Its good to get an outside, pub look at comp....its basically how I've seen it, even though I grew involved with the scene. As I said before, looking down on other people for the classes they play does nothing but alienate people.

After all these people started to use playcomp.tf a few days ago in their steam alias and trying to get more new players I've had like 4 or 5 people randomly adding me already without even using the tag myself, just when playing mge/pubs people seem to be interested when you play in a different style than the rest of the players (mainly talking about pub here)

I explained a bit more than just linking him to playcomp.tf but this is generally all you have to do to atleast make them interested :)

http://snag.gy/bOjuy.jpg

edit;
lol big fail on trying to block the name :>

When you go to a large store such as a grocery store, especially around this time of year, there's bound to be someone (or someones) outside it collecting donations for Salvation Army, Humane Society, or whatever have you. Typically brandishing hats or sweatshirts or clothing of some kind with their organization's name on it, they might ask if you would like to donate to :name of organization here: and regardless of whether you do or do not, they will more than likely wish you a happy holiday or day or something of that nature. They might not even ask you to donate, merely say Merry Christmas and be there if you wished to offer a donation. Now, surely they wouldn't get any money if they were nasty, or even just "yo you wanna donate some money" compared to "Excuse me ma'am would you like to donate to x". Even if four or five people who are present volunteering all say about the same thing (for example, the previous quoted sentence) to you at the same time, but just one person afterwards says something (typically in a joking manner) such as "give us money" or "c'mon we're cold", that could very well turn off many people. Now, to a few of those people they could now forever see all people that brandish that organization's name in the same light as that one person that was seemingly quite rude in their eyes. When you are volunteering your time to try to collect donations infront of this store for this organization, you will not view your time as a failure merely because 10% of the people that walked by you didn't give you anything. As a matter of fact, 10% of people that walked by you to get into the store is the more likely number of people that WILL give you money. So what happens when you stand outside a store under the name of an organization that does truly help out people in need, but their reputation is tarnished by others? You be overly nice in an attempt to win these people over and see things through your eyes, to see the good deeds this company performs, sees how much good this company really does, see how many people this company helps. See how fun competitive can really be.

I think the point that started this thread has been lost a bit (though recent posts are bringing it back into focus). The idea of the playcomp.tf tag, and reaching out and being nice to potential new players and nothing to do with whether shit talking is a part of any competitive sport or e-sport, and everything to do with wanting to share your own love for a game with other people.

You don't have to shit rainbows and love everyone to be a decent human being and show interest and support/encouragement for someone who wants to get more involved in tf2.

As for the community being toxic... every community is toxic if you look in the right places, that is called human nature. It isn't right, and it shouldn't be encouraged or tolerated, but it also isn't going to go away. That said, right now we don't seem to draw a line between shit talking and personal attacks. There is a difference, one is a part of any competition (whether you like it or not) and one has no place in any serious community or competition and should be punished when it happens.

Death Threats, adding someone to continue harrassing them, following them onto the forums, or to other places of community interaction and ridiculing them. That isn't shit talk, it happens, and it should not be tolerated.

So I don't know about all of you but it seems like I'm the only person that's really dedicated into letting this community grow because I just got someone to play comp tf2 through omegle

haha ok what am I doing with my life

Over the past month I've been working on a few projects, including a highlander video guide that shows off the "glory" of every class in a competitive setting. something that pubbers will see and think "god that looks fun", and tell them how to get started. This is something that I think could be really huge if it's executed correctly and promoted well.

I was also accepted into the UGC staff as the NA 6v6 iron division manager. You might think that it's basically the least prestigious title ever, but I consider it a personal responsibility to give the new generation of players the best start possible, and it's a responsibility I take very seriously. I make myself available for every concern that I'm approached with, and even if I can't help I try to show them who can.

The league itself has made some improvements to the 6s format, changing the whitelist and map list to unify with the high level 6s community (ESEA). I don't have numbers on this, but I would guess that the majority of ESEA's new players come from a free league first. Simply put, we want the game to be competitive and fun from to to bottom to give people the best shot of making it big.

I know I didn't make a great impression when I posted in this thread, but I think we can all agree that growing this game requires the community to show the new players what the game we play is like, and show them how to join us.

sorry that this is messy I accidentally hit post. just letting people know that people like me are working to improve things in ways that aren't all that obvious

I really don't understand why some people seem to think that toxicity is what keeps TF2 from growing. Dota2 is a hundred times worse than TF2 and somehow it's still a huge e-sport. I'm not trying to justify toxicity by saying that other games are worse, all I'm saying is that Dota (and probably LoL and CS:GO) are huge despite being toxic as fuck.
I understand why you would want to reduce the toxicity in our community and I see how it could help us, but if you think it's the one thing holding back TF2 you are deluded.

If tf2 was a game around the time of quake/cs1.6 then it might have been bigger as an e-sport, but now it has to compete against such huge communities without any dev support, that's kind of the problem tbh

F2p dont help to not have a lot of tard'.
+Valve doesn't care about competitive, so sometime its difficult to keep the moral for this game.

i find that most of the shit talking from competitive players to pubs comes from those new to comp themselves (oh boy i'm in this new exclusive club!) or generally just at lower tiers. higher level players don't really have the need to tell others that they're better because their gameplay shows it. just my experience playing a bunch of random games the past couple years.

I totally agree with you. It's a problem, I think it should be improved, but it's far from the biggest thing holding us back. If nothing changes, I can live with it.

they're still part of our community from the perspective of a pub player, which adds valuation to the claim of "competitive players are jerks" that some casual players have made.

Anyway, this is a discussion that was already had and is now long over, no need to bring it back.

I think even that is wishful thinking. Out of both Quake and CS, the only real reason CS made is not just because of the developer support, but because it's a game with a much lower skill ceiling than Quake, and thus far more marketable. Similarly, I think TF2 would have shared the same fate Quake has today; few decent-sized tournament, but a fairly stagnant playerbase.