Still a better love story than twilight.

Honestly I don't think level's of production are going to massively increase viewer numbers. I can't say I watch any game just because the streamer provides instant replays, or because it's 1080p instead of 720p, or because of cool overlays, video effects, or studio audio quality.

The problem is the product. We enjoy playing it but what we enjoy in TF2 is different to what the vast majority of TF2 players enjoy. Honestly I think we have two options with this game. One being to continue as we are. Does TF2 really need to be a professional eSport? Isn't it just fine how it is with our tight community, decent coverage scene etc?
Maybe we should focus our efforts on improving how we interact with sponsors, approaching companies with well presented documentation on how they would see a return on their investment if they sponsored our online tournaments. If we put some serious effort into showing how much we appreciate sponsorship for our game, we might attract larger sponsorship deals and have more 'intense' tournaments with more money on the line.

The second option is a complete rework of the competitive TF2 game. TF2 as it is will not become a top tier eSport. Does it have the potential to be one? It's hard to say but the path we are on now is a definite no. Of course, a complete rework of TF2 could be its competitive death. Existing competitive players might not like the 'new game', and casual players might just remain casual. It would be a high risk, high reward option. I'm talking drastic changes like reducing team size down to 5 (in line with other eSports team games), modifying class limits and unlocks to incorporate more diversity, changing the primary map pool to feature the most popular casual maps.

Even to me, (a guy who loves unlocks, offclassing etc..), that second option sounds pretty shit, but if we want TF2 to be a recognised eSport, we are going to need the casual gamers to have some interest, which means us playing their style of TF2, rather than us trying to force them into playing ours.

I vote leave TF2 how it is and enjoy playing the game as it is. Hope for some minimal growth through decent coverage and wait for TF3 to be released. If / when it does get released, we just mustn't make the same mistakes we made with this game :)

I wouldn't blame the developer for our game not becoming a major player in eSports. They did make a large number of gestures to promote the competitive game early in the days of TF2. We had the Beta scheme, they implemented tournament mode, they balanced a number of the early unlocks and game settings after the competitive community highlighted issues. They were at one point working with us, but we pretty much rejected their efforts and decided to do our own thing with the game.

Even now, Valve make their money from purchases in the mannco store, and our competitive game itself doesn't actually use any of that stuff. A public player can't see Ruwin use some new scout unlock and then go buy it because 'he wants to play like him' because we only use default stuff. League of legends, a public player stumbles across their pro streams, see's xPeke destroy someone with Katarina in mid lane, and then they go buy the champ. We don't make Valve much money at all, so we can't expect them to throw time and money at our scene as they would get such a small return for their investment (which is what it ultimately comes down to with any game developer). We can't blame them for that, we simply need to show them how we can make money for them for them to want to invest something in our scene.

Oh also, payload works as a public map, because people naturally play the objective. The cart heals you, so if you want more health, you can go push the cart. Also with some maps if you want to go onto the next 'level' you need to push the cart to the end.

It's the same as how Counter-Strike's public game plays a lot like the competitive game.
People want to win the round, so they can get more money, so they can get bigger guns, so they can kill more people. So they plant the bomb, or diffuse the bomb to get more money for the next round.

There's no motivation for public players to capture the points on a 5CP map, so they simply don't unless they happen to kill all of the players, pushed forward to the next choke point, and captured a point on the way because it was 'there'.

I wonder if we gave payload a huge chance, if we would actual ever be able to enjoy it? Probably not, but just wondering!

Expecting a million down votes, but still...

The competitive game needs to be less alienated from the public game. We have a huge public scene, the competitive TF2 player base is probably less than 1% of it. We aren't getting gamers from other games to quit their competitive games and take up TF2. The pool of potential players and spectators that a 5 year old game (?) has to take from is going to be the public community, which is still MASSIVE.

No other successful eSport title has their competitive game so different from their public game, in fact, some of them are literally identical, and only the level of team play itself differs. The game titles that are a custom mod, pro mode etc, that do make it as a pro eSport title get only a short period of time as a pro eSport title then they die off. Some new releases do get an initial 'hype' period where teams move over to it, expecting it to be the next 'big thing' but those too often die out after a couple of tournaments, and TF2 can't have that as its already an old game.

The problem we have, is that we enjoy a particular style of TF2 to the point where it's almost a completely different game. We play with scouts, soldiers, demos and a medic. We rarely use other classes where as spies, heavies, engineers all feature heavily on pubs. We restrict our game to a handful of unlocks, while the public community have hundreds of weapons to play around with. We play 5CP maps while the public community clearly prefer A/D and Payload maps.

As shit as it sounds, TF2 would probably have more luck as an eSports title if we were playing payload 6v6, with no unlock restrictions, and maybe class limit 1 (to promote more diversity in classes). The game wouldn't be half as fun to play, or watch (from a competitive TF2 players perspective) but the public community would enjoy it a lot more than watching what we play now, and there are a lot more of them than us.

Highlander is great and also much more popular than 6v6 is with barely any coverage and publicity, but 9vs9 isn't really possible for LAN events, or as a professional eSports. It is however highly preferred by the public community, as they can come and watch their favorite class, and everyone is represented in a match.

I think we would need to come up with some sort of 'hybrid' competitive game that still keeps the speed and skill of the existing competitive TF2, but gives public players something they can relate to in the game they play. Maybe a 6vs6 CL1 Payload comp with minimal unlock restrictions, but to most of the competitive community, that simply sounds awful.

