Clients aren't designed to catch cheaters, they're only designed to deter them. Stop citing this as a reason to hate ESEA. It's stupid. Anyone who seriously wants to cheat will, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Clients stop the casual cheaters, the ones who will just pick up a basic hack off some website or another. There are plenty of reasons to justify the move without making up stupid ones.

And it's ridiculous to dismiss his point too.

Jumping ship from ESEA is incredibly risky, and the scene will take a hit for it if it happens. The question is whether or not we can recover to be the same or better than before.

I still want to do it though. But I came to my decision by weighing the risk vs the reward, not by pretending there's no risk at all.

you can't just copy and paste bitcoin code and make it work in a driver you goddam idiot

do ya got specifics on what features you want? esea had stats long before alternatives like ss existed. it's been outclassed by ss these days, but it was pretty nice given when it was made.

As for cheaters, the sentiment I get is that no one in invite actually does. I asked people about it and that was the answer I got everywhere. If you think someone cheats, maybe you should actually use the report feature on esea. newdev has played tf2, and tf2 doesn't have any known driver level cheats as far as I know. If there are cheaters on esea, they'll be banned if their existence is made known.

I just lost MvM Manhattan because client popped up and gave me some weird alert. This is an outrage I wanted to get a gold weapon.

so im gone for a week and this is what i come to
alright

Enigma, if you're reading this just please close this fucking thread. It has a dangerously high level of autism.

This happens every season. People argue about ESEA and threaten to stop using their platform. Not gonna say much, but I will say that Torbull and I have had some pretty long conversations. He loves TF2 and is very impressed by the passion in the community (REALLY). He's always spoken highly of all of you.

Multiple leagues are fine. That's all dandy. Competition drives innovation. ESEA is leagues above everybody else when it comes to resources and technology. It will be a long time before anybody is remotely capable of competing. CEVO has a great, storied history, so they might be able to make it happen.. but it'll be a long road.

There's a ton of games out there that have nothing. NOTHING. Some of the best games ever made have never really had a reliable platform with consistent prize money (Look at Wolf:ET in NA. The best team based FPS ever made. I played in fucking TWL.). Saying TF2 is dead is laughable. IIRC, last season was the largest season in ESEA TF2 history, 14 seasons in. Correct me if I'm wrong.. but I think having more teams is a sign of growth, not death.

ESEA has given TF2 a home. They continue to make changes and investments in the community. Prize pools just went up fairly significantly. It might not be perfect, but at least they give a shit about this game. You can't hold the bitcoin/client crap against them forever. Allowing one bad seed to ruin what they've given you over the last 15 seasons would be foolish.

ESEA has had record numbers, as has UGC 6s - all of UGC's 6v6 league, I'll even slash the numbers a bit by discounting currently dead teams, teams on hold, or teams unreadied:

Platinum: 14 teams - 84 players at least
Silver - 45 teams - 270 players at least
Steel red - 34 teams - 204 players at least
Steel Blue - 38 teams - 228 at least
Iron - 45 teams - 270 players at least

Thus, experiencing 6v6, in an organized way, are 1056 people at the very least. There are more but I've discounted them (dead teams) and subs.

We've had growth like this ever since my first season as 6v6 admin and the growth continued after my departure. I can look at Open and even IM now, and Main in one case, and see teams and people I remember answering questions for. The game is growing.

If anything the dearth of competition we see is from a time period when TF2 in the 6v6 format nearly died before a new crop of players (from s10-s11) came into ESEA. You've got tried and true veterans like B4nny, Plat, Smaka, Enigma, et al, a huge gap (with grape and marma and a small handful of others floating in it), and then these new folks that hadn't played until s10-s11. At the top it'll be slow going for the playing field to equalize, but it will happen given enough time, and TF2 will continue to see forward pressure upwards as more and more teams seek out better and more competition. You can thank the f2p update for chasing me away from pubbing all the time - and I'm sure even more people have that shared experience, along with HL experience which has, say what you will about highlander, it has been absolutely massive for 6v6's player base.

Watch an IM or Main match for a preview of what we could have ;)

John it's more than a bitcoin scam... They're paying a massive amount of money to avoid going to court over this. You could get a team of the most expensive lawyers in the world and it would still be less than what they're paying. It makes no sense you can't sugar coat it.

They only have to drop the million if they fuck up and do wacky things with the client, otherwise they only have to pay a relatively small fine spread out over 10 years - which is far better than what a lawyer would want.

Yeah man. $350k is pocket change.

They've taken a legal oath to not screw anybody over again. They have a lot of restructuring to do, and I'm sure they will.

All it takes is one rogue employee and the entire company is looked down upon. Running a company isn't easy.

ur tinfoil hat is showing bro

I'd rather stick with ESEA because of LAN, but I don't think it's fair to say "Allowing one bad seed to ruin what they've given you over the last 15 seasons would be foolish."

