thanks Mak! :o)

thanks for the offer but i think i'll wait for the official launch

I know that I'm a little late on this, but that video is one of the worst takes I've seen on the FACEIT Platform. Man goes in wanting to play casual TF2, is surprised when a competitive platform isn't full of hoovys, trolldiers and people who kill bind when they get funny kills. He spends 10+ minutes basically saying that the system sucks and is going to die then says "I want it to succeed". Basically equating it to Meet Your Match and blames the competitive community (???) for both.

Thing is, the system isn't perfect. Matches are still unbalanced, partying up is almost a guaranteed win, map pool is a little limited etc. But FACEIT provides another option to play TF2 thats a mix between 'wacky' casual and 3rd party competitive. With the addition of a 6s queue we actually have a nice transition for players from being new at the game to starting their first season of comp.

Fresh Install -> Casual -> Community Servers -> FACEIT 12s -> FACEIT 6s -> In-house PUGs/TF2 Center -> 6s/HL

A seamless transition from casual to competitive is something we've needed for a while, as its currently really hard to get into actual competitive. So this pubber YTber whining that "ITS NOT CASUAL" is so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren't so infuriating. FACEIT needs improvements, as all things do, but having an actual organisation like them behind the competitive community only benefits us.

So long as FACEIT is receptive to feedback for their 12s and 6s queue, if and when it happens, I think that the competitive community should try to support it when possible (notsponsoredbtw). I don't want this to go the same way that Pro League did, where both sides were unwilling to compromise or put in the effort, and it seems that they are quite keen to continue working with TF2 so long as it benefits them.

TL;DR: YTber is dumb, FACEIT needs improvements but is good for us.

agree 100% drhappiness. I think that tyler from vnn's take on faceit he put up today was much more measured and accurate

I watched that video and it came off as more of 10 minutes of tyler reading faceit's faq to you with a vpn ad in the middle than a 'take'

very true. but the faceit faq debunks most of the poor arguments that youtubers are having

As much as this may be obvious to us, the a large group of pubbers seems to think that Faceit is meant to be a complete replacement for the Casual silliness of the "Golden Age" of tf2 they remember, as seen by how many people seem to agree with Zesty's video despite it being what we consider to be straight up stupid

While I think many will be open to a more serious casual setting, this disconnect between their expectations and their experience will lead to a feeling of "betrayal" and a feeling of a repeat of the Meet your Match update that, despite it not being true, the majority of the community feels was an attempt by Valve to listen to the competitive community and in the process, caused permanent damage to the casual side of the game (for example, I still dislike how they made it so you can't select the exact server/map you want to join or join a friend's game instantly from their profile).

I think this could be solved if Faceit/figures of the competitive community worked with youtubers who have been promoting the platform in order to create videos explaining the clear intents of the platform and their plans for a separate ladder for competitive players where points/rewards are much easier to earn, leading to a decrease in pubstomp stacks.

you know how it should be, like how it was:
Fresh Install ===> Community servers ======> inhouse pugs =====>6s/HL

Nothing is going to get casual elitists to actually care about this game as an esport. We'd be better off just making our own game that resembles 6s than trying to get trolldiers/hoovies/HL types to actually put effort into TF2.

CASUAL ELITISTS

So much fun

i feel like the elo system doesn't adjust quickly enough. like matches with insane differences should not happen, and it probably happens because everybody's (on tftv at least) elo is too low

a lot of the complaints i see about faceit being too competitive are completely incongruous with what people seem to expect out of casual tf2. for example, adding an elo system that rises and falls with w/l and divides better and worse players into different servers would just give players more incentive to win, inherently making the game more competitive than a pub. even once the bulk of players have reached their proper rank, who's to say an old pro coming back to play faceit pubs or somebody with an unranked smurf wouldnt come in and ruin the balance of the fresh install servers?

its really weird to see issues like this arising 13 years into tf2's life-cycle when wildly varying skill levels have been an inherent part of public servers / casual servers / community servers since the game's inception. that's the essence of the server being "public" - all are welcome, and it's too chaotic and disorganized for winning to matter, so just walk around and shoot gamers. only this time, you're rewarded with faceit points exchanging at 10 points per thousandth of a cent (with every participant getting nearly the same value, independent of w/l or k/d).

there's also the other pubber crowd complaining about people stacking overhealed heavies or short circuit engineers, completely unaware that this exact problem is why we employ class restrictions and whitelists for competitive tf2. but we wouldn't want to make casual tf2 "competitive," would we?

the faceit faq/vnn's video adressed this issue. They are thinking of adding an even furthur step in between. Like an even more casual faceit mode, but they don't want to split the current playerbase yet.

nothing. but csgo has huge smurfing problem, so i'm sure faceit has thought of how to fix that.

This is main point of tylers video: faceit is not casual mode. Its a " new 12v12 system that sets out to provide the community with a new accessible and rewarding experience" (from https://blog.faceit.com/a-new-frontier-awaits-tf2-lands-on-faceit-d1874873462f)

I think what's confusing people is that this is a new gamemode. It's not casual OR competitive.

-

Terrible video has a sequel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5seEkffpNQ

oh boy...

"my complaints are all relatively minor"

Oh really? Couldn't tell it's a lot of buzz about... nothing?

I literally do not understand this mentality at all. TF2 is a video game, a subset of a game, which are things with rulesets played to win through a variety of means. Are some games more competitive than others? Sure. When you sit down with your friends and play a board game while catching up or hanging out, are you not trying to win? Surely you aren't just pushing the pieces into random places and just talking the entire time. Because that wouldn't be fun either for you or for them.

