If you do nothing else, at least give this man some frags. He could have been out chin wagging/eating Twiglets/having a round with some mates/blokes/chaps/chums/lads or snogging some girl(bird? lass? I have no idea) but instead he penned a 2,000 word essay for us duffers/pillocks/berks. Let's honour his sacrifice and dedication with frags, extra "u"s, poorly used British slang, and perhaps even some feedback.

I guess I'll start.

Excellent article. Or as they say in my neck of the woods, "wicked awesome article". And let me just mention (because I suspect it was a pain for you to do) - beautiful formatting. Also, I'm going to choose to believe that your article title was an homage to my UGC "Let's Talk About Lower Platinum" thread which was sadly killed before its time earlier this week. Fair warning, I'm going to continue believing this even if you tell me otherwise.

I have to wonder if it is really just ETF2L 6's that is seeing a decline. Keeping strictly to the Euro end of things, ETF2L HL seems to have seen fewer team signups over the last few seasons...and then there is the struggling UGC Euro divisions. However, is it possible that there are the same number of players (or more) in competitive TF2 but they are simply spread out amongst too many leagues? ETF2L HL & 6s, UGC HL & 6s, Wireplay HL & 6s, ESEA, and CEVO are all targeting mostly the same pool of people. What's more, each league’s scheduling is not always compatible with the scheduling of the other leagues, which forces people to pick and choose more so than they might otherwise do.

Whatever the case, you are absolutely correct in that the competitive community can not survive without new players. Like a lot of highlander players, my introduction to comp TF2 came from ETF2L's Highlander Challenge, and I hope the Highlander Open is able to generate similar interest in players unfamiliar with competitive TF2. It’s not a solution, but I think it's part of one.

Anyway, that's my two cents/two-penn'orth.

Great article. I think you hit the nail on the head by stating that while we may have been seeing a LOT of superstars leave the game recently, the "average" sixes player is WAY better than a year or two ago. The same phenomenon seems to be happening here in NA as well.

i laughed at the mge versus mike part

Sad that Awsomniac won't be playing next season but will be fun to see the Russians take on the best. Should be a close season.

I haven't been around competitive gaming / eSports for long enough, nor will I pretend to have been around since the beginning of time, but isn't this just the circle of life? Players come and go all the time -- I'm just impressed that we have built a community that cares about the game as much as it does, is willing to put time and effort into building and growing the scene for a 6+ year old game, and keeps the scene going season after season. We've done much better than most games could ever hope for.

I wouldn't overthink things -- after all, talent has left the game in the past, and it will continue to do so as the old guard moves on and new players move up the ranks.

TF2 is dead, all aboard the CS:GO train.

Choo choo!

I mentioned this is Fully Charged on sunday, we seem to be at the point now where we have all the tools that we could ask for to create high quality content and really get EU TF2 going, other games don't have such luxury of logs.tf, Gentleman Jon being a wizard with his spectate tools and other things to our disposal, however, we now seem to lack enough top quality TF2 to go with this.

It's like getting a £5000 kitchen fitted to make beans on toast every day.

What's wrong with that? Just call it 'M&S Luxury Purple Edition Beans Dripping In Rich Sauce Blanketing Perfectly Crunchy, But Not Burnt, Toasted Bread'.

Casters and spec plugins can only call mediocre plays and matches "amazing" and "fantastic" so many times before people get bored.

Prem this season is dismal, it's really really weak, probably the weakest I remember it. And to be honest your team isn't helping either, having a HL team basically in prem, out of the blue, without having to prove themselves, with a pyro main as a prem medic only adds insult to injury. Nothing against him obviously, but this detracts a lot from the "prestige" or "status" prem used to have. A few seasons ago, one team like yours would struggle in div1 or even div2.

But not everything is bad, I have talked with a lot of people in the recent weeks, and I have come to the conclusion that we can take this as a blessing in disguise. Sometimes you need to take 1 step back to take 2 steps forward. If the community plays their cards right, we will have a wave of fresh upcoming talent showcasing in prem/div1, particularly this season, but much of it will stick for more seasons, and I think thats a great thing. As slin mentioned, I think this is part of a natural cycle, players leave, quit, have a break, whatever it is, life goes on, and so does prem, someone will have to replace them, while that will cause a bit of a "dark age" for eu tf2, I think in the long run it will be beneficial for us.

Eu tf2 is not stagnated, etf2l itself is stagnated, take a look at zoob logs.tf thread and check the unique players statistics and weekly/monthly players since i49, and you will see it's steadily increasing, tf2 is a f2p game, so there is always going to be an influx of new players, whether or not they are converted to the competitive format thats another story. But you still have the competitive community steadily increasing according to zoob's stats.

What we can't afford is to lose the hype, I have been so detached this past 2 seasons, I don't even watch the streams anymore when I used to love them. This is because there is really no interest. There's no hype, no epic rivalries broder vs epsilon vs crackclan, I don't feel like supporting any team in prem. And thats a bad sign. You need people to get interested and attached to it, start supporting teams. And how will that happen? First, have stable teams (that dont fold after 1 season), teams with good players, interviews so you can get to know the teams and players, more preview articles, etc etc... Eventually people will grow to love some prem team and feel attached to it. And it will increase stream viewers as well. VanillaTV dying was also not very good for us, but I am glad it is coming back.

