rofl

her*

I didnt realize you just posted about the same thing. Sorry man

There really isn't much to this other than what I've expressed. Like I've clearly stated in that rant:

What I basically wrote is competitive TF2 LANs are expensive to produce. This isn't news to anyone. The production crew of TFTV works their asses and wallets off to make sure everybody can watch some TF2 online and on-site, and sometimes it takes a hit on people's IRL budgeting because of how much they donate to make sure LAN happens. A while back one of our crew said that TF2 has this artificiality about how high its production quality is that exceeds the budget of what we can sustain. There's not a strong enough online presence for competitive TF2, so the justification to go all-out and spoil the LAN productions with nice ass shit becomes harder to justify.

My personal sentiment, that does not necessarily represent every TFTV staff or individual's own personal opinions (which I expressed as "do not take this as event is cancelled, staff is upset rofl"), is that there needs to be more official fiscal involvement rather than having the community continue to burn itself and its wallets out. "Let's figure out what to do" basically translates to looking very at how we can make things continue to happen with reasonable justification financially and practically, or if it's time to just wait and see if Valve can help out themselves or progress.

Very well-written.

This is one of the truer statements that I often mimic in my streams. The ball is now more firmly in Valve's court than ever before (and it always has been). Coming from the player side of things, I could never imagine myself dedicating even 50% of what the production has to these events. And as a player, not only am I sent there completely on the community's dime, I'll usually be coming back with some money in my pocket. There's only so much sacrifice you can expect from these people and they deserve much more praise and respect than they receive.

Starting a thread with the title that amounts to "Reddit had a repost about this topic" doesn't really get people to care about the actual topic of the post. Especially since this includes original thought instead of just the standard doomsaying.

I appreciate the money that goes into production. I feel guilty that I am not able to contribute financially, because in many cases, more money can make a bigger difference than more volunteers.

I know the contributions I have made to the TF2 community come nowhere close to the amount of contributions some others in the community (past and present) have made. But I think even they would agree with the statement that for a community that enjoys the high-quality stream production and presence at LANs, there is very little appreciation given to support or thank those who helped make that happen.

There's a danger to guilt for contributors who don't feel like they've contributed enough. It leads to "X deserves this more than Y, because X did this and Y only did that" or "Y deserves it as much as X did because Y's blah blah blah" and it creates a gap in the unity that competitive 6v6 TF2 needs right now. Objectively, yes, some people have blown more money than what was probably worth it. Spiritually? We are all competitive TF2. The reason why it has existed as long as it has was because of the community. I wrote this on Reddit and I'll copy and paste it here:

Thank the players. The casters. The streamers. The league organizers. The cameramen. The programmers. The sponsors. The donators. The spokespeople and frontmen. The article writers. The analysts. The designers. The medal modelers. The contributors. The viewers. The community. Thank each and every one of these people who are competitive TF2. No, it won't fix the financial shortcomings by a longshot. It helps strengthen our online presence though. This was in the other thread before it got nuked but from what I recall:

Was the most important part to read.

this is kind of a shitpost tho

"tf2 lans cost too much money to cast"

either stop having lans or stop casting them then? There's really not a problem here other than people complaining that they're having to pay out of pocket to fund a hobby no one is interested in. Complaining about the lack of money is pointless because you're not going to whine your way into making the people bankrolling the LANs continue to fund them. Valve very clearly doesn't care, and no one cares about TF2 because its boring to watch. If you want to have professional quality streams at LANs u need to pay for them. Trying to game sympathy dollars by mentioning how someone always has to foot the bill for Insomnia isn't going to make donations go up, its just going to make tf2 look even less professional. If people actually cared about tf2 the game would be popular, but its not. It just has people who care too much about a cartoon shooter propping it up financially in an unsustainable way hoping that this time it'll finally take off and people will get interested.

this thread gets made very regularly and literally nothing interesting was said in it

That's where you're kinda wrong. It was never a shitpost, It was never meant to be. You have to see the sides of the people who works on behind the scenes of competitive TF2. Content creators, journalists, casters, producers, streamers, all who dedicated their life to this game for this scenes apparent life. I saw at what cost they sacrificed their fortune to keep this scene rolling. I just joined the comp.tf team and I saw Kaneco have to juggle between his work and his own website, people starting to lose faith and hope to the game we all loved here. iSeries LAN is basically is the closest thing we have to a TF2 world champions and try as you might to find a better LAN with suffice facility, security, staff, and whatnot. Valve is handling the ball currently, and it's up to them what will they do to this game. They have been friendly and supportive to us and remember, we are talking about one of the smallest eSports scene out there, with a game thats almost clocks in a decade worth of lifetime with one of the unique gamemode and playerbase out there.

