Let me tell you a little story.
I began playing comp TF2 late 2012, and I thought I was late to the party. Season 12 of ESEA had just finished, and I came into the scene wide-eyed and bushy-tailed just to see mix^ slam the international competition at i46. At the time, in fact right after the i46 stream closed, I thought to myself: that was it. That was the pinnacle of competitive TF2. I really am late to the party; nothing else will come close to those TF2 matches that I just watched.
But I played competitive TF2 anyway. I thought to myself, "hey, I'll jump on this game and finish out the rest of its life and then move on to the next CS that's released." After playing for months on Jujump iT and Jump iT, I decided to drop the spy class and my steel highlander team and make the switch to 6v6 on soldier. Like any more casual competitive player I knew that tf2lobby existed, but I also knew of its reputation as the most hateful place to play TF2. As a result, I chose to play in newbie mixes. From there I made the jump from pugs to league play, eventually playing in IM with Hell Xpress before taking a short break this past summer.
Well, six seasons, two international lans, and almost two and a half years later I've realized I wasn't late to the party at all, and in reality the party was just barely getting started. In my eyes, GXL took i46's place as the peak of competitive TF2, and I have no doubt that another event far in the future will surpass it too.
Competitive Team Fortress 2 is a game type that is not (currently) endorsed or supported by Valve. The most we've ever gotten is a little mention in TF2's news section. For the immediate and unfortunate future, it seems it will stay that way. It is up to us as a community to come together and do something that Valve itself will not do: lower the barrier for entry into competitive TF2 by teaching new players the basics of the game type.
But newbie mix has had its fair share of problems. Both with coaches and with admins.
The general line of admins goes: Giffy, pet, milehighmilitia, Shwan, VickM, Noona. After Noona's death, pie_hero picked it up and recruited myself, Mr_Perfect (valkeri), and Tino_ and others to help.. Since this time (around August), pie_hero has left to focus on CS:GO, valkeri and Tino_ have become too busy in real life, and most others show up rarely if at all to help.
And once again newbie mixes remains with far too little adminship and coaching and far too much newbie interest to sustain itself as it is.
So I come to you, TFTV, with one final plea from the current newbie mix admins for help.
As many of the current admins have become overrun with real life, I'm looking for both help running the group and coaching the players. To help bring in coaches, I've created a group specifically for coaches to organize meetings and discussions for how we can improve newbie mixes. This group will also be spammed every newbie mix night when we need coaches, if you weren't already annoyed enough from me messaging you every Friday. If you're interested in coaching, add me on steam and shoot me a message. It's not as hard as many people think - basic knowledge of the 6v6 game type typically suffices.
As far as helping administratively, it's the most mind numbingly simple job I need help with. Coaching is easier. All I need are multiple, consistent people to help with drafting games (dragging players into their teams) and setting up the in game servers (rcon, etc). Again, if you're interested in helping out with this, add me on steam and shoot me a message.
Thank you for reading this far if you have. And thank you for everything you've done as a community to help keep newbie mixes alive.
For those interested: newbie mixes will be happening tonight!!, at nine o'clock eastern time. Drop by and coach a game or two if you can.
mumble info:
chi4.tragicservers.com : 64737
the coaching group I was talking about:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/na6v6newbiemixcoaches/