http://i.imgur.com/tpFMSSO.gif

But there are plenty of NA LANs to piggy back on and the distance issue is one we face in EU too yet the LANs still happen.

NA is too big and what Rick talked about with regional LANs is a problem because not everyone shows up. Plus unlike ESEA, regional LANs don't help to cover the costs of attending.

The 1st/2nd place teams in NA are head and shoulders ahead of the competition and it takes an extremely high amount of effort to topple them. ESEA LAN gives incentives to the lower half of invite to at least make 3rd/4th before dying (see every 4th place ESEA-Invite team ever). No LAN? Sucks to be 3rd/4th not even worth it let's just die at 7th/8th place.

Like I said we'll see what CEVO can do in terms of a LAN but I'm still pretty set on having one.

did you not read ricks post at all? or are you just completely oblivious

arguably one of the biggest east coast lans isn't even in the states its in canada, a lot of people aren't willing to shell out the money to travel when they're actually LOSING money to attend a lan

im more than positive ETS and GXL had around 5 full teams MAX of tf2 players, the only people who actually traveled far out of their way IIRC shrugger, extine (from cali to montreal) boomer traveled pretty far too last year. you aren't ever going to see players from all over the country go to 1 spot when they're LOSING money. well you could argue most players already do that for ESEA lan especially with international travel (Canada--->Dallas)

Yeah big Rick is the only guy I know to attend like 5 regional LANs in 1 year.

Anyways, I have a hard time seeing how CEVO/Nahanni can get enough money together to host a LAN plus help the attendees with out with prize money to get there.

Looking at the prize pool for Season 15:

Invite Division Prize Pot: $14,180
1st place: $6,360
2nd place: $3,660
3rd place: $2,540
4th place: $1,620

That's a lot of money we've got to pull together and then with the cost of hosting LAN...

Quoting Rick:

It's going to cost a lot of money to put on the LAN and ESEA currently funds it with CSGO.

hahahah
We did 3 lans in russia (february, may, november) in 1 year by own hands
this is possible dude
and they were awesome

But how is that any different from the situation right now in Europe where people have to travel thousands of miles, across borders for a much smaller prize pool, yet they still do it?

because
you
have
a
BIGGER
tf2
scene
in
europe

how are you not grasping any of this its actually blowing my mind

If you count UGC & ESEA together there are around the same number of teams signed up for the most recent seasons as ETF2L. Unless I'm missing some other league or fact in which case I apologise.

oh my sweet jesus, ok so by your logic if we combine our highlander league and ESEA we arguably have a comparable scene to europe alright got it, let me fetch those numbers and take a survey of why we don't have as many players gathering at ONE LAN event because i didn't explain any of that above

you need to stop before my head explodes

There are around 200 teams signed up for the most recent season of NA UGC 6v6 and around 90 signed up for the most recent season of ESEA. About 300 teams signed up for the most recent 6s season in ETF2L.

alright my head has exploded, im gonna go gather up the pieces and you can ask the roughly 290 NA teams why they don't all go to 1 lan event even though it has been explained x100000000000000000 times over in the posts above by multiple people

The first argument was that NA is too big to not have a sponsored LAN, but Europe is near the same size (discounting the large swathes of Canada that are mostly uninhabited) and manages. Then you said the EU scene is much bigger but the number of teams looks to be rather close.

If its possible in EU I don't see why NA cant do it either.

even if europe is same size as na, im pretty sure flights are hella more expensive here, since it's like ~ 300$ to fly wherever.

It's this Emilio, when I was in Europe flights were so ridiculously cheap that it was unreal. Here the situation is much worse.

The obvious best choice in all of this, is for the scene to remain largely with ESEA for at least one more season. The sky will not fall, they will not steal all your personal information, lpkane will only shit on you if you bother him.

While that is occurring (which I imagine *will* be the case at least for the upper divisions of TF2) CEVO will have its first real new season. I don't know when they intend to open registration, but that first season should be testing the water there - since right now I have no evidence that they can even run a league with any sizable amount of teams. I imagine several teams will play in both leagues - which will ultimately be a great thing for TF2. I'm guessing they'll start before ESEA opens registration in late January.

If that CEVO season is a disaster (like their last "open" season and the vanilla tournament), we won't really have much choice than continue to split between the two leagues or return to ESEA or look into other avenues. If CEVO starts early enough we may know before registration for ESEA even closes.

UGC would be willing to accommodate, but a large transition would take much longer than late January - an all volunteer force operates more slowly.

It's the responsible choice to straddle the two leagues, for one it provides continuity, and it gives us a plan B if CEVO ends up to be sub-par.

I'm not trying to personally attack anybody working on or with CEVO, I just have my doubts about a league that has very little TF2 being played in it having the ability to cope with a massive influx of new players.

When I started adminning for UGC we had 40 teams. I ran things by myself. It was fun, it was easy. 20 matches a week, scheduling was ezpz.

The next season I had 130 teams. I couldn't cope at all, crap was delayed, disputes sat on the table for a while, scheduling took hours to do. My poor spread sheet was over taxed so teams ended up having wonky schedules. We did end up recruiting some help for me, but one of them ended up being questionable and was let go, causing me to take on a larger work load as we looked for new people. I eventually burnt out and had to step back, I couldn't handle it anymore.

Luckily we'd secured 2 guys willing and able to do the work, and drew some of the HL admins into the pool to help out when things get hot, and forn massively reworked the admin side of the site to streamline things and make work 100% easier. It took time.

