Because there is little incentive for people to take TF2 as seriously as the other "big pro games".

EDIT: hey you answered it yourself!

It's hard to motivate yourself to play because of what yuki said, especially when you are losing really badly. And with some pretty massive skill gaps between top of open and bottom of open, top of IM and bottom IM, etc, its very easy to see your team being in an unwinnable position and give up.

tf2 is not a main priority

It is actually kind of unfortunate, because you are right. There is rarely consistent teams between seasons, or even during season, for people to get together and root for. Aside from HRG and vector, I think every team is very different from last season, and even Vector has had its changes.

However the other people in this thread are right. In those larger Esports, a lot of the top players play the game as a job. Many of them live in team houses, and in a sense are forced to continue playing together as co-workers, unlike TF2 in which a lot of people just play with their friends.

For some reason I feel like EU scene is more consistent or am I wrong?
Anyway, we have this site, streams, YouTube channels - all stuff to spread TF2 into masses, and it is done very well and professional. The quality (and quantity) of TF2 support materials is really good. Is not it strange that we have dedicated "frame" but not a "picture"? Some actions to push players in right direction? Or the only thing we can do is to wait for Valve official support?

a) Skidmark Central
b) i dont understand
3) valve will not support stop please for the love of god

The game just doesn't appeal to the masses as an "ESport". It's just a "hat simulator", "cartoon game", "casual fest" to 80+% of the player-base.

As much as I hate to say it, that's the truth. The competitive scene can, and probably will, slowly but steadily grow, but there probably will not be any big competitions or surges of players in its lifetime.

Pains me to say that as I love the game and sought out the competitive scene in early '08, and have been playing since I bought it ('07).

Not only what I've said above, but it also doesn't help that, in general, it's fairly difficult to understand what's going on in TF2 when watching a pro game for the first time, especially the intricate things that happen during phase-play (timing by scouts to come in to help post uber, clutch uber flashes mid-fight, etc). Kinda harder to follow opposed to CS, where it's just 5 guys sitting around for half a game until one of them pushes, then it resets to the next round. To be fair, FPS's have pretty much gone out of favor, with the previous mention of CS:GO being the only notable exception.

EU scene has maybe two(?) teams that have been consistent for a few seasons, but the fact remains that it's hard to stay interested in TF2 for a long period of time as a comp player. Look at iM (our team in Australia). We've been practically at the top for our lifespan (3+ years), it's no wonder we've gone through 10+ other players in our lifetime.

tl;dr I love TF2 as much as any other - but it won't get the comp following that we think it deserves

tl;dr pt 2 - need another good arena shooter or something. pls

in esea tf2 has had 70 player transactions in the past week

csgo has had 300

ya csgo is bigger but the teams are definitely volatile and csgo invite has been hsaken up pretty heavily as well

Courtesy of "ilike2slin" from Fully Charged EU yesterday.

1) Be a medic main. Don't drop ubers, give heals.
2) Get 5 good teammates.
3) Attempt to play a season.
4) Cut and persuade your way into Prem/equivalent/the top.
5) Win?
6) ???
7) Profit!

In all seriousness, people in this game really want to win. The mix^ vs b4nny's team rivalry has been going on for SEASONS. So many teams in IM especially (even playoff teams) die and reform because people want to be the very best. There's little incentive to WAIT for a team to grow. I don't think this is prevalent, but, some people probably think they're way better than they actually are (and thus they look upwards for rosters to join).

Haha, I watch CSGO and don't understand. Eco rounds and money and when to buy what. Granted I've played 2 competitive matches, and watched maybe 2 youtube videos, but still.

i'm confused, do you think it is because of the volatile rosters that TF2 is not as popular as League of legends or Starcraft? If that is so I think you need to reevaluate the differences between the scenes.

Honestly, I think it has something to do with our format.

Whereas in other e-sports, you're a player on a team locked into a contract, who then plays in various events, they aren't something that stringently resembles a "season" and if they do generally the roster carries several different players who show up from time to time.

In TF2, Winning teams are given like 2-3 weeks to build rosters, and after 4-5 weeks you start cutting off the limbs that didn't grow properly, it's just the way things have to be done, because you never know if somebody is going to work out for your team until you play for a few weeks together, and if it's bad, you cut them, or they depart because they don't like the situation or you do the worst possible thing, and just tough it out because you want to be a nice person, and you all develop terrible habits and bad feelings towards the person(s) that are suspected of dragging you down.

im pretty sure this mostly happens because theres still a huge gap between making IM playoffs and having a competitive/successful invite season

most of the time theses IM playoff teams have scrimmed invite teams a handful of times and know that its going to be a pretty steep uphill battle to get on their level, and they want to have 6 players they know they can depend on to be dedicated and ready to basically lose 5 nights a week in order to get better

while true to an extent, many of the roster mixups (god) at the higher levels happen because players simply lose interest at the end of a season. if there were millions on the line this would be obviously not be the case.

a few off the top of my head:

x6 season 8 -> 9, mixup season 10 -> 11, mixup season 12 -> 13

from what I understand, the top players in both dota and SC actually manage to make a living off of gaming? And the top teams sponsor them?

Contrasted with tf2, the top teams in tf2 have other stuff going on in their lives that takes priority to video games. Plus they don't have that motivation that hundreds of thousands of dollars provides.

