I completely agree with you and so does Valve. They see the opportunity for TF2 to become a competitive game, and that's why they spent two years developing the matchmaking game mode. While everyone wants to see tournaments right away, I don't think that it's reasonable to expect Valve to support these large-scale tournaments until their competitive game mode is fully fleshed out. I don't think that 6v6 no class limits is the final version of the competitive game, but once the final game mode is figured out along with their map pool and new class balancing then the game will be much closer to the final product and will be able to support tournaments.

There's no point in hosting a $100k tournament and driving players into your matchmaking game mode only for them to play it and find out that the game mode sucks. The matchmaking game mode has to be developed more first, which is why I'm urging people to be patient.

You're looking at things the wrong way.

Here's where you're right:
1) They haven't contributed to our version of competitive 6v6 TF2.
2) They shouldn't try to control our game since they aren't contributing to it.
3) They need to communicate with us more if they want to control our version of competitive 6v6 TF2.

Here's where you're wrong:
1) They're not looking to contribute to our version of competitive 6v6 TF2. They're making their own version.
2) They're not trying to control our game -- they're creating their own game mode and they're not shutting us down.
3) They don't need to communicate with us since they're not trying to work on our game mode.

Don't look at this situation as them trying to merge with us. Look at it as them trying to develop their own game mode. WE have no right telling them how to do their jobs although we think we do since we have thousands of hours in the game. They've been more than respectful in listening to us but we don't have control over them and we have no right to try to control them. WE still have control if we want it since we're already trying to grow our own grassroots scene (but it's not working).

You have two options. Support them, or don't. If you choose to support them, I offered you solutions for doing so. If you choose not to support them, it doesn't really matter. They'll keep on doing their thing without you.

I get that you're echoing the sentiments of many people in the community but we're way too self-centered sometimes.

That's just a meme dude. They work on TF2 for a living and they obviously have to playtest their changes.

You could argue that they don't play comp 6v6 TF2, but that's not their game. They're playing their game -- the game they designed -- which is 6v6 matchmaking. A lot of people have been saying that they don't play their game and that there's bugs that they haven't found but you have to remember that it's a small team working on TF2 and there's only so much time to test out every little thing. They have to rely on the community to find those problems just like how Enigma relies on the community to report TFTV website bugs or how many games rely on bug reports to find errors.

Same. I figured since we're all in the same boat, I might as well share what I know.

They've already introduced many, many stupid ideas into the game since it first came out lol (bumper cars, pass time, that thing with the UFO), and the game is goofy as hell. You'd be hard pressed to argue that stupid ideas are killing off TF2's playerbase. And when you say that "they'll have no players anyway" I assume you mean that competitive players will have up and quit the game, but we've already seen that happen a million times before. Legends like Reptile, Platinum, and Yz50 have quit. Community figures like CB (founder of MGE), Graham (founder of CommFT), Enigma (founder of TFTV), and Lange have quit. The game isn't reliant on any single community individual, and that's why I'm convinced that it won't die.

They at least got the player numbers right. They obviously have the 6v6 matchmaking, but if you recall, they also hinted at 9v9 in beta before they scrapped it due to the large team sizes not working out in matchmaking. So they've got the team sizes figured out, although Sigafoo is obviously not convinced. The rest of us are so now we need to figure out class limits.

Can you really justify having class limit 2 on some classes and class limit 1 on others? Has anyone tried playing with all of the unlocks and all of the classes unlocked? No? Okay let's try it! Nobody will die, and at least we can cross this format off of our list if it sucks. That's their mentality. And then they talked to competitive players like B4nny, Truktruk, and such just to make sure that it'd be playable. If it sucks, tell them why it sucks. If it really really sucks, run 4 heavies and try to get a high win percentage. That'll show them.

