But I guess is the way it is…

I hope we can a good competitive 2011 season and Happy Xmas!!!

Thanks for the essay Joint, only just got round to finishing it, and I noticed that this extract is dedicated to us, an honour. Just to set the record straight, because you and enemy seem to think that I was whining about our loss to you guys, I was basically telling you that that game was the reason we didn’t want to play against you at that stage.

We wanted to improve before playing against the top teams as any logical team would do. You don’t start out at the top, you work your way up. There was no point to that game, as I had told you many on every one of the many occassions you asked us for a game and we turned you down. You beat us 5-0 in record time, neither of us got anything out of that game.

Lets look at it this way. A team like dignitas doesn’t want to play against a low level team because they will ROLL them 5-0 in ten minutes and it will just be a waste of valuable practise time for all concerned. We didn’t tear ourselves up over that game as you can see, we still have the same lineup which is more than can be said for your team.

And you say we mess around in Pickups, now even though you contradict your self here I know what you mean. We don’t take pickups seriously, it’s true, but isn’t that what you said in your article? That pickups aren’t meant to be there to replace clan games. We play pickups to improve individual play and have a laugh with friends. I don’t play pickups unless there are other players from severe playing because I DO do it for fun.

Clan matches are different, if you were in our mumble while we are playing scrims you would see that we are 100% into the game and 100% serious. You judge us from the little bit of us that you see, and the little bit of us you see is the little bit of us that likes to have a little bit of fun.
But the thing is that there are other people playing this game, and many groups of people, but at the moment there are two main groups that stand out to me:
1) The admins and their friends.
2) The people who won’t take kak from the admins and friends.

It’s a shame that group number 2 is so small.
Anyway, my article is almost as long as yours now so I will end by saying that I agreed with most of your article and you seem like a pretty intellectual guy, but please, don’t judge us before you get to know us properly. We aren’t here to mess up the community or undermine the admins on every point, we just want to co-exist in a sound community.

To say gaming has put a strain on my relantionship and life in general is an understatment however I am to competitive and have tried to find a balance. I might not the best player I could possibly be if I was a student or didnt have other commitments but I have always tried to maintain a competive level of play and with the amount of time I have I think I have done alright.

However I know X and Eq` are up for a challenge.

I think you have said all what is needed for teams and their leaders to “be real” and if we really want to be real competitors then everyone must be responsable, dedicated and commit for once if we really want this game to move forward on the competitive scene.

However, this article is only slightly relevant to us and our community, as our problem isn’t so much that our players do not have the dedication to be consistent and keep their team’s head held high enough not to lose track and end up disbanding unnecessarily, and thus not adding any value to the top level of competition.

The problem is that we simply do not have a basis for competition at the moment. What I mean by that is that “being the best team” or “being the best player” has little meaning or value to the community as a whole right now. In other words, no one AIMS to be the best, or no one AIMS to improve themselves or their team to help them in the long run and future competition.

What people are doing, and doing very well, is being good at overvaluing short-term success and entertainment; that is, winning pick up games, mixes, and even the odd scrim. Players have disillusioned themselves as to what purpose these short-term games are supposed to serve.

The first purpose people BELIEVE they serve, is to create competition. The reason I feel people believe this is because we’ve all grown to simply take what happens in pickup-games and scrims way too seriously. Sure some things should be dealt with with severity, but there are really no reasons why we should actually care about things like “player balance” and “map preference” or even caring about the performance of individual players. We all, myself included, need to recognise that we’ve been doing this for far too long.
The reason this is a limiting belief to hold is because the real purpose of short-term games like pickup-games, mixes and scrims has been to allow new players to access the competitive community and get a feel for the TERRITORY of competitive TF2, not the COMPETITION itself.

The second purpose people BELIEVE they serve, is entertainment. Now sure, 6v6 TF2 is fun, in all it’s forms. But to play something for purely for its entertainment makes for a nice little excuse for players so that, when something happens that could be deemed as “not fun”, they can say: “it’s a waste of time to do this.” There are endless amounts of casual games you could be playing instead of “entertaining” yourself with short games of TF2. There are also public servers to serve this purpose. The irony is that there are public players that have disillusioned themselves into thinking public game-play has the same makings for competitive game-play, and thus, take public games much more seriously than is deemed logical.

