Hello, apologize in advance for all who feel TLTR.

I want to address the situation of playoffs this season in IM and OPEN. Before I continue, let me say that I have no personal stake in this at all. My team was not affected in any way, I have no friends on other teams that were involved nor am I some TFTV forum troll who goes around bashing ESEA and the admins for fun.

I am bringing this up because I care about TF2 and this community. I have too much personal experience with TF communities and how they fall apart. I will not be going into many boring details about my past but suffice to say that I have been part of every major TF league at the highest levels since day 1 back in 1998. I experienced the TF community deteriorate and then recover as a player and admin several times spanning many leagues and years. I can say without a doubt that ESEA has, by far, the worst LEAGUE-PLAYER communication I have yet experienced. This fact is even worse because ESEA is a pay-to-play league. In the past, our leagues were far larger, but we played and ran our leagues without any money or LAN finals involved. It was about pride in your teams and the love of the game simply because we cared.

To the admins directly (Killing and/or any other active/invisible admin)

If you don't care about TF2 anymore ---- PLEASE quit being our admin or find a replacement
If you can't invest enough time or effort ---- PLEASE quit being our admin or find a replacement
If you can't communicate with us at least once every 2 weeks about the status of our league ---- PLEASE quit being our admin or find a replacement
If you feel that being a TF2 admin is a "chore" for you. I can accept that. ---- PLEASE quit being our admin or find a replacement
Admins have more responsibility than simply showing up to generate buzz for sign-up league fees 1 week before the start of the season.

Now on to my main point

It is my understanding that the IM division will only have 4 teams advancing to the playoffs. That is totally absurd when you actually look at these teams. I fail to understand the logic or reason why this decision has been made. You are awarding 16 OPEN teams with playoff opportunities and that is fantastic, please don't change a thing. On the other hand, you are penalizing 4 IM teams for staying active and fighting for the goal of playoffs. So far, ESEA has said nothing about this situation publicly that I have seen. There is no way the league can blame "forfeit wins" as a reason for this decision and I will explain.

Let us look at only the top 8 teams in IM right now and some facts:

128 Total Matches
20 Total Forfeit Wins (15%)

That means, for the top 8 IM teams, 85% of the matches were played and 15% were forfeit wins. Of these 20 forfeits, almost every Top 8 team shared wins over the exact same 2 dead teams (BUDSQUAD and WELOVEANIME). That means the forfeits had no real impact on the IM division at all.
Since when is 15% forfeit wins a failed division? 85% matches played looks pretty nice to me. All 8 teams need to be in the playoffs for IM. Why only 4? Explain?

One last IM factoid, are Revenge of the Yomies really being kicked out of playoffs for having a successful season? This team went 11-5 with only 1 FFW. Lets look a little more. YOMIES has 67 "Rounds For" in IM this season coming in a close 2nd overall. Is that because they have only 1 FFW, of course, but that does not explain why they also have the 2nd best cap differential in the IM division. (32 - only Blockback tops them) The reason? They played very well. Why penalize this team?

Lastly, can anyone find another 11-5 team that did not make playoffs in ESEA history? I did a pretty long search today and could not find another example, I may possibly be wrong but I did not see one. I have no friends on YOMIES, but WTF these guys need to be in the playoffs just as much as 2,3 and 4 seeds. THE TOP 8 IM TEAMS NEED TO BE IN PLAYOFFS.

Lets now look at the OPEN division and compare some facts:

Starting with the top 8 ONLY
128 Total Matches
28 Total Forfeit Wins (22%)

Math - 22% is higher than 15%. If IM got cut down to 4 playoff teams because of 15% Forfeit Wins, then what does 22% Forfeit Wins get you? I'll tell you!

OPEN got an additional 8 teams for the playoff bracket. Stats for all 16 OPEN teams combined:
256 Total Matches
50 Total Forfeit Wins (20%)

Math - 20% is still higher than 15%. Now please don't get me wrong. I want all 16 OPEN teams to play in the playoffs. My problem is that I see no logic at all in the decision for IM.

As a final example, I can not accept that the admin/s did any type of investigation at all before making a decision. No offense to the #16 OPEN team - NOT UP TO VAR but this team has 6 forfeit wins. More than half of their record (10-6) was earned against dead teams. They have only 4 actual wins but they are getting a shot at playoffs. Compare that to REVENGE OF THE YOMIES situation and you can see how completely absurd this ruling looks.

The purpose of playoffs is to see who really is the best team in the division. If you can show-up as a team in a playoff setting, you deserve everything you earn. Teams 5 thru 8 in IM deserve that chance.

