Season 14, P-REC, Staff and Site Updates. Promote your Stream on TeamFortress.TV
January 18, 2013
Season 14 powered by Twitch – Division 1 Qualifier Updates
We received the sad news that 
The Potentials have folded. With one of the three contenders for the last two spots in Division 1 gone, the qualifier has become obsolete. Both remaining teams, logs.tf and 
OutSiders, have been seeded into Division 1 and the gap in Division 2C has been filled.
P-REC Update
You may have noticed that the P-REC plugin, used by many to automatically record their personal demos for leagues and fragmovies, had been broken since Christmas. 
Orange took the time to rewrite the plugin, despite being retired from TF2, and got it signed by Valve. What a hero! You can find the latest version of the plugin (2.0.4) on his Bitbucket page and say Thanks! on the forums.
In case you are experiencing problems with the plugin, installing the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 may fix your issues. More questions can be asked in the P-REC thread in our customisation forum.
Staff Updates
Seasonal staff changes are inevitable a volunteer organization. Our long-term Highlander admin 
Hildreth has decided to move on and concentrate more on playing (and his job). He will remain on staff as a Honorary Admin and advisor. We are grateful for the countless hours and passion you put in promoting Highlander, and hope you can still enjoy this game as a player.
Pretty much the same applies to 
Buffalo Bill. After 15 months of active admin duty, it is time for him to move on. Thanks to you as well for the countless hours you invested into this league during our two tenures as a 6v6 admin – you will remain listed as a Honorary Admin.
schocky decided to resign from the Anti-Cheat staff, because he can no longer commit time to AC work. Thanks to you as well.
We have some promotions to announce as well. 
DeusVox has proven himself as a keen helper with a lot of good ideas and is joining our media staff. His most recent work is the Season 14 powered by Twitch banner.
Admirable originally wanted to join the ETF2L staff as full league admin (“I am happy to do all the admin tasks“), but it seems it was a bit too much for him. However, he did a great job with the Premiership interviews last season and gathering feedback from our top players, which helped a lot to further develop our league. We are more than happy to keep him around as our Premiership Ambassador (Yes, we made up that position just for him).
ipz- has been removed from the staff for public misconduct. We appreciate the 4 months of work he put into ETF2L and are happy to hear he plans to continue to support the scene with his expertise, even if outside ETF2L. However, we cannot tolerate admins abusing their position and violating our rules of conduct.
Site Update
No doubt, many of your are still waiting on updates from the Banner Competition. We have decided to aim beyond the original goals of the competition (new banner and color scheme) and proceed with a complete overhaul of the site. Our newest asset to the media staff,
DeusVox, took over the redesign of the site and has produced a preview of what the main page would look like:
Please note that this is an early preview and does not feature all of the planned changes, however it does showcase the general style we want to proceed with. Constructive feedback is always welcome.
TeamFortress.TV
Do you livestream Team Fortress 2 and want your channel to reach a wider audience? TeamFortress.TV is the place to go, in that case. You can submit your stream to TF.tv’s livestream widget. Make sure you go through all of the rules and requirements which can be found here. Once you get on the TeamFortress.TV stream list, you are automatically invited to the TF.tv group on ETF2L’s partner Twitch page as well. To accept the invitation, go to your Twitch page, then Settings, where you can accept the invite under the “Teams” tab.
TeamFortress.TV welcomes Europeans on the forums as well, where you can catch up on all the latest news and gossip from the American scene. It is a good source for news from ESEA and other leagues, TF2 streams from North America’s top players, latest maps, player interviews, and even mentors!
Posted by ETF2L Staff in League, Site
content rss
buffalo bill honorary admin joke of the year
other fixes and changes are sick
good job
Cool post.
Site overhaul looks neat, ETA?
The new website idea looks promising, i’m looking forward to see the results. And btw i think you should make both a 6v6 and 9v9 recruitment section on the new site
but the etf2l site makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside already, why change it to some flashy bananascape
new site is le sex
Please don’t use the 2-column layout for the new site, it makes no sense. How are you supposed to read it? Like a newspaper, column by column? Then if you’re reading in chronological order you have to scroll down to the end, then scroll back up, and then scroll back down. Just to read everything in the right order.
