No

I relinquish my position. Truly, your skills of persuasion and debate are unparalleled on this earth.

A bit of a simple way to look at it. If 2% of the "8000" users on TFTV sign up then that is 800 bucks a month for TFTV. What if, however, the price was dropped to 2.50 dollars? Then you would need 4% of the people to sign up but maybe more people will because of how cheap it is (a key a month) and 5% of the people sign up and now TFTV is making 1000$/month. Maybe on the other hand it is raised to 10$ a month but 1.2% of people stay and TFTV makes 960$/month. Maybe, going back to the 2.50 example, enigma is able to use the fact that 400 people are willing to pay for something they enjoy to entice advertisers.

Also, enigma, please please please let us pay with tf2 items. I would buy tftv+ with items if I could. Also the contact us in the advertising page is blank.

ty

I intentionally stayed out of this discussion to see the reaction to TFTV+ but this is not something that's gonna happen any time soon, for a ton of reasons that should be obvious.

learn how 2 math

Actually the TF2 community has demonstrated this many times already. All of the i46/i49 fundraising, as well as donations to streamers for demo reviews etc.

What did I do wrong.

Why? Obvious TF2 items are much more volatile then currencies but you could work out a deal with tf2shop.net, for example, and instantly sell all tf2 items. Even beyond that, how about bitcoins? There are systems to instantly convert those into paypal.

Yeah, I know. The point wasn't really supposed to be "real world".

You just said one of the BIG reasons not to accept it, yourself. Beyond that, there is an incredibly small chance (AKA none) that TFTV would be able to broker a deal with another TF2 site. The risk for using a non-standard currency is too great.

Bitcoins are much more reasonable, I agree, but enigma can't do everything at once.

If you wanna base the reason not to distinguish the top players on mob mentality then you should rethink +and- frags alltogether, apart from the previous(and still current) coloured names, frag number is really the biggest culprit of groupthink on these forums.

While normal foruns entice responses and require(even if little) effort put into an answer over here if you don't agree with someone or just simply because you don't like them you hover the mouse on the -frag button and its done, just like happened to me on this topic.

I agree, I think these forums would be improved with the removal of the frag system.

I'm not taking part of this discussion explicitly but this site is not the only place on the Internet that suffers from groupthink (to some extent). Reddit has tried tons of different ways to avoid groupthink but it's practically an impossible problem to solve because at the end of the day, people are making the final judgments on who to agree with.

I also think the colored name problem is better now that it's only limited to donors, staff, and John (staff and John make up like 20 people at most, and we don't post all that often).

I also ALSO want to emphasize...enigma can't do everything at once right now. The correct approach is to do things step by step, and he's doing just that.

fuck that what else am i gonna brag about to people in mumble to

motherfuckers care too much about optional video game payments

let me pay for half a year at a time. I hate it when this isn't optional.

or instead of ribbons we can have hats. hats>ribbons>badges

So then I assume you advocate black names for all?

I think that having the staff of the site be visible is okay, as long as those staff members are responsible. The number of staff is significantly smaller than the number of invite players, so they are easier to monitor and moderate. In addition, staff should be invested in the public perception of the website, so you'd hope that they try to portray themselves in a vaguely appropriate manner. Enigma has recently revoked staff rights from at least one individual due to unacceptable behavior. That said, I'm not so attached to my green name that I wouldn't be willing to give it up.

DJC? I thought his name was green.

Anyway I think that you guys should have the same thing as a subreddit mod, where you can choose to show your position as a mod. Otherwise you would just be talking as yourself.

not all staff members have forum mod afaik

Also not everyone who has mod/admin powers actively moderates.

I lurk more than I post, but here's what I think:

$5 is fine for for TF.TV+; it's basically just a donation, and 20 cents a day is reasonable for something so optional. People spend 10 bucks on a movie ticket, 5 doesn't seem too bad.

A really easy thing to implement that I would really implore you to implement: Let me donate for multiple months at a time. Unless you have a system that requires you to do this month to month, it would be so much easier to drop $30 for 6 months or $60 for the year. I really don't see a downside to this for anyone, and it would only possibly generate more revenue. Please consider this. EDIT: Went full retard again

Fragging is fine imo, it definitely adds to the charm of the forums, but I really have (/had) no idea what the stars were. If we're at all discussing the possibility of an updated layout, I agree with Lange that the stars are kind of pointless.

Despite occasionally going full retard on here, I do like these forums and will be happy to support them with a donation.

Forgive me if this has already been posted but I personally would love to be able to have more posts viewable per page. Having to change pages every 30 posts or so can be a little annoying, especially when you want to find a specific post or user. I'm not sure how difficult that would be to implement, but I know I would probably pay for the ability to have all the comments on a post on one page.

sick, now i can pretend i'm not shit at this game

Well if you really carry this to its eventual logical outcome, we should all be posting anonymously. You already have significant name recognition in this community, as do many other streamers and high invite players. If people bandwagon behind blue/green names they're just as likely to bandwagon behind well known names regardless of color.

We've gotten a little far from my original point, so let me back it up a bit.

I think that differentiating players based on skill is bad, because of reasons I've already outlined. I have no problem with the donor blue names, or any other name colors. It's just the skill-based system that I think is questionable right now. (But it's already been eliminated, so everything is okay there)

Frags also play a significant role in discouraging constructive discussion. -50 minus frags are not going to tell someone what they've done wrong as well as a few carefully constructed sentences.

As for name recognition, that is of course a factor, but it is less blind than the invite username color & frag systems. There will still be bandwagoning, but to less of a degree.

I'm not so foolish as to believe that an internet forum can be anything close to logical, professional, and moderate. However, I think that with a few simple changes, things can at least be better. I'm talking about small steps here, not completely challenging the fundamentals of online communication.

damn it lange I thought we were really going to make some progress on this

I disagree. I think that players are far more likely to agree with names they know than anything else. There are tiers to these things that (prior to the elimination of blue names based on invite status) looked like this: well known player with blue/green > well known player > lesser known player with blue/green > everyone else.

I guess your argument is that people who are well known or have green names are responsible and won't misuse their reputations. This isn't really fair because it's not as if every player who would get recognition for making invite would misuse their names, and it doesn't mean that every player who is well known or has a green name now is consistently responsible and won't misuse theirs. Basically the elimination of blue names/lack of recognition for player experience etc. just seems to impede on the process of newer players actually becoming well known/respected in the community.

If you add a signature or public tracker of +/- frags people are less likely to use it vindictively, I expect. Much like with vBulletin etc.

I think Lange has a point. But I also think that invite players are fucking good at tf2 and this is a tf2 website.
If you are a newb in competitive tf2 and you are browsing a tf2 thread, it should be safe to assume that invite players are knowledgable.
If you decide to read a thread about dota, religion or US finances and take a blue name's opinion for a fact, it's your own fault. That makes you a newb IRL (read: stupid).
I don't think that invite players should lose bragging rights to make it harder for some people to be stupid.