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I think we have done all we can. People have known about the decline of EU tf2 for almost a decade at this point.
Pugs sites have been created and die, Fundraisers for prize money for seasons and lans, Newbie mixes/coaching events.

I just don't think you can do anything at this point. Sad fact is people just dont wanna play and those that do do not want to put effort into helping the scene.
We have a tiny amount of people who volunteer to keep the scene around. Once they go it really is over.

im ngl making different pug sites for your individual countries doesnt seem like itd help

It will likely continue to slowly decline, but TF2 seems to be a gaming mainstay, and we might even have another pandemic lol. If anything, friend pug servers can fill the void in the absence of TF2C.

I'd be open to RGL and ETF2L working together more closely or even consolidating in the future if worse comes to worse.

the scene was dead the moment yak made prem

I don’t know about the lower divs, but prem/div1 is in a very healthy place right now. There is strong competition at the top of prem (rcadia finals going to 5 golden caps, los getting 2rd last season) teams are sticking together, there are plenty of upcoming players (iusti, flick, haunts, balder, brujman, june, zoey, zambz etc) and old players are returning to play future seasons and lans (ams, condawg, adysky, lukas, voxi, hugo, mak, opti, matthes etc).

I actually think NA is in a far worse place atm (at least compared to where it was a year ago with G6, WG and a strong froyo). I can only talk about the top level ofc

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YOU play with the english then, see how you enjoy it

ok so what if the english folk get their own pug site and the rest of europe gets their own

Thats the biggest issue, it doesnt matter if div 1/prem is healthy and the rest is on life support especially newer divs. If you dont have fresh faces coming in you'll end up with the same circlejerk of people every season until everyone retires, then you have nobody to play prem. Even when someone new comes in, if its someone who wants to try highlander, they're made fun of because they dont want to play the SuPeRiOr GaMeMoDe.

Higher div players love alienating newer players because "they're bad" in pug/lobby/organized competitive websites then those new players lose interest. It also doesnt help you have the most power hungry discord mods moderating the leagues and pugs/lobbies websites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cok5VKAwMM

If the competitive scene dies in EU, its because the community killed it

allowing players from higher divs (high/div1/prem) to play any other class aside from med in low (even if it's not their main class in their actual div) does end up demotivating new players to get into comp. No one wants to play against high div players in open/low . Plus the skill for lower divs compared to previous years is ridiculously low, there's a lack of mentorship and a lot of teams are just put together between friends with little to no experience in the scene.

Perhaps more higher div players could consider becoming mentors for players that want to commit to the scene and show they want to put the work in for it.

I know that people get older and priorities change and not everyone has the time to sit down and go through demo reviews with newbies and whatnot, but if you have patience and time to talk shit about low skilled players without helping them and sandbag in low, you should use it to give advice instead.

The solution is to jump ship and play in NA/Asia

This never matters, because prem/div1/invite/whatever will always exist as "the current best players of the scene right now", no matter how strong or weak they are. Prem/div1/invite exists whether there's 20 low div / open teams or 200 low div / open teams.

Pretty much this.

The foundation of any organization/league is fundamentally always going to be the lower divisions because they make up the majority of the teams/players in the league. The question that we should all be asking when growing the scene is not only to discuss how to support the top level but also how to grow and sustain the entry-level divisions (decreasing the barriers of entry to even play competitively in the first place). The latter is an area that needs to be improved upon if we want to have the scene be more accessible for new players.

bad take, we make pickup sites language based and not country based
atm the only reason 6s eu pickup website doesnt exist only because i didnt start gathering some reasonable people to get it going + i was not sure if that would be successful considering tf2.online existence
eu hl pickups were our testing ground for general audience play and so far i think its good so after christmas it will be a good time to start with eu 6s pickups

Others have mentioned this, but the key to 'sustain' the esport in EU is not the highest level of play or even the average. Instead its the bottom level of comp play, those that are interested in taking the game more seriously but immediately hit the wall of "How do I start?".

Some areas of improvement that would go a long way to promoting longevity include:
- Encouraging and promoting a welcoming environment for new players
- Guided Games (Think Newbie Mixes, Coaching, etc.)
- Methods of playing regular matches against similar skilled players outside of league play/scrims (newbie & open-only)
- Same as above but a more blended experience (open-mid) not reliant on circlejerks and niche communities

I've held the belief that accessibility is one of the biggest problem areas of the scene since it stops fresh faces joining, and as people leave the community doesnt have others to replace them.

