The south american competitive scene is really small (there are like 27 registered teams in the new LBTF2 season), so small that everybody knows everybody in pugs. Even the best player at least heard about that guy in the pug server who doesn't know what is a ubercharge. But, three things have been impressing me with those stress tests:

1) I've been playing with a lot of guys who I've never seen before (most of the matches have been really, but really easy if you play with more people from comp in your team, but eventually this will be fixed with an ELO system)
2) There is no waiting time to find people to play, we just press search and it finds a match (and normally it is really hard to see 2 pugs going on at the same time in our scene)

And the most important

3) Most of the teams made of people who I've never seen before have been playing with a team configuration at least close to the default (and this seems to be becoming more normal in the recent tests). There is ALWAYS a medic, hardly full time spies and engies, some heavies but a lot less than Soldiers and Demomen. The only non-default class I've been seeing a lot is pyro.

It seems the pubbers are learning and they are really playing to win. This is giving me a lot of hope for the future of this game. If they keep gaining interest for the format, both pov streamers and match streams will become more popular, there will appear a lot of new teams joining the open divisions, the tf2isdead threads will stop.

Melee hasn't changed since its release and yet it's gotten more popular over time, so to say that TF2 can't explode years after release is silly. You could say melee is a once-in-a-lifetime event that will never happen again but I disagree. It happened once, and it can happen again.

TF2 has never been a top tier esport, but I think the conditions weren't right for it to grow. We've hashed this topic over and over, but the infrastructure just wasn't there for TF2. The community didn't have easy access to the competitive game, the tournament scene worldwide was iffy, and it just didn't have what it needed to grow. Melee is a game that is easily accessible because everyone had a gamecube and a copy of the game. You could play with your buddies at home, and the game you play at home is the same game that is played by the pros. They didn't have much infrastructure either, though, and it took them time to build it all out. EVO is the big tournament for Melee but they also have tons of events throughout the year that keep competition going and keep the scene alive.

Another game that stunk on release was CS:GO, and then once Valve added matchmaking, skins, and infrastructure, it blew up. One of the most important things that you need is access to the same game that the pros are playing, which is the common thing that all major sports/esports share. After that, you just need a place to compete and boom you're good to go.

In all of these other games, the developers helped the community by creating the infrastructure that allows the pro scene to survive. Blizzard is famous for doing this because they have matchmaking in all of their games, they prop up their scenes with tons of money, and then they hope that those games become major esports. Games like HotS and WoW pretty much live for BlizzCon, which has the biggest prize pools for those games, but I'd say that SC2 and Hearthstone were pretty big successes and could do well without BlizzCon. Anyways, TF2 didn't have that kind of help, so we created the infrastructure on our own and we did the best that we could but it wasn't quite enough. Melee did a lot better than us, but then again they have the most basic building block that we don't have which is easy access to the comp game. The Melee that everyone knows is the Melee that everyone plays in tournaments. The TF2 that everyone knows is not the TF2 that everyone plays in tournaments.

The one thing that I think everyone can agree on is that Valve is much more open to the idea of TF2 being an esport than Nintendo is about Melee. Lucky for us, we actually have a developer who is willing to listen to the community and update the game to fit our needs. We need that kind of help. Getting people access to comp TF2 is something the developers can do that we can't easily do. We tried, but our methods (TF2Lobby, TF2Center, etc.) failed.

Melee had that easy access, and then all they needed was time to create the necessary infrastructure that allows the pro / tournament scene to survive. And they did it without the help of the developer too which is pretty impressive when you think about it.

TF2 also has an advantage over Melee in that we can play our game online. Playing Melee online isn't easy and I don't think it ever will be. So who knows, maybe one day we'll be bigger than Melee.

TL;DR Yes, matchmaking gives our game a fighting chance. Without it the game would definitely die small.

either things are very different in your part of the world or you're on some pretty sweet drugs, because the cultural footprint of tf2 is so incredibly inconsequential compared to SSB. People who play PC games have heard of TF2. Everyone has heard of smash. it's fuckin mario and link fighting each other. There are several orders of magnitude between the impact that those two games have had.

