the type that uses all 4 rockets in a bomb

I am under a hot take opinion that 3/4s of players would definitely not quit and i think you guys would just spend the money to play because most of you should be adults with jobs and that kind of money should be trivial to you

also us paying = prizepools and community funded events so most people just do it anyway and those who cant usually get paid for anyway because most of the time a teammate will be generous and have extra

I don't think 15+ dollars (plus more if you improve) is a trivial amount of money for a lot of the ETF2L player base. Our player base is mostly aged 14-21 who don’t have the money to spend on TF2. A lot are in school or work part time while studying.

That is why I mentioned that a large portion of the player base would quit or make a new free league themselves rather than pay fees.

I played when I was in middle school, and every time someone payed for me. I believe that new players get their dues paid for if their team is created by newbie.tf, and I think most teams want to play with each other so someone will pay for their teammate

I've definitely paid my fair share of teammates fees before, and I think it happens on a good number of teams as well where someone pays for someone elses fees, so I dont think it should be a problem

when i was a teenager my mom made me pay for my ESEA league fees + 3 months of premium, and if a teammate needed theirs paid i would spot them too, i only made like 40 (canadian) dollars a weekend as a hockey referee. with RGL's fees being like 1/2 of what ESEA's fees were, in my opinion, it really is a trivial amount of money that also gets reinvested back into the community via prizepools and (as of recent), LANs.

just a differing demographic then, cuz most of the known people in NA or atleast active ppl are 20+ i think?

steal your moms credit card ez

I don't think that is true considering the people in question spend way more on cosmetics.
To me it always felt like people see no reason to pay fees if it is just a paycheck for the top teams or sandbaggers

The problem is that people think that they will just be paying for a service that they got for free before and that's why they are initially opposed to the idea of paid leagues. But like everything money will only improve the quality of the league as whole. For starters ETF2L will be actually able to pay their admins and site janitors for a better experience. Not the mention the prizepools. I also think this will have the unexpected effect of weeding out people in a good way, as it will be incentivized to try harder and get better in order to compete in the top leagues(aka. get your moneys worth). I'm all for a paid league as it will increase the quality of eu top level tf2 as a whole.

Fees wouldn't work in Europe because half of Europe is poor as fuck.

I'm very interested in seeing what EU players would think about introducing league fees into ETF2L - maybe a poll would be good? I agree with Lupus here in that it will insentivise better competition and make EU a stronger region.

League fees need to be used in a way that they benefit a regular player. Some of the money could go to top level talent, But as Gazy has said, it wouldn't be very popular to just give money to high level talent + sandbaggers and keep the league as it is.

I believe that using league fees to create new services (Building tools like https://ozfstats.com, updating API, etc) or to create events (ETF2L Pugs/LANs/Cups etc) would be the way to implement league fees positively. Then you would also be able to boost winnings of high level talent.

There is of course some negatives to implementing league fees (sandbagging first comes to mind), but I think that if league fees are used positively they could improve the scene in EU and create a better comp TF2 experience.

It depends how the money is distributed, they would have to make it so getting even last place in Prem would make you more money than winning Div1 would, or be a lot stricter on what divs people can play in and not allow rule bending.

The biggest negative to adding league fees realistically is the potential player count loss, as ETF2Ls team count is already declining, i'm not sure if they can afford another hit like that, in any case the low divs should be kept free. But honestly, the concept of paying $15 every 2-3 Months for a hobby that most people spend thousands of hours on is not out of this world.

the problem is just how accepting will people in EU be to that idea. NA never had this problem since they have had to deal with league fees since the inception of their league and scene and it never really got questioned.

i mean na leagues benefit from being all in na, asking people from turkey or russia to pay the same fees as brits or germans is unfair and basically unfeasible nowadays

adjusting to paying for urself will be weird enough without paying for broke/sanctioned/underage players to play a season of div2/mid with you, and even with ppl paying for other ppl you're essentially wiping out the all russian teams that make up like a quarter of low divs lol

It can be done, people are just very set in their ways. The league is like 14 years old after all.

I think only Div1/Prem in rgl has an entry fee.

I care a lot more about div 2 finals if there is money on the line.

its fine - its a small amount - but i don't really see the benefit other than paying the staff

i think the quality of the games would be the exact same, as it is in america. i don't think this would change the effort people already put into the game. i'm pretty sure most americans just see the fees thing as feeding banny, but do it just cause they kinda have to

6s has fees/prizes in all divs above open (amateur). In hl only invite has fees/prizes.

https://c.tenor.com/7ajDxlxJyp4AAAAd/walter-white-falling-walter-white.gif

I think the practical reason for the difference between NA and EU is that it's The Way Things Are Done for both regions, and the exact events that led to things being that way were years before I joined this forum. Also NA has UGC for all the poors so making direct comparisons of ETF2L to RGL isn't right.