Also, the way the game is, two very competent players can be incompatible with each other on a very fundamental level. So you could have a "dream team" in theory, but in reality the chemistry isn't there so people leave.

that didn't work

Yeah, obviously what I said doesn't apply for every case, and interest definitely takes a huge part of it when there are 6 players that need to contribute to make a team. Out of those who DON'T lose interest want to stay competitive, and roster changes are going to be a part of that.

@ m, yep, that's what I meant. I didn't state it clearly.

I'm not even close to authority on this subject, but that's just what I've seen from my short time.

EDIT: I will add, I wanted to comment because I love theorizing rosters and following that kind of stuff. My equivalent of gossip, I guess. :)

the way I see it is that in this game your play is sooooooooooooo dependent of your teammates, that it gets way more frustrating than in any other game.

you can't do well as a demoman if you hit 4/4 pipes but your scouts are doing 0dpm and not cleaning up anything, or if your team is not protecting you at all. you can't pocket well if your medic drops you every time, or pops early or w/e. you can't clean up as scout if all your heavies aren't damaging anything. you don't even have fun as medic if your teammates are failing over and over.

this makes it an extremely frustrating game when you're failing and it's easy to get angry or disappointed with someone on your team because you start thinking they're not doing their job

I don't know about LoL or DOTA, but every match of SC is always 1v1 so you can't measure your efforts against one of your teammates' but rather measure him against his opponent. Also in CS a single player could hit every single shot that he fires as a headshot and win a round by himself by killing the whole enemy team (not saying that it happens often, just saying the mechanics of the game allows it), so when you lose a round, is it because one of your teammates didn't do his job or is it because you didn't hit enough headshots?

I think this stems from and contributes to the larger problem that people just can't compete with the top invite teams. A team gets formed in open, sticks together (maybe swapping bad/annoying players for MGE allstars) through IM, and works up to invite. Then, they soon learn that they have no chance of making LAN because they're never experienced this level of play before. They get upset, they start blaming/doubting each other, they have a growing feeling of futility that demotivates them and creates a cycle that spirals to the point where they give up on improving and break up. Because of this, teams don't stay together long enough to get up to that top level where they can compete with Tri Hards and HRG. AG is an exception, they're been working hard and they've definitely been making names for themselves. Another season together will probably put them among the standard invite players who are/will be always in the div that you just expect to see on a LAN contending roster (like clockwork, b4nny, plat, etc.). Vector is also an exception. They'll get better if they stick together too, but their improvement has perhaps been a bit slower.

This problem is much much bigger in europe. Casters treat any matches between broder/cc/epsilon and anyone else as a pointless technicality, only slowing down epsilon from taking the championship. Everyone knows how it's going to end and the lower teams just don't seem to believe that they'll ever beat the top 3. That is absolutely the wrong mentality (as someone from Fully Charged Europe said the other day).

TL;DR teams will keep getting upset and quit before they become good enough to make LAN, and this prevents teams from ever competing with the current top of invite, allowing the gap to grow bigger and bigger and making the problem worse every season.

I'm probably making things out to be worse than they are, but TBH I'm getting sick of people saying things like "well, it's HRG/Epsilon. we all knew this would be a roll" or "well, yeah, he's good, but, come on, he's no b4nny." Stop treating the top teams like unstoppable forces and they will become stoppable. The only advantage they have is they've stuck together longer. So quit cutting and get used to the teammates you've got. You're in the same div as them. You really shouldn't be if you're going to chalk up every match against them as a loss before it happens.

I don't really agree with a few of these points. I don't think players care if they're gonna make invite (except for a select few)/playoffs or not, they just wanna have fun, and by the time they get to invite from open (at least 2, most likely 3+ season), they have played their "main class" for so many hours that it gets boring, the game itself gets boring, or important players just have to leave for other reasons. While a team will get better as they play together, there's a limit to how much an individual or a team can improve, not to mention how dedicated or focused they are on getting better.

tl;dr teams aren't getting upset and quitting because they arent making lan, they're getting bored or other priorities are coming forward and they can't dedicate the time they once/never did to the game in order to compete with the current level

HRG was an entirely new team last season with the exception of b4nny cyzer and shade. the other 3 members had not played together before hand (except maybe shrugger and lansky the season before??? someone confirm pls). it has nothing to do with how long a team has been together, its how hard they want to win that really matters.

Yeah, I could see that. I personally don't like the idea that it's impossible for a team to become as good as HRG through practice, and it's impossible to prove that to be the case, but I realize it would probably be too much work to be worth it for the vast majority of people. That could enter the topic of prize pool and size of our competitive scene, etc. but it's not going to grow and become profitable until every Invite team is in it to win it IMO. The question I would ask however is: This is b4nny's 11th season in Invite on demo, right? So why hasn't he gotten bored of it? Cyzer, Platinum, Harbleu, enigma, etc. have been in Invite on one, maybe two, classes for years, and they don't seem to get bored of it. Is that the secret to their success? The ability to enjoy the game long enough to get good enough?

The individual players of HRG all appear to take this game more seriously than anyone else. Since season 12's LAN these guys have been scrimming a TON with each other, and it's added up to unmatched team coordination. They've been together for just 2 seasons, but they've played hundreds of matches together and have grown very very used to each other's abilities and style (and the only team with more experience in invite than them is Mix^). Correct me if I'm being naive, but I don't get the impression that any other team plays together as much as they do.