cause TF2 is gonna make you alot of money has tons of spectator appeal and is on the edge of becoming the next big esport.

Remember boys and girls reading and not insinuating and extrapolating what others say will help you understand points that go further than 2 sentences.

svfrey wrote:

Jazzy wrote:

blah blah blah I'm autistic

so no one who plays games casually will ever get into watching games competitively

ok buddy

ya man cause that is what i said!

when did i say that people didnt get into games from watching them? oh wait i forgot you don't know how to read cause your slow. I never said that once. I said that TF2 isnt as big as SC2 or LoL and that probably no one will make a large profit on competitive TF2. That is what i said, and that it is it. Id also say that for foreigner broodwar or any other of the countless games that get shit stream numbes.

nah

svfrey wrote:

Jazzy wrote:

id heard of competitive <TF2> before. i never watched it before. To be honest i dont even remember why i started watching this <ESEA LAN FINALS>. I always liked competitive stuff in the first place so i was drawn to it through that. When i watched it for the first time it was like wow this is really cool. Then i saw <ENIGMA> do this <SPY PLAY> against <FLOW> who was considered the favorite i think. I was a <SPY> player so i had an emotional connection to him in addition to that awesome moment. After that i found a ton of commentaries on youtube and just watched tons and tons of matches and learned of the scene. I then just followed the scene and learned to like all the <CLASSES> and slowly got a deeper understanding of the game. Im not good by any means, but i pretty much <HAVE A FIRM GRASP ON HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED AS WELL AS A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF COMPETITIVE TERMINOLOGY AND STRATEGY>.

So basically it was like, man i really want to see more of this game cause this shit is fucking cool.

?

too bad i was already a competitive player and had an appreciation of competitive video games(competed in 2142). too bad koreans had this enormous scene that had been developing for over 7 years at the time. too bad the production values were off the charts compared to any other esport. too bad starcraft BW is much much easier to follow than TF2. Im not a good example cause i just love watching competitive games or atleast giving them a try(i also at that time watched quake matches on google video and watched old CS finals videos because i was just interested in how they worked.) I'm a terrible example of getting into games because i just love watching competitive games.

Heres a better example and you can go onto the steam forums and probably find posts like this.

I didnt even watch the tf2 lan finals cause every competitive player is a douche and says pyro sucks even though i really like pyro. The game they play blows because 4/9 of the classes arent used and blah blah shit you have heard before.

fatmop wrote:

Jazzy wrote:

actually i have never competed in BW i did 4 pool once to C-. I actually watched BW because it is amazing to watch.

Did the thought "Hey, BW is amazing to watch" simply pop into your head one night without ever having heard of the competitive scene before?

Or did a friend who watched a stream, or some advert from a competitive organization like GOM get you interested?

id heard of competitive BW before. i never watched it before. To be honest i dont even remember why i started watching this gomtv invitional. I never even heard of GOM and this was their first BW english event ever. It was just kinda luck i guess. I always liked competitive stuff in the first place so i was drawn to it through that. Id played BW before when i was little and didn't know about economy and really basic stuff. But when i watched it for the first time it was like wow this is really cool. Then i saw flash do this crazy comeback against savior who was considered the favorite i think. I was a terran player so i had an emotional connection to him in addition to that awesome moment, he then went on to win the tournament. After that i found a ton of english commentaries on youtube and just watched tons and tons of matches and learned of the scene. Then i think shortly after that flash beat stork 3-0 in his first OSL final and that made me super hype. I then just followed the scene and learned to like all the races and slowly got a deeper understanding of the game. Im not good by any means, but i pretty much can identify all the main builds, what supply people move out on, when people should be getting upgrades and stuff.

