"let's lop our own dicks off"

Redeye's opinion of TF2 has never really been a secret, especially considering he used to be involved in iSeries. His opinions on the game can be seen in the i46 grand finals as well as the Ready Up documentary, there are also other major names in esports like Slasher who have expressed their support for the competitive community of Team Fortress 2. Unfortunately having a bunch of famous esports icons saying "well this game shoulda been given a chance" is a very long call from "This game has an active chance at growing into something massive." or having actual developers touch the game outside of a handful of game-breaking bugs in the last 3 years.

Valve's silence the past few years has been astoundingly bad, even compared to how they used to operate. I remember ~2016 when they wanted to start talking way more with the community; there were many figureheads that visited the Bellevue HQ, there were explanations in blog posts about future plans and reasoning for current changes; It really began to feel like they cared. Then the shitstorm that was the competitive beta launched, released fully a few months later with no changes outside of cosmetic changes, and soon after that and the following Jungle Inferno update a year later they turned into the totally mute company we know today.

Anyone with hope with Valve, while I do respect that there was a time where there really seemed like there was a chance, that time came and went without any real support from the developers. If competitive TF2 is more than a passion project or stepping stone and you have genuine hope that there will be any updates or developer support for the competitive game I really hate to be the one that rains on your parade but it just isn't happening. I think there's a half decent chance that the game could still grow community-side and function better on third party support than it does currently, even without major esports players such as ESL/ESEA/FACEIT, but it'll be a decent amount of time, money, and effort sunk in before that happens.

Valve has a few hundred employees compared to the tens of thousands in Ubisoft/Blizzard/Epic. They ignored HL3 because they couldn't spare more people, they poached developers from CSGO for HL:Alyx, and with the 2 new VR games and source 2 for CSGO, TF2 isn't a priority. Whatever skeleton crew is still working on it is only doing it between projects. If you're going to get even scraps of attention from Gaben, it's only when TF2 has a huge competitive playerbase, and pubbers aren't going to suddenly changes their mind about comp TF2.

Just get the promod, make TF2 more enjoyable to play first and promote shit like newbie mixes and creators.tf

I love a "see look someone thinks our game should be big" thread as much as the next guy, but tbh its pretty irrelevant

if you guys are looking for hope about the future of our game the thread should be about us having 36 teams in the newcomer league in RGL 6s this season. That's a crazy amount of people coming into the scene fresh.

I'm hoping RGL delivers on their talk about a pug system for 6s. Clearly there is a group of people looking to get into it, but they only host pugs for Prolander right now from what I can tell

This. Delivering a pugging system that is 1 connected to the main NA league and 2 has multiple different skill levels that makes everyone able to pug in the same place without getting rolled or feeling like they're in noob jail will make for better, more evenly matched, pugs and massively impact how people can get into the comp scene and grow as players.

A good, clean, and efficient pugging system tied to the main league will be the best thing for TF2 so long as every skill level of player can pug there and have fun. For lower level players, pugchamp is elitist and scary, for upper level players TF2Center is a waste of time, and inhouses are too insular to help the growth of the game. RGL has a very large responsibility when it comes to getting this right.

apparently it has a elo system as well? would enjoy being able to see pugs played / class like everywhere else on our RGL pages if that is even possible.

I think it's funny we still try to rely on Valve for esports. When you look at other big esports, CS:GO for example, you see huge LAN events and majors from big companies like ESL, ELEAGUE, PGL etc. But little did you know that these companies have to pay big royalties to Valve (usually in the $$$$$$) to run these competitions. We are actually quite lucky in what we do.

Good to see Redeye's support for the game.

Lool guys remember how one of the few times anyone from valve posted in tftv, it was to make fun of us for wanting to play without high graphics settings? And then they patched the fix we had worked out, completely ignoring the community consensus that doing so was pointless and dumb?

God those valve guys are just a bunch of characters, i'll tell ya hwat

Regardless of whether Valve pays attention to tf2 or not, RGL making a pug system for 6s, having a LAN for invite playoffs, and massively growing the 6s community by getting new players to make teams are huge steps for the community. It's unfortunate that playoffs had to be moved online but RGL will put us in a very good spot if things go smoothly.

I think you are talking about the tournament licences (https://store.steampowered.com/tourney) but those are free and required for TF2 as well (technically)

If you are talking about tournament organizers losing money on the majors, that's true but it's because Valve only covers the prize pool and not the other various costs associated with running stadium events that are rarely profitable to begin with.

