The irony

We need to dedicate a statue to Beater for his great works

Just to reiterate tsc's point Dreamhack pay attention to what ticket holders want to play so it's definitely possible to get tf2 played if enough people attend

The worst thing? Muselk was right

Why do these threads always turn into cheaters discussing the pros and cons of various cheats?

It's pretty legible at full image size

Fuck Infused

You can't compromise with players that have left the game, they had 9 years.

You've said a lot of strange things, but this is probably the strangest.

Are you going for copypasta immortality here?

It does need a makeover, it's just hard to see the trajectory of the game as positive.

It's possible to interpret things optimistically, that their stated goals of trying to change players so that they're more concerned about their performance, that this will lead to more streaming visibility, and the sharp decline in player numbers we're seeing is Valve fearlessly following that path regardless of the short term wastage. They've certainly got enough money to do that.

It's possible to say that they've realised the current model of an item-making echo chamber in which people make the same things for the same people over and over (a bit like this thread) doesn't have a future and they're cutting the cord by making the changes to casual.

But I can't help seeing them making a half hearted effort at minimal cost to see if there's something they can salvage by some miracle, while the competitive players they have completely ignored for 9 years get their revenge by spearheading the massive and continuous competitive publicity campaign that helps Overwatch crush TF2.

It's strange, TF2 was probably the first non-RPG game that obviously wanted to live forever, and despite Valve clearly having the technology to make any infrastructure updates they want, even updating the whole engine, there is an apparent winding down of the game's life cycle. So little of the way the game has been handled makes sense.

No IQ score beats infowars references

Or we could look at the recently published game that actually did look at making 6v6 more agreeable to the casual player and also heavily backed competitive TF2 players, the same players Valve has ignored for years. They've invested in them, invited them to extensive beta testing, taken their feedback on board and gone back on developer stated direction to meet their demands. Coverage people, technical people, etc, are all getting opportunities too.

Basically there is a developer backed TF2 that invests in it's competitive scene right now and it's Overwatch. I have no idea why any high level competitive player would stick with TF2. Just look at what Valve are asking: that the whole world comes to TF2 regardless of any attempts by them to promote it and tell them if their game mode is any good, and if the answer is yes in massive numbers they might consider backing a competitive scene.

Blizzard meanwhile worked with the same competitive players who've been telling Valve what to do for 9 years. They're begging people to come to their competitive scene, funding it, promoting it, working with organisations, and heavily rewarding success. Somebody wants us!

And I don't even enjoy Overwatch or watch it, and I don't want TF2 to die. I along with many others really wanted TF2 to succeed and MM to be a turning point but just compare the attitudes, just look at Valve's insipid reaction. I don't blame the MM devs but they don't have the power to make these things happen, they don't have the capability to truly lead a major change.

The attitude amongst Valve heavyweights is probably close to what Robin Walker said on one visit when informed that ESEA was in jeopardy: leagues come and go. He might as well have said players come and go. Well, someone else offered to listen and they've gone.

I've been inspired by the guy planning a new TF2 league. The game simply doesn't need more engineering solutions, even from Valve, and that's all it's getting. People who know how to program think that them doing more of it will be the solution. It won't.

Slin said that the people working on TF2 are newbies at Valve getting their feet wet. That's not what the game needs either regardless of their competence. These guys clearly have no authority to make big decisions.

TF2 used to be used for experimentation, for Valve to make brave decisions and many of them have been rewarded. But right now in the casual shooter space Overwatch is crushing them. TF2 player numbers are going down, steam charts shows TF2 at it's lowest ebb ever. For the first time there is actually a legitimate threat to the game's long term future.

Overwatch's popularity is based on the current reality of game promotion - Twitch and esports events. They've inflated their supporting esports scene literally from nothing, completely artificially. There's no grass roots, no long competitive history and pedigree, just the publisher deciding from day 1 that there was a gap in the market for a casual team shooter with respawn mechanics promoted properly.

They were right, all of that pedigree and history is simply being transplanted from other games - there's a reason Thorin is doing background on TF2 now. It's because a large part of the value of the competitive scene and the huge amount of tertiary marketing it generates through people like Thorin is in the players, their personalities, their stories. Valve have lost that asset.

Valve's insistence on TF2 MM having to develop organically before official tournament support is just compounding their problems because it's not going to. They can keep searching for the "golden format" forever, they've trained their player base to fuck around with comedy loadouts and overpowered fun unlocks in Hightower 24/7 servers for nearly 10 years. It's not going to work.

The shiny new toy, the one with huge numbers of streamers, big tournaments, incredible production, that's the game that's doing it right. Blizzard must have looked at TF2 and thought "What the fuck are Valve doing? We can just take a huge slice of the pie". Apparently it was easy.

If Valve are looking for an experiment for TF2, picking up this game and making it relevant again might be something the big players at Valve who can actually make a difference should be interested in, the revenue stream will soon be a memory if the current trend continues.

Either that or TF3. It's sad, I didn't think OW would be the nail in TF2's coffin but I'm starting to realise that Valve are so rich the decay of a revenue stream that size really doesn't seem to concern them.

This degenerated quickly. Whoever talks to him, ask him why he doesn't seem to turn the heating on in his house.