6v6 – I might as well play Highlander…

Well, my first ever 6v6 season is finally over, and good fucking riddance. We won a single match, and that was at the beginning of the season, on Viaduct_pro, a really easy map. Every other match was either a forfeit or a complete steam roll. It really is not much fun, unless everyone’s dedicated on improving and is willing to scrim a billion times a week. Sixes is far too meta-y for my liking.

“But Medic, what do you mean by it being meta-y?” I hear all three of you ask. Simple. If you don’t go along with the two Scouts, roaming Soldier, pocket Soldier, Demoman, Medic composition, that’s it, you’ve lost. There is no wriggle room at all. The meta is stale and boring with no space to do anything unusual. Alright, occasionally you see a Sniper or a Heavy on last, but that’s kinda it. And often there’s no point sending out a Sniper when you can have a flanking Scout do the same thing and then go on to capture the control point.

Medic is especially stale. There’s no reason what so ever to run ANYTHING apart from Crossbow, Medi Gun and Ubersaw. Quick-Fix, Vaccinator, Solemn Vow, Vita-Saw are all banned. Amputator and Bonesaw are useless against the Ubersaw, the Syringe Guns never hit anything because you’re playing against two jumpy as fuck Scouts and Kritzkrieg is rendered moot because everyone runs the Medi Gun. Yes, maybe you’ll catch them by surprise, but that will only happen once, and if you time it 8 seconds wrong, they’ll just pop their normal Ubercharge and you’ve instantly lost out.

Scout and Soldier do get on okay. A lot of the stupid stuff for them is banned, but that doesn’t render almost the entirety of their inventory moot. Engineer and Heavy suffer similarly to Medic, but since they rarely get used (particularly Engineer), no one cares. Demoman is slowly getting more choice though. The Loch N Load is still banned despite only being better against buildings now, but that will probably change. The Loose Cannon and Iron Bomber will slowly start to be used. Playing Demoknight is still not worth doing. I admit, for our last match, I wanted to get Reima to play Demoknight for us, just for fun, but I feel it’s the sort of thing that only works if there’s a large gap in skill level.

The map selection is just as guilty of this. You want to play 5cp? Great! That is ALL you will ever play, apart from one KOTH map, which will almost certainly be Viaduct_Pro. Now, 4v4 is very restrictive in its map choices, what with having to use very small maps, but even 4v4 somehow manages to have the same, if not better map variety than 6v6. In Season 4, we got KOTH, 3CP and Attack/Defend, while also having Payload Race in previous years. What did 6v6 have this season? 5CP and KOTH, almost identical to what 4v4 had this season (KOTH and 3CP). 5CP is a fine game mode, but it’s often a losing battle should you lose the mid fight. And once you’ve lost second, that’s pretty much game over. Really, matches would play exactly the same if maps were 5CP, 3 CP or 7CP, it makes little difference once one team is rolling.

Maybe I’m just bitter about having my ass kicked for an entire season. Maybe it’s the other problems our team had. But losing or not, I feel that if I wanted to play a game with a strict meta, I might as well just play Highlander. At least Highlander has proper protection of Medics and doesn’t pretend to be better than it is.

I expected better from 6v6.