So basically it was like, man i really want to see more of this game cause this shit is fucking cool.

duder wrote:

I look at it this way, Jazzy. The more public we can make our game, whether it be through eXtv streaming competitive games, or guys like STAR and Stabby doing pub stuff, the better off we all are as fans in the long run. This game was never intended to be played competitively, but we've done a pretty good job turning it into the best class-based competitive FPS on the planet. People will argue that games like Tribes and BF3 are stealing thunder, but the fact of the matter is NOTHING is cheaper or easier to pick up and play (FPS-wise) than TF2 is (well, maybe Quake Live... but I don't count it). The fact this game is supposed to be a casual pub game, but has such a high level of competitive play, makes it massively appealing to sponsors and other players - it's up to us to make sure those sponsors take notice now that we've proven it's relatively sustainable and not crazy expensive to support a team at a high level, compared to, say, a CS/CSS team.

I do agree that supporting TF2 teams may be more profitable than CS teams, but neither seem like they bring great returns and make sponsors happy. The reason is less lans, so less money for travel and ok viewer count. Im thinking that if you guys can get 1-2k for regularly weakly shows or events then you could possibly get enough sponsors to maybe always get to lan without big costs. The only thing you really got is people fairly dedicated to your game, a fair amount of people really really like competitive TF2, thats why i compare it to BW a lot. You are just a really enthusiastic player orientated community.

fatmop wrote:

How did you come to like watching BW? It sounds like you probably played a lot of BW and heard of the competitive side of things through friends, or through reading TeamLiquid. But everyone has to hear about it from somewhere, then have an actual viewing experience before they can really decide whether they like it or not. Those stream numbers don't come from nowhere.

Competitive BW had advantages over competitive TF2, true. It was a competitive-based game that encouraged players to compete, where TF2 doesn't have that kind of philosophy. That means Valve essentially isn't supporting the competitive side of their game like Blizzard did. From all the comments I've heard about the LAN stream, though, it sounds like we have a great product that many stream watchers simply don't know about. Getting a big following won't happen from pub TF2 like it happened for Starcraft, so we have to work through other channels. eXtv is pushing big for growth and we have more players streaming their top-level scrims than ever before. I'd rather this trend continue and see where we are in 6 months to a year than give up now, dunno about the rest of you.

actually i have never competed in BW i did 4 pool once to C-. I actually watched BW because it is amazing to watch. One night i decided to stay up and watch the gomtv star invitational. and i saw flash do this sick comeback versus savior on blue storm and i was hooked.

I do think Tf2 has potential for growth but i dont think it will ever get enough sponsors to have teams make anything from their hobby(id much rather have aim gods in tf2 make money than LoL players but hey, not my choice).

duder wrote:

Jazzy wrote:

my point is mainly that this is a very rare event and you still got a mere a 3k at top. BW had 3k watching an english stream of the OSL and like 3-4k watching the korean stream at 5 am(foreigners not koreans) before streaming was popular and before sc2 hit. There just aren't that many tf2 fans. Also CS in america is basically dead but in Europe its still doing kinda ok and it can pull in bigger numbers like 7k-15k depending on event(for finals). I'm pretty sure that's still the case, so CS is still the biggest FPS.

TF2 is hard to follow as a spectator there is a disconnect between the pubbers and competitive players(different game), its a first person game so its hard to watch and follow. I'm surprised you got to 3.2k viewers to be honest, but as i said this is an event that happens once every 3-4 months. This is your biggest event basically and its a drop in the bucket compared to other PC esports or even console esports.

Starcraft bw has joke numbers compared to SC2 yet i still watch flash every single time he plays BW. I watch BW cause i like it. And you should watch tf2 cause you like it, none of that incontrol shit of buying or watching things to support esports or putting in more money than you actually care about to make your esport bigger.

Your logic is heavily flawed here, dude. You can't compare SC2 viewership to TF2 - it'd be like comparing soccer viewers across the world to people who watch golf in the US. They are different sports that appeal to different fanbases for different reasons.

Soccer will always draw more and perhaps have more "passionate" fans, but people who watch golf are more appealing to advertisers, mostly due to their affluence and buying-decision authority.

