Maybe introduce briefly the main classes and the offclasses?

I appreciate the effort you put into this but people either enjoy watching competitive or they dont. Imo you should focus on other things. If you think explaining the format helps new people with their viewing experience you are dead wrong because viewers who are not invested balls deep in the scene won't care about uber and player advantage, they are interested in what happens on screen. Explaining the format won't stop new players from giving up on watching after experiencing a 25 minute stalemate.

music's too loud

i think you spend too much time explaining the 5cp control points and cap time

other than that this looks great, love the visual design

definitely add subtitles for english and other languages so the video is not strictly for english speakers. i understand it may be a bit hard to find translators but it makes a bigger difference than you think

Seconded. I get that you don't want to spend too much time talking about classes but it's really important to hammer to new players that it's not always 2 Scouts/2 Soldiers/1 Medic/1 Demo, or rather why this is the standard rollout. The biggest shit that newer spectators will always ask is "why are those the only classes allowed, why don't they run this?" - which, yeah, in retrospect is probably another video altogether if you expand on it and not the purpose of this video, but even briefly mentioning main classes, offclasses, why main classes are main classes and when offclasses get pulled out, will go a long way.

Also, don't make the video longer than 5-6 minutes if you can help it. Prettiness, interactive-ness and narration will definitely help the final product but no one will have the patience to watch a 7-minute infographic on how competitive TF2 works if they're new. It might be more of a testament to how little faith I have in people to RTFM, but the simpler and sweeter the more it'll stick with people. Whittle down to the important things and figure out what you can add on from there.

I do know a lot of people who are interested in spectating the game but not playing it at all. So I see this video as a great effort and timesaver atleast for me :D Instead of explaining all the basics they can just watch this tl;dr video

this is brilliant; a resource like this that can explain 6s in a comprehensive, easy-to-understand, and entertaining way is something ive wanted for a long time. i personally know people who would love to start watching/playing 6s, but are intimidated by lack of knowledge

while I think this video is good on its own, it would be great if we could have a sort of "series" of these types of videos. assuming this video is a starting point, a second episode could focus on class roles and the basics of playing each, and it could expand to a series of videos that progressively get more complex, each being it's own mini-lesson

for this video, I think there should be some cool frags at the very beginning to immediately draw in the viewer and show them how exciting it can be. there should also be a point in the video where certain resources are linked (tftv twitch, website, etc.) they should have annotated links in the video and links in the description as well for those watching on mobile

honestly though this is super cool and it does a great job of explaining simply how competitive tf2 is played. keep up the great work :)

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

http://www.teamfortress.tv/32177/will-tf2-have-the-same-rebound-as-smash-bros-melee/?page=2#55

I believe you and I shounic touched on this idea briefly in another thread but we never got in touch to discuss it. I haven't watched all of it since I'm on the road, but I do plan to watch it and give some more feedback later

Edit: I like many others, would think that you went a little bit too in depth about some topics. Potentially simplifying some longer statements to a few quick words. When I was drawing up my edit of how I would do this (given that I had the time and resources to do it myself), I referenced the i46 documentary and how it approached explaining 5cp format. It was very simplistic and straight to the point. The video wasn't bad, but it could absolutely be better.

this should be added at the beginning of big matches like when they steam i58. Just throw it in every couple of hours? Maybe once a day

commentator's bassy voice drowns in the music

Concept is fantastic. TF2 really needs an entertaining set of tutorials for new players if it wants to grow as a competitive game. Videos like Marxist's precepts are informative and all, but they're boring as shit if you're not already invested in learning the format.

Music is way too loud compared to the voice, and I think you need to either get a different narrator or spend more time on getting the lines right. The frequent stumbles and pauses are really getting to me.

Don't worry too much about the voice over being kinda iffy, I asked one of the Backcap members to quickly do a voiceover for me so I can put together this draft

He wants advice on what to actually put in the video not how it sounds/looks I think

edit: maybe add something like flank and combo? Or is that already too much

please

Assuming you're planning on making follow up videos, I don't see a problem with saying something short like "the combo includes the main pushing force of the team, while the flank keeps opponents from getting behind the team." You can always expand on this later while offering a very basic understanding now.

whatever it is, don't make it longer than 5-7 minutes.

maybe split the videos like 5CP, KOTH.
edit: already mentioned

I feel like you introduce a lot of concepts at 3:46 Kiting, juggling, offclassing (and maybe) that popping means activating your charge) without really explaining them. If i was new to tf2 I'd have no idea what any of those things mean.

