As someone who has been around the comp scene since before the birth of ESEA, I actually remember playing in cevo when it was THE league. The only reason we left is because ESEA was offering more money, and all the stats were a nice touch. We've come to know and love the ESEA format for TF2, but most of us hate the league. If cevo is willing to copy the ESEA format, and improve on it, ill gladly convince my team to make the switch back to cevo.

CEVO should provide all the match servers. It may be a small thing, but it's the responsibility of the league to create the fairest possible environment for competition. It's like switching sides on a tennis court every two games.

Would it be possible to have some free divisions and some paid divisions? Some lower free divisions would be pretty nice while maintaining the higher divisions as paid.

So anyone can "pay their way into invite" ?

The way the old CEVO was ran had an amateur league, which was basically open, and it was free to play. Then it had a main division, which was the middle division, which I believe was pay to play. And then, they had professional, which was equivalent of invite, which if I remember correctly was pay to play and not everyone was able to join it, only the teams that qualified.

Yeah, exactly. You'd have to qualify to join the top divisions like Invite and Professional, but if you felt confident you could join Main and pay the league fee, or something similar.

Oh I see. But how successful was that system in the old CEVO? Do they do that with the current games and divisions they have in those?

No league fees at the moment, but they are open to having them.

I believe it should go Open -> Amateur (-> Main if enough teams) -> Pro, whenever league fees are implemented. Of course, this could be adjusted as needed.

Roll out other divisions as needed, and save Invite for LAN.

Edited: removed free league stuff

Nahanni and I were discussing pay to play and how to structure it. We decided that a free division is a bad idea because it's unfair. Why do you get the same service for free just because you're in a lower division? There are free leagues available for you to play in if that is your intention. In the past amature and main divisions had trouble with teams staying in main or being "forced" to pay for main. We've decided that everyone will pay the same price regardless of what division they're in. Nahanni is going to start crunching numbers and an estimated price point should be available by Tuesday night.

Good to see the community coming together and actually working on options. CEVO looks great, might even go back to tf2 to play CEVO next season. Who knows? :P

Since there is a shift can we legitimize UGC as some sort of gateway to CEVO kind of thing. Like an official below the open thing.

I don't understand what you mean Xan. They're a legitimized league on their own.

Doesn't need to be official, it already happens with ESEA as the top. Nothing's going to change there, except maybe more people moving from UGC to CEVO.

What about a free-to-play ladder as well? Something for teams to test the waters before committing to a season.

Probably the closest thing that exists to this structure would be ozfort. We have a open ladder which is where teams are supposed to "prove" themselves and set a record to be used for manual admin placement into OWL, our big competition. In that way a team that has just formed doesn't have to start in div 6 and work their way up (Which would be a fun Time for reforms of high div teams). It's also supposed to be a place to test the waters for new unlocks and/or maps that might be added into OWL some day. However, at the moment quickfix is still allowed and god awful maps have been played, so most teams withdraw from it as soon as OWL hits.

The main difference is that all of our leagues are free, but of course having a continuous ladder might be a good thing for cevo as well.

well I dont think ESEA LAN even had more than 15 specs last time I went there

How much does playing in cevo cost?

@#197

I have asked this a few times before but

will there be a linux client?

My biggest beef pre-bitcoin/malware drama with ESEA was how they outright 100% refused a linux client, a move that pretty much killed my interest in 6s.

Good morning everyone! I wanted to make a quick post to update you. I have been working as hard as I can to organize, speak to people in the community, CEVO and sponsors. I am very excited to see our great community of ours so pumped! I am respectfully asking all of you to please be patient with me and this process. There is a lot of necessary planning and work that is involved. Many of you have asked me what they can do to help. Thank you so much!! The best thing that everyone can do to help right now is give your support and trust the process.

Let’s remember that everyone is going to have different views and opinions based on a variety of factors like experience in the game and knowledge of the history of this community. Not everyone is going to be happy with some of the decisions made but let’s also remember that we have the ability to make changes in the future as a “community”. I do not want to get into specifics right now but I hear you all. I am reading the post on a regular basis. I am writing all of your questions and concerns down so everyone is heard. I have some answers to your questions already but I want to answer them all at one time or things may get missed. Organization is key when doing a product such as this. Trust me in my experience of organizing a movement or project. (ie 6vs9 and Community vs Pros is no small task…*wink*)

We will be holding a “community meeting” with CEVO on Tuesday November 26th at 6PST/9EST. Now I know that this gets into prime scrim time and I do apologize. This is the only time that certain key players were going to be available. I got a new mumble especially for Community meetings and I will post hopefully by tomorrow, Monday at the latest, the agenda. CEVO only has 30 minutes for us at this time because of the short notice. However, there will be more meetings and discussions so please understand that we are doing our very best to move this forward.

One little leak I will give you is that CEVO has already met with Technosex and SizzlingCalamari to discuss the stats. I give you this piece so you are aware that there are concrete things moving behind the scenes to build a good solid foundation for a league that we can “sustain” not just now but for many future seasons.

In regards to myself personally I want to apologize to those who I had to remove of my friends list. I simply don’t have the room I need for everyone. I am trying my best to add people so I can hear their views and concerns. To those people who I have missed in adding you (as some have now given up and deleted the friend request) please feel free to add yourself back. I am not ignoring you I am just extremely busy and adding a new person means that I give my time to speak with you right away. I want to be able to give you that time in a respectful and productive manner.

Huh. Not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, a decent pot should make the switch more a more attractive proposition for some but then you are alienating a group that could have really filled the league: UGC players. I guess it depends how reasonable the fee is.

Does a web dev with some time to spare want to cross reference the STEAM_IDs of all rostered UGC players with all rostered ESEA players? How much of an overlap is there? Is UGC *really* a feed league to the paid leagues? If so, then I think CEVO implementing fees across the board is okay. If not, then maybe we do need to consider a free option for CEVO.

This would be intersting to see but my main point was a free league with a high skill level then UGC would appeal to UGC players and could make CEVO really big.

Why would a free division in CEVO have a higher skill level then whatever the top UGC div is?

ESEA has historically had the higher skilled players. If they transitioned to CEVO then there would be a league with high skilled players that was also free, something that could appeal to UGC players.

Oh, so you mean the entire league should be free? In that case, I don't agree. There needs to be a league fee to build a prize pot that can attract people from ESEA. Well, the people that need to be anyway. Only other thing we really need at this point to get people to switch is a LAN, but we've discussed that too much already.

I'm assuming transfers from ESEA will play in paid divisions. I'm not sure why the skill of higher divisions would add incentive to play in the free one. I don't play esea because invite teams are good, I play esea because open teams are good (relative to ugc).

And assuming cevo goes the league servers only route, a free division could really clog up scheduling.

The reason UGC is low level is because UGC is free. Other free leagues and divisions will be just the same.

Ok I want to clarify. With all respect this was a discussion and not a concrete decision as of yet. These types of discussions are not final until we speak with CEVO. For example, when I met again with CEVO this morning it was brought to my attention that they do not have a pay n play format system set up as of yet. Some ideas to get around that is to have the first season free to play while CEVO gets organized and build what we want. I respectfully ask that no one takes random posts as a final decision. Everything needs to be discussed with CEVO and we will be holding community discussions with the community. Now some decisions the community wont have any say over and again not everyone will be happy but lets try and work together. Even though I am the lead between CEVO and the community that sure does not put me in any position to make decisions for the community as a whole. We would be missing the whole point of going to a community league if that was the case.

I don't necessarily think the entire league should be free just that if it was it could attract more players. That being said, I am much more willing to pay league fees for CEVO then ESEA.