About the CommFT Mentor Program

Welcome to the Community Fortress TF2 Mentor Program!
Our mission is to provide players with a resource that they can use to improve their game, find the help that they need, and meet people along the way.

Join the steam group to be notified of future events:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/commftmentorprogram

How do you use the mentor program?

For Mentees:

Do you need some help with competitive 6v6 Team Fortress 2? Our mentor program allows you to pair up with a mentor who can show you the ropes and help you improve your skills. Entering the program takes commitment. Mentees are encouraged to regularly check in with their mentors to ask for help with any problems that they may be having.

It is never too late to be mentored! We accept mentees of all levels.

CommFT Mentees:
- Must be on a competitive 6v6 team.
- Have a strong interest on improving in the long term.
- Enjoy the game and know how to have fun!

Please Click Here to Go to the Mentee Applications Subforum (http://commforums.com/mentee-applications-f94.html) for more information.

If you do not plan to commit to a mentor for the long term, we recommend that you use the
Ask a Mentor Subforum (http://commforums.com/ask-mentor-f121.html) instead. There, mentors will answer all of your questions.



For Mentors:

Do you want to help mentor players? We are always looking for new mentors to help improve our program. We prefer mentors who are playing at a relatively high level (ESEA-I or ESEA-IM, ETF2L Division 3 and above) but some exceptions may be made.

Please Click Here to Go to the Mentor Information Subforum (http://commforums.com/mentor-information-f95.html) for more information on mentoring.


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Contact Information

If you have any questions about the TF2 Mentor Program, please contact either of the people below through forum private message, steam message, IRC private message, or find us in channel #tf2mentors on Gamesurge.

MR SLIN
http://steamcommunity.com/id/slin
IRC: Mr-Slin in #tf2mentors on GameSurge

Swift
http://steamcommunity.com/id/gerard
IRC: Swift in #tf2 mentors on GameSurge

Join the steam group to be notified of future events:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/commftmentorprogram

Good luck!

Q&A Question #1 - The most frequently asked question from new players.

I apologize for the length of my response, but I wanted to be thorough. In addition, I get this question very frequently, so I am going to answer every detail and post it so that other players can get the same benefit.

Hi,

First off, forgive me if I'm asking the wrong person about this.

I've been playing TF2 (PUB's) for 2 years give or take a month. I've got 1500 hours of game time. Lately I've been trying to get into more serious play, especially since I now have a decent computer. I've been playing MGE and like to think I have the skills to hold my own in a PUG.

I heard lobbies were a great way to get into it so I tried it out. For a system so simple and well made I still found it remarkably unforgiving. I was kicked while figuring out how to set my team/class, got kicked for asking whether the vanilla game would automatically restrict my weapons or if we're expected to do that ourselves, etc. I feel like a complete noob in these situations but I don't really have a choice.

I had high hopes for your mentor program until I saw it is geared towards players already in the competitive scene. I was hoping you might be able to point me towards a similar system for getting into low level PUG's, if it exists.

Thank you for your time.

tl;dr I'd like some advice for getting into low level PUG's.

Hi Morton,

TF2Lobby is the only place to go for low level PUGs in North America. It is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it is a fantastic way for players to get a taste of competitive TF2 and practice their skills before joining a real team. On the other hand, the culture of TF2 may be hard for newer players to deal with, and it is just the nature of the game.

As much as I as a mentor want to make TF2Lobby more noob friendly, there is unfortunately nothing I can do. You see, each lobby is set up by an independent server owner who uses his server to host the lobby. The players, likewise, are independent from the system. What you are encountering is the culture of competitive TF2, similar to that of other competitive games such as DOTA or League of Legends, if you have played those games. Because it is a team game that relies heavily on each member performing his/her role properly, a deadweight team member brings the whole team down. And because players aren't allowed to leave midway through the game, it can feel like a waste of 30 minutes when they could have used an experienced player and had a better game. In addition, experienced players find that it can be annoying having to deal with a constant stream of new players who are unfamiliar with the competitive format.

