0 hours

familiar with game mechanics= can play low open.

Doesn't matter, as long as you can play Scout you can play in ESEA-O.

what i more mean is how long do you think it takes to... learn [?] gamesense and flesh out good dm.
i guess some people are naturally good at scout.

It's called open for a reason. Everyone can play. If you're looking to compete against the top teams then that's different. People also learn the class and game at different rates. If you're unsure about your skill level you can always start off in UGC like a lot of players since it's free.

Good point. I play on my old HL team's 6s team and I do really well. :>
Thanks shlaner. :]

From a shitnerd know-nothing-first-fps start I'd say it would take maybe two seasons of open while regularly dm/mgeing with an emphasis on improving actual skill before you would be good enough to land yourself on a top open team.

Could be drastically shortened if you no-life it or have genuine talent or find a mentor and seriously care about improving your play (demo review, asking for critique, constructive scrim atmosphere)

It could also be drastically longer if you play dm/mge for points, play stupid and blame it on other factors, or have a bad attitude about critiquing your own play.

People say that everyone has a certain amount of innate potential or talent but seriously, has anyone ever just picked up a mouse one day with zero prior experience and been absolutely amazing? It seems like even if people jump straight to IM/invite relatively quickly after picking up TF2, they always have prior FPS or computer game experience.

No, nobody has been invite level the very first time they played an fps game. Having natural talent just accelerates the process. Just like with music or sports, etc.

I know for a fact that craig "tehoreoz" collier was born with a mouse in his hand

also MIKE became the best demo jumper in the span of like 2-3 months, and one of the best source surfers in under a year when people near his rank have spent like 8~.

step 1, be bad
step 2, get a carry scout partner

This worked for me. Can confirm. :P

(you guys are mean. I can snipe well :<)

Be John

420 hours

we need to figure out a way to get rid of the stigma associated with esea-open

threads like this are pretty silly

The only requirement is maintaining a pulse.

You really couldn't make this more misleading... MIKE played a lot of surf (at least 3-4 hours/day) for about 8 months straight to reach top 25, and it's not like it took everyone else there 8 years to get to that level. More like it took them anywhere from 1-4 years and then they began to hit a plateau, since the top surfers tend to level out at around the same level. As far as jumping, it was certainly longer than 2-3 months and looking at someone who comes into a scene as it's finally "developed" isn't really a fair comparison to other jumpers. It took the early jumpers like Nightin, Muffin, etc., a couple years to reach the level that a player can reach in a few months now.. simply because there is so much more knowledge and experience to pass around than there was in the early stages of tf2.

This isn't meant to bash MIKE... he's a really good player and no doubt has naturaly talent towards the game, but you make it sound as if he became a top player with no effort when he was actually on TF2/CS:S dedicating way more practice/time than most players would even consider.

MIKE mentioned that he practiced nBn for like 4 months till he could speed run it flawlessly.

Also, DaHanG had no prior FPS experience till Quake 3, he mentioned that he watched Rapha vs Strenx (might be wrong there) and that he fell in love and worked his way up to the top by playing the game for a year almost non-stop.

To add on to this, most of the players who "appear out of nowhere" actually just practice a shit ton over a short period of time. To people who don't regularly play/keep track of their practice, it appears that these players get really good suddenly without any effort. I think Yz50 is a good example of this, obviously a very skilled player and has some natural talent (hence why he can play while sleeping at lan) but in the 3-4 months that he went from open to invite level he played DM/MGE almost non-stop.

You should also consider that in ESEA after the first couple of weeks, you will start playing people at your own level.

he actually was a top quake 2 player before
on topic- it depends on how you use those hours. Do you pub vs nobodies or do you actively pug/dm/mge/scrim.
It's all about actively try to improve all the time. Hours don't exactly translate to skill.

play smart in open and you'll slam kids. study the game and critique the fuck out of yourself. if you lose a 1v1 dont blame your dm think why you were in a 1v1 to begin with. do this whilst reviewing demos and prosper