Hey there, if you don't know who I am, I try to play medic in ESEA-IM, with varying degrees of competency, and I'm a UGC admin for it's 6v6 league (also with varying degrees of competency) and have been directly responsible for many of the changes there seen since season 7. Oh, and I also come from the same pub community as twitchjohn ;)
Some of these thoughts and suggestions I've thrown around before and shared with Salamancer and others - probably around a year ago.
With this weeks Fully Charged primarily dealing with how we could utilize streaming, and TF.tv to grow the community and TF2 as an e-sport, I thought I would weigh in especially since I'm not participating in thanksgiving. Why not right - if nothing else that episode was to get people thinking about what they personally would like to see or could do.
1. Surrogate streamers
A major issue in the consistency for tf2 streaming, particularly at the invite level, at least in my mind, is the hassle to the player(s) regarding the setting up of the stream in general, and also the decrease in performance that they get from TF2 as a result of streaming. Almost every high level streamer that I've seen has at some point mentioned or complained about the aforementioned decrease in TF2's performance due to their streaming.
Crackclan in Europe actually has an individual follow them around and stream *for* them. Ggglgy brought up how great it'd be if he personally could get that sort of treatment due to the excellent quality of his stream. There are several people, I'm sure, within TF2 who wouldn't mind rubbing elbows with various invite personalities/teams and who have the ability to aid them in their endevour to provide content.
I'm not 100% on this, but I assume it's even possible to set mumble up in such a way as to allow the player to make asides to his/her stream chat (without his/her teammates hearing him/her in mumble) in the same way they do now even if they're not streaming.
Of course, the other huge upside to this, is that the surrogate streamer can set TF2 up in such a way as to make it as pretty as possible - whereas most of the comp community has TF2 set up to look about as much like quake as possible. It also allows the actual streamer to watch different people throughout a scrim/match. Say we're watching some mix^ from last season - yeah people want to see Plat, but they also want to see all the other great players on that team - and with this format you could get a healthy helping of every player.
1.1 It would also be possible, through TF.tv to set up a sort of pool or a list of people who are willing/able to provide this service. I'm not suggesting that they be turned into lackeys who stream for whatever player so they can MGE without lag - but that it would be a great tool, particularly for scrims/matches. This would also facilitate a deeper engagement with the community (due to the streamer pool having to interact with invite teams) from invite teams.
2. Content ideas.
2.1 Classics night
I'm sure all of us who have been involved in the comp community for any length of time have a classic match that we remember - or maybe if they're a little addled - watch every so often. For me personally it was the s10 Badlands Mix^ vs. eMg/Quantic/Prophets/LG. We have a wealth of great matches from the last several seasons and also casts that date back quite a ways - from the MGE days to a much higher voiced eXtine. Why not just dress these videos up a bit - or if one were want to be really sexy, recast, these games at a certain time every week - maybe 1-2 hours on Tuesdays or, if you really wanted to go crazy, you could just load up Saturday with a stream from some sort of playlist which would have all day content of classic casts and games.
.,CONT.
Hey there, if you don't know who I am, I try to play medic in ESEA-IM, with varying degrees of competency, and I'm a UGC admin for it's 6v6 league (also with varying degrees of competency) and have been directly responsible for many of the changes there seen since season 7. Oh, and I also come from the same pub community as twitchjohn ;)
Some of these thoughts and suggestions I've thrown around before and shared with Salamancer and others - probably around a year ago.
With this weeks Fully Charged primarily dealing with how we could utilize streaming, and TF.tv to grow the community and TF2 as an e-sport, I thought I would weigh in especially since I'm not participating in thanksgiving. Why not right - if nothing else that episode was to get people thinking about what they personally would like to see or could do.
1. Surrogate streamers
A major issue in the consistency for tf2 streaming, particularly at the invite level, at least in my mind, is the hassle to the player(s) regarding the setting up of the stream in general, and also the decrease in performance that they get from TF2 as a result of streaming. Almost every high level streamer that I've seen has at some point mentioned or complained about the aforementioned decrease in TF2's performance due to their streaming.
Crackclan in Europe actually has an individual follow them around and stream *for* them. Ggglgy brought up how great it'd be if he personally could get that sort of treatment due to the excellent quality of his stream. There are several people, I'm sure, within TF2 who wouldn't mind rubbing elbows with various invite personalities/teams and who have the ability to aid them in their endevour to provide content.
I'm not 100% on this, but I assume it's even possible to set mumble up in such a way as to allow the player to make asides to his/her stream chat (without his/her teammates hearing him/her in mumble) in the same way they do now even if they're not streaming.
