This happens all the time, dude.
Get over yourself.

$25, you're almost there.

A significant deterrent to new players/UGC teams from giving Open a try is the massive gulf in the skill level of the top teams vs. the low/new teams - a lot of folks are slow/wary to pay to get beaten down so regularly for the possibility if ESEA TF2 is around in a year they'll have more of a shot at playoffs in the future.

Keeping skilled/talented teams from being formed in IM if they want to isn't just bad for that team, it's bad for ESEA immediately (if they play in Open, lower fees) and also for the league in the long-run as it keeps players in below their level and makes Open less appealing for marginal players to join.

http://i.imgur.com/IXG6EWL.png

I really like the idea of a comp scene that supports locally based teams. I'm not sure if it's really viable but if it works, there's nothing special about A:R that makes it any more viable than any other gametype.

I think you'd have to at least accept the Sandvich, Wrangler, Disciplinary Action and Danger Shield at minimum if not also the Mad Milk and Beggar's Bazooka to satisfy them. But, yeah, my point is they still wouldn't care.
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Because, like I said, 99.9% sure they wouldn't actually do anything.

Bumping, the team is dead so I am looking again, edited the original post with a little bit more open availability as well.

Pretty nice guy, his DM is good and he rarely YOLOs it like so many UGC scouts. Definitely has a future if he finds a team to work with.

I can't forgive him for making me constantly mispronounce the hat, but you might be able to. Give him a tryout!

If Valve wants a "competitive" TF2 to happen, they will do it. All signs point to that they don't.
I don't get why they never tried to make a go of it, but it's what happened.

It's disingenuous for them to act like the way the community plays is the problem - they left it to it's own devices and so they built a game they wanted to play.

I, personally, think the whitelist could be expanded significantly without major damage to the game, leaving all but the most broken items in and most people wouldn't run them. It would make games a touch gimmicky and slow the game down at times, but if it would make Valve suddenly turn the car around and give big time support to comp, it would be 100% worth it, IMHO.

However, I am 99.9% certain if we did that, they wouldn't. Save your hope for TF3.

We've got three rosters signed up so far, and another three people have contacted me but not sent an ESEA roster yet.

I've had a few people ask about their team of all new players that aren't necessarily a straight team porting over from UGC.
That's my bad for wording this not so clearly.

If you're a team of new players to Open (CEVO counts, sorry!), you are absolutely eligible regardless of where your players came from. The point about bringing people from the same team is mainly that if you bring your team over but pick up some experienced Open players, I won't hold it against you as long as they're not sandbaggers.

I've pugged with them several times, they're really nice and working hard at learning, highly recommended if you're looking to get into Open this season!

Messy was a great team leader, loved playing with him the last few seasons.
He's extremely chill and learns from mistakes rather than raging, he'll be a great teammate.

That's plinkooo, thanks!

Yeah, thinking it over I felt that what I wanted to do was give teams something to shoot for by playing in ESEA.

My gut feeling is that it's not the fees that keeps teams from trying ESEA, rather that transition in playing is hard (we can't all be Street Hoops), so I am giving out an incentive for teams to not only sign up but to play it through.

I might be wrong and literally no one will sign up based on accepting the challenge, and so I'm glad Cook (and anyone else who sponsors teams at any level) do what they're doing because we cover more bases that way.

I linked it the reddit post, should have here. Thanks for the reminder!

Awesome, thank you!