They've messed up a lot, and it's added up over the years. I don't think it's foolish to quit a league after realizing they'll never change their mindset and customer service.

I realized it a long time ago, I just don't care.. but it's understandable that others do.

You not agreeing with the things they do isn't them screwing you over. It's you not agreeing with what they do. Poor customer service is poor customer service. I'm sure your ISP and cable company have shit CS. That's common. CS employees are often disgruntled and frustrated constantly. It takes a special person to do the job well, and they are few and far between.

Having a client mining for bitcoins and invading your privacy is screwing you over, though. They did it. They are paying for it with their wallets and their public image (which is far more valuable).

I disagree with Plat's argument that tf2 needs an incentive (prize money) in order to survive competitively. Maybe that holds true for the top few teams but for everyone else it really shouldn't make a difference. The tf2 jump scene has been around just as long as the comp scene and has continued to thrive simply because the players love to jump. In the couple of years it's really taken off with the introduction of different jumping competitions, and, while prize money has been a part of a few of them, it's never been a significant amount or the reason of the scene's success. All I mean by this is that as long as there is some sort of passion towards playing the game it will continue to survive. Prize money and LANs are nice but they should never be the reason to play this game.

I guess I just don't see how banning people for 10 years from a league for saying something on a forum isn't that big of a deal? lol. They've done plenty of things that upset people, it doesn't have to apply to your definition of "being screwed over" it has to make THEM feel screwed over, hence them leaving the league, which they have every right to do.

You agree to their terms of use whenever you sign up for the site/league/forums. It's a users responsibility to follow the guidelines presented in the Terms of Service. It's shitty, but that's the reality of it. Banning for a comment can be considered poor practice, but it's not screwing a user if the rules are provided on the site.

Spending money to stay out of court has guilty red flags all over it. I don't ever say someone or someone is guilty until proven innocent.... but running away doesn't help at all. If they would have gone to court and fought it I would have completely different perspective and would have supported them.

It's also very easy to blame all your problems on one person, but that is seldom truthful.

No reason to fight a case when you're guilty. Pay the minimum you can, accept the mistake and try to move on.

Then they're being blatant hypocrit because the document they signed explicitly says they don't admit any of the allegations were true. As lpkane mentioned a thousand times.

That depends on the situation. Was the employee in question a full time staffer or a contractor? If he was under contract, he's not an official employee of the company (This means ESEA can claim that they are not responsible). There's lots of legal crap that can justify the language in that document. Legal verbiage is notorious for being difficult to understand.

Well there's a lot of legal crap in this world that's put into place to protect people from theft. If the verbiage is too confusing for a business to handle maybe they shouldn't be doing business.

Wait this went from "theyve only screwed the customers over once in 15 seasons" to "it's in their ToS that they're allowed to be dicks" ? Okay man, now people happen to be sick of it I guess?

I guess this is directed at john

Honestly, I think the problem with ESEA is lpkane. Torbull seems like the kind of guy who would actually work with people to make the service better, while lpkane is... well, a troll and he was possibly directly involved with the bitcoin incident (he says it was only one person, but New Jersey says it was both lpkane and Jaguar). His story about the bitcoin incident changed a few times before the current one, also.

If Torbull bought lpkane's share of the company and lpkane no more had an relationship with ESEA, then I'd be willing to work things out with ESEA. Until then, I can't trust them.

Damn it TwitchTVJohn, I really do want to believe that ESEA will change and that they will stop screwing their customers over. Because truth be told, ESEA has been the best option of a league that we have had so far. We were all happy at the beginning of the season for the add to the prize pool and the creation of the Main division. As you describe, all of the features that ESEA has have positioned them way ahead as a legitimate league to play, and they have a good space for tf2 that we can use.

But they crossed a line and enough is enough. I cannot accept to be involved with a company that apparently has access to my computer even when their client is supposed to be off, and that when is asked by their CUSTOMERS to explain the situation they just decide to ban them. Many people that plays in ESEA are not kids, me included, I have a job, I have professional responsibilities, I have access to sensitive information of both the company where I work and their users, and I can't take the risk of allowing ESEA's client to potentially have access to such information for the sake of my personal hobby. Sure, they haven't done anything malicious, but what if they do? what am I gonna explain to my superiors and my customers? "Ammm.. yea, I was playing videogames and someone stole my files while I was going ham".

Sorry but I can't allow that. For my part I will try my best for another league to become the house of our game, because I believe that we should not go back to ESEA and because I believe that the competitive scene can still exist without ESEA.

Soooo... Y'all back to ESEA now?

I know I'm not, can't speak for everyone else though. Wouldn't be surprised though.

nope

in a mix thread... well, no.

Who do you think you are?