You've also got to take into mind the accessibility of the game itself - TF2 is free and runs on anything faster than a TI-83 calculator with minimal tweaks. This is one of the reasons CS 1.6 has been so popular for so long, you can play it on a campfire - why do you think it's so popular in Russia? Sure, the mechanics are great and whatever, but the fact is a PC from 1995 can run it at 100fps. However, what TF2 has going for it that CS and SC2 don't is that it's free and easy to pick up and play. How long does it take someone to pick up and get good at SC2? Couple days, week, month? How much does it COST to play SC2? $50 for the game, $500+ for the PC (at least, probably more). TF2 can be had for the cost a pretty low-end PC, even a used machine from a few years back... so you're talking about a game that is insanely accessible and easy to pick up and learn in an hour, tops, but takes YEARS to master - like Starcraft, but it has a lot more features that can appeal to a lot more people.

Look, the fact of the matter is you just CAN'T compare SC2 numbers to TF2 - it'd be like comparing viewership of the Superbowl to the Masters. Sure, both are the biggest events in their respective sports - but you can't say the Masters was a failure because it didn't get the same number of viewers as the Superbowl. You've got to look at the numbers respectively and realize that TF2 is on the way up, whereas SC2 has plateaued and CS/CSS are on the way down.

i was comparing it to BW before sc2 came out, where they had about 6 to 7k watching a korean only broadcast with a terribly terribly audio desynced english one with pretty bad casters.

And there are plenty of free easy to run games out there. LoL is one of them and it is very successful. But bloodline champions is basically a failure, HoN is basically a sifailure in comparison to LoL. Tons of games have accessibility. I think people are overstating the strength of accessibility, otherwise tons of console games would have been big esports, but they are not. TF2 also has this thing that competitive players are playing a different game than pubbers.

Also your golf vs soccer analogy is good. There is a reason why SC2 is still supported without as high numbers as LoL, and thats because SC2 viewers seem to have a bit more money and are bit more free with it than it LoL viewers.

my point is mainly that this is a very rare event and you still got a mere a 3k at top. BW had 3k watching an english stream of the OSL and like 3-4k watching the korean stream at 5 am(foreigners not koreans) before streaming was popular and before sc2 hit. There just aren't that many tf2 fans. Also CS in america is basically dead but in Europe its still doing kinda ok and it can pull in bigger numbers like 7k-15k depending on event(for finals). I'm pretty sure that's still the case, so CS is still the biggest FPS.

TF2 is hard to follow as a spectator there is a disconnect between the pubbers and competitive players(different game), its a first person game so its hard to watch and follow. I'm surprised you got to 3.2k viewers to be honest, but as i said this is an event that happens once every 3-4 months. This is your biggest event basically and its a drop in the bucket compared to other PC esports or even console esports.

Starcraft bw has joke numbers compared to SC2 yet i still watch flash every single time he plays BW. I watch BW cause i like it. And you should watch tf2 cause you like it, none of that incontrol shit of buying or watching things to support esports or putting in more money than you actually care about to make your esport bigger.

method wrote:

badmanner wrote:

Also, fun is relative and stupid argument. Pyro is fun for the pyro when you airblast, but since it's not standard soldiers will rage. It's saving grace is the ability to stop ubers on small indoor maps, much like heavy. Still not impossible to beat and usually doesn't work anyways.

Its not about being impossible to beat, I dont think anyone is saying heavy is impossible to beat. It just slows the pacing of the game down, and I think most people would agree the faster paced/dm oriented games were far more entertaining than the slow, arduous, warmfront games. I'm not really for banning heavy by any means

Also in reference to fun being subjective, that's pretty obvious.. But if you poll 1000 people and 800 of them think something is "fun" or exciting to play against then you probably will have a more positively recieved mechanic. I mean listen to the casters complain everytime mix^ ran their 3 suicide > heavy strat, the popular opinion by the viewers there seemed to be that it was very boring. And If you say "so what?" well, more people thinking game is fun to watch = more viewers = more attention to comp tf2 = bigger and more competitive scene = more money in the game

But If it were up to me I'm just in favor of anything that makes the pacing of the game faster/more exciting to watch

im gonna take your last sentence to the extreme. remove medic would make game pace and stale mate time shorter, remove demo so that people can no longer hold ground. In all likelihood you don't want what your asking for.

