In case some of you did not notice, there has been an influx of new members using TF2C in the last couple of days. A lot of them are from Brazil, but also a few from other SA countries like Argentina and Chile. Let me first thank the TF2Center staff for providing us all with this amazing (and free) service that has been helping and improving the TF2 competitive scene, every day. I have been watching how this place develops in the last two weeks, and yesterday I finally gave it a try and enjoyed it quite a bit. So much that I made a post in the our forums (English) with a short tutorial on how to create your own lobbies for the people who don't know understand English, but especially the people who can't be bothered or don't know how to set up competitive matches. I'll expand on this initiative later in the post.
A little bit about the Brazilian competitive scene
The competitive TF2 scene in Brazil, as it currently exists, was born in 2007 under the name of "Federação Brasileira de Team Fortress" (Brazilian Federation of Team Fortress) but its origin dates back as far as 1998, so you can imagine we have always had a thirst for competitiveness in FPS, and not just the typical "HUEHUEHUE MMO griefer" Brazil seems to be known for. And competitive games in Brazil date back more than a decade ago, when Quake and Counter-Strike tournaments happened on monthly basis at cyber-cafes (called "LAN Houses" here) throughout the country. It had a very loose organization, with prize pools ranging from mouse pads, to boxed games, and sometimes even three-digits money prize pools. Through the years it has been developing more and more, the most successful teams being sponsored by big hardware companies and other electronic stores. There hasn't been something with such professional levels for TF2 yet. FBTF was never a for-profit organization, most of the work and its foundation being done completely free and for the community to own. Prize pools have always been a little low, but the core of all this competitiveness has been and will always be the enjoyment.
In the current main league (LBTF2) there are a total of 40 teams and with teams ranging from 6 to 10 members, there is an estimate of 400 total players. And of these 40 teams, 16 are completely new groups that are playing their first big league. Matches follow a somewhat close configuration to UGC and are played on weekends, with great levels of anticipation during week days. We also just had a small 12-teams cup called "Nostalgia Fortress" related to old-school stock and custom maps like Follower, Freight and Fastlane. The final match was broadcast live by Esquilado, a competitive TF2-focused Brazilian news website that covers all of the Brazilian TF2 leagues and cups. The livestream peaked at 120 concurrent viewers, with a little bit over 3000 total viewers. The numbers seem shy but for a livestream that wasn't really planned to happen that evening, they proved that there is still a big interest in watching live tournaments being narrated in a professional manner. Once the Esquilado broadcast team has everything set up, the aim is to cast live Elite (highest division in LBTF2) matches throughout the entire season, so stay tuned!
Recently one of the FBTF staff members struck a partnership deal with the hosting company AGP. Prizes are 6 months free server hosting for the champion of the Elite and Central divisions, 3 months for second and 2 months for third in the Elite division, and to add to all of this, every team leader has a whopping 50% discount in the first month of the rent. And last but not least, LBTF2 9nth Edition will have its very own in-game league medal distributed to every participant of the league. This season seems very promising, indeed.
But how is any of this related to TF2Center? In Brazil, competitive mix matches are done in different manner than lobbies and IRC pug channels. It starts off by having to find an online administrator, or at least hoping that a server is online with a push cfg running. Then, using a Stream group, members announce that a match might happen in that server and that's when the waiting games begin. A handful of players might join, sometimes one or two join and and then proceed to leave in the same minute because there isn't enough players for a 6x6. But once there are 12 players, two scouts (one on each team) grab their bats and duke it out in the middle of the map for the first pick. Pretty much the rest happens as you would expect. This is where TF2C comes in. Me and doug, a FBTF staff member, are trying to push the idea of using TF2C in hopes that our mixes can be a little bit more organized. Two of the biggest problems in our mix community are:
- not enough simultaneous matches are being played;
- communication is often disregarded or used for insults or trolling.
The first problem happens not because of lack of players, but because of alienation related to a single server being used. Often mix servers have more than 12 slots, usually 18, with 4 to 10 players waiting as a spectator to play, and normally by means of filling a role of someone who disconnected or quit, or by waiting 30 minutes for the next match. TF2C helps this by having the ability for each of us to organize lobbies while another match is happening. Yesterday, while there were two servers being used for mixes (both of which have more than 18 slots and they were completely filled), we managed to organize about 10 lobbies in a row successfully using TF2C.
The second problem varies in reasons, but usually it's out of pure laziness. TF2C helps by automatically redirecting the player to a Mumble channel, completely skipping the process of having to find a TS (that's the most popular means of communication here, I'll elaborate about it in a bit), gathering some of the players and starting the match. I've been playing mix for years, and the way TF2C sets up Mumble is absolutely fantastic. I have never seen so much coordination and organization during a mix match before.
Now, while TF2Center is definitely one of the best things to happen to competitive TF2 in a long time, there is still progress to be made. A few years ago, there was a project called TF2Lobby, in which you could "place" a server and let people use it. That is one of the biggest drawbacks from people here using TF2Center exclusively. They are just too used to joining a server and waiting, but I don't blame them. In fact, that's my first suggestion for the staff and devs. If such feature is implemented, it would completely eliminate the need for administrators to have to create a lobby, removing yet another middle man in the whole process and enabling players to be more independent. I can see many more lobbies being created if such feature is implemented.
Another big thing for us is TeamSpeak integration. It's what we are all used to, though a few years back we did have a massive Mumble server we all shared so it is very possible that we can move over to the current system. I think one of the things that people would miss the most is having a simple chat room where people can hang out. Brazilians can be very social when given the opportunity.
My own personal suggestions:
- scramble feature that uses an equation that will make teams more balanced in the lobby based off hours played with the class, lobbies played with that class, and so on;
- MGE... seems logical enough, especially with the 1x1 mode on its way;
- Captain Mode/Draft, so leaders can pick out players in spectator mode inside the lobby;
- party/group feature, so we can queue or join a lobby with friends.
Sorry for the long-winded post and excuse me for any mistakes in English (it's not my first language). And thank you again for the TF2Center staff, in particular MasterNoob for helping me around when I first started using this website.
