Damn that hurts. :\

I wish pugs and stuff still happened. Seems like a lot of it is through in-house pugs. Did ESEA pugs ever kick off?

people tried esea pugs for 2 weeks and then got bored

While I agree with that to an extent, I believe it's also fair to say that it's not as big of a competitive game as it could be because the majority of TF2 players do not like/enjoy the 6v6 structure and do not want anything to do with it. If Valve were to start supporting it more, it'd definitely help, but it wouldn't necessarily encourage these people to change their minds.

Just fyi, ETF2L last HL and 6v6 season had increased numbers compared to the previous ones (6v6 season for example had 296 teams). TF2Pickup is averaging something like 800 pickups a month, etc..

American scene is in a dire situation because you got 3 leagues for such a small playerbase, 2 of them paid leagues. It only divides the community. How the hell do you sustain that kind of stuff with such a player base? Even esea got rid of main because there was not a big enough player pool.

Regarding the letter he mentioned, I would have hoped it would be an open letter, I mean if Star can make a video and get a patch out a few weeks later, we can hold them to something at least. We have youtube channels with thousands of subs, big community hubs, a lot of power to our reach to get their attention.

We're not gonna get Valve's attention by playing the good quiet boy, I figured by now you guys already are aware of valve structure and how bad they are at communicating with their community if communicating at all. U can complain about reddit all u want but the truth is that the shit they stir and all the tears over on CSGO and Dota subreddits gets them a long way, tons of patches/updates/explanations/etc by Valve were provoked by the community. If you don't hold them to something then you're sure not to have anything your way.

This is valve we are talking about, as much as I love the games they make and their philosophies, their interaction and communication with the community is pretty abysmal.

maybe there should be more support for other game modes then
5v5 AR could work maybe as an in game lobby format
it'd be different but 6s support is never going to happen anyway

plus frag if you've seen this thread at least 10 times before

I came into TF2 after leaving the cod4 scene for 4 years, half being a quickscoper and the rest being a competitive player till I quit. Now coming into the community of TF2, I meet some great people that helped me become a decent player and some that I became great friends with. After struggling to find teams or players to create a team with, my enjoyment for the game was slowly dying and I wanted to find a new game that I found fun and enjoyable. Which was cs go. Either way, out of all the gaming communities I've been in or seen, the TF2 community will always be the nicest community out there. Rather you move onto a new game to play it competitively or not. Stick to what you enjoy the most.

The only bad things I can really think of are ESEA lan not being that great quality and CEVO dying. I think every time an ESEA lan is bad people complain about how terrible the game is/how top teams are stacked/game's dying. I'm not sure why that's being echoed on such a large scale this time around though.

Other than that CEVO dying should, in my opinion, be considered a good thing. It is unfortunate but I'll bet ESEA will have a good season especially if there's focus signing up teams/making everyone know about S18 coming up. I wasn't interested in CEVO but I'm on tf.tv a lot and I wasn't even aware that CEVO signups were almost up. I can't remember seeing one thing about it, and given how late ESEA lan got pushed back I figure that had something to do with people forgetting about CEVO S6. Of course I might've just missed a big thread but I'm pretty sure that's a general feeling shared among a lot of people.

Hell, even Mixup dying isn't really bad. You're not seeing official rosters yet or something like that there are some pretty good teams getting back into invite, and with basically another lan spot up for contention now I really think the top of ESEA should be good this season. I think people forget how close the race for that 4th lan seed was last season with Mad Men in the picture, probably because lan was delayed so long.

TF2 IS DEAD

.

please donate to david "tri" wang

he is now unemployed and on the street

http://i.imgur.com/qiTL9yS.jpg

give UGC a client for cheating and a dedicated staff and watch it grow.

Speaking of CoD4, that game had a bigger NA 5v5 (standard) scene than our 6v6 NA scene with a larger following, and the EU scene was a billion times bigger. You sorta need dev support to get as big as something like CS or DOTA, but you don't necessarily need dev support to get a lot bigger than where we are at, or how big we've been. They also had more sponsors, but I'm not sure how big of an impact sponsors make.

CoD has way more widespread appeal + larger playerbase
a lot of CS players shit on our game for being cartoons for example

Lange, I get how you feel here, I really do. You are mad about CEVO signups, CEVO was kind of your baby last season, you did a lot of work for them. But the reality is that CEVO dropped the ball in a big way last season. For significantly more than half of the season, none of the servers worked, the client didn't work and we ended up playing a ton of games off client, despite not wanting to. But this isn't the problem, this isn't your problem.

