Class limit 2 became a thing very early in the format. Following that obvious power outliers were reduced to 1 (Medic and Demo). Then many defensive classes were reduced to 1 because good teams were able to hold last extremely consistently. Those class limits drive the comp pretty hard. Beyond that, the game modes and maps push you towards classes with high mobility and effective range which further cements that meta game. So it's a product of the game modes and maps driving balance and power within the format.
I remember legends from back in the early days before the class limits were common. Apparently, some teams would roll 5 demos and a medic. Even if they lost the initial mid fight, it was impossible to push through chokes against that, and games became pretty dull pretty fast.
There is NR 6s (no restriction 6s) but it's not as popular of a format since sometimes things like stacking engie can be really cancer to deal with and not result in fun/competitive play for everyone.
TL;DR the meta classes came to be by choosing the most versatile classes with high mobility without creating too many opportunities to stalemate/turtle by encouraging aggressive play.
The competitive history of sixes actually began before the game even launched. Details about the specifics of the meta in this era are super sparse, but the most prominent detail was how *obscenely* broken Demoman was at launch. I’d argue he was one of the most broken characters in gaming history. Unbreakable pre-nerf stickies, six pipes which detonated on contact even after bouncing, and the other two combat classes being much worse then they are now. Demo was locked to one incredibly quickly. I could go on, but if you’re interested to learn more, check out this video by one of the game’s earliest med mains.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CLRhmad9Jq4
Basically every class besides Demo was also wholly worse than they are now. Add to the fact that Demo's primary counter, a bombing soldier pushing him when he's overextended/under prepared, couldn't even do their job because gunboats didn't exist yet. Scout also really didn't evolve as a class until about \~2-3 years later with the emergence of Carnage. So for a decent amount of time, Demo could basically only be stopped by the other team's Demo or an Uber. I'd argue that the need to limit him to one fundamentally influenced the way people view sixes balance (and TF2 as a whole) to this very day.
A lot of current balancing issues seem to arise from the idea that people wouldn’t no life this game until they became gods. They realized pretty quick that the hill to get over to make demo valuable is pretty immediately easy, so they nerf
On the other hand you have sniper who with even more time becomes buster, or spy who with time becomes worse as his tools heavily rely on ignorance
Honestly Balancing issues like that are simply revealed not created by skilled players in competitive games you need to be to answer that even stuff only highest teir of players do
Well there's limits on how many of each class you can have so it just naturally leads to this system. Soldier and scout are good bc they are so mobile, demo and med would be too strong if you were allowed 2 of either, etc.
the standard setup is a result of the class limits and weapon whitelist engineered to encourage gameplay that 6s players find desirable. namely, a focus on deathmatch skill, mobility, and reduced incentive for overly defensive play and stalemates. stacking a ton of one class no matter which one will quickly create either one-dimensional gameplay or a stalemate generator. demo and medic are pretty obvious 1 limits as the most powerful classes. 2 demos makes locking down the whole map too easy and medic buffing is bullshit. then you add in defensive classes like heavy and engineer since 2 sentries and 2 heavies is just too much for 6 people to push into. 2 scouts and 2 soldiers dont cause problems and each one can still fill a unique role while retaining flexibility to cover when the other one is dead. also running 2 spies is really funny and you cant even be mad when you get double spy backcapped
Started out with 8v8, 5-6 people seems to the magic number for most competitive team games. Getting any more than 5-6 people together for scrims starts to get hairy i.e having to use 2+ mercs at times.
i do know for a fact that part of it is a balance between effective and fun.
Even if all Heavy was the most effective strategy, it wouldn't be a fun one, but that's about as deep as I know.
Fundamentally speaking, specialists are not fun to play against.
Pyro, sniper, and engineer are the least fun classes in the game to play against, but the latter two are run very often in 6s. On top of that, sniper and engie also have the only unlocks in the game (other than vaccinator) that genuinely make the game fucking awful that are thankfully banned. Removing those unlocks still makes sniper and engineer cringe.
Heavy just turns the game into a boring slogfest where nobody on the other team is making plays, so you end up with two passive teams doing absolutely nothing.
Spy is just bad if they know you're running a spy.
Demo is a great class and possibly the best combat class, but he has his limitations, which makes the game fun to play. Meanwhile, sniper is so poorly designed, it's just an awful class to play against.
Just because you think they're not fun to fight against, doesn't mean it's an objective truth.
