by much better weapons and classes and itself isnt that good but it's also one of the most "punish players for their teammates mistakes" weapons in the game. Its just one of the least well thought out designs in the game, even ignoring balance.
I am a map maker myself, I made pl_eruption for competitive after I was approached to improve it for higher divisions. Some people were amazing and helped me a ton.
But I reached a place where I am even concerned to test the map. The feedback I am getting is insane sometimes. For instance "Stop mapping for tf2" isn't the best kind of feedback to receive. Other people were complaining that they were even playing the map. (Again not everyone is like that, but a big majority is). Such a behavior makes me "NOT" want to map for competitive anymore.
When eruption was in alpha where frankly it's super easy for me to make changes, only a small minority of comp players were willing to play and test the map. Players want the map to already be textured and detailed and look pretty in order to consider giving it a shot, but that's super hard for me cause I have to make huge changes afterwards while worrying about balance, detailing, clip brushes, the skybox etc. And even when I am testing the map on Beta I am not getting informed that they are playing the map, nor am I receiving any feedback.
The environment sometimes is toxic AF. Thankfully there are some really good people in the comp community, they were responsible for helping me reach eruption on Beta. Wish more people would be as kind and helpful as them. (I don't want to name either parties here for obvious reasons).
I want to point out how such behaviors can really discourage other people in creating stuff for your community, If I am feeling bad for even mapping or putting my map for testing, do you really think I will put the time and effort for anything else in the future?
i will never complain about rgl administration again lol
SO TRUE OMG
You still should : ) hold them accountable for their blatantly terrible decision making, unprofessional biases and just sheer negligence.
@@BaconBlitzzyeah, but at least none of the rgl admins are saying that rollers are not useful in competitive tf2
@@colatf2 Look at the reasons people were saying for lnl in hl cause it's the same shit really
@@colatf2 at least etf2l admins aren’t letting prem/invite players play combat in main / div3 🥰
Comp scene: BASE JUMPER OP IT NEEDS A CHANGE!!
Valve: nerfs base jumper to the ground
Comp scene: bans it anyway
Yeah... Valve made all these changes and they still don't want to even give some weapons the chance to be unbanned. Just stupidity from the comp scene sometimes
Remember when main snipers and comp players bitched and cried nonstop to Valve that the Base jumper was op, so they nerfed *and* neutered the only counterplay it had against anyone, then, comp players banned it in their league anyways.
Funny, isn't it?
@@h20gamez The Gloves of Running Urgently prove you so wrong lol
@@Artician How though? One weapon out of quick-fix, base jumper, crit o cola, soda popper, bonk, probably more. All were nerfed about a decade ago and still haven't been tried in any serious capacity in 6s. So idk where you are getting this idea that one weapon being unbanned after being nerfed invalidates all the others lmao
@@h20gamez Quick-Fix is busted in 6v6 due to the lack of concentrated damage + it being able to do so many things at once. Crit a cola is a stupid weapon both in casual and competitive and you know it. Soda popper is stupid for multiple reasons, mainly it somehow being having barely any penalties compared to the FaN anf it giving crazy good mobility. Bonk is giga slept on in casual.
"Rollers are barely used on purpose"
They really have to stretch the definitions of "used" and "on purpose" for that sentence to not seem like it's written by someone who has only played 12v12 dustbowl 💀
Hell even in casual I use rollers on purpose, it's quite often I'll kill a light class with a roller since I'll shoot one behind them, so when they start backpedalling after taking the 100 from a direct pipe they end up in the roller's range and die not requiring a second direct pipe.
intentionally missing as opposed to using sticks is incredibly niche and the downside of not having rollers is easily offset by gaining the ability to mortar scouts from across mid.