You are frustrated, and its easy to see why. You will never get back, financially, what you put into TF2. But that isn't why you started being involved behind the scenes in this community. You started it for the game you loved, for the community you loved, for the people you loved playing with. You spent all those hours because you wanted to, in spite of the expectation that you wouldn't get remuneration for your dedication.

But part of me can't help but be hurt by your words in that video, on a personal level. What you got out of TF2 is a community that believed in what you believed in, a starting point for the career you want so badly. I thoroughly enjoyed every event we were at together, just seeing you do your thing. It is clear you have passion about videogames and broadcasting them. So instead of mourning that TF2 hasn't brought you fame and fortune, rejoice that, at least for a few years, we as a community could make all the hours spent reading, tooling, staying awake, travelling across the country, programming, playing, making graphics and herding cats well worth it. Because God Dammit Alex, you love this community.

Maybe this community doesn't have anything left to offer you. In that case, maybe it is time for you to move on. Go forth to the games where there is potential for income, for the life you want to create for yourself. We won't have hard feelings if you move on to greener pastures. But do stick around, throw another Windy City Rendezvous, do the things that made you love this community so much. You are an incredibly talented young man in the prime of his life, don't squander that.

On the topic of valve, we all knew a long time ago that the support we would get from them would be minimal at best. We need to stop expecting it from them. We are saying the game is dead, the game is in decline and, maybe from a numbers standpoint that is true. But this year we had 6 major tournaments (3 ESEA LANs, an iseries and two at GXL), reached more eyeballs than ever before and made enormous strides in everything from stream production quality to server side plugins to teamfortress.tv itself. We didn't do that with valve, we did that with ourselves and the incredibly talented and industrious individuals that make this community what it is.

So what we need to learn from that is FUCK VALVE. We got this. Will we ever be playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars in front of a huge audience? No. Reality check time: it wont happen. But we can attract new people to this community, work hard at spreading the good word of TF2. We have a marketing problem, we need a marketing solution. Let's cultivate a community that we want to live in.

People are still coming to play comp
There is a tons of new div6/div5 teams with people who are new to this game
the game itself will live a long time, i hope so at least.
Tf2 looks dead for people (a lot of people to be honest) only because of the community
what are you expecting, if everyone saying that the game "died long time ago"
LIVE LONG, TEAM FORTRESS.

The mods of cod4 were amazing and I'm glad I played some of the best ones out there. K3, b3 zombies, promod, and EHD zombies.

tf2 will not die until i reach invite wtf

I think the boom of CS:GO was really the knife in the coffin — not just the natural sifting of players and potential players away from the scene — but for any hope of outside support to further legitimize the game as an e-sport. In the FPS dearth of the last few years where Quake was continuing to fade and CS was segmented by the legacies in 1.6 and the ever aging subordinate Source, TF2 had a chance as a fresh and different shooter that still rewarded and demanded the core skill-sets necessary for a competitive FPS. Many of us saw then the potential and looked to VALVE to raise up a brand new exciting e-sport. Many years later, they have. They just did it with a different game.

In hindsight it really isn't a shock. CS is VALVE's competitive shooter. TF2 was always it's workshop and sandbox. They designed it one way, we played it another. They had certain notions about what it was good for. We saw the competitive potential, and manufactured rules around the game to make it function that way. The competitive 6v6 format, was always a knockoff of comp CS. Six players over five to take advantage of more classes. Gravelpit with it's attack/defend and "sites" was the comp map of choice. As the game grew, the competitive meta evolved, and we saw real talents carve out a unique competitive experience for an FPS. In that way TF2 was always sort of caught between being something very fresh and charming, and a forced version of a more raw competitive shooter.

Highlander thought it had the answer, but the game bogs down at the 9v9 level, and much of the meta-game which makes 6v6 so entertaining at it's best is lost, or — by necessity — simplified with addition of more classes. Really this isn't a surprise either, and it seems to me VALVE's understanding of the game. "Of course it bogs down." They might say. It's a pub game. VALVE's actions seem to have always supported this stance.

I believe VALVE being a generally stand-up company, they tolerated the 6v6 scene, they even threw us some bones, like that huge competitive update we had that put customizable cross-hairs and the like in the game, or the first private beta attempt where the 6v6 comp scene was supposed to help balance the game. It seems clear however, they were always honest about how they truly felt about the game. But I am disappointed to learn that they haven't even responded to that email.

