here's feedback for tf2stadium
when someone leaves your game, the system requires 5 people from the server to rep this person. this is dumb, you should make it like tf2center where it auto reps the person who left the server.

favorite meme?

I used to think the same way you did, but after years of trying, I'm starting to think otherwise.

This might be a little too deep but here's my story. I started playing comp TF2 in the fall of 2009 back when we had sponsors like EG, Complexity, and Pandemic. When the sponsors started leaving the scene, I decided to do something about it. I took over the mentoring program for CommunityFortress, which was r/TrueTF2 before r/TrueTF2 existed. For two seasons I organized a group of invite players to spend a season coaching new players to get them involved in the game; we coached over 200 players. When this method wasn't working and 1:1 mentoring became too time consuming, I started streaming so I could show the greater gaming community what competitive TF2 is all about. After 4 years of streaming TF2, creating youtube videos, shoutcasting, and basically looking for various ways to grow the scene, I'm not really getting the results I'm looking for. I've talked to everybody that I can about the game, and I've talked to enough sponsors to know that they're not really interested right now.

I don't tell you this to make you feel bad for me, I tell you this because I feel like I've tried those very things that you're talking about. I feel like I've tried to show people the good parts of the scene, and I've tried growing the scene as a grassroots effort in the same way as smash. In fact, the guys who are responsible for growing smash work at Twitch and I've had many conversations with TheCrimsonBlur about this very topic. While TF2 has a number of advantages that Smash doesn't have and never will have, we still have many issues, and we also have competition. There aren't very many games out there that can do what smash does better than smash, but there are games out there that does what comp TF2 does better than comp TF2.

The primary issue of course is that our game isn't the game that everyone knows when they think about TF2. When you think about smash and you watch tournament-level smash, that's the same game you played with your friends on your couch. When you think about TF2, you think about large server, chaotic, fun, cartoon violence. And when you think about Overwatch, you think esport. The fact of the matter is that plenty of esports scenes are WAY more toxic than ours, and toxicity isn't the main issue. If you want to play tournament level smash, you're probably familiar with the game. Bring your controller to the nearest local and start competiting -- it works even without net play. With TF2, if you want to start competing, it's a lot harder to get involved. Even if you encourage every single new player, you're going to be met with resistance.

I'm not here to tell you that you can't grow TF2 as a grassroots esport. Go ahead and try -- it's possible you can succeed where I have failed. Maybe I'm jaded, but I feel like the game needs a makeover if it wants to be seen as competitive, and I think that that movement needs to come from the developers. I'll stick with TF2 like you will, but I think that it's out of my hands to a large extent now.

Paradise Cafe became The Sparkle Gang right before the match went live @_@
Any reason why you guys changed the name back?

I disagree with your line of thought here. Valve has implemented 6v6 in the game right now, so it appears like we're on the same page as far as server size goes (which is also why Sigafoo's decision to try 7v7 is so questionable). As you've pointed out, class limits is the next part of the game to focus on, and while we've implemented class limit 2 on some and 1 on others, Valve is not convinced that that is the best way to do things. This seems reasonable to me, and they also have the power to balance the classes to keep a consistent class limit 2 or class limit 1.

Obviously they are not the former so given that information, they are the latter. And why shouldn't they be upset with our form of 6s? It's a bastardized version of their game with seemingly arbitrary class limits and weapon bans. Obviously the developers aren't happy that we've implemented weapon bans, and they understand that class limits/weapon bans are required since we don't have direct control over the design of the game.

Given this information though, I think that we would actually want their game to "cannibalize" ours (to use your term) because we want a developer supported game. Can you explain to me why you wouldn't want our version of the game to die in favor of theirs? If they make improvements to the format, I think that we should accept their game.

Yeah, costs are definitely a factor but the primary reason 9v9 doesn't work is because queue times would be sooo much longer. They're already pretty long with just 6v6.