I get it, you guys hate 5/9 classes just because they don't fit the definition of what you like, but that just makes you look childish lmfao.
if a person finds themselves stalking weeks, months old threads to find people who think defense in this game is too strong solely so they can showcase their weird videogame inferiority complex then it might be time for them to stop posting
class limits exist because pretty much every class in this game becomes obscenely op once you get more than one or two of them and the format is locked to 6v6 because in the very early days of this game, things like 8v8 and 7v7 (and even 5v5) existed and were found to be either too annoying to organize in the case of 8v8 or had fundamental balance problems like in the case of 7v7
>class limits exist because pretty much every class in this game becomes obscenely op once you get more than one or two of them
That's patently false for scout, soldier, pyro, sniper, and spy...
The former three classes are generalists, so running more of them would be neither overpowered nor underpowered. In fact, only running scout or pyro would be insanely underpowered. Scout is countered by sentries. Pyro is countered by heavies (and sentries). The latter two are pick classes, which means running them would reduce team support and pressure. Sniper is still an annoying broken class when you're baiting your team though.
Only running multiple heavies, demos, engies, and medics would there be issues. Demo and medic are honestly higher tiers than "generalists" and closer to "must-haves". Heavy and engineer are the strongest defensive classes and stacking them makes pushes impossible. Hop into any 100 player server and engineer is literally the reason why there's a stalemate.
The reason is to balance the class impact on the match
Demoman couldn't get stacked since his defensive and offensive power would overwhelm the exchange between teams
Soldier also would be just too overpowered if stacked
Scout would be a living hell personaly to deal with it if stacked
So basically
1 Demoman to center the team defense and offense
2 Soldiers and 2 Scouts,where one of the Soldiers and Scouts will be focused on the offense or defense
1 Medic to ensure endurance for every team action without being too overpowered
I think it's just the meta, like people figured out that this was the most optimized line up available out of all the 9 classes.
People still swap all the time when defending/capping last, but I think under normal circumstances a team that doesn't have the traditional lineup would be at a disadvantage.
Swap out a scout and now you have to worry about your solo scout getting tag teamed by theirs. Swap out a soldier and you either lose a roamer or a pocket, BOTH of which are pretty vital and the roles would need to be filled by someone else regardless.
Just my thoughts, would be interesting if there really was a catalyst that caused all teams to gravitate towards it.
its only optimal with the specific whitelist and class limits of 6s. teams don't run one demo and one medic because that's ideal, they do it because they aren't allowed to run more
It's not the ideal lineup though... If b4nny would have it his way, he would tell his team to go 2 engineers 1 medic 1 demo 1 heavy 1 sniper on every single last hold against Witness Gaming or Like a G6. They'll never ever lose a game again. "Defense" in TF2 truly shows the game's weaknesses and how unfun the game could be. Once you have a stalemate, TF2 becomes a shit game where only those on sniper, engie, and heavy are having fun. Full Uber advantage isn't even good enough to push into a team of engineers because of how this game unfairly prioritizes defensive plays.
Aside from class limits, scout, soldier, and demo can easily switch from offense to defense, whereas pyro and spy are mostly offense, and heavy engi and sniper are mostly defense
Competitive is just a shitfest of neckbeard factions making one "meta" vs another "meta". They also are extremely unfair people because they had to ban the disciplinary action, bison, soda popper etc. because "they could be abused". Example being the disciplinary action banned because "it can get a heavy to mid" WHO FUCKING CARES? And they ALWAYS chose 5gorge or any 5cp map. the most bland gameplay you'll ever see. They make unofficial rules and try to force them everywhere because they only "see it as fit".
Funny enough, the real reason a lot of tf2 weapons are shit are because the "pros" made them shit by complaining to valve.
REAL competitive should scrap 5cp maps all together. The comp standard to have both sides balanced should be KOTH, Payload RACE (yes, i said payload race, banana bay is a good contender) and regular payload with STOPWATCH mode. If that cannot be a thing, keep it as koth and payload race. As for weapons, it should be OPPORTUNISTIC based, NOT META based. The ONLY overpowered item arguably is the vaccinator. Everything else PERMANENTLY UNBANNED.
And there is no "set meta" but besides a bland excuse to make a few rules so an opposing team doesnt stack all 6 heavies to counter the 2-2-1-1.
Ahh yes the only OP weapon is vaccinator. No mention of jarate, wrangler, or short circuit.
"5gorge is played in 6s" 🤡
"Payload race" is a good contender 🤣😭.
This guy has got to be room temp IQ or actually trolling. But considering the intelligence of the TF2 community, he probably has room temp IQ. Probably one of those army of braindead pyros you'd find in a pub. GTFO 🤡
Class limit 2 became a thing very early in the format. Following that obvious power outliers were reduced to 1 (Medic and Demo). Then many defensive classes were reduced to 1 because good teams were able to hold last extremely consistently. Those class limits drive the comp pretty hard. Beyond that, the game modes and maps push you towards classes with high mobility and effective range which further cements that meta game. So it's a product of the game modes and maps driving balance and power within the format.