Really broken things like hacking and abandonment have been addressed, 4 heavies I'm not convinced that it has been a major problem thus far. In fact at the highest levels of matchmaking I haven't seen people run more than 2 medics on a team, and generally speaking people are running standard compositions because those are the strongest. 5 scouts on a team is actually not that good, and 5 medics on a team isn't really that good either. Even running something like 3 demos doesn't seem to be that broken when I've played it.

I agree that they were out of touch with our community, but they weren't going to pretend like they knew what was going on with our competitive game either. At the same time, they couldn't blindly follow the voice of a small community and trust their valuable IP with us. They had to instead test it on their own and find out what works for themselves, which is why you see them experimenting with maps like swiftwater and unlocking the class limits. While I'm a little upset that they didn't trust us, I can't blame them for doing things their own way.

Also, keep in mind that Enigma acknowledged that they had already started on matchmaking in 2014 and they were going to make that game mode whether Enigma and crew had visited or not. The only thing that the April 2015 visit did was confirm the existence of matchmaking for the community, and that update took an additional year to release. In other words, Valve works slowly.

Hm... it's tough to say. Do they really need to move quicker? Will their game die if they don't?

My guess is that they don't need to move quicker. The game has lasted this long with only a few major patches each year, and the people who play TF2 as such diehard fans that they can avoid patching the game for MONTHS and the game still won't die. In addition, they can experiment with random things like mann vs machine, contracts, and killing off community servers with matchmaking and the game STILL won't die. To top it all off, they're rich. It's not like they're going to run out of money and will be unable to pay their developers. My best guess is that they can afford to wait.

Given that knowledge, I think it's safe to say that we won't be seeing the rapid changes that many competitive players are hoping for. Instead we'll see slow improvements made over the course of 1-2 years.

Cares to me is spending a majority of their day developing the game for us. Looking at the patch notes for the last 4 months, I can confidently say that the developers are making changes that are moving the game in the right direction. They're spending their time making the game that I want to see. They're putting in casual matchmaking with a leveling system. I love it and use it all the time. They're putting in competitive matchmaking and balancing the game. Needs work but hey it's progress. They haven't done one thing that I disagree with except very specific balance changes and even then that's nitpicking. That's caring to me. Maybe they're not working at the pace that some people want but they're doing the best they can with the resources and the size of the team that they have and that's all I can ask of them.

The rate of growth is slow and sometimes even negative but at least they're trying. Plus, what other choice do we have? The only other choice is to switch games / do something else.

I mean... they're giving us badges right? :D I've played over 300 games and mine is rank 18.

I want to make sure that I'm super clear about this -- my posts have been about the state of the game, not the state of any one person's future. The competitive game itself is in a better place now than ever before. We finally have developer support! They're building matchmaking, they're actively working on the game, and I'm very hopeful for the future.

If you're looking to TF2 as the start of your big esports career, it's probably not the right game for you. But then again TF2 has never been about growing your huge esports future. It's been a passion project of all of ours since the beginning. The fact that some people have used TF2 to get places is just icing on the cake. The game isn't in a perfect state but it's playable, and it's being actively worked on. That's all that we can hope for at this time.

Money, esports fame, and huge streaming numbers can come later. Let's just focus on enjoying the present and growing our game as best we can. If you're interested in directly talking to Valve, just do what the redditors do:

http://puu.sh/rGdg8/61740e4c45.png

http://puu.sh/rGd8Q/8c16f157ca.png

Make posts on reddit and address the developers, then discuss your issues with the larger community.

I'm not asking anyone to abandon the format. In fact, I told people that we probably shouldn't continue unbanning all of the weapons in competitive because it doesn't make any sense. What I'm saying is, Valve will continue developing their game and pushing competitive TF2 forward. This is the future of our game, and I don't think that pushing TF2 forward as a huge grassroots effort is the best move for us, especially since developer support is so valuable. Let's let them figure things out. If people want to help contribute, they can either put on events like Sigafoo or simply play the matchmaking game mode and have open discussions about it on the forums. I personally am a huge fan of the work that you've done on PugChamp, TSC, and I think that it's been huge for the competitive community.