Do you read it like a comic book, left to right and top to bottom? Then you either have to make every blurb/summary the same length or you’ll go “out of sync” making it impossible to read.
Just look at the timestamps in the mockup linked, not even the creator seems to know how to organize it.
Just keep the current straight-forward top to bottom layout without any columns, there is literally no reason whatsoever for having the columns. “Let’s put the text in smaller boxes! Because whatever!” Awesome.
The site preview looks sick, altough I’m not sure how you’re gonna port that to wordpress, it might take a long time.
@s3, have you ever seen a wordpress site? Those are just summaries of the top stories which you can click and view in full detail
that horrifying design. lens flare? in 2013? :/ I’m getting cancer just by looking at it.
I would love a site revamp but this preview look like every other e-sports/clan template website I’ve ever seen, still I appreciate any work that is done on the site
The design is based upon other well known MGO and League sites. I havent settled on exact specifics and the news section was one of the last things to be added. Ive had feedback from a few others and I will look into it further thanks.
Lexs. Yeah the point was to create a site that looks like every other site. At the moment i think its best to showcase that we are as serious as the other MGO’s and E-Sport sites. To deviate to far from that might not look good for onlooking Sponsors. Perhaps you could help suggest some alterations to make it feel more unique. Im always open for opinion!!! Thanks
Kaneco: The current design is a WordPress site, I’m not sure what your point is. The two-column design is overly complicated and offers no substantial benefit to make that sacrifice worth it.
I still haven’t seen anyone explain how exactly I’m supposed to read the preview image, even if we disregard the seemingly random timestamps. The comic book way makes the most sense out of the two, but it’s still much worse than the current way. Cutting the horizontal space in half for no real reason just to conform to “every other site” is a terrible idea. The ETF2L site is already too narrow (50% whitespace in 1080p), and you want to cut that in half? No thank you.
The rest of the preview looks nice, but PLEASE DO NOT use two columns for news stories.
Too dark and too serious for my taste.
Deusvox, make it a little less bling blang i.e no lens flare, no nova effect on the etf2l logo, no sun beams on the top and the background looks a bit silly only on the top with that honeycomb structure or whatever that is, stretch it out over the hole site and make it a little more subtle. Other minor details like the match centre could be improved as well. Upcoming, Results and
Deusvox, make it a little less bling blang i.e no lens flare, no nova effect on the etf2l logo, no sun beams on the top and the background looks a bit silly only on the top with that honeycomb structure or whatever that is, stretch it out over the hole site and make it a little more subtle. Other minor details like the match centre could be improved as well. Upcoming, Results and Featured should fill out the hole length. The Latest Headlines area doesnt seem to have a clear structure either but I havernt come up with something better yet^^
+1 to s3. 1 column news please, or it becomes ureadable in preview.
Imo new site looks cool.
dont make it too flashy, but i you are definetly getting there
Website looks very promising! Keep up the great work! :)
haha tschau norbert
I personnaly don’t like black backgrounds with white text on websites, it’s a real pain for eyes. Otherwise, the design seems cool but too similar with others.
How about you enhance the website’s servers capacities, it’s very slow 99% of the time I want to access it.
Don’t make a site like every other site if every oyher site is horrible. This bullshit about “serious” and not looking good for sponsors is dumb, if sponsors see a bad website thats copying a bunch of other bad websites it makes us look worse, whereas if they see something cool and original they’ll think differently.
If all the MGO’s touched kids would you copy them?
#justsaying
nice news!!! :)
Constructive stuff: Why do you have 2 massive rotating banners? On most resolutiona you’ll fill.up thevlarge majority with absolutely nothing of worth, i like that you kept the current menu as is, it’s good and functional and will stop people getting too confused when the switch happens.
The fix: remove the “news” rotating banner, it’s completely not needed when all the latest news is right there underneath it anyway, change the news posts to a single column for ease of reading.
I like everything on the right hand side but maybe make it customisable for users? (dunno how possible that is or how difficult) and i really like the colour scheme (though it could do with less dumb photoshop filters probably) and i like the idea of a rotating banner for aponsors (though idk if we have enough to warrant it).