So why would someone play pickup-games, mixes and scrims just “for the fun of it” yet still try to take them overly seriously for what they’re worth? The short answer is that some people just do not want to take responsibility for what they do in the gaming world. It’s easy to pull out the old “it was just for fun”, when things don’t go your way, or pump your ego when it does go your way.

Now why is this bad, and why is this belief ridiculously limiting? Here’s why: after you put a certain amount of time into something, be it a hobby, a past-time or amusement, you’re no longer simply doing the said activity for the fun of it, even if that was the original intention.
What you are really doing at this stage, is doing it for self-improvement, and self-growth. You’re basically saying to yourself: “How far can I really go, and what are my limits, and how can I push past them?”

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what it is. It can be swimming, table-tennis, cooking or video-gaming, the fact is, after you invest a lot of time into it, it will start giving you more value than simply “entertainment.” What it will give you is an opportunity to express your ability to be better than you already are. And the bigger truth is, it’s your choice to take that opportunity or not.

What most people do, unfortunately, is make excuses, because they don’t like the idea of taking responsibility for their own successes or failures. Again, this comes back to being able to value the short-term, over the long-term.

And guess what? One of those excuses is: “Well, I’m just DOING IT FOR FUN.”
The real purpose in the place of this false belief is that pickup-games, mixes and scrims are there in the first place to show new players the ropes, and more importantly, give them a taste of how awesome competitive TF2 really is, and how FUN it can be, but not that it is JUST for fun, in and by itself. Because after a while, a LINE is crossed where you can no longer say “it’s just to show myself how fun this game is!” It’s so you can say: “How far does this go? How far down this road do I go? And do I take it to the next level or do I just sit here and DO THIS FOR FUN?”

Every time you use a pathetic excuse like this in the place of doing what you really want to do, you lose sight of your real goals and your real passions. Sure, maybe competitive TF2 isn’t your cup of tea, and you genuinely like to mess around on it to blow some steam off. But I’ll bet my steam account there are endless names of players out there that want nothing more than to be the best, and prove to themselves they can be better than they already are in this game, but they’ve, time and time again, ruined their own progress because they did NOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN SUCCESS OR FAILURE.

You’re no longer a new player if you’ve spent 10s or even 100s of hours playing these pickups, scrims and mixes. You’ve probably crossed that line; so make the choice. Are you really still doing this for “fun” or do you have a more important motive for still continuing to play this game?

The third, the final, and the most notoriously bad purpose people believe these pickup-games, scrims and mixes are serving, is to prove your worth as a player or team, in comparison to other players and teams. This kind of mentality is what causes people to overvalue the result of scrims, and even feel intimidated by playing against better teams in scrims, because of the fear of losing, and thus, being considered a “bad team.” This is bullshit. This kind of backwards thinking has been going on ever since people realised there were “good” and “bad” teams in this game. Of course, this happens all the time in other games, but it is so amplified in our community, that you can literally see it so happening that a better team will almost be the least-challenged team in the entire community, contrary to what is naturally supposed to occur in any competitive environment.
The real purpose of these short-term games is to offer individual PRACTISE for new players and teams; PRACTISE for which that team or player can make use of in a REAL COMPETITION such as a league or tournament. And if you have any understanding of the foundations of a strong competitive environment, you’d understand that in PRACTISE, WINNING AND LOSING HAS NO VALUE.

Good players really do have the opportunity to help out here and to give value to the new players. By playing with the new players, and helping them improve, you become a positive enforcement in the means through which new players can improve and encourage players to want to improve. Likewise, you can simply take value away by showing off your skill in pickups and mixes, and look down on these players by comparing your skill to theirs.

If people are constantly going to compare themselves to others, they must expect to be disappointed. Even in the case of a better team looking down on lesser teams, eventually, the better team will be overwrought with depression and frustration when they lose to these previously-lesser teams. Is this the makings of a good competitive environment?

If people are going to take what means that a new player and team is supposed to make use of, a means for initiation and practise, and call it “the defining competitive playing field,” they must expect to lose in a real competition with real stakes. The majority of our teams are in alignment with this paradigm. Is this the making of a good competitive environment?

