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Quoted from Le meme arrows

Isn’t it already late? The game is out for almost 5 years and only now you start doing stuff like streams, newbie mixes, etc. It should’ve been done at the game release or in the first year and not when TF2 is nearing the end of its lifespan.

Well yeah, but better late than never, since the F2P update wasn’t that long ago.

Also I wasn’t here then, otherwise I would have done it. It is that or give up on the game, which I don’t want to do.

Quoted from h1

imo unlucks dont change anything, NA have the same problem getting new players as we do, and claiming “games dead” means jack shit, tf2 still pulls in over 50k players a day with ease which is nearly double that of “dota2” seems to me tf2 is still alive sorta speak, pulling in 20k less than cs/css which are both massive player wise and take your own experience of how you got into comp tf2 and taking that into account, ive only been playing comp tf2 for about 7/8month and it still pulls in more teams than most other games , yes it isnt as huge as it was a few years back but it still pretty big considering how long its been around. dont get me wrong we cant do everything for new players as it isnt that simple. spreading word of mouth about 6v6 and 9v9 games alot of pubbers love highlander style games using what unlock the want etc, then eventually they’ll see 6v6 has a decent side n maybe start on that aswell.

Well the problem has always been the lack of people who are willing to do more than just play the game.

In a community that is as small as ours, we need a lot more help than is currently available.

Quoted from dougiie

[…]

But you need to look at the larger portion of people in this community who just simply play this game for fun etc. Like “why” should regular players take time out of their day just to do something minor for this community. Most of us have jobs/uni/real lives so it’s probably too much to ask of people. Saying that I do have massive respect for the likes of cube/commanderx/greg and co for taking the time to provide us with vod’s and such.

I guess from my point of view it’s sad, because seeing all this shit on the forums makes me hate this game/community even more. Is it so much to ask that we just leave all this shit out and actually play the game?

At the end of the day, it’s a fucking computer game. TF2 will never be a big competitive game, the sooner people accept that, the better.

And thus the problem is shown <3

If you like the game as much as I do, or any of the admins on etf2l, or the streamers like Qun, then you really don't mind putting the extra time in. First because it is fun, I find it quite a lot of fun to test maps or help advertise streams/groups. Second because attracting more people means more fun, for longer.

You see on NATF2, when people talk about the Newbie Mix Group, they get volunteers: http://natf2.com/topics/3523-na-newbie-mix . Here I get suggestions, which are helpful, but no one to help me with them.

So what I am asking is that if you do like this game, even small things, that require little effort and are quite fun, are at least something.

Quoted from skeej

[…]

[…]

Maybe these experiences suggest something? Maybe we should shy away from the “en-masse” approach of trying to funnel all new players through 1 channel of getting familiar with 6v6.

I always favored more localized approaches to attract new players to competitive TF2. It’s just more inviting, especially for people who aren’t used to be on a mumble server and talk with others whilst playing, to have a community from your own country that helps you out can matter a lot for a significant number of newbies. Me myself being introduced to 6v6 by the Dutch GoT community was exceptionally great and stimulating.

I tried this approach myself by promoting our Dutch TF2 irc channel, trying to get every single Dutch player from f2p to prem to idle there and organise mixes with eachother. This turned out to be quite a fail, probably because IRC is too archaic to attract the younger generation that didn’t grow up with it.

If we really want a large scale “get new players into competitive” system to work, we need to work on its infrastructure. IRC is too “oldfag”, the steam group is too messy and inefficiënt. It sucks to say that we really need a actual website dedicated to this, basically exactly what Nightbox was “creating” before he vanished again. A previous suggestion of using the steam group in combination with private lobbies might be a good compromise-solution too (as we don’t have enough people with time and skill on their hands to actually finish a TF2MM type of site).

If we really want to keep up this Steam Newbie mix group, we need a more organised system where we can be sure that every newbie mix has at least 2 players that can maincall and help to coördinate the games. Once players start showing up too many times and exhibit skill that is easily at or above a div6 level, they should be redirected to #pixeltf2.pickup. Isn’t it weird that we have quite a large amount of competitive players, but nobody can remember when #pixeltf2.pickup had 2 pickups running at the same time?

I think if Valve even remotely appreciates what we do over here (which does seem to be the case, considering them not TOTALLY ignoring 6v6), I think they should realise that even with the tiniest amounts of help from them, 6v6 can get such a boost in popularity. At this moment Valve does “support” 6v6, but doesn’t “endorse” it. There is no acknowledgement of competitive TF2 within the actual game’s canon. It’s hard to get players enthused for a metagame that doesn’t even seem to exist, from the game’s perspective. Many suggestions have been made towards Valve which would help our community a lot with minimal effort from their side. eXtine suggested using the ingame news crawler thingie to promote important match casts or other 6v6 events, and moving the most important 6v6 news from the “news” tab to the “blog” tab on teamfortress.com. And what about a working SourceTV browser where people easily can find decently-skilled 6v6 games to spec? eXtine keeps coming with good suggestions like last eXtravision episode’s suggestion of adding a “competitive” subforum on SPUF.

All these efforts that we are kindly requesting from Valve might seem trivial to some, but the simple acknowledgement that 6v6 exists and is (even in the slightest) endorsed by Valve, will attract so much more players to this competitive community, and will most definitely also cause a positive feedback loop towards the pub communities and general TF2 activity (which means that it IS in Valve’s interest to invest in these resource-efficiënt measures that seemingly don’t help them at first sight because 6v6 does not make them money in a direct way).

tl;dr

What can YOU do?
– Grassroots types of approach in your own national community. Help your countrymen, support your local national public servers. Every player with a positive attitude builds towards making a solid community.

What can OTHERS do (Homer Simpson style)?
– An actual seperate website dedicated to introducing new players to competitive and possibly even containing a matchmaking system would be so awesome but probably out of reach.
– Valve can help us with minimal amounts of effort.

Great you sound like you have some ideas, would you like to add me on steam and we can talk about you helping me run the mix group and discuss some other ideas as well?

P.S

How do we go about getting Valve support?

Quoted from Qun

[…]
Please, never compared RTS/MOBA games to FPS games again…

Sorry I presumed a program that raped fps would not be used no matter the game. My mistake.

Quoted from CrashSite

[…]How do we go about getting Valve support?

I honestly don’t know? We could try and get some keen people together to exchange ideas and filter out the best, and ultimately create some well-formulated but concise “6v6 manifesto”, have it signed (by for instance a community petition) and e-mail it to Valve, asking for some simple tiny things that would be of great help to us.

Apart from that, I think eXtine is probably our best shot. He currently seems to be the most important “voice” of comp tf2 that seems to actually be heard by Valve. He suggested most of the things that Valve could do to help comp TF2 already, so I don’t know if we can push those suggestions even more than he did.

Hail extine.