What does watching a pro teach you? How to play in the odd case that your personal play style fit theirs perfectly?

You can find examples of people who aren't the brightest but just play their main game 3-4 hours a day and reach a high level of play.

If something doesn't work, you stop doing it and improve. It doesn't take the commentary of a pro to understand that. At most you'll learn nifty tricks that'll net you 2 kills once a blue moon, but otherwise watching the last 5% of a player's TF2 journey won't teach you that much. Obviously it's a good supplement but not something I'd do outside when I eat and can't play myself.

As I see it, you can skip SOME of the time required to learn positioning etc by watching others. Some of the players at the top that have been at the top since the start, didn't get to watch the ppl before them. They got their by playing and watching themselves to improve. Alot of the time watching your own demos and seeing what could be improved is much stronger than watching an invite player and seeing their mistakes.

I think it's way more beneficial to have a mentor go over a demo of you, and explain what decisions you made were good and bad and let him/her critique your play. You should be working on YOUR play style.

watching STVs and demos is generally better than not watching them, however I don't think you or most other people will be skillcapped by not watching them

yes

Watching STVs and demo reviews are just a tool to learn, plain and simple. They just make it easier to identify your issues and know how to fix them, by seeing other playstyles and what other players may be doing wrong or right and comparing it to yourself. Especially for low level players, who a lot of the time don't even know what they should be doing and don't have the game knowledge to figure it out for themselves.

You obviously won't need to watch other people playing to fix your issues, because it really is just a tool available to help you, so no you wouldn't need it to improve. Though it still is a useful tool and don't neglect it just because it's not 100% necessary either. The key whatever it is you use to improve is to focus on finding out and solving your problems in any case, whether that be watching STVs, demo reviews, scrimming, pugging, etc.

i dont mean to be rude

but none of you understood (or read) my op or something

if you're not in invite I don't think you're really qualified to answer this question and I'd prefer if you don't respond, thanks!

Reviewing your own/your team's/other players demos is probably one of the best ways to improve if you do it right.

It has nothing to do with being "high" or "low" level at the game. I'll just leave this here.

As a low open player I like seeing where high IM/Invite players position themselves at mid. Other than that I don't know that I've learned anything from watching TF2 other than learning when to push as a team.

EDIT: Also good sentry spots on a shitty last

yre closer but not really because like the question wasn't "can you improve without playing tf2" but was more "can you improve to a high level without answering the previous question"

Is it feasible for a player to be a high level player while only practicing TF2 by playing it? Can you actually MGE or pug your way into invite? Can you see your flaws well enough in game that reviewing demos isn't necessary?

I think watching other players is important because they do things you've maybe never thought of doing, or they might have an interesting way of doing things that you can imitate to make your play better. It also helps open up your mind to what is possible so that you aren't caught off guard in the future.

Is it absolutely essential to do in order to be good? Nah, but it depends on your definition of good and how much time you want to spend to get there.

listen to criticism and actually change the way you play off of the criticism
whoa

I'd say people like yomps and yz50 did this. So yes.

you can definitely get to invite only playing scrims and memeing. look at wrench

having different play styles you can adjust to when you play against different players or the pace of the game changes helps a lot. watch demos.

yeah you could just get someone with a brain to micro you

but its gonna be really hard to ever really understand whats going on in a game if you only ever see your own point of view

yes to all of these questions

I think improvement is a lot to due with mentality. You can find a lot of your mistakes and what you can do better while playing, granted in pugs and sometimes scrims its hard to concentrate on thinking about what you should be doing and looking intrinsically at what you could have done wrong whilst also keeping your mechanical play up to par because of all the noise. I think some of the most productive times I've had playing this game was when I'd just local mute my entire team in pugs so that I would have to think about whats going on and figure out for myself what the best play would be.

Can you give me some evidence to back up your worrying amount of misinformation?

That still remains one of the best posts I have read on this website. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, for sure. Almost makes up for the time he talked about not wanting to eat ice cream because he was scared he'd "look cold" in front of some girl he liked. Almost. Hella soft.

So outside of anecdotes I guess this is the best answer anyone is going to be able to provide, but it still feels kinda inconclusive imo. I don't think you can really call someone who has no understanding of TF2 a good TF2 player for example. Even the people named in the thread as examples of not really studying still put some time into reviewing their gameplay and I don't know that people regard yomps and yz50 as tf2 masterminds. On the other end you have players that are strong casters and have a good understanding of tf2 (especially as spectators) but have little practical ability and struggle to work their understanding into the game. You could conclude that understanding TF2 doesn't confer the ability to play it, but could players that focused only on playing have learned more by doing outside study or did they develop a strong understanding of TF2 only by playing it? Are there parts of TF2 that you can't understand in game and require a spectators POV?

I thought it was an interesting question but no one cared i guess rip or maybe i was just bad at asking it.