Again at 4:37 Map control potential, meatshot

I'll look to cut this down in the next version

Yeah the main goal was to keep it short so it was as approachable as possible. Also I'll look to fit the stuff about class comps somewhere.

Seems like it's better to just cut those parts out entirely then, or at least greatly simplify them down into a sentence.

Not sure if I want to add frags into it since the point of the video was more for it to be used like a quick reference or introduction. At that point the person watching is already interested, so it's kinda pointless. I would agree if it was meant to be an advertisement.

And yeah I'll likely be making more / turn it into a series if this goes well. Thanks for the inputs!

Who is the narrator? Sounds like he's from Northern Ireland :D

I really love this concept, and I'm glad this is being made.

First suggestion would be to maybe cut out some of the unimportant bits. Flashing for example is a kinda difficult concept to understand, and it's not super important for watching TF2.

I would also suggest just mentioning something about other competitive gamemodes (Highlander, Arena Respawn) and other game types (koth) just so people don't get confused. I don't think you should go in depth about them, but just stating that they exist could stop some confusion when someone goes from this video directly to a highlander or koth match.

https://youtu.be/7OX1YVUMXKc

version 2

• added a bit at the end quickly explaining class composition & offclassing
  
• added the concept of "mobility" to help the explanation of the class composition
  
• removed verbose paragraphs that conveyed little information
  
• lowered music

not sure if I should keep flashing or not. the main thinking behind including it was that it could be confusing watching the game and wondering why the uber durations seem to randomly vary, or what the big deal is about flashing when it's mentioned by commentators.

but the feedback so far have been very helpful :D & in case the voiceover was hard to understand here is a public copy of the script: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lutA9O-DwrUB_ntvT_-2KaKm5bnRNtMRJAQfq8mElTQ/edit

his alias is Legoguy, he's another proud connoisseur of potatoes hailing from Belfast!

Looks really nice, very well done!

Very nice! Awesome explanation of the generalist/specialist classes

I think that the clip at 2:52 would be a bit too hard to follow for new players - the camera switches targets too much. imo it would look better if it showed deathy's POV (him going in with uber) and then switched to Rando's POV after Deathy died (and then showed rando push with uber)

Maybe show a clip of correctly using each offclass as an example?

Really liking this second draft of the video. Do you plan on including a brief overview of koth in the final version of the video?

part of me kinda doesn't want to cause it means i'll have to record the other in-game clip I used too, for consistency :( [i wouldn't be able to use the tftv hud]

maybe in a video for the future, but for now that seems pointless bloat for this one.

no, i feel like that's outside the scope of this video. i will however cover it in future continuations of this series (if that happens.)

This is a really great concept, and I'm glad we have people in this community willing to tackle these problems, thanks Backcap!

My only concern is that it can be difficult to both squeeze in the necessary information into a digestible 5-6 minutes video while providing enough information for the audience to grasp enough of what's going on. I could see some people watching the video, and still wondering "Why did those two members go behind the team and sit on the point, and why did the team pushing into mid have to go back for just two players", just because TF2 is a game with a lot of layers of understanding.

It would be nice if we could get, like, multiple videos like this, each one focusing at a specific facet of comp TF2. Then the videos could be shuffled / repeated more often during long casts like i58. For example, someone who's new could watch a short video on offclassing, and then during the next match, pay closer attention to how players offclass and at least appreciate the decision making for offclassing, rather than getting the tip of the iceburg and maybe still being kinda confused because its a lot to take in, even if the video is compressed into 5-6 minutes.

That's a lot of work though, and I know Backcap is doing a lot to help the community as it is, so for a single video that doesn't last forever and tries to get viewer's feet in the door for watching competitive TF2, the video does a great job, and the visuals are super helpful for understanding the concepts.

Edit:

Must have missed this while reading, but yeah, tl;dr this

Very nice video! Although, I reckon it would be more effective to:
-make it a series of videos (as almost everyone else said)
-taking bits of gameplay from casted games and analizing them very briefly, without getting that much in depth, just as a quick example. Maybe apply this to the more advanced concepts. (If someone already wrote this I'm sorry I may not have noticed)

Great work though, keep it up!

Maybe outline specific players/roles and what they do (stark holding the flank well and hafficool sticking close to his medic)