Maybe matchmaking gets a lot of people into competitive tf2, and maybe the game sees a renaissance like melee, but we're not gonna blow up to be the 5th or 6th biggest esport. It'd be awesome just to get LAN and sponsor support back in the game.

The reason why people tend to think MOBAs are great spectator games, doesn't mean the game is easy to understand, but rather how easy it is to see what's going on in the game overall; minimap, the ability to switch between areas pretty seamlessly, and fights pretty much always happen in one place (which as a spectator is pretty easy to look at).

TF2 has gotten better at that with all the class outlines and such improvements that the community brought in, but it's still not the most spectator-friendly game as there's so much going on all the time on different areas of the map and there's almost no way to catch it all. And even if you did, it's kind of a chore to see the cameraman switch between POV's really quickly. It's not as smooth and "continuous".

IMHO, it's really hard to tell whether TF2 will take off with Matchmaking. There's CS:GO, that's way bigger already and people tend to flock to bigger, established scenes. There's Overwatch that's the major competitor, and a LOT depends on how Blizzard makes things work out (I don't think they will, look at HOtS). Then there's Valve, who either can or can't be arsed to put actual effort to this and try to make the scene huge.
Realistically, I see TF2 MM having an explosive start, after which it'll start having slow decrease in number of players playing it. Only time will tell.
One can only hope though.

I'm pretty sure jon made something like that a while ago. It took too much effort though, I think, to be used :/

a boy can hope

I think it varies a lot depending on the culture and country, from your perspective I can see it seeming a bit weird, but it's vastly different in Portugal, almost no one knows smash. Portugal was almost solely a Playstation market for years. Other than the gameboy/nds, nintendo has no share here. So yeah, tf2 is definitely more famous here than smash, a lot more. Like almost every male friend of mine (even the non gamer ones) have played it at least once since its f2p,

And this is coming from like one of the ten people in Portugal who bough the nintendo Wii + smash in 2006

Not sure if it's the same in the rest of europe but I think it's also a bit different from the US

Who's gonna make the competitive TF2 documentary

Just having competitive as an option in the game menu will increase awareness of comp which is all you can really ask for. The large amount of players being exposed to this game mode, and making it easy to access will definitely have a "rebound effect" for competitive.

However, a lot of friends I've shown tf2 to have said mechanics like flicking your wrist back to rocket jump gives them a headache. So idk about the amount of people that will take the time to get used to it.

Why would something you do with your wrist affect your head

When I watched i55 during lunch at school many people recognized that I was watching tf2
Most people have heard of tf2 or maybe even played it once but most people didn't know there was more to it than pubbing and trading hats.

A first timer's perspective of competitive TF2 (watch until 1:46:48):
http://www.twitch.tv/ruwin/v/53070384?t=01h46m26s

Also, another thing- competitive TF2 has a pretty high skill curve, similar to quake, which is a legit reason for why it isn't that popular.

no

Here's an off-hand thought - Melee never had a stream browser to let new players watch what is possible in the game from top competitive players. We have been told TF2 is getting that.

Melee almost died like 3 different times. They talked about it in the smash bros documentary.
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX9hbbA-WP4 ) When Melee was almost not streamed on EVO 2013 people thought the game was going to die for the 3rd time. The Melee players made so much noise about it Nintendo revoked the ban on streaming the tournament. They thought Nintendo did not care about the competitive Melee scene. The amount of people who played Melee then was much larger then TF2. Sadly I did not play comp TF2 until around 2014 so don't know how many people played comp TF2 back then. I just feel the huge crowd Melee had since 2001 really stuck around through all the times when Melee needed it the most really gave it that jump start to get noticed by companies like MLG, EVO.

because tf2 has a default fov of 70 and requires you to rapidly turn around multiple times per life

Wait what... Quake Duel is probably the EASIEST game to spectate. You can keep following the same player (or showkiller) and it is immediately apparent what is going on. One cameraview gives you a great overview of the game, and its also easy to start appreciating the mechanical skill, even if you're completely unfamiliar with the game. Granted, the deeper layers of the metagame won't be understood, but that's the same for every game.