Honestly, I think this season is going to be horrible, both prem and div1 are a given basically, lego and epsilon are gonna wreck their way into first place imo. Im not even sure which div is more of a joke, but the skill level has dropped significantly in both. But I hope the community plays their cards right as I said and next season has the potential to be one of the best of eu tf2. Also let me add that historically the season before summer is always the worst season of the year, and the winter season is historically the best one, so I have no doubt things will improve next season, and I hope we can finally invert this signups decline we have been seeing.

Also I wouldn't count on an international iseries this year, nothing was started yet and the americans seem too focused on their own community lan to even bother with it, which is a shame but oh well.

You did a great job with this article, its more and more content like this we need for eu tf2. I wish I could help a bit more in this department, but my projects already consume so much of my time so its not feasible for me.

By the way Hildreth you got kiler's name wrong, like horribly wrong, I don't know where you got that 4 from but its kileR4fuNN. Also isn't it stefan instead of stefen? Other than that great article.

people still talk about those oldschool players but they all chose to not come back to tf2

i didn't even plan to play this season but prem division looks so disgustingly bad that i felt i kinda have to make something happen, but then you hit a brick wall really. The amount of top level players decreased so heavily in the last 1.5 years that it is impossible to have like 3-4 top teams, teams become top teams by default now ....

It's not a bad thing, it gives room for new talent to move up.

Prem has been the same players in different configurations for a while now because no one ever quits this game. So imo this is a nice change, hopefully we'll see upcoming talent bring new play styles and a fresh perspective to the scene. This is definitely not the end, 6s needs something much bigger than just a few top players quitting to kill it. Top players have been leaving the scene for ages (some are mentioned in the article - Haza, Rebeli, Hymzi, Hocz, Jh, Shintaz, Cube, Agron, Darn, Exfane to name a few) but 6s doesn't die, it evolves.

Season 15 was shit.

6s doesnt really evolve the skilllevel just drops heavily and divisions get filled with lower division teams

also season 13-15 were quite good tbh always roughly 4 teams battleling it out with epsi being ahead for first spot

Just wait for the csgolounge-like website to get finished.

Not as easy as that, there has been VERY little new talent moving up and actually being worth anything, I think the most recent examples are probably Shadowburn & fl1p. There is quite a bit of dead weight in div1/prem where people have been able to get in a team around that level without actually improving or trying to improve.

Not sure why people have to continue to throw out "game is dead". I say play what you love. If that is tf2, cs:go, super mario brothers, etc. Just game on. (And dont forget to support as meany leagues as you can handle.) :)

You're right about the skill level dropping, but I believe it only applies to prem and will only be shit for 1 season. The summer season is always the worst because people have exams and then want to go on holiday instead of playing TF2. But I think prem will start to look like a new, different and potentially better beast in S19, some div 1 teams will have had a chance to prove themselves and some prem players will return.

There are some really motivated players that have been hovering around d2 and d3 for a while now because there is no room to move up. The average skill level of the whole ETF2L scene has been constantly increasing, I've played 3 seasons in div 3 now and the competition was better every time. Prem may be shit this season, but the rest of the scene is a step above what it was last season.

In my opinion Shadowburn and fl1p are really interesting players, because not only have they improved every season, but they've improved at a much faster rate than everybody else - they really are the definition of upcoming talent.

I think there are players who have been improving (especially in div 1), just not at a fast enough rate to become stand out players and be let into prem - so instead they're in div 1 doing it the old fashioned way trying to beat everyone else in their division. I honestly think LEGO will finish mid d1 this season.

What I'm trying to get to is that people are confusing fewer good teams in prem and d1 as a sign the whole scene is shit. But actually the top teams in d1 and prem are no worse than in the past, it's only some mid/low d1 and prem teams that contain the dead weight.

Consider this. You are a div 4/5 player. You admire the people in prem and want to be as good as them.
Now you are a div 2 player, you've been practicing and you think your pretty good. all the old prem players who you used to admire have left the game and the old div 2 players have moved up. in your opinion the skill level in prem has decreased because no one is as good as those old player you used to admire.

You are now prem. A few old players aside, the people you started playing tf2 with are all the prem players. Has the skill level decreased or has your perception of it not changed? You still see yourself as not being as good as the old-school players that you admired and looked up to therefore anyone who is below you is automatically not as good as those players. in your opinion the skill level has decreased.

In actuality we have no way of measuring this because while players have made their return they arent the same as they were back then.
The top team now will never play the top team from 15 season ago. you cannot measure skill level it is all based on perception.

I have never posted on these forums before cause I'm a pubber, but I feel like I might have something to add here.

I stared playing tf2 last summer and found out about competitive through Cube's frag movie "Prem" and eXtv's i46 Documentary around the winter. I was really really intrigued, I had never seen the concept of "e-sport" before. When ETF2L S16 came around Admirable wrote his article about all the old and new teams and I started really feeling the hype Kaneco described. As a soldier I really like Tek and Tmac being such a dm-heavy soldier duo (hell, I started mge'ing when I had 100 hours into this game, dm is fun) and I rooted for Awesomniacs all season. And dayum they delivered, the playoffs vs Dotter and TLR were really good (to my newbie standards at least).

