people who pub that think comp. play is wrong have no say in the matter, and people who think comp. play should govern how pub play works should get shot in the foot.
You don't need to be a comp player to know what the game was designed with in mind, why and how. You also don't need to be a comp player to understand the mechanics involved in choosing certain classes over another, relative to player count. Completely different mechanics are at work in each style of play, so i find it amusing that comp players should call certain classes broken or redundant and therefor require balancing.
Mar isn't wrong in how the classes perform in a limited team, but comp play will likely have to put up with this as the classes forfill their roles perfectly fine in a full server, as Valve intended.
Beyond the fact that some shitty unlocks were made available, such as the sandvich, I can't see Valve having any obligation to change the classes further. Each tactic has a counter, provided you have the player space to forfill certain roles.
I know your statement probably wasn't specifically directed towards any individual. But i can't help but feel that any arguement by the comp players is made redundant by the statement "use a full team". Why should Valve blur the lines between classes to satisfy comp players because they have difficulty filling a server, and resort to the same class setup that neglects half the classes for the other. It's a fact of life that the most durable classes will be more useful than others with low player numbers, it's a fact of most games, and a fact that is in fact focused on in a lot of games as a mechanic itself, particularly RPG/RTS. (Sure, sure, this isn't RPG or RTS, but the fact remains).
You're not going to be able to balance certain classes without a near full server. Balancing a spy against another opposing class is never going to happen because they know you're an enemy because there's only one of you; so it's effectiveness is drastically reduced. The more players the better the spy performs. It's the same with 6vs6. Some classes still wont be as matched as others. It all becomes balanced when you get to the number of players Valve had designed for. 16-24. These player numbers also work in unison with the design of the maps.
The comp scene wont see much improvement via attention from valve, to change what they already have here, for this reason. It's not that
I think comp play is wrong, it's that i get saliva stuck in my throat everytime i see a comp player bitch about class and weapon redundancy when they only play 6vs6 push cp.
I fail to sympothise with this.