@@captainweekend5276alot of times you just want to hold a area so using your stickies isn't possible and you shoot pipes at them around the walls you place your stickies at so you can actually do damage to people preparing to push. In a casual setting, if you play Demo as the defense class in name you understand why he has rollers. To damage players when he can't be damage
@@sn0ipe333 to be fair they had to also nerf the iron bombers explosion radius because of its rollers being so much better than stocks and yet it's still a pretty viable grenade launcher Id frankly argue. Like that to me says theres some value to spam roller type grenades at least to some extent
I remember back in like 2014 or 2015 I had my one and only discussion I had on a comp forum and it was about banned weapons. Banning items was mostly done to "overpowered and overcentralizing weapons", so I did the forbidden thing and mention that the crusader's crossbow and ubersaw are exactly that and are not banned (you WILL run the crossbow you WILL run the ubersaw). Boy, did they get butt hurt. Ever since, I realized a lot of my favourite weapons are banned and there's no chance for things to get better, and I lost interest in playing competitive TF2 forever.
im gonna harass everyone
downward spiral
It feels like they're always need to kept their thing on their own sphere, not being the majority who dictates the whole game direction and balance.
As someone who didnt know or cares about competitive leagues it really messed up that they dont have to give a reason and there's no system to repeal the decision. If it were up to competitive players there would be no interesting weapons or cool tec. "Rocket jumping over my team to kill the sniper that's been oppressive that's getting banned."
Nice strawman argument there at the end
Don't you know hyperboly exists?
Also, it wouldn't be impossible for the air strike to be banned due to the air oppression it gives.
@@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672 Its damage penalty along with its blast radius reduction literally makes it useless in 6's lol, it won't get banned pal
@@Artician yeah, i may love the weapon, but i'll admit that its mostly useless in many occasions where stock just fairs better both in 6s and casual.
@@Artician while I will admit that it is a bit of a strawman I had a weapon in mind when I was typing it out. It was the Ullapool caber. A meme weapon that was nerfed into the ground it's only viable use is in caber knight builds and your forced to play a suicide charger. The reason valve nerfed it was due to competitive players complaining that it could drop a medic (Note: I'm not saying competitive players ruined a meme weapon intentionally and with malice. Valve made the choice to nerf it out of viability and never fix it. I'm just saying I don't think they took it off the ban list).
Edit: it was unbanned. Really showing my lack of knowledge on competitive.
Hey, a few things are speculations in this video and are indeed wrong. Firstly, every suggestion brought up by prem players is first discussed internally and in-detail with prem players, even holding meetings at some points to get in depth info about whether the gun is indeed OP or not, the reason this is first only brought up with the top 8 teams is because it is very unlikely a player in mid will have the same level of game knowledge as those who are in prem. Also having thoughts from those who have been top 3 for a while helps a lot, because the game knowledge from bottom and top prem is also night and day. There might have been some polls that were prem players only (?), but for as long as I have been a part of the discussion, in my personal experience, every issue is addressed with those that bring it up and then polled on the entire league (I was indeed a part of polls that were vast majority prem in favour of banning, but the weapon stayed unbanned because of the rest of the league voting against it)
To simplify it: the prem division's opinion is weighted so heavily because those at the top understand the full potential of what's being discussed, therefore can better judge if it too strong
As for the loch-n-load, the reasons you stated are the correct ones and those that were brought up for why it should be banned. Everybody said the reasons etf2l named on their post were dumb, and they were as you pointed out in the video.
Now, battalion's backup was VERY strong, way too strong, hence why I, along with many others used it and have been for a while (not just wG and tf2easy). As much as I miss it, the ban is justified.
I used to think winger was just a tool that made 1v1ing a scout as a projectile impossible, and while the jump boost might seem minor for repositioning, it can completely change the trajectory of fights in situations where instead of just shaving off 0.5 sec it has you completely avoid a route and saves MANY seconds. Also, the angle you approach highground from and whether you are seen approaching it is very important. Not to mention gaining access to areas you can't get to otherwise (also, scout is the most powerful 1v1 class yes, that's what he was designed for, but in 6s is far from being the most powerful or impactful class. Scouts carry in lower divs but good projectiles will always win you the game)
I really do understand your confusion about the weapon pickups, solemn vow, etc. but I won't go in depth on every discussion that was held to potentially ban or keep a weapon, there can be a lot said about each of these things I already broke down, and even more about the ones I just mentioned. Because this game has unbelievable depth making these choices is very tough.
