The developers aren't aiming for growth right now. They seem to be more focused on making matchmaking stable and finding the right competitive format.

Think of it like this. The developers putting money into an esport can be considered like a marketing budget for the game. If you put money into a tournament, people will learn about the tournament and become interested in the game. There's no point for Valve or any other sponsor, for that matter, to put money into TF2 because even if people were to become interested in TF2 they'd end up joining into a half-baked matchmaking system. Matchmaking needs to be fixed before they can focus on putting money into the scene and growing their game.

I'm advocating for patience and open-mindedness while the developers figure things out. That's the only choice we have anyways, since, as you mentioned, grassroots won't work.

You didn't read my article. I'm not advocating for grassroots growth in my article, I'm advocating for us to help the developers to develop the competitive game since I don't think grassroots growth will work in TF2. We've tried for 9 years and it hasn't worked well.

The only reason I say that we should take a grassroots approach in post #9 is simple - if the developers won't support the comp scene, then we are the only ones who will. We'd have no choice but to go grassroots in the same way the smash community has been forced to run a grassroots esports scene for SSBM. I think that this is a terrible situation for us, but luckily we're not in that position since the developers have already shown that they are more than willing to develop the competitive game. Have no fear!

I think step 1 is to figure out how many players need to be in the server. 12 seems like a decent number, but there's still some doubt (i.e. Sigafoo is hosting a 14 player per server tournament). Once the server size is determined, you can balance the classes so that you don't need class limits of 2 for some classes and class limits of 1 for others.

Remember that arbitrary class limits and weapon banlists are something that we came up with because we have no direct control over the game. The developers can always solve this with proper class balancing.

When I say that we should no longer be a grassroots esport, that means giving up some control. As a grassroots esport, we call the shots, we design the game, and we figure things out for ourselves. Transitioning to a developer-designed esport means giving up that control and allowing them the creative freedom and time to create a proper game. In order for this to happen we would need to put our faith in the hands of the developers.

1) When I say "we test" I don't mean the we as competitive players. When I say that we need to test the game, I mean the greater TF2 scene needs to test the game. After all, "we" as competitive players are just a small subsection of the larger TF2 community that the developers have to worry about satisfying.
2) The developers want to see a competitive format that does well for new players as well as seasoned pros. They want an esport that is easy to pick up and play but also fun to watch at the highest levels of the game. That is how you create a good esport.
3) Our current competitive game is not exactly #2. I think our game is really hard for newbies to get into, but really fun at the highest levels. That's partially the developer's fault -- it's hard for new people to get involved in our game because of the barriers to entry. The developers need to lower those barriers and they have definitely done that by creating a matchmaking system. The system will continue to be iterated upon as long as people show interest in it.
4) With all of that said, it's on us as TF2 players to use that system and provide feedback AND SHOW INTEREST in this system to Valve. Valve won't spend time, money, and resources on something that nobody is interested in. We need to invest time in the matchmaking system in the same way that we have been calling for the community to invest time in FaceIT.
5) I don't think the community will be able to find the perfect format for Valve. I think Valve wants to figure it out for themselves, and that will frustrate comp TF2 players who don't want to wait.

This is the perfect example of #5. Some people don't have the time to wait while their esports career fades away, and that's completely understandable. I mention in the article that this is why some people have moved to Overwatch and other games. Valve is a company that is interested in the long term. They have 20 years to wait and make the perfect product. Individual players don't have that kind of time.

Many people have been predicting that Team Fortress will need a re-launch in order to re-gain interest in the franchise just like how Starcraft, Diablo, Dota, and Counterstrike did. The smart thing for the developers to do is iterate and design the perfect game before launching Team Fotress 3 (or whatever the sequel will be).

Some people are under the impression that Valve is more interested in supporting the casual scene than they are supporting the pro/comp scene. They think that Valve balances weapons around casual gameplay and large, 12v12 servers. This actually was true for the first 8 years of the game but recently they've begun undoing 8 years of bad balancing and are now taking a closer look at the competitive game.

If Valve is trying their hardest to build a casual pub game, then yes we should continue growing our scene as a grassroots scene since we won't be getting developer support. However, if we are getting developer support, we should take it.

Grassroots movements are bottom-up, rather than top-down. A grassroots comp TF2 scene is one driven by the community as opposed to driven by the developers.

In my article I write about how comp TF2 has existed for 9 years as a grassroots esport but I think that the future of our game relies on the developers.

I disagree with the premise of your question. They've been developing TF2's matchmaking since the fall of 2014 and it took them basically two years to release it, and it's still not done. They could have released it later, but they needed community input in order to a) determine which format was the most fun and b) figure out how to create a stable matchmaking system. With b) they obviously needed people to play on the system in order to figure out where the problems were, and they fixed those problems including matching you with servers in bad locations and abandoning. As far as a) goes, they couldn't decide which format was best, so they released a format that was simply 6v6 with no bans and no class limits. That format is almost certainly not the final esports format, so in the meantime they'll continue to collect user data and plan their next move. Once their move is planned, they'll make the necessary adjustments to matchmaking.

6v6 is by no means locked into the game at this time.

Hey guys,

I wrote this document a week ago after I heard about Sigafoo's tournament, and I wanted to give my comments to the community about the state of TF2. This is an opinion piece but I've done my best to reveal as much information as I know about the current state of the game. Only a few people have read this prior to my post, and I don't expect my post to change anything about the development of matchmaking or the development of our comeptitive game. I simply wrote this article to comfort the community in one of TF2's most vulnerable times. I originally intended for this opinion piece to be posted on the forums, but realized that people may read this and hate Valve so I decided not to post it. Today I changed my mind and decided to post it again. I hope it wasn't a mistake.

This document is long (10-15 minute read) so take your time and think things over; the post isn't going anywhere. I'm hosting an AMA here so that I can take some time to answer any questions that I may not have addressed in the original article. Please enjoy.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16U_3AeAkYX_TEde2TvdaEBsDCtz0jG3Z7wJI0CQfI4o/edit?usp=sharing

Slin

P.S. Please try to keep things civil here -- don't attack each other. Instead, let's try to have a constructive discussion about our game.

You already know what valve's policy is on community communication, so I assume this is rhetorical?

Valve doesn't do direct communication with the community. It's fairly well known and documented.

I don't think Valve thinks that TF2 with no class limits is the best way to push the game forward.

facebook in 2016 LUL

thanks for casting!

please stop messaging me on steam

i'm not playing this season

http://puu.sh/rqtrf/8a145f6aa6.jpg

The reason is that it's hard to consistently get teams into the casting mumble before matches, you can't control what they say, and it didn't seem to add much to the cast. A lot of professional esports don't do this for the same reason, and if they do include it (like in LoL, for example), it's edited in post.