r/TagPro • u/ThatOneTigerGuy81 • 5h ago
Highlight My last montage... and the reasons why
I don't know how many people will actually care about this, but for those who do, here's my tagpro story and why I'm retiring from playing.
Beginnings
I found this game in 2016 when I was 10 years old on an iogames website. I didn't have any gaming systems, just my dad's old macbook, so browser games were the best I could get. I loved the idea of a game where you could juke people, it felt so natural and fun. I would play most days when I came home from school, and got up to about 50 degrees before I even considered playing defense (ew, boring). I started to get better at defense, which in turn made me better at offense. I was still playing on a macbook, but I was starting to feel good at the game. The best part about tagpro is the super high skill ceiling. You wouldn't think such a simple game could be so complex, but there truly is so much depth to this game that I don't even understand all of it yet. At 88 degrees I unlocked the sword flair, and from then on I was a bit obsessed with win rate. Probably an unhealthy amount, but having something to quantify improvement was motivating. At 111 degrees I unlocked the hammer, but I just couldn't get the axe. I kept trying and trying, sometimes getting within a few percent, but it felt like an impossible task. How could anyone be that good at the game? I was almost always the best player in the lobby, was there really much more for me to grow?
Discovering Competitive
Yes. Yes there was. I was having a normal night of playing tagpro about two years ago when I saw a message in the chat about competitive signups. I had looked at the competitive tab on the website before, but I'd always felt like I wasn't good enough to join, despite it saying everyone gets drafted. Something felt different that day though, I finally felt ready to try it out. It was a pretty big step for me, I had barely ever used discord or reddit at that point. After submitting my signup, the first thing I saw in the comp server was people arguing about me. Apparently I have too high of a skill score to play in novice...? I had no idea what that meant, but the last thing I wanted was to be a problem on my first day. I learned that there's three tiers of play, and I signed up after the deadline for the middle tier, minors, which is apparently where I should be. That seemed crazy to me, I didn't even know anything about this whole comp scene, and people thought I should already be in minors? They had me play in novice, and to be fair to the complainers, it was kinda easy. It didn't feel that much different than a good pub lobby. We had to be in a voice call, but I didn't say much and just kinda did my own thing.
My First Season
My coach wasn't about to let that slide. ASAP saw potential in me, and would spend many hours over the course of the season helping me improve. He taught me how to communicate better, how to play defense with a teammate, and most of all how to hold. Offense gets so much more complicated when you realize you shouldn't just run straight to your flag every time. I was really enjoying learning more about the game, there was so much I wasn't aware of. After two weeks I was called up to minors, and was now playing in two leagues at once. It was a bit of a challenge to switch between the two constantly, but overall it was great for my growth. I actually learned more from ASAP coaching me in novice than my minors team, but both were awesome. One thing my minors team (especially Batman) had a big impact on was my setup. I was still playing on a macbook on wifi, but I was being told over and over that I should get ethernet. I scoffed at the idea of spending money (even $10) on tagpro, like come on now, I'm not about to spend money on a silly little browser game. A few weeks later I bought an ethernet cable, and boy were they right. The ping difference was helpful, but the stability was huge. I wasn't getting lag spikes every few seconds anymore. About halfway through the season I finally unlocked the axe flair. All it took was treating tagpro like a part time job. In the end I won the minors championship and lost the novice championship (as Misery reminds me to this day).
Welcome to the Big Leagues
My rookie majors season I got drafted to ASAP's team, and was excited to play with him and Waterwheel, but unfortunately there was some disagreement between those two and we dropped Waterwheel. He would get picked up by Alphachurro and win the Superball that season. I still learned a lot though, especially about using defensive backboards and prevent defense in general. Spending my first two seasons of comp with ASAP in my ear was incredibly helpful to my growth. I was extremely lucky to have such a great coach and teammate. Despite dropping Waterwheel we almost made the playoffs. I still remember in the last week of the regular season we were in a must-win game and I got nubbed by Fender on Moon Base. I was very upset with myself after that game, but I think it was actually a good thing for me because it motivated me to get better. I spent a lot of time that offseason training. I watched every game I played that season, as well as some recent Superballs. I went in private groups by myself practicing boost routes, and even made a map to practice precise boosts and bombs. I was determined not to miss playoffs again.
