newbie mixes

not only is that still word of mouth which is not easily accessible (and only once a week), thats also information coming from a lot of people who dont know how to play the game perfectly themselves.

it is utterly disappointing to me that an invite player would incomprehensibly not understand the point of what im saying and just type out the words newbie mixes

Newbie mixes are cool and all but are really not enough. There should be way more resources into learning 6s than currently exist. I think a good if not sort of funny example is that the marmaloo how to play roamer on x map videos are one of the best resources to learning the game in recent time and I feel a similar style of videos or something is something that could exist much more commonly.

Are there people in the community even left that would want to go through the effort of passing that sort of knowledge on?

When I was getting back into the game last year, I think the biggest hurdle was finding up-to-date videos about current maps. Many didn't have anything newer than 2015, if anything at all. I had to go ask a European how to play Reckoner, and now I can't find anything about Sultry, just a couple scout POVs. The best resources available to me were paying B4nny for coaching, and Tragic mentoring me on medic, but most people don't have those options. It'd be nice to see more educational materials, but I also know that it's time-consuming and not very lucrative to create.

cin and marmaloo's demo review series have to be the best educational content for soldier that exists on youtube. if more top-level players were willing to create content like that, I think the entire scene would appreciate it greatly.

Fair point on the first part, but our real focus is near the skill floor of the game. We don't provide perfect answers because optimal play is not what we are trying to teach. We first need to teach them how to play at all and that's always been our focus.

I agree that suggesting "newbie mixes" to your initial post is pointless for what you're trying to suggest for the community as a whole. Just wanted to get this part straightened out and I'm certainly hoping the best for anyone actively trying to add to the pool of learning resources for the game.

If this is something you want to have a discussion of you'll need to ask yourself whether the problem is high level players not really wanting to put forward the time or whether there isn't a space for them to do so.

Tf2 Coaching Central has spaces for coaches to host classes, events, review sessions and post in a channel meant for guides and resources where people can search for key words for what they're looking for If they can't find an already existing guide in there. We're also working on converting the text channel to a forum with better organization and actual tags. Even though we don't allow high level players to play pugs, coaches can get an exception to just be med locked as well.

Wonder for instance found some of his favourite high level educational videos (both old and new) and posted them there and sometimes would pop in to answer text questions. A lot of high level players think they have to be a professor or bust.

I'm sure RGL is also planning on adding unto their guides section.

I've asked adv / invite players and outside of the Newbie Cup, the consensus is that they'd rather have people come to them than the other way around being fairly content with teaching a small subset of people in private. It would be great even if Invite players kept the same relationships but did it in a public discord so people can at least see a learning environment, perhaps even have people join muted to watch. There's a lecture hall channel explicitly for that purpose. A lot of coaches apply and then never do anything. I can't always blame them but that's the state currently.

Rn it feels like there's pretty much no reason for someone to want to come from a pub -> comp, and once they do, I think there's an alright amount of resources and access to like, ground level tf2 - nc/am in na, but past that, it pretty much becomes you need to know someone or else die and never learn. I feel that "halfway in the door" level is a place where a ton of people just get stuck (am-main specifically) and it can feel nearly impossible to push past that level. Invite players are simultaneously accessible to talk to in a pug or something, but it's pretty aids finding people who can mentor or make content for that level I'm mentioning. Ofc there are factors like not everyone want to, or they don't have the time etc. But I think it can also feel very unrewarding to spend time doing stuff only for no one to care, or mentoring someone that then ceases contact entirely or something. I'm not sure what could specifically be done for this, either. Needing to pay to learn the game sucks and although free resources are great, not everyone wants to commit that time.

im only advanced but i feel like the best way would be to pug with these people and then either tell them in the moment in a not sperg way cause alot of advanced and invite ppl ive been around do that and its disgusting and annoying to hear or talk to them afterwards about a call they felt strongly on or something but like 75% of the time i do, im met with a nigga backtalking me or thinking that they are right

only person in recent memory ik that have like actively asked questions the most is the med main optimiyst in pughub

either that or them asking ppl for demo reviews would solve their prob wouldnt it?

