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The argument regarding sponsorship/players is a vicious circle. You get into it by just “becoming” one side, and the other obviously follows on the next tick over. If you want to start with sponsorship, tell potential sponsors that you will have “x” players, and by the sponsorship you attract “x” players.

If you want to start with players, you attract players by stating there will be “x” prizes, get the signups, then get “x” prize from sponsors by showing them signup statistics. Its quite simple really.

If you want to see how e-sports can/should go, have a listen to the BBC Radio interview regarding gaming a few months back (the one with ODEE from dignitas) and it might give you some idea. It could go huge, just no one who has the money necessary to make it happen is willing to do so.

I can’t help feeling the effect of sponsorship is overstated, drawing parrallels with pro sport doesn’t really work as pro sport physically takes up all your time from training to resting (unless it’s darts or something :P ).

Those “paid” to play games would probably be playing tomorrow if you took all that stuff away. For most, gaming is about that mental zone you get into when the match kicks off, that’s why we are all here, everything else is just a peripheral triviality. The vast majority of entrants are no-hopers, not playing for extrinsic rewards. A league provides a record of progress and achievement that attracts a lot of people and is an intrinsic reward. Just look at the div tables to see that.

If people can’t see the links between extrinsic reward and cheating in games or sport, it’s worth thinking about before going down that road.

Quoted from Skyride

If you want to see how e-sports can/should go, have a listen to the BBC Radio interview regarding gaming a few months back (the one with ODEE from dignitas) and it might give you some idea. It could go huge, just no one who has the money necessary to make it happen is willing to do so.

Where is the interview.. cant find it on youtube :s

erm all i can see good coming out of the new updates is an awesome highlander scene. or possibly 7v7 or 8v8 1 class limit gameplay.

all these updates practically kill 6v6 gameplay because its aimed at playing tf2 in a variety of classes… which is pretty great for joe public. but not so great for a finely structured 6v6 style of play.

we need consistency for 6v6
i don’t care what that consistency is, but we have to decide whether it was how it was pre store update or vanilla+ med. then stick solidly to that rule set until such time that it needs to be discussed again.

i would be very interested in seeing 8v8 or 7v7 come back in a highlander format with all weapons available. because as i see it that is how tf2 with this update will work best. and 6v6 needs to make its mind up. either shut up and get on with it or define a set of rules and stick with them. like all other comp games do.

+ can we have ” the vanilla season” and see how it goes. or a “vanilla sundae cup”

I’d like this myself:

Keep: All Medic, Equalizer, Sandvich, Cloak and Dagger, Backburner, Flare gun, Jarate, KGB, Bonk Drink and Axtinguisher.

Ban: All others. Especially Natascha, FAN, Wrangler, Direct Hit and Buff Banner.

It might make the games a bit less accessible for new players, but at least it gives a bit of variety and some options for off classing.

Looking at the new Wireplay rules for instance, less people are gonna want to play pyro without the axtinguisher, spy with no cloak and dagger, heavy with no KGB or sniper without jarate and this will lead to more boring matches, both to play and to spectate.

As long as some kind of decision is made and is STUCK TOO, I dont see any major issues, but please no vanilla + medic!

Occasional offclassing is the key to keeping the game fun and interesting imo and it’s more fun and more interesting with some of the new weapons.

Tbh div1 should just boycott any league that doesn’t appease it’s desires concerning rules. It sounds a cheap and nasty way, but at the end of the day anyone acting under the impression that any other group of players have such substantial impact on the way the game is played is seriously mistaken. The majority will follow happily, the majority of the remainder will follow begrudgingly, and whats left over can suck a dick.

Edit: I’m aware that there are some differing opinions even in div1, but the overall consensus is far closer to unanimous than in any other partition of the skill spectrum.

What I don’t get is all this harking on about “continuity makes for a better game”. A good player should be able to adapt to new situations rather than crawling under the bed and harking on about the old days and I say this as somebody who has played a game (competitively) which has undergone much larger overhauls in its updates, Pokemon.

With each new generation the metagame has adapted and so too have the players. After RBY people abandoned Tauros in favour of Curselax, then Curselax went out of favour for Salamence and then Garchomp replaced Salamence. Then Garchomp was banned to Ubers.

The reason for banning it was something simple and something comp. Tf2 should look at before blanket banning stuff for being “new and different”; over-centralisation.

Time was in fourth gen. that to be a viable, competitive team you had to have Garchomp or atleast 3-4 hard counters to Garchomp otherwise he would simply mess you up.
Look at Pokemon, now back to TF2; can you say that any of the unlocks are necessary to playing at a high level? How many recruitment posts are looking for a mid+ Natascha Heavy? high- Scout, must have FAN?

Fact is these insidious unlocks are used situationally at best and it is from these situations come the complaints. Nobody complains about being killed by sticky traps any more because it has become an accepted part of the metagame but if you put it against the test that unlocks must adhere to it fails spectacularly; it slows the game down something rotten, takes minimal aim, and completely outclasses the alternatives. Had the shield been the vanilla and the sticky launcher the unlock it would’ve been banned so quickly.

Simply put; what I’m saying is that these new unlocks need to be tested (a la the experimental ordanance cup) to see if they have any real effect on the metagame rather than just falling under the “it’s strange and different! kill it!” mentality which seems to run rampant up in here (up in here)

(last section bolded for those nitwits too lazy to read)

You mean like Kritzkrieg?