Commentary: TF2 is Dead... [Part 1]

Leftism — It’s not really something we like being paraded on Vanilla: the phrase involving the words “TF2″ and “dead”, but dunc here has told me the next two parts of his new three part series of articles focusing on the state of the game we all know and love will have a more positive feel about it. With all that said I’ll hand you over to the community’s strongly opinionated Geordie.

dunc — “TF2 is dead…” – harsh title for harsh times. It’s true isn’t it? TF2 is dead. In its entirety I guess that sentence is a lie – public play is booming, highlander is still fairly active and ETF2L continues to boast large numbers of players and teams.

At first glance, ETF2L’s Premiership might even look quite good. Known teams like Epsilon eSports, Team Infused, Crack Clan and Team YoYoTech dominate the league standings. However, when you dig a bit deeper, all is not well with top-end competitive TF2.

Only two of these players are now ever seen playing TF2.

Historically, top-end TF2 has struggled with less well-known players breaking into the top flight. We’ve had a few: cookye, stefan and randa are just a few examples of players that played in lower divisions until they were “found” and enlisted by top teams. Generally though, over 4 years of playing the game, we still have the same players inhabiting the D2 and D1 teams, incapable of proving their worth in a Prem team.

Similarly, players that have tried to adapt from other games haven’t been too successful. I love Rulah, and given a longer period of play he may well have been better, but his brief foray into our beloved competitive scene wasn’t hugely impressive despite the hype.

Apart from the TCM guys previously mentioned, only I'm left :(

Similarly, TF2 has always had a core of top players and teams that were pretty much impregnable. Sure, teams would fold, but new teams would form off the back of those – often better teams; teams that pushed the boundaries of competitive play. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve always had around ~50 players capable of playing at the top level, even if they weren’t necessarily organised into the same teams.

Unfortunately, now, that isn’t the case. Teams have folded and the players aren’t coming back together to form new teams.

One of the many incarnations of Power Gaming, versus one of the many incarnations of num's stupidly-named team. These guys aren't even the most well-known Finns, yet they're all gone too. Apart from Moose. That guy loves playing Scout.

As much as the Finns will sadistically love taking credit for breaking our scene, they have essentially done just that. The core of Darn, Rebeli, hymzi, Haza, hocz, mafu, Punpu and company have removed a big chunk of the talented core of TF2 elite. Obviously it isn’t just the Finns: losing bybben – in my opinion, and likely anyone else that has ever played with him, the best scout TF2 has ever seen – and ryb – TF2s most famous Demoman and with no doubt the loveliest guy in the scene – was equally massive. Massively bad.

This week we had an official against Tryharders. We couldn’t find a PCW for 20CET, which meant we went into the official cold. Today (Friday) I’m writing this out of frustration because we weren’t able to find a game for either 20CET or 2115CET yesterday evening.

TF2 has had periods where everyone broadcasted it to be “dead”. Brink was a great example of this. The famous tactician/German mong mvp decided to jump ship to the latest, greatest game. The ETF2L forums were going crazy – “TF2 is dead!” – but in actual fact that proved to be the strongest period TF2 has ever had.

During all of those periods, the aforementioned core has continued to exist. We did lose a few players, notable names like AppZ, but none were ever important enough to detrimentally impact the scene.

Now though, the core is tiny. Epsilon, Infused, Crack Clan, some of the YYT players then a couple of individuals like longas and quad. At a stretch, maybe 24 individuals. The worst thing is that the teams are barely even active. When Epsilon, Infused and Crack Clan all have officials against each other in the space of a couple of weeks, we all end up struggling to find opposition.

So, what separates these players from the players like Koetije or ViQun who have played TF2 for just as long? In fact, is it even the players themselves, or is it the team ethics? Maybe it’s the tactics?

That is an article in its own right… Coming soon, Part 2.

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Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2012-03-03 by Leftism.

Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.