I counted at least 12 when I was there back in June, and they said a few people were on vacation. You've got a couple artists but the rest seemed like game designers or something. I hate the misinformation though cause I think it's hard to get an exact number. Definitely a small team though.

Sorry, I'm not saying that the two game modes have to come together. We know that many esports are successfully able to develop both competitive and casual game modes for their respective games.

I'm saying that Valve only has X employees working on TF2 as a whole. They can't assign their entire team to supporting the competitive format, especially since casual players are such a large portion of their playerbase. If they stopped supporting casual that would create a big problem for them. Thus, some portion of their time and resources will have to be spent supporting the casual scene, and the casual scene will likely (unfortunately) have some kind of effect on their balancing decisions. My understanding is that they're always designing the game around small team sizes like 6v6, but they also have to appease players who dedicate themselves to a single class.

Definitely agree with you there when you say that it's ludicrous for either party to abandon what they've built so far. What I mean by that is, it's ludicrous for us as competitive players to abandon our form of 6v6 TF2, and it's ludicrous for Valve to abandon the pub game that they've spend a decade developing. What you're seeing is two factions that are slowly coming together.

We actually made a HUGE leap by unbanning as many weapons as we did this season, so I think we're good for now. Next season we can take another look at the whitelist but I don't expect it to change much. Right now it's Valve' turn to make the next move, but I'm not sure how much time people are willing to give them at this point.

Still, will that change anything? If Valve takes forever to make their changes, will you quit TF2? I think that a lot of competitive TF2 players are just enjoying the game and having fun with it while it lasts. There's no denying that time is running out for Valve, and they are definitely keeping track of their player numbers throughout this process. (http://steamcharts.com/app/440)

In Valve's defense, two of the players that they talked to quit the game for Overwatch. Extine and Mana are still a part of the community but B4nny is by far the most active one of the three and is the only one currently playing in Invite. They actively included B4nny in discussions regarding the development of the matchmaking system, and they're still talking to him while adding a few more people to the list. So the conversation is still going, but not with the original group that visited Valve.

I actually mentioned that this meeting did in fact happen in April 2015. Here's the TFTV post: http://www.teamfortress.tv/24792/valve-and-competitive-tf2

#59 yea... I did acknowledge that in the OP though.

Only now do I realize that I had a typo in the OP but I'll leave it unedited now :>

Multiple people have had this conversation with Valve in-person (see the article for a list of people) and they've told us that they're reading the forums and silently collecting feedback. I personally have made posts on r/TF2 and gotten responses from people on the TF2 team. I think the reason that they talk to me is because I'm reasonable with my responses and respectful of their decisions.

I disagree with the premise of your statement, which is that they've done nothing so far. They've created matchmaking when we wanted it, they've worked on that matchmaking system which is a 6v6 format, they've balanced weapons and classes to be better in competitive play, and they've promised that they'll address two of the nine broken classes in future updates.

If you're not paying attention or purposely trying to avoid looking for this kind of stuff, then yeah you'll miss it. But if you look for it it is there.

Also why would they 100% officially commit to competitive TF2? They don't even know if competitive TF2 will be successful. I don't think it's realistic or sensible for them to blindly throw away everything they've created just to appease the competitive community. I think it's smart for them, as businessmen, to create a game mode and then wait to see how the community reacts. If the community reacts in the same way that they did to other failed game modes, then they can just release a different game mode and try again. However, if they put something in writing like "We, Valve, will 100% throw money at TF2 until we're out of money" that would be insane.

They don't need us to be patient. The competitive community could all quit TF2 for Overwatch TODAY and Valve would be totally fine. They're more interested in creating the perfect product than they are in appeasing the vocal minority.

I mean you've been around for a long time so the conversation might be boring to you but I think it's a worthwhile discussion to have every so often since it's good to take the pulse of the game throughout the year. I also don't think that anyone in their right mind browses through old TFTV threads but maybe I'm wrong LOL

I used to think the same way. We spent 9 years developing and balancing our version of competitive TF2. Why wouldn't they just copy us?

Comp TF2 players are players that are dissatisfied with the casual version of TF2. These are the most hardcore players who have thousands of hours in the game. While you might think that we know what is best, there is still disagreement within the competitive TF2 community on the best format. 6v6 and 9v9 HL are the two major formats, and while there seems to be a general consensus that 6v6 is the best competitive format, there are more 9v9 players worldwide which is a big signal that something is wrong with 6v6.

Once you step out of the competitive community there are also a large number of casual players that don't seem to enjoy our version of 6v6. Thus, the developers are trying to reconcile that and create a competitive game that is fun for everyone -- pubbers, 9v9 players, and 6v6 players. Rather than replicating our game they're choosing to start over from scratch and that is why you see a 6v6 matchmaking game with no class limits and no weapon bans. This is probably not going to be the final version of the game but it's the only good starting point.