Valve was able to work around this for 12v12 pubs by partially filling servers and then adding new players to the server as they added themselves to the matchmaking queue.

Definitely can't be done for ESEA, it's been tried. There was also a push for camera guys to stop using cheat feed because you couldn't use them at LANs with the live crowd, but I think that it should be used online where possible since the goal is to give the viewers the best experience possible.

I do realize that my opinion on this situation is going to be unpopular, but I also know who my audience is. The whole reason that we're on this forum in the first place is because we're dissatisfied with the game that the developers gave us, so we created our own game mode / format that we could play in tournaments. Anything that the developers create that is seen as "less" than what we've already created for ourselves is going to be seen as incompetent. Matchmaking system? Woop de frickin' doo, TSC and Erynn created PugChamp with only two people, complete with ELO system and public stat tracking. SizzlingCalamari created an entire stats system that allows people to drill down into their individual performances, and it's accessible in-game. We have amazing map makers that have created maps that the developers had to basically steal from us since they couldn't do it on their own.

If you compare what they've done to what we've done, then of course it's going to look bad. But I look at it this way -- the TF2 dev team is pivoting right now, moving from years and years of casual development to now supporting a competitive format. We've been working on our competitive game for almost a decade with many, many people getting involved. It is truly a grassroots competitive scene. Their team has only been working on this for two years and they've come a really long way. If I compare the game 12 months ago to the game as it is now, there's been a large number of really positive changes made to the game and that's what I'm happy about. If you guys compare the game as it is now to the competitive game that we've been working on for years and years, then of course it will pale in comparison and you'll be upset.

That said, it's all constructive feedback and many of you guys aren't wrong. I'm just saying put things in perspective and the whole situation is not as bad as you're painting it to be.

For sure. What you're saying totally makes sense but I want to put that in perspective.

1) The TF2 team is relatively small. Valve has money to pay developers but if they hire new people, those people tend to go work on other things like virtual reality, Dota, CS:GO, etc. TF2 is a game that new employees work on to get their feet wet and that's why you see so many different projects popping up in TF2.
2) Given that they have a small team, there's only so much that they can accomplish in a short amount of time.
3) The beta could have been longer, but we have to remember that the community was so thirsty for the matchmaking update, refreshing daily and begging to get their hands on it, especially after many Valve visits and B4nny hype tweets.

I think that the TF2 dev team handled everything pretty well given these circumstances, and while they may not be able to satisfy everyone, I think that they've done a good job and that's why I have faith in them to make the best decisions for their game moving forward. People will always want more updates in less time with more content, but they've done the best that they can and that is commendable.

I hear you my dude. I too wish that we could just put our 6v6 game into matchmaking but that's not how they see the future of the game necessarily, and you'd also piss off a bunch of people who don't like playing Scout/Soldier/Demo/Medic. It's obvious that they won't just take our word that this is the best format, but maybe they'll reach similar conclusions after months of playtesting.

They did pay attention to our community and what they found was a community with low viewership, low participation, and just a small scene overall. You could argue that we were small because we didn't have developer support, but if you put yourself in the developer's shoes it was possible that we're small because the game mode that we designed for ourselves wasn't very good. They needed to test it out for themselves and find that out on their own.

In our defense, we did the best that we could with the tools that we had, but it's obvious that we could only take that so far. At a certain point it's hard to introduce people to a game that has so many barriers to entry.

Valve is slowly stripping away those barriers and introducing the larger TF2 population to the competitive side of the game, and that's why competitive TF2 is in a better place today than ever before.

You can't change too many variables at once. The beta wasn't for testing the gameplay -- the beta was for testing the stability of the servers and the stability of the matchmaking service. This should be clear to you because it was a closed beta with limited access; they limited access on purpose so that they wouldn't overload their system, and then they ran stress tests to try to overload it. Again, the beta wasn't for gameplay testing purposes. They COULD have tested gameplay during the time that the servers were shakey, but then you wouldn't collect good data since people could be lagging with the FPS settings that they forced, or maybe they had high ping because they were playing from halfway around the world, or maybe people were randomly afking / abandoning / hacking, etc. There's like a million problems that could go wrong there, so that wouldn't be a good environment to test the gameplay.