ETF2L should seriously have a splash screen when you aren't logged in telling you how to get involved in the scene, the current guide is a blog post hidden behind an easily missed submenu. Look at tf2center's splash screen for an example.

s

NA needs these (especially the last 2) really fucking bad too. theres like 50 people left in the tf2 community in NA that can actually play in pughub because of the average skill level of the players and how everyone also just only wants to play with their similarly skilled friends

In regards to North America (I know -- this is a thread about Europe)

I think not a lot of people from the Main+ levels tuned into the North American Newbie Cup that happened last weekend. If you were there for some of the interviews and the channel we had ~24 teams (so over 100+ newbies participating in the cup) and some of the teams are even sticking together to play in the Newcomer/Amateur division heading into next season. You can talk about the lower levels of NA but if you're ignorant to what is going on at the lower level scene and throw words about how participation is lower, you'll clearly be overlooking the efforts players in this scene (shoutout to M17, Jamilia, heck, shelzor, and the rest from Newbie Mixes/TF2CC btw) have been trying to spearhead for seasons on end to try to revitalize the scene. They were actively advertising this everywhere but TFTV (Reddit, even getting posted on the TF2 game website). I saw first hand how much work they put in and it did not go in vain.

Start ahead. You can talk but if you don't contribute to the cultivation of the lower levels of our scene nothing will amount to it. We have Newbie Mixes, TF2 Coaching Central, and many people who want to build grassroots projects to help get people into competitive TF2. But there's practices such as 10:30 PM EST match start times that gatekeep people from playing past the Amateur level in our scene.

I am all for implementing the Unity/ETF2L timer ruleset for Newcomer/Amateur. Would make more sense for games to end quicker. The TF2CC cup implemented it and it worked wonders for everyone involved, not just the players.

We're doing a good job here in NA, we have TFTV coming back for coverage next season and this might just be the most exciting time for North America with everything that is going on right now. I'm really hopeful for the future of this scene.

We need websites where everyone is welcome and has a chance to play, tf2.online is captain based system so you get always the same people playing, if you arent friends with everyone or you're a well known high player there's 0 chance of you being picked. It baffles me people still defend tf2.online as a good alternative to tf2center or newbie friendly in any way.
At the end of the day, even tho everyone shits on tf2center, its the best thing the community has to introduce new players to comp.

The HL pickup are working great, if you do the same to 6s, please dont restrict it only to higher players, let anyone come in and queue up

Instead of thinking how to reverse this, think about whether you should prevent such things at all.

I actually think they are relevant to this thread. Both organizations started as one-stop shops for everybody but naturally just progressed to being NA focused due to lack of EU coaches and player interest.

I can speak a lot more accurately for TF2CC, while it hasn't been advertised that well, wants to give out event runner and pug runner roles for the EU scene. I'm sure Newbie Mixes feels the same but understandably aren't always willing to go super far out of their way for a base that hasn't quite bit the bait when they can work on more projects like the Team Drive or Newbie Cup etc.

People from EU stumble upon Newbie Mixes or TF2CC and can't participate because of the time zone diff and I always feel bad because I don't know where I can point them, other than "uh I guess try Rahmixes?"

TF2CC used to accommodate EU players in pugs and events (our first Newbie Cup even had an EU division, we had an NA coach waking up at 5am to give map talks for a team of newbies on another continent), until the NA organizers decided it was too much trouble trying to coordinate things across continents and zero EU players stepped up to fill the gap. Newbie Mixes was trying to expand outside of NA but seems they had trouble getting participation from EU coaches. I'm just an outsider, and maybe there are differences in culture or whatever, but if you're looking for why your scene is dying, those seem like some pretty big clues.

afaik Rahmixes died relatively recently

tbh the time RGL went hard on restricting SA/EU players, killed a considerable % of players and teams that constantly played the league, idk if something like that happened with ETF2L as well.

I think this section in the pinguefy's video describes the issue with the comp scene pretty well: https://youtu.be/iHtmqtsRi3I?t=1577

6v6 tf2 is like a separate game with zero marketing, barely anyone is talking about it in casual tf2 crowd, so it's actually a small miracle whenever someone learns about and becomes fully engaged with the game mode. Wouldn't say the scene is in danger of dying off though, unless the leagues say that they would pull the plug at some specifically low number of teams. Otherwise, current players wouldn't see much difference in how the game plays for them, whether the number of teams goes down to 50 or up to 200.

Most of what could be done has been done already, so now we can just wait for valve to make tf3 by 2035 or some eastern oil prince to fund etf2l out of enthusiasm.

I think trying to market to the "casual community" is basically useless because casual players as a whole will never be competitive-type players. RGL tried marketing to casual players with "No Restriction 6s" and to an extent Prolander which were total failures.

6s is its own game and needs to be treated as such; trying to appease people who say "I would play if I could use engineer more" or "I don't like the fact that there's x rule" will never help grow the scene and can only cause the 6s we know to die and get absorbed into the casual sphere. In other words, appealing too much to casual players can only cause 6s to lose its identity and not be 6s anymore. Sure, groups like TF2CC cast a really wide net, but then we get in a situation where (literally) people are asking to get their pubs demo reviewed, etc., and it ends with almost no one sticking around because they're all casual players at heart.

This is why it's important to appeal to competitive-minded people to begin with, rather than just TF2 people in general. Purebred casual players simply play a different game than us. Maybe trying to get people who already play competitive movement FPS games to test out 6v6 TF2, or having some kind of ELO-based matchmaking service that only appeals to competitive-minded players in the first place would work. Part of the problem is that a lot of people in and out of TF2 don't even know "comp" exists to begin with. I don't know how we'd fix that.