What I'm trying to say is that Kaneco is right: the hype is crucial. I don't know who to support next season, I don't even know if I should be watching based on these posts I keep reading.

Did I say I had something to add? Meh, I tried.

I just want this scene to survive so I have the time to practice and kick all your asses in 2017 prem.

I also think that something like csgolounge would incredibly benefit the community both, US and EU alike. Stream numbers would increase even more, and people would grow attached to teams easier when theres money or at least some value on the line.

I really hope it gets done. But I don't think cherry alone can do it all.

What you saying is very true, your perception of it changes a lot. I played last season on div3 and I was thinking the whole time how the level dropped, where any of those teams I played last season on div3 would have got wrecked in any other sesason's div3, but its a lot due to your own perception, and tbh the skill level even tends to increase over time as the metagame gets more refined and "studied"

Having said this, you still can't deny the skill level for prem/d1 has dropped a lot when there is a 7 team prem, with 2 teams from div1 and 2 teams that didnt prove anything (saints + lazy pandas). And when there is a div1 where all the teams there but lego were div2 teams last season. Thats 7/8 teams in div1 that were div2 last season. And one of them was actually div3 (K-RNAGE) altough they changed their roster a bit

just look at kaidus he played in top teams for the past i dunno 10 seasons or something and he will tell you that the skilllevel dropped alot, there used to be way more top teams than there are now and thats just a fact

Its all very good that people can point out the problems with tf2 but there is a massive lack of people actually doing something. No one can be fucked to do anything of real progress in eu tf2, like barely anyone can be bothered to take charge and form a team and build it up to the top level. in eu tf2 people ride on their reputation way to much and never work towards actually getting better.

IMO tf2 needs more stable and long-term teams to build hype around matches. Atleast i've lost all my interest to follow prem just for the reason most of the teams are mix teams that will barely stay together for a season.

This is troubling for me, even more so that other people are sharing this sentiment, because the last two seasons have featured the most extensive, in-depth coverage of any seasons I can remember between Gentleman Jon's ridiculously impressive word count exploring the depths of TF2 stats and TFTV covering every Premiership game going... with the majority of those casts featuring post game interviews. We have also seen more top European players streaming than ever. An incredible ZOWIE invitational just before Season 17. Extensive Previews. Gossip updates. Awards shows. DavidTheWin writing a series of weekly reports. WARHURYEAH even has a blog!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs

The scene definitely needs more characters, drama and rivalries; those things tend to sprout from serious competition, but do the players care enough to make things interesting?

Am I the only one who doesn't think it's that bad? Bottom of prem is always shit compared to the top anyway, the fact it's slightly more shit than usual isn't actually going to have a significant impact on how interesting prem is to watch. If you look at logs you'll see there's actually decent games going on between a soon to be established top 3 with the potential to expand to a top 4, and that's pretty much the way it's always been. Do you even remember who was in the bottom of prem when it was epsi/bro/cc/skidmark in the top 4? It's definitely not as strong as this time last year, but that was truly the fucking golden age of EU TF2 the like of which has never been seen before nor will be seen after. It's what all seasons will be compared to, but falling short isn't the sign that the apocalypse is here. 7 teams sucks but hopefully there'll still be an 8th, but if not we can just pretend that there was an extra russian team that folded before things got started and it's like 90% of other prem seasons, right?

The only reason div1 looks that bad is because you don't recognise the same cornerstones of mediocrity (did i stutter, autobots, whatever CXs team was called, etc) you've seen the past 3 seasons who's existance in this game was only valuable insofar as it brought familiarity to division 1. We've turned a corner where there are now legitimate, passionate teams filling these spots with the potential to benefit and improve from the experience playing against ex prem players in division 1. It's not gonna be a walk in the park for lego, I guarantee phase + cplay will be more interesting to watch than the same regurgitated lineups that have plagued div1 the last year or so.

The problem in prem has a name: circlejerk (and if you don't fit in there, even if you are better than some players, you won't be allowed to reach prem unless your team mates step it up, which rarely happens) and that's why we have really good players who are stuck with their bad teams in d2, although they could actually compete at a prem level. And none of the prem teams were willing to give these players a chance (unless your name is HYS, which I think it's the right thing to do, so congrats to him for bringing up so many players)

Actually, I think some of these guys could be actually pretty good, they just need a chance to play in that level and (maybe) some guidance, and they will fit in a week or two, simple as that.

It's not hard to get into the "prem circle jerk". We dblmix 4 or 5 nights a week and are constantly looking for more people to get involved (i'm not joking, after 2-3 maps we literally sit for 20 minutes ready to accept ANYONE that wants to play tf2 so we can get another game started), the only requirement for which is be vaguely decent/not awful and not a cunt.

how can you even say something like this when there isn't even 8 teams to fill prem. Or, are you trying to say that the "circlejerk" is preventing the addition of an extra team?