Of course, the other huge upside to this, is that the surrogate streamer can set TF2 up in such a way as to make it as pretty as possible - whereas most of the comp community has TF2 set up to look about as much like quake as possible. It also allows the actual streamer to watch different people throughout a scrim/match. Say we're watching some mix^ from last season - yeah people want to see Plat, but they also want to see all the other great players on that team - and with this format you could get a healthy helping of every player.
1.1 It would also be possible, through TF.tv to set up a sort of pool or a list of people who are willing/able to provide this service. I'm not suggesting that they be turned into lackeys who stream for whatever player so they can MGE without lag - but that it would be a great tool, particularly for scrims/matches. This would also facilitate a deeper engagement with the community (due to the streamer pool having to interact with invite teams) from invite teams.
2. Content ideas.
2.1 Classics night
I'm sure all of us who have been involved in the comp community for any length of time have a classic match that we remember - or maybe if they're a little addled - watch every so often. For me personally it was the s10 Badlands Mix^ vs. eMg/Quantic/Prophets/LG. We have a wealth of great matches from the last several seasons and also casts that date back quite a ways - from the MGE days to a much higher voiced eXtine. Why not just dress these videos up a bit - or if one were want to be really sexy, recast, these games at a certain time every week - maybe 1-2 hours on Tuesdays or, if you really wanted to go crazy, you could just load up Saturday with a stream from some sort of playlist which would have all day content of classic casts and games.
.,CONT.
Obviously, really old POV demos and STVs have their errors now, but I'm sure we could look past these things or if they survive in youtube format, it wouldn't be impossible to edit out the old cast and simply redo it with music in the background (I'm partial to that ESPN classics style football music that they always use for football from the 60's).
It's an easy way to provide content because you're providing premade content whose quality is already laid bare. All you have to do is sex up the start of the video with a description of why the match was important, and who participated in it - and get somebody to stream it.
You could also hype the next weeks classic match at the end of the game, etc. You could even make a show of it "Cbears classics" or "Classic Tf2 with Classic Mix^"
3. Modern Match night
Another huge issue we have as a community is that, at least in ESEA's 6v6 leagues, match times aren't very predictable. It wouldn't be difficult to just set a time and have matches from the previous week, or the current week be cast. Eventually, so long as the time was reasonable, teams who wanted to be cast would consider scheduling matches in that particular time slot. The main issue is getting casters in this regard I assume?
4. All day tournaments
It was mentioned on Fully Charged that LoL and other games can provide an entire days worth of content... Well, I'm sure lots of us don't do stuff on the weekends and could easily have an Ultiduo or even a PUG-bracket tournament if enough notice was given in advance and it wouldn't be hard to get this kinda stuff organized right here on TF.tv.
I know quite a bit of tl;dr but the above isn't terribly difficult to pull off, and there's really no reason why we aren't.
Obviously, really old POV demos and STVs have their errors now, but I'm sure we could look past these things or if they survive in youtube format, it wouldn't be impossible to edit out the old cast and simply redo it with music in the background (I'm partial to that ESPN classics style football music that they always use for football from the 60's).
It's an easy way to provide content because you're providing premade content whose quality is already laid bare. All you have to do is sex up the start of the video with a description of why the match was important, and who participated in it - and get somebody to stream it.
You could also hype the next weeks classic match at the end of the game, etc. You could even make a show of it "Cbears classics" or "Classic Tf2 with Classic Mix^"
3. Modern Match night
Another huge issue we have as a community is that, at least in ESEA's 6v6 leagues, match times aren't very predictable. It wouldn't be difficult to just set a time and have matches from the previous week, or the current week be cast. Eventually, so long as the time was reasonable, teams who wanted to be cast would consider scheduling matches in that particular time slot. The main issue is getting casters in this regard I assume?
4. All day tournaments
It was mentioned on Fully Charged that LoL and other games can provide an entire days worth of content... Well, I'm sure lots of us don't do stuff on the weekends and could easily have an Ultiduo or even a PUG-bracket tournament if enough notice was given in advance and it wouldn't be hard to get this kinda stuff organized right here on TF.tv.
I know quite a bit of tl;dr but the above isn't terribly difficult to pull off, and there's really no reason why we aren't.
Good ideas marxist I was thinking about the same things after watching fully charged as well.
However I think there is an even simpler way to go about growing the community and interest. What most people seem to think is that we need some sort of event or activity that is set up in a semi official way to generate greater interest. I say we invert that paradigm and utilize what we already have.
What I mean is rather than setting up some sort of daily event and try to incentivize players to play in it. We should instead make better use of the nearly daily invite pugs that take place every night. That content is free and it is engaging because its high level tf2 play that is semi casual/serious.
My idea is that we take these vods from the various players who stream their pugs and upload them to youtube say under a teamfortress tv account or commft or what ever. In these uploads are included links to teamfortress.tv and the streamer who streamed the original vod of the invite pug.