Forced into Leadership
The CRC (I don't think anyone actually knows what this stands for but they're the governing body of comp) couldn't find enough people to run teams in majors so they made me be a "playing captain" where I would draft my own team. I didn't even know half the people who were signed up, so I made a google sheet and scouted each and every one of them, watching their games and analyzing their stats from previous seasons. Some of them hadn't played comp in a long time (like Yawn who I drafted) so all I had to go off of was their casual games (this was before ranked was a thing). I went with a strategy of having a well rounded team with no weaknesses, in line with the saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Maybe my teammates from that season could speak to this, but I don't think I was a great leader. It was only my second season of majors and I was still figuring a lot of things out, so to have to lead 3 other people was a challenge to say the least. I made videos once a week reviewing our games and saying what we could improve on, but I'm not sure how much they really helped. We were playing very well together though, my draft strategy seemed to be working. I also bought a $100 monitor halfway through the season, increasing my fps from 60 to 144. We finished as the #1 seed with a bye week in the playoffs, and I was racking up stats with the perfect support team around me.
Playoff Pressure
I had experience as a top team in the playoffs before, but never in majors, and never as the leader. Our first series was in the semifinals against the #6 seed LBT with Jig at the helm. I remember in the week leading up to the game, Jig was significantly more hostile towards me on discord, and was being weird around picking maps for the games. I'm not sure if that made me play better or worse, but it certainly made me lose respect for him. The series began and right away we lost the first two games. Maybe Jig's antics did have an effect. We were feeling dejected after game two, and no one was talking in the intermission. It felt like we were on our way to getting swept. I took a deep breath and re-centered myself, then did my best to rally the troops. I don't remember much from it, though I do remember asking everyone individually if they wanted to win. If they wanted to play in the Superball. After that it was different. Maybe it just took two games for us to knock off the nerves, but we won the next 4 games and secured our spot in the Superball. Next we would face the #4 seed Blockettes, led by Rina and NameLEss, who were the only team we lost to in the regular season. The game was set to be played on July 27th, my 20th birthday. The excitement and nervousness were off the charts for me, I so badly wanted to win, to finish off this amazing season with a trophy. I'd guess my teammates felt similarly, as this was everyone's first appearance in a Superball. The opposing team was very different, I think all of them had played in a Superball before, and multiple of them had won before. The experience showed. We won the first game on Centenaria, but after that the Blockettes were completely in control. My strategy of having us hard commit to winning powerups was being punished by Rina, as she over and over would grab the flag as we fought for powerups, walking in easy caps. This had happened to us before, but never at this scale. I wasn't sure what to do, this strategy had worked all season, so I just assumed someone else was doing something wrong, someone else must not be staying ahead when they should be, someone else must not be communicating fast enough. I was arrogant and stubborn. I should've stepped up and made a change to counter their strategy, but that wasn't the only issue. We were all playing worse than usual, making mistakes that we almost never did normally. The pressure was just too much, and we lost 4-1. I didn't feel like I played badly, so I blamed others internally. It wasn't my fault, I was just unlucky. Let me tell you, that is a terrible mentality, a loser's mentality. I held a disdain for Anti-re for months, childishly blaming him in my mind for the loss. I suggest you watch the end of game five and see just how badly I played. I couldn't even take a boost straight for goodness sake. Don't be like me, don't blame others for your failures. It won't lead to anything good. The only way to grow and improve is to look at your own mistakes and how to fix them.
Searching for Success
I thought that if I could just get back to that moment, back to the Superball, it would be different. I never did get back there. I never even won another playoff series. I would put up decent stats in the next three seasons, but I would miss playoffs twice and lose in the first round of playoffs the other season. It all kinda blends together looking back now. I'm still not exactly sure why I struggled so much, I felt like I was playing well and had good enough teams to make a run in the playoffs, but it just never worked out. I even set a modern (since season 10) record for hold in a season, but then again that was partly just because there were rarely cap opportunities. I think the biggest difference between me and the "elites" is leadership. I don't think I'm much different from CarrotCake or Alphachurro in terms of skill (I'm sure people will disagree with that), but when it comes to leading teams in comp I'm just not very good at it. I try my best but I struggle to be a field general while playing. I have pretty good game sense, but when it comes to telling others what to do and organizing a team in real time I fall short. Part of me always wished I had more time to develop, more time to learn from others. Don't get me wrong, ASAP was an amazing teacher, but I wish I had learned from more people, gotten more perspectives, and gained a more complete understanding of what it means to be a 1st ball before I was thrust into that role. I still really enjoyed playing though, I love playing tagpro no matter what. I always think it's funny when people in comp don't want to scrim, like why are you playing the game if don't enjoy... playing the game...? Anyway, I'm grateful to all my teammates for the fun times, even if we didn't win that much.
