Possibly. Maybe people will realize after overwatch happens tf2 is the superior game, as they did with melee

I don't think so. Smash bros is just such a house-hold name, and so many people grew up playing it that when they got older they kinda came back to it, and the good mechanics continue to draw in players. The difference for tf2 is that it's not a game that everyone plays, so it's impossible for it to rebound on anywhere near the same scale.

knock on wood nigga

one can dream

The number of people who own TF2 was estimated at over 20 million in 2014, the most recent data I can find. And yes granted, some people played for 10 minutes or less and will never go back, but that number shouldn't be underestimated.

Maybe we shouldn't be using the word REBOUND here - maybe rebirth is more appropriate.

Matchmaking wont save anything. It'll pull back a few vets and they might stick around. That's all I'm hoping for.

FGC outsider opinion: While one could attribute Smash's modern success to nostalgia, there are definitely other factors at play that make a game rebound in popularity. You'd have to look at the FGC as a whole to really make a good call on if smash came back because of players flooding back into it from good vibes, or if because people came back because nothing really compared to smash. If its the first, then nostalgia is what propped it up, if the second, Smash's merits managed to carry it while nostalgia gave it a nudge. Smash and TF2 both fill niches in their communities that other games don't and until something better comes along, nothing will really replace them.

(tf2 is also pretty well known ime, most of the people I've met who play shooters have at least heard of it)

it's no secret that dev intervention is critical to the success of a game
(note: the game also has to be good and popular, both things tf2 is lucky to have, at least in general)

as long as valve wants to actually make comp tf2 a thing it will become a thing, they have plenty of resources to do so

Is this going to be the new "is TF2 dead" thread? Because I was really missing those.

Now would the people who drop $60+ be more likely to commit to Overwatch as opposed to a F2P game?
idkidkidk

I mean how many people drop $60 on a game and then play it for like 50 hours and never touch it again? The vast majority, so cost will not be a factor in player conversion.

doesnt sound far fetched, tf2 has a lot of qualities that would be intriguing to a new/returning player base

isnt tf2 like really shitty to watch if it was a person who has never played tf2 before?

No more so than most other video games I would imagine. I know people always say that mobas are really easy for an outside audience to understand but I've shown my gf some LoL and Dota matches and she was always incredibly confused. New players won't understand the flow of the game or the importance of uber management, but I think that seeing a rocket hit someone or a sniper land a headshot is pretty intuitive, definitely more so than most moba skillshots.

I think a lot of games are like that, with quake duel probably being the biggest victim to be honest.

Honestly the camerawork in TF2 is fantastic and the level of production of streams is of a good quality. It's obviously harder for people that are new to try figure out whats going on, apart from "dudes kill dudes, dudes capture an area, dudes win by capturing the final area (5cp)", but you can't really expect too much there. So I think that the general quality of the casting streams really helps for newer people watching.

EDIT: somewhat borrowing from above, it's easier to see "player input" in an FPS, because what they see and do is what you see; there's also obviously a lot more POV vs mobas (non existent) & RTS for example.

Who the fuck says mobas are easy for new viewers?! All I see is 10 things walk in a pile, massive amount of shit on screen while 2 guys scream random words that possibly mean something idk and then either some guys are dead and others run away or chase someone running away.

Edit: The things that make TF2 good for the casual viewer are the things that can be linked to real world. A regular person knows that a rocket shot at someone will hurt them. Or that explosions throw stuff around and can throw a person forwards. They don't know that a shiny person is invulnerable or that a crossbow with christmas lights on it that shoots candy canes will heal someone when shot up the ass. That's why for example CS:GO is very easy for a new viewer to understand. They know what a bomb is, what a sniper rifle does and what a terrorist tries to do. Everything that can be related to something a person already knows helps bring them closer to understanding what's going on.

A minimap for TF2's STVs would be great. It would be pretty easier to people not familiar to the game to understand what is going on and it would also help the cameraman to get all the action.

I kindly disagree. TF2 is as much of a house hold name as smash. Only difference is that it was released much later.

tf2 has been in the top3-5 most played games on steam for as long as I can remember which is arguably the biggest pc gaming platform. And the tf2 universe is probably one of the most widely and easily recognizable universes in the entire videogame industry, how many meet the team, dank memes, sfm and gmod videos can you remember about tf2 and now about other games.

