Counter Strike: Global Offensive is, on balance, a better competitive FPS than Team Fortress 2.

My arguments about the scene and the game's accessibility are mainly rebuttals, I will then post them in Round 3 to follow the structure proposed by my opponent. But the aspect on which a competitive game proves its worth is on its core gameplay, and this is where TF2 really shines. In fact, TF2 has many qualities that makes it, in my opinion, superior to CS:GO as a competitive game, and I will itemize here the most important of them. CS:GO is random   The point of a competitive game is to oppose a set of players in a fair game, in which the winner will be the most skilled opponent(s). With that objective in mind, a good competitive game will strive to circumscribe the influence of randomness on the game. Indeed, random events can decide the outcome of a confrontation, but can't be controlled by any of the adversaries. This is at the opposite of the spirit of a competitive game [1].   This is why most competitive games today such as fighting games (e.g.Super Smash Bros. Melee [2]) or strategy games (e.g. StarCraft II [3]) contain little to no randomness in their competitive play. This is the path that chose TF2: similarly to items in Super Smash Bros., stochastic actions are fun in casual play. But random weapon and damage spread, random crits, are all disabled in competitive play [4], leaving only very marginal fortuity in the game.  This is far from being the case in CS:GO. Its main flaw in that matter is the inaccuracy of weapons, which is added to the input of the player in every ranged weapon [5]. This mechanic, admittedly more realistic than the predictable shots of TF2, add on the other hand an awfully important amount of luck to every fight in the game.  Indeed, everything that the player does in the game, ranging from walking to jumping around, falling from an elevated ground or taking bullets, climbing a ladder or firing (especially the famous no-scopes), everything adds an excessive amount of computer-generated randomness to the shots the player takes. Even standing perfectly still and taking a single shot is inaccurate [6]!  Even if the idea behind this of making some weapons less viable at longer ranges is commendable, it fails at doing so in a fair and balanced way. A good aim can, and often will lose against a messy and lucky spray of bullets. Even worse, some weapons in CS:GO have a high number of bullets and a high fire rate, making them viable to use in a this spraying fashion, such as the P90. These weapons substitute careful aiming and crosshair placement for an approximate aim and unskilled spraying. These weapons have massive spreads, and can still do shockingly high damages by hitting random head shots, making them in most cases a better option than an assault rifle at low level, and still viable at high level [7]. The idea behind this inaccuracy was to punish the use of close to mid range weapons at longer ranges, which is commendable. But where TF2 opt to a predictable and skill-based system with a damage fall-off, CS:GO random system fails at creating fair matches, rewards low-skill strategies and puts a maximum on how well a player can perform (skill cap). This results in a skill ceiling way lower than TF2's, and in a more frustrating, less interesting to watch game [8]. CS:GO is less able to judge players skill  CS:GO firefights are usually very short, usually finished in a couple seconds, after the death of one of the belligerents. This is much shorter than TF2's fights, usually involving many opponents and not always resulting in the deaths of all of them.  There are multiple reasons explaining that: - First off, weapons in CS:GO deal tremendous damage. Every sniper rifles and shotguns in the game, the AK-47, and the Desert Eagle are able to kill any opponent in one shot. If a player is unarmored, he can be killed by almost all weapons in one shot [9]. - Another reason is the complete absence of heals in CS:GO. Once damage is taken, full health won't be restored until respawn. This is very different from TF2, that includes many ways of healing, such as health packs on the map, classes able to heal teammates (such as the Engineer or the Medic) and weapons healing the user. This is problematic for many reasons.  Statistically speaking, the more an experiment is repeated in a test, the closer the data obtained becomes to theory. For example, if we were to roll a dice once and get five, we could think that we'll get five more often than every other numbers. If we repeat it a thousand times though, we quickly see that it's far from being true [10]. The same goes for FPS games. In these games, player behavior is, at high enough level, very unpredictable. Because of this, lucky kills do happen, even if the game is perfectly fair, and if a fight rarely lasts more than a second, it's not unlikely that a player kills a more experienced player. On top of that, considering that CS:GO is, as mentioned earlier, a game that reward luck rather than skill in its mechanics, these short fights just add another incentive to the player to use luck-based strategies such as spraying rather than a skillful aim.  