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Very sorry to see you go, you’ve been one of those people that I just assumed would always be around working with TF2 – think we’ve probably taken advantage of your generosity over the years. All your guides (IRC/OBS etc.) have helped me a lot in the past.

On a slight tangent you mentioned a lack of drive to get things done in the community: is there anything people can do to easily help out? Always wanted to get stuck in but I don’t know if I have any useful skills/enough time to really do anything of worth.

No idea about any of the drama, don’t really care about it to be honest.

All I ever saw from Skyride was him working his ass off, both for VanillaTV, and for TF2 in general. Even at LAN, the guy was working tirelessly while some of us went off for a beer and a chat. Personally, I can’t fault the guy, he showed dedication for this community beyond nearly everyone else in it.

But Skyride, you’re entirely right. We do not have enough people motivated to make TF2 succeed as an eSport. Take a look at the situation in Starcraft 2 at the moment. You have a large number of people, who literally work everyday on anything related to their game. I’m not even suggesting that I’m one of the exceptions. On a personal level, I’m sure as hell not putting much effort into TF2. I commentate a few games, because I enjoy commentating them, I play the game because I like to play, and I debate unlocks and participate in discussions, because I have an opinion on things. If I’m asked to do something I do not enjoy, to help the community out, there’s a strong chance I’m not going to do it. I have other things that I enjoy doing, much more than computing gaming.

But one thing to take into account, is that you can’t force people into putting more effort in. They have to want to do it. Praise and reward are good motivators. Our community, is one of the worst I’ve ever seen at praising people for their hard work, especially in the coverage field. VanillaTV gets a load of new casters come through the door, and 90% of them get slammed immediately after their cast. Commentating is a lot like playing TF2. You don’t immediately pick up a copy of TF2 and become a premiership scout, and the same goes with commentating the game. You need time to develop as a commentator. I mean, if you need proof, check out my first TF2 commentary on YouTube from 5 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9507rwvm8k

It’s so painful to listen to. I personally believe it’s actually worse than nearly every new commentator coming into VTV at the moment. The problem is, that at the time that myself and Beta started commentating TF2, we mostly got praise for our work. This was because there wasn’t really anyone else commentating, and so there was nothing to compare it to. These new casters just get the shit kicked out of them by the community, and end up leaving because people ‘hate’ them before they’ve even had time to develop.

My point is, anyone who does anything helpful for TF2, tends to get abused for it.

ETF2L admins only get abuse, not praise. How many people turn around at the end of the season, and say, “Thank you guys for yet another awesome season!”.

VanillaTF2 article writers get hounded to write more articles, and rarely get appreciated for writing out something, unless it’s one of those massive-massive review articles that take a tonne of effort to write.

Sponsor prizes get laughed at. Our community is expecting tournaments with £5000+, and anything less is like, “meh!”.

Could list more, but this post is getting longer than I wanted anyway.

It’s no surprise our community keeps losing some of it’s best, most hard-working members, as even the most modest person needs to be recognised and praised a little, but to also know they are not alone in their efforts.

Can’t add anything to the people thanking you for all your time and insane effort that you put in the community, both online and at LAN …. I could never fathom where you go the energy to keep putting in so much and getting back so little.

Having your admin status removed after that Byte incident sounds really disrespectful towards all your intentions and efforts towards the TF2 community; I can’t really see how there is a side of the story left untold here, but I sure hope there is, for VTF2’s sake…

Quoted from Skyride

This isn’t a “goodbye TF2” post, I’ll still be doing Pirate Radio when cx and greg can sober up long enough to do it, my TF2 server is still available to the half a dozen people who borrow it regularly, and any mumble’s I’m running won’t be going down. I’ve just had so many people PM me about various things I’m no longer involved with and felt like I really needed to get some of this stuff off my chest so I could move on.

Does this mean I might still one day get the stv from my “triple airshot while drunk at i46” pixel pickup game? :DDDD

Quoted from skeej

Having your admin status removed after that Byte incident sounds really disrespectful towards all your intentions and efforts towards the TF2 community; I can’t really see how there is a side of the story left untold here, but I sure hope there is, for VTF2’s sake…

I actually spoke to Torden about this last night, and my admin has been reinstated. As it turned out there was a little extra to it that I wasn’t aware of. I still don’t necessarily agree with it, but it appears to be not nearly as bad as it sounds.

:(

Arx makes a pretty good point. It’s a shame really there should be more support for the support. The people who cast (even if you don’t favour them), the people who stream, who admin or anything else. The troubles of being in the public eye is that people enjoy reading gossip and seeing people fail. Often more so than they enjoy seeing success.

Certainly I doubt anyone would not know of at least some of the work you’ve done Skyride and everyone in the larger community should give thanks to the efforts you have put in.

In terms of getting more people to contribute it might be good for the projects who are lacking to be a little more pro-active in the wider community. Encourage people with small competitions. Need more writers? Put up a small comp to get your article posted on TF.TV and Vanilla maybe further incentive. Give them a subject/topic and get the news out there on multi gaming sites, on reddit on the main subforums. People need encouragement to get started and to continue. I’d love for us to be in a position where no Prem game goes uncasted, where discussions and articles are well written and thought provoking. We can only get there with positive reinforcement and a bit of shoving. People like Skyride are few and far between unfortunately.

I don’t have much to add at this debate, but with it being brought up, I would like to provide some clarity in Skyride’s admin, which is completely back to normal.

His suspension came as a reaction to concrete logs detailing a breach in the site security, and I saw no choice but to freeze some accounts until we could get to the bottom of what’s actually going on. Typically, this would be a standard procedure – It’s just a situation we haven’t had before.

With all of this cleared up, Skyride’s admin was reinstated. And as far as I’m concerned, anyone is welcome to ask him out about the illuminati mind tricks I deployed on him :)

Quoted from torden

I don’t have much to add at this debate, but with it being brought up, I would like to provide some clarity in Skyride’s admin, which is completely back to normal.

His suspension came as a reaction to concrete logs detailing a breach in the site security, and I saw no choice but to freeze some accounts until we could get to the bottom of what’s actually going on. Typically, this would be a standard procedure – It’s just a situation we haven’t had before.

With all of this cleared up, Skyride’s admin was reinstated. And as far as I’m concerned, anyone is welcome to ask him out about the illuminati mind tricks I deployed on him :)

<3

Cheers

Byte