The thing is, etf2l has many skill based divisions and people can play other teams of their corresponding skill level and get a neat medal and bragging rights/a sense of accomplishment for being good enough to play or place highly in a certain div.

Cups on the other hand are free for everyone to enter so only top players actually bother signing up because only they have a chance at winning.

You can't seriously expect an open/mid/low high team to get hyped over a cup they know they have absolutely no chance of winning.

The problem with open cups is that no one below the top end of high has a chance of winning, so 90% of ETF2L teams cant be bothered to enter just to get smashed by nameless in their first roung.

There's a p good reason why these kind of teams get stuck winning open forever and never getting good, and that attitude is one aspect i.e. being content to "win" a much lower skill section. Making deep runs in a tournament like PC Master Race did this series is a huge achievement, way more than doing ok in High or winning Mid or w/e these teams normally pride themselves on. PCMR for example boosted themselves in just 2/3 tournaments from being a literal shit-tier team that nobody knew or cared about to a better than top10 team.

The teams who even made it out of the open section of these cups achieved a lot, people will notice Infamous, xTp, dd+5, top5, etc. There is no difference to playing scrims and playing etf2l for years if you're not going to actually compete and test yourselves when the opportunities arise. What do you even practise and scrim for if not to try and win things?

Also this is why the bottom of the scene is a mess with ugc/esea open etc. This retarded outlook - if these cups were 64+ teams like they easily could be, then you wouldn't face a good team in the first round! If you decide to sign up to cups or esea open en masse, then the chance of you meeting a team way above your skill level reduces massively and you have more fun. But if you are scared, and convince others that cups and esea are scary places with far better teams, then all the lower scene disappears in a negative spiral.

This is so true, ondkaja may say there are 200 teams, of which 100 are open and 50 are mid. All of which feel they have no hope in hell in getting anything from it. You can say maybe you see getting to the 2nd round or whatever is an achievement. but it doesnt feel like an achievement say as a mid team if you play one close game say vs another mid team then get smashed by a prem team.

I agree most high teams should sign up as they have a chance at least of pulling an upset. but suggesting that there are 200 potential teams for these cups is ridiculous.

Have you ever played a sport in your life? If you make it to the next stage of a tournament or win your heat to get into another round you are hyped to challenge yourself against better opponents. I've never met such a strangely pathetic attitude in competition as we have here, where as soon as you're unlikely to LITERALLY win the whole thing you give up.

That's just the thing sideshow. Your view of the scene has been massively skewed from being at the top for so long. That's why I see you and other top players like kaja in this thread taking the same stance on this issue. You just mentioned teams like top5 and dd+5 and pcmr as being teams of nobodies who made a name for themselves and you're asking for more teams like them. Thats just the thing though, those aren't your average etf2l teams, they're teams who all have players that have been in the scene for years and have competed near the top. Those ain't your average open or mid or whatever players.

And about teams winning open over and over again as you say, well no one does that. If you're good you move up divs till you can't move up any longer (minus a few sandbaggers here and there). No one is content with winning a low div but people know their limits. You move up gradually as you get better over the years.

Telling a team "oh you just won open now go and fight nameless" is like asking a kid that's had a few martial arts classes to go and fight a dude with a black belt.

you lost because you guys played like dribblers

Spend thousands of hours practicing the game to play it competitively then when a chance comes around to play it competitively people are too fucking scared to play because "wah I might lose". To add insult to injury they then go and pug and mix all afternoon which is an absolute waste of time compared to playing in a structured cup. Even if you did get knocked out after a round that just means you can get back to your pug/mix safe space sooner where losing doesn't matter. Even if you can't field a full roster, playing with 3/4 of your main team is better than mixing with potentially none of them.

Problem is the lower teams might have that attitude of being excited but they know that they will ultimately lose 100% against teams like nameless and that's very disheartening

Excuse the double post I'm on mobile and I'm too lazy to edit my other one. This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. That's what etf2l does to you. You beat your opponents and win a div so you're excited to move up a div to play stronger opponents

You're making it sound like sports get the winner of the middle school basketball tournament to play the Lakers next month which is what being an open/mid/low high team and signing up in a cup vs nameless or suave or whoever else would feel like

It's easy to be preachy and condescending when you're already at the top

These top players are so disconnected from people actually playing in open. There is no fun in playing vs a high team when you're at open level. What is fun is playing against people at a similar skill level or slightly better so you have a close game and a chance at winning, rather than getting 5-0'd straight away every time. Its not about worrying about losing, its the fact that getting stomped is no fun at all and isn't worth your time just because some people are complaining about not enough sign ups.

If you want open people to sign up host a cup for open/mid players so its actually fun and beneficial.

it's not like ur being forced to play the same league as them every season. idk why you wouldn't go for the opportunity to play with big players. if ur sunday league team was offered to play against barcelona would you say no as well?

I don't see the problem here?

I can't imagine what the point is for my team of playing a cup. If we had all the time in the world and no entry fee then sure why not, but with the goal of getting out of open in a year and limited time per week to play, they don't serve a purpose.

Scrims help us get better by practicing against teams near our skill level.

Playing an ETF2L season tells us how good that skill level is relative to the rest of the community and lets us test our best against the best of our competitions.