I really debated whether I should post here since I haven't been around for years, and a lot has changed for me since (I also barely follow anything anymore lol), but I'll be honest, Jeff, it makes me pretty annoyed that you're in denial of how much Valve's influence could help in current era TF2 (which I'm spanning from the time I was still involved, around 2013, to current times). And I think you know me well enough that I'm not going to respond with bullshit (at least not intentionally). I hope not. If I am, I absolutely should be called out on it.

TLDR: nerd essay on why eXtine is wrong and what I want him to ACTUALLY do

What SHOULD be the way the community "interfaces" with Valve? In all my years of randomly checking the forums and seeing you and b4nny post about this subject, neither of you have EVER elaborated what these exact steps are. I don't think people here are unwilling to engage Valve. If you look at the patterns of how people respond to anything related to Valve, it tells me that Valve has not made clear how to communicate. The onus of opening communication is not on the community. It's on Valve. As someone who works a job with a lot of high stakes customers, and communicates fairly often with them (and with other employees), we lay out and make open a very clear way of communicating with us. Hell, we have MULTIPLE ways of that, and we accommodate all of it. I don't know if you're basing what you know off of the meeting we had way back when, but, I don't remember them ever discussing how we can keep a line of communication going. Do you? Or did you just make that up based on speculation?

Can you imagine if a customer you were serving in a restaurant was dissatisfied (in an extremely noticeable way), and then you just sat there and did literally nothing? That's what the Valve + competitive community relationship looks like to me right now.

I do agree with you, though, that the Valve boat hasn't sailed. I just think they're not making the right decisions, or have decided (actively or passively) that it's not worth it to advance things. That, or we'll see said advancements in a way that's not directly related to TF2 (e.g. TF3).

I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying, but, do you wanna elaborate? Sitting on a high horse like that isn't going to win you points in this community. Evidence and deductive reasoning will (and good shitposts). The thing is, even if it's not their fault, Valve is the one in the position of power and influence, and has been this whole time. They're the ones with the power to make unlock balance changes, bug fixes, map fixes, map inclusion, etc. I'm really loving the fact that there's a pro-mod that's starting to gain legit support AND is making legitimate fixes. While I was still active, and there were only discussions of adopting a pro-mod, I actually was against it (but I never posted about it, that I remember; I didn't feel that strongly, and at the time, the closest pro-mod existing was through minor options in TFTrue), but not too long after I stopped being active, I changed my mind. Valve doesn't even really care about the pub experience, either, let's be honest. At this point in time, it looks like they're doing the minimum to keep a safe, steady playerbase. From what I can tell, they're not interested in sinking even a moderate amount of dev time, much less towards anything more serious than that. What I'm thinking is that they see development targeted at competitive support as high risk AND long term. I don't think either of those estimates are accurate, but this is speculation on my part. Maybe they're right, since they have insider info. But also, maybe they're wrong, because they're still humans who are speculating on the future and can make mistakes. Maybe they just don't feel like doing it.

Also, whatever happened to your anti-banned item stance? Way back when, you were ALL about "adapting" to Valve's item balance and allowing all unlocks. Has that changed? I didn't expect you to advocate for a pro-mod, given what stances you've held in the past. Anyways, piggy backing off of the previous point, I think you should explain what the community could do and advocate for those changes. But if you don't have any concrete actions for the community to act upon, then you're either seeing specters or being unclear. Either way isn't good for advancing the overall goals of doing more for Valve.

My own "controversial" opinion is that I would've loved to have seen more maps and game modes in the map rotation. Another KotH map to complement Viaduct Pro, and a new map to successfully replace Gravel Pit. Something like that. And probably some other stuff, but those were probably the biggest impact that I held an opinion on.

I agree with you on this, but I don't think you're seeing the entire picture around what you're saying objectively. Growth in the community's infrastructure CAN'T be the only thing that's necessary for Valve to give a shit. It'll take too long and we'll all be retired from every game ever (AKA dead) by the point that we see metaphorical returns, if at all. And the question of how to grow that fundamental infrastructure has a complex answer. On top of that, TF2 looking like it's on the gaming population's backburner is an uphill battle to developing that infrastructure. With a relatively small audience, there's less incentive to invest the time to volunteer/admin/produce besides growing a love of the game (which can only keep you going for so long, as I found out). I don't entirely know what the right answers are to that question, but the status quo is (and has been for a long time) incredibly dangerous for that infrastructure. These league sign ups are most likely correlated to COVID-19, you can't count on the same numbers happening the next seasons. I've seen the cycle of abysmal to massive back to abysmal ESEA team counts even in my relatively short time of being active.

