I've never really agreed with this viewpoint, people who are interested in competing at tf2 will usually naturally find their way into 6s or highlander at some point. People act like all the pubbers in tf2 are just sitting in their nearest mario kart server saying "Man I wish this game wasn't so random, that it had some structure and that I could play it in a format that was fair and balanced!" when actually most of them are probably thinking "That dude has a flaming gibbous fucking rad!".

Yeah maybe some people who would appreciate it don't find comp tf2 but I highly doubt its even like .1% of the pubber base. The rest either don't care about playing in leagues, aren't passionate enough about the actual game, aren't competitive, whatever. Also just advertising wouldn't be enough you'd also have to create an easy to access non-cancer place for newbs to have fun playing without better players stomping them and calling them shit all game (newb mixes are cool but not nearly as accessible as any of the alternatives).

Fact of the matter is if a person isn't interested enough to spend 5 seconds googling "tf2 competitive" then they probably either aren't very interested in competitive gaming in general or aren't specifically interested in tf2 comp. I get that 6s is different from pubs but everyone who plays tf2 competitively fell in love with the game in pubs and then found comp whether it be from a friend or whatever.

I don't want to be the Jehovah's witness or Mormon of TF2, and I don't like the aspect of actively recruiting people to play 6v6. I don't mind advertising big events, but just generic competitive TF2? That's just desperate. The big games have these huge events, often sponsored by the company that made the game (see LoL, CS:GO, Dota2, HoN, SF, etc). Big events are the things I feel that bring people into a game. Unless you're like SSB where you have way more casual players into the mix and is easy to spectate, you won't be able to host the events that bring people in. Plus this is around the time between Melee and Brawl where you'd normally end up with a CS:S situation that honestly keeps the community at large a bit bigger, even if splintered.

That's why I see TF2 6's will shrink to the small leagues. Highlander is probably going to fine for now though so I guess there's always that competitive part of TF2 (and honestly feels supported by valve much more).

In a lot of ways i agree that we shouldn't be personally advertising but if you get down to technicalities what does valve do for every TI in dota? they reach out and put up ads in the game with the compendiums and shit. If we think of our community as just that then we aren't advertising personally but rather advertising for the community. We have to be our own valve because the real valve doesn't care to back us. there is a thread on reddit for pretty much every match between rival teams or when two really good teams play in games like dota and cs go, where is ours? Its not on reddit it's here where people that don't know about this site can't see it.

And that's basically why TF2's probably not going to grow. The people who can affect the community the most more than likely have jobs and other obligations. To each person, their time is valuable, and I don't see that time of the collective TF2 6's being enough to ever replace even a fraction of a percent of valve with their 3 billion net worth to help the game. I mean look at what Lange has done for the past few years and where we've ultimately ended up at; not very far from where we started 5 years ago. I don't want to stop anybody from trying because if they do have passion they should do it, but I don't think it's right to call people out on not doing it. I don't think you'll find anyone who's played since launch that's not disappointed at valve in some way and disillusioned with the scene.

I don't agree with this at all. I didn't know competive tf2 was a thing until some random dude in a trade server added me. He later realized I played sniper so he asked if I could play a UGC Steel match for him. I still play and love competitive tf2 to this day even though I had no idea it was a thing.

All I can say is from the perspective of a pubber/somebody who doesn't know about comp, it's not like you just know about competitive or wonder if it's a thing. At least a lot of my friends and I at the time didn't. In csgo, however, I'm pretty sure every single player that plays it knows comp csgo of some sense is a thing, given the implemented match making system and updates on the home page about competitive events.

Being a big Highlander player, I am not disappointed at the potential to strengthen the Highlander community and maybe have it taken more seriously. If this is what Valve wants to support, and we want any support at all, accept that fate and help build Highlander.

Sure, the chances of a Highlander LAN are low, but that doesn't stop us from having PUG teams at LANs, or even the core of HL teams coming together to play. With lots of luck, energy, and love, Highlander can succeed.

Assuming 7 people paid up on a roster.