If people are going to participate in short-term indulgences such as success in pickup-games, scrims and mixes, and winning in these games, rather than focusing on long-term success, such as improvement, future competition, and dedication, then they must understand that they are going to conflict with their natural desire to genuinely improve their standard of play, and thus, end up making ridiculous excuses to protect themselves from their own success. The majority of our players make excuses for doing what they genuinely want to be doing: improving. Is this the makings of a good competitive environment?

The answer is no, no and no. You might call me crazy for going to such extreme lengths to describe what I believe is causing the problems in this community, but I describe them so because I have witnessed great extents of hypocrisy, conflict, and counter-intuitive behaviour.

I’ve seen teams terrified to scrim against other teams to the extent that they end up with a fancy tag and avatar, as well as a steam group and website and T-shirt design, only to see it all disappear the next week.

I’ve seen players team-hop so quickly that you wouldn’t be able to keep up with their alias-change history within a month.

I’ve literally seen a team tear themselves up over a loss in a scrim, and end up arguing and complaining amongst themselves in such deep frustration that one of their players ends up complaining to me that it’s my fault for “challenging” them and my fault for allowing them to accept my “challenge” to a friendly scrim.
The same team’s players clown around in pickups on a regular basis instead of genuinely practising. They’re still not aware of the reason why they are still a mid-tier team at best.

With this kind of behaviour, madness is the only thing that comes to my mind when trying to fathom what players have done to themselves to actually believe this is the way a competitive community is supposed to work. But it doesn’t stop there.

Players are so obsessed with short-term, individual skill and achievement, that they are willing to give useless validation to players for mid-airs, killing sprees and the like, and the said players aspire to do and be the same. But when was the last time someone mentioned the name of a team like torment / brazen?

For those of you that don’t know, brazen was the longest-lived team in our community’s history, possibly the only team to stick around for as long as it did with probably only one big line-up adjustment throughout its lifespan. As well as that, they practised regularly, and actually watched demos as a team to learn strategies and to refine their game-play. It was also the most dedicated team to the community, allowing players of all skill levels to learn from and challenge them. With such dedication, support and finesse and leadership, you’d think players today would aspire to create a team of players like that, or talk about a team like that, or at least remember a team like that.

No; individual skill is where it’s at. Dedication is so 2009 according to the average, local player’s logic. You want a good team? Throw 6 “good” players together and wing it. Real logic, right? No, again, this is bullshit, but people have slowly grown to buy into it.

So you see, we have no competitive value the way things are going. There’s no value in being the best team. There’s no value in wanting to be the best team. There’s not even going to be value in being a team, if things keep going the way they are going.

If people refuse to accept these ridiculous beliefs that they’ve adopted throughout the last two years, things will go no where on the competitive landscape of this game. But if people do accept it, we’ll have a chance to change things for the better, and bring TF2 to its full glory.

Right, so if we know it’s a problem, at least we hope we’re starting to accept it. But if we are accepting it, what do we do? Well, as an individual player or team, it’s simple:

1. Stick together as a team, regardless of skill level.
2. Scrim. Scrim. Scrim, against all teams of all skill levels.
3. Recognise your weak points, practise to become a better player.
4. Practise as a team; watch demos, get on a server and work on specifics. Do whatever it takes to improve your team’s level of play.
5. Put that practise to use in REAL competitions, not just scrims.

That’s it, really. If you do that, you create real competition, if you create real competition, you give value to being a competitor, and a successful competitor. If you give value to the competition, value is given to good players and good teams. With value placed where it should be; on real competitions and good teams and players, then people ASPIRE to be part of that, and want to aim to be a good team and a good player. With enough players like that, you have more new players being attracted to the competition and wanting to be a part of that, and so it goes on.

That’s how a competitive community should simply be. And our community can be that, but it starts with you, as a player and your team or future-team. You must take the competition seriously, but not the winning and losing, especially in practise. It’s a tough paradigm to break through, but people must start doing it if they want to gain value out of playing this game anymore.

I’ve probably thrown about R10 worth of 2 cents at everyone in this community, but again, it’s your advice to take or throw away.

Good luck in the future competitions.