Fun is always fucking subjective and if i wanted to take it to the extreme. if you asked 1000 people what their favorite game was it would probably not even be competitive multiplayer games. Obviously they should make it more like blank thing that more people have fun with so that it will be more popular.

hey, ill play, just get in mumble

were playing some duels now if anyone wants to join us in mumble

66.150.214.6

9890

pw: levig

wareya wrote:

I never had to get over a hump playing FPSs, everything is pretty simple. Quake Live's FFA is about denying item pickups to the resident slummer, for example, or else you're never going to be able to get any kills. CA on the other hand is taking advantage of free flanks while your team keeps a good position. Just watching someone do an FPS for a short while teaches me enough about it that I don't need to get over any serious hump, and at a certain point the DM stops being important and complex strategy starts taking reign - that's when FPSs actually get interesting. For TF2, ESEA's high IM is at that point. You don't have a hump to get over before you start getting to that point, because the objectives, and what you should be doing, and how to go about it, are all totally intuitive. They make sense. It's not like DotA were you have something obvious to do but you need to spend a week of playing to figure out how to even do it, against people who aren't total shit. Games like quake and TF2 are different, you can hop in with marginal competitive experience in anything, and granted that you have the mechanical skill for it, learn how the game works and why in a really short time.

If you're playing a fighting game, you won't be able to do anything half the time as a newbie, because you're probably going to be in a lock, or in starcraft you're going to be massively out-played or at a massive unit disadvantage. In TF2 and Quake you're a single unit with a single position and it's hard to lock you out of being able to do anything at all. Getting juggled in the air is hard, and for the few situations where it's really common (bhopping into someone with the LG at high speed, or in TF2, letting a pyro get near a corner and you) you learn really fast that it's not a good idea to do that. By the very nature of the games, a slight skill disadvantage at low levels is going to have a large effect, because the skill curve is really high (easy to progress) early on. It's when you get to higher skill levels that things start plateauing. Because the game's so easy to get good at when you don't know what you're doing, the "hump" isn't when you start playing, it's when you start understanding that the game is tactical at its core.

Picking up on mechanical things is easy. Games that are extremely mechanically punishing like fighting games, or games where the mechanical is just about how case you can execute commands, that's hard to pick up? They're really hard to learn, because strategy is learned from experience and when you need to know how to work your mechanics for your strats to work, or your strategy is /in/ the mechanical part of the game, you can't even pick the game up enough to be immersed before you have to start getting good at it. With FPSs like quake, the mechanical skill is at the forefront, and lets you dive in and get a feel for the game and start messing around and having fun, before you have to be any good at the meta.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the games are just mechanical. You can't win serious quake games with just an aimbot. You have to understand what you're doing. Oh, I know exactly where that guy's going! I'm going to shoot a rocket across the map and get a direct hit on him - the moment that he enters my line of sight. Oh, he's going for the red armor! I'm going to get the two yellows and lay a grenade trap at the teleporter exit, then get ready for an LG gith - if I lose I can jump away and pick up the armor shards and health above me, because I have the position advantage! I'll have to go back down there soon, though, because the mega's spawning! Things like that are what make Quake the game it is, it's not about combo locking or countering enemy strategies. It's about predicting what's going to happen, knowing who controls what, and what battles you can get away with fighting.

That all comes from experience, and it's really easy to get experience. You don't even have to be playing. You can watch someone else, and understand what they're doing, and learn from it - even if you're totally horrible. Even if you have not even the slightest bit of skill or experience, you can spectate a high level player, and understand what's going on, and learn for you own playing like that. Even if you're fighting a horribly losing battle in quake Duel, you can learn a lot from it. Fighting games aren't like that. Fighting games are hard and punishing, because they're not intuitive and they're not open. You can't learn a lot about fighting games just by sitting there and watching someone else, or watching someone beat on you. Well, maybe SSB.

just gonna say you haven't played enough fighters to know that. Go play some Super turbo, that game is not mechanically demanding, hell, play SSF4, and pick a character like T. Hawk. Not every fighting game is marvel or guilty gear and requires crazy execution. Learning why things work is also part of the shit you learned and passed in your fps's.