I feel like a lot of your points were thrown away for meme material, swept under the rug as "this is useless" or just biased without taking any consideration of what implications it might have on teamfights. (i.e. gas passer)
Overall it's good you brought up these things, although it feels like the video was only made to shit on etf2l and "prem players evil" as you only gave a side that benefitted your arguments. I'd say the only worthwhile takeaway from this video is that we need more communication and reasoning on changes, which is fair. Everything else you mentioned has been discussed in detail, and syncing RGL and etf2l whitelists would be awesome :) (as previously mentioned many times as well)
p.s.: the game is in a really good state right now, and the league is seeing improvement going forward
👌🙏
What implications would the gas passer have on teamfights exactly lmao?
@@garm2287 having your scout potentially set 4 enemy players on fire (safest, longest range, smallest damage option) - add up the afterburn damage and the medic having to distribute heals to many more people just to put them out, and if thats not done you take away the situation where someone lives on sub 20 hp, which is very common. Situation 2 you're an unbuffed scout doused in gasoline - one pipe or close range rocket kills you because you will burn out
@@buud7947 I think these posts are one large appeal to authority, and I have no idea what you're going on about with the Gas Passer.
People too often look at these items in a vacuum, and need to consider what you're trading for the situational, Fire AOE which requires coordination from another player. Not to mention it's on a Cooldown.
_You also have to play Pyro._
@@MiaoNya the coordination required is beyond minimum 6s coordination level. This is basic focus fire, you don't even need to make a call for this focus fire, just need to do 3 damage to make someone take 80 afterburn. Pyro is played VERY often on last holds so there is no reason to not run this, and the cooldown can be avoided by going pyro on time, as last holds are indeed set up before the enemy pushes your last if you have time
Have you ever played 6s with comms?
This is an ancient take, but I still hold it against Etf2l for arguing to play Vanilla+Kritz back in the day.
Some items like the detonator could allow people to play in a totally different way, by allowing a full-time pyro. I think most of the voters want to ban these items before they affect the overall meta of comp 6s, not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, seems dogmatic. Playing against pyros, lochs, market gardeners, and snipers can be annoying; but after 17 years of Tf2 it is nice to try something new.
Detonator is allowed in NA and Pyro is just as bad as usual
@@SolarLight i was on a preseason team last season that ran full time pyro and was winning scrims vs the best team in invite
edit: also loch has been allowed for like 15 seasons and ppl didnt start using it in NA until very recently. just because something is viable doesnt mean it will get used in 6s
@@junifromspykids I stand corrected
@@SolarLight solarlight and dingo crossover that's crazy
nothing can be worse than the nursey incident, and the people that continue to defend him
personally, from my experience from the smogon community, im on the "don't listen to people who don't know what they're talking about/never even played the game" crowd. now i don't know how qualified the overall eu tf2 community is, prem players included, but id say its better than bending over backwards to people who have nothing but contempt for you and the game you play.
I mean Im pretty sure not listening to division 1 and 2 players isnt really like a healthy thing to do. They're not anywhere on prem level sure but like they still clearly love the game and do make up the vast majority of the players so their opinions should on some level still matter.
14:39 the Gunboats thing is not a bug. The item specifies "from rocket jumps" in its description.
It strikes me as hypocritical that you would defend the Gunboats crutch plugin at the same time as decrying arbitrary weapon bans that result in a homogenized meta.
Should not the Soldiers simply git gud at not hitting themselves when defending at close range or swap to the Shotgun and adapt just as you wish these prem players would have had to adapt to an unbanned Loch-N-Load?
how is a plugin buffing soldier against denying scouts result in a "homogenized meta"? both of these classes are going to be used anyway with or without it.
same thing with the weapon bans, i dont like some of etf2l's whitelist decisions but the vast majority of them are for the main generalist classes. nothing says "homogenized meta" more like banning most of the tools of your supposed homogenized class line up...
you can call etf2l's whitelist a lot of things, but "upholding the meta" isn't one of them. banning the battalions or the wrap assassin isnt somehow putting heavy or sniper down
@@itsasecrettoevery1 denying scout? It would apply to bombing soldiers too no?