I have no idea if any ESEA rep will respond at all and attempt to drop some knowledge on me. I really don't even know how the community will respond to this post but I felt like saying it anyway. I did not send this privately to ESEA because the lack of community interaction is already at a terrible level. ESEA needs to be more active in the community and be heard publicly every once in a while. If you do reply, please don't act like your hands are tied and can't change anything. Playoffs have not started, and adding 4 more teams to a bracket does not sounds difficult.

If true and not a typo, a terrible move by ESEA that just fucks over 4 teams who were fighting hard all season for placement.

I don't understand the logic at all. For the past 2 seasons, ESEA has been close to possibly closing TF2 all together. Why would you not award 4 ACTIVE and COMPETITIVE IM teams that fought to make the top 8?? Forfeit wins mean nothing to me in this situation and don't give me any bullshit about "luck wins" happening.

The bottom line is, if you fucking lose in the playoffs when everything is on the line, you simply are not the best team. Stop trying to give excuses for losses that have not even happened yet.

My current season is over but I would like to continue playing on a consistent basis if possible. Pug groups and mixes are fine for simply having fun but I would prefer an actual team that is working close to match settings. I don't rage and can make 4-5 nights a week or as needed. My goal is to continue to improve and IMO only match type settings can help me at this point.

Exp- Last 2 seasons were as an IM Roamer. This season I played scout with a group of old friends for most of the season but switched to Roamer towards the end.

My DM is the strongest part of my game but also have good comms, game-sense and will make plays. Any team that would need an IM level Roamer as a backup / temporary sub or just a steady and reliable player from week to week, please feel free to add me.

Unlike most people in the spotlight, this woman constantly said the things nobody else had the balls or guts to say in public. Who cares what she said about the Palestinians, she is 100% right. They fucking start shit all the time so if they die because of it then you made your bed.

I found her to be extremely funny and admire her strength of personality to not bow down and be a sheep in life. Maybe I relate more because that is exactly how I live as well. I have never backed down or given another person an inch of respect unless it was earned. If something needs to be said, go ahead and say it. Stop worrying about someone's feelings getting hurt.

She is probably talking shit to whoever is running the afterlife right now.

If I showup and see this, it's not going to end well for him.

The entire Geneforge Series. Completely single play based.

No eye candy, just hours upon hours of enjoyable RPG party building. Has a good story-line and different possible endings based off your actions during the game.

All 5 games for only 30$, it can't be beat for the price.

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/geneforge/

Obviously I understand that. I wasn't talking about money in any way and never mentioned it. I was talking about competition from different parts of the world and how in an ideal setting, it would be nice to see them all playing together.

All current rap is terrible. No artist stands out at all. Rap used to tell a story where the lyrics alone would take you into the artist's world and mindset. It happens very rarely today if at all.

Today's rap is all about marketing and the shock value of an artist to generate buzz and sales. The things artists do OUTSIDE of the music is many times more important to sales than the actual music.

I offer to be NA team/s bodyguard in the next LAN.

Certain that coleman would have been dealt with quite swiftly.

Even if this is true, it would still be nice to see these teams play on LAN. Publicir and AYO were simply filler teams for the Invite bracket. I wouldn't see any problem with giving those 2 spots to the Asian and South American teams instead.

Even if you did not go that direction, the Asian/South American teams should be good enough to finish top 2 in the Non-Invite brackets and advance to play in the final tournament.

Turin, I know racism exists and I never said anything otherwise. I said that in america, racism is a 1 way street.

Just because your local police force "supposedly" called SWAT out incorrectly does not mean there should be no SWAT teams at all.

Right, and when someone goes crazy is running around with a assault rifle and body armor killing everyone, you would likely be the first person to say "Why didn't the police have anything to stop this maniac before he killed so many people". Keep throwing stones without understanding.

Gates was a visionary and he acted when others did nothing.

This whole situation is terribly simple to understand and CNN provided the footage. A black woman was being interviewed and she said (yelled) "All we want is the truth, why can't we have the truth...."

Simple fact is, that once it was a white cop that killed a black guy, there was no real "truth" to provide her at all. She made up her mind about everything and was just on the warpath afterwards. New facts, forensics, video's, etc will NEVER matter to her. The same is likely true about 99% of the protesters.

Everyone always talks about it and would love to believe and live in a fairy tale world where racism is a 2 way street. Please wakeup, in this country it only goes 1 direction. This whole story is being covered from 1 side, media coverage across the board is 1 sided.

For myself, I will wait for when the media can repeatedly report on the same outrage when a black person kills a white person. When was the last time you seen that reported on international news and had the president involved? Take your time to look it up, I am not going to hold my breath. Maybe its because we don't use every incident like this to riot.

Was a pretty simple and effective strategy on defense. We gave them the flanks but challenged hard 1on1 whole clogging up the middle on the crosses. Not going to work vs Germany but I'm sure the coach knows that all too well.

I think we are going to surprise vs Portugal but losing altidore is so huge.