Someone informed me that it doesn't actually matter what you call the hud? Not sure.

People who want your HUDs to work, I got sent a workaround temporary fix

go to your custom hud folder (so for me its tf > custom > HUD)

in a plaintext editor (preferrably not notepad) create a file called info.vdf and put this in

"HUD name" { "ui_version" "1" }

where HUD name is the name of your custom folder.

Worked for me (modified KBNHud with a few additions/subtractions)

People who want your HUDs to work, I got sent a workaround temporary fix

go to your custom hud folder (so for me its tf > custom > HUD)

in a plaintext editor (preferrably not notepad) create a file called info.vdf and put this in

"HUD name" { "ui_version" "1" }

where HUD name is the name of your custom folder.

Worked for me (modified KBNHud with a few additions/subtractions)

Healing scouts is now even better :3

You still have not addressed my primary concern.

I /get/ what successful esports have in common. I /get/ that TF2 doesn't have those things, I /get/ that this is a big, grand gesture towards the competitive community and that it has potentially good and potentially very bad side effects. But Dota/CS launched with working competitive that was balanced and intended for professional play. They weren't perfect, but the gap between their launch and a better state of competitive being wasn't literally change the dynamics and weapon balance of 80% of their game immediately.

So my question for you is, that I was trying to put and has not been addressed.

What happens if, when matchmaking launches (which is like right now as I am getting HLDS announcement), the game is not ready, not balanced, not good and not fun for a competitive audience and it belly flops, ruining our chances at making this game what it can be and what we know it can be? What happens when all the community supporters and high level players that were holding out for matchmaking to breathe new light into the game see what it is and realize there is, minimum, 1-2 /years/ worth of valve time balance changes before true competitive viability? We will be pushing 10 or 11 years at that point, which would make us by far the oldest game to receive this kind of mass support. What happens if we don't get an international, don't get the support, but all of our rules changed and no one wants to play anymore?

I'm not saying all of that will happen, but its at least as likely as us becoming huge esports. These are the kinds of things that we need to keep in mind, because they are problems we will have to face.

That's not cynicism. Cynicism is distrusting the motives of valve. They mean and want well for us. I'm questioning the means they have taken to get there.

I have something awful to admit.

I am a fraud, a con-man, a fake.

I do not have a Ph.D or an M.D.

Sorry to disappoint.

You make it sound as if all we have to do is follow Valve's lead and all of a sudden we become big. I really don't see any reason to believe that to be the case. If we shift to their current ruleset, we will lose almost everyone who currently plays. Then what will we have? ESEA will stop because they aren't going to keep a league around for 0 players in the hopes that maybe someday the matchmaking players will come into this ghost-town and revive it. All I am saying is that matchmaking has to become a good competitive experience first, then get released to the public, then hyped. In that order. Anything else runs the risk of grounding this flight before it even pulls away from the gate.

I've seen enough over the years to think that we are in for the latter, and that blindly hoping for the former is naive.

We agree on this. The only thing worse than our current setup is to have a game that is so unbalanced and stupid to play that no one wants to. This is colloquially known as Valve's game.

This also kills the future potential of the game if we take too long to fix everything. I don't trust that Valve will act fast enough and decisively enough to actually fix anything in time for it to matter. This is my concern.

You are correct, I did not specifically mention them in my post, but it is separate to my main point.

These are all problems with matchmaking, which I don't think should be released yet primarily due to a lot of those concerns. Weapons aren't well balanced, so why start having people play competitive with the unbalanced game? My underlying point has more to do with the fact that Valve has a limited window for which this will work. Releasing matchmaking and hyping it up will bring players to try it out. If it sucks (which it does right now), we won't be able to retain those players.