Another reason why this is bad is because it hinders strategic options. In TF2, most fights are team fights because killing an opponent can't be done fast enough to just get away with it (except for pick classes specialized in doing so, such as the Spy or the Sniper). In TF2, killing an opponent is more strategic than in CS, because it's not just about being able to aim better than him and being better positioned. The value of the kill has also to be taken into consideration, and how much damage it is worth taking for it, as well as what a player taking a fight will mean for both the positioning of his team and the opposing team.  Lastly, the power of the weapons coupled with the inability for players to avoid damage through good movement results in camping techniques being extremely powerful. This is a problem, because where TF2 takes a true map awareness, CS:GO is mostly about being good at hide and seek, which isn't fun to play or play against, and watch.  This is one of the reason why TF2 is more strategic than CS:GO, but it's not the only one, and it's not the only skill that TF2 requires to a bigger extent, which brings us to the third point. CS:GO opposes players on a narrower set of skill Strategy  The mere fact that players are able to get heals changes everything. It transforms a game that is mainly about killing every player in the enemy team to a strategic game that is more about gaining ground, since any player harmed will be healed, and any player killed will respawn in a few seconds. Similarly to more popular eSports such as MOBA, TF2 not only asks the player to perform better than their opponents, but also to be able to track what every player is doing at all times, how much health and where they are, as well as many other informations (e.g. the Über advantage, the Soldier bombing, the Spy, etc.) and act accordingly [11]. Even better, TF2 gives players the opportunity to specialize in a role. Teams are made of power classes at their core, but also need healing classes. This creates valuable targets, generating a need for pick classes specialized in killing them, themselves inducing a need for defensive and support classes. Overall, this leads to more depth of gameplay and more strategy than CS:GO. Movement  Traditionally, FPS games are about killing your opponent, but also about avoiding getting killed. This is why in these games, dodging is so important, and why the greatest competitive FPS games have in their core gameplay skillful movement mechanics (e.g. Bunny hopping in Quake 3). This is the case for TF2: movement techniques by themselves require hundreds of hours to be mastered. Moreover, getting better at this skill is very rewarding, since a good sticky/rocket jumper is a force to be reckoned with, and a Spy or a Scout good at strafing is definitely more dangerous.  CS:GO chooses a completely different path. Not only does it lacks hard to master movement techniques, but it also punishes the player for moving. Indeed, jumping, falling or even just walking greatly harms your ability to shoot precisely. This results in fights where players move slowly, on very short distances, thus greatly decreasing the skill it takes to successfully shoot your opponent. Gameplay diversity  It's true that there are many weapons in CS:GO. But at the end of the day, the main differences between them are superficial differences. The skills they require comes down to two aspects: being able to aim well, and being able to control their spreads. Using them, you may be able to move more or less, or to shoot accurately at different distances and at different rates of fire, and it's true that these differences matter. But it's nothing next to the variety of possibilities that TF2 offers. In TF2, a player can use weapons based on explosive, bullets, or fire. They may be hitscan weapons, or they can be projectiles, or melee, and require for you completely different collections of skills. This results in a wide diversity of viable gameplays: when you take the time to compare, the sneaky gameplay of the Spy and the explosive play style of the Demoman share almost nothing in common. The game can be played in a huge number of completely different ways, balanced over the years, that all take literally thousands of hours to master, where the only thing you can truly get better at in CS:GO in the long run is aiming. This is also the reason why surprises happen way more often in competitive TF2, making it all the more entertaining to watch [12] than CS:GO's competitive gameplay which revolves over a few meta strategies. Sources [1] http://goo.gl... [2] http://goo.gl... [3] http://goo.gl... [4] https://goo.gl... [5] http://goo.gl... [6] https://goo.gl... [7] https://goo.gl... [8] https://goo.gl... [9] http://goo.gl... [10] https://goo.gl... [11] https://goo.gl... [12] Not later than today: https://goo.gl...