Rocket jumping isn't this super intuitive thing, but you probably do it like second nature now. So it plinking, double tapping, tiger kneeing, tons of motions. You act like you can't play a fighter unless you know all the crazy combos. Well last i checked you can't play quake worth a shit unless you can move around properly, you can't even duel decently unless you can strafe jump. You won't get anywhere in quake without some time to learn the movement and learn the timings, same thing with learning move properties.

Your essentially saying fps are easy to learn for you cause you put hundreds of hours learning how to aim and move in other games and trying to apply it when you have to learn a completely new control scheme and system. And you can't learn from getting your ass beat in fighters? I'm sorry, but what the fuck are you talking about? You want to know what happens if you duel some players that will fucking smash your face in quake? they can literally beat you brain dead with just aim and literally the only response to even GET to the actual strategy is to get better aim. You know how many execution training lab freaks that suck shit in marvel cause they don't understand strategy? don't know how to setup the hit? Execution is barrier for fps and fighters, about equally as well, hell its more skewed torweds fps games actually. Do you know how many really really good ssf4 players that have pretty poor execution?

Hers a good example of something really simple like your strategy rant. Hey this rufus is always grabbing after blocked divekicks. Guess i should shoryuken or tech to counter that. Hey this zangief is doing alot of neutral jumping. Maybe i should jump hk out of the air with ryu. Not intuitive and open? Well I don't what open means, but i think you may have lost what intuitive means, rocket jumping isn't intuitive, air strafing isn't intuitive, bunny jumping isn't intuitive. It may be intuitive since you have been doing it so long, but go explain doing strafe jumping to your average pc gamer and see if they think its intuitive. You can just look at a quake game with no experience and understand what is going on? wtf im sorry. But how many pub tf2 players have spectated a TF2 match or quake match and have come to drastically wrong conclusions of how to play. How many open 6v6 players are playing sort of incorrectly from a strategic point of view? I think your confusing your solid amount of fps experience with intuitiveness. Oh yeah, there is a player, by the name of snakeeyes, he started playing Super street fighter turbo: HDR 6 months before the first evo it was held at and he won the whole thing, with the worst character in the game with an xbox 360 fightpad, this was his first fighter that he took seriously and beat players that had been play super turbo for over a decade, oh yeah, it was also his second tournament. read about it here: http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/7/12/evolution-2010-the-miracle-man-with-zangief.html

You know how many people learn fighters by watching better players? my painwheel got so much better by watching severin play in tourneys. Hell, you can probably learn MORE in fighters than from watching fps cause there is less hidden information. Hey, why is valle throwing out standing heavy kick against rufus? ask questions of what standing heavy kick covers and you probably have your answer.

Don't confuse your hundreds of hours in fps as if fps games are intuitive. They are not, you went through a lot of muscle memory and general basic strategies memorized very early on in your pubbing days. You played with people bad over and over till you could get your mechanics to become a pub star at one point. Fighters have to be played properly to learn from them. Playing fighters without understanding basic concepts of 2d fighters is like playing quake duel without trying to even get armor. You have to understand the basics of ANY game to understand why your losing

tehoreoz wrote:

sc2 and fighting games feel a lot different. being just slightly better than someone else is the difference between getting 20-0'd or having an even game. that an the fact that there arent enough people playing to get constant even games.. D:

cpm24 cpm22 cpm3a pukka cpm1a

It feels like that at lower levels in fighting games i will admit, but once you learn the games system the games are pretty close(though often the scores don't represent it, a 3-0 can have very very close games). I'm not good enough at SC2 or BW to say what happens once you get near the top. A lot of times just knowledge holds you back in fighting games and starcraft, you have to know exactly how to respond to certain situations. Just remember you have gotten over the hump of transition into a competitive FPS player and probably haven't gotten over the hump in the other games, so your perspective on player skill may be slightly skewed.