where do you even start with creating a league? I'm happy to help in any way that I can, and I'd put way too much of my own time and money into getting something started, but I hoenstly don't even know who to talk to or what to do.

So about what we do here, but split. Hm, maybe I'm just overestimating the amount of effort we're really putting in to learn the maps or something. Thanks for responding, user T0m.

That's all I really care about to be honest. Even if it's not a client, just playing on a dedicated match server would be preferable to what I've seen in my (very limited) UGC experience.

I don't think many people in this community honestly cheat in any sort of official setting tbh, but I've played a number of UGC matches on my own server with no STV running and there was never any sort of oversight. If UGC can provide working servers for every match, then that's one thing, but half the UGC servers I've played on have been really stuttery to the point of unplayability. Not that that is much different from a typical ESEA match server, but at least those felt official.

i think his hands are busy right now

so a scrim for you is about an hour, then? how many scrims do lower div teams play per night/how many nights per week? At this point i'm more just interested in the workings of the lower div teams. My team is probably more dedicated than 95% of open teams and I still think we'd struggle with two maps per week. How much time in a particular week would you say that you spend on each map? Between scrims, demo review, etc?

I personally am not a huge fan of UGC because of the lack of a client, servers, and a really poor setup for match comms/scheduling. ESEA doesn't have a great website and in a lot of ways it's really really shitty, but at least it's not that hard to navigate it to at least find when your match will be. I'd need a better layout to really consider UGC as an alternative. Would they be doing a paid league, Marxist? Or just more free divisions?

you have to be mentally unhinged to subscribe to that lifestyle publicly, so this isn't really out of their wheelhouse.

fair enough, still seems like a lot tho.

for those who ahve been playing with their team for a long time it's easier, i'm sure. I know all the maps in esea pretty well on a personal level, but it's still a struggle to mesh everyone on my team together in just a week of scrims/review. I dunno, maybe it's different for those playing at a higher level. Does anyone in lower divs have any thoughts?

let's just go play cevo. A lot of people have bad memories of it but it's under new leadership and the admins seem to genuinely want the input of the community. They're already offering cash prizes and a growth in numbers would only see that increase (hopefully).

It's more the "two maps per week" thing that I dislike.

Maybe it's just because i'm still really bad at this game but focusing on one map per week is enough. Trying to prep as a team for two per week would just be too much. I've heard from some EU players that they just prep the map they think they'll be better at and toss the other one out essentially.

Another good potential alternative. I think I'd still prefer CEVO to this because I don't want to learn a different playstyle to fit the ruleset, plus the two maps, 1 match per week thing really sucks in my eyes.

That said, I'm up for trying anything at this point. I think we as a community just need to make a decision and stick with it, to try and develop it.

still a semi-rough estimate but I'm guessing the absolute minimum for playoffs will be 9-7, 45 RF, 44 RA. More likely is 10-6, 52 RF, 44 RA

it's shaky because the autoscheduler is confusing as hell but i'll be able to give a closer estimate when week 8 schedules are released

would anyone be interested in some math-based preds of who the playoff teams will be + seeds? Note that it's not my personal predictions so please don't crucify me if I didn't put your team in or something

pipes are a crutch for demomen with bad positioning

"shoutout to unannounced pleasure for being our easiest victory"

goddamnit broking