Forum

I have added a handful of people the past week since competitive mm was announced and even more after muselk video, every one of them stumbled upon tf2center or tf2pickup and to avoid them having a bad first experience (or getting banned on tf2pickup for example) I tried to add them and direct them the right way, but there are several hurdles within the site that really should be addressed fast to take advantage of this new wave of players coming and soon to come with matchmaking.

Here’s some challenges I faced when trying to help some players.

http://i.imgur.com/bxZ2dQv.png
http://i.imgur.com/rOfjbT7.png

Open name is confusing (I already had that criticism when we changed to tiers system), Low seems much more logic and fitting. Still that’s the least of the problems. There’s no real guide or even explanation on the website where I could find how to open a recruitment post, and yes that’s a real issue for new people even if you are already used to the website.

Like, not even the 6v6 newcomer guide makes any mention to the recruitment section or how to open a recruitment post or how it should be like. Also that guide is too hidden to do anything valuable, it should be an infobox or something like that in the header/homepage or a menu of its own.

Very scarce information regarding some stuff, and with a site layout straight of 2004 some people might be immediately turned off by this.

We really need to be able to accommodate this new wave of players if we want our scene to grow, and the best way to do that is make the main league in europe as noob friendly as possible, which it currently isn’t.

Quoted from Oxy

Afaik it takes players to the newcomer thread once they register.

Well as stated even the newcomer guide doesn’t explain the recruitment section.

Also this guy for example was already registered on etf2l for like 2 months and only now showed interest. Its understandable that some players when registering just ignore that.

I dont see any single image on the newcomer page, you realise how many people will just close it immediatly seeing it’s a wall of text?

That’s actually a thing I love about tf2center, their splash page is very explicit with clean and concise graphics with instructions that go direct to the point and make everything clear for even the complete newbie. I think something similar (splash page or not) would help greatly.

As for what’s missing it’s probably as you mentioned in the other post, separation of gamemodes, more in depth guidelines/guides on recruitment section or how to find a team or people to play with.

http://etf2l.org/forum/league/topic-31516/page-1/

Quoted from Hildreth

….but I don’t expect ETF2L to make any change and try to do the minimum to pass off promotion and keep the stagnating community content, until the lack of growth descends the league into nothing.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Quoted from Kaneco

I dont see any single image on the newcomer page, you realise how many people will just close it immediatly seeing it’s a wall of text?

Images on the newcomer pages/guides, noted.

Quoted from Hildreth

…but I don’t expect ETF2L to make any change and try to do the minimum to pass off promotion and keep the stagnating community content, until the lack of growth descends the league into nothing.

If only we had a PR admin who did something to make a change happen…sadly the last guy quit halfway through because he wasn’t fit for the task at hand.

Though until we find someone who’s actually suitable for that admin position we should be fine either way, after all this league has existed for almost 8 years now.

Ducky, do you have to be so self-righteous all of the time? If you’re actively going to debate and defend ETF2L’s current stance, please do it in a way that doesn’t make you look like a bigoted twat waffle, thanks.

Using the tier name “Low” seems a little degrading in my personal view. Open is more inviting towards new players, as in it is open to all players.

I’d agree that the newcomer guide needs to be updated and have more attention drawn to it, especially with the recent influx of new players coming in, and a likelihood for this to increase in the coming months with matchmaking due to arrive.

Quoted from ash

If none of the current admin team has the time, skills and/or motivation to update the Newcomers Guide, maybe outsourcing it to a trusted community member would be a viable choice.

I mean, I would love to help, but between my current projects, my university work, the team I play for, and still trying to find an acceptable social life, it’s really impossible for me.

Maybe in the summer when the things cool down a bit I could help if you’re still receptive but I think that would be a bit late if there’s already an influx of new players.