To add to what i said previously, instead of just copying MGO websites, take the good bits and remove the shitty bits. Warning though, most MGO websites are shitty and confusing to use.
Not keen on the dark look. Once you get over the initial “oooh shiny” its just a bit depressing. Lighter themed websites are definitely more catchy and memorable. There’s also an awful lot of high res graphics on the website, which obviously means slower loading times (Not everyone has a 100mb connection yet). The time taken to load a webpage is critical to actually getting users to stay on the page. If it takes longer then 1, maybe 2 seconds you lose a lot of potential viewers.
Functionality over appearance should be the aim. It’s a TF2 league website not a graphic designers portfolio website. The sponsors banner is a lot better and actually tells me who we are sponsored.
Personally not big on menu text being CAPS. My personal opinion is that properly capitalized menus (like ETF2Ls current menu) are better as they enhance readability (Same reason why motorway signs aren’t all caps)
http://imgur.com/nZGpX
The numbers aren’t exact by any means but give you a rough idea. Almost a third of my screen was the logo, compare that to websites such as http://imgur.com/ http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx http://www.nike.com/gb/en_gb/
What was the point of the banner competition if you’re not going to use the winning entry?
I hope he/she gets the prize at least.
Tip: Keep it clean. Design it so that as much as possible can be built with pure css3 and few images. Going for dark base is always risky as well, and almost always ends up worse than light as it’s very limiting to work with overall. Content and structure needs some re-thinking, as others have pointed out.
If you are going to use icons, I’d suggest FontAwesome, as that will simplify for whoever is going to do the markup: http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/ (Scales up to any size, retina support, less images/server requests needed etc)
Site design looks very pretty at first glance. The colour theme if not tone is nice. I have to admit the first concener I had was just loading times. Seeing as something close to 75%+ of my time on the site is whilst at work the potential increase to loading times is offputting. Especially when you consider that the site in it’s current basic form isn’t renowned for it’s speedy response regardless of the end users specs and connection. The fact that I’d be loading all this glitz and glam from what people refer to as toasters isnt something to fill you with confidence.
Personally I think I’d go with a more TF2 orientated design. It dosnt need to be smooth and shiney to look nice. A stylistic choice to take artistic cues from the era TF2 is set in could provide a nice basic basis for a design model and of course you have the TF2 blog and site itself which could provide further suggestion. I understand the desire to be seen as professional, to attract sponsors by saying “look at us, we’re here, we’re devoted, we’re a good investment” but I’d think playing up the fun aspects, the quirky design of the game and the friendly community would be more rewarding from a design perspective.
Not that the design is inately bad in it’s self I just would’ve taken a different angle on a re-design.
I think the banner seems kind of “empty” when the ETF2L logo is a little logo on the left. I think it would be cool to add TF2 characters on the right side of the banner. Or something.
I don’t get the “if I make the site look like every other template MGO and League Site, it will look like we are serious about e-sports” ideology. Those template sites look like ass and you have nothing unique to show what ETF2L is; there is no theme? it’s a colour experiment, as highlighted by others already.
The preview of articles into little blocks seems a little overkill IMO because you are not aggregating tonnes of articles, most of the site’s visitors, visit often at a guess, and are likely to see the updates anyway. They also take away from the UI fact that there’s additional actions involved to read news updates. Currently you visit ETF2L.org and can read the news contents, in that change you will have to click and view the news item individually; it’s no longer blended. This is an effect of the MGO design you are opting for and think it would be cool to add despite it not having improvements over the current system.
The design seems to be adopting a ‘Portal’ or ‘Gateway’ design, where the design is naturally for bringing !significant! amounts of different content together for easy-to-view purposes. I’ll be interested to see if it bears any more practical advantages over the current layout.
From a nitpick point of view, the font’s are too TALL for the space they are used in, i.e. the Match Centre tabs.
The footer makes no sense, Legal? About is cramped into a tiny box IN THE FOOTER, this should be bold as brass – it’s telling people about ETF2L!
Also your content border isn’t even all the way round.
