going back to my original post on page 3: queue times are the most important part when deciding things like this.

CSGO works with 50 minute games because it has way more players drawn to it (2012*) and as a result locking players in game for 50 minutes doesn't hurt queues that much. Having 20 minute games in TF2, a game that will likely have longer queues based on having 2 more players per game and a smaller community, means that no one player is locked out of the MM formula for long. After 20 minutes, no matter what, 12 players are now free to play again. This lets the MM formula more quickly randomize and sort players because they'll play more matches, and allows a smaller number of players to have constant fresh matches against different players. With 20 minute games, you'll see a higher percentage of players searching at any given time compared to a 50 minute cycle.

2012: Although CSGO only had 10,000 PEAK players when it released MM, and ~50k the month after, I'm assuming that valve thought that CSGO would have strong growth potential. There's also the fact that a best of 15 or 10 CSGO game would be 1/2 or 1/3rd the length, but since each half would only be 4 or 7 rounds, you wouldn't have enough time for the economy to develop. CSGO needs games to be a certain length for all the core gameplay elements to actually show up, whereas TF2 is a blank slate round-to-round

False information.

CSGO's MM was released in October 2012 (http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2012/10/5292/), but the game just started to get at least 70k average players in March 2014 (http://steamcharts.com/app/730).

http://i.imgur.com/Up01pTg.png

where's the source of these players?

so the thing is with cs is

did it consistently lose playerbase prior to the matchmaking update? was the added players people coming back to csgo, 1.6 / source players switching over, or new players?

with tf2

there isn't "another version" that people can switch from (unless ow players switch to tf2 lol), tfc isn't really alive at all. are there tons of players that need matchmaking as an impetus to return to tf2?

like you can't just say "add mm and it'll go from 10k players to 3x a year million dollar majors overnight / over the course of two years"

They better change how the abandoning system works. Specifically the duration of the low priority.
Why? I've been banned from MM for the last 100 days

Valve was actually using CSGO to beta test MM for us so that when it comes to TF2 it would be AMAZING.

I made a nerd essay about muselk bullshitting those numbers last week idk why i didn't even bother to look it up sorry

EDIT: looked at it again, I was looking at peak players originally. CSGO peaked at ~50k and had a much lower average, meaning MM caused a ton of people to check CSGO out, but not all of them stayed. Or the russians couldnt afford GO and the dead timezones when the West was asleep caused the average to fall idk

Alright, I did some quick calculations in my muselk thread and it was roughly

1.6: 50000
Sc: 30000
GO:10000

players the month before MM dropped. It was

1.6: 20,000
Sc: 12,000
GO: 50,000

the month of. Clearly a lot of players tried it out or switched, but it should also be painfully clear that CSGO took off on its own merits. 50,000 is only ~10% of the current playerbase. We can argue how much of that growth was due to the massive influx of old CS players in the initial months i guess, but it should be clear that TF2 becoming "big" will depend on people who've never even cared about it coming into the game.

comparing these numbers doesnt matter what matters is just that TF2 takes off with the help of valve and with valve listening to the competitive community

My understanding is that it's best of three because you get more games in that way which allows the matchmaking system to be tested more (because it is in beta and they need to test that stuff). It could be extended to best of five or first to five later on.