Indeed. The same also went for lobby/pug services in the past. In the end, the community will/usually decide which will end up sticking around, usually the distribution could be like 70/30 or 80/20 and it winds up forcing the community to follow where the crowd is.

Also as mentioned in the OP:

I don't quite see why people continue to say it's "too late". Sure RGL announced itself prior already, but NACL still has some time to further establish itself and release more info.

If anything, both this and RGL could survive and work well in certain ways. It seems that RGL has the money so those like b4nny and etc. will be playing in that league. But will the league allow the players to play in the way that they prefer in terms of whitelists, maps, match formats, and etc. ? RGL could easily be the money league that doesn't quite have a format that people agree with while NACL could be the league that can provide a way to play that the community might prefer and perhaps be more "fun".

Anything could happen. It's still a bit early to make calls, but things will eventually/hopefully sort itself out in the next few months and we'll all see where it goes. It's unfair to put everything into RGL just because they announced first and ignore/neglect other leagues that are trying and in the end just trying to help and haven't been given a chance.

Let the best league win.

Hopefully, the staff, service, and satisfaction between each of the leagues will be compared and be a ultimate decider on which will succeed ESEA. It'll be interesting to see which players pick what league and for what reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50rlHVe6g9Q

After trying to catch up(probably missed quite a bit anyway) on the whole league stuff on which will be the new replacement, I think it's important to consider a lot of things.

First, I want to say that with ESEA ending its ties with TF2 as a league, this is possibly a great opportunity for the NA TF2 Community(or the whole TF2 community in general) to have a new beginning with a new league that can/will hopefully do better than ESEA during its run and perhaps even open up a chance to gain new players hopefully. Two important things to remember is: 1. What does the community really need? 2. Who can and is willing to provide it if possible?
I'd say #1 is highly important as it may ultimately lead to what people might choose to do, here's a short list of what I think the community could use in accordance with a new league:

A. A very organized, dedicated, knowledgeable, TRUSTWORTHY, and fantastic team that is highly likely to ensure good quality and not be questionable(as we known of in the past...)
B. Willing to communicate with the community and take them into consideration.
C. A very decent well-running functional website with a great UI in order to actually run the league and represent information.
D. Connections with a great production team/casters and of the sorts, kind of tied with A.
E. Multiple available decent servers with an actual working STV.
F. Willing to communicate with the community and take them into consideration.
G. Actual possible unity(the more unification there is, the better for games like TF2 and such).
H. Willingness to improve, as maybe they don't start out well at first or have X, but are willing to expand and provide it in the future.

There's probably a lot more, but do note I didn't list "LAN" or possible LAN. It's important to consider that you have to think about what's most important and I know that some leagues or people have this idea of trying to have a TF2 LAN or some eSports ideas involved and such, but there are also many people that are done/past that and just want to play the game, but hey you never know, maybe if we can first establish a good community-run league then there can always be plans for LAN in the future. Personally, I think it's more important to establish the most unified "go-to" league that has a lot of the aspects I mentioned and is more community-run, because a community can last longer in the long run than a different provider(ESEA, ESL, Faceit, or etc.) as you never know how long they might last or continue to support the game.

I haven't checked out all these new leagues that are popping up, their site UI, and what they can provide/do for the community, but one other important thing to consider is the players themselves and which league they decide to go with. We're still generally a small community with a limited number of possible teams. It is not good if a community as small as competitive TF2's splinters. An example, back then after tf2lobby ended, people were splintered between tf2center, tf2stadium, and tf2.gg for a small while, with all of them having great UI and potential, but just an unnecessary splinter. I'd think it'd be cooler if some groups/leagues collab, as someone mentioned having RGL+twiikuu team work together(which can be good as we lessen the # of possible splinters and can put more people working together to be able to handle providing the service).

Anyways, I hope in the end it all works out and the community be will be able to settle in a fine league run by a great team. Just remember to consider what the community really needs to survive and be able to have them play the game they love.

Used to be between:
20 pc McNuggets
2 Plain McDoubles
2 Cheeseburgers

with an additional fries + large drink, but now I just mix it up and try to utilize the McDonalds app (which as of lately included/includes $1 Large fries).

Holy shit, you guys got BUICK!!! One of the most humble guys in the community ever.

Sorry for the late notice guys, meant to post this on Sunday night but been busy.

As mentioned earlier, we are having an NA only(Canada, USA, Mexico) event this April! That means NA servers and NA players only as we haven't had one since last year and multiple of our events are EU, so this month we're taking a break.
On Saturday, April 20th, 2019, we will be hosting the NA Amphi Cup @ 17:00 PDT/18:00 MDT/19:00 CDT/20:00 EDT with a 1 hour prior check-in(need to check-in/be available within 1 hour prior to the start).

For those who don't know what amphi is, it's a map with a octogonal field and surrounded by lava, and with the timelimit set to 2 minutes, you and your opponent are to have an "aim"-like duel and try to score the most points. Also, you may know about amphi as an arena in MGE, this is where the concept draws inspiration from. So for those that are huge aim/DM nerds, or the KAT(Kovaak's Aim Trainer) lovers, this cup may be the cup for you!
But of course it'd be sort of stale if it was a 1 map only cup, we also have other maps that fall into a amphi-esque/aim-practice category to help make the cup more interesting. We are including fd-b2 which is like amphi but with a void but in the style of the Smash Bros. map Final Destination! And lastly, the third map is brdmm1_b2 which is made by fellow TF2er Benroads! His map draws more inspiration of endif(yup endif spawns) and also has an interesting mechanic of grenades exploding upon contact with the ground, and also has lava with a jumppad on each corner to possible make a comeback for those who can airstrafe. You can see a bit of the looks of each map in the below poster.

