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Recent forum activity has made it obvious that we here in the good ol’ E of U are doing something wrong. We have the biggest TF2 LAN event in the world in the iseries, we have enjoyed a busy and popular community run league for years and now things are in decline.

Less and less teams signing up for the 6v6 league, more and more teams signing up for highlander. The US and AU scenes are enjoying a revival as more and more teams and players sign up and we…well, we aren’t.

Why is this? How come other scenes attract new players and we can’t? How come highlander is growing where 6v6 is shrinking?

Obviously I don’t actually know. What I do know is that those other scenes, and our very own highlander competitions, all allow various unlocks. Coincidence? Mebbe.

Another thing I know is when I play lobbies, (yeah yeah, leave me alone, I like it!), I often hear new players complaining about ‘why can’t I use such and such’, or ‘arrrghhh, where’s my thingy ma bob’ referring to their favourite play thing in TF2. I can see now how this might be a barrier to making the leap from pub to comp. When I found competitive TF2 there was no such thing as unlocks and I just had to get used to Class limit 2 as it was then, and then CLl1 on medic and demo as the game evolved. I knew of more than a few people who quit the game back then because 2 demos on a team was even more seriously OP back when you couldn’t shoot stickies. People will only play a game for fun, no matter how ‘competitive’ you are, it’s still all about fun remember.

These days any interested pubber may just think, ‘meh, too many constraints, too many rules, I’ll go play highlander where I can have some fun on maps I know and love’.

It seems to me that the end is nigh for a vanilla ruleset if we want to keep the game being played and draw new players in, I feel we have to change things again, just like adding the demo and medic limit, just like stopping playing dustbowl and goldrush and well.

The idea of a panel has been mentioned in a couple of threads and I wanted to get more opinions on the feasability of such a project.

I would love to see a panel made of top players, mid players and low players, casters and commentators, ex players and league admins, highlander and 6v6’ers, basically as broad a spectrum of people who care or have cared about this wonderful game of ours as possible. I would love them to have a forum section only they could post in, but everyone else could read.

Polls are all well and good, but the flaws in any poll system we can think of have been pointed out and argued about before.

I think we have to accept we wont please all of the people all of the time and decide as a community to move things on, make the 6’s game more accessable to interested pubbers and maybe allow some variation on load-outs and the best way to get good unlock variation allowed is for intelligent, well-informed people to discuss it and discuss it in public.

TL;DR: Please organise panel for talking about unlock rules

Not sure you’re very good at this reading lark. It wasn’t lobbies with unlocks, it was about pub players showing an interest in comp, finding tf2lobby.com and being put off and disappointed they can’t use whatever unlocks they’re used to.

Have another go, maybe this time try reading a bit slower?

a league will prosper as long as new players joining outnumbers old players leaving, meaning the two issues are recruitment and retention.

My view has always been that the more differences between the “normal” game (I’d like to use the word “vanilla” there but it seems to have been co-opted to mean something entirely different) and league play, the higher the barrier to entry is. The fact that a standard team right now uses less than half of the classes and a fraction of their weapons cannot help but retard recruitment. In addition, the fact that new teams cannot help but be less well versed in the highly modified ruleset we call “vanilla” artificially raises the skill difference between a div6 team and a new team, and means they’re more likely to get rolled (as opposed to merely lose) and quit in their first season.

As for retention of more veteran players, surely at the very least allowing new tactics is going to help prevent boredom? Even if a team doesn’t change their rollout at all, they have to think about what weird things their opponent is going to do (quickfix+demo, GRU heavy, combat sentry engy, degreaser/axtinguisher pyro, whatever)

It’s always confused me that an early league rule – class limits, in order that people use a wider range of tactics – was followed by restricting the weapon selection

Quoted from CanFo

We talked this over in our admin cave last night. What would you think of a heavily moderated forum where people can apply to get access to? Offtopic comments, insults, trollbaits will be deleated and punished with a 1-day forum ban, the second offense means the access to the forum will be revoked. Everybody can apply (and will be accepted) if he has not been banned from that forum before.
That forum could be used for a lot lilke feedback on maps and unlocks or rules.

That looks like a great idea

Sounds like a great idea to me CanFo.

I hope we can get some US and AU guys or gals involved if possible, some rational points made by people who have been using unlocks would be uber useful…sorry, quick-fix useful too.

For me personally and some of my friends its always been about the top of the game. If theres a lot of competition at the top (and also a lot of coverage to show this), then theres gonna be more people interested.

Sadly we only have epsilon and infused duking it out and TCM forever third (alltough Punchline being the most interesting one imho). ESEA just had big upsets with Flow dropping out even if they dominated the league which made the top even more interesting.

What we need is an upset in the top. We need another underdog. Another Broder!

Quoted from Tapley ❤

I’d include polar opposites onto the unlocks panel, such as a high end intelligent players who are in favour of unlocks and ones who arn’t and have a serious discussion, as you really dont want a circle jerk, you want both sides of the argument who are willing to compramise for the good of the game, and can explain both points of view.
Get casters involved as they spectate the game and may see and understand things others may not, plsu they’re active in the community and understand it. I’d say go with DJC also he’s one of the only peope who has both NA and EU expirence plus he knows what hes on about. Then fill the rest with etf2l admins and other people smart enough to know the game.

However if most people are really happy playing badlands vanilla for years to come and actually enjoy it and dont want to see any change, then thats up to them, but that for me has/will become very stale.

What Tapley said, basically.

Allow notable community leaders, people who have played the game for long periods of time (at any skill level) and top end players all contribute but make it so that its only people willing to A) Reason and B) Listen to reason. None of this instantly dismissing anyone’s opinions because of their skill level, none of this mindless dismissal of anything people say without any reasoning or even thought behind it.

Otherwise it’ll not work and we’ll implode sooner than we should.

Quoted from CanFo

My problem is: How do we decide who should be in the council without one side being overrepresented? “Anyone who is interested in serious discussions can request access” sounds like a good solution to this imo.

The issue with the council selection does feel like a bigger issue than the one I pointed out earlier.

It is a complicated issue, the council selection… I had written a huge wall of text with a system but it seemed far too complex and rubbish to warrant posting so I believe the best decision would be to go with what you have suggested.

Besides, from that open forum, certain community members might stand out making the council choices obvious if we wish to follow with that idea later on.