Why not just work on “WHAT WORKS, and WHAT COULD BE BETTER” point of view? i.e. I want to view Transfers and Recruitment more easily, I still can’t in this design and the navbar is empty like a soulless witch.
On a positive note the simple flat look on the Social icons look good
In general, the MGO template vibe baffles me. Design is meant to be fun intuitive, and unique. Dark templates are only cool to 17 year old badasses, don’t hate on clean and easy-to-see sites, often simple is best.
The rearrangement of the newsposts addresses a very important issue, the current site has: Important newsposts, such as rule reminders and cup announcements, vanish too fast from the top site and don’t get noticed by many, especially if we keep up covering every premiership match in the future.
Regarding the rest of the critique: The design still uses a lot of placeholders and is far from being finished. We will see, what of the mentioned suggestions can be implemented.
Did you just totally shelve the banner contest then? What a waste of time and effort :/
cool preview of the site, but i suggest to put 1 column of posts in the homepage, and a maximum of 4 per page. Those posts are too tiny!
Create a guestbook and an “add friend” option into etf2l ^^
Haha.. only real issues on that desing are color scheme, it’s honestly too dark and if its two column like that its at the moment too filled up and packed, needs less text and sparet date of news more clearly. Other than that there arn’t any real flaws.
CanFo: Don’t cover every prem match/highlander/6th cup match on the main page, it’s not necessary, Maybe have a seperate news section for stuff like that.
Honestly, i don’t care who is playing who at what time and what the scores were, i definetely don’t want it pushing important things like rule updates, cup dates, new seasons etc off of the main page.
The preview looks good at first glance, but imo it gets annoying after a while. Also I dont like this “we wanted a site that looks like every other site”, because it has no personality, it makes it pretty average and ordinary, whereas as it is now it’s much more original, clean, handy and functional.
Make it cleaner and lighter, it is much more confortable. That ETF2L logo is fine but that shining effect with those honeycomb things are terrible, and has nothing to do with TF2.
The sponsorship panel is ok, as well as the sliding preview bar, but everthing really needs to be moved up or at least has less height, because it is alreaby been said, a third of the page for the logo is really bothersome.
You have to scroll down the page to see even the newest post unlike the current one. On the other hand I agree the 2 columns pattern may be more suitable for reminders, posts and announcements and I’m fine with it.
Summarizing up:
– Choose a different color theme and background
– Remove the shining effect from the logo
– Reduce the height of the logo, sponsor banner and sliding bar a bit so that it gets moved higher and you can immediatly see the newest post (I cant see them even on fullHD)
“In general, the MGO template vibe baffles me. Design is meant to be fun intuitive, and unique. Dark templates are only cool to 17 year old badasses, don’t hate on clean and easy-to-see sites, often simple is best.”
this
It looks like some random internet thrash, really, not a website where you are supposed to read a lot of text content. Colors are really annoying and make your eyes water after few minutes of reading. And not to mention following this stupid fashion of huge banners…
Please, guys, please, I beg you, don’t make the new site all glittery and stuff, like on that mockup. We’re in 2013.
@CanFo Featured posts option in wordpress exists for a reason, I think the current theme doesn’t support it, but if you’re working on a new theme, make sure to port it to wordpress with a working featured posts widget on top…
The slider type featured posts is what I think that works better, like the one in the mockup.
Thanks for all the feedback. The news section I will have a look at and produce a few mock-ups. As for the scaling of the site I deliberately made it slightly TOO large as scaling down is always easier than scaling upwards in most cases so sizing and spacing are simply place holders for now. I am not here to make another variation for fun. My aim for to completely bring ETF2L on the same echelons as other sites. The usability issues need to be worked on. But as for the presentation of it, it will more or less remain similar to this design with few tweaks and improvements. I didnt spend 2 mins on it copying other websites. I looked and catalogued over 1000 MGO, Sponsor and League Sites from across all regions of there world. The colours scheme also will for now remain dark as with my research it showed that most professional leagues had dark themed sites (I am not saying I personally like it but I believe its beyond just want we personally want its want the league needs!). There will in my future designs will have added customisable features such as font sizing for text on the page, font colour and also to change the colour theme. ALL this stuff takes time and effort and I am a volunteer and im going to try and bring a site that the ETF2L deserves. I really appreciate all critiscism and when i am next free will mock up some designs based on it and pitch it to admins and see what we can do. Thanks
DeusVox :DD
“but I’d think playing up the fun aspects, the quirky design of the game and the friendly community would be more rewarding from a design perspective.
