Saw the TF2 Blog post linking Extine's "Newbie Guide to Competitive TF2" and it looked really cool. I started watching his casts and got interested, but never really considered myself good enough to play, so I just watched. After a while I started TF2lobbying (around the Polycount Update)... then got discouraged by low scores and annoying teammates, so I stopped for a while. I kept watching though and began to "main" engy and soldier in case I ever wanted to play HL and 6v6. This past summer I was contacted by a guy who had seen my forum posts analyzing higher level engy play and wanted me on his team. I said I wasn't sure, but I could tryout and see how it goes. After a couple scrims I never looked back.

How exactly does anyone besides you benefit from people sticking in your league when they could have better competition in another league? Ideally, yes, your configs/maps would be similar. But that's not the topic here. I'm just curious why it's beneficial to the players or to the community to keep the top UGC 6s players stuck in that league when there's a way to give them better competition and help them on their way to the top league: ESEA Invite.

First of all, I'd like to point out that I play in UGC HL, and I do not play in ESEA nor do I intend to in the near future. I think that a free league is definitely an important part of the community. At the same time, I strongly disagree with most of your posts here.

You can't really say ESEA is greedy when you're the one shutting down the "free season of ESEA" proposition. They have every right to make their league pay-to-play, and so would you. You haven't, and as a result of that you can "feel that every league is equal," but few will agree. I don't see UGC 6s get taken nearly as seriously as ESEA. People practice much much harder when they're paying and when there's a significant prize pool to win (the keys this season are a good start, but ESEA's prizes are obviously much bigger, which is another reason that more serious players prefer the pay-to-play leagues).

The sooner you accept that UGC 6s Platinum is basically one step below ESEA Open, the sooner you'll gain support and stop calling out "let's see how many -frags I get now!" Honestly, that's a really stupid thing to say as an admin. You should really try appealing to the crowd more instead of repeating stupid arguments that you already know to be unpopular. I don't think I'm saying anything new here, and others can tell me if I'm completely wrong, but this is what I see as the popular opinion on these forums, and you aren't going to change that.

Well the problem is that you seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't see UGC 6s as a stepping stone into ESEA. No one is going to stick around in UGC Plat if they have the money for ESEA. It would be beneficial to everyone if the top UGC teams could get a free season in ESEA because they'll likely want to move over anyway for more competition, and you don't grow the competitive scene by being greedy and trying to keep people in a free beginner's league. You grow it by fueling the main league that everyone is willing to support. Fragmenting the community by separating the leagues just because you're afraid of looking subservient is negatively impacting the community (and you don't need to be afraid, you already look subservient because you're a free to play league). I'm all for supporting UGC 6s to a certain degree because everyone has to start somewhere and not everyone has the money for ESEA, but you can't hold players back from the league that, in the end, is the only one that will be taken seriously for your own greedy motives.

Verify game cache if those don't work.

MVP: Enigma
Most Likely To Be MVP Next Season: Stultus or Tagg. Both didn't deserve the team they were stuck on, and I'm sure they would have been MVPs if they were on any other top4 team.

Oh, well in that case, he's probably going to put harb on either medic or backup, with TLR roaming maybe? Harbleu's spy plays are cool and all, but TLR and Plat are the two best soldiers right now, and I don't think Plat would ever kick off TLR to take his spot if there was another option.

Plat has said in the past that even though he likes soldier the most, he won't let someone play demo on his team unless they're as good/better than him at it, and it's easier to find really good soldiers (TLR and Harbleu) than really good demos (besides himself and b4nny there aren't many options). If he finds a really good demo though, he would likely end up pushing harb to medic to replace PYYYOUR, and we all know how much fun that would be.

I'm a big fan of watching ESEA Invite, but I'm not a big fan of paying to play 6v6 when i can just join UGC and enjoy 9v9 more anyway.

If Chess Club is still around next season, Kermit will be on Roamer (he doesn't like demo anymore apparently) and Tagg will leave to go play with a better team. Either that, or the players of Chess Club all split and join various IM and Open teams (though I'd like to see stultus and Tagg stay in Invite after seeing a pretty strong LAN performance from them). Ruwin's leaving, and dabes will probably replace him. Tyrone's leaving, and I'd say Lansky is probably the best choice to replace him.

Not as bad as STAR's server, where minisentries have 50 hp and the caber and enforcer drain your health.

Let's make a thread! No, wait, bad idea... darn it, well, it's too late. I guess I'll just apologize and post it.

Castle's ledge is OP

ChessNetwork is tons of fun to watch. I'm in my school's chess club and I find myself winning more blitzes than regular games because I learned how to think quickly from him (I'm not very good, but I'm consistent no matter what the time settings are, unlike the top player on the team who's much better than me but struggles with less time).

Just as many HL teams don't scrim more than once a week. My team has played 4 games now, and only one has been against a team that appears to be very committed to the league. People don't play ESEA as much because of money, srs bsns, and skill. If you're looking for a free, light-hearted, easy-to-get-into league, UGC is unfortunately your only option. Far more high-pub-level players like scout and soldier than pyro or heavy, so that's definitely not the reason either. Just look at what classes take the longest to fill in pugs or HL. Medic, Heavy, and Engy are the hardest to find there, in my experience.

"slipped my mind"

obviously hacking.