It's easy when you know the maps, where the teleporters go, what the item pickups do, how the weapons behave, etc. Compared to say Counter-Strike, the weapons aren't as immediately intuitive, so it's not as easy to watch if you've never played it.

you might want to see a doctor if doing a few dozen rocket jumps gives you a headache

with matchmaking's implementation, valve can actually direct the game. the players who used to play only pubs might be able to find 6v6 fun, because it's actually accessible to them, and they're not forced onto one class the entire time. the essence of 6v6 isn't a class-restricted game mode that "takes the fun out of tf2" or "purposely alienates classes." you can choose any class you want to play as long as it falls under the total class limit. it just so happens that the best classes for a tug-of-war oriented game mode are the classes that move the fastest and have the most potential. this isn't to say spy, engineer, heavy, pyro, etc are not useful, as they are being utilized more and more often as people find niche situations to exploit their strengths.

one thing that could help is a radar, so you can more easily anticipate engagements (I talked about this with sideshow in the interview to a deeper level), like you can with counter-strike. aside from that, most of the groundwork has already been done. if you follow overwatch at all, you can already see the struggle for good commentating. the hud isn't good, there's no minimap, casters don't know on which aspect to concentrate, etc. there's even a confusion on how the game should be played.

i'd wager most people who commented in this thread want the game to grow, so there's no reason to forsake the game's potential success for edgy posts that inevitably are -fragged anyway. you might as well put some faith in the game and show some positivity now, when it matters most

http://www.teamfortress.tv/30157/a-spectators-guide-to-comp-tf2-video-series

Haven't had any time at all to really put anything into this, and it's one thing that I'm really trying to get set forward as an independent project of mine. Unfortunately, I have basically no time to really dedicate to this, as classes are more than eating every bit of time I have. I'm slowly but surely getting into the meat of the script of this, but unless I was to not sleep for the next month this might get released before the official matchmaking release. Maybe we can make this a community project involving people that have more experience doing video editing and things like that. While I do have experience, it's nothing even close to the high quality content that some people in this community have produced.

Also, inb4 anyone mentions this as what's already been done. It's multiple years old, lies a ways inside the video AND doesn't include any explanation at all of the koth format. So I figured that it was about time to make something more updated while also maintaining the rulesets for multiple divisions, as NA and EU have slight variations on their rulesets. It was very well done, but it's not up to date. And I feel that if we were to include more recent content (from i55 and maybe even dreamhack), then it would be more appealing to newer players, as they would recognize what they would see in this video.

I feel like a quick reference guide would be the easiest thing for any newer player to grasp when looking at the competitive game. A 10(ish??) minute video explaining the basics such as map formats and rules, team composition (not going into much detail about why but making a remark about the mobility of certain classes over others), and weapon bans in league play would be good enough to encompass a single video, given that the correct material is presented in the right fashion. This would be aimed as a reference for anyone that has little to no idea of the competitive format and give them an insight to how the game flows so that they can appreciate what we see.

Ask kevinispwn, has been working on his beyond the hats thing for ages now. Not sure what kind of limbo that is in atm.

maybe i'm biased as an overwatch player but i really don't think it will and i don't even think tf2 is relatable to melee. i'm pretty sure melee was a much bigger game than tf2, most people my age know about the game and maybe played it when they were younger. most people have no idea what tf2 is, and even a large amount of the player base doesn't even understand or care about competitive at all. i think what sparked the resurgence of melee was the smash documentary as well, which was amazing and got people really interested in the game and players who are still playing now. plus the game is arguably a much better game to watch on stream which boosted it's popularity. imo tf2s history is much less interesting compared to melee and a lot of the legendary players have moved on already. i don't think competitive alone will make tf2 a "popular" game, imo it needs something else idk what

edit: edit plus tf2 is trying to make it's comeback right when overwatch is coming out which hurts it a lot. much like brawl took a lot of the casual scene away from melee i think overwatch will do the same thing

bring back BIG BOY BONES

Show me what you got :)

Here you go

It's far from done, and I've had near minimal time to polish the script itself due to classes and everything. Thoughts? I've also tried to make it as detailed as possible as what I'd imagine most of it to be

edit: just realized the link doesn't work. I'll get this fixed as soon as I can
edit 2: ICTF2 = Introduction to Competitive TF2