This wasn't start-up problems though, since ESEA in NA had exactly the same problems, minus teams folding because they don't have time to play four matches in one week while still playing in ETF2L. It was pure neglect from ESEA to not have TF2 servers ready when the season started, despite it being delayed for three weeks.

ESEA could've gone somewhere because the sign-up numbers weren't that bad for a first season, but I'm convinced they fucked it up massively.

Normally, you would pay to play in a P2P league because of the quality of servers, organisation, customer service, cheat free environment etc. This is what you should get when you pay up. You get value out of paying other than the mere possibility of winning more money. There's nothing wrong with pay to play.

However, when I played in the only season where ESEA operated in Europe, everything was basically a trainwreck and it was all ESEA's fault. I've NEVER played in such a disorganised league, and I've played in many free leagues. Three weeks delay of the season, servers weren't working when the season finally started, when the server issue was fixed there were no server available suddenly, ESEA doesn't give a fuck and forces us to play four officials in one week, and then the BTC scandal happens again. The competition was non-existant because nobody bothered to play four matches a weeks and would rather fold (because the league was at this point a joke, there was no reason to not drop once you weren't able to reach play-offs anymore). Meanwhile the ESEA staff posted dumb shit on TFTV to everyone who complained, it really showed that they don't really give a fuck about TF2.

So yeah, I basically paid them to fuck me up in as many ways as they possibly could think of. It still gives me a headache thinking about this, which is why I think they are fucking crooks.

It's kinda sad that people actually believe that the survival of American TF2 apparently depends on paying (read: donating) money to a crooked company like ESEA who seemingly do everything in their power to fuck up their customers. In return we get three LANs a year with only four teams, which are mostly just boring turtlefests where nothing interesting happens for an hour per map, while the same people win the prizes season after season. Lol, TF2 won't die just because ESEA stops supporting it because in the end only a few people are truly in it for the money.

nice frags man

Adopting a pick/ban system is definitely a step towards more MOBA based gameplay. But unlike MOBAs, the gameplay in TF2 doesn't revolve around strategy, it revolves around mechanical skills, deathmatching skills, gamesense and positioning. In MOBAs, the gameplay revolves around strategies, which are realised by the picking of heroes. Unlocks, in comparison, don't have near the same effect on gameplay that heroes do in Dota, because of several reasons:

Most unlocks aren't balanced for 6v6 (or at all).
Most unlocks are useless/gimmicks.
The stock weapons can't be banned.

Because of these reasons, the pick/ban system for unlocks in TF2 becomes more of a gimmick than something that actually dictates the flow or structure of the game. Since most unlocks aren't used at all, you wouldn't ban them. This leaves us with a selection of a few unlocks that are actually worth banning, which makes the pick/ban phase very bland in comparison to Dota. Also, since you can't ban stock unlocks, there's nothing you can ban to make a team with strong DM weaker. TF2 doesn't revolve around strategies that are realised by unlocks, and banning unlocks have little effect on the game in most cases. It will still be a DM based game, and a pick/ban system only provides with superficial changes to the flow and structure of each match. But I fear the day a team who can't deal with kritzkrieg just opts to ban it in every game so they don't have to adapt.

Don't make TF2 into a MOBA. We've played this gamemode for seven years now, and now Valve wants us to fundamentally change the way we play this game. But what do we get out of it? A fucking retarded game and Valve will probably still not give a fuck about us. They didn't care about us for seven years, they are not going to start caring now.

i bet it was zebbosai he is pretty bad with servers

The lighthouses themselves aren't the problem, but it's a symptom that the entire second point is being rendered when you stand on mid, can't say that this is the case because I haven't looked at the map too thoroughly. Another upside of having the lighthouses in the 3d skybox would be that they would always get rendered regardless of visleafs.

Another problem in regards to optimising is that you don't put nodraw on textures that are below displacements, displacements don't block vision so these textures get rendered anyway unless you put nodraw on them.

But for clipping errors:
setpos -5046 7895 513
setpos -5121 7474 625
setpos -3800 7480 -110
setpos -608 3847 196

Also tended to get stuck on the spiral stairs on second point. Perhaps make it a tiny bit farther from the center.

Can see through the bottom of the window (on all windows it seems):
setpos -760.238586 3592.410645 129.031311;setang 2.227793 -86.828278 0.000000

Also found that you can stand on top of the slanted clip brush on top of the mid point.

Was able to stand inside the awning on the slanted clip brush (remove the clip brush and make the brush beneath it non-solid func_brush):
setpos -1352.641602 2115.120605 65.031311;setang -27.973633 -92.319298 0.000000

Make these lamps non-solid:
setpos -4763.606445 6887.968750 -254.968689;setang -43.531898 -138.022354 0.000000

Can completely hide stickies inside these rocks:
setpos -3201.395508 3366.437012 132.920227;setang 41.012444 -53.230721 0.000000

You get stuck mid-air while sticky jumping around here:
setpos -2499.772217 5393.065918 1232.214722;setang 3.629202 175.946640 0.000000

- Avoid slanted clip brushes in general, you can often just stand on top of them.
- The rooftops should be made non-solid func_brush and the clip brushes should be flush with the wall (as opposed to the rooftops) so that players don't collide with them mid-fight.

Anyway, this map was really well polished from what I found, good job.

Well. It seems that the lighthouses are drawn from the mids, which I think is the biggest problem. Maybe it is possible to prevent second being drawn from mid (and vice versa) and put the top of the lighthouses in the 3d skybox instead, along with the rest of the water that's on the map.

Gunslinger engineer with short circuit meta

Just played a premdoublemix on it in Europe, and people seem to be having framerate issues, especially on older rigs. I understand it's difficult to fix visleafs and stuff this late in development, but this map has so much potential and the framerate is a legitimate issue and should be prioritised for future updates.

how can someone living in 2014 not be aware of targeted advertising

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Talk about Kaidus' wreck post