Honestly, I'm glad ESEA is dead. The company is corrupt through and through and even if we're going into uncharted territory with this whole CEVO thing, it has to be better than what we've had so far. So far all I've seen is that community icons like Lange and Nahanni are willing to step in and dedicate their time and money to the cause, and CEVO simply has a better product than ESEA, LAN or not. If teams like Mix^ can't see that, then it's their loss and they're giving up this great game for a corrupt piece-of-cr*p company with a shady owner and ineffective admins.

So far, the CEVO matches have been pretty much flawless, and with all the improvements they've been making it's sure to get even better. I look forward to this new era of TF2 and I know the rest of you guys are too!

Good luck and see you on the battlefield, guys. Should be a great season in both CEVO-O and CEVO-M. :)

Did you just have a stroke?

That's the prerogative of the players, not the league. You can't blame CEVO when they offer everything that's needed to foster high level TF2, besides a LAN (and we've talked that to death anyways). If players don't want to take the better league seriously, then maybe TF2 deserves to die. I don't mean to be harsh here, but it really just comes down to the players realizing that they need to learn to love CEVO and that it's far better than ESEA ever could have been.

its funny cause owl is basically an old man sitting on his porch yelling across the street at the kids playing stickball cause he can't play anymore

This is an unfortunate truth. While there are some great teams in CEVO-M, there is a high probability that most of them will not take any of it seriously and we will see off-classing and troll strats like huntsman snipers to mid or 24/7 heavy. While it's true that the invite level players in cevo-m probably don't see much to strive for, I personally would hope that they (as seasoned veterans of the game) would at least have enough respect and sportsmanship to play their matches with dignity. Even if they themselves do not care, they may be facing other teams who do.

When it comes down to it, this is an "e-sport". If you're a high tier team or player, I would hope that you would conduct yourselves as such. Looking forward to our match vs. 180 tonight, gl to all other teams starting their week 1 matches.

What? That's not a very funny thing to joke about :(

You just did a complete 180 from your initial stance.

Please prioritize this, what happened was funny because it was innocuous, I wondered what it would do so I added twitchplayspokemon so people that clicked on our match would tune into pokemon. Imagine what would have happened if I put my twitch on there and we were facing a team closer to us. Anyone on their team that immediately loads MOTD would get to hear our comms. What if it was a casted match, suddenly both teams can listen to any callouts about offclass's or uber %. There is absolutley no reason anyone in-game should be able to view the stream.

I'm not sure if you have me mistaken for someone else but I've been a CEVO supporter from the beginning. I have at least three friends who play CS and had parts replaced from their computer so I know first hand how evil ESEA is.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7a22o8OUf1rboltwo1_500.gif

"when theres no competition and nothing to play for i hope u guys will still try hard when the entire reason u play the game in the first place is taken away from u"

lower level players have made it pretty clear they dont give a shit about high level players so im not sure why the feeling would not be mutual at this point

..........

Why would you expect players who have nothing to strive toward to try-hard for the benefit of the lesser skilled teams? Is cevo now some sort of training league because theres nothing to win?

i have a tattoo of an owl on my leg thats how i picked my alias for this game :)

you see i used to work at this summer camp and all the counselors there had to have 'nature' names and the name that was given to me was owl because when i was a kid i was a dork and read a lot of books and stuff so they thought i was smart so after workign there a few years i got the tattoo but then when i got my teaching job i realized what a mistake it was because now i can't wear shorts to work when its warm outside :(

sure you can
embrace it

It's not about try hard, I'm not expecting teams to give it their all. Off-classing is fine, playing silly is fine. But at the same time have fun without disrespecting the other teams in the league. I didn't say "main class and try hard" I said "don't run huntsman sniper to mid and have 24/7 heavy".

there's a difference between being silly and having fun and being downright disrespectful when you play.

Okay, I stand corrected; this is now the dumbest post I've seen in this entire thread. I have never in my life wanted somebody to lose the ability to communicate more than I do right now.

That's on you, the top teams, not CEVO. They have everything the division needs to be competitive except for a LAN at the end, and if LAN/money are the only things that matter to you then I think you might want to check out some other games.

STV/stream delay would hopefully be used here to avoid ghosting issues.

Also, there is nothing stopping a person from watching the same stream on their second monitor. I would imagine they would rather do that to try to cheat than use the in-game MOTD display.

The CEVO web developer has said he will be looking into this issue today.

Thanks to sleeping for pointing this out. We all just need to admit that we're getting used to cevo.

PS. Last night I messaged fog with questions. He literally answered me within a minute. So props to the admins for having prompt response to the CEVO league games.

Also idk where to put this on the cevo website/forum. But 2 suggestions.

1) Could we get servers with the "live in 3"? Like in ESEA. I liked it. Made the match seem more official for a start of a round.
2) Consider having servers already pre-configured like in ESEA. This way we can not have to worry about one captain having rcon. I just foresee some issues with this in the future. Just my opinion though. (Ready with .ready or w/e)

I think this is the best thing you've said so far, just because of how utterly insane it sounds to me.

I'm pretty sure you have things backwards once again; it seemed like all the upper division players cared about were themselves, and that lower level players should be eager to support what better players want. The biggest sticking points higher level people used to convince people to play in ESEA over CEVO were the money and the LAN, neither of which directly affects lower division players.

And of course lower level players are going to consider themselves first; the majority of the player base is playing TF2 for their own enjoyment, not yours. That being said, you're delusional to think that nobody cares about the state of high level TF2. Nahanni put in $1,000 of her own money, and people have donated directly to this season's prize pool as well. Not to mention that CEVO wasn't even going to be a paid league until people said they wouldn't care if there wasn't money on the line. And it's like I said earlier, the lower level players are the ones who funded the LAN to begin with.

Just because the wants and needs of lower level players don't line up perfectly with mason's invite dream scene doesn't mean they don't care, it just means they have different priorities.

well ur entire post is backwards but so are u so it fits

Uhhh..

I mean it's not the ONLY thing, but you can't deny that LAN and money are definitely things that encourage the top players of this game to dedicate their time to scrimming and practicing constantly and trying to win. There needs to be an incentive. If there was no LAN and the prize pot was Valve store coupons, we would not have a competitive scene like we do today.

I'm already discussing with the people who run the servers what can be done in regards to these. I can't guarantee anything at this point in time, however.

wait if underline the parts of my posts that appeal to lower level players then do i get plus fragged?

can we stop talking about money, it's almost completely irrelevant. it's all about the competition which is at it's highest in a LAN environment.

you're getting -fragged because you support the league that's run by scam artists and thieves hope this helps

i know esea is dead and shit and cevo is the main league now (cool beans) but you legit just listed off the things cevo did "for the community" like they weren't things any even remotely decent league should have.

i hope cevo's the shit now that it's all we've got but can we stop pretending that doing any of that list is even remotely impressive for a league that wants to be taken seriously?

you really listed people paying to pay in the league and then cevo having a prize pool as something cevo did for us...like holy shit.

Mr_Owlyou're getting -fragged because you support the league that's run by jews hope this helps

i'm sorry, bad joke

don't become blink

Don't get me wrong, I think LANs are great, that's why I co-hosted a half dozen of them. And for it to be an incentive play? Absolutely, I think it's a good way to push players.

The problem I have is the concept of invite teams and players trying to hold the game hostage, and blaming lower level players for not catering to their whims. I think it's just downright disrespectful to expect the majority of the player base to bend to your will.