Not that the design is inately bad in it’s self I just would’ve taken a different angle on a re-design.”
Thanks Ill have a look into doing some alternative play arounds but not promising that I will like them. The last thing I want is to be cheesey. Im sick of banners/sites and other stuff trying to show off our unserious the game is it detracts from all the effort put in by etf2l and such… But I will look into it
“”“In general, the MGO template vibe baffles me. Design is meant to be fun intuitive, and unique. Dark templates are only cool to 17 year old badasses, don’t hate on clean and easy-to-see sites, often simple is best.”
this
It looks like some random internet thrash, really, not a website where you are supposed to read a lot of text content. Colors are really annoying and make your eyes water after few minutes of reading. And not to mention following this stupid fashion of huge banners… “””
The design is a website rather than a blog if you look into other orgs, mgos and esport sponsors. None of them have this “Fun” designs they are designed to look professional and do what they say on the tin. The current format is one of a blog which isnt in the slightest professional in my opinion thanks anyway value any feedback as always.
Please, guys, please, I beg you, don’t make the new site all glittery and stuff, like on that mockup. We’re in 2013.
Noted I will look into this my designs are based on my own research done on other sites so whatever you see are the best bits from all of them. But i understand what you say and ill be looking into it!
“because it has no personality, it makes it pretty average and ordinary, whereas as it is now it’s much more original, clean, handy and functional.”
Noted but anyone who looks at the current etf2l site atm from my research would say this website is Clunky, Cheesey, Unproffessional and cluttered. All issues im trying address. But I will look into everyones feedback and decide with the admins the best course of action..
Why the fuck would you choose to change the website’s layout. Moreso, make it look like nba.com or some other horribly-designed website? Just because you’re “moving up in the world”?
DeusVox: people don’t like changes:] I like the overall look of the new design, but…
1. the logo, try with the simple one, not the one from the animated intro, it’s nice but site needs something simple (like the actual one, white and blue), moreover, everything except the background is “metro like”, simple and clean while the logo is not. It would look nice if it was animated.
2. I don’t like the 2 column news shorts, it’s too cluttery for my likings, it some kind overwhelms with information
Regarding new site thingy.
Please don’t make me scroll down to see “Recent Forum Posts”.
It’s by far the thing I look at the most on the site, I’m pretty sure several others can agree.
Nice… What’s basic them?
“Why the fuck would you choose to change the website’s layout. Moreso, make it look like nba.com or some other horribly-designed website? Just because you’re “moving up in the world”?”
I changed the design as I personally hate the current design and I was given full artistic license to create something that would fit in more with today’s standards for sponsors as such. The design as i stated is based on many hours of research so its not something unusual it will just take some getting used to!
Please don’t make me scroll down to see “Recent Forum Posts”.
It’s by far the thing I look at the most on the site, I’m pretty sure several others can agree.
This is also a great point and i have written it down.
1. the logo, try with the simple one, not the one from the animated intro, it’s nice but site needs something simple (like the actual one, white and blue), moreover, everything except the background is “metro like”, simple and clean while the logo is not. It would look nice if it was animated.
2. I don’t like the 2 column news shorts, it’s too cluttery for my likings, it some kind overwhelms with information
1. The logo is interchangeable and was added last I wasnt sure on the reception although the plain one im not sure would fit with the rest of the site.
2. I took hours out of my scheduale looking into the best ways to display the news on websites similar to etf2l. (Mgo’s, Esports leagues etc..) was a choice between this and another version that I had created but not submitted as i prefered this version.
However saying all this nothing has ever been set in stone so im going to get on top of this as soon as i can.
The new website pic that deusvox has made looks just, sick!
