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I just want to so how much I hate the 'LAN doesn't matter to open teams' argument. Actually, LAN matters a whole lot to a bunch of open players. Plenty of people I've played with or spoken with really really wanna get to LAN and if there is no longer a LAN to get to they'll lose a massive part of their motivation towards getting better. Sure, it's a long way off for some, but for people to say that low-level players don't care about LAN like they speak for everyone when so many have a tenuous connection to the competitive community at best is just dumb.

while cevo hasnt proven themselves by having a successful season of tf2 under their belt, all esea has been able to prove throughout 15 seasons of operation is that they are more consistent about offering sub par services which are never fixed and that they will betray all of their customers trust without batting an eye. cevo doesnt need to prove themselves, as we already know what we get with esea.

you just called xbox gamers legitimate fps players. congrats.

games. plural. maybe if you took a break from patting yourself on the back you'd have read that right. but yeah lets link insomnia, a tournament thats only big once a year and costs like $20,000 for an NA team to go to. let's do it!

and who's to say cevo will be any better? i would be legitimately happy if cevo was the fucking shit and dunked on esea, that would mean we'd have a pretty amazing league to play in. probably shouldn't shit on the only regular tf2 lan we have in north america without first having our new league prove itself better.

yo avg isnt even good tho

I happen to agree with everything marma's saying. He's being even more blunt than I am which is pretty blunt, but I can respect that.

We're not saying CEVO is bad or CAN'T be better than ESEA.. But the key word here is in time. As of right now it's not the premier league for competitive tf2. Maybe after a few seasons of working out the kinks and getting things together it will be. As of right now there's absolutely no good reason to switch leagues. Play in both if you have time too. I think ESEA should still come first, it's still our bread and butter, and still our LAN and exposure ticket.

We have some of the best people in our community getting the CEVO thing kick started which of course is creating a lot of urgency but it's just not the right time yet. I have faith in them that they can create a league that is better than ESEA they just have to make it come to fruition before we just dismiss the best league we do have. ESEA isn't a perfect system by any means, and as many people know I was more pissed than anyone about what happened with the client. Doesn't change the fact that it's still the stable of our competitive community and needs to stay that way for the time being to salvage the real competition that's still alive.

It's so stupid to say "I'll play CEVO when it has proven itself." or "I'll play in 3 seasons after it gets good." Without people playing in new leagues, without a willingness to TRY to have a better league, we are never going to get something better than ESEA.

CEVO doesn't need to be better than ESEA this season. Most of your open players are interested in giving it a chance though because the alternative is paying money to play in a league that didn't give a shit until 3 days ago.

ESEA has been providing TF2 with a league to play in for 15 seasons, how many of them did you participate in?

You keep saying wait for cevo to prove itself, and that if it goes well stick with it... What I've been trying to tell you that people are just simply not interested in esea even if Cevo doesn't work out. For a lot of low level shitlords, cevo has already proven itself to be the league they want to play in. The meetings, the ongoing discussions the feedback has been going on since November.

It's a shitty situation where you have more casual players who don't care and just want to play some tf2 and high level players who take the game very seriously and don't want to see the revert back to where it was 5-6 years ago.

maybe when you come down off your high horse low level players will heed your advice and respect your opinion.

and that's fine, i'm not asking the people who aren't interested in esea regardless of cevos existence or not. i'm talking about the existing playerbase in esea. from my personal experience and what i've seen a lot of is that teams in esea are not "low level shitlords," they're teams looking to get into the competitive scene and start the climb to the top. that's the reason they're in a pay to play league versus something like ugc. those players should be concerned with a league having a lan, as that's something that keeps the top 1% interested and the other 99 working towards something.

Not on a high horse here. I asked a simple question guy. I understand you're upset that ESEA isn't going to die but CEVO will still be alive so you have a chance to have a winning record still! I know the vector guys are really anti-ESEA which is fine and your opinion. Don't really understand where that came from?

I'm still waiting to hear from prang on how many seasons he has under his belt in ESEA.. It was a legitimate question.

Not on a high horse here. *Insert condescending remark*

In case you didn't know, xensity and vector kinda had a rivalry going. I like mile though and the vector guys. He's a cool guy and a good roamer. He just obviously has a very different opinion on the situation..

Ffs let people play in the league that they want to play in. Both products have made it very clear what they're offering. And for the people who have been saying "esea hasn't made a single cent off of tf2, they must love it so much!", that is possibly the stupidest point (among countless other stupid points) in this whole argument. They put all of their time and effort into CS because it's the moneymaker. They get better support, an AC that actually works for their game, etc. TF2 is just their red headed step child and most likely just another way to fund the CS pot. I find it really hard to believe that they don't benefit from us in any way. If that's true then they are terrible businessmen. Our game doesn't fit there, its just easy for them to run because it's a popular source engine game.

And you can sure as shit guarantee that cevo won't be successful if you idiots keep begging everyone to "stay with esea for now".

While I understand arguing for principles, arguing about "so-and-so isn't getting my money" is a little silly. We're talking about, what, a few cups of coffee a month? One ore two pizzas? Hell, you can drop more at the bar in one night than you can in a calendar year for both leagues combined - and if you're budget is that strained, you probably shouldn't be playing in either.

In that context, suddenly the idea of supporting both leagues and figuring out which one is best for the community becomes a lot simpler (setting aside those with time constraints).

im surprised no one wants to watch shade lan vids anymore

Not to harp on the issue because it's been said a few times in a few places, but they really don't. The "business model" is irrelevant, ESEA continues to (or has up to this point) support TF2 as good will for online gaming in general, and probably because it looks good for them to in Vavle's eyes (which is an important relationship).

While I don't speak for Torbull, my impression was he supported TF2 because a) he actually enjoyed the community and the competition, and b) the stream numbers for LANs were impressive enough to keep it around.

Leave red-heads alone.

stpatrick is a redhead, so I'm just gonna assume he is an unloved stepchild now.

They don't though. in 2007, before ESEA was a league, Torbull ran a TF2 LAN tourney. The matches were actually really good and somehow DJ Wheat ended up casting the matches for the LAN attendees. Torbull fell in love with the game after that, he pugged the game quite a bit and he made it an official game the moment ESEA became a league a few years later.

Maybe its a dick move to flaunt that they don't make money from the game in our faces, but don't just assume they MUST benifit from it somehow. Even if they did, at the end of the day the main reason it's a part of ESEA is because Torbull simply fell in love with the game and always planned on supporting it competitively.

They're not as ambitious with the game anymore, at least not as much as the community would like, so yeah that kind of sucks. They were trying really hard early on, but the invite players back then didn't give a shit about growing the league and I think it left a bad impression. Now a days they keep it around but kinda expect us as a community to make the first move before they put in any extra effort.

None. Do I need two seasons of IM to have an opinion?

I started playing comp TF2 last season in UGC after watching it casually for a few years. Getting comfortable enough with 6v6 to play ESEA open this season was the goal right from the start. That became less and less appealing but my personal tipping point was reading through the New Jersey legal decision and then watching ESEA's total disregard for the community that supports their business.

Luckily for me my teammates felt the same. We were thankful to see another league trying to get its foot in the door. Supporting that effort is important to me because I see it as TF2 growing bigger. I'm just presenting my opinions. I don't pretend to represent all the shitty TF2 players, but if the idea of playing in UGC again and again instead of ESEA was more appealing before community members I respect put their efforts behind CEVO, then that might be an indication as to why Open was in danger before Killing put out an appeal.

I'm just interested in playing TF2 with cool people.