This potential interest in the 6s format is nice, I will concede. But is there a coordinated plan to gather these players and "show them the way" so to speak of esea/ugc/etf2l/<your regional equivalent here>? Because if not, that still doesn't solve the issue. Has valve said they would create exposure for leagues? Any exposure we've had so far has mostly been blog posts about broadcasts and LANs which are nice, but only the tip of the iceburg in terms of what valve could do and has done for their other games. Are we going to get those benefits? Does anyone have any sort of evidence or something more firm than "wouldn't it be nice if" on what it is that valve is going to do?

I've seen this game come a long way in 7 years, and I know what it can be. I also know that it is where it is now in large part because of the talented and hard working people behind the scenes. Look around you. Look at ESEA, look at TFTV, look at the iSeries and GXL and UGC and even our very format. We did this. We made this from ground fucking 0, with no (or extreeeemely limited support from Valve) over almost a decade. I am not opposed to Valve trying to come in and support competitive, I just want it done right. I don't want our "omg its Valve here to save the day" blinders to come on and make us ignore the very real problems with their implementation as we understand it so far.

What qualifies as a "real competitive game"? Broodwar? DOTA/DOTA2/League? Counter Strike?

TF2 has lasted an incredibly long time if you throw out the very obvious outliers. Broodwar is an anomaly and became popular mostly due to socio-economic factors in Korea and didn't enjoy mainstream (global) popularity until near the end of its lifespan, and arguably at all. SC2 did better, but if you notice it has waned considerably from its initial release (though still managing to be much bigger than TF2 now), the MOBAs have a similar story where they really became popular after the streaming breakthrough and globalization of esports, which I would argue TF2 was too early to take advantage of and too small by the time it came around to hook in.

Other "esports"? Titanfall? for what, 5 months?, call of duty is popularish, but only because it constantly gets new releases and appeals to a certain crowd (found its niche). Smash? Resurgence with exclusively dedicated community support. Other fighting games get a little excitement, but lets be real here, none of that is what you are really hoping to happen.

People are looking at TF2 and saying "if only we had valve support, we could be esports" but I don't think that has any sort of inherent truth to it.

I think we are, in the grand scope of things, pretty damn "esports" already. We have a paid league that has prize payouts, we have international tournaments, we have a lot. Sure, we don't have the money, the viewers or the sponsors, but a lot of these games don't either.

<out of space>

When so far all we know they did is remove the word "beta", open it up to everyone and add a 12v12 mode, yeah thats a queue modification.

Idk, maybe I feel differently about all this than most people, but I've never tried to hide my opinion that matchmaking isn't going to save this game, this competitive community, in any way. Certainly not in its current form."Valve's game" is not a competitive game in any way, some people probably have fun fucking around with 6 engi strats or double medic double demo strats, but that isn't a recipe for interesting or dynamic competitive games.

I am afraid that releasing matchmaking now, with no (yet announced?) balance changes or dramatic weapon changes or class limits will severely limit how seriously matchmaking is taken by anyone. And we can say "well the goal is to just get them to think about joining competitive", well how will the average person know about our community, how will more interested and skilled people looking for their next competitive game join in, play a couple games of mm, decide it fucking sucks and is basically shit all around and then decide to stick around long enough to find out about us?

Just disappointed in the direction of TF2 lately and this update isn't helping.

so wait...

we get a queue modification, 4 taunts, and some crates?

and to think people were excited.

I am convinced moy is playing pre-nerf demo, holy cow did he put in work.

GG NAB

I was gonna come in here and say let's wait for more details before going crazy or getting on our angsty privileged high horse...

But damn that just looks awful. He was down man.

System 2 vs not around bears :p

Add me, we'll talk.

This has a better chance of success if you use the existing base of newbie mixes sponsorship, expertise, and funding and I can help with that. You have the drive I've got your means.

Radium is such a sweetheart

(almost) Everyone I've met at LAN has been pretty awesome, with special mention to kevinispwn who continues to care WAY too much about this game.

dreamboat is like your semi-retarded friend who always has this big dumb grin on his face but you can't help but feel better whenever he's around.

Panacea is probably the nicest and most appreciative person I've ever mentored.