Talk:Community competitive play

Outline

At this point it might be good to talk about the plans for competitive articles and their scope, so here goes.

The two main purposes for the competitive articles are...

• Give new competitive players and noncompetitive public players (who understand the basics of TF2) a resource to learn about competitive dynamics and concepts, as well as some information about the scene itself. This is why there are articles on fundamentals like standard competitive format and sections on straightforward usage trends like in the class articles.
• Give all competitive players a reference for consolidated information, and general ideas for aspects of competitive play they might not be familiar with, like certain loadouts or maps. This is why there is stat collection on the class pages (which assume all settings of the standard competitive format so competitive players immediately get the accurate stats they want) and a plan for competitive-focused map articles.

What the competitive articles are not includes...

• Competitive news outlet. Current events discussions would be better relegated to a forum or news portal.
• Pub vs. comp controversy. Whether or not competitive players are really "playing the game as intended" or what have you is highly subjective at best.
• What the current TF2 strategy pages are. Articles describing strategy and tactics should be concise and based on observation of competitive trends and consensus, not individualized advice/preferences.
• A replacement of the general wiki articles. Competitive articles are meant to provide metagame and consolidation for TF2's competitive aspects. Things that are not important to competitive play specifically (like articles on specific game mechanics, like Pickups, articles on general/non-gameplay topics, like Crafting, and sections that are about lore or trivia, like on the regular class articles) should be left to general articles.

At the moment, the competitive articles are clearly unfinished, most of them being either stubs or nonexistent. Currently, my main concerns are laying down the templates, layouts, scope(s), and guidelines/policies of the competitive articles. At the moment, prose is mostly only concerning for the foundational articles like competitive play, and maybe one example article of each type to use as a figurative template for others. Some things to ponder over are...

• How detailed should strategy discussions be, and what range of strategy should be included? How common should a strat need to be to be included? How "advice"-driven should they be?
• What should be included in each article type? (types being things like "[class] (competitive), [class] weapons (competitive), and [map] (competitive)") How specific should the information be on those respective pages, and where should redundancy be tolerated or avoided?
• Which articles should be fully fleshed out first as examples for others to take from? Of the maps, the obvious choice is badlands (competitive), but I dunno about classes.
• How detailed should be be about discussing the TF2 scene itself? Should leagues have articles? Maybe an article about leagues?
• What policies/guidelines should we make to ensure that the articles stay consistent and avoid subjectivity and irrelevance?
• When ready to be presented to the general public, how should the competitive articles be integrated into the general wiki? Where should links and mergers take place?

If anyone has any thoughts on any of this feel free to share here, post on my talk page, or message me on Steam. Hopefully we can get through these articles and get them integrated into the general wiki before going into Valve Time. :) ~G-Mang (T|C) 02:58, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Here's some general notes for editing the competitive articles:

• Don't give advice, give information. If something is common in competitive play, you can say it's common, but don't say it's "better" or "recommended"; this is subjective, assumes a certain infallibility in the meta, and discourages innovative strategy. If your article/section is starting to look like a user guide, stop and try to revise it so that it reads more like a scientific/journalistic study.
• Talk. Whether you're going to edit or not, these articles are still in their formative stages, and have plenty of room for new suggestions, planning, and revising. You can have just as much impact--if not moreso--in discussions than page edits: the talk pages are here to stay; individual articles and their sections might not be.
• Anticipate changes. The articles are all works in progress, so revisions, article restructuring, and the like are very likely to take place. Your material may not appear in the public integrated version of the competitive articles. Current focus should be less on prose and more on foundation.
• Maintain proper writing. Don't let yourself lapse into second-person, and avoid any jargon that is not clearly defined on the wiki. A lighthearted tone is good, but your prose should maintain formal grammar and spelling.

Thanks, and happy editing. :) ~G-Mang (T|C) 03:19, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Old Discussion

What about the wireplay league http://tf2.wireplay.co.uk/ --mark"d"davis 13:45, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK the only European league that has the mainstream competitive following that CEVO, ESEA, and TWL have is ETF2L. There are a bunch of other great, less prominent leagues like STA, UGC, and wireplay, and I'll probably compile a list of leagues like that to add to the page. If you think wireplay should be added to the major league list, could you provide some third-party sources treating it as a major league? If it looks significant enough I'll probably check it out and add it. CEVO, ESEA, and TWL all have major competitive attention, especially on sites like GotFrag and Community Fortress, the hubs of NA competitive topics, and in those same discussions, whenever Euro play is mentioned, it's always been talking about ETF2L from everything I've read. No offense to wireplay or its participants. G-Mang 22:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Good stuff, just a few suggestions. I don't think we need competitive pages for every weapon as well, a few people think it's slightly confusing already having alternate versions of the class pages. Also, at some point we should clear up all the unadded competitive terminology to the glossary or give them their own pages (if there's enough to say) rather than sitting around as stubs/wanted pages forever. I was also considering the possibility of merging some of the info in these articles with their counterpart non-competitive pages and possibly merging the rest of the info in these competitive class templates with relevant articles (once the information is down) to avoid the aforementioned confusion some have voiced. This is especially since the weapon damage values on these pages appear to be up to date, creating something of a disparity with the main class pages. Please let me know your thoughts on these suggestions! --Wilsonator 16:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, Wilsonator, as you can see if you look at the hotlinks in more recent edits, or from the extremely short discussion here, weapons are no longer getting their own articles. Glossary expansion would be good. For the damage values, please keep in mind that all competitive information is written and tested with tf_damage_disablespread set to 1, which will inherently give different damage ranges than their noncompetitive counterparts. The reason that the competitive articles have some of the general stats like health and movement is because the articles are meant to be consolidations of information for those classes, so some redundancy is expected (a lot of health and movement specifics are currently spread around various places). G-Mang 20:03, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

In which case, can the articles that have none existent links be cleaned up, as Wilsonator mentioned. I was going to put a cleanup template on them but I figured your still working on them. --Aurora (talk | contribs) 15:32, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The competitive articles in general are all unfinished. I wouldn't bother administering them until they're actually done. Are there any articles in particular you had in mind? G-Mang 20:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Might be worth putting a reference in linking to pick up games as a taste of competetive play ?? http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/team-fortress-2-pickups/65313-rules-overview is where i play, nb the wireplay league has over 500 registered clans and 4000+ registered players and 2300 steam group members--mark"d"davis 15:20, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Maps

Made some redirects. For competitive maps I recommand doing infos inside the main map article, too many articles is not something very cool.