As far as the potentials go, ‘We received the sad news that The Potentials have folded’, they hadn’t really been practicing all that much hadn’t they, they just got some players and tried to go prem with no practise what so ever. (maybe they played a week or two, wasn’t really paying attention, that’s what it looked like)
Can we get a media pack to download containing stuff like logos in differnt size/formats
I believe the media team have a project with all that sort of stuff coming soon its on our todo list as its just me and huhy atm we are trying our best.. There is a lot of stuff to do!! :D
New look is great ! Looks much more proffesional then current one.
The new design looks pretty slick, but I just feel that by moving to it we’ll lose some of the personality that comes from a game like TF2.
You’re right about the site now being clunky and quite disorganised, but by setting the competitive tf2 website for europe so far apart from every other tf2 related website design, I can’t help feel that we would be losing something by doing so.
Ye im copying the most valuable opinons to a txt file for when i next work on this project im gonna be whacking out multiple variations based on feedback hopefully one will stick.. Thanks for all the support!!
white text on a black background is objectively bad. read a block of text in this comments thread, and then read a block of text on the website mockup.
black text on a white background is far, far more comfortable to read
I like the idea of changable color theme in the future, some people like it dark and some like it bright. Go for it, and the sooner the better.
Also, I think it is quite important to have the full league name on the banner (European Team Fortress 2 League). Think of a random visitor who might have gotten to the website from a completely random place and will have no idea what “ETF2L” means. Might think it’s some random team website or something and not read any further.
I think the gray, red and blu color scheme that TF2 uses is pretty cool
the grain effect, altough it looks nice, is a massive performance issue (not scale or repeatable without getting eye cancer). there are certain ways to avoid those issues with transparent .png’s, but those will also have an negative effect on the performance.
the menu is a problem. if you will use, like on the site now, a drop-down menu, it will cover the sponsors (no good.. nono) or your site will expand vertical (goodbye site content). or even worse, you need to load a new site (unnecessary perfomance loss and useability loss).
one does not simply mix up site concepts from around the world. ;3
btw your job really sucks, it’s the ungrateful and impossible job of satisfying everones expectations and personal taste. you need to ignore some people’s opinions, altough they might be good, a site concept must be straight, or the site won’t have one. (but before you ignore people, ask them why they did add you on steam, takes 5 seconds :x)
For the first point there is however a way to add noise without requiring a huge amount of effort or performance loss (I haven’t just stepped out from no experience.) The overall design is a mock up any feature and every feature will be subject to design change until we decide its a lock down.
In regards to the menu I will be looking into suitable ways to achieve this. Requires further investigation and research (Thanks for the reminder.)
Lastly I don’t think my job sucks. So far I have only grown a strong understanding of what things are about. How people with no knowledge can be your most insightful commenter. As well as those who know more always willing to let there opinion.
I have been asked by a few people now for my PSD’s I have turned them down because this is a project I volunteered for to be able to give my something back to the community that I love. The last thing I want to do is upset the apple cart. My technical abilities are not what is the matter it is finding a balanced solution to a quite tender subject.
If anyone wishes to lend there criticisms then please add me I cant promise I will agree with you but I will try and understand what is being said. There is no need to begin side projects or redesign my mockup as it will create more hassle for me in the long run!
In short you word is most important to me thanks.
Site preview looks great, i really like it. The only problem with it imo is that it don’t fit original tf2 style, colors and atmosphere.
Would it be possible to run the old and the new website at the same time, so you can run this new website on etf2l.org, and this old one on etf2l.org/old.
I’m all up for the scene trying to catch up with the fashion set in other leagues…… but I just hate those black sites, the current etf2l page has pleasant colours and it very easy to navigate if this could still be run I would be very happy (or if we could just select a different skin)
you should put kaidus / tviq’s stream on the frontpage, they are streaming pretty much all the time and it would reach more people. Besides, etf2l has a partnership with twitch for this season so surely you can figure something out
also those background images are quite low quality, and you might want to make as much yourself instead of applying filters etc
Mightyme this is a mock-up all text and images… Basically everything except the layout are place holder and therefore subject to change.
This looks absolutely vile. It’s far too dark and not at all easy on the eyes like the current site design. Why even change what ETF2L looks like anyway? It looks nice and it’s functional.
When will you change theme?
still waiting for the changing