People are still going to run double Gunboats even with the plugin disabled. The Shotgun wasn't meta before the plugin was introduced, so it's unlikely to become meta after it was removed. The plugin simply acts as a quality of life change to nerf Scout, and doesn't appear to influence secondary weapon choice.
Don't get me wrong, ETF2L Admins are going insane with the bans lately, but the gunboats plugin is a separate thing. It's a shame they don't act more like RGL.
@@literatemax scouts deny soldier bombs, so scouts are often referred to as "denying scouts" if thats what you meant
@@SolarLight It makes bombing easier regardless of whether scout is the target
wtf is going on in the competitive community
They got brainrot for trying to play a casual focused game in a way it was never intended to
Real. I watches some videos on Medic's comp strategy. It was literally like chess with 5 schemes for an entire game. And, counting weapon bans, it doesn't sound interesting at all
Europeans.
"The Ugliest Side of Competitive TF2" aka ALL of competitive tf2
das ist bait ja
@@g0reshowkompetitive ist sheize. dast ist nut veri gudenberg
@@g0reshow ja
“Due to how close it was, we decided to go with what premiership voted on.”
This is the electoral college all over again.
respect for blurring out the gambling websites
this video perfectly summed up how feel about comp tf2 bravo
the way that they handle bans is very dumb, but imo, it's fair to want to ban things that aren't particularly fun to use/fight and don't contribute anything interesting to the game (notably, base jumper and steak fall into this). they really should have a better system of voting though lol
(p.s. greetings from 20BrassBeast)
3:41 "agains't"
Weapon bans are so stupid. God forbid the meta becomes interesting, but no just stock items and maybe some unlocks.
U wanna play unrestricted 6s? Lol
I don't know why all the bad bans are in normal 6v6, I mean the rest of the formats have bans that are more understood due to the number of players or the objectivity of how broken they are. But in 6v6 it seems that they don't like TF2 and want to play cartoon quake
The buffalo steak lets you use only melee and you take more damage so the ban is even more incomprehensible xd
Probably gotten these comments already but RGL is fairly light when it comes to weapon bans (see WildRumpus' video on said bans, you'll see that there aren't as many as you might think) but more so issues in community management.
Same story, different year. Been happening for over a decade. One person gets too good with a non-meta unlock, forcing a few other players to play slightly outside of their routine each round, these players then screech and demand the weapon get banned.
Ban the loch n load, because we can't have engineers building on last in a slightly different spot, and we just can't ask a medic to not stand in the exact same spots every time.
Anything that makes players slightly deviate from the second-for-second predictability of the 6's meta is banned. People wonder why most players don't take competitive TF2 seriously. This is why.
ive seen times when i dont think the medic was in a bad position or did anything wrong but got piped across the map by the loch. impressive shot, yes, but feels kinda frustrating from medic pov.
dont you have an oc to commission goon art of
@@river038 it's not the the position is bad, it's a normally GOOD position because they know nothing can touch them there, but now a weapon exists that forces them to take 5 steps to the left, and they don't want that.
@@valiumaggalinewhen you don't have good arguments, use ad hominem
@@mrstudent9125you have a bad loadout
So in conclusion, add sex to tf2
agreed
agreed
Sex is banned in comp, it can distract the pocket medick from sucking the soldier's rocket dry.
Maybe Scout is too powerful because 6s players play one mode where Scout is basically designed to be the best class. Kinda feels like saying Engineer is too powerful in CTF.
inb4 they ban the entire class of engineer
In 2025 they'll probably revert to a 2007 build and then ban demoman because stickies were OP in 2007
@@kerzch672they still are op, just not as op
Damn I just got into comp cuz I heard RGL relaxed the restrictions more such as unbanning steak sandvich etc, but etf2l is just banning even more weapons wtf.
