One thing I mention often on my stream is the content that's available to new players now to drag them in to comp.

This mainly applies to the EU scene in some way though.

Before TF2 went F2P we had a good amount of content freely available to people, we had MGE VODS and the site in general, we had cadred for EU, Vanillatf2 was buzzing with articles and their vanilla insights, various podcast shows that would go on. In terms of casts we had a lot of people available, often having two games casted in one night.

Now we have a gigantic influx of new players where has this content gone? Vanillatf2 is dead, we've lost news article sites to some extent, there is a big short of learning resources for new players, yes, streams are a lot more popular but there isn't many places for organised content in one place.

We need to get smarter in how we get competitive TF2 across to people, I'm hoping that the fully charged EU reboot is something that will rekindle some interest for TF2 again.

The main positive thing from this is that the casting resources is really fucking impressive, logs.tf and ss. is really really making a change for us.

i feel like theres a lot of people that play tf2 that dont play comp because they dont want to play comp games. the majority of people who play tf2 are playing it casually because they play games casually and dont want to put in the time and effort to play a game competitively.
however, that HUD is still super cool

It will have, but it's not even beta :)

Hey, I'm one of the TF2Center devs. Sorry I'm rushed for time, but I'll respond later properly. Just wanted to say I think this looks cool, and we should discuss how we can integrate more easily (I assume you're using steam browser which has some known issues - maybe they jump up the priority list)

tf2center is already pretty bad though with people who join mumble w/o mics and straight up idiots along with snipers to mid its gonna leave a bad taste in their mouth when it ends up being 5v6

MasterNoob already knows, talked with him earlier :)

I'm really impressed with the implementation and the fact that you guys got it to mostly work. Here's my issue with this: Who would install and use this HUD to play TF2Centers that wouldn't go to TF2Center normally? I'm just not seeing the problem that this solves if it's only distributed to people that normally use custom HUDs, which AFAIK are mostly comp players.

I think a good next step would be "newbie-only" lobbies, but those have a whole set of issues... I'm thinking of a form of "coach" spectating that would only let you spectate people from your assigned team to prevent ghosting. Would a sourcemod plugin be able to do this? Or could you put them on the team as a 7th/10th player, kill them, and give them a 30 minute spawn timer? Both of these require a Tf2center-specific plugin, I think. I definitely don't trust the honor system.

Sadly, I see this a lot. I feel like most new players would rather market garden people while calling each other faggots and laugh about how they got a kill as backburner pyro in 6s. Even the people that aren't good enough for centers think they're too good for centers.

edit: I don't mean to just complain about new players, I guess my post is implying the question: How do we improve the experience for people that are part of the problem, or don't try to improve? As someone who has mentored a ton of Highlander players, I've found that the majority of a low level team is generally not that interested in improving competitively.

The success stories usually start like this: A player plays in pubs, and begins to play on a team with friends. They're interested in it because of their friends primarily, but the competition eventually becomes just as important, if not moreso.

As much as it would be a double edge sword, some sort of ranking system for lobbies would make people play a lot more competitively within them.

From what I figured out last night, the browser the MOTD uses is at least superficially distinct from the Steam overlay browser in the sense that it has its own cookies/cache (persistent between TF2 launches). I would bet that they use the same browser/rendering engine, but I haven't done enough testing to conclusively determine this.

As rays said, this is still a big ugly hack and we haven't fully determined its viability. That being said, I am more than willing to discuss it in greater depth with knowledgable parties who might be able to help us advance this proof of concept.

PLS CHERRY HURRY, YOU CAN BE THE HERO OF COMP TF2 ;~~~~~~~;

If only valve supported TF2 a bit more. It gets impressive numbers but they just don't add anything worthy lately. They should add a new interface similar to other valve's games. The biggest thing attracting people to comp is definetly tf2center, really want it in my rayshud it's awesome.
And I have "teamfortress.tv" on my scattergun with a description tag because I want more people to start competitive heh.

i wanted something like in-game tickets to watch stv's, but then I realised how dumb that would be considering the lack of leagues, and there is almost no benefit to locking the stv's to those buying tickets

It would be better to focus on things we can effect than stuff we can't (Valve)

Done

what makes you think people who arent interested in competitive tf2 will install a HUD that links to competitive tf2 servers

http://i.imgur.com/V81g732.gif

<3

TFTV Comp hud please.

I love the center integration, will discuss it this weekend.