We need teams to instantly relate to the viewer before they know all the rules of the game. I don't follow all the rules of football, but if I watch it I at least know right off the bat who to root for because they have my city's name written on them. He's right, there's a narrative.

TF2 does have that narrative. We've got B4nny, Harb, PYYYOUR, Mackey, etc. who are big names with big personalities, but you have to watch them play for a while to see it, and there's no difference between this team with 6 random usernames and this other team with 6 random usernames to someone who doesn't already know the players, their story, their playstyles, etc. I watch Invite because I care about how the players play. I get greater joy out of seeing my favorite players go huge and greater excitement out of seeing the players I don't like go huge than I get from a game where I don't know anyone. I don't watch Open because I don't care about the outcome because I don't know any of the players. When we find a way for me to look at two Open teams with 0 players I recognize and I still have a reason to care about the outcome, we will expand to the size of greater eSports.
More LANs, more streaming with facecams, etc. are a good start. I don't know where to go from there, but we have to market players and teams, not the game.

"Where does the Constitution say that that exists?" -conservatives who disagree with gay marriage

Separation of Church and State would be great, but TBH that's 100% impossible. Where do you draw the line? If I start a religion where my God tells me I must kill a non-believer every day, and the state can't interfere in my beliefs, what's stopping me from murdering people every day? Their religion says that the punishment for murder is death, and it also demands the same punishment for homosexuality. To them, it's like legalizing a crime as bad as murder, and to overturn DOMA is to force our religion on them.

C++ and Java, I took AP CompSci this year.

When a map is made of quality comparable to those maps, we play it.
see: process

no offense to the mapmaker, but a non-symmetrical (I mean 5CP style symmetrical, not koth style) 5CP that is largely designed for HL play will never be considered for 6s, and 6s players tend to like hating maps made for HL.

"The scouts should be fun to watch
...
Players to watch: <Not Scouts>"

???

Robert Carrow's biographies of Lyndon Johnson are great. That'll keep you occupied for a while.

go ahead and say I'm crazy, I probably am, but...

what if the season were 9-10 weeks long?

We'd get 3+ of each gamemode (assuming maps get made) or we could keep 5 5cp and have 2 koth and 2 a/d, which is already becoming feasible (there are koth maps out there, and edifice is definitely getting there).

Right, that was directed to the mapmaker, I'm just trying to help while reminding people that saying "this map sucks" helps no one.

Specifically what didn't you like about it? It is extremely similar to viaduct except snipers are a bit stronger on lakeside and soldiers are a bit weaker, and I guess scouts are a bit weaker too with all the flat open ground. Is that the problem? Is it too big? I think it's easier to make a good map if you explain why a map is bad rather than saying what maps are bad.

This

EDIT ninja'd by the fix, nvm

-Design it with the way KOTH is played right now in 6s in mind(or HL if you're designing this for them too).
-Sniper sightlines are OK, but within reason of course. There are some really good snipers out there. They should be rewarded, but they shouldn't be able to carry their team.
-Jump routes for soldiers are fun and make bombs exciting. Use ramps instead of staircases (allows rampslides and in general staircases are a pain).
-The way lakeside, viaduct, and, to an extent, arctic are layed out has sort of become the generic koth map: Spawn area, go through chokes to reach a yard, go through chokes to reach the valley before the point, which has things obstructing it so you access it through ramps/stairways on either side. There's also a whole balcony system for snipers and enemy soldiers, and there's a little room off to the side of the point for flankers. I don't know if you want to follow that, but it would be your best bet for a easy-to-make balanced map. Alternatives are cool, but obviously harvest, king, etc. are pretty poorly designed.

I can give you a lengthy explanation of why that vanilla style of koth map works best if you need it, especially if you don't plan to use it because you should keep the basic principles pretty much the same.

I'd vote for a visual style like 2fort and dustbowl. It's the style of all the original maps but none of the koth maps really have it right now.

Yeah, I could see that. I personally don't like the idea that it's impossible for a team to become as good as HRG through practice, and it's impossible to prove that to be the case, but I realize it would probably be too much work to be worth it for the vast majority of people. That could enter the topic of prize pool and size of our competitive scene, etc. but it's not going to grow and become profitable until every Invite team is in it to win it IMO. The question I would ask however is: This is b4nny's 11th season in Invite on demo, right? So why hasn't he gotten bored of it? Cyzer, Platinum, Harbleu, enigma, etc. have been in Invite on one, maybe two, classes for years, and they don't seem to get bored of it. Is that the secret to their success? The ability to enjoy the game long enough to get good enough?

The individual players of HRG all appear to take this game more seriously than anyone else. Since season 12's LAN these guys have been scrimming a TON with each other, and it's added up to unmatched team coordination. They've been together for just 2 seasons, but they've played hundreds of matches together and have grown very very used to each other's abilities and style (and the only team with more experience in invite than them is Mix^). Correct me if I'm being naive, but I don't get the impression that any other team plays together as much as they do.

I think this stems from and contributes to the larger problem that people just can't compete with the top invite teams. A team gets formed in open, sticks together (maybe swapping bad/annoying players for MGE allstars) through IM, and works up to invite. Then, they soon learn that they have no chance of making LAN because they're never experienced this level of play before. They get upset, they start blaming/doubting each other, they have a growing feeling of futility that demotivates them and creates a cycle that spirals to the point where they give up on improving and break up. Because of this, teams don't stay together long enough to get up to that top level where they can compete with Tri Hards and HRG. AG is an exception, they're been working hard and they've definitely been making names for themselves. Another season together will probably put them among the standard invite players who are/will be always in the div that you just expect to see on a LAN contending roster (like clockwork, b4nny, plat, etc.). Vector is also an exception. They'll get better if they stick together too, but their improvement has perhaps been a bit slower.

This problem is much much bigger in europe. Casters treat any matches between broder/cc/epsilon and anyone else as a pointless technicality, only slowing down epsilon from taking the championship. Everyone knows how it's going to end and the lower teams just don't seem to believe that they'll ever beat the top 3. That is absolutely the wrong mentality (as someone from Fully Charged Europe said the other day).

TL;DR teams will keep getting upset and quit before they become good enough to make LAN, and this prevents teams from ever competing with the current top of invite, allowing the gap to grow bigger and bigger and making the problem worse every season.

I'm probably making things out to be worse than they are, but TBH I'm getting sick of people saying things like "well, it's HRG/Epsilon. we all knew this would be a roll" or "well, yeah, he's good, but, come on, he's no b4nny." Stop treating the top teams like unstoppable forces and they will become stoppable. The only advantage they have is they've stuck together longer. So quit cutting and get used to the teammates you've got. You're in the same div as them. You really shouldn't be if you're going to chalk up every match against them as a loss before it happens.

gg enigma wins 2-0 against jumping soldiers

Probably not. I don't have much money. If I did? Yeah I guess.