Maybe the sheer degeneracy in the community but okay...
On another note, I think this video is written very clearly to pander to uncletopian level players, and considering most of those people are tweens with no critical thought, they will just complain about comp more. (yay more flame wars and uninformed opinions!)
I do agree we should shake up the meta, at least for some experimental cups, but I don't think adding back more random shit that makes the game slightly worse is the way to do it. The loch n load got banned not because of the sentries, it got banned because it's incredibly annoying to give demo another 100 damage long range projectile. The wrap assassin got banned because scout shouldn't have a random projectile he can just yeet across mid and have a 3-5% chance to hit the med with for approx. 70 damage. It just makes everything more fair since you just don't have these very annoying things you have to consider once you take 100 damage across mid with a mach speed projectile. I agree some of the bans are unfair, but I'd rather have a fun and fair game which takes skill instead of the market gardener.
I don't understand this apparent obsession with random garbage that makes the game slightly worse. Even if we do fuck up sixes and make it more like pubs it's not like the pubbers are gonna start playing competitively.
I don't mean anything mean, we need a civil discussion and I want to nurture that.
There is literally no point in unbanning weapons that just make the game worse to play lol
weapon variety is cool :)
Iron bBomber rollers are super annoying
People play competitive ???
DOWNWARD SPIRAL
DOWNWARD SPIRAL
DOWNWARD SPIRAL
How would rick feel about this...
2025: banned all unlockable weapons
Great video! These would probably make more people interested in playing comp too
my man is spitting fax
htwo pipes....
I will get into comp tf2 just so I can lead a revolution to get the loch-n-load and the market gardener unbanned. Or try and get players to join UGC EU 6v6 until ETF2L clean their act up.
no you won't
I agree with other comments that you should change the title to better reflect what the video is about, specially the dumb bannings
the year is 2025 you are only allowed to use stock weapons
that would be your mother
Nice video fam, i FUCKING HATE ADMINS, RAHHHH
unrelated but I feel like a complete moron for not knowing that the gunboats resistance doesn't apply when rockets hit other players until like a month ago
5k hours in btw
First, thank you for the video.
Second, I think your anger and frustration with the leagues (while very valid) kind of led you to make some misjudgements.
I think all of your individual points on balance are valid, eg weird and unjust reasoning for banning loch load. But I think your criticism gets lost in these points.
More generally, the leagues seem to be lost in the sauce. When you get lost in the sauce, the bigger picture and taking a step back becomes vital to getting out of the pudding.
That's valves lack of support for the game. The leagues can only do so much short of modding the game. Overall, it's hard to have a standard when the comp scene has basically grown without support from the game dev. Comp match making didn't help.
Also, it's been a very long time since I've played the game so um. What I'm saying might not be valid.
we've never been more back than right now...
why the fuck doesnt etf2l just redesign every banned weapon. if theyre nerfing the winger to require its deploy speed, having better gunboats etc... i say go all out.
fuck it, redesign everything to work for comp. its already a different gamemode when compared to vanilla casual tf2
I mean, redesigning a weapon that can go straight through walls (COUGH COUGH GAS PASSER COUGH COUGH) is more of a task for valve to fucking do since they have direct access to the code and don't have to rely on plugins that can't fix everything.
If we’re changing the game this extensively anyway, then maybe it’s a sign that comp players should be playing something else.
Hostile take, but there are good games other than Team Fortress 2 that are designed with comp play in mind. I say this as someone who has been playing TF2 since 2014.
@@MeowHype the fps market is pretty bad for a competitive tf2 player who wants something similar, because there’s nothing quite like tf2 which combines the quake-like arena shooter movement and aiming with unique and dynamic teamplay. overwatch resembles more of a first person moba (also run by a shitty company), tactical shooters are much slower and focus on very different skillsets and actual arena shooters are almost exclusively 1v1 (and dead lol). also the scene has always been grassroots and small so many comp players already know that there’s pretty much no future in the pitiful esports scene and treat the game like a hobby that they’re very passionate about.