I think one thing that may have gotten overlooked in my opinion piece is our ongoing relationship with the developers thus far. I think that the Valve visits were more than just a flight to Seattle -- they were building bridges between our community and the developers. While you guys might not see the bridges that were built, I can confirm that we definitely have a stronger relationship with the developers today than ever before. The issue that I also tried to address is that we can't reveal the nature of those relationships for fear of burning those bridges. If the developers tell Sigafoo something in confidence and he reveals that secret, they will never tell him anything ever again so while we didn't sign any non-disclosure agreements, we definitely want to keep this relationship going.

Unfortunately the only indication that you have that the developers are listening is our word, and every person who has visited Valve to date has told the community that they're reading the forums, listening to our streams, and watching our communities. If you don't believe us then okay, but don't expect an official notice from Valve saying "HEY WE'RE READING YOUR FORUMS" since we all know that that is not how they operate. I think that a forum post from Jill should be evidence enough but it seems like it is not.

As far as how the actual feedback mechanism works, just pay attention to their actions and not their words (or lack thereof). If they're creating matchmaking, that means that they think competitive TF2 is a good idea. If they're giving Spy more movement speed, that means that they're trying to make Spy stronger. If they're punishing people for abandoning matchmaking, that means that they're listening to our feedback about how bad the matchmaking abandonment was.

This is all feedback that they can gather from conversations within the community as well as player data. If 30% of matchmaking games end in abandonment AND everyone's complaining about it on the forums, it's probably a big problem. If the casual community really thinks that pyro is underpowered, they'll create an update to the class that fixes that.

It's an article on the current state of TF2 and you're kind of right that it hasn't changed much over the years. Competitive TF2 in general hasn't made as much progress as we would have liked since its inception, so the state of TF2 won't change much from year to year. The main difference between the state of TF2 today and the state of TF2 four years ago is that the developers are actively building a competitive game for us.

This article also comes as a response to the outrage regarding Sigafoo. People were disagreeing with his desire to run a non-standard comp TF2 format, and they were wondering why he was choosing to do that when the competitive format was decided long ago. My point was that the developers of our esport haven't figured out the final competitive format for comp TF2, so he's just trying to do them a solid and we should all be supportive.

In addition, people are urging Valve to invest money into the game but I'm trying to tell the community that it's pointless to invest money in a game when your competitive format has not yet been settled. Once the competitive format is settled it will make more sense to invest money into the scene.

Good points.

1) I think that if we want TF2 to be supported by the developers, we have to relinquish some control over the game. This means that we have to be willing to give feedback and then have that feedback be rejected. After all, if the developers are the ones creating the game, then they call the shots and we just have to trust them with the future of their game.
2) Since they're the ones calling the shots, we need to let them work on it in their own time. We can't rush them. What if they're considering your feedback and think that it's valid but in order for them to execute on that feedback it just takes time? A Twitch example would be HTML5. HTML5 streams are a great idea but you can't switch from flash streams to HTML5 streams overnight. People keep talking about HTML5, HTML5 was coming the entire time, but the engineers just needed time to make it.
3) Definitely cry as hard and as loud as you can but also realize that there's such thing as the "silent majority" and the "vocal minority". The vocal minority may be loud but the majority of people might disagree and are simply saying nothing. (link to urban dictionary which happens to give a product-focused explanation of this lol). Some people might like the thing that you don't like, they're just not taking the time to voice their opinions.

You're not wrong. I agree with you that they're starting from the beginning and that it may take them a long time to build out the competitive game. That said, I think it's also important for you to disclose that you're one of the impatient players who is unwilling to wait for Valve to take their time developing the game. It's totally reasonable to not want to wait for Valve to build this foundation and build this house, and I can understand why you've moved on to other games.

I think that Valve is considering a younger generation of players that still have time for Team Fortress to become a larger esport and they want to do it right. That's why they're starting over. In their defense, a huge portion of the TF2 community has not yet discovered competitive TF2 so in that sense they are basically in kindergarten and Team Fortress is just a baby of an esport.

Gotcha. I'd agree with both of your points, but I also mentioned that in my piece that they're fully aware that their participation in the discussion would change the nature of the discussion. We may never see them participating in the forums.

They've already created matchmaking -- what other indication do you need? They're creating the very thing that we want, but people aren't patient enough to wait for them to continue iterating on the game. People seem to want instant changes NOW but these things take time.

What can we do to help? Play the matchmaking game and give open feedback on the forums. Discuss things as a community. Raise awareness about issues and advocate for change. This is how you make changes in a world where you are not the developers of the game.

Definitely. They've seen what we've done as a grassroots scene and we can all agree that we haven't been able to push competitive TF2 far on our own. They're willing to help us out, they care about the competitive scene, and they're actively taking steps to develop the game as an esport (starting with creating matchmaking). They're not about to give up on the work that they've put in for the last two years.

The question is -- are people in this community willing to wait for those changes? Many people don't like playing matchmaking in its current state, and if people don't like playing matchmaking then Valve has less reason to continue developing it. I'd urge the community to play matchmaking and then voice their opinions on it openly so that everyone can hear and we can discuss it as a community.