How would you implement a prizepool in EU? I think fewer people would quit than you say even if paid divs were the only options. There may or may not be room for a concurrent free league, but despite the amount of shit that gets talked about it, NA has sustained a free league in UGC this whole time, so I doubt that would be an issue. ETF2L itself could get in on running both types or not, but at the end of the day, all an EU prizepool means is that the EU community needs someone(s) it trusts enough to handle money to step up and distribute winnings.

If running two leagues really isn't viable for whatever reason, we could try to get crazy. What if you ran an entry fee bracket parallel to the normal free one? During the season you can simply run everything normally with all teams, and then I see a couple of routes for playoffs. I think the best is again to just run playoffs as normal, but only teams that paid in are eligible for payouts. So for example, if at the end of grand finals you had:
#1 Team 1 (free)
#2 Team 2 (paid)
#3 Team 3 (paid)
Team 1 would still be able to say they're the best team in EU, but since they didn't pay league fees Team 2 gets the grand prize, Team 3 would get the 2nd place payout, and so on. You could argue that only teams with a chance of winning would pay in, but that's kinda how things already work anyway, except right now there's absolutely no one paying because it isn't an option. You could argue that it makes grand finals less exciting if the prizepool might not actually be on the line, but again, compare to now, where no one gets paid.

As full alternatives, if you want to lock playoffs behind a paywall, or run separate free vs paid playoffs, you could have a secondary point total for paid teams during the regular season that only updates when they play against other teams in the paid bracket. Then you can rank paid teams separately in the postseason. But these have huge drawbacks, like the best teams potentially not technically winning the season because they didn't pay.

I dunno, at this point I'm just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, but the point I'm trying to make is that there are plenty of options to try to implement if anyone really feels passionately about prizepools. My feeling is that there isn't one because the people in charge feel they don't need one, or maybe even that TF2 shouldn't have one, and I wouldn't fault them for either.

this is literally what I was gonna say.
Sure making $15 an hour is harder in Alabama than it is in New York, but it's nothing like comparing getting $15 in Germany or the U.K. compared to Albania or Serbia

was also gonna mention this. There have been league fee's since I started playing ESEA at 15 years old so, kinda just the name of the game over here

i can't pretend to know much on the subject, but dealing with players' money has to be a small nightmare, thinking about the legal, operational, and cybersecurity aspects

isn't there also a big problem with the winners of these prize pools not receiving them for like months

I feel like the main reason pay-to-play for European leagues would not work is because most people will not see any of this money come back their way and it will primarily be to fund prizepools for the top divisions and compensate community contributors. The amount of money would also have to depend on the country, due to income varying heavily across Europe. Would be a logistical nightmare. Either that or it would have to be such a low amount that it might as well not be worth the effort.

Also no shot anyone is (voluntarily) programming a payment system into the Wordpress mess that is ETF2L.

People who want to financially support ETF2L can easily do so by donating, there's been some fairly generous donations in the past.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/891822755442487369/1015622962386305084/unknown.png

although one benefit of a payment system of some sort is if we organised a LAN like now for America next summer and then it all goes towards that spanning all the seasons in between

this way we can guaranteed send whatever the best euro team at the time is there and don't have to worry about hitting goals/just drop a shock fundraiser on that last season, it can just be a slow graduated thing.

maybe the games just gone past that tho, idk

if you have money to spend on tf2 items (which almost every one of you does), you have 15$ to put in a prize pool to play in a season. 3/4s would not quit, and ultimately if someone cant pay their fees someone on the team usually does it for them.

if i spend money on cosmetics im buying them for myself

if i spend money to play a tf2 league im just giving it to top div people/sandbaggers

those arent the people providing the service. if admins started demanding to no longer be volunteers and the money was to give them a salary then that'd be a bit different i feel.

don't get me wrong, i think its important to have dedicated top players pushing the boundaries of the game and making the top competition good to watch, but still.

(obviously im not saying i don't want top players to have good prize pools, i just don't like it being "forcefully" funded by the community, especially when many people arent even playing to try to reach the top themselves)

edit: forgot that rgl uses money to fund lans, that actually makes it a lot more justifiable IMO since it adds a genuine great increase in quality to the conclusion of the top competition (more so than i'd imagine a prize money increase does since people don't really play for money anyway but i'd be interested to hear top player perspectives on this -- does a higher prizepool significantly increase your motivation to win and thus improve the quality of the competition?) and i feel it gives back to the whole community (since theyre exciting to watch) more than an increase in prize money for the top players does.

ive never really cared about prizes but also never really cared about paying the fee lol. if it goes to stuff like making lan happen then its worth it IMO, though I think EU already runs more lans than NA? so I guess they don't need it.

(btw "ill never see the money because it will just go to sandbaggers" is such a bad mentality lol, do you have no faith in your own improvement? just get good lol)

fees for lan > low fees for website upkeep/community stuff? (online) > fees just to feed b4nny (online)