There is a higher level PUG system known as #tf2.pug.na, but it is reserved for the very best players in North America (I don't want to go into the details of why this is so). The type of player who plays in TF2Lobby that you are dealing with is likely experienced in TF2 to the point where he is not considered a "noob", but is inexperienced to the point where he cannot play in the upper level PUG system.


For now this is something you'll have to deal with. The community is not large enough to justify having a middle level PUG system, so you're separated into upper players and middle/lower/new players (basically everyone else). My only recommendation for you is to continue to persist and play lobbies, and you'll eventually learn what to do. Unlike pub TF2, competitive TF2 has a very high learning curve, so it is up to you to learn quickly.

This brings me to your last point about the mentor system. I have a very complex reasoning for why I ultimately decided to tailor the system to experienced players, and I will try to give you the simplified version as best I can. I attribute this to three factors: 1) the desires of mentors, 2) the steep learning curve, and 3) the size of the community.

1) Mentors want to mentor experienced player. I have lots of experience with this myself, and it is much more enjoyable and rewarding to work with players who are very familiar with the game but are just having a few problems in certain key areas. For this, a mentor is perfect. He can point out the errors, relate them to his games, and give the mentee a solution to the problem. It is the ideal mentor/mentee experience. The best use of a mentor's time is to teach tactics, strategies, and theory, all of which can only be used when a player plays on a team of six players that consistently player together. You cannot utilize these ideas to the same degree in a PUG. What mentors do NOT want to do, is teach people how to play TF2, which brings me to my second point.

2) As I mentioned before, TF2 has a very high learning curve. While mentors are perfectly capable of teaching people how to play the game, it is not worth their time. A player can simply teach himself how to use his mouse and keyboard in a similar amount of time that a mentor can. This is largely because learning those skills requires practice, practice, and more practice. I relate it to playing basketball. Yes a mentor can teach you how to shoot the ball, but you can probably teach yourself the same thing in a similar amount of time through repetition (you claim to have these skills). However this goes beyond just using a mouse and keyboard. Familiarizing yourself with the competitive format takes time as well. There are resources for you to use that teach you about the competitive format and how it works (see http://www.gotfrag.com/tf2/story/43759/), so this isn't worth the time of the mentor to spend 1 on 1 time teaching something that will take you a short of time to learn on your own. This goes for everything from rollouts to defending and pushing to basic team communication. There are videos about this, resources, and ways for you to find that information on your own. (By the way, if you do have a question and want to find the answer quickly, you can also use the Ask a Mentor section of the forum for these basic needs, found here http://commforums.com/ask-mentor-f121.html). But what a mentor needs to spend his time doing is correcting bad habits, teaching the nuiances, and explaining the complex theory that takes a tremendous amount of time for a player to learn on his own.

3) Finally, the size of the community does not justify the type of mentoring you desire for new and incoming players. If you look at large gaming communities such as Starcraft II, you'll see that they have this "mentoring" for all levels of play. This is justified, warranted, and a good use of time. You have everything covered from your Day 9 to your low level tips. However in TF2, we're small and growing. Now you may ask, why not let ESEA-IM players teach ESEA-O players, and let ESEA-O players teach the new players? This is because in ESEA-O there is a tremendous skill disparity between the top of the division and the bottom of the division. In ESEA-IM, you will find that the players are much more similar in skill. When trying to create a standard, objective system for selecting mentors, choosing only IM mentors seems to be the way to go. If I let all ESEA-O players mentor, I run the risk of bad mentoring or mentors who are not teaching the correct information.

I also just brought back the Mentor Program in April 2011, and I wanted to build a strong foundation before I branched it off until other projects. The community will truly grow from within, and this mentor program I hope is the start of that.



I hope I was able to adequately answer your question. If you have any follow-up questions, please ask me in the Ask a Mentor section, or send me another PM.

Best,

MR SLIN