So without changing the actual game, the only thing we can really do is try to heavily promote what we have, and hope it sticks with some people and grows over time, but I can't see that happening 5 years (?) into a game's existence, or at least not to a point where it will make it as a huge competitive title. The game is growing, but at this rate, we would need 10+ years to get to the level of publicity where we could expect tournaments of $35,000 or more to feature in our scene.

If you asked me next week, I'd probably have a different team as a number of players are interchangeable, but tonight I'm going to go with:

Scouts: Ruwin + Clockwork
Demoman: Numlocked
Soldiers: TLR + Mike
Medic: Mirelin

Sometimes it's best to sit down with them and have a discussion about it. I had a friend in a similar problem at that age and he asked one question that made them really think. That was simply:

"What were you doing at my age"?

His parents said how at 18 they had moved out, they had adventures driving and camping in mainland Europe. He turned around and said, "and I'm not even allowed out with my friends after 11...". That kind of hit them a little bit.

Anyway, I think you have to demonstrate to your parents that you are mature. Have adult discussions with them and if you find yourself being treated like a child, throw lines at them like, "Well tell me, how am I supposed to develop into an adult if I have no freedom to do so"?

Regardless, you still have to respect your parents, but that doesn't mean you can't attempt to demonstrate that that you are mature than they think you are.

The key to calling is to have everyone follow your calls and trust you.

Sometimes you will make a bad call, but sometimes a bad call can still work out if your whole team executes it perfectly. Your bad call will 100% of the time be a terrible call if 3 of your team mates follow the call, and 3 of them decide that they know better and don't go with the play.

The other thing to remember, is sometimes the call could be perfect, but some enemy hero scout comes in and cleans up all 6 of your team. Once a call has been made, and the actions executed, regardless of the outcome, focus on what is going to happen next, don't just simply bitch about what went wrong... focus on the task in hand.

Oh and also, be decisive. Take into account any input your team mates have on the situation, but when you decide to make a play, you tell your team, and you make that play. Don't make questionable calls such as, "Hmmm I think we should push now?". Just say, "Go in now, push!". Repeat it if needed. You can also collect your team after a push went wrong...

"Okay that was a bad call guys, sorry for that, but here's the situation we are in now so let's focus and work as a single unit".

I had a DA a while ago and couldn't use it because of the right mouse button.

The problem is, you can press the mouse buttons from half way way down the shell of the mouse. Literally, if you press quite hard in the middle of the mouse, you can click the buttons.

So if you're a palm grip player, and low sensitivity (meaning you're quite aggressive with your mouse), your palm (or close to it) can sometimes push the buttons. It was incredibly annoying when playing medic (popping ubers), sniping (zooming out just as your about to take a shot) and demoknight (bleh).

It could be that when you're playing MGE, you are more aggressive with your mouse meaning the right mouse pops off? Just basing it off my experience with it.

Or I could be completely wrong and it's a mechanical fault.
It's a shame as it's such a good mouse otherwise.

Yes, you're right. The correct thing that benefits the community is to do what you said to do (for the record, that's not my job at Vanilla TV). My post is highlighting why even though I know it's the best thing to do, why I'm personally finding it difficult to want to do so. Someone insults you and then you're supposed to go work with them. Venting my frustrations here makes it easier to do so.

Wrong. We wrote our own proposal and secured the contract. That's not what this is about at all. I'm mad because TF.TV should be focused on how to make this event epic, which should have started with working with Vanilla TV instead of trying to discard Vanilla TV.

It's what I thought should have happened from the start. TF.TV should have spoken to us but before we even got the chance to go speak to them about the event, we get an email from Multiplay telling us to fight our case. I'm venting because TF.TV decided to take a different approach instead of cooperating for the good of the game... and I'm venting because you're correct... it's still the right course of action to talk it out and work something out that involves both of the organisations, but it's hard to consider talking to 'great people' that try to oust you from one of your passions... covering competitive TF2 at the Multiplay LAN events.

The smarter people out of the readers here would see that while this is a vent on how TF.TV annoyed me personally, it is also an attempt to justify opening a dialogue for the benefit of the community.

It's the whole point of my frustrations. With a lose reference, if someone invades your country and you fend them off, do you then invite them in to run it with you?

Even if I think it would be better to let them in, the hostile approach makes it difficult to want to...

It would have been better to speak to us, and attempted to run it together first.

It's not that I feel we needed to be asked. It's just if TF.TV wanted what is best for the community, I would have thought they would have considered trying to work with us first (as I think most people agree that would have been the best outcome). Instead they went to try and take the contract, which is one way to do it (and also perfectly legit), but attempting to take the contract surely ends the possibility of working together, because it's a hostile approach rather than a diplomatic one. Why would you want to work with someone after they've attempted to push you out entirely?

VanillaTV secured the contract and now there are well-founded calls from the community to invite people like Sal to come and work with us. The point I am making is that half of me thinks this is a great idea (and should have been done from the start), where as the other half is thinking 'fuck these guys, they tried to cut us out the contract, whereby we would have no role in a show we've been working hard with for years'.

Do you see what I mean?

Yes, I'm aware, but I wanted to vent my frustrations, and sadly I don't have a goldfish.

My frustrations that the community should be working together, but instead TF.TV decided to take the hostile approach to things by trying to push us out of the picture at this event.