So, if you starting to lose faith on TF2 and the competitive scene, think the men, women who dedicate their life to keep this scene rolling, do what you can to help, and remember:

damn

x

Then leave you freeloading worthless child
Dont watch any of the ESEA casts, i-series games, play in any leagues or come to this site anymore
We have all these things available to us in TF2 because of extremely dedicated individuals and you should be thankful
To see that you think you're even important enough to tell these people to stop doing all this work for the community is actually upsetting

so you are burnt out :/

From the perspective of someone who's sponsored a few of the events' production costs, it's depressing how little I can justify to provide.

Uberchain's right -- the finances from a business perspective don't add up. The value of the advertising for any sponsor is much lower than the amount they're paying. That said, it's a lot easier to provide a few thousand bucks than it is to put in the amount of work I've seen some people do.

I've seen Dashner literally sleeping on the couch at GXL because he was so exhausted and frustrated and yet he still tries (and succeeds) every single time to make an amazing cast happen. I'm pretty sure that Dashner is hiding certain production costs from me so he can pay them himself. The TF2 scene has some ridiculously dedicated individuals and every single one of them can stop at any moment and the only thing they'd deserve is a massive thanks for what they've done. These people are literally paying to entertain you and people like eee still act like they're trash. Unbelievable.

I wish I had a way to give back other than watching the casts. I don't want to see this game die

damn dude for someone who's smart at video games ure not very good at reading :)

its fine if u want to attack ppl or w/e cause u cant handle the game being "dead" but that's not a good attitude to have when you need way less people donating thousands to make casts and way more people actually watching streams and shit. I didn't tell them to stop doing what they're doing, I told them to stop whining about the lack of pay off. If you're playing/streaming tf2 for the money or recognition you're wasting your time and complaining that people aren't grateful enough or appreciative that you're making content that they don't care about makes you look like a big baby and doesn't actually fix any problems.

idk how u retards managed to confuse "lans are a waste of money but everyone already knew that" with "lans shouldn't happen and no one should do anything for them". if making the backend shit makes u happy u should do it but u shouldn't be fishing for recognition because you spent a lot of money and time trying to make people excited for a game no one is actually excited about.

elliott why are you condescending and self important 100% of the time

yeah your arguments would probably gain more traction if you didnt act like a condescending asshole in every post

No one's fishing for recognition...

its more fun when i get downvoted but im still right

I feel like most of this stuff should be treated as a hobby, not a profession.

It sucks that all these guys putting in work to do these kind of events can't make a living or at least get reimbursed for their time, but that's just how it is with a game with a small competitive following.

You've missed the point though, and are not "right" (in as much as you could be in this ridiculous argument).

Nobody is going to these lengths for recognition, otherwise they'd be blasting their achievements around and asking for people to suck dicks at lans. They do it because they want the game to succeed, and want to benefit the community who enjoy the content. They're now annoyed because an opportunity has presented itself but there are barriers outside their control which stop/slow down success. And sometimes reverse it.

As a side note, there are definitely people who don't know or appreciate how difficult it is to produce an event with reasonable production quality, and the article had merit for that reason alone. For example when we put on the event at DreamHack Winter our sponsored PC broke, giving us ~25 fps instead of 60+. The whining and whinging from the community was appalling, and the people at production genuinely considered turning the stream off and removing the toys from the squealing toddlers who were acting as if they're entitled to that entertainment.

You can't both expect to be entertained in this method and mock the idea of supporting those giving content. While obviously you knew from the beginning about the costs entailed, the majority do not. Purely as an insight into how much it costs to run a LAN event, it was worthy of being written.

You play in a league and derive entertainment from that. You play scrims every week and derive entertainment from that. You watch games, chat on the forums, and play pugs. You and many other people use systems to get entertainment which are financially unsupportable without charitable work. That's not news, but the extent we may have to scale things back IS news. And there are quite a few people who value their time spent being entertained by this barely-alive game, even if the number is not high enough to financially support the artificially high products available.

oh god theres a nerd essay under my post from a 4 star general shitposter

"acting as if they're entitled to that entertainment"

and the creation of this shitpost is acting like content creators are entitled to validation

"mock the idea of supporting those giving content"

I'm not. I'm mocking the idea of supporting those giving content and then expecting a reward or any sort of external validation. at BEST yre gonna get a nice thread made about u and 600 nerds watch you for a weekend. Everyone who plays tf2 knows that's the entirety of what a well made stream can get. The extra effort put in to make it look nice isn't done for money or some sort of reward, its done because its fun and makes everyone happy. All I'm saying is that if they (content creators) think its actually not worth making the content for this community anymore because of lack of interest, no amount of forum posting or video editing is going to make people watch TF2. They're going to have to either keep doing it because they like it or stop it. Its a shitty reality but w/e the game has to die eventually.

"chat on the forums"

literally the only one of those i do but i get what you're saying

didnt salamance spend so much out of pocket for i46 and barely got paid back

it was salamancer, now it's dashner

we are killing these people

Is there anything the community can do besides donate/pray that valve helps financially?