a big part of the issue is that there is very little content aimed towards pubbers that teaches them how to actually be good at the different classes. Sure, they show you how to get results when you're bad but they don't tell you what you should be working towards as you get better. For example, they teach scouts that all you should be doing is harassment and le epic super flanks. Its unreasonable to expect a new player to push through a scout as choke and accomplish anything but its still important to teach them that you will eventually be able attack people head on.

I think there should be more videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DI8iW7eowg . Also when habib+friends were watching the invite qualifiers and noticing what they were doing wrong... that was super educational.

I unironically believe channels like officerreekz are invaluable for the transfer of knowledge with scrim povs, habib casts, etc being uploaded.
Though this is ofcourse a very "raw" form of information

probably the wrong video. probably

fixed, woops. also that stream was the one i was thinking of... nice that reekz uploaded it

https://youtu.be/_d6oEOEUXTw i wish there was more stuff like this

long time ago war started a series of how-to videos and in the first one he literally pointed out the meta place to stand on a process second hold, with disad or even, for each class, and why. i remember thinking, realistically to learn this game at a high level you either need a video like this for every map, point, and situation, or else just to be shouted at in pugs until you get it. there's not much in-between. it's a really hard game

i would go one step further, not only is there a lack of centralized content on how to play comp, but the actual funnel for recruiting (and retaining) new players is lacking. rgl does a pretty good job of marketing the league if you happen to be watching one of its streams, but put yourself in the shoes of a total noob: okay, you see an ad for rgl, you go to the site. there's nothing on this front page that, as someone who has never played comp, is intuitive or holds your hand through the steps of how to find a team, how to learn this new format, how to find newbie pugs or scrims and begin practicing, etc. these things are all completely foreign to someone not in this community and i'd wager that there are plenty of potential new players that stop before they even start because they don't know what to do or how to do it. an introductory beginner video or a guide or some sort that clearly walks players through this process should be prominently on the front page and easily accessible, and then there should be a clear funnel to step by step get someone signed up and start the process of getting them involved and engaged with learning and finding a team.

regarding educational content, rgl's youtube posted soapy reviewing a pov. a series like this has a lot of potential and should be followed up on with other players/classes/maps, and even more importantly at a lower introductory level. there are some callout vids for maps which are good as well, but again this content needs to be expanded on and centralized and more easily accessible.

(on a smaller note, there also needs to be a clearer incentive than "do you want to play comp tf2? check out rgl.gg". this will get the attention of a portion of the pub/casual player base that is competitively inclined and looking for something more challenging, but there are other reasons someone might want to start playing comp- making new friends, being part of a community, getting better at the game, and so on.)

finally, ya'll need to work on that SEO. when you search "competitive tf2" rgl doesn't even show up on the front page of google, same with "how to play competitive tf2", where the most helpful resource is this sorta boring wiki article. if you search for "tf2 league" the first result is UGC.

there are multiple weak links in this chain of recruiting, educating, and retaining new players and if u want the comp scene to thrive into the future it's one of the most important things to focus on.

#19 Very well put. There is a large disconnect between those brand new to comp TF2, and people who are familiar with leagues and formats. If someone asks you where to get started in comp TF2, what's the first thing you would tell them? There are so many sites and leagues spread out that it's already a confusing and involved process. Between all the league sites, Newbie Mixes, the TF2CC discord, TF2Center, and many more, there are just so many different places to go that it can quickly feel overwhelming for the average player.