Now all of this has the potential to shift with a competitive matchmaking system, which might rejuvenate the comp scene with interest from the pub scene . . . but that is a lot of ifs. Not beyond the realm of reason, but unlikely.

Do I think the game is dead as a comp shooter? No. But I do think its best days are behind it.

Prove us wrong, Valve. (buff the classic)

See you all in CS:GO/Overwatch

Here's some calculations of how many teams we had in ESEA, CEVO, and UGC, and how many combined. Keep in mind that this doesn't take into consideration overlap between leagues so there's at least some inflation here. This means the total number of teams is actually lower. Also, it does not account for dead teams, but that was an issue even when we were in better shape. I included UGC as it gives a picture of what our pool of potential new ESEA players we have.

ESEA S15 had 85 teams. CEVO S3 (just prior to the paid league) had 34 teams. UGC S14 had 264 (!) teams, so that's 383 teams total. ESEA + CEVO was 119 teams.

ESEA S16 had 62 teams, which is a pretty steep dropoff from S15. However, CEVO's paid S4 had 126 teams and UGC S15 had 306 (!!) teams, giving us a total of 494 teams. ESEA + CEVO was 188 teams.

ESEA S17 had 63 teams, CEVO S5 had 103 teams, and UGC S16 (still in playoffs) has 243 teams. This gives us a total of 409 teams. ESEA + CEVO was 166 teams.

In addition, GXL had 25 teams. Not sure how this compares to other LANs, but it's definitely the biggest NA LAN we've ever had since at least 2012.

CEVO S6 was cancelled due to a low registration rate (as Lange pointed out). ESEA S18 currently has 47 teams, and none of them ready (it's still very early in registration though); this also includes mix^ and other dead teams since there's the chance their roster is used to form a new team. UGC S16 playoffs are still going on so we won't hear about their S17 for another month or two.

If ESEA does not even reach 63 teams, then TF2 is probably on the path to a quick death. If we have even just 85 teams in ESEA, then I'd say we can at least hold on for a little longer. If we can keep the UGC team numbers up and actually get these people over to ESEA, we could end up with a new age. However, with mix^ dying and the recent update, I'm not sure if anyone outside of our community will be able to take comp TF2 seriously.

I'll stick around the community for as long as it's still around, but I don't know if I'd become active again. If I can get my schoolwork organized so I have time, then I might be able to stream matches assuming we can get the 45/5 plan from AT&T since my parents are cutting TV out to save money (our only other option for Internet is Comcast which my dad will never get again).

^ CEVO TF2 is dead. We're back to 1 paid and 1 free league. We may still see a drop in players. To be honest, if we just want to play TF2 competitively for fun, then we might as well just drop ESEA and 100% commit to UGC or ETF2L. There's no need for a LAN that only four teams can participate in unless we want exposure.

This this this.

I feel the ESEA-CEVO split caused a lot more harm than people realize, and it really hurts me to say it knowing how much time TheFragile, Lange, Nahanni and countless others put into it to make it happen. The split separated our small communities into even smaller communities. Neither league was really as competitive as it would have been if one just died and the other survived.

Some numbers (ESEA Season on left, number of teams across all TF2 divisions on right):

S10 | 68
S11 | 83
S12 | 68
S13 | 89
S14 | 102
S15 | 85
S16 | 52
S17 | 63

S14 was the highest in terms of registration. Shortly before S14 began, the bitcoin fiasco occurred. S15 was when ESEA added the "Main" division to TF2 due to its growth the previous year, and an extra team in invite. The first time TF2 ever had the Main division. A lot of people argued it would make the game more competitively balanced and I'm inclined to agree. With more teams, you need more divisions so that you can play against similarly skilled opponents. Nobody wants to get rolled week after week. Good things are happening, finally TF2 is getting some of the things CS has had for awhile in ESEA. I'm also pretty sure the TF2 prize pot increased substantially to allow the fourth place team to come away with a small profit. It wasn't much, but before this point, every season we'd have LAN fundraisers, similar to our fundraisers for the the i-series LANs, to get 4th, 3rd, and sometimes 2nd and 1st place teams to LAN.