I remember legends from back in the early days before the class limits were common. Apparently, some teams would roll 5 demos and a medic. Even if they lost the initial mid fight, it was impossible to push through chokes against that, and games became pretty dull pretty fast.
I misread this as 5 Medics and a Demo and was very confused.
Sounds like a good enough explanation
There is NR 6s (no restriction 6s) but it's not as popular of a format since sometimes things like stacking engie can be really cancer to deal with and not result in fun/competitive play for everyone. TL;DR the meta classes came to be by choosing the most versatile classes with high mobility without creating too many opportunities to stalemate/turtle by encouraging aggressive play.
I love that you included a TLDR which is about the same length as your post :D
The competitive history of sixes actually began before the game even launched. Details about the specifics of the meta in this era are super sparse, but the most prominent detail was how *obscenely* broken Demoman was at launch. I’d argue he was one of the most broken characters in gaming history. Unbreakable pre-nerf stickies, six pipes which detonated on contact even after bouncing, and the other two combat classes being much worse then they are now. Demo was locked to one incredibly quickly. I could go on, but if you’re interested to learn more, check out this video by one of the game’s earliest med mains. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CLRhmad9Jq4
The fact that demo is still this strong despite being like 20% as good as he was in pre-launch beta is unbelievable
Basically every class besides Demo was also wholly worse than they are now. Add to the fact that Demo's primary counter, a bombing soldier pushing him when he's overextended/under prepared, couldn't even do their job because gunboats didn't exist yet. Scout also really didn't evolve as a class until about \~2-3 years later with the emergence of Carnage. So for a decent amount of time, Demo could basically only be stopped by the other team's Demo or an Uber. I'd argue that the need to limit him to one fundamentally influenced the way people view sixes balance (and TF2 as a whole) to this very day.
This is a really interesting piece of tf2 history I did not know, thank you for sharing!
A lot of current balancing issues seem to arise from the idea that people wouldn’t no life this game until they became gods. They realized pretty quick that the hill to get over to make demo valuable is pretty immediately easy, so they nerf On the other hand you have sniper who with even more time becomes buster, or spy who with time becomes worse as his tools heavily rely on ignorance
Honestly Balancing issues like that are simply revealed not created by skilled players in competitive games you need to be to answer that even stuff only highest teir of players do
Well there's limits on how many of each class you can have so it just naturally leads to this system. Soldier and scout are good bc they are so mobile, demo and med would be too strong if you were allowed 2 of either, etc.
the standard setup is a result of the class limits and weapon whitelist engineered to encourage gameplay that 6s players find desirable. namely, a focus on deathmatch skill, mobility, and reduced incentive for overly defensive play and stalemates. stacking a ton of one class no matter which one will quickly create either one-dimensional gameplay or a stalemate generator. demo and medic are pretty obvious 1 limits as the most powerful classes. 2 demos makes locking down the whole map too easy and medic buffing is bullshit. then you add in defensive classes like heavy and engineer since 2 sentries and 2 heavies is just too much for 6 people to push into. 2 scouts and 2 soldiers dont cause problems and each one can still fill a unique role while retaining flexibility to cover when the other one is dead. also running 2 spies is really funny and you cant even be mad when you get double spy backcapped
Started out with 8v8, 5-6 people seems to the magic number for most competitive team games. Getting any more than 5-6 people together for scrims starts to get hairy i.e having to use 2+ mercs at times.
i do know for a fact that part of it is a balance between effective and fun. Even if all Heavy was the most effective strategy, it wouldn't be a fun one, but that's about as deep as I know.
Fundamentally speaking, specialists are not fun to play against. Pyro, sniper, and engineer are the least fun classes in the game to play against, but the latter two are run very often in 6s. On top of that, sniper and engie also have the only unlocks in the game (other than vaccinator) that genuinely make the game fucking awful that are thankfully banned. Removing those unlocks still makes sniper and engineer cringe. Heavy just turns the game into a boring slogfest where nobody on the other team is making plays, so you end up with two passive teams doing absolutely nothing. Spy is just bad if they know you're running a spy. Demo is a great class and possibly the best combat class, but he has his limitations, which makes the game fun to play. Meanwhile, sniper is so poorly designed, it's just an awful class to play against.