Now if we could make use of that universe in favor of the comp community I have no doubt comp can suffer a similar success as it did in smash, or maybe even better depending on how much valve invests into it.

edit: wording

I think you should change "suffer a similar fate" to something like "find similar success". When I read that sentence I'm like "wait wat" :D

i agree with this i get cancer from watching any moba game tbh

I'm confused at the idea that TF2 isn't as popular as melee, partly through how ppl are underrating TF2's success (probably the biggest F2P first person shooter in the world, how doesn't that have a chance?), but also forgetting that melee for the longest time had like an anti-nostalgia, where most of the casual audience despised it because comp players liked it

TF2 definitely has something like that, but even in /r/tf2 you're seeing people smarten up now that valve's kind of validated 6v6 as a concept. compare and contrast, not only did melee have to win a massive charity drive (where, in an alternate universe, we're all talking about how skullgirls is the greatest grassroots indie game of all time), but as people were flying to the biggest event the game had ever seen, nintendo tried a C&D takedown for the entire stream, only rescinding it on the basis that far too many people were pissed the fuck off. the two are very different beasts, and in TF2's case I'd say this is a good thing

if valve wants things to be even more visually simplified for spectators, just give casters more stuff to work with that they can heavily customize. it's clear that TF2 casters are pretty fucking amazing when it comes to getting as much as possible out of little things

The more I watch Overwatch the less I think it can really be compared to TF2 on the grand scale of things, sure it has KOTH and Payload, and a hero that heals things with a magic beam or a short dude who builds sentries and is hated by everyone, but in the core gameplay its way different from TF2. In the long run I think MM might help TF2, but its way too early to say for sure. I still remember when Robin called 6v6 stale.

looking back on that in hindsight, that was incredibly messy. I feel like robin was trying to speak in a sense of "we could try and test these eventually" in the same way the TF team is known to test weapons they know will be absolute dogshit just to be able to look back on it, but when you tell a competitive community "hey your metagame is boring, try weapon bans" with little other context to what people went to them for (which was basically an early form of MM, if I'm recalling sal's videos correctly) that's not ending well

TF2 faces a lot of difficulty in its success, but the comparison to smash is justified. While it's difficult to view (not necessarily compared to mobas, but something like CS is incredibly intuitive), matchmaking should help with this, if it makes people's ingame experience more representative of a competitive stream. TF2, like melee features a lot of fast paced mechanical skill, and unlike almost any other game with quake style dm, it's not a quake clone, having its own unique classes and gamemodes.

Like smash, the concept of comp in TF2 has been for the most part ignored by devs for years, with many default features in the normal game that have to be turned off/aren't used in comp (as many characters/stages in smash aren't used, and items are off altogether). Nintendo even added anti-competitive features such as random tripping in brawl. Despite this complexity and random stuff in the games that detracts from them being taken seriously competitively when compared to other games in their respective genres, the core mechanics in both TF2 and smash still make the potential for skilled play very high.

Both games are extremely well known casually, and both have well known and respected developers who have the potential to back competitive strongly. Both are relatively old games that are still popular.

Moving away from the smash analogy, TF2 also has mechanics like pushing off advantages, turning small advantages into larger ones as well as capitalizing off of mistakes which creates a good flow to the game. This provides a balance between action and stalemates which makes casting easier and watching more entertaining. The game at a competitive level also often has better production value than many top level esports which is something to note.

I really feel that TF2 has all the ingredients there for a successful competitive game, although it's probably unrealistic to expect it to be on the level of even smash, but the only thing that will grow it at this stage is support from valve and general interest in the game. The community has gone above and beyond to help grow the game as much as it can, but without the money or the playerbase, the game won't see anything exponential.

What exactly has changed about tf2 that's going to bring so many people back? What has changed about it that is going to bridge the huge gap between 6s and pubbers. That gap only gets bigger. This game is great and fun, but I'm not sure what actual reasons people have for holding out hope that the competitive scene is going to get "big" again. Maybe if esea holds a lan again that might help, but honestly I do not think matchmaking is going to improve it that much.

In what possible way has the gap between 6s and pubbing become bigger with the advent of matchmaking? The competitive scene has been drawing closer and closer to the casual community over the years.

my housemate watched me play once and said he had no idea what the fuck was going on. To compare, when I watch cs majors on my laptop he asks me to plug it into the tv and gets pretty into it.

granted, csgo is the easiest FPS on the planet to understand. people shoot at each other, you aim better to kill faster, either everyone on one team dies or terrorist side sets up a bomb which CTs have to disarm

TF2 has a lot of stuff going on at any moment in time, which is made worse the more numbers are involved in an interaction (HL casting is especially awful with this, casters literally can't even comment on any individual kill lest they ignore three more in a row)

That entire visit was ridiculous as well, when they came back we got the VAGUEST sense of whatever conversation they had. So much must have been lost in translation.