TF2 launched with a win condition, a loss condition, a scoreboard, kills, deaths, dominations, achievements for dominations, etc. Just because the format is more competitive than your average casual matchmaking pub, doesn't mean the game isn't also casual, because there are surely players in faceit pubs just playing to shoot around and talk to their friends. And just because your average Valve matchmaking server is casual, doesn't mean it also isn't competitive, because I've played pubs where people are really trying to win, type EZ when they win or throw slurs at you for cheating when they lose. It's such a crazy double standard that bad players with some weird narcissism complex have tricked themselves into thinking is just a one-sided, unfortunate reality they're living in. Every game you play, unless it's just an empty room where you're walking around taunting at each other, showing off your cosmetics, will be competitive (and even then you'll have people comparing each other cosmetics). And obviously they will be competitive, because they are games with rulesets designed to determine a winner. Whether or not you value that determination is entirely up to you and the degree to which you do is why new games are split into rated/unrated. Basically, people that you're describing don't want things that aren't competitive, they want to be one of the best players in the server. And that will either naturally happen because of elo, or they can take it upon themselves to try to get better at the thing they seem to value so much.

Yay! More opportunities to voice my opinions that noone asked for. To be honest, the first couple of minutes of this video actually brings up a couple of decent points. FACEIT's AC is particularly annoying and invasive and if their EULA is anything to go by it seems to be a good way for them to sell data (but at this point which website ISN'T selling your data?). Secondly, the marketing around the platform did seem to try to say that this was some sort of 'replacement' of casual, which from the beginning I thought was a little...off, I guess?

I think their main critique was that they were not transparent about sponsoring (or incentivising) content creators to speak good things about their platform. The rest of the video involves them saying that FACEIT is a very corporate entity focusing on profit, not really caring of TF2 as a game. To that end, I agree that we should remember that such companies seek to gain from the game and its community. But then again, FACEIT want the system to have high player counts for more money so they themselves are incentivised to keep us around, so its a double-edged sword.

Again, like my previous post discusses, having a company like this on board is important for a community like ours and that offering alternative casual modes is great in the absence of constant development from Valve. Competitively, the platform is a good chance to make it easier to get more people into 6s/HL which is always a good thing. I think that FACEIT has a way to go in being a platform for both competitive and casual audiences, but from what I've seen it's a decent start.

TL;DR: Did you guys know that FACEIT...is a FOR PROFIT COMPANY!?!?!?!

i get that he has a bad take but you're kinda preaching to the choir here
we have like 1 and a half pages of responses to someone who will never read them

youre right we need to post on their videos about how much of a dumdum they are

Definitely incentivising, not sponsoring.

Nobody was actually paid specifically to say good things about FACEIT (except maybe scrap.tf but I'm talking in terms of "influencers"). However, the number of views you can get by streaming in faceit matches is admittedly hilarious and I've been abusing this, but only because I genuinely like the idea of a middleground between casual and comp. I can finally play Demoknight in a somewhat serious manner without having to trouble myself with competitive formats nor farm bad players in Casual mode over and over.

Zesty pointed out the free stuff that was delivered to these guys. I will admit that I was randomly offered free stuff from them, but I was never obligated to do anything as a return. I assume this is also the case for everyone else involved with this. It appears to be more of a tactic to get these "influencers" to like FACEIT, as opposed to directly saying "we will pay you X if you say that it's good in a video".

This does have implications when it comes to bias, yes. But I dislike the notion that FACEIT forced us to say good things. In fact, a lot of these guys are quite critical of the match balancing, which they do need to improve.

FACEIT is planning on adding a server browser type thing with no leaving penalties as a separate option so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about with some of these guys ranting as if things will not improve. If you're a casual player who wants regular community servers then just wait until FACEIT comes out with their own version of that. I think a lot of the complaints are coming from the fact that not everyone even knows that this is being planned.

yooooo, companies want to make money? when did they start doing that

I call it drooling noob mentality (somewhat related to scrub mentality). the most disturbing part is that as time goes on and video games are dumbed down further and further these mentalities only grow. Very few people care about being good, or figuring out efficient paths to victory, yet still want to win. Anyone who has taken the time to figure these things out is someone using 'cheap' tactics, and they wouldn't dream of stooping to that level.

I hate drooling noobs.

as if its a matter of being good, and not "how many discord medics can i shove up my ass??" lOl

idk about you, but its kinda aids to deal with three four medics if one of them has a braincell, while you get medics who cant play against one kritz, and can't heal/uber you cuz you don't wear hats, and if you say something in voice nicely, you get people shouting you down for "being sweaty tryhard" for wanting to see your medic use once instead of dropping or your medic is an actual bot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pktMqkfvoBM

I hear in all of these awful takes the claim over and over again that faceit is a "Competitive matchmaking mode NOT a casual one" and for their argument and entire basis of that based entirely on how the format "feels" to play it "feels too competitive".

Is casual and competitive defined by the format and not the attitude of the players?

like the argument "this is just competitive matchmaking with more players and more maps" like, is that by definition what casual is, and what a casual mode should be?

and the claim about the balancing being awful about how it's always rolls and they need a working elo system would just turn it into a competitive mode as people would now care about win / loss.

I think we can all agree Faceit is one of the best things to happen to tf2 in an extremely long time and, if played correctly could mark a massive massive turning point and point of growth for our game, but i really do fear that these loud uneducated hyper casual players who don't even know what they want could make such a public mess about this, so many of these players take a hive mind opinion off of some god awful video like zesty's that it could honestly squander out any chance of this going further and I god well hope it does not turn out that way as I want this to be everything it could be.

agree completely. well said

wtf cmon man

anyone else notice how fucking crazy the bots are

just played an upward game where my team got shut down by a heavy that would lock on to literally everything on offense and then two engineers that would insta-rebuild sentries (while roaming and fragging players on shotgun) on defense