To those that are interested, join the CPMA Discord and PM me @Magikarp#1497.
You can find more info and the map downloads here: https://www.plusforward.net/cpma/post/62897/CPMA-NA-Amphi-Cup/

I hope to see some NA TF2ers join in!

https://i.postimg.cc/9XyQdxJN/NA-Amphi-Cup-resize1.png

Sorry for the huge bump. Just wanted to let you guys know that CPMA 1.52 & CNQ3 1.51 is now out! 2018 was an amazing year for Promode and we already started off this year with 2 Beginner events(Duel and 2v2)! Quite a number of you EU TF2ers have recently even been playing and joining the last two events, we hope to see more of that!

For those who want to join in on the fun, the CPMA community at the moment is largely based around NA, EU, RU, and a little bit of AU(Oceania). But we are always hoping to grow as much as we can in other parts of the world. We definitely have some events lined up and hoping to host this year, with an NA only(we needed more of these) event happening this April(TBA) and an international(usually EU based) event coming soon after.

Join the CPMA Discord to grab the whole CPMA package(everything's ready for you!), get help, and find games!

You can also find the official download links to the new version of the mod (CPMA 1.52) and client (CNQ3 1.51) here:
https://playmorepromode.com/downloads

Hope to see some more TF2ers join in on the fun!

https://i.postimg.cc/hPNp95Tn/CPMA-1-52-CNQ3-1-51-Flyer-resize1.png

Return of the Gandhi Hop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAyyb-lnb0Q

I agree, if this was an issue years ago that a few people have been known to using it, then if anything it's just staying as a "hidden private" cheat for these people who may never get caught or banned as they get away with an unfair advantage.

Pete making this more public is great, and the fact that there's already at least 3 pages on the thread(and hopefully more) is good. Let more people start abusing it, or as hooli has mentioned, get the pubbers angered about it so that Valve will possibly pay attention. This will either lead to:
1. Valve eventually fixing it and thus getting rid of the people that have been using it(and who will ever use it).
2. More and more people continue to using it, and Valve not fixing it after a certain period of time where it's ridiculous, but clearly solidifying their stance on the future support for TF2(to b4nny, that means it's not all about unbanning more weapons in whitelists).

Honestly, if this does get to the point where it becomes more known and used on public servers, just a PC gamer/vg247/kotaku article will start talking about the craze, and then perhaps Valve will start to see the bad public image of it and get to fixing it.

Both of the above ^ would be great for sure, especially with the name of the site being "fragcapsule" as it can act as a time capsule for these fragmovies in case they are ever removed from youtube or etc. But of course you would have to go out and acquire the highest quality download available for the movies if there is any(a good amount will include a DL link).

Also could you add this to the Quake series section? The original uploader deleted their channel, but WASD has a reupload:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3ui0hz6sm0

Thanks. Hope to see some more improvements and such. The site is a cool concept and can act as a a good hub to finding good fragmovies.

stultus posts on natf2 back then were gold

I've been out of the loop for a while and only skimmed the last few pages, but to my understanding it seems that b4nny and some others(as seen in a screenshot) discussed about the banning/unbanning of certain unlocks such as bonk?

Was there any large community poll/survey recently looking for the opinions of the players on whether an all the unlocks should either:
1. stay banned for next season
2. maybe has potential to be unbanned
3. could try unban for next season
or etc. in any shape or form? This matters because for a long while there had been a certain opinion or perspective that I have somewhat sided with and seen in some posts in this thread, which is in relation to the argument about "unbanning more unlocks so that Valve sill support us" and other sorts of arguments/debates.

At this rate, Valve isn't going to support us any time soon from much indication or listen to us that much, and it's possible that it's never going to happen as many believe. During the time/era when Valve was doing amazing things as a company in general and for their other games, TF2 didn't get much of a further push for the competitive scene, what makes us think that in even more recent times where the company(in different areas/aspects) has lately been "making some mistakes" Valve/TF2 team will even work to help support competitive TF2 in a larger contributing factor?

Aside from that, I think one thing I noticed is that some people have acknowledged for a while now or more recently that competitive TF2 only has a few years left or has a limited amount of time left and that they want to play the game while it still has players playing, the balance/style of competitive is still being played, and generally it's still fun to play and that the unlocks that are banned/unfun stay that way. Competitive TF2 is great and some people often play it for a reason, whether they enjoy a competitive environment, the meta is fun, the style of play is preferred compared to pubs, or a mix of all those or something else. The competitive TF2 community is still a small community, of course it has perhaps gotten either smaller or larger over the years as we may lose some players and gain new players over time.

Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that it is important to take into consideration of what many of the players think rather than just a specific # of specific people(Invite or whatnot) who will get to decide what gets added or removed to the game that people enjoy playing for a reason. Multiple players of varying skill levels(Invite, IM, Open, or etc. from EU) should be able to put in their feedback/response in some way so that way we can see not what only the "top/important players" are leaning towards in the opinions of banning/unbanning, but we can see a popular vote at the same time to see what a good # of the community thinks. Everyone should have a fair way to say something and show their feedback, because it's not just X number of people's game(referring to those who got to discuss it internally), it's the community's game.

cinq and pingu, didn't think i'd see those names in 2018. Glad to see y'all finally meeting each other!