Even as someone who's played comp, it's not immediately obvious how to navigate the RGL site and to find the info I'm looking for. I really think there needs to be a big, obvious button somewhere that says "New to Competitive TF2? Click here!", or some sort of comprehensive but easily understood guide posted somewhere. It's already bad enough that the comp scene is separate from the base game and needs to be sought out by players themselves, but comp resources are also very spread out and not the most beginner-friendly.

agreed. The last pocket guide with any worth I've found is now turning 9 years old in a week, and many parts have naturally aged like milk with things like the scout buff... it's just sad; that emptiness is kiling the scene

https://www.teamfortress.tv/62591/day-4-rgl-new-player-experience

This thread is on point with the solutions RGL is tackling right now--making the UX experience and pathing more obvious for new players, centralizing resources, and emphasizing sustainability. We're creating a new landing page that is MUCH more clear for new players and will offer a myriad of other solutions for age-old problems mentioned in the article I linked.

However, we shouldn't discount how powerful TF2CC and Newbie Mixes are for new player onboarding. RGL's goal for the newcomer division this season was 15 teams (compared to usual 10 new teams), and we have almost 30--the most we've had since the height of the covid bump. Gotta give huge thanks to those two orgs.

Looking forward to showing the community what we come up with.

This is an important distinction because half the battle is getting someone in the server, and I'm a believer that you cant even begin to teach people what advantages are, pushing vs holding, even the most basic of things if they aren't even comfortable in a server comming with 6 people on 6s classes. Newbie mixes and tf2cc seem great as not only a really easy place for people to do that but also serve as a kind of monolithic place you can just tell a pubber to go to and the rest is taken care of.

The learning past that, when you actually start to pick up on the intricacies of 6s, seems to be severely lacking with a bunch of random guides in random places. So, unlike the case with completely new players where you can just send them to tf2cc or newbie.tf, they have to already know about a certain guide or video, in which case they'd paradoxically already know the contents.
I think just a basic aggregate site with some limited searchable tags that compiles all this hidden wealth of info into a more approachable collection would do wonders instead of needing to know a guy who knows a video. Some of the vids posted here are ones that I didn't even know existed even as an established player so even though the info they have is way better than anything I could've passed off to a beginner myself, I couldn't have even recommended them, let alone learn from them myself.

a lot of people are really, really ignoring the massive hole that prevents new players from playing a lot which is in the fact that there exist either extremely few or extremely hard to find (or more often both of those things) places to play 6v6 without actually being on a team already and getting scrims and playing matches. other competitive games survive because they have a place you can go to instantly play a victory focused, competitive match (most often in the form of an in-game ranked queue) but if you dont have your ear to the ground in the TF2 community to find the little hidey hole discord where people play open level pugs, you'll literally never get to play unless you find a team. practice is the most valuable learning tool of all and i'd argue its easily the most scarce for a player who isn't main+

this game's competitive scene desperately needed an on demand matchmaking system that's standard in competitive videogames since the late 2000s and when the developers finally got around to adding one about five years too late, it turned out to be hands down the worst ranked mm system of all time

tf2's comp scene will remain niche unless by some miracle we get a 3rd party to do it better than valve did, the way csgo has faceit/esea running their own mm parallel to the dogshit official mm

i think this kind of goes unspoken for good reason. it's not that people are forgetting this but we're literally never getting anything better so why not focus on what can actually be changed?

rgl is in such an easy position to make some sort of mix service that uses your included RGL performance to auto balance pugs and just play all day and its just not here yet

i think shorter videos, like the ones shounic makes would be better for new comp players. i don't think many new players who are unsure about whether they want to play comp want to watch a 40 minute unedited video about a single aspect of 6s

also a video like this would work perfectly: someone explaining passionately the storyline of a tournament to an outsider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyEAeWKqX-0 .

The storyline of the split of froyo and the competitive top 3 was super compelling last season, and the old/new generation thing. There are so many epic stories untold/undocumented in this game...

I would put in some money as a sort of bounty to make content like this (any of the suggestions above).. A little crude but I don't have the time/knowledge to make any of them.

This is why grape juice's line-theory video is so good, we need like 10 more of these explaining other fundamentals.