Coaching
I've been a coach/general manager for 6 teams now, and I gotta say it's sometimes more rewarding than actually playing myself. My franchise the Furballers has yet to win a title, but man has it been fun. I haven't really been in a coaching role before, but I love teaching people who really want to learn. Seeing them grow and improve is so cool. It wasn't too long ago that I was a lowly novice ball being taught by ASAP, and now I get to do that for others. Special shoutout to DiegoOnMac for always being the most wholesome and positive guy around, love you man.
Mapmaking
This was a part of tagpro I was always a little curious about, but never knew how to get started on. One day I found the channel in the tagpro discord server about how to make maps, and never looked back. I've been making maps since October of 2024, and been on the MTC (Map Test Committee) since March of 2025. I implore anyone to try out mapmaking if they haven't, it's super fun. You will be bad at first, as everyone is, but over time you'll learn what works and what doesn't, and hopefully you'll bring your own ideas and style. I love the open-endedness (that's a word right?) of it. Even though there's not that many types of tiles, there's an infinite amount of combinations and unique interactions between them. My goal for a while was to get a map into comp and play on my own map. It's pretty hard to do that, partly because I was still learning what people like in a map, but also because there's no clear pipeline for a map to get into comp. Currently you have to go through casual first, but often times casual players and comp players like different things. I did eventually achieve my goal with Oncilla, though it almost got removed from the game early on in its life because a certain MTC member with antlers thought it wasn't getting enough votes... silly guy, right?
Personal Life
So this is the real reason I'm retiring. It's not because I'm burnt out, or tired of losing, or tired of dealing with MTC arguments. I'm just going through a life change that requires stepping away from tagpro a bit. I've always loved animals and the outdoors, and want to be a Zoologist or something similar. I've been studying Animal Biology at the University of Cincinnati for the last two years, but felt like I needed a break. I was looking for a wilderness program to do for a year, and found one near Seattle. I've been to the area twice, once to visit Olympic National Park, and once to do a Wilderness First Aid course. I loved the nature and environment, and knew I would come back at some point. About a month ago I moved out here, and have been loving it so far. I'm living in a cabin in the woods on a 60 acre property, and as you can imagine the internet connection isn't quite as good as it was in Cincinnati. I wouldn't really want it to be anyway, as I want to spent as much time as I can outside. Not to mention the program I'm doing which has multiple week-long trips where I'm totally off the grid. I have to admit, there was a part of me that didn't want to go so that I could keep playing tagpro, but ultimately there are just other things more important.
Conclusion
I've loved playing tagpro over the years, it's taught me so much. I've learned how to communicate better, how to coach, how to work in a committee, how to video edit, and so much more. Thank you to all the people that run this game, putting hours and hours into something they don't get paid for, just for the love of the game. Thank you to all the people I've pubbed with over this decade. Thank you to all my teammates for building me up, and all my opponents for tearing me down. Thank you to all my coaches for giving me a foundation to build off of. Thank you to all the players I've coached for being willing to listen to me yap about tagpro. Thank you to the members of the MTC that helped me get better at mapmaking, and for telling me when I'm wrong.
I'm sorry to all the players I was mean towards when I was trying to boost my winrate, and all the players I was mean towards in ranked. I truly am at my worst in those settings, and I hope none of you took it personally. I'm sorry to my season 36 team for not being the leader you all deserved. I'm sorry to Anti-re for blaming you for so long. I'm sorry to Cheetos and Curry for calling you washed and bad behind your backs. I'm sorry to all the people that drafted me expecting better. I'm sorry to all the teammates I lost with.
I'll still be around, at least a little bit, in mapmaking and coaching probably. I know this is all kinda dramatic, but I thought it'd be cool to put my experience into words before I forget most of it. Hopefully at least a few people read through this and gain something from it. I hope you enjoy my final montage.
