INSIGHT: ETF2L HEAD ADMIN CRASP!

With great pleasure we here at TCM-Gaming.com would like to announce the return of the 'INSIGHT ' series.

'INSIGHT' is a regular feature at TCM-Gaming.com. These features aim to give our users an insight into those who support the team and figures invovled in the making Esports a viable industry.

In this edition of the series the TCM-Gaming Content Manager Märt "M2R" Valdin spoke to Jonny "Crasp" Hendry, who works as a Head Admin in the European Team Fortress 2 League (ETF2L).

Afternoon Crasp, could you please give us a short introduction about yourself?

Hi, my name’s Jonny a.k.a. Crasp. I’m 23, from Glasgow and currently going into 3rd year of my Computer Science course. I’ve been part of the ETF2L admin team for coming on 2 years now, and I’ve been a head admin for about 4 months, I think. I also manage the TF2 side of Esports Heaven (no prizes = nothing for me to do atm :) ), and I’m part of the eXcello TF2 admin team as well as VanillaTV.

In a few sentences could you please tell us how you got involved with competitive gaming and Team Fortress 2?

TF2 was my first foray into gaming competitively, before that the closest thing I played to a competitive FPS match was 4-player split-screen Red Faction 2 on PS2, in school back in 2005.

I began things in TF2 on the VIA 32mansanity community server in 2007, from there some friends formed what is now Bacon!, and entered into ETF2L Season 4. Having followed their progress with interest, I joined another clan from the community and took part in Season 5. After s5 our team went our separate ways and I eventually joined Bacon!

Season 9 was unsuccessful in the eyes on many, due to the amount of teams dropping out, especially in the Premier Division. What are your thoughts on that?

From a participation perspective I would agree that Season 9 sucked, particularly for the higher divisions – the Premier Division was underpowered from the start and still only 3 teams managed to last the full season. The rate at which teams dropped was the highest it has ever been in any ETF2L competition. On the other hand, 238 teams still managed to finish the season, which as far as I’m aware still makes Season 9 the largest TF2 league running at the time. Compared to what we’re used to at ETF2L it was pretty bad, but we’ve definitely learned a lot from Season 9 and the feedback gained a decent amount of feedback from it. Plus, without the bad times the good times wouldn’t look so good.

Looking back, there doesn’t seem to be one all-encompassing reason for the drops: some said they just didn’t have the time or the drive to play, others objected to the ruleset for the season (though most people with this opinion opted not to sign up in the first place) and there were the unfortunate few who left because they didn’t like a decision we made regarding their team. Quite a lot of teams didn’t give any reason at all. Personally I think it was a combination of poor timing and a generally negative vibe (for want of a better word), as well as the reasons listed above.

Last season saw the likes of Epsilon eSports and the current Team Dignitas prefer ESL to ETF2L. Has the ETF2L made any changes to the league in order to lure them back?

Compared to last season, several changes have been made. The ones I can remember at this moment are the division sizes, the schedule week, the timing, a few staff changes, the map pool and the set of allowed unlocks.
The division and schedule changes were made in order to make scheduling and playing matches this season a little easier; in Season 8 there was a bit of a conflict towards the end of the season with the Christmas holidays, so hopefully we can finish up well before that this year. March has turned into September all by itself but I’m happy to accept credit for that.

We’ve added some new staff and said thanks and goodbye to some old staff; it’s happened before and will happen again. I think we could do with a few more admins in every area, so we’ll see how that pans out.
The Season 10 map pool was picked by the players themselves, we’re really happy with how it has turned out.

We have again changed the set of allowed unlocks for this season, I’ll go into more detail about it below.

My point is all of these have been made with the main intention of improving the quality of the league for everybody; we can’t really spend time trying to meet the tastes of specific teams. If the changes now suit some of the teams who didn’t like last season, then that’s great. Their inclusion will hopefully make things more enjoyable.

Season 10 will see ETF2L return to the “Vanilla” style of gameplay. How was the decision made to get rid of most of the unlocks and return to “Vanilla”?

It was pretty excruciating. From allowing almost everything in AFS (just as the engineer update hit), to a little less in Season 8 (polycount), to the unfortunately named “cinnamon” in Season 9, we’ve now excluded the vast majority of weapons for Season 10. Way back when the unlocks debate began, I think every admin had a fairly strong opinion on them, but it’s safe to say that strength has been eroded over time. We like playing TF2 so much that we run a league for it, so we had to decide what we thought would be best for everyone rather than what we enjoyed the most.I think it’s clear to see from the season-by-season changes from AFS to now that we recognised the call to ban most of the unlocks, but while that wasn’t the opinion of the majority we had to find a compromise that suited the largest number of teams. As time passed, more people came out in favour of less unlocks, so we went with less and less. Now we have just 4: the Blutsauger, the Kritzkreig, the Ubersaw and the Crusader’s Crossbow.

Do you think the new ruleset will keep more teams competing and less dropping out?

I think next season is going to be one of the best we’ve ever had, if not the best then definitely in the top ten.I think the teams, the timing, the maps, and the ruleset provide a great starting point for Season 10, and I’m very excited to see how it turns out. Teams are going to drop out and they’ll have their reasons for doing so, but hopefully the setup we have supplied will help to keep that to a minimum.

What can the Team Fortress 2 community expect from the ETF2L in the future?

Controversy probably, though it’s hard to predict where that will come from exactly.In the near future we are obviously focusing on the 6v6 season, though we did promise some cups over summer that failed to appear (kritz only, 5v5) so I’ll see what we can do to remedy that. Less near, we’ll be expanding into other forms of competitive play, with Angel and Imperium running things for Ultiduo teams, and Ashkan & co. cooking up a few treats for the Highlander scene. We have an idea for when we want Season 11 to take place but no other details at this point.Our long term goals are less concrete. While we are the biggest TF2 league in the world there is still a huge amount of room for expansion, so we’re always looking for ways to do that. Whether it’s working more closely with Valve or acquiring more sponsors or something else entirely, we’re happy to give it a go at least once and see what happens.

What are your current thoughts on the Team Fortress 2 scene?

I think this summer has marked a turning point, the end of a period of relatively slow growth that can be traced back about 2 years. The Free to Play update, i43 and now an ETF2L season with so-far mostly positive feedback all suggest that 4-year-old TF2 has plenty of life left in her yet!

Thank you for your time. Do you have any shoutouts?