An elimination cup could also tell us how good we were from how far we got through the competition, but we might get unlucky seeding and play a team we would never beat early on. After a certain skill gap, you can't really tell how much better a team is than you, so that experience would leave us feeling shit that we lost so early, wouldn't tell us how good we were (only that we were worse than the top-tier team that beat us) and we'd feel like we may as well have spent the evening scrimming to get better (which we'll have to make do with for the rest of the cup now). ETF2L matches tell us we weren't good enough for the teams that beat us, but we'd still have the rest of the season to play.

I don't see what's wrong with an attitude like this.

Also there are plenty of sports that are full season and no cups (look at any motorsport), so again I don't understand what's being complained about.

I feel like the chance of people with "strangely pathetic" attitudes AND ONLY people with these attitudes just happen to be playing the same game in the same community, is quite a lot smaller than you just being dead wrong about something that everyone else in the community disagrees about.

The person that spends his entire day on this forum and on every single tf2 twitch stream yet doesn't play the game complains about other people not playing cups. Funny.

Anyway to reply to your actual post most people don't pug and mix to get better, they do it because it's a fun hobby. Some people play tf2 to pub some to jump, some like playing 6s. This isn't the pokemon theme song, not everyone wants to be the very best, most people just find pugging in a 6s format to be a fun passtime.

Painting everyone that doesn't sign up for a cup as a scared crybaby is just retarded.

I think these cups need group stage play; single elimination is brutal for a midday cup which isn't at normal team playing times. If each team was guaranteed several matches through group stages, with the top team/top 2 teams from each group moving into playoffs, then lower level teams would probably sign up more.

if more open teams signed up, there would be a higher proportion of open teams and more chance of playing vs other open teams.
everyone complaining about just losing to high teams is just adding to the problem of not having enough open teams in the cups to make your time worthwhile.

Tho i understand/share some of your points the fact you've fallen to a so low level makes me puke.

Given a choice between a round robin league, or swiss league, or a ladder, and a single or double elimination cup where all participants were open-level, I'd choose the league over the cup. The cup would have to have a prize and I would have to feel I had a chance at that prize to choose the cup. Elimination makes for better spectator competition (fewer matches that need covering, no pointless matches) and lets people who are only in it to win it go home when they lose their chance, but other than that, I can't imagine how elimination is better for the player than a league or ladder.

I just cant understand it. If you get the chance to play some tf2 and you also have the time for it, then why not?? This attitude is what prevents people from getting into comp tf2 and actually improving.
My open team signed up for this cup and we lost to a mid team in the first round. The match was close. It was very close. I was not available to play and I was still super hyped for my team. So I can't see any reason why other teams won't join the cup BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF LOSING. It's just a game and nothing bad can happen if you lose. It can only help you in improving.
What you're saying is like telling a pub player to not start playing comp tf2 because he's not good enough or telling to a tf2center player to not start playing pickups and pugs to experience some real tf2, just because people are better. That attitude will never help tf2 growing.

He calls others "too fucking scared" to play tf2 and says that they want to go back to "their safe space where losing doesn't matter". He then calls their choice of how to spend their free time "an absolute waste of time".

I'm just calling out the hypocrisy.

you dont have to choose between them, theres no reason not to play both? if open teams sign up for this you basically get free automated scrims with a v small chance of winning a prize or something, and if you do end up against a prem team you can literally just press Forfeit and find a scrim on irc or discord instead. its just another way to play some fun tf2 and people are complaining about it for no reason imo

Time isn't free. If you get a chance but you don't have the time, then you have to decline. My team wanted to do UGC and ETF2L this summer, but we only had time for 1, let alone any cups.

We'd rather spend what time we do have scrimming to get better, is that so hard to understand?

Edit: Also what's more open teams playing in cups rather than a league supposed to fix?

Since you're discussing about how the tf2 scene is still small for what it potentially can be, i think you can spare David since he's surely not the problem of it but quite the opposite.

I can't understand people who won't join a cup when they get the opportunity just because they might lose. I'd play tf2 every time I get the opportunity to even if I would probably lose. If someone doesnt have the time to play I completely understand that was not my point.

u all need 2 stop

Its understandable that lower teams want to play in the lower leagues to have a good time and to have close games but doing that forever isn't going to get you anywhere, ever. You're stuck at playing the same difficulty and chances to improve, adapt and observe things is minute when you stay low. Prem teams and high players arent saying to exclusively get rekt and 5-0'd but simply sparing some time to do this is not nonsensical, its clever. You learn, adapt and change. Simply playing pugs with some prem people has given me insight into the game I'd never seen before in years of playing lol. Take the advice from people higher up, they're not doing it to be dicks or to talk down to you but it's because they know its what you need to do.

if you want to get better and rise up and are not bothered to watch demos or think conciously atleast play and get rekt once or twice a month.

Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to diminish his contribution to tf2, he's obviously done a ton for the scene.
I just dont think that should exclude him from being called out when he's wrong, like in this case.

Good point (though the better team isn't always nice about it), but how does playing a cup help more than just asking for a scrim against a better team every now and then? (Again, when you're pressed for time. When your team is all on summer holiday, sure, why not?)

You're already committing time to the game anyway. If you're scrimming on the same night the cups are on what is the disadvantage of playing? You wont have real proper scrims? This is like one or two nights of the month, its worth dropping two proper scrims to get fucked on and have a minute chance even if its like 0.00000001% its still better than no chance at all by not playing. I'd understand if you dont have a full team and you dont plan on playing that night but if you are it makes no sense.