SetsulHow do you expect the competition in CEVO to get better if you refuse to play CEVO because "the competition isn't as good as in ESEA"?
Cevo and ESEA competition are pretty much the same level, it's not like cevo is all new players. The difference is that esea has a lot more to play for, a lot more to be competitive for, doing well in esea is a bigger deal because the league is more prestigious and there is more to be won. The players though, are the same.
I know some people will say they don't care about growing the game or whatever, they just want to play and have fun. That's all fine, but really if esea tf2 dies the game is dead after maybe 2 meager seasons of cevo. I think cevo is a great league to have added on to the scene, having multiple popular leagues brings more attention, more people wanting to win with more prizes, more players, etc. But I really want to see tf2 actually grow.
If esea dies, the amount of top players that will quit, or stop trying, I'd assume is at 50%. Stream numbers in tf2 for matches have gone down by a lot over the past year, and if all the top players quit, even though there are new players on the rise that people in comp tf2 now, spectators won't know them very well and nobody will care to watch the streams. At that point, no one new is really joining competitive tf2, while people continue to quit.
This isn't just about the good of invite players though, as I know an outspoken open player will tell me I'm only looking out for myself. I'm looking out for tf2 in general. No one here wants this game to die, I've wanted it to grow since I started playing competitive, and after last lan I started to really like playing again. (I know if I didn't have the opportunity to make lan and chill with my team again, I would no longer care.)
2nd lastly, this season of invite I think will be one of the best seasons of invite there will be to date. There are arguably 3, maybe 4 teams that could win 1st, and 5 teams vying for 4th. Pretty much every match this season is going to be really influential to the final standings of the league, and I really think if there was anytime to bring new people into tf2, rather than worrying about everything else going on with leagues, it would be much more beneficial to be trying to hype up this season with a ton of content, streaming, doing whatever to get people interested because this season is going to be awesome. I really think that if this season is hyped up enough, the quality is the best its been, and we drag in a ton of viewers for a really good season of tf2, then the game could start booming again like it seemed to start doing about a year ago till it died down.
Lastly, I played in open once too. I've played in every division in esea now but main, and worked my way up to invite. I just wanted to say that to anyone who actually really has a passion for the game, whether it be pugging constantly to be the best, or never leaving dm or mge because you want to be the best, or scrimming 86 times a night to be the best, playing in ESEA and trying to work your way up to invite if you have the drive is the most rewarding thing you could do in competitive tf2 for yourself, and making lan with a team you like is something to try to work for.
Let's focus on trying to grow the game in no better time to do it than an amazing season of invite, because this might be one of the last chances the game has. If you have a competitive drive in this game, esea is the most rewarding thing to play in. So yeah, sign up for esea if you can please, I'd love to see the game have a boom of growth again.