S17 Open: 38 teams * 7 players * ($10 league fee + 3*$7 premium per player) = $8246
S17 IM: 16 teams * 7 players * ($20 league fee + 3*$7 premium per player) = $4592
S17 Invite: 9 teams * 7 players * $60 league fee (free premium for Invite) = $3780

Total revenue (not profit) from TF2 players: $16,618
TF2 prize pot for S17: $16,880
Profit: $-262

Since sponsors probably cover the deficit, ESEA may not be losing money on TF2 based on this model. But even assuming 7 paid players on a roster and everyone pays for 3 months of premium (in reality, most teams will only have 6 paid throughout the season and not everyone will pay for 3 months of premium), they're not really making money off of us. If they dropped TF2, they would just allocate all sponsorship money going into TF2 to CSGO. They really have nothing to lose if they drop us if we keep pulling these kinds of numbers.

It is alllll about money. Sure we can have 100+ people increase their efforts in marketing, just so they feel giddy about themselves. The two things that kill this approach is that it's not efficient and there's no monetary incentive. It would take Valve a few employees maybe a few days to accomplish what the few hundred people people sacrifice weekly. Everyone would eventually tire out (like Lange). Lange spent hours on the infrastructure of everything and thinks Valve fucked him over. He hit a breaking point where didn't think he was fairly rewarded for his time/energy spent on improving the tf2 experience. If the tf2 community raised $2,000 as payment to Lange for his efforts, would he feel different? Probably a bit, but this kind of work is considered charity so that'll never happen. Best case scenario is you get a shoutout like TrukTruk at the end of a match.

Competitive players are probably the most costliest players of any category. New users probably eclipse try hards/competitive players in the steam store purchases. New users are ignorant, it's a new game, they buy random shit, and have tons of fun with no complaints. Competitive players complain and plead Valve to make changes (costs them $$$), and probably don't buy much from the store at all. From a Valve business perspective: fuck competitive players, invest in new users. If you want to change that, time to work with Valve. If Valve commits to suggested changes by competitive players, idk say we'll play some Valve advertisements during i55. Another crazy example? Let's have Valve experience i55. We can raise money to send the topmost Valve tf2 guy to i55 and experience the international LAN setting. We can prob just pay for the flight/hotel, him the food and anything else. Pamper him up, have someone sleep with him (lulz), show him the beauty of 6s. Lobbying 101.

Even b4nny does it partly for money. He wouldn't be streaming as much if it weren't for paid subscribers. Thing is, he treats his subscribers like royalty and is friendly to viewers. He's literally a business tf2 player, and good for him because he loves it. But he's also looking to switch games to a larger user base... because money.

My point was that if you like the game and play decently often you will eventually find out about competitive and probably wanna play it. I hop in pubs and see people talk about esea/ugc/cevo highlander 6s all the time, and you and I are both clearly examples of how you will find out about competitive play if you are interested in the game. It wasn't that somehow people are imbued with the knowledge of 6's, although I guess I worded that a little oddly so yeah. I also wasn't saying don't tell people about competitive, I was just saying that I think going into random pubs and literally advertising competitive isn't going to make people any less or more likely to join since eventually if you play the game long enough and you dont have chat disabled and steam friends turned off you almost definitely will find out about competitive play. We may be a small community but we're a pretty loud one and we're not so small that its uncommon to find competitive players in servers lol.

EDIT: I was introduced to competitive through a pub community, and i'd wager that pub communities are only more knowledgable about that sorta thing with the prevalence of highlander. I guess my point is that I dont think that its a very substantial percentage of the community that would love to play competitive 6s but just doesn't know about it, its much more likely that people know about it even if they only know that it exists but aren't interested for whatever reason. I'm also not saying that there dont exist people who would like 6s or hl but don't know about it, juts that the percentage of those people is pretty low. Unless you play for like a week and then decide you dont like the game or whatever and never really get interested in the game for the SPECIFIC REASONS that would make competitive play ideal to you, chances are you will find out about competitive through friends or communities or shit even a valve post about highlander or whatever. I just think that people overestimate the number of people who want comp and dont know about it and underestimate the number of people that could give less of a shit about competitive and just want to trade sparkly hats.