@@ryvn_ryvn_18 Honestly, all this really tells me is that people should just play Quake competitively instead. The competitive meta seems to continuously centralize around the roots of Quake, so comp players should just play Quake.
Wishful thinking. Its just out of depth for most players. Tf2 is good enough and there's nothing close. The game design versus comp quake is different enough for both to be unique experiences. But i wish more people would give Quake a chance. Itll make a comeback eventually
They banned the loch in rgl HL because top div players whined about it too much. Same issues are happening in rgl but to a lesser extent.
3:41
Downward spiral core
Wow they got the Base Jumper nerfed (a parachute mind you) so you can open it once(a long while ago) and then they still banned it.
Top players know the game better than lower level players. Let them decide how the game is played and showcased in matches. I don't think top players are in favour of "status quo", otherwise we would be on win-diff 5, vanilla, no scout speed etc. They just don't want the game to be unfun and not competitive.
At times do they maybe not explain things well or unjustly ban items? Probably. But this video doesn't really attempt to seriously or in good faith make arguments against the map picks or weapon bans (imo).
ETF2L is a free league ran by volunteers who admin and maintain the website, plugins, bans, matches etc. A lot of work for a tiny competitive game. Is the fact that the gas passer or steak sandvich is banned so bad that it warrants a whole boycott of the league? Probably not.
Top players are the most unwell and brainrotten ones. The game being unfun is precisely what they want because a perfectly balanced game cannot be fun. Even counter strike is not perfectly balanced. Chess is, though. Tf2 isn't and was never meant to be, it's always been very casual with unfair rng mechanics and unfixed exploits.
Basically every unlock has to be equal to or worse than stock in ANY given situation, otherwise someone complains about it and it gets banned. Loch n load is objectively worse than stock but it got banned just because some prem player complained about demos two shotting his sentries.
I understand that the vaccinator or short circuit or some other weapons have to be banned because they are simply broken but many of the bans are literally "every single weapon that is better than stock in some situations will be banned because only stock weapons are the ones those whiney nerds won't complain about". Although I won't be surprised if next year prem players start complaining about stock weapons and demand to nerf them with plugins.
Thankfully in TF2 all of this is only limited to a competitive league, but some game devs rebalance their games for EVERYONE based only on what the pro players are telling them and it always ends with those games becoming unfun, boring and frustrating and with regular players leaving the game en masse.
@@kerzch672 Ubersaw, crossbow, solemn vow, panic attack, escape plan, iron bomber, all of demos melees are unbanned. All straight upgrades from stock. The majority of weapons are unbanned, look it up on the tf2 whitelist site.
Also loch n load was banned because of how effective it was at range iirc, not because of 2 shotting sentries. I think its unanimous among demo mains that the loch is better in most scenarios on most maps.
You are quite biased against competitive for seemingly no reason. But being competitive is better for the game. Not fun dying to random crits? Competitive players got the ability to disable crits added to the game. A lot of needed changes in 2015-2017 were done in the spirit of competitive, which made the game more fun to play. A balanced game is a fun game.
@@kerzch672ok but still fix casual matchmaking, steamrolls are not fun for anyone no matter who is stomping or being stomped
i don't know how to ride a bike
7:16 sun lamp tf2
Great vid
🗣🔥🔥 get this man a nobel prize (in facts and video making)
What is the hub that you're using????
Don’t really agree we should “nerf last holding”. A lot of rounds already basically get decided by the midfight and making last harder to hold just worsens this, though this really depends on the map (can we just delete sultry please).
Yep, if you want a faster game make the timer shorter like b4nny did
new goat youtubrr ?? wowa!!
common etf2l admin L
I will say I absolutely understand not necessarily listening to low div players, open players opinions are generally not the best when it comes to anything meta related and also listening to the majority isn't instantly better, I'd say mid or div 2 should be the cut off for who gets to vote on weapon bans/unbans personally
shitter admins suck off prem players way too hard currently unfortunately
this guy got pay'd by kouna.