For as great as twitch tv is, it is the casual youtube audience that we need to tap into. Star, jerma and shibby all pull in massive amounts of views because the casual gamer isn't on teamfortress.tv or twitch tv looking up competitive tf2.
As for the content, I think it speaks for itself. The aim and skill that are seen in invite pugs far dwarf the skill seen in the videos produced by the pub stars (no offense). Additionally as twitch john was asking for, we get mumble comms that display the dynamic thought process that goes into playing competitive tf2.
My main point is to tap into the content that we already have and distribute it better. Invite pugs are going to take place regardless of whether people watch them or not, so why not put them to use beyond just practice for the players?
I know from my own experience I stumbled into competitive tf2 via the commft youtube channel, which featured pyyyour's pov vods and links to his stream. There are enough streams now that daily high level play can be uploaded straight to youtube.
And I completely agree with using surrogate streamers like mister slin and truk truk who have the technological capacity to stream these pugs.
Good ideas marxist I was thinking about the same things after watching fully charged as well.
However I think there is an even simpler way to go about growing the community and interest. What most people seem to think is that we need some sort of event or activity that is set up in a semi official way to generate greater interest. I say we invert that paradigm and utilize what we already have.
What I mean is rather than setting up some sort of daily event and try to incentivize players to play in it. We should instead make better use of the nearly daily invite pugs that take place every night. That content is free and it is engaging because its high level tf2 play that is semi casual/serious.
My idea is that we take these vods from the various players who stream their pugs and upload them to youtube say under a teamfortress tv account or commft or what ever. In these uploads are included links to teamfortress.tv and the streamer who streamed the original vod of the invite pug.
For as great as twitch tv is, it is the casual youtube audience that we need to tap into. Star, jerma and shibby all pull in massive amounts of views because the casual gamer isn't on teamfortress.tv or twitch tv looking up competitive tf2.
As for the content, I think it speaks for itself. The aim and skill that are seen in invite pugs far dwarf the skill seen in the videos produced by the pub stars (no offense). Additionally as twitch john was asking for, we get mumble comms that display the dynamic thought process that goes into playing competitive tf2.
My main point is to tap into the content that we already have and distribute it better. Invite pugs are going to take place regardless of whether people watch them or not, so why not put them to use beyond just practice for the players?
I know from my own experience I stumbled into competitive tf2 via the commft youtube channel, which featured pyyyour's pov vods and links to his stream. There are enough streams now that daily high level play can be uploaded straight to youtube.
And I completely agree with using surrogate streamers like mister slin and truk truk who have the technological capacity to stream these pugs.
Yeah obviously anything that's produced should be thrown over to youtube - hey tf.tv youtube channel? lol
Sometimes the invite pugs are a bit on the lolzy side, but I'm sure if they knew the game was going on youtube there would be a little bit more emphasis on not running rocket jumpers etc and that would indeed provide oodles and oodles of high level content and display many of the personalities in the community in a less intense environment.
Yeah obviously anything that's produced should be thrown over to youtube - hey tf.tv youtube channel? lol
Sometimes the invite pugs are a bit on the lolzy side, but I'm sure if they knew the game was going on youtube there would be a little bit more emphasis on not running rocket jumpers etc and that would indeed provide oodles and oodles of high level content and display many of the personalities in the community in a less intense environment.
Marxist4. All day tournaments
It was mentioned on Fully Charged that LoL and other games can provide an entire days worth of content... Well, I'm sure lots of us don't do stuff on the weekends and could easily have an Ultiduo or even a PUG-bracket tournament if enough notice was given in advance and it wouldn't be hard to get this kinda stuff organized right here on TF.tv.
If we got more coaches, I could run newbie mixes any time of day or night. Even when I try to run them from 9PM to midnight people show up and play from 7PM to 7AM. People have the time and want to do this but our community doesn't support newbies as much as we could IMO.
[quote=Marxist]
4. All day tournaments
It was mentioned on Fully Charged that LoL and other games can provide an entire days worth of content... Well, I'm sure lots of us don't do stuff on the weekends and could easily have an Ultiduo or even a PUG-bracket tournament if enough notice was given in advance and it wouldn't be hard to get this kinda stuff organized right here on TF.tv.[/quote]
If we got more coaches, I could run newbie mixes any time of day or night. Even when I try to run them from 9PM to midnight people show up and play from 7PM to 7AM. People have the time and want to do this but our community doesn't support newbies as much as we could IMO.
I'd be more then willing to help out surrogate stream anything and I bet a lot of newer players, like myself, would really enjoy seeing high level play mixed the fun that is pugs.
I'd be more then willing to help out surrogate stream anything and I bet a lot of newer players, like myself, would really enjoy seeing high level play mixed the fun that is pugs.