He couldnt play his cringe rules if he wanted because no one else would want to waste their time on that shit so its understandable he obviously has to play it in RGL. he loses money to go iseries is the difference.

His goal in life is to make money off of video game... Thats all that matters. Shoulda just went OW

iSeries prizepools have actually got bigger (peaked at i55 at 10k, still bigger today at 6-7k than the earlier ones' 5k or less) and viewership for i63 was bigger than any tf2 event ever. idk where u get ur info from fam.

not claiming the game is thriving but ur take is dumb

Local man who sells plasma to make rent because he plays a 12 year old video game religiously and is dead set on making it his career isn’t the smartest or best at arguing, who would’ve guessed?

Interesting how you leave out the most recent tf2 event.

I65 had less than half the average viewership, over $2000 less in prize money and an over 400% drop in peak viewership. Clearly, there is something going wrong here.(source: https://escharts.com/tournaments/tf2), the first iseries event remains, the by far biggest tf2 event, prize pool wise, is some literal age old event from 2008 that had fucking 2fort in the map rotation, so we haven't been able to top that in the literal decade that this format has been around.

If you're here just to enjoy yourself and dont care about growth, alright, but this is not anything that could even come clsoe to a "sustainable tournament circuit", b4nny is willing to give other formats a chance to invite in newer players, people like you should realize that attempting to pool new players into 6s is wasted time, your TFNew projects is "not where it used to be" according to your own twitter.

B4nny has been talking about this for years, he's finally going to take more drastic measures to pave the way for a more open tournament circuit, there is no use in supporting a format that has consistently proven to not be sustainable, a format that has failed to break into any kind of relevance. If you wish to continue to hunt for the long gone dream of a trad 6s tf2 esport, go ahead. It's resulted in nothing but stagnation and wasted time, I'm excited for whats in store.

Let's not even mention how RGL tried to build itself a sustainable viewership to gather around sponsors and build a tournament circuit, look how the community reacted to that..., it's obvious that the people in charge and the vocal parts of the community do not want anything that resembles common practicies in...any other esport or traditional sport.

The prize pool decrease was a result of the change in the event itself, not the game as Insomnia transferred to a signup-dependant method. As for peak viewership, this was largely dependant on a variety of factors concerning how Twitch presents their Front Page. IIRC they have changed the way the numbers are registered and we only got front page on Twitch UK, but someone may feel free to debunk this. In terms of signups and engagement internationally, we had a similar amount of teams competing and more audience attendees than i63. If you were to determine our success through statistics, then we've pretty much matched last year albeit a decrease in average viewership however that has been consistent throughout on-season play as well.

There is no guarantee that dramatic changes to the format would encourage more people to play, only purely anecdotal evidence and theorycrafting (something that b4nny doesn't like, actually). TFNew and projects like it are crucial to not only engage newer players, but also older players into committing to the scene more. Unfortunately, every project in TF2 is volunteer based and extremely volatile without any sort of funding or monetary investment. It isn't a wasted effort.

Ah yes, because b4nny's previous excursions and projects have been sooo successful. You can't be a pro player and also run a league/tournament system, its too much to handle. Since he makes a living off streaming and picking up winnings, why would he ditch that to try to work on a project of that scale? Funnily enough, you need the community (or the organisation owners at least) support if you are going to make significant changes. He is a divisive figure and that in turn may only divide the community further. Running an esport isnt fucking easy, and he should know this.

And noone who plays the game in any competitive setting is expecting or pushing for true viability within the current gaming market. While it would be nice to have money thrown our way, the fact of the matter is that it isn't ever going to happen, so the community has elected to shape the game in a way that would be enjoyable for the majority of current players. MarmadukeGRYLLS said it best earlier on.

People hate on RGL not for trying to "grow" the scene, they hate on them for seemingly reactionary or downright confusing litigation or rules and their poor public presence and attitude towards the competitive TF2 scene. And yes, the community doesn't want 'common practices' because it isn't a fully viable esport and the measures needed to do so are laborious, time consuming, difficult, and controversial. You are not going to find more people that I can count on one hand who have the skills, time, effort, and experience necessary to pull of what people like b4nny want that are also willing to do it for free. Its far more complicated than you think it is.

I'm not looking for a constant back and forth so here's what I'll say

on-season play which matches the ruleset seen on lan (apart from minor details...), so you yourself agree that viewership is declining, you can have 10 more people sign up to your lan, won't change anything and fails to make an impact in comparison to the catastrophic viewership numbers in comparison to last year, yet again a tf2 lan fails to attract any outside sponsors or establish any tournament circuit, I'm critical of these lans because they're the same every time and lead to no change.