Not to take away from this video because ETF2L is garbage and the only way to play 6s if you're stuck in Europe so these are all super valid, but I do think it's important to point out that other regions are way more reasonable on pretty much all of this. Most negative stereotypes about competitive are really just true things about ETF2L that don't apply elsewhere
I was agreeing with you but after that clip at the end I can't help but feel you're wrong and that the loch n load DESERVES to be banned, like holy fuck is that thing op. honestly kinda stupid to leave in a clip that proves you so wrong
Also "Uhm le gas passer banned for no reason"
gas passer going straight through walls live reaction:
@@Artician did you know, they can change the rules to prohibit players from doing that. It's not casual, it is a monitored league with actual moderators and GM's.
Funny how the loch n load is op but direct hit isn't despite being easier to aim
@@asschezchand now you have admins wasting their time going through demos because someone decided to throw it through a wall
@@Artician this is such a minor bug that is has 0 effect on the game, especially considering how bad the gas passer is. uhmm pyro can like puff his flames through the spawn gate thats a bug ban him
Dont be deceived too much by RGLs experimental cups. They will unban things for the cup but will always say the didn’t get enough testing to unban them for the season
They basically ban every weapon that makes Heavy viable in 6s because he isn't fun to fight against and then call him a trash class.
really the only bans "holding him back" are the fists of steel (incredibly justified) and whip, which does not need any elaboration as to why it deserves to stay banned.
maybe he's a trash class because he isn't nearly as versatile as other classes, and relying entirely on singular unlocks to keep up with them is actually emblematic of how poorly he fits into 6v6.
@@sn0ipe333buffalo steak?
@@mrstudent9125 steak isn't banned in na and it changes absolutely nothing. heavy is still as useless outside of last holds as he is now.
there's only like 2 maps where he doesn't get rolled immediately outside of last and it's like, clearcut and gully -- maybe snake.
......Holy hell and here I am thinking the smash bros stage list is too small
Weapons:
Loch and Load should be banned: mid fights with it are cancer and players can just spam across the whole of even large mids like process easily - no safe distance from blind spam.
It being equiated to last is stupid and not what a single prem or high div player has given me personally as ban reasoning.
Battalions should be tested: using it out of last equates to pretty much a double uber which is nuts but on maps like sunshine and snakewater i think thats why you probably need to push outta last if im honest. Needs to be given more seasons or atleast pre season cups.
Buffalo steak sandwich: yeah i dont get this one ngl unban please.
Detonator: yeah probably unban. its pyro. weirdly the reason ive heard its banned is because of it destroying stickies there reasoning in the blog post is dumb and wrong for 98% of players.
Base jumper : i mean i think it encourages a cringe playstyle but its easily beatable so fuck it.
Gas passer: not a fucking clue.
Winger: Personaly i think winger should be banned for its free 100+ damage at close range with the jump height means its basically impossible to lose to a soldier.
Voting:
I have a contoverisal opinion on this I know but i genuinley think we should leave the decesion making to people with a better understanding than us. Do i think that should be exclusivly prem? No. But do i think Timmy with 3 matches in open should have a say on whether things should be banned? FUCK NO. I think including div 1 in this would be a good fix as the div is not size limited, maybe even include div 2 if we are feeling spicey. All these vores should be counted equally. Overuling gunboats plugin because prem said so is cringe - even though personally I think its additon was bad (and im a solider main). Reason im against gunboats plugin is it does just making nuking groups of enemies easier, bombing into a single target and holding W in there face became almost free, created a weird divide between casual and competetive play and holding W at any class with an overheal and not knowing the skill in maintining range just removes a skilled element. Big disadvantage now however is scout can just W at you and is almost garunteed a trade.
Clearcut is shit im sorry. Its core design with shed is bad and makes medic so easy and hard to kill - should'nt have been even tested in the first place. But changing decesions between different blog posts is cringe, admins please be consitent.