On top of that, maintaining and growing the producer/caster/etc. count is an insane challenge. American network infrastructure still sucks ass except in specific areas/cases, the scheduling logistics are all or nothing (being on the west coast, you definitely get what I mean), and, of course, as we saw last year, that shit can go nuclear at pretty much any moment. When I was admin for TFTV streams, I was CONSTANTLY recruiting producers, backup producers, AND backup to the backup producers. I frequently ran into situations where I had to call in backups. The other issue is that the competitive population is relatively young. They, most likely, haven't seen what a constructive environment can do not just for themselves but for the community as a whole. Creating and making sure that environment keeps up is a whole challenge by itself, for sure. And, just for reference, I definitely didn't know what one looked like, nor how to create it, back then. Can't say I do, now, as a "grown-ass" adult. It's a complicated question.

I really wish I could have. I most likely could have prevented the situation last year, among other things.

Anyways, sorry for the slam post, Jeff. Hope I can make a trip to Portland after the pandemic is over and hang out with you.

there’s really no indication whatsoever that sticking to vanilla TF2 does anything to make valve care, why not do a promod? lots of fixes and balance changes can be made entirely within the game (twiiku’s, this thing: http://higps.no/balancemod/index.html, creators). doesn’t seem too far fetched to make specific mods which could be used by leagues in just sixes, since its all server side. besides bugfixes, it would be pretty neat for the community to be able to experiment with balance and doing things like potentially making other classes better fit into the existing 6s playstyle. any community development team would be better than valve, and its easy to revert anyways.

fuck me this thread again

fuck me this thread again

Raelyn said WHAT??? Pog!

If Valve were genuinly interested in making TF2 an esport, how fucking hard is it to communicate? Having to figure out the ancient fucking code to meeting the allmighty VALVE GODS and crack the code on what the fuck they actually want has been attempted for a decade and yet the most we got was some "we'll think about it" that never went anywhere. It is not a reasonable state of affairs for any company to place this burden on their customers just because you placed the community in a maze and we ended up going our own way instead of following the one magical path that could have >>>POTENTIALLY<<< lead to a valve supported game in 2012, reminder that this path is made by the same guys that thought turbine was a map that belongs in competitive play, limiting your config to high settings with the highest dxlevel on a game that about as optimized as a PS4 game thats trying to run on a PSP.

What's a better way? Praying to lord gaben and experimenting for years and years until someone from Valve actually shoves his desk back into the TF2 room, which hasnt had a team ship a major update since 2017 OR after countless attempts to grow the community (TFNew, Newbie Mixes, Guides and Videos), countless formats and over a decade to just accept that it just wasnt meant to be, make the best out of what we have and just try to keep the people that are already here happy instead of trying to force a fairy tale into reality.

If Valve actually wanted to make TF2 a big esport, they totally could. TF2 ticks every box to be a viable esport, but its just a faint dream at this point.

I just want to drink whiskey with my friends at lan

One of my favorite clips that i still remember to this day was when Redeye was at i49 i think and talked about TF2 and its community

Why do ppl have these high hopes for valve and comp tf2 when even pubs have not been functional for like 2 years now lmfao

Also is major gonna happen before casual stops splitting up parties? That coming soon feature has been there since ji

yall remember when valve had a bunch of competitive players test the matchmaking update that was supposed to 'save the game' and they all said it was shit so valve did nothing and then it was shit

.

i mean more than that i distinctly remember a google doc with actual pages of constructive criticism. think valve uses it as toilet paper in the tf office now

guys i saw gaben think about tf2 does that mean we are gonna have a major?

cause they only care about our opinion for a rough idea of what THEY want to do. the end result is never what we want in regards to anything thats been made for this game entirely. they say theyre gonna make what we want and tben lie at the very end

great timing

this cancel culture that exists nowadays is so cancerous, judging everyone by their lowest isn´t really fair is it ?

its not fair to john wayne gacy that everyone talks about his serial killing lows and not the more positive, honest clown work

I feel like judging someone by there lowest is exactly how you should judge them I'm pretty sure there's a higher chance the rapist will rape again rather than a non offender

well i think its pretty obvious i´m not talking about rapists or serial killers, but when i have to point that im not even gonna bother discussing it

no one is judging anyone for their edgy middle school phase, we're talking about a history of abusive behavior here and you just vaguely gesture to the entirety of cancel culture as bad