Completely agree. As you mention, I acknowledge that there's a good reason why people are leaving the scene, and I also acknowledge that my future is not dependent on the success of this game as I have a job in the industry as well. Anyone reading my posts should consider that TF2 has been a "dead game" for a very long time.

Still, it's comforting to know that the developers care as deeply about the competitive game as I do. Times are changing. You may not believe it (and you don't have to believe it), but they care. I can tell you about all the times I've talked to them, in person or otherwise. I can show you patch notes. I can talk to you about how much time they've spent developing the competitive game. All I'm trying to do is comfort the community by telling them about the state of the game, telling them about the various trips that have been made to Valve, and telling them about what I think is the future of the competitive scene. You don't have to believe in it, and you don't have to invest in it. In fact, your belief and your investment aren't really key to the success of the scene anyways lol. Plenty of top players have quit TF2 and the game still moves onward. Valve is going to keep on chugging along, and I'm just trying to open your eyes to the whole situation as best I can.

Look around -- I think the evidence is there; I think there's enough evidence out there that Valve cares about the competitive scene without them having to put up a blog post explicitly saying that they'll create a TI for TF2. If the evidence is not there, I'd encourage you to continue asking questions in this thread and having an open discussion about it. An open discussion is key to the success of the community, even if it's not Valve that is directly driving the conversation.

Right, which is congruent with what I'm saying. Valve is more interested in creating the perfect game for the long term than they are in satisfying the vocal minority for the short term. They're more interested in rolling back competitive TF2 to it's early roots (6v6, no class limits, no weapon bans) and starting over from scratch than they are in quickly recreating the existing competitive game mode and dumping a ton of money into a potentially broken game. In order to do this they needed to create matchmaking, gather player data, and slowly rework the competitive ruleset. Rushing them through this process will not have a huge effect during this time (although Sigafoo will try to help push them along :D).

They're just going to keep slowly making changes and gauging community sentiment at each step of the way. The biggest, most crushing feedback that Valve got happened when they created matchmaking. The community was furious! Then they fixed a few things and people settled back down. I don't think you'll see people in an uproar that big again for a long time.

I agree with you that some weapons are still broken but please look at the last four months of patch notes and tell me that they're fucking up: http://www.teamfortress.com/?tab=updates

Big changes that were positive:

• HUGE updates to matchmaking, making it much more playable
  
• Adding in MANY updated, competitive maps into the matchmaking rotation.
  
• Class balances to Spy, Medic, Engineer, and more to encourage diversity in competitive classes.
  
• Classes that couldn't be easily balanced (Pyro/Heavy) are promised to be reworked.

Seriously. Look at these patch notes specifically from July 7th and September 27th:
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=22759
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=24510

I agree with you guys that the previous 8 years of balancing sucked, but this is a different Valve that we're dealing with nowadays. It'll take time to undo the terrible balancing that took place previously. In fact, these balance changes that have been slowly creeping into the game is what allowed us to unban 40 weapons from ESEA this season.

B4nny has his own biases. When we were discussing the global whitelist changes, some people objected to the changes that B4nny wanted to make. It makes sense to gather information from the entire community instead of just one person. In fact, people on these exact forums have complained about this MANY times, upset that Valve was talking to one person instead of gathering feedback from the masses. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I don't understand why you guys are writing off a sequel to Team Fortress 2 as an impossibility. It's almost certainly going to happen, don't you think? If you go back and look at my writing I referred to specific moments as "Team Fortress" and not "TF2". This is what I mean when I say that some people may not have the patience to wait for Valve to figure things out and why I refer to future generations of Team Fortress players, not TF2 players.

What do we know about Valve?

• They're game makers. They like making games.
  
• They like their franchises. They like making sequels to said franchises.
  
• They like Team Fortress. They don't want to see Team Fortress die.

If you take all of these things into account then it makes perfect sense that:

• They're not super interactive with the community and they spend a lot of time making games.
  
• There's a sequel to Team Fortress 2, an incredibly popular game of theirs.
  