It's irresponsible to just assume CEVO will cope perfectly with us. If they do manage to cope and people prefer them, then we can talk about moving the whole thing over there. But to talk about packing up entirely and moving into unknown waters is silly and irresponsible, particularly given that nothing ESEA has done has directly affected any of us (unless you ran the client in the off season) - unless your willing to go with NJ's unsubstantiated claims.

The event is BYOPC, plenty of people travelled by ground which isn't cheap no matter where you're coming from.

okay then, a byoc lan wouldn't work in NA for a national event because there is shit for ground transportation when it comes to traveling across the country,

Some people here are being absolute cowards and (I am sorry to say) idiots when they:

a) Refuse initiative by the community to improve some things.

b) Cry about the LANs, as in something that community cannot organize (which Dikker proved wrong, and I am certain French community can show you their own results. Also there is QuakeCon who started as a community thing, but look at it now.).

c) Cry about money loss when you travel to LAN - welcome to European world people, we don't get jack shit for attending "i series", yet we go there every year, get horribly drunk and comment how English women look like dinosaurs.

d) Refuse to be patient at how things go with CEVO, it isn't a small task.

e) Listen to Skyride who isn't active in TF2 for years now.

That's because everybody older than 12 in your country owns at least 3 pickup trucks.

what

Cars and petrol cost considerably less in the USA than Europe, reducing demand for a comprehensive public transport system.

i dont even have one pickup truck

So I read through the entire thread in one sitting...

I can see what most peoples viewpoint is on what the future holds for tf2, but either way I still cannot see myself ever playing in esea ever again and I was planning on returning to tf2 after my current school semester ends in December. I think even if the competition takes a hit from people refusing to play in cevo, the scene will still continue to live on. I mean, I could personally still see myself playing tf2 even if there were no leagues at all, but I think people still should take a chance by signing up for cevo next season to at least try to make a difference.

I can't say anything about the lan situation, since I have never been to a single lan in my life, so the only thing I can relate it to is fighting game tournaments (which I have flown out for). I'm of the opinion that if enough people switch to cevo, then plans can be arranged in the future to expand the league, which would eventually mean putting out a pay-to-play league (through cevo) and gathering funds together to figure out how to make it work. I've been part of many communities, and that includes the smash community which had people that were under 30 running huge events of over 200 people flying out from everywhere. Some people flew/drove to these events with their CRT TVs, which I find comparable to bringing a PC to lan (plus being 50 lbs heavier). What I'm saying is that if cevo grows to the point where its comparable to the esea numbers, I'm sure the people behind cevo wouldn't be against the idea of putting together lan arrangements in the future.

Comparing things in the past doesn't work in this formula because this would be a drastic change from the past. Slin and a few others keeps bringing up about how European/OZfortress tf2 is dead, but it doesn't have to be like that. I am a firm believer that the competition will not die if you play in cevo, and I think it is absolutely ridiculous that people think the game will die just because there is no lan. As long as people keep their drive of becoming better players, I don't think the competition will ever die, and that's the thing that people are underestimating.

Even if people continue to play in esea, I still think there should be a league that can challenge esea to do a lot better than what they currently give to us as players and competitors using their services, and I strongly feel that cevo is the answer to that calling.

is lan literally the only thing you care about cause through almost all your posts its lan lan lan

ya it is very important to a lot of people, and I'm sure me or slin are not the only ones with this opinion

Having an invite LAN is very important to our community - but I don't think it matters what league we get it from. I think the litmus test will be whether or not CEVO can come close to matching ESEA in terms of services provided to the teams in the league.

I would like to see what CEVO comes up with for next season before passing further judgement. Nahanni and Co. are only at the "meeting stage" right now. We have no idea how good or bad this "master plan" actually is. I will give CEVO a shot next season out of good faith - but I want to see physical progress before joining the bandwagon.

The absolute sad thing about this is none of you Americans are daring to dream.

You just say something is impossible and dismiss it based on theories, yet in Europe people continue to make tremendous efforts to attend I-series and community LANs. you have had bigger and bigger LAN events every year, the last one that happened at the start of October had a good turnout, 60+ TF2 players or so? That to me is a LAN scene growing - The I-series actually has Spring/Winter events dying over time but the Summer one remains stronger than ever, and that tournament didn't get good overnight, it went from small scale to large scale over time.

I compared prices of flights around Europe and America, on average it's slightly higher in US, cross country flights from coast to coast are pretty expensive, (£600+) though your closer (couple hundred miles) flights aren't that much more expensive than say, flying from Sweden to Birmingham, UK. I'll admit on average it's at least 20% more expensive, especially long distance.

However extra expense....isn't an excuse to just say "we can't do it, not possible" and compare Europe + US size. IT IS VERY POSSIBLE, it just requires hard work, committment and effort to make it happen and to many people here it feels like no-one is willing to be a Tapley or a Firestorm and make it happen.

The cost shouldn't even be a factor, isn't one of your favourite national movies "Field of Dreams" (or something). The famous quote being "If you build it, they will come" - Start small, like the LAN you had in October, build on it, build on it and start garnering interest for larger prize pools, Invite teams attending and eventually people will want to dish out $1,000 to attend.

And defy, considering the amount of logic Emilio gives you, you're one rude man to insult his intelligence when he makes very good points.

god damn it now i've got to watch Field of Dreams so i can feel like an american

Slin, if anything is killing my incentive to improve it's the high level players throwing hissy fits over what league we should play in, even though we've been getting screwed over for 14 seasons now. Why the hell should I look to improve when I can't respect the 1%, who are going to have a temper tantrum over a fucking LAN? It's just a video game - and an already miniscule scene at that. I think we all need to remember that.