Can we just....stop saying they're pushing an esport agenda here? Theyre clearly not, or they would do way more balancing and preferebly hire an expert from the industry, considering they have zero experience on the topic.
The class system wasnt made for competitive, its easier for them in almost every way to lock down how people play. This way they can balance between gamemodes fairly easily (gold for skirmish, troops for captain) and not to mention they can make sure the equipment you pick fits with the "uniform" they want you to have, and armor clipping shouldnt be an issue. It also makes it easier to sell skins down the line, and they mentioned people being confused by picking their own equipment. None of this has to do with competitive or esport. It makes a lot of sense for them to do this, it just sucks for the players.
Skirmish is definitly their competitive gamemode, they probably thought battle was too boring and simplistic and as someone who commentated quite a few games, theyre not wrong. At the beginning of battles there'd usually not be any fighting at all, and everyone would just find their assigned seats then move on when the flag shows up for 1 big fight. I think Skirmish is gonna end up basically the same way, but for now, the 3 flags give an incentive to fight throughout the round instead of at the end of it. Multiple lives also help this idea. Personally I dont mind skirmish, Im not a crazy fan of multiple lives, and I think as a way for new players to learn the game, Battle would be infinitely better, with a limit of 10vs10 on public servers, but I think skirmish has some potential. They listened to competitive players with years and years of experience on battle changes because its something that we mastered in previous titles, but even then, they have their own ideas that we heavily disagree with, like crushthrough.
Now! For why tw still isnt allowing custom servers. Ofcourse just in my opinion.
Theyre not ready for it. Look at how any of the gamemodes are set up in this game. Its so hardcoded, it wouldnt surprise me if they have to completely re-do how its done. There are no admins tools that we know of, changing maps seem to be impossible, TDM boots you out after each round, cant spectate in Skirmish/captain even on clan matches.
Theres also some logic to the idea that the game is changing so much, after every patch the servers would need updates etc, however considering the last major update was weeks ago, Im not sure im on board with that. Add a disclaimer explaining why their servers might break and people will still happily create their own servers. We'd be first in line.
Then theres the whole data collection thing, Im not sure how this works, but Im pretty sure its easier for them to collect data from their own servers etc. Theres still instability on servers, things like that will have to be fixed before giving out the server tools.
Its just not ready yet.