• They're taking this whole process very seriously and carefully, making sure that they don't ruin their game.

Also I'd argue that Team Fortress 2 was just as popular as Dota. Maybe not as an esport but definitely as a video game.

Well they also spent a majority of that time fixing the broken matchmaking system. People complained about how they were getting placed in servers really far away and dealing with abandonment and griefing. They spent a large portion of this time fixing that and making various adjustments to matchmaking in general, as well as class/weapon balances.

We all agree that pyro needs to be reworked and so does Valve. In fact, pyro won the pyro vs. heavy war and it'll be the first class to receive this rework. So we already know that this is going to happen and I have no idea what you're talking about. Source. Source2

Secondly, think about the situation objectively. Does it really make sense to limit some classes to 2 and other classes to 1? I think it makes much more sense to limit everything to 2 or limit everything to 1 and then rebalance the classes so that it works.

I can't tell if your entire post is a troll or not. Obviously nobody here wants to play with a class limit of 6, but Valve isn't lazy. If they were lazy, they'd just copy our game directly. Instead, they're trying to put in the time to understand why class limits of 6 doesn't work, so they've created a game mode where you can run 4 heavies to gain a better understanding of why it doesn't work. This is the exact opposite of laziness.

Are you just saying this because this was the response Thorin gave you in his AMA? :p

The original DOTA "languished in obscurity" but it spawned two huge mobas in LoL and Dota 2.
CS:GO was terrible when it first came out and then they made some big competitive updates to it and it really grew.

Here's a quote from Sirscoots in reference to CS:GO's turnaround:
"For years Valve did not care at all, because it was a mod of their game, and even when they bought it and made Source, they didn’t really care,” Smith says. “It took forever to get things patched - it was community driven. It was fine, it thrived without them, but to have developer support of your game - especially an esport - is an incredible added bonus, especially nowadays."

Source: http://www.pcgamesn.com/counter-strike-global-offensive/how-counter-strike-global-offensive-is-turning-into-the-worlds-most-exciting-esport

Well the obvious answer is that it can't bring in less players, so of course advertising something will bring more attention to it. The question is, will advertising playcomp.tf matter? Should you be paying to advertise the game?

My response probably belongs in the "unpopular opinions" thread but sponsors have been signaling to the community for years that competitive TF2 isn't really worth investing in right now. Most of the money that flows into the scene comes from ESEA's prize pool and the rest of it comes from the players themselves to fund various events. Not a lot of people play the game right now so sponsors aren't putting money into the scene, and since there isn't a lot of money flowing into the scene, there isn't a lot of outside interest being generated like you see in other games like Overwatch.

The reason people aren't advertising the scene right now is because there's too many barriers to entry. In order to get into the competitive game you have to jump through a lot of hoops and sign up for third party services. That's not very appealing, and that's why you see new multiplayer games making it so easy to hop in and begin playing in matchmaking services. People don't want to do a lot of work in order to play -- they just want to start up the client, click play, and get moving. The problem with TF2 is, even though we have that now, it's not perfect. The competitive game mode seems half-baked and it needs work.

Valve is looking to change this whole situation but their approach is different from Blizzard's. Blizzard created a brand new IP, made their very first FPS game, and dumped a ton of money into their game. Success. Valve, on the other hand, is taking an existing IP, when they already have a more successful FPS game launched, and they're only investing a small amount into the competitive game in order to gauge community sentiment. Will people be upset that they're turning TF2 into a competitive title? Are they liking it or are they hating it?

Only time will tell. People from the competitive scene clearly want Valve to dump a ton of money into the game but it doesn't really make sense for them to introduce a ton of money into TF2 and potentially ruin the game that their casual playerbase enjoys. If they mess up TF2, they've just messed up their 5th most popular game on Steam. It makes sense for them to tread carefully.

Still, they've successfully been able to develop the competitive scenes in both DOTA and Counter-Strike. I trust them with Team Fortress.