I'd also recommend speaking to some top players. I am close friends with a couple and dating another and i definetly dont get the impression they just wanna ban things because "change bad". Assuming prem players mentality here is wrong imo - be better, talk to them.
Closing thoughts:
We need a shit tonne more transparency. I want a long multi paragraph blog post about why each inviidual change is made, why the change is being made, data, opinions from players and everything in between. There needs to be some understanding of what the fuck is going on so we can have the kind of disscussions this video brings up on equal playing fields. Thank you for making the video I hope more comes from it.
Buffalo Steak should be unbanned. But It's so awful that nobody's gonna pick it anyway. lmao
I think the reqaon gas passer is banned is because of a bug where it can clip through walls, and steak being a fast hwg item gives people tommy gruvich fear
winger ban is crazy
Battalions: Yes absolutely, I am in favor of testing rather then instantly unbanning battalions. Especially since this weapon was / is proven to be problematic.
Winger: I disagree, scatterguns also do 100+ damage at close range, and you also have to factor in the RNG of pistols. For the jump height, I'd say that is fair but I haven't seen that happen so often that we should ban it.
Voting: I agree, if we could maybe people with more then a few seasons can vote or at least a vote for everyone that is above Low or in Low. Prem / Div2+ players should also hold a heavier vote (for lack of better words).
On clearcut I've made a statement on a other comment that I will just copy and paste here.
I personally think clearcut is a good map, and it's fine if people dislike it. However it was stated that they wanted to gather feedback, this was the golden opportunity for the people that dislike clearcut to change it or take the feedback for clearcut and create a new map from that.
The thing is that I literally don't know any prem players, I'm sure a lot of them are chill people that you could definitely get a beer with. I also don't have friends that are dating prem players. My "change bad" take was from the outside looking in, I do not have the full picture and that's what extremely frustrating.
Closing thoughts: I agree. Thank you for the nice comment.
only thing that maybe should be is loch tbh simply because its generally hated and unskilled but honestly its still a big maybe. Banning it before we even know how good it exactly is probably isn't worth it.
cowards, i play against 15 wrangled level 3 sentries on the shounic trenches 100 player tf2 server and i never complain or demanded a wrangler ban
RGL WINS BY DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! USA USA USA /j
GOD BLESS
WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETER RAHHHHHHH 🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
RGL is the worst league in the history of tf2
@@ghost_loot mge?.ill kikc ur ass. i play in the Dirt cup league, im red-green gummy worm (3rd highest div). your nothing to me kid
The premiership in the United Nations Security Council, does matter what the rest of the non-permanent members say or what the General Assembly says, the choice is usually rested on them to completely shut down something or say no to something for personnel motives..
12:04 Wait what is gunboats plugin? Does it make it so even if you take dmg while hitting someone you still take reduced self dmg?
I thought you always take reduced self damage with gunboats 😅
if you hit someone with the rocket launcher and take splash damage at the same time you dont get the 60% damage resistance so soldier doesnt become a super high damage tank at close range
Laughs in not paying for tf2*
Laughs in steam being banned in my country*
kill this gamemode lets all play pass time
this game and its community has rotted to the core, there's no coming back
Thank you for making this video, I can now rest easy knowing there is SOMEBODY else that shares these opinions
this is so real
you are a bottom div player
Ur a virgin twitch main
Competitive scenes on casual games was a fucking mistake
highlander lol
Comp tf2 is the reason the game is in this horrible state.
A casual player complaining about competitive tf2 because it apparently ruined the game (it didn't)? Daring today aren't we.
6s is not tf2 i dont get why valve listened to compies or even bothered with a 6v6 gamemode
@@Artician the meet your match in question
Good video i agree this is just silly, you should allow as many weapons as possible so you don't end up with a stale and boring meta, and you should only band weapons that is broken
Seeing competitive weapon bans feels like a watching kid trying to build lego house, not using half of the provided details and then crying that they can't finish a building
flasre$h upload :D
Fun is not allowed in comp
Consistent
European
Bodyshots
RGL is totally fine, i played 3 years and it was fucking awesome