We're stuck at theorycrafting because most of the people in communities like these have been pushing back on trying out other formats, there has yet to be a MM 6s cup in EU, etf2l seems to not be interested, even mocking the idea of having such a cup during april fools, rgl has tried mm 6s and has been a success, their statistics even prove that round times are FASTER (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D1ounszWsAABDUH.jpg) , so i'm not basing my optimism for the mode on pure guesswork, its been tried, stuff that was complained about before wasnt an issue and yet nothing has changed.

You aren't the community. The competitive community isn't the community and tftv isn't the community, the "community" is everyone who plays tf2. Your support isn't needed when allowing for a more welcoming format can lead to current community figures being replaced by new ones, remember that the competitive community is still only 1% of the overall playerbase, the other 99% of people play on non comp servers, you know, the other 50k players that play at any given moment and dont even realize yet that tf2 can be a competitive game.

So, you've given up? Nobody in the past decade has ever really tried to make a format thats more accesible and diverse, atleast not one that was accepted by the community as the "premier version of competitive tf2". You just made your own version of tf2 and expected valve to support it, you've already given up without even trying new stuff, not suprising that im defending the guy thats actually trying to push for change.

They're controversial to you because the scene has developed into such a hardcore community orientated mindset that anything made for growth, and not the community, is instantly labelled as bad. And how do you expect to ever develop into a proper esport when you cant even handle the basic practices, you need to lay the groundwork first and go from there.

I'm not here for a long, painstaking back and forth which will result in nothing anyways, tftv and other small, isolated communities (b4nnys chat included...) will be resistent to anything other that they're told to be the "solution". its not worth taking the time out of anybodys day to argue with people who cant have their minds changed, kind of defeats the purpose of discussion. so, continue to waste your efforts on a slowly dying scene.

guess we all might as well die irl now since we're all slowly dying anyways

i mean to be fair b4nny probably thinks that pubbers will flock into comp once they hear it has no classlimits (lol) and that theres thousands of potential players that dont play just because of the whitelist

Ok. Since you have made it known that you don't want a back and forth, ill give you the luxury of a concise rebuttal.

• The organisers for i63 and 65, Belong.GG, are a prominent sponsor with connections to large international companies, as the tournament was under their brand it is not our responsibility to secure sponsorships for iSeries. i65 peak viewers and i63's cannot be compared confidently due to a significant change in how front page works. The viewership was not strikingly different outside of the peak.
  
• RGL's statistics do demonstrate a faster game, yes, but did you forget that the format as of the infographic was only 4-6 weeks old in comparison to a 11 year old format? Does a faster game mean a better one? ETF2L has experimented a LOT over the years and was a key pioneer in changing the whitelist/map pool over the years.
  
• I am not the community, never claimed to be. I just speak based on my own perspective and ongoing research. You can have multiple communities within a single game, and many that are aware of competitive simply aren't interested, speaking from experience when talking to casual players whilst running the ETF2L Newbie Mixes.
  
• We haven't given up, but rather we are being realistic about the circumstances. The game is 12 years old, supported only through shoutouts and new cosmetics/content, and this has been the case for a while. The game simply cannot compete in the current esport market, the data backs this up.
  
• If you find someone who has the time and passion to establish these so called 'basic practices', provided such things exist; I will eat a picture of b4nny's face.

lol 69

does faster mean better lol

i do not think sigaStatistics™ are terribly reliable, considering the only analagous free league it can compare itself to is UGC, renowned for its quality gameplay

This has already been said in a couple different forms, but b4nny is one man, a man who attempts to live off this game, by livestreaming to what we can pretty safely assume is a viewership made up newer, younger players. They look up to him! He's their idol. How would you feel if your idol said that the game is what it is, that there was no prize at the end? Would you keep watching him? No, you fucking wouldn't. The game has gotten to a point where he can't ignore the idea of stagnation - it is there - so his solution has been to essentially point fingers at everyone else and prolong his own relevancy by advertising himself as the "solution". He'll say whatever the fuck makes people feel like there is an actual path, a point, to playing other than for good ol' Pride and Peanuts. Whether that's coming out with a new pug website that dies within a year, promoting a new gamemode that at least half the people who have spent multiple seasons competing have genuine arguments against and either didn't play, or played non-competitively for shits and giggles, whatever.
Why does he only cater to newer players? Because anyone around long enough realizes sooner or later that it's all bullshit, you get nothing for playing this game, there is no path, there is no end, there no promised future, you ride the fucking train and meet some cool people along the way till your stop. And there's nothing wrong with that.

What's the difference between Insomnia Series and BTS, gameplay wise. Not much. But one of them is on another continent, and the other is like two hours away from the dude's house. Chew on that for a minute.

Can you blame him for trying to make a living doing something he loves? No, but stop trying to take a business man's word as truth.