Then CEVO introduces its TF2 division and lots of people switch leagues due to ESEA's lackluster TF2 support. CEVO seemed to be a great, almost community driven league that didn't come with all the stuff we paid for (but didn't use) in ESEA. The downside? It's smaller in scope and potential. A reliable LAN wasn't guaranteed. Even if there were LANs, they wouldn't pay back travel expenses, and it wouldn't be as highly regarded as ESEA for the simple fact that it hasn't been serious competition for ESEA in years. ESEA at this point has an international LAN. People fly from France to play in its LAN event, and we're splitting our numbers with a league that might not even have a LAN every year?

I'm not defending ESEA at all for their lack of support for competitive TF2. There are times when their support has been dodgy at best. However, they have always kept TF2 in their league, even two seasons after the huge dip in numbers shown above. They finally gave us a Main division and a balanced 9 team invite. The very next season we dump all that progress we as a community made in ESEA because they did something really stupid that didn't even affect the TF2 community nearly as much as it did the CS community, which relies heavily on the bitcoin-mining client.

After that season I took a break from TF2, partly forced due to real life, but also partly because I knew how bad it would be in both CEVO and ESEA in terms of numbers. Now CEVO is not having another TF2 season, and I don't blame them with the numbers they got (although starting a season in the middle of the holidays is a questionable business move).

The only thing that I think will keep TF2 alive is if the community realizes that ESEA is the best we got, and we have to stick with it if we want a competitive environment. ESEA LAN generates views, interest, its something to talk about and watch as a community. ESEA pays TFTV's production crew for their work so it doesn't seem like a complete waste of time for them to fly over. They have the best CS players in the world in the same building, and that comes with sponsors, money, and recognition.

We don't have the resources or players to be split between two leagues, and I think CEVO letting TF2 go will reunite the TF2 community again if we're all willing to accept what little we have and make the best of it. We'll see what happens from there.

How many people quit because of split leagues and how many people quit because they were bored of the game? S14 was the last time we didn't have to compete with CSGO or Doter, so the environment was obviously different. Idk how ~50 teams could drop out of the player base completely, that's nearly 300 players who would've had to quit because we decided to switch leagues.

Loss of players is not necessarily my point. A lot of those lost players in ESEA went to CEVO, so the competitive TF2 community did not immediately lose that many players after CEVO opened up.

What did happen was our community was split. Some teams refused to play in ESEA, while others refused to play in CEVO, for various reasons. Our writers were split, our teams were split, overall our collective resources as a community were split. We used to have paid writers on a somewhat highly regarded league website making articles about TF2. Sure, they were a bit silly sometimes and weren't entirely professional, but this at least gives our scene some legitimacy to the outside viewer.

Its been said a thousand times. TF2 is VALVES cash bitch. All they have to do is release some new pixels into a game (unusuals) and they make thousands from it. TF2 was never meant to be competitive more of an experiment on what they could do and what would work. Bloodsire put it perfectly in that the game was designed one way but we played it a different way and valve didn't embrace us they embraced CS. Competitive TF2 will survive as long as a community is there to hold it up (ESEA, ETF2L, Teamfortress.tv, UGC, production teams at LANS etc). As soon as people stop giving blood to these vital organs competitive TF2 will suffocate and will die.

It goes without saying that great thanks is needed to everyone volunteering to keep these supports alive.

THIS

quick question: does anyone from valve read these forums?

I don't think they even read their own.

McJohn does

getting a hold of valve is hard in general tho, especially if ur trying to find out something that isn't related to you getting a refund/not suing them

tf2's glory days are behind it, as a large scale competitive game i dont think it ever really had a shot without valves help. But man the community you guys have is by far the best in any competitive game out there. Theres been a lot of amazing people in this community and as long as you guys keep at it tf2 will never truly "die". It will get smaller and smaller sure, but the people will never really let it die. You guys own and i legit cant say that enough about you guys.

I wouldnt worry about if comp tf2 does or doesnt die, id instead cherish all the awesome people you got to meet and made you wanna play everyday. Thats the real gift of this game

I've spent 4 years of my life playing this silly and amazing game. I've put money into the game and the community. We've raised money for kids with cancer and to send some profesh gamers to EU to kick some EU ass (sorry Europeans I love you) I don't think I could stand to see this game die on such a low note. I've had some of the best experiences of my life through this game hell I got people to sign a can of ravioli at GXL. No matter what happens to this community we need to just make it go out on a higher note IF it has to go. Let's hope it doesn't though at least not now.

#HotLange