when will the season actually start?

Says in the second paragraph.

Damn I would have been happy if they just added healing stats for matches.

http://www.reddit.com/r/truetf2/comments/1k8nhx/esea_vote_on_adding_in_a_main_division/

I made a thread on Reddit for this several hours ago, in case anyone cares.

I don't really see an incentive for any EU teams lower than prem to play in esea

going to get wrecked by top teams+have to pay+no chance of getting prize

Does this mean that prem is dead?

It's really not that different from what low open teams experience in NA. There are always a handful of top open teams that WILL crush them. Sure the top euro teams are much better than high open but what's the difference in one seven minute 5-0 from the next?

Opening multiple divisions on a new continent would be a huge risk for ESEA. They have to start small, and if the low div teams join and handle one season of some tough losses, they'll prove that Euro is big enough for multiple divs.
It's only going to get bigger unless the low teams are too afraid to join.

#37

etf2l divisions are fairly even. euro players are used to that and won't be eager to pay to get curb-stomped.

#38

I know, and I'm not criticizing esea for doing that. I'm simply saying that anyone outside of prem has no incentive to join beyond "we like esea and want them in europe"

and getting players to feel that way is not going to be easy, considering things like the bitcoin scandal, shitty esea servers and simple inertia. even if esea had a full league like in NA, people who know they won't get 1st place (aka 95% of teams) would have no incentive to switch. The benefits of ESEA, LAN and prizes, are only a factor at the highest level.

tldr : why pay when we've been getting all this for free ?

Because now you too can be held hostage to the same shitty league we've been for years.

I wouldn't mind paying to get rolled if it meant we get an EU invite later

Not really, epsilon's Knox, Mike, and numlocked after i49... epsilon wont be that big of a powerhouse anymore...

Yup and we hear it every year :) Let

I know that I'm going to get de_stroyed if I join ESEA but I won't regret it, since I know I helped TF2 grow, and know that if I suck it up this season for only like $8 (still not sure how much is the fee for Open) we will probably get ESEA to create more divisions for the EU TF2 scene and so I will join (hopefully) the next season.

One thing that I love about ESEA is that they reward every division winner, Open, IM, Invite, all get paid for winning their divisions, which is awesome and something that actually could motivate you alot.

Also more weeks, more maps, more unlocks, better system.
Hopefully they will take their current map pool :)! (maybe not gpit, but maybe another a/d map, ediface is my choise :>)

I don't mind losing $8, I really don't, I just hope they will create division like IM, Open, Main, Invite, maybe those are too many divisions, but it seems like more teams will start signing up if they won't be matched with Mike, stefan and kaidus in the same division.

To all Europeans there, if you got a couple of spare Euros / Sterlings / Bananas / Keys / Hats, go sell them, get some cash, get into ESEA EU Open, have some fun playing, play against cool prem dudes, play in a new and awesome system and support this growing eSport.

You can't say you never wanted to be like b4nny or Platinum typing in chat:
.ready
.gaben
x)

Killing, we will sign up, we will lose (not the Prem dudes) our dough, but we do this because we love the game, and we want more divisions, I can agree that it is a huge risk to open more than one division atm, take example from ESA, at the 1st cup I was excited to play and support, yet it started to become more and more a fight between the Prem teams for the headsets & cash, I didn't mind losing there, but the fact that they're continuing on doing the same thing over and over, and starting to collect fee for entering, that doesn't motivate me to pay and sign up, if ETF2L was a Pay-to-Play system, I would pay, but only if I was put in my right skill level.

Great job overall!

Wouldn't make more sense for ESEA to do a big open divison and a 8/9/10 teams invite? Even without any prize pool.

i guess that depends on what you mean by successful heh. but really, i think they'll probably do what they did last season and move all 16 open playoff teams to IM, especially with a main division already created.

Not really. It appears that a lot of the teams in open are gonna be prem teams who would otherwise be in invite. Thats a pretty huge risk for esea, hoping that 5+ extra "open" level teams join.

If this season is successful, they will probably have invite and open next season, and possibly and IM added the season or 2 after that.

They are a for profit company and as such they can't just take big risks.

I'm gonna be a party pooper here but if ESEA really wants to get into the EU scene they have to mold themselves to the EU scene limitations / characteristics.

Not every country has the same median income per capita, there are eastern nations where 5$ a month would mean the world to them and the same 5$ a month in norway would be spare change. Same about player technologic or language limitations, I don't know at what point you have your infrastructure ready to accomodate EU players but for example do you have the ESEA client translated to the languages of the areas you want to target? Plenty of people in spain barely talk english, same for russians, etc etc...

I do hope you have this thought-through, it has potential and I hope it works but I wouldn't put my hands in the fire for it right now.

If people can afford to buy a high end PC they can afford premium.

And a lot of people play tf2 on a potato with maxframes

If you can't afford premium/league fees, you can't play in ESEA. It's a lot of money for a lot of Americans too. The financial aspect isn't even worth discussing because it's not like this is even close to a required cost.

EDIT: what I meant by that last sentence is that it's not a good reason to try to get ESEA to change their fees because cost of living is different in different countries, not that we shouldn't care or complain about the cost of luxury goods.

Not necessarily. Imagine it's a kid 18- with a pc offered by his parents, and their parents probably won't allow or won't think its funny 6$ a month to play videogames

What Im saying is that Europe isn't the US, neither economically or mentality wise, so better be prepared for it.

ETF2L has like 300 teams a season while ESEA-NA has barely 100 afaik. ESEA can't expect all 300 EU teams to switch, because of that difference in mentality and financial situation. But having 100 teams playing in ESEA-EU within a year seems reasonable to me.

They already have the infrastructure to accommodate EU players as they currently run CS:GO Open, IM, and Invite EU divisions.

Plus, the only major country in TF2 that has a questionable economy is Russia (that means all easties), all the countries in central or western Europe are hardly worse off than NA.

inb4 you bring up portugal and i look like a fool. portugal might be an exception

bringing up country economies doesnt make sense to me, if you cant afford something you dont do it, doesnt matter where you are or what kind of family you were born into. NA isnt exactly in a good economy at the moment, even though its recovering, i have friends who couldnt afford to play in ESEA even if they wanted to, so they dont. thats it.

the reason people are bringing this up is because the competition is free. and if a significant number of people cannot afford esea that's going to stunt its growth.

ESEA main: Killing's way of keeping mangachu out of invite

Hey killing, remember when I suggested main at the beginning of last season and you completely shut me down with the most condescending tone ever?

I do know that they have EU CS:GO so I am guessing that they do have some language translations.