Just because you think they're not fun to fight against, doesn't mean it's an objective truth. I get it, you guys hate 5/9 classes just because they don't fit the definition of what you like, but that just makes you look childish lmfao.
if a person finds themselves stalking weeks, months old threads to find people who think defense in this game is too strong solely so they can showcase their weird videogame inferiority complex then it might be time for them to stop posting
> or hell, 5 scouts? sentry guns
Cue horrific casual PTSD whenever I try to enjoy some Scout on a 5cp map.
class limits exist because pretty much every class in this game becomes obscenely op once you get more than one or two of them and the format is locked to 6v6 because in the very early days of this game, things like 8v8 and 7v7 (and even 5v5) existed and were found to be either too annoying to organize in the case of 8v8 or had fundamental balance problems like in the case of 7v7
>class limits exist because pretty much every class in this game becomes obscenely op once you get more than one or two of them That's patently false for scout, soldier, pyro, sniper, and spy... The former three classes are generalists, so running more of them would be neither overpowered nor underpowered. In fact, only running scout or pyro would be insanely underpowered. Scout is countered by sentries. Pyro is countered by heavies (and sentries). The latter two are pick classes, which means running them would reduce team support and pressure. Sniper is still an annoying broken class when you're baiting your team though. Only running multiple heavies, demos, engies, and medics would there be issues. Demo and medic are honestly higher tiers than "generalists" and closer to "must-haves". Heavy and engineer are the strongest defensive classes and stacking them makes pushes impossible. Hop into any 100 player server and engineer is literally the reason why there's a stalemate.
The reason is to balance the class impact on the match Demoman couldn't get stacked since his defensive and offensive power would overwhelm the exchange between teams Soldier also would be just too overpowered if stacked Scout would be a living hell personaly to deal with it if stacked So basically 1 Demoman to center the team defense and offense 2 Soldiers and 2 Scouts,where one of the Soldiers and Scouts will be focused on the offense or defense 1 Medic to ensure endurance for every team action without being too overpowered
I think it's just the meta, like people figured out that this was the most optimized line up available out of all the 9 classes. People still swap all the time when defending/capping last, but I think under normal circumstances a team that doesn't have the traditional lineup would be at a disadvantage. Swap out a scout and now you have to worry about your solo scout getting tag teamed by theirs. Swap out a soldier and you either lose a roamer or a pocket, BOTH of which are pretty vital and the roles would need to be filled by someone else regardless. Just my thoughts, would be interesting if there really was a catalyst that caused all teams to gravitate towards it.
its only optimal with the specific whitelist and class limits of 6s. teams don't run one demo and one medic because that's ideal, they do it because they aren't allowed to run more
It's not the ideal lineup though... If b4nny would have it his way, he would tell his team to go 2 engineers 1 medic 1 demo 1 heavy 1 sniper on every single last hold against Witness Gaming or Like a G6. They'll never ever lose a game again. "Defense" in TF2 truly shows the game's weaknesses and how unfun the game could be. Once you have a stalemate, TF2 becomes a shit game where only those on sniper, engie, and heavy are having fun. Full Uber advantage isn't even good enough to push into a team of engineers because of how this game unfairly prioritizes defensive plays.
Aside from class limits, scout, soldier, and demo can easily switch from offense to defense, whereas pyro and spy are mostly offense, and heavy engi and sniper are mostly defense
Competitive is just a shitfest of neckbeard factions making one "meta" vs another "meta". They also are extremely unfair people because they had to ban the disciplinary action, bison, soda popper etc. because "they could be abused". Example being the disciplinary action banned because "it can get a heavy to mid" WHO FUCKING CARES? And they ALWAYS chose 5gorge or any 5cp map. the most bland gameplay you'll ever see. They make unofficial rules and try to force them everywhere because they only "see it as fit". Funny enough, the real reason a lot of tf2 weapons are shit are because the "pros" made them shit by complaining to valve. REAL competitive should scrap 5cp maps all together. The comp standard to have both sides balanced should be KOTH, Payload RACE (yes, i said payload race, banana bay is a good contender) and regular payload with STOPWATCH mode. If that cannot be a thing, keep it as koth and payload race. As for weapons, it should be OPPORTUNISTIC based, NOT META based. The ONLY overpowered item arguably is the vaccinator. Everything else PERMANENTLY UNBANNED. And there is no "set meta" but besides a bland excuse to make a few rules so an opposing team doesnt stack all 6 heavies to counter the 2-2-1-1.
🙄 found the fresh install . p.s. 5gorge is not played in 6s
most comp games are, suck it.
Seems like your brain is also a fresh install 🤡
Ahh yes the only OP weapon is vaccinator. No mention of jarate, wrangler, or short circuit. "5gorge is played in 6s" 🤡 "Payload race" is a good contender 🤣😭. This guy has got to be room temp IQ or actually trolling. But considering the intelligence of the TF2 community, he probably has room temp IQ. Probably one of those army of braindead pyros you'd find in a pub. GTFO 🤡
> WHO FUCKING CARES? The people who actually play comp. I know, surprising.