If you want to get really tinfoil hat,

i wish he said this earlier tho instead of ‘i got nothing to prove muahahaha >:)’ the whole time because we coulda made these changes and had this discussion earlier BEFORE viewership went from 10k to 1k

what makes people think that the company that in 2019 made the game Artifact can make a game from 2007 an esport?

Like Happiness said, projects like TFNew are volunteer based so definitely volatile. That said though, TFNew cup #5 is well underway and the Discord server now has over 1k members. Now seems to be a convenient opportunity to shamelessly plug the fact that we need coaches so if anyone wants to take on the task hmu on discord JWB#6651 or apply in #role-applications on the Discord server discord.io/TFNew ;)

edit: also the idea that rounds in NR6s being faster makes it viable/better is a joke. When sigafoo first posted that data, individuals like DrH and DCS pointed out on Twitter that it being the first season of NR6s means people aren't going to be as used to it yet and so will make more mistakes and rounds will be faster. It's the reason open rounds in 6s are often a lot shorter than prem rounds because it's easier to snowball off enemy mistakes in open because the mistakes are bigger and the enemies don't know how to recover. In 10 years time, will Invite NR6s in its current state be a fast paced, exciting format?

Reminder that i63 viewership was also greatly impacted during finals because RTGame literally sent over like 6000 extra people after finishing his stream that night.
Also, attributing the overall decline in viewership of TF2 to the format instead of, I don't know, the fact that the game is older than at least half its regular playerbase and hasn't had a meaningful update in over 2 years?

welp we had a good run boys but looks like its time to shut it down

its absurd to me that people still correlate banny being good at a video game with his intelligence

every time i've ever seen a clip of him he's come off as one of the dumbest motherfuckers i've ever witnessed

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/329332818633162763/637925307340423168/b4nny.jpg

B4nny put some real effort into invigorating the scene with TF2PL, although he maintained his namesake in the process. The game is small and shrinking. You can pout and cry, leave, or do something about it. He tried to do something about it. It's pretty clear b4nny isn't acting in bad faith when making his opinions on a better future for competitive TF2, whether you agree with them or not.

der ewige banny sub

Did he though?
He did fuck all except maybe talk to Faceit and slap "TF2PL CEO" onto his name. He definitely was not coding and maintaining the site.

TF2PL wasn't a thing without him. Yeah, b4nny was douche. He would come beat on us 1000 hour players and get all passive aggressive if we didn't play to his standards. Some of the best moments on that site were fucking with him. He tried though, when it didn't take off I think he lost interest.

The way I see it is that he lost interest because he couldn't profit from it in any way. Trying in that situation means getting people to give TF2PL a second chance, especially in his position, and not abandoning the project and then also killing PugChamp NA in the process because he told them to fuck off and die. I might be mistaken but the NA pug scene has been in shambles ever since and thats definitely the opposite of keeping the scene alive.

How could he maintain interest when the platform failed to get anywhere near the traction he probably hoped it would, also there is little to no money in faceit. At the end there was only a player base of around 100 people (generous estimate). I doubt monetary gain was his main incentive. If money was his goal I don't think he would play TF2 for a living. At least that's what I think he does, I don't know him.

Pugchamp NA is far from dead. I don't know what it used to be like, but there are pugs everyday.

That would only be relevant if we would be trying to attract people who weren't previously interested in TF2 at all. The point of "blaming it on the format" is that there is already a big playerbase, but we're not taking advantage of it. The point of changing the format is to get people who are already playing tf2 to play competitive tf2, not to get people who have never played tf2 to start playing tf2. The competitive community is 1%, lets try to get the other 99% involved.

that 99% is playing a different game. i dont mean that in the sense of a different ruleset, or the whitelist, or 5cp, i mean they have no interest in trying hard in a video game. tf2 is a stomping ground for new gamers, so a lot of them are people who are still getting used to keyboard controls. or people who can only play for 5-10 minutes. seriously, join any pub, and you will see people rotating in and out constantly. and theres more who just dont think theyre good enough for competitive.

and beyond all that, a major problem is (and always has been) valve itself. many of those who might want to try competitive tend to think that the valve version is at least somewhat representative of a competitive experience, even if theyve heard its bad.

weve just got to do our best to enjoy what is available. thats legitimately the only real way to grow the scene; you have to have fun playing the game. trying to promote competitive gaming to a wider audience that has zero interest in competing is not the way to do that.

lmao

if anyone thinks that anything other than tons of money will help, improve, save, revitalize or any other synonym they are delusional. Rules don't need to be changed (can use NA or EU ruleset), maps hardly need to be changed (stick with the 7 now and improve them, product, snake, process, gully, sunshine, badlands, granary). Whitelist changes don't need to happen.

You can find people in the community willing to take all the logistical jobs as well as players already here. Just need the paycheck so they can spend the time doing it.