It's actually "compensated" instead of "coveted", but yeah, awesome work there :)

http://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/2oxg4t/counterstrike_global_offensive_update_for_121014/

These are the kinds of updates CS:GO gets.

to be fair that cz nerf is kind of overkill
theyve been buffing the other pistols trying to make them as good as cz and then they just SLAM the cz into the ground
valve is not very good at balancing

wow dota stickers?

ded

Sorry for a post 7 pages in that is solely reflecting on the original YouTube link, but that's what I'm doing.

Having been one of these guys that poured a great deal into competitive TF2 and then burned out, I'm sorry to see others reach that point. I'll be the first to say what I did in TF2's youth is dwarfed to the nth degree by what Lange (and eXtine, and enigma, and so many more) have done and continue to do - but for whatever my small role was, it still sucks to see others push so hard for something and eventually come to realize it's not going to be what you wanted, as I did.

TF2 will never be what Dota 2 is, or what even CS:GO is, or SC2, and so on. More than anything, I feel like TF2 was a victim of the times... so many companies had much greater budgets for the niche PR market that is competitive video games pre-2008 (ie. the recession), and had this game existed in 2003, who knows... maybe a CPL TF2 tournament (or whatever the equivalence) could have existed. But it's not to be.

Who knows what the landscape will be when TF3 rolls around (which, knowing video game company's propensity for sequels, is bound to happen), but Lange's view on what Team Fortress is in its current incarnation is right on the money. And that's a hard pill to swallow.

Pre-flame edit: And yes I realized most people posting here have no clue who the fuck I anymore, and I will quietly disappear again.

Fear of a community backlash.

Which makes no sense because it voices exactly the community concerns and aspirations.

I would get the "we don't wanna put them in a tough spot" excuse, because it comes off kinda in a "take it or leave it" tone. but I dont really get that first excuse.

The reaction from various people who signed or didn't want to sign was presumably enough to convince the decision makers otherwise.

I didn't get to see any bad reactions from the people asked, actually I think virtually everyone active in the community was represented there, save for some exceptions.

What would be the reasons to sign a letter like that and then not want it to be public? It's a fact based re-tell of a story we know all too well.

When I signed it I was under the impression it was gonna be an open letter, actually, that was one of the main reasons I signed it for, because if it didn't create any fuss around it I knew it wouldn't really be effective or even worth doing, I even offered to "advertise" it on our site/youtube channel when and if they decided to make it public, but that never happened obviously

There wasn't anything too backslash really, we didn't even say what did we want to achieve with this discussion as far as I remember, so there was no room for disagreement. Anyone who was asked to sign this should just feel honoured and do it.

If not a backlash (which I think is a valid concern) then also the additional risks of it being pushed off course, dilution of the message and loss of control of the agenda were concerns. Once it's public property then it's also fair game for everyone which would cause significant problems maintaining the focus of the project.

I don't think publishing is out of the question forever (particularly if met with apathy by Valve), I would say it's just a decision taken at a certain time for reasons of expediency to try to ensure a consistent message and focus.

I'm done with this game, CUBE got a community weapon and i didn't. fuck you valvo!

They got you mixed up with the Wireplay guy

rk came back from the dead to do predictions on tf2.

WE ALIVE BOYS

Enimgma, are you willing to show us traffic stats again? Maybe beautiful twitch john as well?

This is what somebody posted on the UGC forums:

This first part of this really strikes me, as I know how many people have tried and still try to get new players to take a look at competitive tf2.

I think this idea that I presented on the UGC forums isn't a bad idea to get people to simply search it.

Like I said, I know we've done something similar, but I don't think we ever got the majority of comp players to put something this informative in our names.

Would this be a good idea that you guys would want to do? It's pretty simple and effortless, because the site is already made.

I would hope you guys are glad for the opportunity to play a game you enjoy that realistically will not 'die' (ie get to the point where you can't play competitively) for many, many years.

I've had to suffer through a lot worse crap playing the old tribes games competitively, which were categorically better games than tf2.

We all loved having an AK in our secondary that cost $500.

I am not so sure about this given the number of unusuals, killstreak and australium items floating around the community, not to mention how many gift wraps have been sold so that top players can sign stuff for people. I am guessing the average 6s player has a much larger than average investment in TF2 than the typical pubber, we just make up a relatively small % of the customers.

Every time I read one of these threads, I just post this video. Still applies.

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