Yep.

Added!

thats why I said

I'm saying there's no point in staying with ESEA since we take care of all that stuff anyways. Or CEVO would have to. or whatever.

gotcha.

but yea do you mean a pov of this discussion or a pov of the event? cause i think tyrone has one somewhere about i46 talking about what the experience was like etc. numlocked has one too.

I was simply saying LANs are valuable to the community ESEA or otherwise. ESEA just seemed easier for NA cause it already exists -- it's not something additional we have to create.

You said it yourself. The LAN events are enjoyable. Not necessary though I agree.

[edit] er it depends on what your definition of necessary is. i think it is unnecessary if all you want to do is keep playing TF2, but i think it's necessary in the sense that it makes top level TF2 more interesting

also...playing for profit? does anyone really do that in this game?

And you're right. I guess that what I was trying to say was that LAN is the literal end game for all players and also invite players. iT/Mixup is the final boss. It's a dumb metaphor anyways.

Point is, LAN can't happen without the support of the entire community and if the community is no longer interested in supporting it then so be it.

The only reasons to stay with ESEA is because:

1. You want their league support (stats/match scheduling/pugs/scrim servers/forums/admins/support)
2. You want to support the Invite players with LAN

If we don't need their league support and don't want LAN then as long as league support is taken care of in some other way there is no point in staying with ESEA.

People are saying ESEA is scummy and we need to leave it, others are saying we need it for the LAN and really nothing else (cause we host all of our own stats/servers/pugs/forums anyways)

People are saying we don't need LANs, all of the Invite players are saying they need it for motivation to keep playing(like endgame for an MMORPG), but a significant portion of the population says we don't need it to play TF2, the others are saying without an endgame the game will die

People are saying why do we need an endgame if we're never going to make it there, others are saying what the fuck the endgame is pretty awesome and at some point you too might actually get there but who really knows

People are saying ESEA is the only way to keep having a LAN, others are saying CEVO could certainly host one in the future

Trying to have a civilized conversation about this topic that I care so much about and it just got very hostile. I'm sorry that it got this far but I hope you realize that this discussion is not personal. I really do feel like there is a lot at stake here and I am not just going to go along with everyone else when I think something is up.

***

So why ESEA, and why was I pushing for a LAN so hard?

A lot of you guys probably don't understand this, so maybe I'll put it in MMO terms -- if your entire TF2 experience is like leveling up and you reach max level, what is there left to do? Yeah it's nice to say you're Invite but who really cares at that point. Now you're Invite and there's nowhere left to go. No reason to put in the extra hours to grind through those losses against every other Invite team who is better than you simply because "it's fun". Trust me. You need this end game. You need this incentive for the Invite players. Every MMO that I have ever played that has no end game has died a painful death.

LAN isn't essential to playing the game but enough of us care about it to the point where I don't think we should take what ESEA is giving us for granted. They give us 3 LANs per year that our entire community can come around to watch and appreciate. If CEVO can put one on that is fine but I think it's a long ways down the road and we should be grateful for what we have now. It's not even like ESEA is some dead-end road for TF2. If we back it as a community and continue to see it grow we can expand the ESEA-Invite LAN like they do for the other games and eventually send even more players, and I think that that would be awesome. Don't you?

[edited for length]

Yeah big Rick is the only guy I know to attend like 5 regional LANs in 1 year.

Anyways, I have a hard time seeing how CEVO/Nahanni can get enough money together to host a LAN plus help the attendees with out with prize money to get there.

Looking at the prize pool for Season 15:

Invite Division Prize Pot: $14,180
1st place: $6,360
2nd place: $3,660
3rd place: $2,540
4th place: $1,620

That's a lot of money we've got to pull together and then with the cost of hosting LAN...

Quoting Rick:

It's going to cost a lot of money to put on the LAN and ESEA currently funds it with CSGO.

NA is too big and what Rick talked about with regional LANs is a problem because not everyone shows up. Plus unlike ESEA, regional LANs don't help to cover the costs of attending.

The 1st/2nd place teams in NA are head and shoulders ahead of the competition and it takes an extremely high amount of effort to topple them. ESEA LAN gives incentives to the lower half of invite to at least make 3rd/4th before dying (see every 4th place ESEA-Invite team ever). No LAN? Sucks to be 3rd/4th not even worth it let's just die at 7th/8th place.

Like I said we'll see what CEVO can do in terms of a LAN but I'm still pretty set on having one.

Take a look at #227-237 where the aussies are talking about top level AU TF2. That's how games die. It's like Quake. New players have to put in a lot of time to beat established players and there isn't really an incentive to do so. That's when the game starts dying.

You can play the game at a lower level because the game itself is fun but when it comes to taking down the upper level teams it suddenly becomes "not worth the effort".

DUE TO THE LANS

point proven

/thread

think it's red bean i could be wrong

http://puu.sh/5sFaF.png

Uh huh.

it doesn't die instantly!! it just dies in the same way that european or australian tf2 dies. the competition just dwindles and teams lose interest in the game and drop out. it won't be next season or maybe not even the one after that but teams lose that drive to play. like i said, i46 when europe was dying and lost that LAN is what invigorated that community to work hard and improve themselves for i49, another LAN. it's what keeps communities going, no matter how big or small.

also hooky yeah it's true but that's why i'm saying it's not guaranteed. it's possible but who knows. i guess we'll have to wait until tuesday.

Done.