Now you could ask "why not keep it in beta as they test the gameplay now that things are stable?" Well it's a pretty well polished product now as far as the actual server stability goes, so I don't see a point in keeping it in beta forever. Besides, beta is just a label. The system works the same way right now whether you call it alpha, beta, or full release. You're still going to keep working on it since TF2 is a software as a service, and calling it a beta doesn't change that.

It isn't communicated in writing but if updates aren't coming as quickly as you want them to come out then it's slow by your standards. They don't need to smack you in the face with it and spell everything out for you, you can just pay attention to how long it's taking them to do things. Like you said, they're slow. Okay they're slow, so what? It's not like they're directly interfering with how we run our competitive community, so there's no reason for us to get upset at them for being slow at updating something that is outside of our community.

Yeah that's definitely a flaw here. I think Sigafoo recognizes this and is trying to motivate top players to try out that 7v7 format, but I'm not sure how well it will do. I hope it's fun to watch.

Valve, when they're ready, could always do the same thing. They could put up a really small prize pool or reward players with an in-game medal, and then have them compete. They don't need the top players in the game to play it with high level strats, they just need to see if the format is competitively viable.

Antimoon seems to recognize this as well. There's no established competitive game so the developers are starting from scratch as we mentioned before. So I feel like we're just rehashing this over and over, and I've already stated in my opinion piece that this is where we're stuck right now. Valve has the matchmaking client up and running, they have tried the no class limits / no weapon bans for months, and now they just need to make a decision on where to go next.

You could say "why don't they just use the competitive 6s format that we've been running for almost a decade?" but the problem is that it might not be the perfect format. It might be close, but it might not be the final format. I personally tend to agree with this notion because I don't think you should have some classes limited to 2 and others to 1.

I get what you're saying but in order to refine the game they needed player feedback so unfortunately they had to release the matchmaking game in its current state. Now that people are playing it they can collect user data alongside feedback from the forums and make adjustments. They've already adjusted the major problems regarding queue times, local servers, abandonment, and initial concerns regarding hacking. There's obviously more work to be done and the biggest class balance changes are still to come.

You're missing the point of the video and how it applies to TF2. TF2 isn't Quake. TF2 isn't some ultra hardcore professional esport designed to push your 1v1 skills to the limit. It's a casual FPS game that is easy to pick up and play. It has mass market appeal and likable characters. And it's difficult to master.

Sure TF2 isn't Overwatch but many, many players talk about how Overwatch is a game that is missing something. You need a game that is derived from those kinds of quake/arena FPS shooters but is easy to pick up and play without diluting it and removing the things that make the game fun. TF2 could totally be that game, but it needs developer support.The developers are offering us their support as we speak, and that's why competitive TF2 is in a better place now than ever before.

If you don't like matchmaking in its current state then fine! Honestly the matchmaking game mode was garbage when it first released and we all knew it. The competitive community knew it, Reddit knew it, and the developers knew it. But they also knew that it would take time to refine it, so they're working with us to make that happen by letting us play it and provide open feedback. If you don't want to help out that's fine. If you do, awesome.

Valve doesn't care about weapon balancing right now. Who cares if a weapon is overpowered in 6v6 if the final competitive format is 7v7? 4v4? 5v5? What if a weapon is overpowered with class limit 2 but not with class limit 3?

Sigafoo understands a concept that most people in the competitive scene don't. Nobody at Valve cares about weapon balance right now because the final competitive format has yet to be finalized. Valve will address seriously broken shit like shooting your Pomson 6000 through your own dispenser but triple jumping is a non-issue right now.

To quote myself: